st night.'
With straining eyes, and bloodless cheeks, Marginy saw Duprat take his position in the middle row of his companions, who stood in three ranks of seven each. Then the awful spectacle of the execution began. After the first seven deputies had suffered there was a pause; the horrible traces of the judicial massacre were being removed.When the execution proceeded, Duprat was the third taken from the middle rank of the condemned. As he came forward, he stood for an instant erect under the guillotine, he looked with a smile on his friend, and repeated in a clear voice the word, 'Remember!' -- then bowed himself on the block. The blood stood still at Marginy's heart, as he looked and listened, during the moment of silence that followed. That moment past, the church clocks of Paris struck. He dropped down in the cart, and covered his face with his hands; for through the heavy beat of the hour he heard the fall of the fatal steel.
'Pray, sir, was it nine or ten that struck just now?' said one of Marginy's fellow-prisoners to an officer of the guard who stood near the cart.
The person addressed referred to his watch, and answered --
'NINE O'CLOCK!'