g whatever to do with the present case. Did you or did you not
receive for the aforesaid information a large sum of money?"

"I did; but my lord, my lord, spare--"

"Which sum of money you have concealed," continued the duke, with
another frown and a sharp rap. "Now the question is, where have you
concealed it?"

"I will tell you, with all my heart, only spare my life!"

"Tell us first, and we will think about your life afterward. Let me
advise you as a friend, my lord, to tell at once, and truthfully," said
the duke, toying negligently with the thumb-screws.

"It is buried at the north corner of the old wall at the head of
Bradshaw's grave. You shall have that and a thousandfold more if you'll
only pardon--"

"Enough!" broke in the dwarf, with the look and tone of an exultant
demon. "That is all we want! My lord duke, give me the death-warrant,
and while her majesty signs it, I will pronounce his doom!"

The duke handed him a roll of parchment, which he glanced critically
over, and handed to the queen for her autograph. That royal lady spread
the vellum on her knee, took the pen and affixed her signature as coolly
as if she were inditing a sonnet in an album. Then his highness, with a
face that fairly scintillated with demoniac delight, stood up and fixed
his eyes on the ghastly prisoner, and spoke in a voice that reverberated
like the tolling of a death-bell through the room.

"My Lord of Gloucester, you have been tried by a council of your
fellow-peers, presided over by her royal self, and found guilty of high
treason. Your sentence is that you be taken hence, immediately, to the
block, and there be beheaded, in punishment of your crime."

His highness wound up this somewhat solemn speech, rather
inconsistently, bursting out into one of his shrillest peals of
laughter; and the miserable Earl of Gloucester, with a gasping,
unearthly cry, fell back in the arms of the attendants. Dead and
oppressive silence reigned; and Sir Norman, who half believed all along
the whole thing was a farce, began to feel an uncomfortable sense of
chill creeping over him, and to think that, though practical jokes were
excellent things in their way, there was yet a possibility of carrying
them a little too far. The disagreeable silence was first broken by the
dwarf, who, after gloating for a moment over his victim's convulsive
spasms, sprang nimbly from his chair of dignity and held out his arm for
the queen. The queen arose, which