There was a little hum of conversation, and poor Bessie, surveying the scene through the crack in the store-room wall, groaned in bitterness and despair of heart.
Then Hans Coetzee spoke. “It cut his bosom in two,” he said, “to have to say a word against one to whom he had for many years been as a brother. But, then, what was he to do? The man had plotted evil against their land, the dear land that the dear Lord had given them, and which they and their fathers had on various occasions watered, and were still continuing to water, with their blood. What could be a fitting punishment for so black-hearted a traitor, and how would it be possible to insure the better behaviour of other damned Englishmen, unless they inflicted that punishment? There could, alas! be but one answer—though, personally speaking, he uttered it with many tears—and that answer was death.”
After this there were no more speeches, but each man voted, according to his age, upon his name being called by the president. At first there was a little hesitation, for some among them were fond of old Silas, and loth to destroy him. But Frank Muller had played his game very well, and, notwithstanding his appeals to their independence of judgment, they knew full surely what would happen to him who gave his vote against the president. So they swallowed their better feelings with all the ease for which such swallowing is noted, and one by one uttered the fatal word.
When they had all done Frank Muller addressed Silas:
“Prisoner, you have heard the judgment against you. I need not now recapitulate your crimes. You have had a fair and open trial by court-martial, such as our law directs. Have you anything to say why sentence of death should not be passed upon you in accordance with the judgment?”
Old Silas looked up with flashing eyes, and shook back his fringe of white hair like a lion at bay.
“I have nothing to say. If you will do murder, do it, black-hearted villain that you are! I might point to my grey hairs, to my murdered servant, to my home that took me ten years to build—destroyed by you! I might tell you how I have been a good citizen and lived peaceably and neighbourly in the land for more than twenty years—ay, and done kindness after kindness to many of you who are going to butcher me in cold blood! But I will not. Shoot me if you will, and may my death lie heavy on your heads. This morning I would have said that my country would avenge me; I cannot say that now, for England has deserted us, and I have no country. Therefore I leave the vengeance in the hands of God, who never fails to avenge, though sometimes He waits for long to do it. I am not afraid of you. Shoot me—now if you like. I have lost my honour, my home, and my country; why should I not lose my life also?”
Frank Muller fixed his cold eyes upon the old man’s quivering face and smiled a dreadful smile of triumph.
“Prisoner, it is now my duty in the name of God and the Republic, to sentence you to be shot to-morrow at dawn, and may the Almighty forgive you your wickedness and have mercy upon your soul.
“Let the prisoner be removed, and let a man ride full speed to the empty house on the hillside, where the Englishman with the red beard used to live, one hour this side of Wakkerstroom, and bring back with him the clergyman he will find waiting there, that the prisoner may be offered his ministrations. Also let two men be set to dig the prisoner’s grave in the burial-place at the back of the house.”