The jury all went out. Then another case was called on, a fresh jury sworn in for to try it. We sat in the dock. The judge told Starlight he might sit down, and we waited till they came back. I really believe that waiting is the worst part of the whole thing, the bitterest part of the punishment. I’ve seen men when they were being tried for their lives—haven’t I done it, and gone through it myself?’—waiting there an hour—two hours, half through the night, not knowing whether they was to be brought in guilty or not. What a hell they must have gone through in that time—doubt and dread, hope and fear, wretchedness and despair, over and over and over again. No wonder some of ‘em can’t stand it, but keeps twitching and shifting and getting paler and turning faint when the jury comes back, and they think they see one thing or the other written in their faces. I’ve seen a strong man drop down like a dead body when the judge opened his mouth to pass sentence on him. I’ve seen ‘em faint, too, when the foreman of the jury said “Not guilty.” One chap, he was an innocent up-country fellow, in for his first bit of duffing, like we was once, he covered his face with his hands when he found he was let off, and cried like a child. All sorts and kinds of different ways men takes it. I was in court once when the judge asked a man who’d just been found guilty if he’d anything to say why he shouldn’t pass sentence of death upon him. He’d killed a woman, cut her throat, and a regular right down cruel murder it. was (only men’Il kill women and one another, too, for some causes, as long as the world lasts) ; and he just leaned over the dock rails. as if he’d been going to get three months, and said, cool and quiet, “No, your Honour; not as I know of.” He’d made up his mind to it from the first, you see, and that makes all the difference. He knew he hadn’t the ghost of a chance to get out of it, and when his time came he faced it. I remember seeing his worst enemy come into the court, and sit and look at him—then just to see how he took. it, but he didn’t make the least sight. That man couldn’t have told whether he seen him or not.