gh opinion of Ranulph, and that he should fail him was
a blow to his judgment of humanity.

He was thoroughly disgusted. Also they had compelled him to put on a
white shirt, he who had never worn linen in his life. He was ill at ease
in it. It made him conspicuous; it looked as though he were aping the
gentleman at the last. He tried to resign himself, but resignation was
hard to learn so late in life. Somehow he could not feel that this was
really the day of his death. Yet how could it be otherwise? There
was the Vicomte in his red robe, there was the sinister Undertaker's
Apprentice, ready to do his hangman's duty. There, as they crossed the
mielles, while the sea droned its sing-song on his left, was the parson
droning his sing-song on the right "In the midst of life we are in
death," etc. There were the grumbling drums, and the crowd morbidly
enjoying their Roman holiday; and there, looming up before him, were the
four stone pillars on the Mont es Pendus from which he was to swing. His
disgust deepened. He was not dying like a seafarer who had fairly earned
his reputation.

His feelings found vent even as he came to the foot of the platform
where he was to make his last stand, and the guards formed a square
about the great pillars, glooming like Druidic altars. He burst forth in
one phrase expressive of his feelings.

"Sacre matin--so damned paltry!" he said, in equal tribute to two races.

The Undertaker's Apprentice, thinking this a reflection upon his
arrangements, said, with a wave of the hand to the rope:

"Nannin, ch'est tres ship-shape, Maitre!"

The Undertaker's Apprentice was wrong. He had made everything
ship-shape, as he thought, but a gin had been set for him. The rope to
be used at the hanging had been measured and approved by the Vicomte,
and the Undertaker's Apprentice had carried it to his room at the top
of the Cohue Royale. In the dead of night, however, Dormy Jamais drew it
from under the mattress whereon the deathman slept, and substituted one
a foot longer. This had been Ranulph's idea as a last resort, for he had
a grim wish to foil the law even at the twelfth hour.

The great moment had come. The shouts and hootings ceased. Out of the
silence there arose only the champing of a horse's bit or the hysterical
giggle of a woman. The high painful drone of the chaplain's voice was
heard.

Then came the fatal "Maintenant!" from the Vicomte, the platform fell,
and Elie Mattingley dropped the