It is not given to any living being, man or beast, to know the hour of his death, else the monstrous horror would drive him mad. Yet, I know it and am not mad. It must be that I cannot believe it; that nature protects me with a density through which I may not penetrate, or that there are yet four days—ninety-six hours!
When I was at school, I kept a calendar on the wall and struck off the days till Christmas or Easter, when I would be home again. Most boys did.
The guards in the hallways talk of horses and women and, sometimes, they forget me and laugh aloud. I know they have forgotten me, for when they remember their voices drop suddenly to a whisper. I heard one of them tell of a half-Cree he shot through the heart at the time of the Rebellion. There was, he said, no doubt of its being in the heart, for the fellow drew up his right leg.
The tragedy of my approaching death is its impossibility. How can one realize his execution when the homely smell of hot wheaten bread sifts into his cell? There is the odour, too, of horse-sweat on the guards as they come into my cell. They are the Royal North-West Mounted Police.
I do not know why they are royal and I am criminal, for, after all, the distinction between us is of slight consequence. They do by law what I did contrary to law. The results are the same. On the whole I think they are the worse: their killing by rule is so monstrously premeditated. And yet, this side of the subject has never occurred to me till now that I am the prisoner of the police.
But why should I carp and gird at these fine fellows? They are only the instruments of the state, that is to say of the citizens. I myself, by taxation, have contributed to the expenses of the scaffold whereon I shall be executed.
The priest pleads with me that I may not die in my sin. He does not understand, and I may not tell him, that Margaret died in hers, and that I must do likewise if I would spend eternity with her.
He carries the whole dogma of the Church in his face and shoulders, this old priest, but he is a good man and sincere. His endeavour is to help and comfort me, but his words are short-armed to relieve my agony. Surely my soul has descended into hell.
To-day, he spoke of my mother, but I would not have it. One need not die a hundred deaths....
"Oh! little did my mother think
The day she cradled me
O' the lands I was to travel in,
Or the death I was to dee."