Unziar sprang up hurriedly.
'It is in the ante-room,' he said; 'I will bring it.'
Sagan rose from his place as Unziar returned with a naked sword in his hand. The Count took it and laid it on the table before him.
Then standing he addressed the court.
'Gentlemen of the Guard,—I must thank you in the first place for the admirable patience with which you have listened to the details of the abominable crime with which the prisoner, John Rallywood, is charged. His guilt has been proved up to the hilt by Lieutenant Unziar's evidence, but in addition to that the accused was not ashamed to convict himself out of his own mouth. The sentence upon a traitor as upon a mutinous soldier is unalterable. It is death! No doubt, gentlemen, we are unanimously agreed upon that, and the formality of the ballot is all that is left.'
The ballot-box stood upon a side-table at the upper end of the room, and beside it a basket with a number of ivory balls, some black, some white. The officers went up in rotation and each with his back to the company placed a ball of the colour he chose in the ballot-box.
The haggard daylight was fading slowly as the men left their chairs and returned to them in silence.
Rallywood waited, not in suspense indeed, but with the full sense that his fate was being legally recorded by a jury of his fellows. It is at such a moment as this that a man goes back to his belief in God. If there is no God, to what end anything? Those who say there is no God say the world is a sad and very evil place. If their creed were universally accepted, the last state of humanity would be worse than the first, and earth degenerate into a hopeless and helpless hell.
'Six black balls, one white,' announced Major Ulm.
The prisoner's gray frank eyes flashed out at Unziar, but the Maäsaun's rigid face gave no sign.