gloom. The delightful sprite named Expectation, who had
whispered so piquantly of this same eventful morn, had basely changed
herself into a hideous vampire, and she muttered at him, in frightful,
raucous tones. Yet the hag's snarls were true promises. There was
to come, surely, inexorably, a certain other eventful morn, and
he would awake, and without his mother's calling him, he would
know--_know_--that it was time!

Back in that childhood hour he had lain for a while quite inconsolable,
until his mother came again, and rested her hand on his head, and told
him--"Why, one would think the little goose was going away forever!" It
was broad daylight by now, too; and wholly comforted, he had sprung up,
joyfully alive. Eternity did not worry him any more for a week.

But the awakening of this later morning, in a Mexican prison! And when
he understood that the old familiar fantasy was become a fact! When he
remembered how once he had been consoled in his boyhood! For a moment
the sense of loss and of helplessness was stifling, and he
yearned--yearned frantically, as he never had as a boy--for the touch of
his mother's hand, for her voice, so low and sweet. The horrid cruelty
he could not, during that moment, bear. He felt that he must cry out for
her, like a very child. And though he wept, it was the man, and the
man's despair that his was not now the boy's need of comfort.

But when they came in the first dawn and knocked at his door, they found
him serene, untroubled, and only the wonted shade of melancholy on his
brow. He greeted them courteously, and was desirous that they should
have no unnecessary difficulties on his account. Being dressed already,
punctiliously, and in black, he himself went to call Miramon and Mejia,
and brought them to his own cell, where they received the last sacrament
together.

Later the three condemned were at breakfast--bread, chicken, a little
wine and a cup of coffee--when horses' hoofs rang abruptly in the street
below, and as abruptly ceased under their window. There was a command,
and sabres rasped against their scabbards to gain the light. Maximilian
raised eyes filled with pity to his two companions. Mejia, an Indian
thoroughly, made a gesture of impatience. The handsome Miramon, of
French blood, shrugged his shoulders. Then both glanced timidly in their
turn at Maximilian, and each finding a hand stretched forth, grasped it
silently. But the priests of the condemned, who were waiti