Hammersley ventured nothing further, eating silently, and with a surprising appetite, for good Lindberg’s face in the background had given him new courage. When the meal was done, he asked for his pipe again and Wentz ordered the Forester to fill it. Hammersley inhaled the smoke and exhaled a sigh. “So far as I am concerned, Herr Hauptmann,” he said with a smile, “when this pipe is finished you may kill me at once.” He extended his wrists behind him in silence while Captain Wentz took half a dozen turns of the rope and made it fast. Hammersley sat up in bed puffing at his pipe and wondering whether some miracle might not be induced that would kill Wentz. But he was quickly disillusioned, for when Lindberg took the dishes and moved toward the door, he heard Wentz’s crisp orders: “You will send Max Senf to take the first night watch upon the prisoner. He is awaiting my orders in the guard room. _Schnell._” Without even a glance at the prisoner Lindberg saluted and went out and Hammersley’s spirits fell. Help from Lindberg was impossible. Von Stromberg was taking every precaution. There was no way out of it. Hammersley was doomed. But while Wentz was in the room he kept a cheerful countenance, though for the first time in his life that he could remember his pipe was acrid. He saw the new guard enter and heard the last orders of the officer. “You will watch until one o’clock when your relief will be sent. The prisoner is to be allowed no privileges. Under no circumstances are his hands to be untied. If he wants water, you will give it to him with your own hands. _Verstehen sie?_” The man stood erect and saluted. “_Zu befehl, Herr Hauptmann_,” he said. Hammersley saw the door close and heard the key turn in the lock while Senf came forward into the room and stood by the foot of the bed. Hammersley studied him closely: a tall, loosely jointed man in his early thirties with the heavy brows and high cheekbones of the East Prussian, the face of a Slav, almost, with something of the thoughtful intensity of the South German mystic. His eyes were large, his nose thin and his face was bearded, but the lines of his mouth had a sensitive curve, belied by the big bony hands and broad shoulders. A sentimentalist, perhaps! Hammersley determined to try him, for a plan had been forming in his mind. He had noticed with a glance which had included everything in the room when he entered, a Bible upon the mantelshelf, and in a tone which had in it a solemn sense of the doom which awaited him in the morning, he addressed his guardian quietly: “Senf, you have a kind face. There is a small favor that you may do me.” “If it does not conflict with my orders.” “Not at all. Tomorrow morning I am to be shot. All I ask is that you will allow me to read for a while the Bible upon the chimneypiece.” “_Ach!_ I see no harm in that.” He went over and got the book, opening the pages and looking through them. “It is little enough for a dying man to ask,” he said.