"Then I'll remit your prison sentence also and merely transfer you to the stone-quarry. We need more common labourers on the rock-pile there preparing the macadam for the court of the regent's palace. Report at once to the foreman of that gang."
"Thank you, sir," the Bard stammered, feebly, as he backed out of the room.
The poet bent his proud back over the stone-pile for two weeks and suddenly disappeared.
His hat was found on a rustic seat on a high cliff whose perpendicular wall was washed by the sea. Beneath this hat lay his last manuscript protest to the world. It was entitled:
"The Journal of Roland Adair, Bard of Ramcat." It was written in blank verse and proved a most harrowing recital of the horrors he had suffered at the hands of the tyrant regent. With eloquence fierce and fiery he called on the slaves who were being ground beneath his heel to rise in their might and slay the oppressor. He had chosen to die that his death-song might stir their souls to heroic action.
Search was made on the beaches for his body in vain. His wife's grief was genuine and a few of his friends gathered with her on the tenth day after his disappearance to express their sorrow and appreciation in a brief formal service.
Diggs was delivering a funeral oration bombarding Death, Hell, and the Grave with endless questions, when suddenly the Bard appeared, pinched with hunger, his clothes covered with dirt, his long hair dishevelled and unkempt. He had evidently been sleeping in the open.
His friends stood in wonder. His wife shrieked in terror.
The Bard solemnly lifted his hand and cried:
"I stood on the hills and waited for slaves to rise and fight their way to death or freedom. And no man stirred! Did they not find my death-song?"