“Though at least they might have notified me sooner,” grumbled the governor. “The executions are all arranged for--the orders all given--the men appointed to the work merely waiting for the hour. But that’s no fault of yours, captain!” He proffered his cigarette case. “Will you join me?” “If you please. Thank you. And now I suppose the prisoners are ready?” “They have merely to be brought from their cells. Will you let me have the order?” Drexel handed it forth, and life stood suspended in him while it underwent the scrutiny of the governor’s sharp eyes. If Sabatoff had made an error in the form! But the governor thrust it into a drawer of his desk. “So you only want four of them?” “Four, yes. The prisoners known as Borodin, Sonya Varanova, Razoff and The White One.” “They trust me with one out of the five; I dare say I should be satisfied,” said the governor ironically. “The order against the fifth, of course, still stands. I suppose you will wait here while I bring them.” It flashed upon Drexel that if Sonya first saw him in this bright room, her natural astonishment might be observed and prove the means of their betrayal. Better that the first meeting should be in her shadowy cell. “No, I will go with you,” he said. The governor summoned guards and ordered irons for four and a wheeled chair for The White One; then armed with a lantern he led the way from the office. A deeper chill, a more fearsome suspense, settled upon Drexel as he entered the cold and gloomy corridors whence no voice could penetrate the outer world--behind whose every door lay some political dreamer who perhaps would never again look upon the sun. Through one dark corridor--then another--then another, the governor and Drexel marched, followed by a guard with manacles and leg-chains, and another trundling The White One’s chair. At length the governor paused and thrust a key into a door. “In here is the old woman,” he said. They entered. The lantern’s yellow light revealed The White One upon the straw mattress of an iron cot. She turned her white head and regarded the invaders with calm questioning. The governor stepped forward, the guard with the irons beside him. “Hold out your hands!” he ordered. “What for?” she asked in her even voice. “For those,” and he pointed to the heavy manacles in the hands of the guard. “What are you going to do with me?” “None of your questions! Out with your hands!” She returned his look with the calm defiance of her unbroken spirit. “I shall give you no aid in leading me to a fate I am ignorant of.” “You won’t!” roared the governor. He snatched the manacles from the guard, tore off her coarse blanket and was reaching for her wrists, when Drexel quickly shouldered in front of him. “Wait, colonel. I’ll make her obey!” He seized the lantern and held it before him, so standing that his body blocked the governor’s sight of the blanched head on the pillow.