“Bah!” said the soldier, “I have not the patience to talk with you. But I trust the man and the woman are still upstairs in their chamber.” “They are not,” said the landlord; there was a note of triumph in his voice. “A company of smugglers bore them away half an hour after your departure.” “And you allowed them to leave your inn, after what I had said to you?” said Culpeper, striving to control the fury that was shaking him from head to foot. “I could not help myself,” said the landlord, indifferently. “And you could not help the King’s going, I suppose,” said the soldier, “even when he went past your very nose?” “No, I could not help myself,” said the landlord again. “And wherefore could you not?” The soldier’s rage was giving place now to a self-contained harshness which did not distress the landlord to observe. “I do not know why I could not stay the King’s going,” said the landlord. “What do you mean?” said the soldier. “When the King went,” said the landlord, “I was not the master of myself; but, thank God, I am master of myself now.” “You will soon cease to be,” said the soldier, regarding him with a grim surprise. “That is as maybe,” said the landlord. The soldiers crowded about the landlord with sinister intention upon their faces. Captain Culpeper briefly told two of them to procure a rope. “You will find plenty in the stable,” said the landlord. Several of the soldiers chuckled. “Do you know for what purpose we require it, good Master Innkeeper?” said Culpeper, laughingly. “The signboard will suit your purpose best,” said the landlord. “You oblige us vastly,” said the soldier. The landlord astonished them vastly too. They had not looked for this demeanour in one who was about to undergo the penalty of death. They had never encountered such an indifference in the face of it before. However, when the two men returned bearing a stout piece of hemp, an evidence was furnished of the price at which the landlord’s newly-acquired fortitude had been purchased. When his bloodshot eyes fell on the rope, a cord appeared to snap in the middle of his brain; his head revolved slowly on his neck; and he pitched heavily on to the kitchen floor. They turned him over on his back, but all attempts to restore the landlord to sensibility failed. After a while he appeared to grow dimly conscious of his surroundings; but he was bereft of speech, and he had not the power to move. It mattered not what remedies they had recourse to, the horrible, convulsed white face still had the vacancy and the inanimation of death without the repose of it.