ee droned
drowsily near, humming his song to unheeding ears. Where the tall pine
trees of the forest met the sky argosies of clouds spread their
portly sails along the blue. In the heat of the July morning Peggy sat
shaking like a leaf.

"I must be brave," she told herself again and again. "He hath no one
here but me. I must be Harriet and Cousin William both to him. I must
be of comfort to him."

Long she sat there under the tree trying to pull herself together, but
after a while she rose and made her way into the house. It was well on
toward the end of the afternoon when Colonel Dayton came to her.

"Your cousin wishes to see you, child," he said pityingly. "He bears
up well, but I need not say to you that he will need all his fortitude
to go through with this ordeal."

"I shall not fail him, friend," said Peggy with quivering lips. "I am
all of kith or kin that is near him. I shall not fail."

But the maiden had need of all her resolution when she entered the
guard-house where Clifford was, for he was most despondent.

"I am glad it is ended, Peggy," he said gloomily. "The restlessness of
waiting is over at last. All the feverish anxiety, the hope, the
longing, are past, and the end hath come. Do you remember last year,
when John Drayton, that Yankee captain, was condemned to this same
sort of death, what father said? He said, 'The vicissitudes of war are
many, my son. By sad fortune you might find yourself in the same
condition as this young fellow.' And here I am, in very truth,
condemned to die on the gallows. I have been thinking of it all day."

"Clifford," she cried in alarm, for there sounded a note of agitation
in his words that made her fearful lest he lose his self-control,
"thee must not talk like that. Think on something else."

"But to die like this," he cried. "An Owen on the gibbet! 'Tis bitter,
bitter! I had planned a different death. 'Twas on the battle-field.
Gloriously to fall, fighting for the king and England. I do not fear
death, my cousin. It is not that. 'Tis the awfulness of the mode. I
cannot help but think of that other death which I would so gladly die.
I have ever loved martial music, and 'twas my thought that at my death
the muffled drum would beat for a soldier's honorable funeral."

"Clifford! Clifford!" she cried. He was so young, so noble, and yet
to die a cruel death on the scaffold! It was hard. What comfort could
she give him? He was in sore need of it.

"Bear with me