I think they were all sorry for me; I know that they were gentler with me than with other prisoners. Once or twice the man who had prepared my defence came to see me; it seemed that they were preparing a great petition, to save me if possible from the gallows. I protested against that; it was not what I wanted. No living death for me, herded with criminals for the rest of my days; let me walk out as bravely as I could, and face the penalty. I protested strongly against the suggestion that I should be given any other fate than that I had earned. Nor would I in any way give them help for the framing of their petition; they had heard the evidence, and it was true—and what more did they want?
They plagued me to such an extent that at last I refused to see the man at all; but still I understood that the petition went on, and was being signed widely everywhere. I was so young—and, God help me!—so good-looking, they told me—that there was every reason for the hysterical outpourings of sympathy; had I been old and hardened, never a word would have been said.
The good chaplain I listened to—hearing the simple comforting words that I had heard many and many a time in the old days at school. It seemed strange that I should hear them now, in this place, where I was shut away until the time came for them to kill me! My life had been clean and wholesome—there was nothing very heavy that I had to carry before my God, save that slaying of a fellow-man. And it seemed more than possible that God would understand.
The long days dragged themselves out, until there were but three left. I was in a mood to wish that they might hurry the business on; I had begun dreadfully to count the days, and then the hours; and there was a torture in that. I would have welcomed any man who came suddenly into my cell, and announced that then and there I must walk out to die; it was the knowledge that I must wait—must hear the clock in a distant church tower lopping off my life by inches, even in the still watches of the night; that was the terror of it. In mercy they might have stopped that clock—might have tried to cheat me a little as to the progress of the days; but that was all a part of my punishment.
And now I come to a strange thing that happened to me in that place of torture—a strange thing, sent for my comfort. You are to understand that two men watched me night and day, and their watches were relieved at regular intervals. I, who had so little to occupy my attention, came to watch for the changes, and for the new faces that greeted me when the time for changes came round. The men were good fellows, despite their occupation; I put it on record here that they were considerate and even courteous to me; I read a deep pity for me and my fate in the eyes of more than one of them.
It had come to that night when there were but three days left. I had eaten my meal, and had got into my bed; I liked that time best, because of the stillness, and because I liked to feel, poor doomed mortal that I was, that all the great city slept quietly about me, with every man and woman in it each with their separate trouble and their separate grief. I lay a thing apart, condemned to die; and there was in my mind the curious feeling then that it was strange that the needs of the world were such that a fellow-man had been able to say that I should die, and that other fellow-men were appointed to watch me that I did not escape, and that yet another fellow-man had the dreadful task of killing me, just as I had killed Gavin Hockley. Lying on my bed in my cell I thought of all that, and watched the men who were seated silently near me. And then I fell asleep, quite peacefully; and in that sleep I dreamed a dream.
The end wall of my cell was down, and it seemed as though I looked out beyond it over green fields, on to a place I knew. It was just as though one sat in some strange theatre, and saw through where the wall had gone to some scene beyond. At either side of the stage of that theatre, as it were, sat the motionless warders; the auditorium was my cell. And then I thought that I got up from my bed, and passed straight between them, and out to the freedom of the woods and the fields; leaving them motionless, and even looking behind for a moment, and seeing the empty bed there in which I had so recently lain.
I think I knew then, unconsciously, that I must go back to that cell, and that the vision would fade; I am certain that I thought that. But for the moment I was free; I had passed into some strange country, and yet a country I knew. Then, just as in the fairy tales, I seemed to turn a corner, and found myself suddenly in the wood in which I had met Barbara. And it was the most natural thing in the world that she should come towards me out of the wood, smiling, as I had seen her smile before.
It was only when I reached her, and held her hands, and looked into her eyes, that I realized in my dream that she knew what had happened; there were tears in the dear eyes I loved.
"You are sorry for me?" I said, holding her hands. We seemed to be quite alone in the wood, and the sun was shining, just as it had shone on that day I met her first.