He thought that I had become confused and was a little wrong-headed from excitement. Master Lindstrom also felt troubled, as he told me afterward, at seeing me taken up with a trifle at such a time.
But there was nothing wrong with my wits, as I promptly showed them.
"The horse I was riding yesterday?" I continued. "Ah! then, I understand. I was riding the horse which I took from the Spanish trooper. The Spaniard must have annexed the haversack when he and his companions searched the house after our departure."
"That is it, no doubt," Master Lindstrom said. "And in the hurry of yesterday's ride you failed to notice it."
It was a strange way of recovering one's property--strange that the enemy should have helped one to it. But there are times--and this to me was one--when the strange seems the ordinary and commonplace. I took the sack and slipped my hand through a well-known slit in the lining. Yes, the letter I had left there was there still--the letter to Mistress Clarence. I drew it out. The corners of the little packet were frayed, and the parchment was stained and discolored, no doubt by the damp which had penetrated to it. But the seal was whole. I placed it, as it was, in Master Lindstrom's hands.
"Give it," I said, "to the Duchess afterward. It concerns her. You have heard us talk about it. Bid her make what use she pleases of it."
I turned away then and sat down, feeling a little flurried and excited, as one about to start upon a journey might feel; not afraid nor exceedingly depressed, but braced up to make a brave show and hide what sadness I did feel by the knowledge that many eyes were upon me, and that more would be watching me presently. At the far end of the room a number of people had now gathered, and were conversing together. Among them were not only my jailers of the night, but two or three officers, a priest who had come to offer me his services, and some inquisitive gazers who had obtained admission. Their curiosity, however, did not distress me. On the contrary, I was glad to hear the stir and murmur of life about me to the last.
I will not set down the letter I wrote to the Duchess, though it were easy for me to do so, seeing that her son has it now. It contains some things very proper to be said by a dying man, of which I am not ashamed--God forbid! but which it would not be meet for me to repeat here. Enough that I told her in a few words who I was, and entreated her, in the name of whatever services I had rendered her, to let Petronilla and Sir Anthony know how I had died. And I added something which would, I thought, comfort her and her husband--namely, that I was not afraid, or in any suffering of mind or body.
The writing of this shook my composure a little. But as I laid down the pen and looked up and found that the time was come, I took courage in a marvelous manner. The captain of the guard--I think that out of a compassionate desire not to interrupt me they had allowed me some minutes of grace--came to me, leaving the group at the other end, and told me gravely that I was waited for. I rose at once and gave the letter to Master Lindstrom with some messages in which Dymphna and Anne were not forgotten. And then, with a smile--for I felt under all those eyes as if I were going into battle--I said: "Gentlemen, I am ready if you are. It is a fine day to die. You know," I added gayly, "in England we have a proverb, 'The better the day, the better the deed!' So it is well to have a good day to have a good death, Sir Captain."
"A soldier's death, sir, is a good death;" he answered gravely, speaking in Spanish and bowing.