I shook my head.  “No,” said I; then, on second thought:  “And yet there is a word.  You saw how I must see the matter through to shield the lady?”

“Surely; ’twas plain enough for any one to see.”

“Then I shall die the easier if you will undertake to make it plain to Richard Jennifer.  He must be made to know that I supplanted him only in a formal way, and that to save the lady’s honor.”

The lieutenant promised heartily, and as he spoke, the oaken bar was lifted and my reprieve was at an end.

Having the thing to despatch before they broke their fast, my soldier hangmen marched me off without ado.  The house and all within it seemed yet asleep, but out of doors the legion vanguard was astir, and newly kindled camp-fires smoked and blazed among the trees.  In shortest space we left these signs of life behind, and I began to think toward the end.

’Tis curious how sweet this troubled life of ours becomes when that day wakes wherein it must be shuffled off!  As a soldier must, I thought I had held life lightly enough; nay, this I know; I had often worn it upon my sleeve in battle.  But now, when I was marching forth to this cold-blooded end without the battle-chance to make it welcome, all nature cried aloud to me.

The dawn was not unlike that other dawn a month past when I had ridden down the river road with Jennifer; a morning fair and fine, its cup abrim and running over with the wine of life.  I thought the cool, moist air had never seemed so sweet and fragrant; that nature’s garb had never seemed so blithe.  There was no hint nor sign of death in all the wooded prospect.  The birds were singing joyously; the squirrels, scarce alarmed enough to scamper out of sight, sat each upon his bough to chatter at us as we passed.  And once, when we were filing through a bosky dell with softest turf to muffle all our treadings, a fox ran out and stood with one uplifted foot, and was as still as any stock or stone until he had the scent of us.

A mile beyond the outfields of Appleby Hundred we passed the legion picket line, and I began to wonder why we went so far; wondered and made bold to ask the ensign in command, turning it into a grim jest and saying I misliked to come too weary to my end.

The ensign, a curst young popinjay, as little officer cubs are like to be, answered flippantly that the colonel had commuted my sentence; that I was to be shot like a soldier, and that far enough afield so the volleying would not wake the house.

So we fared on, and a hundred yards beyond this point of question and reply came out into an open grove of oaks:  then I knew where they had brought me—­and why.  ’Twas the glade where I had fought my losing battle with the baronet.  On its farther confines two horses nibbled rein’s-length at the grass, with Falconnet’s trooper serving-man to hold them; and, standing on the very spot where he had thrust me out, my enemy was waiting.