There
were present also the gray-haired father and mother of Eugene Pearson,
broken and bowed with the grief and shame which had been brought upon
them by the crimes of their beloved son; the aged parents of Dr.
Johnson, who had come to witness, with saddened hearts, the doom of
their darling boy; the young wife of Newton Edwards, who in the moment
of her husband's ruin had, with true womanly devotion, forgotten his
past acts of cruelty and harshness, and now, with aching heart and
tear-stained eyes, was waiting, with fear and trembling, to hear the
dreaded judgment pronounced upon the man whom she had sworn to "love and
cherish" through "good and evil report."
Since his incarceration she had been a constant visitor to his cell, and
by her love and sympathy had sought to uphold the fallen man in the dark
hours of his shame and disgrace. Here also was the aged father of Thomas
Duncan, the only friend whom the young man had in all that vast
assembly. Though his face was stern and immovable, yet the quivering of
the lips and the nervous trembling of the wrinkled hands told too
plainly that he too was suffering beyond expression in the sorrow that
had been wrought by the boy who in his early years had been his pride
and joy.
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