"That you shall hear. March, I say. You are my Prisoner. You will stand your Trial--ah!" He smacked his lips to show his satisfaction, and wagged his head. He was a true Child of the People, and could not conceal his gratification at the discomfiture of traitors. "You will hear what the Court has to say--ah!" Again he repeated this sign of satisfaction. "You will be tried, and you will hear the Sentence of the Court--ah, ah! Do you know what it will be? Death!" he whispered. "Death for all! I see the sentence in the Suffragan's face. Oh! he means it." The girl heard without reply; but her cheeks turned pale. "You won't mind much," he went on. "You hardly know what it is to live. You haven't been alive long enough to feel what it means. You're only a chit of a girl. If it wasn't for the example, I dare say they would let you off. But they won't--they won't. Don't try it on. Don't think of going on your knees, or anything else. Don't go weeping or crying. The Court is as hard as nails." The honest fellow said this in his zeal for justice, and in the hope that nothing should be said or done which might avert just punishment. Otherwise, had this girl, who was, after all, young and ignorant, thrown herself fully and frankly upon our mercy, perhaps--I do not say--some of us might have been disposed to spare her. As it was--but you have seen. "We waste time," he said. "March!" She was dressed, as I have already related, in a masquerade white dress of the old time, with I know not what of ribbon round her waist, and wore her hair floating down her back. The old man--her grandfather, as she called him--sat in his arm-chair, looking on and coughing. John Lax paid no attention to him at all. "Good-by, grandad," she said, kissing him. "You will not see me any more, because they are going to kill me. You will find your inhaler in its place; but I am afraid you will have to manage for the future without any help. No one helps anybody in this beautiful Present. They are going to kill me. Do you understand? Poor old man! Good-by!" She kissed him again and walked away with John Lax through the Picture Gallery, and so into the College Gardens, and by the north postern into the House of Life. * * * * * When she was gone the old man looked about him feebly. Then he began to understand what had happened. His grandchild, the nurse and stay of his feebleness, was gone from him. She was going to be killed. He was reckoned a very stupid old man always. To keep the cases in the Museum free from dust was all that he could do. But the revival of the Past acted upon him as it had acted upon the others: it took him out of his torpor and quickened his perceptions. "Killed?" he cried. "My grandchild to be killed?"