CHAPTER XXX.
THE BURNING PRISON.
“The doomed girl is silent,
I watch with her now,
And her pulse beats no quicker,
Nor flushes her brow.
“The small hand that trembled,
When last in my own,
Lies patient and folded
And colder than stone.”
Malcolm paced up and down before the prison walls. The sky was “blind with a double dark” of night and clouds. The huge building itself seemed only a blacker shadow in the black scene. But not darker was the night without than the soul within the solitary watcher. Why did he walk there? Not only because he had promised Annella to do so. Not, either, with the faintest hope of saving the martyr-girl who lay within those strong walls awaiting her doom. No; but to be near her in her sorrow, to watch with her as we watch beside the dead. Who can estimate the anguish of that dark vigil? The deep-voiced clock at the top of one of the towers struck each hour in its turn, and each stroke sounded like a knell upon his ear and heart. He wondered if she heard them too, or if Heaven had blessed her with sleep in these last hours. If so, would to Heaven she might never wake to the horrors of the morning.