Your lordship sees me--an innocent man whose only offence is that I practised charity--with a halter round my neck.

Your lordship, being the justiciar, speaks with knowledge of what is to come to me.

I, being a physician, may speak with knowledge of what is to come to your lordship.

And I tell you that I would not now change places with you--that I would not exchange this halter that you fling about my neck for the stone that you carry in your body.

The death to which you may doom me is a light pleasantry by contrast with the death to which your lordship has been doomed by that Great Judge with whose name your lordship makes so free." The Lord Chief Justice sat stiffly upright, his face ashen, his lips twitching, and whilst you might have counted ten there was no sound in that paralyzed court after Peter Blood had finished speaking.