Part 11 (2/2)

Sergeant Joyce, retain four files, and see the sentence carried out.

Or stay, I will reduce it to writing. The boy may be with him.”

The voices of the General's staff, as they mounted and rode briskly away at his heels, had long died away, and only the sobbing of the child as he lay in Frank's arms broke the silence of the ill-fated house. The guards left in charge, grave stalwart men, not without bowels of compa.s.sion, had retired outside the door and left the two to pa.s.s these last moments together; with an intimation that when the hour was up they would call their prisoner. All things, even the ray of golden light which presently pierced the window, as if to warn Frank to look his last on the sun, combined to heighten the stillness and peace, if not the solemn resignation, of this last hour. But alas, the approach of death withers life itself. The young man's blood curdled and stood at the thought of it, so that at last the moments slowly pa.s.sing in that silence grew intolerable. An hour? It seemed to him that he had sat with the child in his arms for thrice that time.

When would they come?

He grew so desperate at last that he set the boy down, and with a parting pa.s.sionate embrace hurried to the door; the sooner it was over now, the better. Desperately he opened the door and stepped out into the daylight.

For a moment after he had done so he stood confounded, staring about him with wild eyes. Before him lay the moorland, half in suns.h.i.+ne, half in shadow. Above him the clouds had parted, and the infinite expanse of heaven lay open to his view. But nowhere was a living creature in sight. The troop-horses, whose bits he had heard jingling a few minutes before, were gone; the troopers had melted into thin air!

[Ill.u.s.tration: He bent his head and peered at it.--Page 190.]

He clapped his hand to his forehead, and stood awhile battling to control himself. Was this a trick? If not--and then his eye, travelling dizzily round, lit on a piece of paper which some one had nailed to the outside of the door with a knife. He bent his head, and peered at it, and read:

”_To Sergeant Joyce.--Half an hour after my departure you will let the prisoner, Francis Patten, go free. And this shall be your authority_.

”_Oliver Cromwell, Lieutenant-General_.”

THE END.

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