At any rate, he had the appearance of
thoroughly deserving it.
This picture put a kind of constraint upon me to look upward
too--at the top of the bed. It was a gloomy and not an
interesting object, and I looked back at the picture. I counted
the feathers in the man's hat--they stood out in relief--three
white, two green. I observed the crown of his hat, which was of
conical shape, according to the fashion supposed to have been
favored by Guido Fawkes. I wondered what he was looking up at. It
couldn't be at the stars; such a desperado was neither astrologer
nor astronomer. It must be at the high gallows, and he was going
to be hanged presently. Would the executioner come into
possession of his conical crowned hat and plume of feathers? I
counted the feathers again--three white, two green.
While I still lingered over this very improving and intellectual
employment, my thoughts insensibly began to wander. The moonlight
shining into the room reminded me of a certain moonlight night in
England--the night after a picnic party in a Welsh valley. Every
incident of the drive homeward, through lovely scenery, which the
moonlight made lovelier than ever, came back to my remembrance,
though I had never given the picnic a thought for years; though,
if I had _tried_ to recollect it, I could certainly have recalled
little or nothing of that scene long past.
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