ht to caution you not to come too near
me. I nearly killed a man yesterday: and to-morrow, when they come to
lead me out----But, with regard to you, Major Buckley, the case is
different. Do you know I should be rather sorry to tackle you; I'm
afraid you would be too heavy for me. As to my having anything to
forgive, Major, I don't know that there is anything. If there is, let
me tell you that I feel more kind and hearty towards you and Hamlyn for
coming to me like this to-day, than I've felt towards any man this
twenty year. By-the-bye; let no man go to the gallows without clearing
himself as far as he may. Do you know that I set on that red-haired
villain, Moody, to throttle Bill Lee, because I hadn't pluck to do it
myself."

"Poor Lee," said the Major.

"Poor devil," said Hawker. "Why that man had gone through every sort of
villany, from" (so and so up to so and so, he said; I shall not
particularize) "before my beard was grown. Why that man laid such plots
and snares for me when I was a lad, that a bishop could not have
escaped. He egged me on to forge my own father's name. He drove me on
to ruin. And now, because it suited his purpose to turn honest, and act
faithful domestic to my wife for twenty years, he is mourned for as an
exemplary character, and I go to the gallows. He was a meaner villain
than ever I was."

"George," I asked, "have you any message for your wife?"

"Only this," he said; "tell her I always liked her pretty face, and I'm
sorry I brought disgrace upon her. Through all my rascalities, old
Jeff, I swear to you that I respected and liked her to the last. I
tried to see her last year, only to tell her that she needn't be afraid
of me, and should treat me as a dead man; but she and her blessed
pig-headed lover, Tom Troubridge, made such knife and pistol work of
it, that I never got the chance of saying the word I wanted. She'd have
saved herself much trouble if she hadn't acted so much like a
frightened fool. I never meant her any harm. You may tell her all this
if you judge right, but I leave it to you. Time's up, I see. I ain't so
much of a coward, am I, Jeff? Good-bye, old lad, good-bye."

That was the last we saw of him; the next morning he was executed with
four of his comrades. But now the Major and I, leaving him, went out
again into the street, into the rain and the furious wind, to beat up
against it for our hotel. Neither spoke a word till we came to a corner
in George Street, nearest