The Bohemians recovered their muskets, and the bewildered Morton was once more in custody of the corporal, who led him, guarded as before, back towards his cell. Padre Luca, who thought that an interposition of the Virgin had softened the commissioner's heart, hastened to his oratory to pray for the heretic's conversion. Faint and heartsick, Morton scarcely knew what was passing, till he was thrust in at his narrow door. The jailer was there, but the corporal entered also, to aid in taking the handcuffs from his wrists. One might have looked in vain among ten thousand to find a nobler model of masculine proportion than this soldier. He stood more than six feet high, and Morton, who loved to look upon a man, had often, even in his distress, admired his martial bearing and the powerful symmetry of his frame. His face, too, was singularly fine in its way, and though the discipline of long habit usually banished from it any distinct expression, yet the cast of the features, and the manly curve of the lip, which the thick brown mustache could not wholly hide, seemed to augur a brave, generous, and loyal nature. More stupefied than cheered at being snatched, as he supposed, from the jaws of death, Morton stood passive while his hands were released. The jailer left him for a moment, and crossed over to the opposite corner of the cell. His back was turned as he did so. The corporal's six soldiers were all in the passage without. At that instant, Morton felt a warm breath at his ear, and heard whispered in a barbarous accent,-- "_Courage, mon ami! Vive la liberte! Vive l'Amerique!_" He turned; but the martial visage of the corporal was unmoved as bronze; and, in a moment more, the iron door clanged behind him as he disappeared. CHAPTER XXXVIII. O Death, why now so slow art thou? why fearest thou to smite? _Lamentation of Don Roderick_. When all the blandishments of life are gone, The coward sneaks to death, the brave live on.--_Sewell_. The whispered words of the corporal kindled a spark of hope in Morton's breast; but it was destined to fade and die. Once he was sure that he heard the tones of his voice in the passage without his cell; but weeks passed, months passed, and he did not see him again. And now let the curtain drop for a space of three years. Morton was still a prisoner. Despair was at hand. He longed to die. His longing at length seemed near its accomplishment. A raging fever seized him, and for days he lay delirious, balanced on the brink of death. But his constitution endured the shock; and late one night he lay on his pallet, exhausted, worn to a skeleton, yet fully conscious of his situation. The locks clashed, the hinges jarred, and a physician of the prison, a bulky German, stood at his side. He felt his patient's pulse. "Shall I die, or not?" demanded the sick man.