Part 57 (1/2)
It is not our intention to go through the details of the trial of the Red Rapparee. The evidence of Mary Mahon, Fergus O'Reilly, and the sheriff, was complete; the chain was unbroken; the change of apparel--the dialogue in Mary Mahon's cabin, in which he; avowed the fact of his having robbed the sheriff--the identification of his person by the said sheriff in the farmer's house, as before stated, left nothing for the jury to do I but to bring in a verdict of guilty.
Mercy was out of the question. The hardened ruffian--the treacherous ruffian--who had lent himself to the bloodthirsty schemes of Whitecraft--and all this came out upon his trial, not certainly to the advantage of the baronet--this hardened and treacherous ruffian, we say, who had been a scourge to that part of the country for years, now felt, when the verdict of guilty was brought in against him, just as a smith's anvil might feel when struck by a feather. On hearing it, he growled a hideous laugh, and exclaimed:
”To the divil I pitch you all; I wish, though, that I had Tom Bradley, the prophecy man, here, who tould me that I'd never be hanged, and that the rope was never born for me.”
”If the rope was not born for you,” observed the judge, ”I fear I shall be obliged to inform you that you were born for the rope. Your life has been an outrage,upon civilized society.”
”Why, you ould dog!” said the Rapparee, ”you can't hang me; haven't I a pardon? didn't Sir Robert Whitecraft get me a pardon from the Government for turnin' against the Catholics, and tellin' him where to find the priests? Why, you joulter-headed ould dog, you can't hang me, or, if you do, I'll leave them behind me that will put such a half ounce pill into your guts as will make you turn up the whites of your eyes like a duck in thundher. You'll hang me for robbery, you ould sinner! But what is one half the world doin' but robbin' the other half? and what is the other half doin' but robbin' them? As for Sir Robert Whitecraft, if he desaved me by lies and falsehoods, as I'm afraid he did, all I say is, that if I had him here for one minute I'd show him a trick he'd never tell to mortal. Now go on, bigwig.”
Notwithstanding the solemnity of the position in which this obdurate ruffian was placed, the judge found it nearly impossible to silence the laughter of the audience and preserve order in the court. At length he succeeded, and continued his brief address to the Rapparee:
”Hardened and impenitent reprobate, in the course of my judicial duties, onerous and often painful as they are and have been, I must say that, although it has fallen to my lot to p.r.o.nounce the awful sentence of death upon many an unfeeling felon, I am bound to say that a public malefactor so utterly devoid of all the feelings which belong to man, and so strongly impregnated with those of the savage animal as you are, has never stood in a dock before me, nor probably before any other judge, living or dead. Would it be a waste of language to enforce upon you the necessity of repentance? I fear it would; but it matters not; the guilt of impenitence be on your own head, still I must do my duty; try, then, and think of death, and a far more awful judgment than mine.
Think of the necessity you have for; supplicating mercy at the throne of your Redeemer, who himself died for you, and for all of us, between two thieves.”
”That has nothing to do with my case; I never was a thief; I robbed like an honest man on the king's highways; but as for thievin', why, you ould sinner, I never stole a farthing's worth in my life. Don't, then, pitch such beggarly comparisons into my teeth. I never did what you and your cla.s.s often did; I never robbed the poor in the name of the blessed laws of the land; I never oppressed the widow or the orphan; and for all that I took from those that did oppress them, the divil a grain of sorrow or repentance I feel for it, nor ever will feel for it. Oh! mother of Moses! if I had a gla.s.s of whiskey!”
The judge was obliged to enforce silence a second time; for, to-tell the truth, there was something so ludicrously impenitent in the conduct of this hardened convict that the audience could not resist it, especially when it is remembered that the sympathies of the lower Irish are always with such culprits.
”Well,” continued the judge, when silence was again restored, ”your unparalleled obduracy has gained one point; it was my intention to have ordered you for execution tomorrow at the hour of twelve o'clock; but, as a Christian man, I could not think for a moment of hurrying you into eternity in your present state. The sentence of the court then is that you be taken from the dock in which you now stand to the prison from whence you came, and that from thence you be brought to the place of execution on next Sat.u.r.day, and there be hanged by the neck until you be dead, and may G.o.d have mercy on your soul!”
The Rapparee gazed at him with a look of the most hardened effrontery, and exclaimed, ”Is it in earnest you are?” after which he was once mor
e committed to his cell, loaded with heavy chains, which he wore, by the I way, during his trial.
Now, in order to account for his outrageous conduct, we must make a disclosure to the reader. There is in and about all jails a certain officer yclept a hangman--an officer who is permitted a freer ingress and egress than almost any other person connected with those gloomy establishments. This hangman, who resided in the prison, had a brother whom Sir Robert Whitecraft had hanged, and, it was thought, innocently.
Be this as it may, the man in question was heard to utter strong threats of vengeance against Sir Robert for having his brother, whose innocence he a.s.serted, brought to execution. In some time after this a pistol was fired one night at Sir Robert from behind a hedge, which missed him; but as his myrmidons were with him, and the night was light, a pursuit took place, and the guilty wretch was taken prisoner, with the pistol on his person, still warm after having been discharged. The consequence was that he was condemned to death. But it so happened that at this period, although there were five or six executions to take place, yet there was no hangman to be had, that officer having died suddenly, after a fit of liquor, and the sheriff would have been obliged to discharge the office with his own hands unless a finisher of the law could be found. In brief, he was found, and in the person of the individual alluded to, who, in consequence of his consenting to accept the office, got a pardon from the Crown. Now this man and the Rapparee had been old acquaintances, and renewed their friends.h.i.+p in prison. Through the means of the hangman O'Donnel got in as much whiskey as he pleased, and we need scarcely say that they often got intoxicated together. The secret, therefore, which we had to disclose to the reader, in explanation of the Rapparee's conduct at his trial, was simply this, that the man was three-quarters drunk.
After trial he was placed in a darker dungeon than before; but such was the influence of the worthy executioner with every officer of the jail, that he was permitted to go either in or out without search, and as he often gave a ”slug,” as he called it, to the turnkeys, they consequently allowed him, in this respect, whatever privileges he wished. Even the Rapparee's dungeon was not impenetrable to him, especially as he put the matter on a religious footing, to wit, that as the unfortunate robber was not allowed the spiritual aid of his own clergy, he himself was the only person left to prepare him for death, which he did with the whiskey-bottle.
The a.s.sizes on that occasion were protracted to an unusual length. The country was in a most excited state, and party feeling ran fearfully high. Nothing was talked of but the two trials, par excellence, to wit, that of Whitecraft and Reilly; and scarcely a fair or market, for a considerable time previous, ever came round in which there waa not a battle on the subject of either one or the other of them, and not unfrequently of both. n.o.body was surprised at the conviction of the Red Rapparee; but, on the contrary, every one was glad that the country had at last got rid of him.
Poor Helen, however, was not permitted to remain quiet, as she had expected. When Mr. Doldrum had furnished the leading counsel with his brief and a list of the witnesses, the other gentleman was surprised to see the name of Helen Folliard among them.
”How is this?” he inquired; ”is not this the celebrated beauty who eloped with him?”
”It is, sir,” replied Doldrum.
”But,” proceeded the other, ”you have not instructed me in the nature of the evidence she is prepared to give.”
”She is deeply penitent, sir, and in a very feeble state of health; so much so that we were obliged to leave the tendency of her evidence to be brought out on the trial.”
”Have you subpoenaed her?”
”No, sir.”
”And why not, Mr. Doldrum? Don't you know that there is no understanding the caprices of women. You ought to have subpoenaed her, because, if she be a leading evidence, she may still change her mind and leave us in the lurch.”
”I certainly did not subpoena her,” replied Doldrum, ”because, when I mentioned it to her father, he told me that if I attempted it he would break my head. It was enough, he said, that she had given her promise--a thing, he added, which she was never known to break.”
”Go to her again, Doldrum; for unless we know what she can prove we will be only working in the dark. Try her, at all events, and glean what you can out of her. Her father tells me she is somewhat better, so I don't apprehend you will have much difficulty in seeing her.”
Doldrum did see her, and was astonished at the striking change which had, in so short a time, taken place in her appearance. She was pale, and exhibited all the symptoms of an invalid, with the exception of her eyes, which were not merely brilliant, but dazzling, and full of a fire that flashed from them with something like triumph whenever her attention was directed to the purport of her testimony. On this subject they saw that it; would be quite useless, and probably worse than useless, to press her, and they did not, consequently, put her to the necessity of specifying the purport of her evidence.