d his face weakly to the man beside him.

"Where did she go?" he asked.

It was a boyish face into which his pleading eyes gazed, a face white
with the strain of battle, reddened a little on one cheek with a smear
of blood, and there was a startled, frightened look in it that did not
come of the strife that had passed.

"Who? What are you talking about?"

"The woman," whispered Nathaniel. "The woman--Marion--who kissed--me--"

The young fellow's hand gripped his arm in a sudden fierce clutch.

"You've been dreaming!" he exclaimed in a threatening voice. "Shut up!"
He spoke the words loudly. Then quickly dropping his voice to a whisper
he added, "For God's sake don't betray her! They saw her with
us--everybody knows that it was the king's wife with you!"

The king's wife! Nathaniel was too weak to analyze the words beyond the
fact that they carried the dread truth of his fears deep into his soul.
Who would have come to him but Marion? Who else would have kissed him?
It was her voice that had whispered in his ear--the thrill of her hand
that had passed over his face. And this man had said that she was the
wife of the king! He heard the voices of other men near him but did not
understand what they were saying. He knew that after a moment there was
a man on each side of him holding him by the arms, and mechanically he
moved his legs, knowing that they wanted him to walk. They did not guess
how weak he was--how he struggled to keep from becoming too great a
weight on their hands. Once or twice they stopped in their agonizing
climb up the hill. On its top the cool sea air swept into Nathaniel's
face and it was like water to a parched throat.

After a time--it seemed a day of terrible work and pain to him--they
came to the streets of the town, and in a half conscious sort of way he
cursed at the rabble trailing at their heels. They passed close to the
temple, dirt and blood and a burning torment shutting the vision of it
from his eyes, and beyond this there was another crowd. An aisle opened
for them, as it had opened for others ahead of them. In front of the
jail they stopped. Nathaniel's head hung heavily upon his breast and he
made no effort to raise it. All ambition and desire had left him, all
desire but one, and that was to drop upon the ground and lie there for
endless, restful years. What consciousness was left in him was ebbing
swiftly; he saw black, fathomless night about him and the earth seemed
slipping fro