Past the piles of smouldering ashes, and tracks strewn,
with all sorts of destroyed merchandise, they went. They
had looted the stores to their hearts' content, and were
now rioting in an excess of what to them was good living;
but where those short-sighted creatures expected to get
fresh supplies from is a question they probably never
once put to themselves.
Silent and powerless in King Frost's embrace lay the
great river. How like beautiful filagree work some of
the pine-boughs looked against the snow banks and the
pale blue sky! How lovely seemed the whole world! Pasmore
was thinking about many things, but most he was thinking
of some one whom he hoped was now making her way over
the snow, and for whose sake he was now here. No, he did
not grudge his life, but it was a strange way to die
after all his hopes--mostly shattered ones; to be led
like a brute beast amongst a crowd of jeering half-breeds
who, only a few days before, were ready to doff their
caps at sight of him; and to be shot dead by them with
such short shrift, and because he had only done his
duty!...
They were coming to the rise now. How like a gallows that
tall, dead, scraggy pine looked against the pale grey!
How the hound-like mob alongside yelled and jeered! One
of them--he knew him well--he of the evil Mongolian-like
eyes and snaky locks--whom he had spoken a timely word
to a year ago and saved from prison--from some little
distance took the opportunity of throwing a piece of
frozen snow at Pasmore.
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