ommenced to tie her with the back supported
against the post.

"They say," her defender continued writing, "that one of her hands
waved to me for the last time just before it was fastened down by the
rope.... I saw nothing. I could not see!... It was too much for me!..."

The rest of the execution he knew only by hearsay. The trumpets and
drums continued sounding. Freya, bound and intensely pale, smiled as
though she were drunk. The early morning breeze waved the plumes of her
hat.

When the twelve fusileers advanced placing themselves in a horizontal
line eight yards distant, all of them aiming toward her heart, she
appeared to wake up. She shrieked, her eyes abnormally dilated by the
horror of the reality that so soon was to take place. Her cheeks were
covered with tears. She tugged at the ligatures with the vigor of an
epileptic.

"Pardon!... Pardon! I do not want to die!"

The sub-lieutenant raised his sword, and lowered it again rapidly.... A
shot.

Freya collapsed, her body slipping the entire length of the post until
it fell forward on the ground. The bullets had cut the cords that bound
her.

As though it had acquired sudden life, her hat leaped from her head,
flying off to fall about four yards further on. A corporal with a
revolver in his right hand came forward from the shooting picket:--"the
death-blow." He checked his step before the puddle of blood that was
forming around the victim, pressing his lips together and averting his
eyes. He then bent over her, raising with the end of the barrel the
ringlets which had fallen over one of her ears. She was still
breathing.... A shot in the temple. Her body contracted with a final
shudder, then remained immovable with the rigidity of a corpse.

Voices were heard. The firing-squad re-formed in line, and to the
rhythm of their instruments went filing past the body of the dead. From
the funeral wagon two black-robed men drew out a bier of white wood.

Turning their backs upon their work, the double military mass marched
toward the encampment. The ends of Justice had been served. Trumpets
and drums were lost on the horizon but their sounds were still
magnified by the fresh echoes of the coming morn. The corpse was
despoiled of its jewels and then deposited in that poor coffin which
looked so like a packing-box. The two nuns took with timidity the gems
which the dead woman had given them for their works of charity. Then
the lid was fastened down, shutting aw