The
gleam of her Cross and the colorless calm of the childlike face that
wore the resolve of a Napoleon's on it were the last they ever saw of
Cigarette.
All her fluent, untiring speech was gone--gone with the rose hue from
her cheek, with the laugh from her mouth, with the child's joyance
from her heart; but the brave, stanch, dauntless spirit lived with a
soldier's courage, with a martyr's patience.
And she rode straight through the scorch of the midday sun, along the
sea-coast westward. The dizzy swiftness would have blinded most who
should have been carried through the dry air and under the burning skies
at that breathless and pauseless speed; but she had ridden half-maddened
colts with the skill of Arabs themselves; she had been tossed on a
holster from her earliest years, and had clung with an infant's hands in
fearless glee to the mane of roughriders' chargers. She never swerved,
she never sickened; she was borne on and on against the hard, hot
currents of the cleft air with only one sense--that she went so slowly,
so slowly, when with every beat of the ringing hoofs one of the few
moments of a charmed life fled away!
She had a long route before her; she had many leagues to travel, and
there were but four-and-twenty hours, she knew well, left to the man who
was condemned to death. Four-and-twenty hours left open for appeal--no
more--betwixt the delivery and execution of the sentence. That delay
was always interpreted by the French Code as a delay extending from the
evening of the day to the dawn of the second day following; and some
slight interval might then ensue, according as the general in command
ordained.
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