THE UNJUST JUDGMENT.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume I, Issue 47, 25 November 1867, Page 4

THE UNJUST JUDGMENT.

(Oonclued from oui last.)

“ Look at ye, ye white-faced villain!— .cowardly villain what kills the women and children!” continued John, grasping the other’s collar, and shaking him violently. “I’ve had my revenge on ’tothers, and I doant want to rob ye, hut I’se a mind to break every mortal bone in yer black body!” John Hughes was strong; rage and vengeance deferred gave him additional strength, but the other was, as he had shewn himself, wary and cunning. Even while his assailant, with doubled fists, endeavored to reduce his frame as much as possible to the resemblance of a jelly, without actually taking his life, the bailiff was watching his chance, and slipping his hand into a wide-mouthed pocket, he drew forth a knife, which opened with a spring, and made a thrust at his antagonist. John felt the blade pierce the fleshy part of his hand. His hitherto subdued blood to a certain extent boiled up. Wrenching the knife from the bailiff, but not before he had received several cuts in the fingers, he made a stab at him, not intending to inflict a mortal wound, but when the mad blood is up, and men take to the knife who may reckon upon the result! The bailiff moved with a twist aside, and the weapon was buried to the hilt in his bosom.

Then John Hughes became sobered. It was the first blood he had shed; it seemed to his excited mind at that momen tjthathe saw his lost Jenny before him, wringing her hands; one look he gave at the dying man, and then springing «ver the hedge, fled—fled for his life. Next day John was in London, and for the first time his associates saw him reeling drunk. Oh! now anything to to deaden memory! The papers teemed with it, and John Hughes’ name was in everyone’s mouth, for the bailiff lived long enough to depose to the above facts, and denounce him as the murderer. “Well!” exclaimed the reckless man, as he read about himself and his antecedents, coupled with the accusation of having been the author of the various robberies committed in the neighbourhood, at all events, now they all knows who it wur who robbed ’em, and revenged hisself. Now that justice knows who tore his child’s pictur to bits. He drownded mine, he and his likes did. ■ But justice demands a life for a life and a few weeks saw John Hughes an inmate of the county gaol; then tried convicted, condemned to die. Was there no hope of a commutatioa •of the sentence ? was it not manslaughter, not murder 2 No! true to the last, to his hatred towards John Hughes, the dying man deposed that the other had methim to commit the crime, rifled his pocket of the knife, and stabbed him. So John was left to die. There was no one to speak a kind word for him, not one to tell how he had been led into temptation, illegally convicted as a poacher, and cast to starve or steal on the world, with a wife’s early grave to -avenge. Heaven help the like, and judge them more leniently than man does! The first natural feeling of man’s heart nnder heavy wrongs is revenge—and, poor, blind mortal, too often it is against himself—in bitterness towards mankind.

Doggedly, -almost without thought, and certainly devoid of any feeling like repentance, John sat for days in-his cell. He would see no one, scarcely touched food. If any one spoke to him, he turned his face to the wall and remained -obstinately silent. The chaplain of the gaol came-; hehad ■a soft and earnest voice-; he strove to soothe. John was touched, but his heart would not admit it. This man had quitted a more lucrative profession to •become a soother of the suffering'; and as a sure path to touch a man’s sensitiveness before addressing one so great an outcast as John, he had closely examined the man’s career, step by step, and the-result was a more than merely -charitable pity towards the unhappy prisoner. In imagination he had seen him driven, an innocent man, from his happy home. He had walked beside that stretcher, so painfully described by John Hughes, even while turning with glaring eyes on the one who came to ask him to repent —him whose every hope had been crushed.

There is always a consolation at hand Tor those who visit the sinner, when he will argue, and not remaim obstinately ailent.

The young clergyman felt this, and Heaven; out just as his work -appeared likely to be rewarded by a more tranquil and resigned spirit on John’s part, sickness separated them, and another was appointed to do his work. All those early texts he had read in bis little cottage to poor Jenny were reviving in the man’s mind, rising to the -surface like lilies above the foul matter of hate and revenge at the bottom. He yearned for the hour to come when •a kind and truthful voice, a manly, not a 4rawling, canting one, should speak them, for it seemed to him that every word brought him neater to Jenny; for the moment, far

cell, which would bring' his kind friend once more, footsteps smote on his wake* fill car.

Tears were in his eyes. “ I must be black-hearted and seeming deaf, to sin any more,” he said, as the steps advanced; “but I wull up an’ tell he all the good he had done I!” With these good resolutions in his mind, eagerly watched the opening door.

How wisely we are tried by Heaven, that every hidden fault may break forth and become, even by bitter suffering, eradicated, for there is no wound so cancerious as an unseen one.

Thedoor opened, and a tall, meagre, man followed the gaoler in. How, in a moment, a haze, a mist followed by a black threatening cloud, came over John Hughes’ face, chasing away the expression of humble welcome ! In the one chosen to supply the place of the chaplain, laid prostrate by illness, the wretched, the doubly wretched, prisoner beheld the chairman on the magistrate’s bench, on his first cruel and ruinous conviction, the Reverend Mr. Brand. Starting back, John dropped on his pallet The other still advanced; and then the voice said—- “ Well, John Hughes, I’m sorry to see you here, hut, you know, I foretold how it would end years ago.” “ Take that man away, wull ’e!” cried John, in a suffocating, hut imploring tone, to ihe gaoler. “No!”■ answered Mr Brand, “I have come here to perform a stern duty, and I will conscientiously go through with it, and point out.to you,most wretehedman, whither you are going.” John clenched his hands firmly together to still the beating of his pulses, and turned his back on the speaker as he dropped down on his hard pallet. “Such men as my reverend friend, who has lately been with you, are too mild to deal with unrepenting sinners like you,” continued the speaker. “You only dupe and deceive them, bringing the greater punishment on your already condemned souls!”

.John could, possibly, have borne all which might have been said of himself, but not of of one whom he had learned to revere like his late pastor. The unsubdued passions within him rose—in one glance he again saw his happy home—then Jenny, dead—his own and all the latter, springing like fungi from the hot-bed of oppression and wrong, with a mad spring he was at the other’s throat, bis nervous hands clasped the neck, and but for timely help, he would have added another murder, though an unpremeditated one, to the first.

With much difficulty they loosed that iron grasp, and then the wretched man was placed in irons. Before night, he was raving mad—raving! and one fierce cry blended words of love and regret for those he had lost with the bitter curses and denunciations on his Jenny’s, his poor wench’s murderers. Nights and days he lay thus; restraint was obliged to be used, but they could not quell thought, wild and mad as it was. “ How is he ? How is that poor fellow?'’ asked a gentle voice, a few days later, as an emaciated figure was supported into the prison. It was the gaol chaplain. •“Well, sir,” answered the governor, “ I fear he’ll cheat the hangman yet 5 he is very all.” “Pear ?” ejaculated the other; “ would it not be God’s mercy to take him, if sense be given for repentance ?” The governor turned away. He was one of the : stern school, preferring a startling andnever-good-doing example, to a peaceful, repenting end to so sad a career. The pale, sick minister of mercy sat on the felon’s bed ; the wild, roving eyes rested on the face. A momentary gleam of memory crossed it, then it faded away again. “ Have a care, sir,” said the turnkey. “He may start up on a sudden, and do you a mischief; he’s too ill to bear restrain* now.” “ I don’t fear,” was the gentle answer, as a thin hand rested on the felon’s heated brow, ’Twas the seat of sense. Bid that touch, by some mystic power, awaken thought and intercommunion between the two? In a broken, disjointed manner, John Hughes began to utter some of the words of consolation the other used to pour into his ear, those words which had opened the stony heat within him, and bidden the waters flow forth.

Tears stole down the chaplain’s face. “ What be ’e Cryin’ for?” asked John, looking wistfully in his face. “ Have they gone and. drowned thee Jenny, too?” “There is little use talking to him, sir,” suggested the turnkey; “ he’s quite mad.” But the other would talk, would strive. It seemed so dreadful to him to see a fellow-creature die deranged, and with a heavy and unrepented weight of crime on his conscience.; . . It fcas ’ been Veil and : truly proved gentaaiig&a fetopkh with

The good, man persevered. Ho had crawled from his sick bed to do so, and if ha. wore his own strength in the effort, what was that to him? he brought health to the diseased mind, A few more days, and the felon’s hand clasped his. • ..... “ Oh, sir 1” he whispered, “I owe you more nor life; I owe you hopes far brighter nor anything in thisn word. May the Lord bless you and youru !” u And John you will see Mr Brand ? not to oblige me, but because we ought to forgive as we hope to be forgiven ?” 4t Yes, sir, I wull,” was the quick rejoinder, u for even in his cornin’ therewur marcy j but for that, I should ha’ broughtened on this fever. I should ha’ died on-——” The poor man’s pale face blanched with horror as he thought, not of death, hut the scaffold, and the thousands of upturned faces. The Reverand Mr Brand came, stern as ever; a frown on his brow, no mercy, no pity; ‘twas a crime in his eyes to pity a sinner: his faults should ever be held up in black letters before him. John Hughe* was the great man then, before his Maker, for he raised himself feebly, in his bed, and held out an emaciated hand. “ Forgive me, sir,” he cried, “ I be main sorry now. Thank God I was saved from harmin’ ’e.” Immoveable the other stood, at a distance, nor touched that sinner’s hand. “John Hughes,” he began; and then commenced a severe, unchristian oration to the dying man. But another soft, kindly hand clasped the one so sternly rejected. “ God Almighty bless you, sir, and pardon I!” uttered John, as his eyes gazed on that kindly face whilst they could see; and that was not a very long time, for a film came oyer them; and John Hughes cheated the hangman, to the religious horror cf the Reverand Mr Brand, who thought all severe punishments best. (Concluded.)