roughly dragging me across the hall.

"Who knows, Madonna?" he said, with a bow and an infernal smile. "If you
were to beg his life, it might even come to pass that I might spare it."

He did not wait for her answer, but stepping after me he called to the
men that led me. In obedience they halted, and he came forward. We were
now at the foot of the staircase.

"Boccadoro," said he, planting himself before me, and eyeing me with
eyes that were very full of malice, "you will recall the punishment I
promised you if I came to discover it was you had thwarted me in Pesaro.
It is the second time you have fooled Ramiro del' Orca. There does not
live the man who can boast that he did it thrice, nor will I risk it
that you be that man. Make your peace with Heaven, for at sunset--in
an hour's time--you hang. There is one little thing that might save you
even yet, and if you find life sweet, you would do well to pray that
that little thing may come to pass."

I answered him nothing, but I bowed my head in token that I had heard
and he signed to the men to proceed with me, whilst turning on his heel
he stepped down the hall again to where Madonna Paola, overcome with
weakness, had sunk upon a stool.

As I was leaving the gallery I had a last glimpse of her, sitting there
with drawn face and haggard eyes that followed me as I passed from her
sight, whilst Ramiro del' Orca stood beside her murmuring words that did
not reach me. His so-called courtiers and his men-at-arms were trooping
out of the room, no doubt in obedience to his dismissal.

CHAPTER XX. THE SUNSET

I have heard tell of the calm that comes upon brave men when hope is
dead and their doom has been pronounced. Uncertainty may have tortured
and made cowards of them; but once that uncertainty is dissolved and
suspense is at an end, resignation enters their soul, and, possessing
it, gives to their bearing a noble and dignified peace. By the mercy of
Heaven they are made, maybe, to see how poor and evanescent a thing is
life; and they come to realise that since to die is a necessity there is
no avoiding, as well might it betide to-day as ten years hence.

Such a mood, however, came not to soothe that last hour of mine, and yet
I account myself no coward. It was an hour of such torture and anguish
as never before I had experienced--much though I had undergone--and the
source of all my suffering lay in the fact that Madonna Paola was in
the hands of the ogre of