Nathaniel threw another handful of gold on the table.

“Five hundred!” he exclaimed.  “It’s cheap enough for a woman’s soul!”

He motioned for Neil to put the money in his pocket.  The pain was coming back into his head, he grew dizzy, and hastened to the bench.  Neil came and sat beside him.

“So you think it’s the end?” he asked.  He was glad that his companion had guessed the truth.

“Don’t you?”

“Yes.”

There was a minute’s dark silence.  The ticking of Nathaniel’s watch sounded like the tapping of a stick.

“What will happen?”

“I don’t know.  But whatever it may be it will come to us soon.  Usually it happens at night.”

“There is no hope?”

“Absolutely none.  The whole mainland is at the mercy of Strang.  He fears no retribution now, no punishment for his crimes, no hand stronger than his own.  He will not even give us the pretense of a hearing.  I am a traitor, a revolutionist—­you have attempted the life of the king.  We are both condemned—­both doomed.”

Neil spoke calmly and his companion strove to master the terrible pain at his heart as he thought of Marion.  If Neil could go to the end like a martyr he would at least make an attempt to do as much.  Yet he could not help from saying: 

“What will become of Marion?”

He felt the tremor that passed through his companion’s body.

“I have implored Winnsome to do all that she can to get her away,” replied Neil.  “If Marion won’t go—­” He clenched his hands with a moaning curse and sprang to his feet, again pacing back and forth through the gloomy dungeon.  “If she won’t go I swear that Strang’s triumph will be short!” he cried suddenly.  “I can not guess the terrible power that the king possesses over her, but I know that once his wife she will not endure it long.  The moment she becomes that, her bondage is broken.  I know it.  I have seen it in her eyes.  She will kill herself!”

Nathaniel rose slowly from the bench and came to his side.

“She won’t do that!” he groaned.  “My God—­she won’t do that!”

Neil’s face was blanched to the whiteness of paper.

“She will,” he repeated quietly.  “Her terrible pact with Strang will have been fulfilled.  And I—­I am glad—­glad—­”

He raised his arms to the dripping blackness of the dungeon ceiling, his voice shaking with a cold, stifled anguish.  Nathaniel drew back from that tall, straight figure, step by step, as though to hide beyond the flickering candle glow the betrayal that had come into his face, the blazing fire that seemed burning out his eyes.  If what Neil had said was true—­

Something choked him as he dropped alone upon the bench.

If it was true—­Marion was dead!

He dropped his head in his hands and sat for a long time in silence, listening to Neil as he walked tirelessly over the muddy earth.  Not until there came a rattling of the chain at the cell door and a creaking of the rusty hinges did he lift his face.  It was the jailer with a huge armful of straw.  He saw Neil approach him after he had thrown it down.  Their low voices came to him in an indistinct murmur.  After a little he caught the sound of the chinking gold pieces.