Hark! Two quarters have struck;--the third--the fourth.

It is! Six hours left.
Tell him not of repentance! Six hours' repentance for eight times six years of guilt and sin! He buries his face in his hands, and throws himself on the bench.
Worn with watching and excitement, he sleeps, and the same unsettled state of mind pursues him in his dreams.

An insupportable load is taken from his breast; he is walking with his wife in a pleasant field, with the bright sky above them, and a fresh and boundless prospect on every side--how different from the stone walls of Newgate! She is looking--not as she did when he saw her for the last time in that dreadful place, but as she used when he loved her--long, long ago, before misery and ill-treatment had altered her looks, and vice had changed his nature, and she is leaning upon his arm, and looking up into his face with tenderness and affection--and he does _not_ strike her now, nor rudely shake her from him.

And oh! how glad he is to tell her all he had forgotten in that last hurried interview, and to fall on his knees before her and fervently beseech her pardon for all the unkindness and cruelty that wasted her form and broke her heart! The scene suddenly changes.

He is on his trial again: there are the judge and jury, and prosecutors, and witnesses, just as they were before.