“Major Monck, if you will persist in this offensive style of joke, I, as a prisoner, have no power to prevent you. So pray proceed until you become tired. And don’t on any account cease for my sake, as I shall not give myself the trouble to listen to you,” said Justin, drawing a paper from his pocket and beginning to read. “Joke! Heaven and earth, man! can’t you see that this is no joke! Here you are within—” Monck again referred to his watch and then continued—“within fifty minutes of your execution, and you persist in calling it a joke!” Justin Rosenthal was assuredly a brave man. He had frequently faced death fearlessly even in its most fearful forms. But now, as a conviction of Monck’s real meaning forced itself upon his soul, he shuddered in spite of himself and grew a shade paler. “Major Monck,” he said, gravely, “you will not dare to carry out your design! You will not dare to commit this cold-blooded murder!” “I should like to know what it is that I would not dare to do! But this is no cold-blooded murder, Colonel Rosenthal. For reasons that appear good to me I condemn a prisoner to death and order his execution. A dashed disagreeable duty, as I said before—especially when it has to be done upon a man one has been dining with. I had no thought of winding up our social evening in this way. But you heard the row outside?” “I heard it,” curtly replied Justin. “Well, it was about you.” “Me!” “Yes. You see a party of my poor fellows went out yesterday to intercept some Yankee commissary stores that were on their way across the valley. But my poor boys were themselves intercepted by a squadron of Yankee cavalry that came from W. to look after them. There was an engagement, and my men were routed with considerable loss. Some were taken prisoners; and some were hung up to the roadside trees to dry in the sun. Those who escaped by flight rushed into the camp in great haste and disorder this evening.” “Thank Heaven!” exclaimed Justin. “Exactly; but you see this thing works two ways. For instance, when they learned we had a Yankee colonel here as a prisoner—you heard the row they raised?—they called for your life in retaliation of their murdered comrades. I could not in common justice refuse them so reasonable a request. And so, Colonel Rosenthal,” said Monck, once more coolly consulting his watch, “as it is now half-past eight o’clock, you have ‘just thirty minutes to live.’” “Oh, Heaven!” groaned Justin, dropping his head upon his hands and thinking of his young sister in her desolate orphanage, and of another still dearer than that sister, and realizing how the news of his dreadful doom would break those loving hearts.