driving back the mystery of the night, and that weird loneliness of
an arctic world. The city was hardly waking as yet, but straight
silver columns of smoke rolled up out of many chimneys, and the
golden cross on the cathedral caught the first rays of the sun. I
was not interested in the city; I had now, as I thought, done with
men. Besides the four soldiers who had brought me out, another squad
surrounded me, commanded by a young officer whom I recognized as
Captain Lancy, the rough roysterer who had insulted me at Bigot's
palace over a year ago. I looked with a spirit absorbed upon the
world about me, and a hundred thoughts which had to do with man's
life passed through my mind. But the young officer, speaking sharply
to me, ordered me on, and changed the current of my thoughts. The
coarseness of the man and his insulting words were hard to bear,
so that I was constrained to ask him if it were not customary to
protect a condemned man from insult rather than to expose him to it.
I said that I should be glad of my last moments in peace. At that he
asked Gabord why I was unbound, and my jailer answered that binding
was for criminals who were to be HANGED!

I could scarcely believe my ears. I was to be shot, not hanged.
I had a thrill of gratitude which I can not describe. It may seem
a nice distinction, but to me there were whole seas between the
two modes of death. I need not blush in advance for being shot--my
friends could bear that without humiliation; but hanging would have
always tainted their memory of me, try as they would against it.

"The gallows is ready, and my orders were to see him hanged,"
Mr. Lancy said.

"An order came at midnight that he should be shot," was Gabord's