painfully than when he was first brought, but still very
pale. Elzevir stood with the lanthorn in his hand, looking at Maskew
with a fixed gaze, and we could hear the hoofs of the heavy-laden horses
beating up the path, till they turned a corner, and all was still.

The silence was broken by Maskew: 'Unloose me, villain, and let me go. I
am a magistrate of the county, and if you do not, I will have you
gibbeted on this cliff-top.'

They were brave words enough, yet seemed to me but bad play-acting; and
brought to my remembrance how, when I was a little fellow, Mr. Glennie
once made me recite a battle-piece of Mr. Dryden before my betters; and
how I could scarce get out the bloody threats for shyness and rising
tears. So it was with Maskew's words; for he had much ado to gather
breath to say them, and they came in a thin voice that had no sting of
wrath or passion in it.

Then Elzevir spoke to him, not roughly, but resolved; and yet with
melancholy, like a judge sentencing a prisoner:

'Talk not to me of gibbets, for thou wilt neither hang nor see men hanged
again. A month ago thou satst under my roof, watching the flame burn down
till the pin dropped and gave thee right to turn me out from my old home.
And now this morning thou shalt watch that flame again, for I will give
thee one inch more of candle, and when the pin drops, will put this thine
own pistol to thy head, and kill thee with as little thought as I would
kill a stoat or other vermin.'

Then he opened the lanthorn slide, took out from his neckcloth that same
pin with the onyx head which he had used in the Why Not? and fixed it in
the tallow a short inch from the top, setting the lanthorn down upon the
sward in front of Maskew.

As for me, I was dismayed beyond telling at these words, and made
giddy with the revulsion of feeling; for, whereas, but a few minutes
ago, I would have thought nothing too bad for Maskew, now I was turned
round to wish he might come off with his life, and to look with terror
upon Elzevir.

It had grown much lighter, but not yet with the rosy flush of sunrise;
only the stars had faded out, and the deep blue of the night given way to
a misty grey. The light was strong enough to let all things be seen, but
not to call the due tints back to them. So I could see cliffs and ground,
bushes and stones and sea, and all were of one pearly grey colour, or
rather they were colourless; but the most colourless and greyest thing of
all was