Would that damned magistrate never come?  Didn’t he know that Malet-Marsac was fighting for his manhood and terribly afraid?  Didn’t he know that unless he came quickly Malet-Marsac would either leap on his horse and ride it till it fell, or else lose control inside the jail and either burst into tears, faint, or—­going mad—­put up a fight for his friend there in the jail itself, snatch weapons, get back to back with him and die fighting then and there—­or, later, on the same scaffold?  His friend—­by whose side he had fought, starved, suffered, triumphed—­his poor two-natured friend....

Could not one of these cursed clever physicians, alienists, psychologists, hypnotists—­whatever they were—­have cut the strange savagery and ferocity out of the splendid John Robin Ross-Ellison?...

A buffalo passed, driven by a barely human lout.  The lout was free—­the brainless, soulless bovine lout was free in God’s beautiful world—­and Ross-Ellison, soldier and gentleman, lay in a stone cell, and in quarter of an hour would dangle by the neck in a pit below a platform—­perhaps suffering unthinkable agonies—­who could tell?...  His old friend and commandant—­

Would Wellson never come?  What kept the fellow?  It was disgraceful conduct on the part of a public servant in such circumstances.  Think what an eternity of mental suffering each minute must now be to Ross-Ellison!  What was he doing?  What were they doing to him? Could the agony of Ross-Ellison be greater than that of Malet-Marsac?  It must be a thousand times greater.  How could that tireless activity, that restless initiative, that cool courage, that unfathomable ingenuity be quenched in a second?  How could such a wild free nature exist in a cell, submit to pinioning, be quietly led like a sheep to the slaughter?  He who so loved the mountain, the wild desert, the ocean, the free wandering life of adventure and exploration.

Would Wellson never come?  It must be terribly late.  Could they have hanged Ross-Ellison already?  Could he have gone to his death thinking his friend had failed him; had passed by, like the Levite, on the other side; had turned up a sanctimonious nose at the letter of the Murderer; had behaved as some “friends” do behave in time of trouble?

Could he have died thinking this?  If so, he must now know the truth, if the Parsons were right, those unconvincing very-human Parsons of like passions, and pretence of unlike passions.  Could his friend be dead, his friend whom he had so loved and admired?  And yet he was a murderer—­and he had murdered ... her....

Captain Michael Malet-Marsac leant against a tree and was violently sick.

Curse the weak frail body that was failing him in his hour of need!  It had never failed him in battle nor in athletic struggle.  Why should it weaken now.  He would see his friend, and bear himself as a man, to help him in his dreadful hour.