spirit of the late rebellion at Aldershot, was sentenced
to be shot to death at noon of the next day, and that all the other
leaders were to be imprisoned for the term of fifteen years.

There was a roar and a rush as the people rose to escape from the
galleries, and few observed a slender girl slip from her seat to the
floor. A woman with beautiful eyes, whose face was otherwise veiled from
view, stooped to her succor, then gave a shrill cry. Mary Lincoln lay
lifeless. Mrs. Oswald Carey, whose shriek it was that made this known,
was not one to believe that a woman can die of a broken heart. But if
even such a result of her treachery had been foreshadowed to her, she
would not have faltered.

CHAPTER XIII.

AN UNFINISHED TASK.

Immediately after the sentence was pronounced the prisoners were led
back to the Tower. They were chained together by twos, and Sir John
walked with Geoffrey. During the entire walk from St. Stephen's, along
the river embankment, neither of them spoke to the other. For Geoffrey,
at least, it was a subject of life-long regret that he had not done so.

It was part of the policy of Bagshaw's government thus to march them
through the streets, a spectacle, like a caravan of caged beasts, for
the populace. Geoffrey thought to himself, curiously, of the old
triumphs of the Roman emperors he had read about as a schoolboy. Then,
as now, the people needed bread and loved a show. But the people, even
then, had caught something of the dignity of power. Silently they
pressed upon the sidewalks and thronged the gardens by the river. Not a
voice was raised in mockery of these few men; there is something in the
last extremity of misfortune which commands respect, even from the
multitude. And, perhaps, even then the first-fruits of freedom might
have been marked in their manner, and magnanimity, the first virtue of
liberty, kept the London rabble hushed.

Geoffrey's eyes were turned within as he walked, as if he were thinking,
but of thoughts far distant, far back in the past. Dacre held his glance
still high and forward, fixed and straight upon the road before him.
Only once, when they passed the Temple gardens, did Geoffrey's eyes
stray outward; it was when he marked the windows of his old study in the
Inner Temple, where he had studied to be a barrister in days gone by;
then his look grew introspective as before.

When they came to the gate of the Tower the soldiers divided and drew
apart in tw