"It would be no better than a mockery, if I should do as you wish. I cannot——"
Here a clear, deep voice from the adjacent room interrupted him.
"Mother of heaven!" cried Padre Luca, greatly agitated.
"I am ready," answered Morton, in a voice firm as that which summoned him.
He returned to the priest's apartment, and in the doorway stood the athletic corporal, like the statue of a modern Mars.
"Mio figlio! Mio caro figlio!" faltered Padre Luca, laying a tremulous hand on the young man's shoulder. The kindly accents of the melodious Italian fell on his ear like a strain of music.
"You must not die now; you are not prepared. I will go to the commissioner. He will grant time."
He was pushing past the corporal, when Morton gently checked him.
"I thank you, father, a thousand times; but if I must die, there is no mercy in a half hour's delay. Let me go. This sentence may be, after all, a kindness."
The corporal took him into custody; and, with three soldiers before and three behind, he moved towards his place of execution. He seemed to himself like one not fully awake; the stern reality would not come home to his thoughts, until, as he was mounting a flight of steps leading to the rampart, a vivid remembrance glowed upon him of that summer evening when, in her father's garden, Edith Leslie had accepted his love. It was with a desperate effort of pride and resolution that he quelled the emotion which rose choking to his throat, and murmuring a petition for her safety, walked forward with an unchanged face.