The Wildfire Club - The Emma Hardinge Britten Archive

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the ignominious death of the gallows. When the usual
query was put to them as to whether they had any thing
to say why sentence of dea\h should not be passed upon
them, young Rookwood gazed tenderly upon his unfortunate
companion. but replied simply, that if the plain statements
of his truth and innocence had been unable to save him,
he had nothing more to urge.
The unhappy Hannah had, throughout the trial, con.
ducted herself in a. manner which rather tended to confirm
than dispel the supposition of her guilt. Her appealing
glance was perpetually wandering from young Rookwood
to his judges. Of her own situation she seemed almost
unconscious. A wild and most uDsatisfactory account ot
her night's proCieedings was all they could extract from
her relative to her share in the tragedy; but when they
spoke of him, her eager eyes seemed to read the souls of
judge, jury, witness, and counsel, as if her very salvation
depended on each word they should utter for or against her
darling. The proceedings of this remarkable trial were
characterized, we are told, by divers singular noises, em·
anating, as it would seem, from stationary benches and
inanimate articles, where no human contact could account
for the mystery of their sound. Sometimes the tables and
chairs used by the learned gentlemen of the law would be .
l;'olently shaken, and it unoccupied, quite overturned; yet
all this without any visible agency to account for the same,
except the weird reputation which the female prisoner was
known to possess. "The gentlemen of the long robe"
were much perplexed, and it was even thought some·
what startled, by these mystic signs of an unaccountable
intelligence; for intelligence it certainly was, since the
noises (resembling in sound and force the heavy drumming
of a stick) would seem to emphasize various sentences
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