“It matters not.”

“He is an English noble, I tell you—­”

“He is a soldier who has broken the law; that suffices.”

“O Heaven! have you no humanity?”

“We have justice.”

“Justice!  If you have justice, let your chiefs hear his story; let his name be made known; give me an hour’s space to plead for him.  Your Emperor would grant me his life, were he here; yield me an hour—­a half hour—­anything that will give me time to serve him—­”

“It is out of the question; I must obey my orders.  I regret you should have this pain; but if you do not cease to interfere, my soldiers must make you.”

Where the guards held him, Cecil saw and heard.  His voice rose with all its old strength and sweetness.

“My friend, do not plead for me.  For the sake of our common country and our old love, let us both meet this with silence and with courage.”

“You are a madman!” cried the man, whose heart felt breaking under this doom he could neither avert nor share.  “You think that they shall kill you before my eyes!—­you think I shall stand by to see you murdered!  What crime have you done?  None, I dare swear, save being moved, under insult, to act as the men of your race ever acted!  Ah, God! why have lived as you have done?  Why not have trusted my faith and my love?  If you had believed in my faith as I believed in your innocence, this misery never had come to us!”

“Hush! hush! or you will make me die like a coward.”

He dreaded lest he should do so; this ordeal was greater than his power to bear it.  With the mere sound of this man’s voice a longing, so intense in its despairing desire, came on him for this life which they were about to kill in him forever.

The words stung his hearer well-nigh to madness; he turned on the soldiers with all the fury of his race that slumbered so long, but when it awoke was like the lion’s rage.  Invective, entreaty, conjuration, command, imploring prayer, and ungoverned passion poured in tumultuous words, in agonized eloquence, from his lips; all answer was a quick sign of the hand, and, ere he saw them, a dozen soldiers were round him, his arms were seized, his splendid frame was held as powerless as a lassoed bull; for a moment there was a horrible struggle, then a score of ruthless hands locked him as in iron gyves, and forced his mouth to silence and his eyes to blindness.  This was all the mercy they could give—­to spare him the sight of his friend’s slaughter.

Cecil’s eyes strained in him with one last, longing look; then he raised his hand and gave the signal for his own death-shot.

The leveled carbines covered him; he stood erect with his face full toward the sun.  Ere they could fire, a shrill cry pierced the air.

“Wait!  In the name of France.”

Dismounted, breathless, staggering, with her arms flung upward, and her face bloodless with fear, Cigarette appeared upon the ridge of rising ground.