Don't let them tie me or bandage my
eyes to-morrow, please. I will stand quite still."
. . . . .
At sunrise on Wednesday morning they brought
him out into the courtyard. His lameness was
more than usually apparent, and he walked with
evident difficulty and pain, leaning heavily on the
sergeant's arm; but all the weary submission had
gone out of his face. The spectral terrors that
had crushed him down in the empty silence, the
visions and dreams of the world of shadows, were
gone with the night which gave them birth; and
once the sun was shining and his enemies were
present to rouse the fighting spirit in him, he was
not afraid.
The six carabineers who had been told off for
the execution were drawn up in line against the
ivied wall; the same crannied and crumbling wall
down which he had climbed on the night of his
unlucky attempt. They could hardly refrain from
weeping as they stood together, each man with his
carbine in his hand. It seemed to them a horror
beyond imagination that they should be called out
to kill the Gadfly.
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