In these last
hours Father Gadd, the prison chaplain, was assisted by the Very
Rev. Canon Cantwell and the Rev. Father Quick, whose attentions were
unremitting to the end. From the first the prisoners exhibited a deep,
fervid religious spirit, which could scarcely have been surpassed
among the earliest Christian martyrs. They received Holy Communion
every alternate morning, and spent the greater part of their time
in spiritual devotion. On Friday evening they were locked up for
the night at the usual hour,--about half-past six o'clock. In their
cells they spent a long interval in prayer and meditation--disturbed
ever and anon, alas! by the shouts of brutal laughter and boisterous
choruses of the mob already assembled outside the prison walls. At
length the fated three sought their dungeon pallets for the last
time. "Strange as it may appear," says one of the Manchester papers
chronicling the execution, "those three men, standing on the brink
of the grave, and about to suffer an ignominious death, _slept
as soundly_ as had been their wont." Very "strange," no doubt, it
appeared to those accustomed to see _criminals_ die; but no marvel to
those who know how innocent men, at peace with God and man, can mount
the scaffold, and offer their lives a sacrifice for the cause of
liberty.
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