"Ready! Present! Fire!"
The six rifles flashed simultaneously.
Then, as the wounded Lirico was struck, he bounded into the air and fell back into the grave—stone dead!
Hunston stood smiling grimly, even while the very men turned sick at the butchery they were forced to enact.
He, with fiend-like satisfaction, noticed the sickly pallor of the two boys' faces, and it gladdened his black heart.
"They aren't quite so happy now," he muttered. "Now it is they suffer. Oh, if Harkaway were here too. It would make me drunk with joy."
The girl turned to young Jack.
"Courage," she whispered, "courage; be bold."
And then turning to the firing party, she said—
"Come, do not delay. It is needless to prolong the sufferings which these poor boys feel already."