“To-morrow, the 25th--yes, at seven o’clock in the morning,” he answered, with professional brevity, and then here was an awful pause. Harvey Wilson looked at his friend. He was shuddering from head to foot, and seemed about to fall. An awful pallor like the greyness of coming death covered his face. “Strangemore, bear up, for heaven’s sake? Don’t give up now, don’t sink when every moment is worth its weight in gold to us. Think of Nina’s peril!” he implored, touching his arm, gently. The half-closed eyes flared open widely. Talbot answered, with feverish incoherency: “Lead on, Wilson, I shall not sink, never fear. I will go through fire and water to save her, my martyred love, my wronged darling!” “Will you come with us to the nearest telegraph office?” Wilson asked the lawyer. “Willingly,” he answered. They put on their hats and went out. The day was beautiful and bright, but they paid no heed to it. The faces of the hurrying throng seemed like faces seen in dreams to Talbot Strangemore. The world seemed full of shadows, blackest and darkest of all the shadow of that awful scaffold that to-day they were building in far off Baltimore for Nina, his fair young wife whose summers had not yet reached nineteen. They went to the telegraph office and dictated their urgent message to the governor of Maryland asking him to come home that night. Then they went to a railway station and took the earliest train for Baltimore. The interested lawyer accompanied them of his own will, anxious to see the end of what might be a woeful tragedy. CHAPTER LI. ON THE SCAFFOLD. “The last hour of my life!” said Nina Strangemore, solemnly, and with an awful shudder. It was the morning of the 25th of July and already the merciless hands of time were pointing to the seventh hour. She stood trembling among the little group of beloved friends who thronged the narrow cell to bid a last good-by to the lovely girl going forth to meet ignominious death at the strong arm of the law. She had chosen for her dress this morning a long clinging black velvet gown from which her pale face gleamed with marble whiteness and delicacy. Her rippling, waving, golden hair had been gathered into a gleaming braid at the back of her small head, and the unusual style of coiffure, while it lent added dignity and gravity to her youthful beauty, also showed a new charm in the stately grace of the white neck and delicate shell-like ears. She was changed greatly, but none the less beautiful for the cruel tragedy and the waves of anguish that had swept across her life. Sorrow and suffering had etherealized her beauty until it was almost unearthly. She lifted her great dark eyes heavy with despair, and looked into the blanched faces of her friends. “The last hour of my life!” she repeated, solemnly, and with something like awe in her quivering voice.