tle whisper all along the snow, not though the King
knocked down the first man that set hand on him--not though old Peachey
fired his last cartridge into the brown of 'em. Not a single solitary
sound did those swines make. They just closed up tight, and I tell you
their furs stunk. There was a man called Billy Fish, a good friend of us
all, and they cut his throat, Sir, then and there, like a pig; and the
King kicks up the bloody snow and says, 'We've had a dashed fine run for
our money. What's coming next?' But Peachey, Peachey Taliaferro, I tell
you, Sir, in confidence as betwixt two friends, he lost his head, Sir.
No, he didn't, neither. The King lost his head, so he did, all along o'
one of those cunning rope bridges. Kindly let me have the paper-cutter,
Sir. It tilted this way. They marched him a mile across that snow to a
rope bridge over a ravine with a river at the bottom. You may have seen
such. They prodded him behind like an ox. 'Damn your eyes!' says
the King. 'D' you suppose I can't die like a gentleman?' He turns to
Peachey--Peachey that was crying like a child. 'I've brought you to
this, Peachey,' says he. 'Brought you out of your happy life to be
killed in Kafiristan, where you was late Commander-in-Chief of the
Emperor's forces. Say you forgive me, Peachey.' 'I do,' says Peachey.
'Fully and freely do I forgive you, Dan.' 'Shake hands, Peachey,' says
he. 'I'm going now.' Out he goes, looking neither right nor left, and
when he was plumb in the middle of those dizzy dancing ropes, 'Cut you
beggars,' he shouts; and they cut, and old Dan fell, turning round and
round and round, twenty thousand miles, for he took half an hour to fall
till he struck the water, and I could see his body caught on a rock with
the gold crown close beside.

"But do you know what they did to Peachey between two pine-trees? They
crucified him, Sir, as Peachey's hand will show. They used wooden pegs
for his hands and feet; but he didn't die. He hung there and screamed,
and they took him down next day, and said it was a miracle that he
wasn't dead. They took him down--poor old Peachey that hadn't done them
any harm--that hadn't done them any--"

He rocked to and fro and wept bitterly, wiping his eyes with the back of
his scarred hands and moaning like a child for some ten minutes.

"They was cruel enough to feed him up in the temple, because they said
he was more of a God than old Daniel that was a man. Then they turned
him out on t