trange sound like the wind in dry trees, as the huge crowd gathered.

Beatrice raised her eyes suddenly.

The fortress itself which had been quiet till now seemed to awaken
abruptly.

The sound seemed to come to them up the stairs, but they had learnt
during those hours that all sounds from within came that way. There was
a trumpet-note or two, short and brazen; a tramp of feet for a moment,
the throb of drums; then silence again; then the noise of moving
footsteps that came and went in an instant. And as the sound came, Ralph
stirred.

He swayed slowly over on to his back; his breath came in little groans
that died to silence again as he subsided, and his arm drew out and lay
on the bedclothes. Chris could see his face now in sharp profile against
Beatrice's dark skirt, white and sharp; the skin was tightly stretched
over the nose and cheekbones, his long thin lips were slightly open,
there was a painful frown on his forehead, and his eyes squinted
terribly at the ceiling.

A contraction seized the priest's throat as he watched; the face was at
once so august and so pitiable.

The lips began to move again, as they had moved during the night; it
seemed as if the dying man were talking and listening. The eyelids
twitched a little; and once he made a movement as if to rise up. Chris
was down on his knees in a moment, holding him tenderly down; he felt
the thin hands come up and fumble with his own, and noticed lines deepen
between the flickering eyelids. Then the hands lay quiet.

Chris lifted his eyes and saw his father's face and Beatrice's watching.
Something of the augustness of the dying man seemed to rest on the grey
bearded lips and solemn eyes that looked down. Beatrice's face was
steady and tender, and as the priest's eyes met hers, she nodded.

"Yes, speak to him," she said.

Chris threw a hand across the bed and rested it on the wooden frame, and
then lowered himself softly till his mouth was at the other's ear.

"Ralph," he said, "Ralph, do you hear me?"

Then he raised his face a little and watched.

The eyelids were rising slowly; but they dropped again; and there came a
little faint babbling from the writhing lips; but no words were
intelligible. Then they were silent.

"He hears," said Beatrice softly.

The priest bent low again; and as he did so, from outside came a strange
sound, as of a long monstrous groan from a thousand throats. Again the
dying man stirred; his hand sought his brothe