“He has, before now,” she replied: “but not to-day.” “Then why do you weep?” “Not for that.” “For what then?” “For you—oh, dear, dear! How shall I tell it? They are going to—to—” She sat down on the chair, and sobb’d in her apron. “What is’t they are going to do?” “To—to—h-hang you.” “The devil! When?” “Tut-tut-to-morrow mo-horning!” I went suddenly very cold all over. There was silence for a moment, and then I heard the noise of some one dropping a plank in the courtyard below. “What’s that?” “The gug-gug—” “Gallows?” She nodded. “You are but a weak girl,” said I, meditating. “Aye: but there’s a dozen troopers on the landing below.” “Then, my dear, you must lock me up,” I decided gloomily, and fell to whistling—— “Vivre en tout cas, C’est le grand soulas—” A workman’s hammer in the court below chim’d in, beating out the tune, and driving the moral home. I heard a low sob behind me. The jailer’s daughter was going. “Lend me your bodkin, my dear, for a memento.” She pull’d it out and gave it to me. “Thank you, and now good-bye! Stop: here’s a kiss to take to my dear mistress. They shan’t hang me, my dear.” The girl went out, sobbing, and lock’d the door after her. I sat down for a while, feeling doleful. For I found myself extremely young to be hang’d. But soon the _whang—whang!_ of the hammer below rous’d me. “Come,” I thought, “I’ll see what that rascal is doing, at any rate,” and pulling the file from my pocket, began to attack the window bar with a will. I had no need for silence, at this great height above the ground: and besides, the hammering continued lustily. Daylight was closing as I finish’d my task and, pulling the two pieces of the bar aside, thrust my head out at the window. Directly under me, and about twenty feet from the ground, I saw a beam projecting, about six feet long, over a sort of doorway in the wall. Under this beam, on a ladder, was a carpenter fellow at work, fortifying it with two supporting timbers that rested on the sill of the doorway. He was merry enough over the job, and paused every now and again to fling a remark to a little group of soldiers that stood idling below, where the fellow’s workbag and a great coil of rope rested by the ladder’s foot. “Reckon, Sammy,” said one, pulling a long tobacco pipe from his mouth and spitting, “’tis a long while since thy last job o’ the sort.” “Aye, lad: terrible disrepair this place has fall’n into. But send us a cheerful heart, say I! Instead o’ the viper an’ owl, shall henceforward be hangings of men an’ all manner o’ diversion.” I kept my head out of sight and listen’d. “What time doth ’a swing?” ask’d another of the soldiers. “I heard the Colonel give orders for nine o’clock to-morrow,” answer’d the first soldier, spitting again. The clock over the barbican struck four: and in a minute was being answer’d from tower after tower, down in the city.