If this is a crime worthy of death, I am ready to die.

Yet I hold that both God and man will give more honour to me the criminal than to you the judges, and to those who before ever you sat in this Court instructed you, whom I know to be but tools, as to the verdict that you should give." The applause which my words called forth from those gathered at the end of the Court died away.

In the midst of a great silence the president, who, like his companions, I could see well, was growing somewhat fearful, read the sentence in a low voice from a parchment.

After setting out the order by which the Court was constituted and other matters, it ran: "We condemn you, Michael, otherwise called Olaf or Olaf Red-Sword, to death.

This sentence will be executed with or without torture at such time and in such manner as it may please the Augusta to decree." Now the voice of Jodd was heard crying through the gathering gloom, for night was near: "What sort of judgment is this that the judges bring already written down into the Court?
Hearken you, lawyer, and you street-curs, his companions, who call yourselves soldiers.