At length came that day, that dreadful day, whose evening Sir Henry Ashwoode was never to see. Noon was the time fixed² for the fatal ceremonial; and long before that hour, the mob, in one dense³ mass of thousands, had thronged⁴ and choked the streets leading to the old gaol⁵. Upon this awful day the wretched man acquired, by a strange revulsion, a kind of stoical composure, which sustained him throughout the dreadful preparations. With hands cold as clay, and a face white as ashes, and from which every vestige⁶ of animation⁷ had vanished, he proceeded, nevertheless, with a calm and collected demeanour to make all his predetermined arrangements for the fearful scene. With a minute elaborateness he finished his toilet, and dressed himself in a grave, but particularly handsome suit. Could this shrunken, torpid⁹, ghastly spectre, in reality be the same creature who, a few months since, was the admiration¹⁰ and envy of half the beaux of Dublin?

 

There was little or none of the fitful excitability about him which had heretofore marked his demeanour during his confinement¹¹; on the contrary, a kind of stupor¹² and apathy¹³ had supervened, partly occasioned by the laudanum which he had taken in unusually large quantities, and partly by the overwhelming horror of his situation. He seemed to observe and hear nothing. When the gaoler entered to remove his irons, shortly before the time of his removal had arrived, he seemed a little startled, and observing the physician who had attended him among those who stood at the door of his cell, he

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