hours would flit by for him in the blissful
state of unconsciousness. Now at last the heavy carriage began to move
more evenly. The soldier at the horses' heads was stepping along at a
rapid pace.

Marguerite would have given much even now to look back once more at
the dense black mass, blacker and denser than any shadow that had ever
descended before on God's earth, which held between its cold, cruel
walls all that she loved in the world.

But her wrists were fettered by the irons, which cut into her flesh when
she moved. She could no longer lean out of the window, and she could
not even hear. The whole forest was hushed, the wind was lulled to rest;
wild beasts and night-birds were silent and still. And the wheels of the
coach creaked in the ruts, bearing Marguerite with every turn further
and further away from the man who lay helpless in the chapel of the Holy
Sepulchre.

CHAPTER XLVIII. THE WANING MOON

Armand had wakened from his attack of faintness, and brother and sister
sat close to one another, shoulder touching shoulder. That sense of
nearness was the one tiny spark of comfort to both of them on this
dreary, dreary way.

The coach had lumbered on unceasingly since all eternity--so it seemed
to them both. Once there had been a brief halt, when Heron's rough voice
had ordered the soldier at the horses' heads to climb on the box beside
him, and once--it had been a very little while ago--a terrible cry of
pain and terror had rung through the stillness of the night. Immediately
after that the horses had been put at a more rapid pace, but it had
seemed to Marguerite as if that one cry of pain had been repeated by
several others which sounded more feeble and soon appeared to be dying
away in the distance behind.

The soldier who sat opposite to them must have heard the cry too, for he
jumped up, as if wakened from sleep, and put his head out of the window.

"Did you hear that cry, citizen?" he asked.

But only a curse answered him, and a peremptory command not to lose
sight of the prisoners by poking his head out of the window.

"Did you hear the cry?" asked the soldier of Marguerite as he made haste
to obey.

"Yes! What could it be?" she murmured.

"It seems dangerous to drive so fast in this darkness," muttered the
soldier.

After which remark he, with the stolidity peculiar to his kind,
figuratively shrugged his shoulders, detaching himself, as it were, of
the whole affair.

"We should be ou