hey were still too far off to see. They might only
be cruelly holding out hope to one of the doomed.

The pursuivant shouted aloud--"In the King's name, Hold!" He lifted
Dennet on his shoulder, and bade her wave her parchment. An
overpowering roar arose. "A pardon! a pardon! God save the King!"

Every hand seemed to be forwarding the pursuivant and the child, and it
was Giles Headley, who, loosed from the hold of the executioner, stared
wildly about him, like one distraught.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

PARDON.

"`What if,' quoth she, `by Spanish blood
Have London's stately streets been wet,
Yet will I seek this country's good
And pardon for these young men get.'"
Churchill.

The night and morning had been terrible to the poor boys, who only had
begun to understand what awaited them. The fourteen selected had little
hope, and indeed a priest came in early morning to hear the confessions
of Giles Headley and George Bates, the only two who were in Newgate.

George Bates was of the stolid, heavy disposition that seems armed by
outward indifference, or mayhap pride. He knew that his case was
hopeless, and he would not thaw even to the priest. But Giles had been
quite unmanned, and when he found that for the doleful procession to the
Guildhall he was to be coupled with George Bates, instead of either of
his room-fellows, he flung himself on Stephen's neck, sobbing out
messages for his mother, and entreaties that, if Stephen survived, he
would be good to Aldonza. "For you will wed Dennet, and--"

There the jailers roughly ordered him to hold his peace, and dragged him
off to be pinioned to his fellow-sufferer. Stephen was not called till
some minutes later, and had not seen him since. He himself was of
course overshadowed by the awful gloom of apprehension for himself, and
pity for his comrades, and he was grieved at not having seen or heard of
his brother or master, but he had a very present care in Jasper, who was
sickening in the prison atmosphere, and when fastened to his arm, seemed
hardly able to walk. Leashed as they were, Stephen could only help him
by holding the free hand, and when they came to the hall, supporting him
as much as possible, as they stood in the miserable throng during the
conclusion of the formalities, which ended by the horrible sentence of
the traitor being pronounced on the whole two hundred and seventy-eight.
Poor little Jasper woke for an interval from the sense of pre