eel and plead
for me as I would gladly have died a thousand deaths rather than have
her plead; for life for me, or if not that, at least for some brief
respite that the priest might shrive me.

And in the end she won the respite, though I did think it far too dearly
bought. When he granted it the colonel lifted her and took her hand,
bowing low over it with courtly deference. "For your sake, Mistress
Margery, it shall be put off till morning," he said; then gave the
order: At dawn they would march me out and hang me, and I would best be
ready. For later than the sunrise of a new day the king himself might
not delay my taking off.

"You know too much, my cursing Captain," was his parting word. "Were it
not for Mistress Margery and my promise, you should not keep the breath
to tell it over night."

IX

HOW A GOLDEN KEY UNLOCKED A DOOR

Having my dismissal and reprieve I was remanded to the custody of that
young Lieutenant Tybee whom you have met and known as Falconnet's second
in the duel. Interpreting his orders liberally, he suffered me to keep
my own room for the night. I had expected manacles and a roommate guard
at the least, but my gentlemanly jailer spared me both. When he had me
safe above-stairs, he barred the door upon me, set a sentry pacing back
and forth in the corridor without, and another to keep an eye upon the
window from below, and so left me.

There was no great need for either sentry, or for bolts and bars. What
with the night's adventures and my scarce-healed wound, I was far sped
on that road which ends against the blind wall of exhaustion, as you may
well suppose. For while a man may borrow strength of wine or rage or
passion, these lenders are but pitiless usurers and will demand their
pound of flesh; aye, and have it, too, when all the principal is spent.

So, when Tybee barred the door and left me with a single candle to my
lighting, I was fain to fall upon the bed in utter weariness, thinking
that the respite bought by my sweet lady's humbling was more dearly
bought than ever, and that the truest mercy would have been the rope and
tree without this interval of waiting.

To me in this grim Doubting Castle of despair the priest came. He was a
good man and a true, this low-voiced missioner to the savages, and he
would be a curster man than I who failed to give him his due meed of
praise and love. For in this dismal interval of waiting, with death so
sure and near that all the air