For the Cause

The three men were going to do that which two certainly, and perhaps all, knew to be perilous. One went to it in gloom, anger as well as sorrow at his heart. One bustled about nervously, and looked often behind him as if to see Marie's pale face at the window. And one strode out as to a ball, glancing up and down the dark lane with an air of enjoyment, which not even the grim nature of his task could suppress. The body was hanging from a bar which crossed the street at a considerable height, serving as a stay between the gables of two opposite houses, of which one was two doors only from the unhappy Portails'. The mob, with a barbarity very common in those days, had hung him on his own threshold.

The street as the three moved up it, seemed empty and still. But it was impossible to say how long it would remain so. Yet the soldier loitered, staring about him, as one remembering things. "Did not th