He had no offering--his hands were powerless
now; but at least he could stand by it and touch it with his body and
face and pray for its forgiveness, and for deliverance from the doom
which threatened him. The constable had compassionately, or from some
secret motive, granted his request; but alas! if in very truth the power
he had come to believe in resided in the tree, he was too late in
seeking it.
The trial was soon over; by pleading guilty Johnnie had made it a very
simple matter for the court. The main thing was to sentence him. By an
unhappy chance the judge was in one of his occasional bad moods; he had
been entertained too well by one of the local magnates on the previous
evening and had sat late, drinking too much wine, with the result that
he had a bad liver, with a mind to match it. He was only too ready to
seize the first opportunity that offered--and poor Johnnie's case was
the first that morning--of exercising the awful power a barbarous law
had put into his hands. When the prisoner's defender declared that this
was a case which called loudly for mercy, the judge interrupted him to
say that he was taking too much upon himself, that he was, in fact,
instructing the judge in his duties, which was a piece of presumption on
his part.
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