To avoid any misplaced sympathy
with the condemned man, I may say that it was a peculiarly brutal
murder. A man at Cork had kicked his wife to death, and had then
battered her into a shapeless mass with the poker. I went into my
father's study on the tip-toe of expectation. I pictured the
Private Secretary coming in slowly, probably draped for the
occasion in a long black cloak, and holding a white handkerchief
to his eyes. In his hand he would bear an immense sheet of paper
surrounded by a three-inch black border. It would be headed DEATH
in large letters, with perhaps a skull-and-crossbones below it,
and from it would depend three ominous black seals attached by
black ribbons. The Secretary would naturally hesitate before
presenting so awful a document to my father, who, in his turn,
would exhibit a little natural emotion when receiving it. At that
moment my mother, specially dressed in black for the occasion,
would burst into the room, and falling on her knees, with
streaming eyes and outstretched arms, she would plead passionately
for the condemned man's life.
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