The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 105: what you’re looking at

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

88 REYNOLDS’ WORKS against the stout upright post. The iron collar was then fastened around his neck; his eyelids quivered not, neither did his lips; he breathed, with the secret voice of his soul, a quick but fervent prayer for Kate Marshall, he commended himself to his God, he thought that he had done with all the affairs of this life, and that in a few moments more he should be a corpse. Profound was the silence which still pervaded the gathered multitudes, — a silence broken only by the low hollow dirge of the priests at the steps of the scaffold. Every neck was stretched out, all breath was held; the chests of the men moved not, the bosoms of the women remained upheaved. Ali was suspense — deep, solemn, awful. The fingers of the executioner were upon the screw; in another twinkling of the eye it would have been all over with thee, Edward Russell, when, from the extreme outskirts of the crowd, a voice cried out something.~ This something was taken up by other voices, hundreds of ejaculations swelled into thousands, and like the quick, successive fire of musketry the cries went on till they reached the foot of the seaffold, and then their meaning was understood by the persons stand- ing thereon. It was a reprieve. The crowd parted from the spot whence those cries had: first commenced on the extreme verge. Yes, that living ocean of people parted even as parted the Red Sea to form a passage for the Israelites. And then was beheld a horse- man covered with dust, urging the jaded steed along, and holding up a paper in his right hand. Whatsoever feeling of enmity the Barcelonese entertained toward Ned Russell, when he was still a prisoner in his cell, had been to a con- siderable extent changed into sympathy, not unmixed with admiration, when his fine person was seen moving along with manly bearing toward the scaffold; but now both sym- pathy and admiration swelled into enthusiastic delight, and it seemed as if a really generous feeling, until this moment latent, had blazed up on the part of the myriads gathered there. Hats were waved, fans and kerchiefs likewise; the dark eyes of the Catalan women flashed joy from the balco- nies and from the midst of the multitudes in the square; adown many a cheek, both male and female, did tears flow. On came the horseman, sitting like one intoxicated upon his steed, for full evident was it that he had journeyed far and had journeyed fast. We need scarcely say that the fingers CONNIE LIOO KS m