“No words,” he repeated. “What? Confess to the priest? Not worth while. I have shed blood. The law sheds my blood. It’s the good old rule. We’re quits.”
Nevertheless, he stopped short for a moment:
“I say, is my mate going through it too?”
And, when he heard that Gilbert would go to the scaffold at the same time as himself, he had two or three seconds of hesitation, glanced at the bystanders, seemed about to speak, was silent and, at last, muttered:
“It’s better so.... They’ll pull us through together . . . we’ll clink glasses together.”
Gilbert was not asleep either, when the men entered his cell.
Sitting on his bed, he listened to the terrible words, tried to stand up, began to tremble frightfully, from head to foot, like a skeleton when shaken, and then fell back, sobbing:
“Oh, my poor mummy, poor mummy!” he stammered.
They tried to question him about that mother, of whom he had never spoken; but his tears were interrupted by a sudden fit of rebellion and he cried:
“I have done no murder.... I won’t die. I have done no murder....”