usual scraps of finery were carefully disposed about his person.

"What cheer, Barnaby?", cried Hugh. "Don't be downcast, lad. Leave that
to _him_," he added, with a nod in the direction of Dennis, held up
between two men.

"Bless you!" cried Barnaby, "I'm not frightened, Hugh. I'm quite happy.
Look at me! Am I afraid to die? Will they see _me_ tremble?"

"I'd say this," said Hugh, wringing Barnaby by the hand, and looking
round at the officers and functionaries gathered in the yard, "that if I
had ten lives to lose I'd lay them all down to save this one. This one
that will be lost through mine!"

"Not through you," said Barnaby mildly. "Don't say that. You were not to
blame. You have always been very good to me. Hugh, we shall know what
makes the stars shine _now_!"

Hugh spoke no more, but moved onward in his place with a careless air,
listening as he went to the service for the dead. As soon as he had
passed the door, his miserable associate was carried out; and the crowd
beheld the rest. Barnaby would have mounted the steps at the same time,
but he was restrained, as he was to undergo the sentence elsewhere.

It was only just when the cart was starting that the courier reached the
jail with the reprieve. All night Gabriel Varden and his friends had
been at work; they had gone to the young Prince of Wales, and even to
the ante-chamber of the king himself. Successful, at last, in awakening
an interest in his favour, they had an interview with the minister in
his bed as late as eight o'clock that morning. The result of a searching