Cecil laid his hand upon his old friend's shoulders.
“It will be useless,” he murmured. “Let them act; the quicker the better.”
“What! you think I would look on and see you die?”
“Would to Heaven you had never known I lived——”
The officer made a gesture to the guard to separate them.
“Monsieur, submit to the execution of the law, or I must arrest you.”
Lyonnesse flung off the detaining hand of the guard, and swung round so that his agonized eyes gazed close into the adjutant's immovable face, which before that gaze lost its coldness and its rigor, and changed to a great pity for this stranger who had found the friend of his youth in the man who stood condemned to perish there.
“An hour's reprieve; for mercy's sake, grant that!”
“I have said, it is impossible.”
“But you do not dream who is—”