position."

"It took you five days to bring it--this merciful tender, as you term
it," said Ralph.

"The King is now at Newcastle, and there at this moment is also
Justice Hide, in whom, had you been an innocent man, you must have
found an earnest sponsor. I bid you good day."

The sheriff rose, and, bowing to the prisoner with a ridiculous
affectation of mingled deference and superiority, he stepped to the
door.

"Stop," said Ralph: "you say we know each other of old. That is false!
To this hour you have never known, nor do you know now, why I stand
here condemned to die, and doomed by a harder fate to take the life of
this innocent old man. You have never known me: no, nor yourself
neither--never! But you shall know both before you leave this room.
Sit down."

"I have no time to waste in idle disputation," said the sheriff
testily; but he sat down, nevertheless, at his prisoner's bidding, as
meekly as if the positions had been reversed.

"That scar across your brow." said Ralph, "you have carried since the
day I have now to speak of."

"You know it well," said the sheriff bitterly. "You have cause to know
it."

"I have," Ralph answered.

After a pause, in which he was catching the thread of a story half
forgotten, he continued: "You said I supplanted you in your captaincy.
Pehaps so; perhaps not. God will judge between us. You went over to
the Royalist camp, and you were among the garrison that had reduced
this very castle. The troops of the Parliament came up one day and
summoned you to surrender. The only answer your general gave us was to
order the tunnel guns to fire on the white flag. It went down. We lay
entrenched about you for six days. Then you sent out a dispatch
assuring us that your garrison was well prepared for a siege, and that
nothing would prevail with you to open your gates. That was a lie!"

"Well?"

"Your general lied; the man who carried your general's dispatch was a
liar too, but he told the truth for a bribe."

"Ah! then the saints were not above warming the palm?"

"He assured our commander we might expect a mutiny in your city if we
continued before it one day longer; that your castle was garrisoned
only by a handful of horse, and two raw, undisciplined regiments of
militia; that even from these desertions occurred hourly, and that
some of your companies were left with only a score of men. This was at
night, and we were under an order to break up next morning. That order
wa