“Clifford! Clifford!” she cried. He was so young, so noble, and yet to die a cruel death on the scaffold! It was hard. What comfort could she give him? He was in sore need of it.
“Bear with me for just a little, Peggy,” he said. “It hath eaten into my heart—the manner of this death. I have talked bravely all these long, weary days of waiting, but oh! if they would just shoot me! The shamefulness of a gallows!”
“Don’t!” she cried suddenly. “I—I cannot bear it.”
The boy pulled himself together sharply.
“Forgive me,” he said speaking more calmly. “I’ll be good now, my cousin, but ’tis enough to make a man rave to contrast the death he would die with the one he must. I’ll think of it no more.”
“Thee must not,” she said faintly. “What—what can I do for thee, Clifford?”
“I have writ some letters,” he said picking them up from the table. “Will you see that they are sent? I need not ask. I know you will. One is for Harriet; I was too hard on her, Peggy. I see it now. One is for father, and one for your father and mother. Had I been their own son they could not have treated me with more tenderness. And, Peggy——”
“Yes, my cousin?”
“There is one for Miss Sally,” he said with slight hesitation. His face flushed and he busied himself among the papers on the table. “’Fore George,” he cried with an abrupt change of manner, “I can’t forget that look of scorn in her blue eyes! It haunts me. I writ before, you remember? She did not reply, but sent word that she had no hard feelings. ’Twas all I had a right to expect, but somehow—— I have writ again, Peggy, to tell her—— Well, you know I don’t want her to think me altogether contemptible.”
It was such a youthful outburst, and so natural that Peggy had hard work to retain her self-control. Then, like a flash, she knew the comfort she could give him. Leaning toward him with brightening eyes she said softly: