country, beneath the sun. Again his thoughts turned to his friend, and he felt a strange assurance that Dacre had foreseen it all along, but not held back his steps one whit for that. And there was Maggie—in America—could she, and her life, be in the same world with this? Yet it was natural enough, and such things had always been, only he had never truly pictured them. The day seemed endless. If he could only hear something of the others, and not be so terribly alone. If he could but learn where they were—where Dacre was. He heard a dull sound like the noise of distant firing, but more like thunder, coming heavily through the ground. Geoffrey ran to the window, drew himself up, and looked out through the bars. There was a sea of upturned faces, all pale and with one fixed look, a myriad times repeated, pointed to the base of the Tower below his window where he could not see. Then he fell back upon the ground, burying his face in his hands.
Dacre himself had slept that night a dreamless sleep, as he had slept any night before in the years since he had seen his path and chosen it. At noon the people came to his cell and led him out. Numbers of men were standing in the corridor and on the stairs; he looked on between the lines and walked to the door. Then he begged that his handcuffs might be removed. As he paused a moment, Richard Lincoln stepped forward and ordered that it should be done. Then he fell back, bowing once to Dacre. Richard Lincoln had come there from the death-bed of his daughter to do this last service to the man that she loved. Then Dacre passed on, out of the great door into the full light of the noon. There in front of him was a great concourse of people, the multitude Geoffrey had seen from his window. Dacre looked out from the prison
