osition a little more--"

"YOUR position? And what is HIS? You with EVERYTHING you want in
life--that man with NOTHING. He is being hounded to prison for what?
Pleading for his country! Is that a crime? He was shot down by
soldiers--for what? For showing something we English are always
boasting of feeling OURSELVES and resent any other nation feeling
it--patriotism!"

"Stop!" commanded Kingsnorth.

"If you take that sick, wretched man out of this house it will be a
crime--" began Angela.

Kingsnorth stopped her; he turned to the magistrate: "Kindly take the
man away."

Roche moved to the window.

Angela's heart sank. All her pleading was in vain. Her voice faltered
and broke:

"Very well. Then take him. Sentence him for doing something his own
countrymen will one day build a monument to him for doing. The moment
the prison-door closes behind him a thousand voices will cry 'Shame' on
you and your government, and a thousand new patriots will be enrolled.
And when he comes out from his torture he'll carry on the work of
hatred and vengeance against his tyrants. He will fight you to the last
ditch. You may torture his BODY, but you cannot break his HEART or
wither his spirit. They're beyond you. They're--they're--," she stopped
suddenly, as her voice rose to the breaking-point, and left the room.

The magistrate went down the drive. In a few moments O'Connell was on
his way to the Court-House, a closely guarded prisoner.

Angela, from her window, watched the men disappear. She buried her face
in her hands and moaned as she had not done since her mother left her
just a few years before. The girlhood in her was dead. She was a woman.
The one great note had come to her, transforming her whole nature--love.

And the man she loved was being carried away to the misery and
degradation of a convict.

Gradually the moans died away. The convulsive heaving of her breast
subsided. A little later, when her sister Monica came in search of her,
she found Angela in a dead faint.

By night she was in a fever.

CHAPTER IX

TWO LETTERS

Dublin, Ireland, Nov. 16th, 18--

Dear Lady of Mercy:

I have served my sentence. I am free. At first the horrible humiliation
of my treatment, of my surroundings, of the depths I had to sink to,
burned into me. Then the thought of you sustained me. Your gentle
voice: your beauty: your pity: your unbounded faith in me strengthened
my soul. All the degradation fell from me. They