"And so to the end of the chapter! There! The

murder, you see, was out :

Easy to guess how the change of mind in the rebels was brought about!

Safe in the trap would they now lie snug, had treachery made no sign :

But treachery meets a just reward, no matter if fools

66

malign!

That traitors had played us false, was proved –

sent news which fell so pat :

And the murder was out-this letter of love, the

sender of this sent that!

'Tis an ugly job, though, all the same

to have to deal

a hateful,

With a case of this kind, when a woman's in fault;

we soldiers need nerves of steel!

"So, I gave her a chance, despatched post-haste a

message to Vincent Parkes

Whom she wrote to; easy to find he was, since one

of the King's own clerks,

Ay, kept by the King's own gold in the town close

by where the rebels camp :

A sort of a lawyer, just the man to betray our sort ·

the scamp!

"If her writing is simple and honest and only the lover-like stuff it looks,

And if you yourself are a loyalist, nor down in the rebels' books,

Come quick,' said I, and in person prove you are each of you clear of crime,

Or martial law must take its course : this day next week's the time !'

"Next week is now does he come? Not he! Clean

gone, our clerk, in a trice!

He has left his sweetheart here in the lurch: no

need of a warning twice!

His own neck free, but his partner's fast in the

noose still, here she stands

To pay for her fault. 'T is an ugly job: but soldiers

obey commands.

'And hearken wherefore I make a speech! Should any acquaintance share

The folly that led to the fault that is now to be punished, let fools beware!

Look black, if you please, but keep hands white : and, above all else, keep wives

Or sweethearts or what they may be- from ink! Not a word now, on your lives!"

Black? but the Pit's own pitch was white to the Captain's face- the brute

With the bloated cheeks and the bulgy nose and the

blood-shot eyes to suit!

He was muddled with wine, they say: more like, he

was out of his wits with fear;

He had but a handful of men, that's true,

a riot

might cost him dear.

And all that time stood Rosamund Page, with pin

ioned arms and face

Bandaged about, on the turf marked out for the

party's firing-place.

I hope she was wholly with God: I hope 'twas His

angel stretched a hand

To steady her so, like the shape of stone you see in our church-aisle stand.

I hope there was no vain fancy pierced the bandage to vex her eyes,

No face within which she missed without, no ques

tions and no replies —

"Why did you leave me to die?"-"Because...

Oh, fiends, too soon you grin.

At merely a moment of hell, like that-such heaven as hell ended in !

Let mine end too! He gave the word, up went the guns in a line :

Those heaped on the hill were blind as dumb,— for,

of all eyes, only mine

Looked over the heads of the foremost rank. Some

fell on their knees in prayer,

Some sank to the earth, but all shut eyes, with a

sole exception there.

That was myself, who had stolen up last, had sidled behind the group:

I am highest of all on the hill-top, there stand fixed while the others stoop!

From head to foot in a serpent's twine am I tightened: I touch ground?

No more than a gibbet's rigid corpse which the fetters rust around!

Can I speak, can I breathe, can I burst-aught else but see, see, only see?

And see I do for there comes in sight — a man,

it

Who staggeringly, stumblingly, rises, falls, rises, at

random flings his weight

On and on, anyhow onward

a man that's mad he

arrives too late!

Else why does he wave a something white high-flour

ished above his head?

Why does not he call, cry,

curse the fool! — why

throw up his arms instead?