Without any apparent emotion Lady Jane then tied the handkerchief over her eyes. She was now blindfolded and, trying to feel for the block, asked, "What shall I do? Where is it?"
A person near her, on the scaffold, guided her to the block, and she instantly laid her head upon it, rested in silence for a moment, then exclaimed:
"Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit," and a moment later the agony was over.
The noblest, most courageous girl who was ever the victim of relentless ambition, was gone, sacrificed to a game of chance in which she was the royal pawn! History offers no sadder, no more thrilling story than that of Lady Jane, the girl of seventeen, who was a "Nine Days Queen!"
GENTLE ANNIE:
A Daughter of the Regiment
FORT SUMTER had been fired on!
The whole country was in a state of flaming excitement. Up to that time there had been a division of sentiment in the North, and many thought that by patient effort the seceding States could be brought back into the Union—that there would never be any serious fighting—but now all that was changed.