"John Dacre--you have nothing to say?" said the President again. "You may yet save yourself. Where is the King?" Dacre turned his glance upon him, slowly. "I am ready," said he again. He seemed to overlook the President as he spoke, and he never looked at him again. "Give the order to make ready!" said Bagshaw, angrily, to the officer in command, and the slight click of the rifles followed his words. The narrow courtyard was as still as if deserted, though it seemed you could almost hear the breathing of the multitude that thronged the streets. But to die thus, penned in a narrow courtyard, passively, vainly, shot like a dog. A low murmur began to come from the people, indeterminate, inarticulate; it came to Dacre's ears like the hum of distant battle, and perhaps he saw the battle, and the royal standard, and that last unworthy King for whom this thing was done. Then came Bagshaw's voice again: "Where is the King?" "Silence, sir!" thundered Richard Lincoln, and Bagshaw slunk back a pace or two, like a chidden dog. "The King is dead," said Dacre, so clearly that all the people in the street heard him, but no one made a sound. Then he threw back his coat, as if to bare his breast to the levelled muskets; and as he did so the withered rose dropped out and fell into his hand. It was Mary Lincoln's rose that he had thrust there on the day before. And as he looked at it the false bonds of his faith fell from him like the fetters of a dream, and he looked upon the multitude and saw that theirs was the right, and he knew that his life was thrown away; then first he remembered she had loved him, and he saw what might have been. He saw the poor image of a king--the King who had deserted his own cause and left him in his loyalty alone; he saw the throng of humanity standing silent there before him, and the sweetness and the virtue of the life which he had put behind. Then for the first time his firm lips trembled, as he lifted the poor rose to his lips, and kissed it once, in memory of her whom he was leaving, as he thought. But Mary Lincoln was dead; and as he turned his face upward, he seemed to see some vision in the sky, and they say that a great glory shone into his face. "Fire!" came the word, and the sheet of flame leaped out toward him, and he fell; and the rose-leaves, scattered by a bullet, lay about him on the stones. CHAPTER XIV. THE LAST ROYALIST.