The place seemed to the eyes of the prisoner to grow gradually darker
and darker, till he could discern nothing distinctly but the lumen of
the eyes that were turned upon him from every bench and side and corner
and gallery of the building. The prisoner doubtless thought that he had
quite enough to say, and conclusive, why sentence of death should not be
pronounced upon him; but the lord chief-justice puffed it contemptuously
away, like so much smoke, and proceeded to pass sentence of death upon
the prisoner, having named the tenth of the ensuing month for his
execution.

Before he had recovered the stun of this ominous farce, in obedience to
the mandate, "Remove the prisoner," he was led from the dock. The lamps
seemed all to have gone out, and there were stoves and charcoal-fires
here and there, that threw a faint crimson light on the walls of the
corridors through which he passed. The stones that composed them looked
now enormous, cracked and unhewn.

He came into a vaulted smithy, where two men, naked to the waist, with
heads like bulls, round shoulders, and the arms of giants, were welding
red-hot chains together with hammers that pelted like thunderbolts.

They looked on the prisoner with fierce red eyes, and rested on their
hammers for a minute; and said the elder to his companion, "Take out
Elijah Harbottle's gyves;" and with a pincers he plucked the end which
lay dazzling in the fire from the furnace.

"One end locks," said he, taking the cool end of the iron in one hand,
while with the grip of a vice he seized the leg of the Judge, and locked
the ring round his ankle. "The other," he said with a grin, "is welded."