"And it is----"
"Guilty, your lordship."
"Ah, by my life, and I should think so," roared Jeffreys. "Guilty, indeed! guilty as any man who ever faced a judge. Listen, Michael Fane! Ye have tried lying, brazen impudence, and every other wile to save your neck, but all have failed you. One more question: Where is the box in which 'tis said these documents were stored?"
"How should I know, seeing they were stolen from us?" I answered warily, not meaning to enlighten him on that point. "Ask those who stole them."
"Ah! so we flout and snarl unto the end, eh? Well, well, it matters not, for verily that mocking tongue of yours will soon be put to silence. Listen, Michael Fane! Ye die, and would that I only had your wicked father here, that I might send him to his death along with you. He hath sorely cheated me by dying of his own accord. Ye die, I say, and as ye hail from Lyme--that sink of rank rebellion--there ye hang, and that as near as may be to the spot where Monmouth landed. If ye be not quartered also, 'twill be marvellous. I have already twelve more knaves to hang at Lyme--some who came ashore there with their pretty Duke, and some who waited for his coming. Ye make thirteen--a good round baker's dozen! (Make a note of that, clerk--Michael Fane to hang at Lyme with others on the twelfth of this month; and mark it that he dies the last of them.) Oh, Michael Fane, thou lusty scoundrel, doth not even a heart so base as yours feel some small gratitude that I have it in my power to end a life so wicked in its early days? Consider what ye would have grown to, and use what little time remains to you on earth in thinking deeply on your awful sins. Away with ye!"
He waved his hands, the warders seized me, and so, like one a-dreaming, I was hurried back to prison. I found it much less crowded than it had been, for many had already gone to death. Many, also, were to die upon the morrow, and for all of us who gathered there that night there was not left a single ray of hope.
CHAPTER XXIV
Beneath the Gallows
Early in the morning on the twelfth, those who were to die at Lyme (Sam Robins, the fisherman, Sampson Larke, the minister, Dr. Temple, and myself among them) were brought forth from the prison, placed in two carts, and driven on our way to death.
As we rumbled through the ancient streets of Dorchester, the trembling, sad-faced townsfolk watched us go, and many tears were shed. Thus we passed out into the silence of the lanes. 'Twas a glorious, sunny morning, and to me the world had never seemed so fair a place as it did then.