business were Ranulph
Delagarde's. He was to have his boat waiting to respond to a signal from
the shore, and to make sail for France, where he and his father were to
be landed. There he was to give Mattingley, Alixandre, and Carterette
his craft to fare across the seas to the great fishing-ground of Gaspe
in Canada.

Lastly, if these plans failed, the executioner was to be drugged with
liquor, his besetting weakness, on the eve of the hanging.

The first plan had been found impossible, the window being too small for
even Mattingley's head to get through. The second had failed because
the righteous Royal Court forbade Carterette the prison, intent that she
should no longer be contaminated by so vile a wretch as her father. For
years this same Christian solicitude had looked down from the windows
of the Cohue Royale upon this same criminal in the Vier Marchi, with one
blind eye for himself the sinner and an open one for his merchandise.

Mattingley could hear the hollow sound of the sentinels' steps under the
archway of the Vier Prison. He was quite stoical. If he had to die, then
he had to die. Death could only be a little minute of agony; and for
what came after--well, he had not thought fearfully of that, and he had
no wish to think of it at all. The visiting chaplain had talked, and he
had not listened. He had his own ideas about life, and death, and the
beyond, and they were not ungenerous. The chaplain had found him patient
but impossible, kindly but unresponsive, sometimes even curious, but
without remorse.

"You should repent with sorrow and a contrite heart," said the
clergyman. "You have done many evil things in your life, Mattingley."

Mattingley had replied: "Ma fuifre, I can't remember them! I know I
never done them, for I never done anything but good all my life--so much
for so much." He had argued it out with himself and he believed he was a
good man. He had been open-handed, had stood by his friends, and, up to
a few days ago, was counted a good citizen; for many had come to profit
through him. His trade--a little smuggling, a little piracy? Was not the
former hallowed by distinguished patronage, and had it not existed from
immemorial time? It was fair fight for gain, an eye for an eye and a
tooth for a tooth. If he hadn't robbed others on the high seas, they
would probably have robbed him--and sometimes they did. His spirit was
that of the Elizabethan admirals; he belonged to a century not his own.