d all
recover."

But Sir John gave little heed to the matter of those others. His grief
and dismay at this quenching of all hope for his friend precluded any
other consideration at the moment.

"And he will not even recover consciousness?" he asked insisting,
although already he had been answered.

"As I have said, you may count him dead already, Sir John. My skill can
do nothing for him."

Sir John's head drooped, his countenance drawn and grave. "Nor can my
justice," he added gloomily. "Though it avenge him, it cannot give
me back my friend." He looked at the surgeon. "Vengeance, sir, is the
hollowest of all the mockeries that go to make up life."

"Your task, Sir John," replied the surgeon, "is one of justice, not
vengeance."

"A quibble, when all is said." He stepped to Lionel's side, and looked
down at the pale handsome face over which the dark shadows of death
were already creeping. "If he would but speak in the interests of this
justice that is to do! If we might but have the evidence of his own
words, lest I should ever be asked to justify the hanging of Oliver
Tressilian."

"Surely, sir," the surgeon ventured, "there can be no such question
ever. Mistress Rosamund's word alone should suffice, if indeed so much
as that even were required."

"Ay! His offenses against God and man are too notorious to leave grounds
upon which any should ever question my right to deal with him out of
hand."

There was a tap at the door and Sir John's own body servant entered with
the announcement that Mistress Rosamund was asking urgently to see him.

"She will be impatient for news of him," Sir John concluded, and he
groaned. "My God! How am I to tell her? To crush her in the very hour
of her deliverance with such news as this! Was ever irony so cruel?"
He turned, and stepped heavily to the door. There he paused. "You will
remain by him to the end?" he bade the surgeon interrogatively.

Master Tobias bowed. "Of course, Sir John." And he added, "'Twill not be
long."

Sir John looked across at Lionel again--a glance of valediction. "God
rest him!" he said hoarsely, and passed out.

In the waist he paused a moment, turned to a knot of lounging seamen,
and bade them throw a halter over the yard-arm, and hale the renegade
Oliver Tressilian from his prison. Then with slow heavy step and heavier
heart he went up the companion to the vessel's castellated poop.

The sun, new risen in a faint golden haze, shone over a sea