river on that side; it was built upon an
embankment some thirty feet high; around this, at the base of the
edifice, and some forty feet below the window, ran a narrow pathway
protected by an iron railing. But so narrow was it, that had a man
sprung from the casement of Crispin's prison, it was odds he would have
fallen into the river some seventy feet below. Crispin turned away with
a sigh. He had approached the window almost in hope; he quitted it in
absolute despair.

"Ah, well," said he, "we will hang, and there's the end of it."

Kenneth had resumed his seat in the corner, and, wrapped in his cloak,
he sat steeped in meditation, his comely young face seared with lines of
pain. As Crispin looked upon him then, his heart softened and went
out to the lad--went out as it had done on the night when first he had
beheld him in the courtyard of Perth Castle.

He recalled the details of that meeting; he remembered the sympathy
that had drawn him to the boy, and how Kenneth had at first appeared to
reciprocate that feeling, until he came to know him for the rakehelly,
godless ruffler that he was. He thought of the gulf that gradually had
opened up between them. The lad was righteous and God-fearing, truthful
and sober, filled with stern ideals by which he sought to shape
his life. He had taxed Crispin with his dissoluteness, and Crispin,
despising him for a milksop, had returned to his disgust with mockery,
and had found a fiendish pleasure in arousing that disgust at every
turn.

To-night, as Crispin eyed the youth, and remembered that at dawn he was
to die in his company, he realized that he had used him ill, that his
behaviour towards him had been that of the dissolute ruffler he was
become, rather than of the gentleman he had once accounted himself.

"Kenneth," he said at length, and his voice bore so unusually mild a
ring that the lad looked up in surprise. "I have heard tell that it
is no uncommon thing for men upon the threshold of eternity to seek to
repair some of the evil they may have done in life."

Kenneth shuddered. Crispin's words reminded him again of his approaching
end. The ruffler paused a moment, as if awaiting a reply or a word of
encouragement. Then, as none came, he continued:

"I am not one of your repentant sinners, Kenneth. I have lived my
life--God, what a life!--and as I have lived I shall die, unflinching
and unchanged. Dare one to presume that a few hours spent in whining
prayers shall a