ot have made them long.

With his long streaky hair hanging wild about his temples, Sim sat
hour after hour on a low bench beneath the window, crying at intervals
that God would not let them die.

CHAPTER XLVI. THE SKEIN UNRAVELLED.

It was Thursday when they were condemned, and the sentence was to be
carried into effect on the Thursday following. Saturday, Sunday, and
Monday passed by without any event of consequence. On Tuesday the
under gaoler opened the door of their prison, and the sheriff entered.
Ralph stepped out face to face with him. Sim crept closer into the
shadow.

"The King's warrant has arrived," he said abruptly.

"And is this all you come to tell us?" said Ralph, no less curtly.

"Ray, there is no love between you and me, and we need dissemble
none."

"And no hate--at least on my part," Ralph added.

"I had good earnest of your affections," answered the sheriff with a
sneer; "five years' imprisonment." Then waving his hand with a gesture
indicative of impatience, he continued, "Let that be as it may. I come
to talk of other matters."

Resting on a bench, he added,--

"When the trial closed on Thursday, Justice Hide, who showed you more
favor than seemed to some persons of credit to be meet and seemly,
beckoned me to the antechamber. There he explained that the evidence
against you being mainly circumstantial, the sentence might perchance,
by the leniency of the King, be commuted to one of imprisonment for
life."

A cold smile passed over Ralph's face.

"But this great mercy--whereof I would counsel you to cherish no
certain hope--would depend upon your being able and willing to render
an account of how you came by the document--the warrant for your own
arrest--which was found upon your person. Furnish a credible story of
how you came to be possessed, of that instrument, and it may occur--I
say it _may_ occur--that by our Sovereign's grace and favor this
sentence of death can yet be put aside."

Sim had risen to his feet in obvious excitement.

Ralph calmly shook his head.

"I neither will nor can," he said emphatically.

Sim sank back into his seat.

A look of surprise in the sheriff's face quickly gave way to a look of
content and satisfaction.

"We know each other of old, and I say there is no love between us," he
observed, "but it is by no doing of mine that you are here.
Nevertheless, your response to this merciful tender shows but too
plainly how well you merit your