The yelling of the crowd outside the court was only a detail of the bitter process that was gradually compassing his condemnation.  He knew he was to be convicted.  It was written in varying characters upon every face; pity, severity, disgust—­he met them on every hand.  And so on this the fifth and last day of his court-martial he confronted destiny—­that destiny that he had once so gaily dared—­with closed lips and eyes that revealed neither misery nor despair, only the indomitable pride of his race.  Do what they would to him, they would never quench that while life remained.  The worst indignity that man could inflict would provoke no outcry here.  He had protested his innocence in vain, and he had no proof thereof to offer.  It remained for him to face dishonour as an honourable man, steady and undismayed.  Doubtless there were those who would deem his bearing brazen, but not his worst enemy should call him coward.

Across the court an Englishman, with keen grey eyes that took in every detail, sat and sketched him—­sketched the proud, fearless pose of the man and the hard young face, with its faint, patrician smile.  The sketch was little more than outline, a few bold strokes; but the people in England who saw it a couple of days later felt as if the artist had deliberately lifted a curtain and shown to them a man’s wrung soul.  And everyone who saw it said, “That man is innocent!”

Trevor Mordaunt said it himself many times that day before and after the making of the sketch.  He knew, as well as did the prisoner himself, that there would be no acquittal.  Almost from the commencement of the trial he had known it.  But he knew also that two at least of the judges were disposed towards leniency, and upon this fact he based such slender hopes as he entertained on the prisoner’s behalf.  As a fellow-correspondent—­a Frenchman—­had remarked to him earlier in the trial, whatever the verdict, they would hardly martyrize the man lest at a later date further question as to his guilt should arise and all Europe be set bubbling anew upon that much-discussed topic—­French justice.

Mordaunt was of the same opinion; but, as he watched the young officer throughout the whole of the day’s proceedings, he came to the conclusion that the verdict was everything in this man’s estimation and the sentence less than nothing.  If he were condemned to be blown from his own gun, he would face the ordeal unshrinking, almost with indifference.  Deprived of honour, what else was there in life?

So when the end came at last, and the inevitable verdict was pronounced, Mordaunt shut his note-book with a feeling that there was no more to be recorded.

As a matter of fact the sentence was not pronounced at the time, and only transpired two days later, when it was officially made public—­expulsion from the army and incarceration in a French fortress for ten years.

“That, of course, will be commuted,” said one who knew the probabilities of the case to Mordaunt when the sentence was made known.  “They will release him au secret in a few years and banish him from the country on peril of arrest.  They are bound to make an example of him, but they won’t keep it up.  The verdict was not unanimous.  And, above all, they won’t make a martyr of him now.  The other affaire is too recent.”