Wild,
brutal brigands, whose year was one long razzia of plunder, rapine, and
slaughter, felt their lips tremble like young girls' when they asked how
the issue went for him; and the blood-stained marauders, who thought as
little of assassination for a hidden pot of gold as butchers of drawing
a knife across a sheep's throat, grew still and fear-stricken with a
great awe when the muttering passed through the camp that they would see
no more among their ranks that "woman's face" which they had beheld
so often foremost in the fight, with a look on it that thrilled their
hearts like their forbidden chant of the Marseillaise. For when the
third day closed, they knew that he must die.
There were men, hard as steel, ravenous of blood as vultures, who, when
they heard that sentence given, choked great, deep sobs down into the
cavernous depths of their broad, seared, sinewy breasts; but he never
gave sigh or sign. He never moved once while the decree of death was
read to him; and there was no change in the weary calmness of his eyes.
He bent his head in acquiescence.
"C'est bien!" he said simply.
It seemed well to him. Dead, his secret would lie in the grave with him,
and the long martyrdom of his life be ended.
In the brightness of the noon Cigarette leaned out of her little oval
casement that framed her head like an old black oak carving--a head with
the mellow bloom on its cheeks, and the flash of scarlet above its dark
curls, and the robin-like grace of poise and balance as it hung out
there in the sun.
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