"Mr. Munn," said the professor with feeling, "I thank you. Such words from a companion who is about to suffer jointly with me the extreme penalty prove that you are a man of parts and fitted for a nobler walk in life than the one you have heretofore taken. I am very, very sorry that you are to be cut off so soon."
Quinn was fortitude itself, his courage born of a knowledge of duty well done. I am prone to believe, also, that I myself was not less firm, although a less laudable cause lay back of it.
The square, I should judge, measured about two hundred feet on each side. While the professor and I were engaged in talk, sight-seers had been gathering in the streets, keeping carefully to the sidewalk boundaries of the open space.
Every eye was turned upon the professor and myself and the sleeping Meigs. The broker was snoring dismally, the sound rumbling above the babble of the word-boxes and echoing through the adjacent thoroughfares.
"What has happened to the executioner-general?" I said to the professor. "He isn't very punctual in keeping his engagement with us, it seems to me. We have had daylight for an hour."
"Something has gone wrong, Mr. Munn," Quinn answered, taking note of a ripple of excitement that ran through the crowds around us. "Ah! Here comes the high chief of the military forces. He has his word-box ready, so I suppose he is going to explain."
The high chief was pushing through the throng into the square, two of his hands holding a word-box and the other two a zetbai. Advancing upon us, he halted just without the ring.
"Be patient, gentlemen," he said through his talk machine. "You will not be kept waiting much longer."
"We are not so wildly impatient as you seem to think," I sent back at him; whereupon he tittered a little with Key 7.
Seeing that I was getting ready to use the same key for a few expletives, the professor made haste to break in.