'As for Tone,' he went on, severely, 'it is right and fit that he should die. I would not move a finger to save him from the hangman. The mischief-maker! Come, my carriage shall take you back to Strogue. An officer shall ride behind to protect it.' Then, seeing how distressed she looked, he took her hand, and continued, in a kinder voice, 'I'm not so heartless as you imagine. Girls should not trouble their pretty heads with politics, which they are unable to understand. You think it very shocking to be giving feasts at such a time? Yet both your cousin Shane and your father are here for state reasons. These festivities have a political meaning. Now, get you home and go to bed to refresh your roses. My word! Madam Gillin, if I mistake not? A strange companion for my lady's niece! Good-night. For his sake I will not tell your father of this escapade.' And so the maiden's effort was as vain as the little lawyer's was. She sat sedate and still as the coach rattled on, murmuring once, in an undertone, 'That I, who never kneel to any one but God, should have knelt at that man's feet in vain!' She thought of Theobald. What was he doing? Was he praying, or sleeping a last sleep? It must need all a soldier's courage to walk calmly to a scaffold. A cause should be a good one that has power to produce such martyrs. * * * * * While Curran and Doreen were straining every nerve for him, Tone stared moodily out into his prison-yard and watched the building of a new gallows there. 'A soldier's end was all I asked,' he sighed, 'and they even deny me that small grace.' In the evening he took a tender farewell of Terence, and moved into an adjoining cell, which, as for a distinguished person who was condemned to death, had been set apart for him. 'Let us sit together to the last,' Terence objected, with a mournful smile. 'Why should we be parted who are both hovering on the confines of eternity? Well, come in and look at me again before you go.' Theobald embraced his friend with clinging warmth, and whispering once more, 'We shall meet again,' withdrew. When the gaolers came to lead him to the gallows-foot they were too late. His body lay cold upon the pallet. An ensanguined mark was on his throat. He had escaped the scrag-boy--cheated 'Jack the Breath-stopper'--and was gone! CHAPTER V. THE ALTAR OF MOLOCH.