k of
that!"

"Could I stay on here? I would like to."

"I have put all affairs in order. The place and the servants are yours.
I'vee paid every debt, I think. Mocket knows--he'll show you. But to
live on here alone--"

"It will be the less alone. Don't fear for me--don't think for me. I
will find courage. To-morrow!"

"It is best," he said, "that I should tell you that which others may
think to comfort you with. It is possible, but I do not consider it
probable, that the sentence will be death. It will be, I think, the
Penitentiary. I had rather it was the other."

After a time she spoke, though with difficulty. "Yes--I had rather--for
you. For myself, I feel to-night that just to know you were alive would
be happiness enough. Either way--either way--to have loved you has been
for me my crown of life!"

"I have written to Colonel Churchill, and a line to Fairfax Cary. There
was much to do at the last. Now it is all done, and I will go early in
the morning. You knew that it was drawing to this end--"

"Yes, I knew--I knew. Lewis, Lewis! what will you do yonder all the days
the months--the--the years to come? Oh, unendurable! O God, have mercy!"

"I will work," he answered. "It is work, Jacqueline, with me--it is work
or die! I will work. That which I have brought upon myself I will try to
endure. And out of effort may come at last--I know not what."

They sat still upon the stone. The wind sank, the air grew colder; near
and far there gathered a feeling of the north, a sense of loneliness and
untrodden space. The whippoorwill called again.

Rand shuddered. "Our last night--it is our last night. Look!--a star
shot over the Three-Notched Road."

Jacqueline slipped from his clasp and stood upright, with her hands over
her ears. "Come indoors--come indoors! I cannot bear the whippoorwill!"

Early the next morning he rode away. Halfway down the drive he looked
back and saw her standing under the beech tree. She raised her hand, her
scarf fluttering back from it. It was the gesture of a princess,
watching a knight ride from her tower. The green boughs came between
them; he was gone, and she sank down upon the bench beneath the tree. It
was there that Major Edward found her, an hour later.

Rand passed along the old, familiar road. He travelled neither fast nor
slow, and he kept a level gaze. The May morning was fresh and sweet, the
land to either side ploughed earth or vernal green, the little stream
laughing t