Read "The Red Cockade" by Stanley J. Weyman online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
For, of all the things that had happened since I left the Committee Room, the Captain's death remained the one most real and most deeply bitten into my mind. He had shared with me the walk from the inn to the garden, and the petty annoyances that had then filled my thoughts. He had faced them with me, and bravely; and this late association, and the picture of him as he walked beside me, full of life and coarse wrath, rose up now and cried out against his death; cried out that it was impossible. So that it seemed horrible to me, and I shook with fear, and loathed the man whose hand had done it.
Nor was that all. I had known Hugues barely forty-eight hours, my liking for him was only an hour born; but I had his story. I could follow him going about to borrow the small sum of money he had possessed. I could trace the hopes he had built on it. I could see him coming here full of honest courage, believing that he had found an opening; a man strong, confident, looking forward, full of plans. And then of all, this was the end! He had hoped, he had purposed; and on the other side of the Cathedral, he lay stark -- stark and dead on the grass.