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"My God," continued Caillaud, "I could drive a knife into the heart of the man who thus talks!" "No murder, Caillaud," said Zachariah. "Well, no. What is it but a word? Let us say sacrifice. Do you call the death of your Charles a murder? No; and the reason why you do not is what? Not that it was decreed by a Court. There have been many murders decreed by Courts according to law.
It was settled at the club that the Major should accompany the expedition and Zachariah and Caillaud having drawn lots, the lot fell upon Caillaud. A last attempt was made to dissuade the majority from the undertaking; but it had been made before, not only by our three friends, but by other Lancashire societies, and had failed.
Caillaud Pauline, and Zachariah were there, but not the Major. Caillaud was sitting by the fireside; her husband and Pauline were talking earnestly across the table. Apparently both of them were much interested, and his face was lighted up as she never saw it when he was with her. She was fascinated, and could not move. It was a dull lonely street and nobody was to be seen that wet night.
They were outvoted; but they conceived themselves loyally bound to make it a success. Zachariah and Caillaud were not of much use in organisation, and the whole burden fell upon the Major. Externally gay, and to most persons justifying the charge of frivolity, he was really nothing of the kind when he had once settled down to the work he was born to do.
That could have been endured could he but have FELT and showed his feeling, could he but have cast himself upon his neck and wept over him, but he was numbed and apparently immovable. It was Caillaud who first broke the silence. "It appears I shall have to console you rather than you me; believe me, I care no more about dying, as mere dying, than I do about walking across this room.
"Anywhere!" and she had gone. The constables, after putting the corpse in a hackney coach, proceeded to the room; but it was dark and empty. They had no directions to do anything more that night, and returned to Bow Street. The next morning, however, as soon as it was light, a Secretary of State's warrant, backed by sufficient force, was presented at the lodgings of Caillaud and Zachariah.
He secured a bed in a low part of the town, at a public-house, and on the morning of the third day presented himself at the prison door. After some formalities he was admitted, and taken by a warder along a corridor with whitewashed walls to the condemned cell where Caillaud lay. The warder looked through a grating, and said to Zachariah that a visitor was already there.
Zachariah was too weak to say anything more, and fell asleep again. Next day he was better, and he then thought of his wife; he thought of Caillaud, the Major, and Pauline; but he had no power to reflect connectedly.
"With honour!" and Caillaud smiled. "To be hung like a forger of bank-notes not even to be shot and then to be forgotten. Forgotten utterly! This does not happen to be one of those revolutions which men remember." "No! men will not remember," said Pauline, with an elevation of voice and manner almost oratorical. "Men will not remember, but there is a memory in the world which forgets nothing."
He was unarmed; but he was a powerful man, and wrenched himself free. The soldier drew his sword, and although Caillaud was close by, and attempted to parry the blow with a stick, the Major lay a dead man on the ground.
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