第191章

So the day came.The last day! What a queer feeling it was when I lay down that night, that I should never want to sleep again, or try to do it.

That I had seen the sun set -- leastways the day grow dark --for the last time; the very last time.

Somehow I wasn't that much in fear of it as you might think;it was strange like, but made one pull himself together a bit.

Thousands and millions of people had died in all sorts of ways and shapes since the beginning of the world.Why shouldn't I be able to go through with it like another?

I was a long time lying and thinking before I thought of sleeping.

All the small, teeny bits of a man's life, as well as the big, seemed to come up before me as I lay there -- the first things I could recollect at Rocky Flat; then the pony; mother a youngish woman;father always hard-looking, but so different from what he came to be afterwards.Aileen a little girl, with her dark hair falling over her shoulders; then a grown woman, riding her own horse, and full of smiles and fun; then a pale, weeping woman all in black, looking like a mourner at a funeral.Jim too, and Starlight -- now galloping along through the forest at night --laughing, drinking, enjoying themselves at Jonathan Barnes's, with the bright eyes of Bella and Maddie shining with fun and devilment.

Then both of them lying dead at the flat by Murrynebone Creek --Starlight with the half-caste making his wild moan over him;Jim, quiet in death as in life, lying in the grass, looking as if he had slid off his horse in that hot weather to take a banje;and now, no get away, the rope -- the hangman!

I must have gone to sleep, after all, for the sun was shining into the cell when I stirred, and I could see the chains on my ankles that I had worn all these weary weeks.How could I sleep? but I had, for all that.

It was daylight; more than that -- sunrise.I listened, and, sure enough, I heard two or three of the bush-birds calling.

It reminded me of being a boy again, and listening to the birds at dawn just before it was time to get up.When I was a boy! -- was I ever a boy?

How long was it ago -- and now -- O my God, my God! That ever it should have come to this! What am I waiting for to hear now? The tread of men;the smith that knocks the irons off the limbs that are so soon to be as cold as the jangling chains.Yes! at last I hear their footsteps --here they come!

The warder, the blacksmith, the parson, the head gaoler, just as I expected.

The smith begins to cut the rivets.Somehow they none of them look so solemn as I expected.Surely when a man is to be killed by law, choked to death in cold blood, people might look a bit serious.

Mind you, I believe men ought to be hanged.I don't hold with any of that rot that them as commits murder shouldn't pay for it with their own lives.

It's the only way they can pay for it, and make sure they don't do it again.

Some men can stand anything but the rope.Prison walls don't frighten them;but Jack Ketch does.They can't gammon him.

`Knock off his irons quick,' says Mr.Fairleigh, the parson;`he will not want them again just yet.'

`I didn't think you would make a joke of that sort, sir,' says I.

`It's a little hard on a man, ain't it? But we may as well take it cheerful, too.'

`Tell him all, Mr.Strickland,' he says to the head gaoler.

`I see he can bear it now.'