brave: they followed their queen upon the scaffold. So, you see,
I am not so much to be pitied in my prison,' I continued: 'there
are none to wait for me; I am alone in the world. 'Tis a different
case, for instance, with yon poor fellow in the cloth cap. His bed
is next to mine, and in the night I hear him sobbing to himself.
He has a tender character, full of tender and pretty sentiments;
and in the dark at night, and sometimes by day when he can get me
apart with him, he laments a mother and a sweetheart. Do you know
what made him take me for a confidant?'

She parted her lips with a look, but did not speak. The look
burned all through me with a sudden vital heat.

'Because I had once seen, in marching by, the belfry of his
village!' I continued. 'The circumstance is quaint enough. It
seems to bind up into one the whole bundle of those human instincts
that make life beautiful, and people and places dear--and from
which it would seem I am cut off!'

I rested my chin on my knee and looked before me on the ground. I
had been talking until then to hold her; but I was now not sorry
she should go: an impression is a thing so delicate to produce and
so easy to overthrow! Presently she seemed to make an effort.

'I will take this toy,' she said, laid a five-and-sixpenny piece in
my hand, and was gone ere I could thank her.

I retired to a place apart near the ramparts and behind a gun. The
beauty, the expression of her eyes, the tear that had trembled
there, the compassion in her voice, and a kind of wild elegance