What's coming next?' But Peachey,
Peachey Taliaferro, I tell you, Sir, in confidence as betwixt two friends, he
lost his head, Sir. No, he didn't, neither. The King lost his head, so he did,
all along o' one of those cunning rope bridges. Kindly let me have the paper-
cutter, Sir. It tilted this way. They marched him a mile across that snow to a
rope bridge over a ravine with a river at the bottom. You may have seen such.
They prodded him behind like an ox. 'Damn your eyes!' says the King. 'D' you
suppose I can't die like a gentleman?'
"He turns to Peachey--Peachey that was crying like a child. 'I've brought you
to this, Peachey,' says he. 'Brought you out of your happy life to be killed
in Kafiristan, where you was late Commander-in-Chief of the Emperor's forces.
Say you forgive me, Peachey.' 'I do,' says Peachey. 'Fully and freely do I
forgive you, Dan.' 'Shake hands, Peachey,' says he. 'I'm going now.' Out he
goes, looking neither right nor left, and when he was plumb in the middle of
those dizzy dancing ropes, 'Cut you beggars,' he shouts; and they cut, and old
Dan fell, turning round and round and round, twenty thousand miles, for he
took half an hour to fall till he struck the water, and I could see his body
caught on a rock with the gold crown close beside.
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