With this the Commander rose, and himself accompanied Armstrong to the door in most friendly manner. The young man, in spite of his distrust, was very favourably impressed, for there had been nothing, in Cromwell’s conversation, of that cant with which he was popularly accredited. The Scot had expected to find an English Alexander Henderson; a disputatious, gruff, tyrannical leader, committing acts of oppression or cruelty, and continually appealing to his Maker for justification. But Cromwell’s attitude throughout had been that of the honest soldier, with little to suggest the fervent exhorter.
After giving some laconic instructions touching the welfare of the Northerner to Captain Bent, who was hovering uneasily in the outside hall, Cromwell, bidding his enforced guest a cordial farewell, ordered Wentworth to be brought to him, and retired once more into the dim council-chamber.
With hands clasped behind him, and head bent, he strode slowly up and down the long room in deep meditation, vanishing into the gloom at the farther end, and reappearing in the limited circle of light that surrounded the two candles, for the torches had long since smoked themselves out, and there had been no replacement of them; none daring to enter that room unsummoned while the leader was within it. The watcher in the gallery felt rather than saw that there was an ominous frown on the lowered face as the Commander waited for the second prisoner, over whom hung sentence of death.
This time a clanking of chains announced the new arrival, who was preceded by Colonel Porlock and accompanied by two soldiers, one on either side of him. The young fellow, who shuffled up to the table dragging his irons, cast an anxious look at the forbidding face of the man who was to be his final judge; in whose word lay life or death for him, and he found there little to comfort him. Cromwell seated himself once more and said gruffly: “Take off those fetters.”
When the command was complied with, the General dismissed the trio and sat for some moments in silence, reading the frank open face of his opposite.
“You are to be shot at daybreak to-morrow,” he began in harsh tones that echoed dismally from the raftered ceiling. This statement contained no information for the youth, but the raven’s croak sent a shiver through his frame, and somehow the tidings brought a terror that had been absent before, even when sentence of death was pronounced with such solemnity by the court. There was a careless inflection in the words which showed that the speaker cared not one pin whether the human being standing before him lived or died. Allowing time to produce the impression he desired, Cromwell continued in the same strain of voice:
“I have examined the evidence, and I find your condemnation just.”
The boy remembered that his father had met death bravely, asking no mercy and receiving none, and the thought nerved him. If this man had merely brought him here to make death more bitter by taunting him, it was an unworthy action; so, moistening his lips twice before they would obey his will, he spoke up.
“I have never questioned the verdict, General, nor did I make appeal.”
The shaggy brows came down over Cromwell’s eyes, but his face cleared perceptibly.