"This man loved you, and made you his wife. A wife should be one to stand by the man she marries ’for better, for worse’; which means that when she takes the oath to do so, she accepts the man’s sins with the man--she becomes one with him, half of himself. There are wives who have died for husbands as faulty, perhaps more so, than your unhappy victim. But you! What have you done? When you had money at your command, did you seek him out? Did you even endeavour to discover what had become of him? No! Instead, you, as it seems by the evidence we have heard--incontrovertible evidence of trustworthy witnesses--were planning a bigamous marriage and secret elopement with another man; and when, just before the consummation of your guilty plot, your lawful husband appeared, you were tempted to get rid of the obstacle to its accomplishment, and to kill him. How you executed the terrible deed we have heard. You have had every chance which the goodness of your fellow creatures, and their kindness to you has been almost unexampled, could provide. You have had, I fear, more mercy than you deserve. For myself, I cannot hold out any hope that your misguided and guilty life can possibly be spared." Then Joan listened in mute agony to the sentence which condemned her to be "hanged by the neck till she was dead"; she heard the awful prayer, uttered with deep feeling by an aged man to whom Death could not long remain a stranger, "and may God Almighty have mercy on your soul!" and all became a blank. A blank--but not for long. She seemed to be roused by the tolling of a bell, and looking around, found herself in the condemned cell. Some one was strapping her with small leathern straps which hurt her, and in reply to her miserable, pathetic appeal, "oh, please don’t," the man dryly said it would be better for her to be submit to be tightly bound--"it will be over all the sooner." It? What? Then she saw serious averted faces--they belonged to men who were forming into line--she heard the words, "I am the Resurrection and the Life," she caught the gleam of a white surplice. She struggled--fiercely--madly--and awoke. Awoke--bathed in sweat from head to foot--her pulses beating wildly--gasping, choking--but alive--free--free! There was her dear familiar room, grey in the early morning light; the bell was tolling from a neighbouring monastic church--she was alive--alive! But--but--it might--come--true--that dream-- "Oh God, it must not!" she exclaimed, flinging herself out of bed and upon her knees. "It would not be just! You know, my God, I did not mean it! You know what he was! You must not let me be hanged!" CHAPTER XX