Perceiving this--perceiving that time or opportunity for reflection,
or for the subsidence of panic, would almost certainly snatch its prey
from vengeance--a deafening yell arose from the raving creatures of
blood-hunger, demanding that not a day, not an hour, not a second,
should be granted to the condemned.
Still the Irish people would not credit that, far towards the close of
the nineteenth century, an act so dreadful durst be done.
During all this time the condemned lay in Salford gaol, tortured by
the suspense inevitably created by Maguire's reprieve. Although every
effort was made by their friends to keep them from grasping at or
indulging in hope, the all-significant fact of that release seemed
to imperatively forbid the idea of their being executed on a verdict
whose falseness was thus confessed. The moment, however, that the
singular conduct of the judges in London defeated the application of
Mr. Roberts, they, one and all, resigned themselves to the worst;
and while their fellow-countrymen at home were still utterly and
scornfully incredulous on the subject, devoted their remaining hours
exclusively to spiritual preparation for death upon the scaffold.
It was now that each character "rushed to its index." It was
now--within the very shadow of death--in the most awful crisis that
can test the soul--that these men rose into the grandeur and sublimity
of true heroism.
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