The soldiers below were, he saw, undoubtedly about to raise some erection with the planks and boards they had brought into the courtyard. Yet, to the mind of the prisoner above, who, in his time, had not only taken part in sieges but had himself on more than one occasion been besieged in some strong fortress or town of the Netherlands, it did not appear that either mantlet or temporary shield against sharpshooters of the enemy was about to be erected.
Instead, four large stones, each forming the corner of a square, had been removed from the earth below, and easily removed, too, as though this was not the first time they had been subjected to the process.
A moment later, in the spots those stones had occupied four short posts had taken their place, while, next, two other stones were removed in the middle of the square space. A second later a platform, itself a square of about eight feet, had been lifted on to the top of those posts and was being nailed down to them at each corner.
"I misdoubt me of what it is they do," Bevill murmured to himself as he saw this, while now the warm glow, the throb, the tremor of happy anticipation that had sprung to his heart but a few moments ago ebbed from it, leaving in its place a chill as of ice, one that he thought must be as the chill of death.
"Ah!" he gasped now. "Ah! It is so. That tells all."
For the soldiers, still working steadily below, had lifted first one piece of framework and then another--two long posts that, in their way, resembled signal posts at crossroads--on to the wooden platform, had thrust the lower ends through it into the two holes last left empty, and had gradually fitted them into the vacant spaces.
As now those things stood there towering some eight feet above the platform, he almost reeled back into the embrasure. For it needed nothing more, it needed no rope thrown over the cross-beams that, illumined alone in the dusky light by the flare of the torches which burnt flickeringly in the night air, seemed like some ghastly hands pointing the sombre road to death--to tell him that they were gibbets awaiting their victims.
"The hour is at hand," he whispered. "At dawn to-morrow if not now, I--" then suddenly he paused. "No, no," he exclaimed a moment later. "Not I! Neither of them is for me. My hour is not yet. They are for those others--Francbois, Stuven. My death is to be more noble or, at least, less ignominious. 'Tis true. There is still a chance for me--a chance for life. For her. For our love and happiness together."
Yet in an instant Bevill knew that he had spoken too soon.
As still he gazed below, fascinated by the sight of those awful, hideous things, he saw the man who was in command of this party, a sergeant of the dragoons of Risbourg, look round the courtyard as though in search of something. Next, he saw him advance towards the farther wall, while evidently counting his footsteps as he did so. Then, having touched the wall, he recounted them backwards, stopped two paces short of the spot whence he had before started, and, taking a chisel out of the hand of one of the others, stooped down and scratched a long line on the stones. After which he returned to the wall, made some other rough scratchings on it at about the height of a man's head, and, pointing his hand at the mark on the stones and afterwards at that on the wall, said something to the soldier which, naturally, Bevill could not hear.