s scaffold went up.

Then the door opened, and after a word or two the soldier motioned them
in.

* * * * *

Again they had to wait.

The Lieutenant, they were told, had been called away. He was expected
back presently.

They sat down, still in silence, in the little ground-floor parlour. It
was a pleasant little room, with a wide hearth, and two windows looking
on to the court.

But the suspense was not like that of the morning. Now they knew how it
must end. There would be a few minutes more, long perhaps to Ralph, as
he sat in his cell somewhere not far from them, knowing nothing of the
pardon that was on its way; and then the door would open, where day by
day for the last six weeks the gaoler had come and gone; and the faces
he knew would be there, and it would be from their lips that he would
hear the message.

The old man and the girl still sat together in the window-seat, silent
now like the others. They had had their explanations in the boat, and
each knew what was in the other's heart. Chris and Nicholas stood by the
hearth, Mr. Morris by the door; and there was not the tremor of a doubt
in any of them as to what the future held.

Chris looked tranquilly round the room, at the little square table in
the centre, the four chairs drawn close to it, with their brocade
panels stained and well-worn showing at the back, the dark ceiling, the
piece of tapestry that hung over the side-table between the doors--it
was a martial scene, faded and discoloured, with ghostly bare-legged
knights on fat prancing horses all in inextricable conflict, a great
battleaxe stood out against the dusky foliage of an autumn tree; and a
stag with his fore feet in the air, ramped in the foreground, looking
over his shoulder. It was a ludicrously bad piece of work, picked up no
doubt by some former Lieutenant who knew more of military than artistic
matters, and had hung there--how long? Chris wondered.

He found himself criticising it detail by detail, comparing it with his
own designs in the antiphonary; he had that antiphonary still at home;
he had carried it off from Lewes, when Ralph--Ralph!--had turned him
out. He had put it up into a parcel on the afternoon of the spoilers'
arrival. He would show it to Ralph again now--in a day or two at
Overfield; they would laugh over it together; and he would take it with
him abroad, and perhaps finish it there. God's work is not so easily
hindered after al