they must have observed our conversation to die out
unusually soon. Yet I doubt if any of us slept. Each lay in his place,
tortured at once with the hope of liberty and the fear of a hateful
death. The guard call sounded; the hum of the town declined by little
and little. On all sides of us, in their different quarters, we could
hear the watchmen cry the hours along the street. Often enough, during
my stay in England, have I listened to these gruff or broken voices; or
perhaps gone to my window when I lay sleepless, and watched the old
gentleman hobble by upon the causeway with his cape and his cap, his
hanger and his rattle. It was ever a thought with me how differently
that cry would re-echo in the chamber of lovers, beside the bed of
death, or in the condemned cell. I might be said to hear it that night
myself in the condemned cell! At length a fellow with a voice like a
bull's began to roar out in the opposite thoroughfare:

"Past yin o'cloak, and a dark, haary moarnin'."

At which we were all silently afoot.

As I stole about the battlements towards the--gallows, I was about to
write--the sergeant-major, perhaps doubtful of my resolution, kept close
by me, and occasionally proffered the most indigestible reassurances in
my ear. At last I could bear them no longer.

"Be so obliging as to let me be!" said I. "I am neither a coward nor a
fool. What do _you_ know of whether the rope be long enough? But I shall
know it in ten minutes!"

The good old fellow laughed in his moustache, and patted me.

It was all very well to show the disposition of my temper before a
friend alone; before my assembled comrades the thing had to go
handsomely. It was then my time to come on the stage; and I hope I took
it handsomely.

"Now, gentlemen," said I, "if the rope is ready, here is the criminal!"

The tunnel was cleared, the stake driven, the rope extended. As I moved
forward to the place, many of my comrades caught me by the hand and
wrung it, an attention I could well have done without.

"Keep an eye on Clausel!" I whispered to Laclas; and with that, got down
on my elbows and knees, took the rope in both hands, and worked myself,
feet foremost, through the tunnel. When the earth failed under my feet,
I thought my heart would have stopped; and a moment after I was
demeaning myself in mid-air like a drunken jumping-jack. I have never
been a model of piety, but at this juncture prayers and a cold sweat
burst from me simultane