An honourable death in battle, a more awful one on the scaffold, or at best an eternal banishment, were the alternatives which he had ever contemplated; and he thought he had schooled his mind to acquiesce calmly in the fulfilment of that which awaited him, although it might be the least welcome of the three. Once more to see his beloved wife, to pour forth all his thoughts and feelings into her bosom, to deliver to her his last injunctions concerning his children, to arrange with her some plan for her future life, to give and to receive the last adieux, and then placidly and composedly to lay his head upon the block,--such had been the course in which he had guided his feelings and his reflections. He had seen her! He had felt how dearly he was loved! He had felt what charms life still possessed for him! He had also felt how utterly impossible it was that she could ever acquiesce as he did in his fate, how completely her happiness was bound up in his! And where were now the resignation,--the cheerful submission,--the philosophical indifference with which he had brought himself to anticipate his probable sentence? Never since the first night he had become an inmate of the Tower, had he experienced such a struggle of conflicting feelings! The picture which he had himself drawn of the gradual approach of age, of the happiness of descending hand in hand into the vale of years, had awakened a desire of life which he had hoped no longer lurked within his bosom, and it required the aid of prayer to subdue, and all the pride of man to conceal, the agitation of his mind. CHAPTER XVIII. It is God's indulgence which gives me the space, but man's cruelty that gives me the sad occasion for these thoughts.--_Eikon Basiliké._ The greater part of the night which succeeded the Earl of Nithsdale's interview with his wife, was spent by him in restlessly measuring with hasty strides the mean apartment to which he was confined. In the morning he obtained permission to refresh himself by walking on the leads over the warders' lodgings, an indulgence occasionally granted to the prisoners. The fresher air, all chilly as it was, and loaded with London smoke, revived him; and as he paced the narrow limits, his eye turned involuntarily towards the vessels which crowded the river up to London Bridge. As he watched, he saw one who sesails were beginning to be unfurled, while all was bustle, hurry, and confusion on board: she was getting under weigh, and he sighed to think how impossible to be surmounted were the obstacles which interposed between him and the vessel which seemed so near. His eye dropped, and rested on the Traitor's Gate, and he almost thought he once more heard the jarring sound of the iron bolts and bars which had closed behind him.