The Child of Waterloo, or, The Horrors of the Battle-Field — page 294: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE CHILD OF WATERLOO. avi The moment arrived when the procession was about to be formed, when the various officers of the prison approached him; but he did not wish one of them farewe ‘*T will not go,” he muttered; ‘‘no, no, I will not go. You may drag me, but you shall not take me to die if I can help it. bes resist; you may murder me, but you shall not do it cheaply. The ‘wretched man was too far gone; he trembled while he struggled, and at the same time the officials found but little dif- ficulty in carrying him along the passages. The chaplain began to read the burial service, and the proces- sion moved forward; the sound of St. Sepulchre’s church bell came heavily on the ear, and not a sound was lost; Sternholde was carried forward, faintly struggling in the arms of those who bore him along. Abject cowardice seemed to have come over him, and he could not think of death with calmness. They now came upon the platform; Sternholde was supported to the drop. Tt rained fast, but there was a dense mass of people, who saluted him with{a groan. He had pulled off the cap which had been drawn over his face, and he yet struggled witb his sup- porters more violently, as the moments grew shorter, and the mob hooted and howled dreadfully; the rain came down heavily, the dismal tolling of the bell came more dreadful and more distinctly than ever. The preparations for the execution were complete, so far as the prisoner was concerned, and then the aigue was given, and the wretched man, by some misplacement of the rope occasioned by his struggles, swung to and fro, horribly convulsed, for the space of one or two minutes, notwithstanding the executioners hung to his legs, and thus added their weight to his. After a short and sharp struggle he was no more, and the spirit of the wretched culprit was launched into the dread realm of eternity. CHAPTER LI. THERE was one subject of anxiety connected with Mabhel’s history, which her friends had kept from her, because they fe no satisfactory solution to the mystery would be found. This was as regarded the fate of her mother, and from all the authentic particulars which the Morton family could gather, although there was every presumption that Marie Rouselli was no more, yet no authentic record of her death could be ascer- tained. They well knew that to doubt upon such a subject would be to produce in Mabel’s mind a great amount of anguish, and therefore was it that, with a pardonable duplicity, the Mortons had never hinted to her a doubt but that her mother had ex- pired upon the field of Waterloo. Captain Morton, however, had made it his special business to see the chaplain as well as the governor of Newgate, and the sheriffs, in order to beg of them, if an opportunity should pre- comicbooks. com