lls as
thick as these. But how idle they seemed! How futile, how vain to make
with his two hands a way through stone, or burrow like a mole into the
earth! And yet those legends seemed no less a dream than this of his.

There was a strange silence as the morning grew on; he wondered if the
world outside were all asleep. He had foreseen it; and yet he had not
quite foreseen this; some glorious end, in a battle, perhaps, fighting
out in the free country, beneath the sun. Again his thoughts turned to
his friend, and he felt a strange assurance that Dacre had foreseen it
all along, but not held back his steps one whit for that. And there was
Maggie--in America--could she, and her life, be in the same world with
this? Yet it was natural enough, and such things had always been, only
he had never truly pictured them. The day seemed endless. If he could
only hear something of the others, and not be so terribly alone. If he
could but learn where they were--where Dacre was. He heard a dull sound
like the noise of distant firing, but more like thunder, coming heavily
through the ground. Geoffrey ran to the window, drew himself up, and
looked out through the bars. There was a sea of upturned faces, all pale
and with one fixed look, a myriad times repeated, pointed to the base of
the Tower below his window where he could not see. Then he fell back
upon the ground, burying his face in his hands.

Dacre himself had slept that night a dreamless sleep, as he had slept
any night before in the years since he had seen his path and chosen it.
At noon the people came to his cell and led him out. Numbers of men were
standing in the corridor and on the stairs; he looked on between the
lines and walked to the door. Then he begged that his handcuffs might be
removed. As he paused a moment, Richard Lincoln stepped forward and
ordered that it should be done. Then he fell back, bowing once to Dacre.
Richard Lincoln had come there from the death-bed of his daughter to do
this last service to the man that she loved. Then Dacre passed on, out
of the great door into the full light of the noon. There in front of him
was a great concourse of people, the multitude Geoffrey had seen from
his window. Dacre looked out from the prison gate with his fixed, clear
eyes, but the road was growing very short before him now, and still his
glance went on beyond--beyond the company of soldiers standing thirty
yards in front, the butts of their rifles resting on the gr