ody in her arms.

"Why, he's dead, my boy he's dead!" she cried. "Tell me he's not dead,
though he lies sa still."

Rotha drew her away, and, stooping, she kissed the cold wasted
whitened lips.

At midnight a covered cart drove up to the cottage by the smithy. John
Jackson was on the seat outside. Rotha and Mrs. Garth got into it.
Then they started away.

As they crossed the bridge and turned the angle of the road that shut
out the sight of the darkened house they had left, the two women
turned their heads towards it and their hearts sank within them as
they thought of him whom they left behind. Then they wept together.

CHAPTER XLIX. PEACE, PEACE, AND REST.

In Carlisle the time of the end was drawing near. Throughout the
death-day of the blacksmith at Wythburn the two men who were to die
for his crime on the morrow sat together in their cell in the Donjon
tower.

Ralph was as calm as before, and yet more cheerful. The time of
atonement was at hand. The ransom was about to be paid. To break the
hard fate of a life, of many lives, he had come to die, and death was
here!

Bent and feeble, white as his smock, and with staring eyes, Sim
continued to protest that God would not let them die at this time and
in this place.

"If He does," he said, "then it is not true what they have told us,
that God watches over all!"

"What is that you are saying, old friend?" returned Ralph. "Death
comes to every one. The black camel kneels at the gate of all. If it
came to some here and some there, then it would be awful indeed."

"But to die before our time is terrible, it is," said Sim.

"Before our time--what time?" said Ralph. "To-day or to-morrow--who
shall say which is your time or mine?"

"Aye, but to die like this!" said Sim, and rocked himself in his seat.

"And is it not true that a short death is the sovereign good hap of
life?"

"The shame of it--the shame of it," Sim muttered.

"That touches us not at all," said Ralph. "Only the guilty can feel
the shame of a shameful death. No, no; death is kindest. And yet, and
yet, old friend, I half repent me of my resolve. The fatal warrant,
which has been the principal witness against us, was preserved in the
sole hope that one day it might serve you in good stead. For your
sake, and yours only, would to God that I might say where I came by it
and when!"

"No, no, no," cried Sim, with a sudden access of resolution; "I _am_
the guilty man after all, and it