There was a strange silence as the morning grew on; he wondered if the world outside were all asleep. He had foreseen it; and yet he had not quite foreseen this; some glorious end, in a battle, perhaps, fighting out in the free country, beneath the sun. Again his thoughts turned to his friend, and he felt a strange assurance that Dacre had foreseen it all along, but not held back his steps one whit for that. And there was Maggie—in America—could she, and her life, be in the same world with this? Yet it was natural enough, and such things had always been, only he had never truly pictured them. The day seemed endless. If he could only hear something of the others, and not be so terribly alone. If he could but learn where they were—where Dacre was. He heard a dull sound like the noise of distant firing, but more like thunder, coming heavily through the ground. Geoffrey ran to the window, drew himself up, and looked out through the bars. There was a sea of upturned faces, all pale and with one fixed look, a myriad times repeated, pointed to the base of the Tower below his window where he could not see. Then he fell back upon the ground, burying his face in his hands.
Dacre himself had slept that night a dreamless sleep, as he had slept any night before in the years since he had seen his path and chosen it. At noon the people came to his cell and led him out. Numbers of men were standing in the corridor and on the stairs; he looked on between the lines and walked to the door. Then he begged that his handcuffs might be removed. As he paused a moment, Richard Lincoln stepped forward and ordered that it should be done. Then he fell back, bowing once to Dacre. Richard Lincoln had come there from the death-bed of his daughter to do this last service to the man that she loved. Then Dacre passed on, out of the great door into the full light of the noon. There in front of him was a great concourse of people, the multitude Geoffrey had seen from his window. Dacre looked out from the prison gate with his fixed, clear eyes, but the road was growing very short before him now, and still his glance went on beyond—beyond the company of soldiers standing thirty yards in front, the butts of their rifles resting on the ground.
"John Dacre, you are found guilty of high treason to the people. Have you anything to say?" It was Bagshaw, the President, who spoke, in his capacity as general of the army.
Dacre made no reply. He was thinking of the treason of his King, and not of his own. And there in front of him were the people—the people, in might of numbers, in the majesty of strength, ten thousand to his one. But as he looked upon them their ten thousand faces were turned on his, their hearts within their eyes; and Dacre might have noted that in all of them there was not one but spoke pity—pity, in their silence, for himself. Then he turned aside from the door, with his back to the prison wall. "I am ready."
"John Dacre—you have nothing to say?" said the President again. "You may yet save yourself. Where is the King?" Dacre turned his glance upon him, slowly.
"I am ready," said he again. He seemed to overlook the President as he spoke, and he never looked at him again.
"Give the order to make ready!" said Bagshaw, angrily, to the officer in command, and the slight click of the rifles followed his words.
The narrow courtyard was as still as if deserted, though it seemed you could almost hear the breathing of the multitude that thronged the streets. But to die thus, penned in a narrow courtyard, passively, vainly, shot like a dog. A low murmur began to come from the people, indeterminate, inarticulate; it came to Dacre's ears like the hum of distant battle, and perhaps he saw the battle, and the royal standard, and that last unworthy King for whom this thing was done. Then came Bagshaw's voice again: "Where is the King?"
"Silence, sir!" thundered Richard Lincoln, and Bagshaw slunk back a pace or two, like a chidden dog.
"The King is dead," said Dacre, so clearly that all the people in the street heard him, but no one made a sound. Then he threw back his coat, as if to bare his breast to the levelled muskets; and as he did so the withered rose dropped out and fell into his hand. It was Mary Lincoln's rose that he had thrust there on the day before. And as he looked at it the false bonds of his faith fell from him like the fetters of a dream, and he looked upon the multitude and saw that theirs was the right, and he knew that his life was thrown away; then first he remembered she had loved him, and he saw what might have been. He saw the poor image of a king—the King who had deserted his own cause and left him in his loyalty alone; he saw the throng of humanity standing silent there before him, and the sweetness and the virtue of the life which he had put behind. Then for the first time his firm lips trembled, as he lifted the poor rose to his lips, and kissed it once, in memory of her whom he was leaving, as he thought. But Mary Lincoln was dead; and as he turned his face upward, he seemed to see some vision in the sky, and they say that a great glory shone into his face.