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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: death, or in the condemned cell. I might be said to hear it that
night myself in the condemned cell! At length a fellow with a
voice like a bull's began to roar out in the opposite thoroughfare:
'Past yin o'cloak, and a dark, haary moarnin'.'
At which we were all silently afoot.
As I stole about the battlements towards the - gallows, I was about
to write - the sergeant-major, perhaps doubtful of my resolution,
kept close by me, and occasionally proffered the most indigestible
reassurances in my ear. At last I could bear them no longer.
'Be so obliging as to let me be!' said I. 'I am neither a coward
nor a fool. What do YOU know of whether the rope be long enough?
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