ng apart, felt
their blood turn to icy beads. For them the quick metallic gust of
strident life down in the street had the merciless quality of hammering
upon a coffin lid.

Troops filed up the stairs, and along the corridor. They halted, faced
the door, grounded arms. An officer stepped out, fumbled with a
document, and read the death sentence. Maximilian gently released
himself from one and another of those present, and turning to the
Austrian physician, handed him his wedding ring. "You will give it to my
mother," he said. Father Soria's eyes filled with tears, one plump fist
clenched pathetically. Maximilian passed an arm over the good man's
shoulder, and with him walked out among the soldiers. He nodded to them
encouragingly, and so started on his little journey.

Three ramshackle public hacks, set high over wabbling wheels, and drawn
by mules, waited at the door. Maximilian smiled an apology as he
motioned Father Soria to precede him into the first. The troops used
their spurs. A whip cracked. The springs jolted. Everywhere, on the
curbs, in windows, on housetops, there were people. The archduke had the
impression of breath tensely held, and of eyes, eyes strained, curious,
and awed, like those of children who witness suffering and cannot
understand.

Passing the convent of Santa Clara, Maximilian peered upward at the
windows; and, as he hoped, he saw Jacqueline. She was leaning far out,
and tremulously poised. Tender compassion was in every line of her tense
body, but as their gaze met she tried to smile, bravely and cheerfully,
and until the hack swung round the corner, there was her hand waving him
farewell. The little journey might have been, a fete, and somehow, he
was comforted.

"I wonder," he mused, "if I've done very much for her, after all. Or for
that American, named Driscoll? Will she--" He shook his head, and
sighed. "No, she is not the lass to have him, not after my little scene
of last night. But, the choice does rest with her, now. And for a girl,
that is everything.--Alas, poor young man!"

His rueful prophecies were that moment interrupted by a woman's scream.
It rose piercingly over the clatter of their march. Maximilian put out
his head and looked back. The woman was running beside Mejia's hack,
panting, stumbling through the dust, her black hair streaming. She held
a babe in her rebosa, but with her free hand she clutched weakly at the
spokes. To the clumsy, pitying soldiers who would fo