ast time the old sweet smile sprang to
lip and eye.

"Thank you, mother," he said, and raised his hand to his bare head
with courteous gesture.

The crowd howled and swayed. He passed on.

And now the end! There is the cart; the officers draw back to make way
for the man who is to help him with his final toilet. The chaplain,
too, falls away after wringing his hand again and again. Good man, he
weeps and cannot speak the sacred words he would. Why weep? We must
all die! How blue the sky is: he will look once more before drawing
down the cap upon his eyes. His hands are free, for he is to die as
like a gentleman as may be. Just the old blue that used to smile down
at him upon his merry _Peregrine_, and up at him from the dancing
waves. He had always thought he would have liked to die upon the sea,
in the cool fresh water ... a clean, brave death.

It is hard to die in a crowd. Even the very beasts would creep into
cave or bush to die decently--unwatched.

A last puff of sweeping wind in his face; then darkness, blind,
suffocating....

Ah, God is good! Here is the old ship giving and rising under his feet
like the living creature he always thought her, and here is dazzling
brilliant sunshine all around, so bright he scarce can see the free
white-crested waves that are dashing down upon him; but he is upon the
sea indeed, upon the sea alone, and the waves are coming. Hark how
they roar, see how they gather! The brave _Peregrine_ she dips and
springs, she will weather the breakers with him at the helm no matter
how they rear. On, on they come, mountain high, overwhelming, bitter
drenching.

A great wave in very truth, it gathers and breaks and onward rolls,
and carries the soul of Hubert Cochrane with it.

The woman in the black cloak falls as if she had been struck, and as
those around her draw apart to let her companion and another man lift
her and carry her away, they note with horror that her face is dark
and swollen, as if the cord that had just done its evil work yonder
had been tightened also round her slender throat.

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE GIBBET ON THE SANDS

Woman! take up thy life once more
Where thou hast left it;
Nothing is changed for thee, thou art the same,
Thou who didst think that all things
Would be wholly changed for thee.

_Luteplayer's Song._

Pulwick again. The whirlwind of disaster that upon that fatal
fifteenth of March had burst upon the house of Lan