grave interest; and stood with his hands resting on the slab of
wood before him, so composedly, that they had not displaced a leaf
of the herbs with which it was strewn. The court was all bestrewn
with herbs and sprinkled with vinegar, as a precaution against
gaol air and gaol fever.
Over the prisoner’s head there was a mirror, to throw the light
down upon him. Crowds of the wicked and the wretched had been
reflected in it, and had passed from its surface and this earth’s
together. Haunted in a most ghastly manner that abominable
place would have been, if the glass could ever have rendered back
its reflections, as the ocean is one day to give up its dead. Some
passing thought of the infamy and disgrace for which it had been
reserved, may have struck the prisoner’s mind. Be that as it may, a
change in his position making him conscious of a bar of light
across his face, he looked up; and when he saw the glass his face
flushed, and his right hand pushed the herbs away.
It happened that the action turned his face to that side of the
court which was on his left. About on a level with his eyes, there
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
sat, in that corner of the Judge’s bench, two persons upon whom
his look immediately rested; so immediately, and so much to the
changing of his aspect, that all the eyes that were turned upon
him, turned to them.
The spectators saw in the two figures, a young lady of little
more than twenty, and a gentleman who was evidently her father;
a man of a very remarkable appearance in respect of the absolute
whiteness of his hair, and a certain indescribable intensity of