The shadow of death was closing round him, and he was nearly
mad with fear.
"The old steward saw a strange sort of smile twist his master's white,
quivering lips when he heard this, but he never said a word. I imagine
he thought to reveal his purpose now that it was crushed too great a
sacrifice even to clear the dead girl's fair fame; perhaps, though, he
could not trust his voice, for he did not announce the sentence in
words, but wrote it down: his hand shook very much, and it never carried
a full glass unspilled to his mouth again.
"The court broke up at midday, and the man went straight, unconfessed,
to the place of his punishment. They tied him to the tree nearest his
own door, and the count sat by while he howled his life out under the
lash. He was hardly dead by sundown."
"It was revenge, not justice," Mrs. Bellasys said, more firmly than was
her wont. I saw the quick, impatient movement of her daughter's little
foot; she did not appreciate her mother's moralities.
The answer came in the deepest of Livingstone's deep, stern tones.
"He was no saint, but a man, and a very miserable one; he acted
according to his light, and in his despair caught at the weapon that was
nearest to his hand.
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