It drove him nearly mad to think that he must leave it all, that his brief sojourn upon the fair and noble earth which he loved so passionately was at an end. He was too strong of blood for such a death. With all the force of his will had he striven to compose himself. Many prayers had he addressed to God that it might be given to him to meet his fate with the high dignity that was the due of his manhood. But as now he lay shuddering in the darkness, do as he would he could not bring his mind to accept the end. Times and again he pressed his wild eyes to his pallet with a half-strangled moan of despair.
The fact that he was an entirely innocent man did nothing to console him. Indeed, had he been guilty, death had been less hard to bear. But coming to him in this arbitrary, unjust guise, its cruel causelessness set his every fiber in revolt.
Faint sounds began to creep through the night. All too soon his quivering senses caught them. Subtle as they were, he knew them at once for the noise of hammers upon wood. O God! they were setting up the scaffold in the courtyard. In spite of the strength he had won in these last few weeks he rolled off the pallet onto his knees and began to pray wildly. A fever shook his mind. His new-found strength was leaving him. Death—and such a death!—was a thing he did not know how to meet. A grim terror took hold of him.
And then a thing happened to him which shook the central forces of his being.
Suddenly he saw the face of Anne. He saw it all wan and swollen with tears. And as he looked he saw the eyes grow starlike and great with their compassion. And then he remembered his vaunt to her that he would walk firmly in his last hour, and that her name should be upon his lips. Her image was hardly more than that of a mortal daughter of men; but that which had sprung from her own bruised spirit, which looked out of her eyes as now he saw them in the darkness, was the only evidence he had of the Eternal. Some immortal essence had fused her heart as so humbly and so pitifully she had looked up to him. Through those eyes he had seen God.
Such a thought had the power to offer a measure of ease to his torments. The dreadful tumult began to grow less. Those eyes were as stars in that gross darkness. No longer was he afraid. A strange peace had begun to bear him upon its wings.
No longer had he cause to fear the noise of the hammers. Let the morning break. Let death come when it would. His fainting spirit had now a manifestation to which to cling. He would walk to the scaffold with this noble image in his heart, and it should accompany him forever in his wanderings through the wide fields of eternity.
He crept back to his pallet, and stretched out his fever-racked limbs to their full length. A profound peace was enfolding him. If only death could come now!
Long he lay thus, and as he lay he strained his eyes to catch the first faint light of the dawn. Would it never arrive? All his fear now was lest this new strength should flee as suddenly as it had been given. But no!—the ineffable spirit that had entered into him would continue through all eternity to bear his soul.
At last and quite suddenly a more instant sound began to mingle with the distant noise of the hammers. A key was grating in the lock of the door. Yes, his hour was here at last and he had not known it. With a feeling akin to relief he sat up on his pallet.