Once more he was looking into eyes, but they were the eyes of himself! Ronald Morelle was standing watching him with sorrow and pity. Ronald Morelle was watching himself! And then again the urgent hand pressed him forward and he paced mechanically.
"——I know that my Redeemer liveth——"
The little clergyman was walking by his side, reading tremulously. Ronald looked down at himself, his shoe was hurting him, somebody had left a nail there and he cursed François: but those were not his shoes he was looking at, they were great rough boots and his trousers were old and frayed and there was a shiny patch on his knee.
"—Man that is born of a woman hath but little time upon this earth, and that time is filled with misery—"
He walked like one in a dream into the shed and felt the trap sag under him. The executioner—it must be the executioner, he thought, stooped and strapped his legs tightly. Ronald wondered what would happen. It was an absurd mistake, of course, rather amusing in a way—François had not been paid his month's salary, and François was meeting his brother today from Interlaken, Interlaken in the Oberland.
The man put a cloth over his face—it was linen, unbleached and pungent. When the executioner passed the elastic loops behind his ears, he released one too quickly and it stung.
"It is not me, it is not me," said Ronald numbly, "it is the body of Ambrose Sault—the gross body of Ambrose Sault! I'm standing outside watching! It is Sault who is being hanged—Sault! I am Morelle—Morelle of Balliol—Major Boyle," he screamed aloud. "Major Boyle—you know me—I am Morelle—"
Yet his body was huge—he felt its grossness, its size, the strength of the corded muscles of the arm; the roaring fury of the life which surged within him. He heard a squeak—the lever was being pulled—
With a crash the trap gave way and the body of Ambrose Sault swung for a second and was dead, but it was the soul of Ronald Morelle that went forth to the eternal spaces of infinity.
The prison clock struck nine.