ntiff
in impressive tones, "Proceed with the execution!"

Now the chest was slung up to a hook in the ceiling, and gradually
drawn back by a pulley until it was far above the heads of the men, the
chains meanwhile clanking continually against the receptacle, from
which came forth a stream of smothered profanity.

"Hurl him down to the traitor's death!" shouted the Sovereign Pontiff.
The chest was loosed, and swung like a pendulum lengthwise of the room,
down almost to the floor and up nearly to the ceiling. The profanity
now turned into a yell of terror. The Martyrs slapped one another's
backs and grew blue in the face with laughter. At a signal, a light
box was placed where the chest would crush it (which it did with a
sound like a small railway collision); the chest was stopped and the
lid raised.

"Let the body receive Christian burial," said the Sovereign Pontiff.
"Our vengeance ceases with death."

This truly Christian sentiment was received with universal approval.
Death seemed to all a good place at which to stop.

"Brethren," said the Deacon Militant, as he struggled with the
resurgent Stevens, "there seems some life here! Methinks the heart
beats, and----"

The remainder of the passage from the ritual was lost to Amidon by
reason of the fact that Stevens had placed one foot against the
Deacon's stomach and hurled that august officer violently to the floor.

"Let every test of life be applied," said the Sovereign Pontiff.
"Perchance some higher will than ours decrees his preservation. Take
the body hence for a time; if possible, restore him to life, and we
will consider his fate."

The recess which followed was clearly necessary to afford an
opportunity for the calming of the risibilities of the Martyrs. The
stage, too, had to be reset. Amidon's ethnological studies had not
equaled his reading in _belles-lettres_, and he was unable to see the
deep significance of these rites from an historical standpoint, and
that here was a survival of those orgies to which our painted and
skin-clad ancestors devoted themselves in spasms of religious frenzy,
gazed at by the cave-bear and the mammoth. The uninstructed Amidon
regarded them as inconceivable horse-play. While thus he mused,
Stevens, who was still hoodwinked and being greatly belectured on the
virtue of Faith and the duty of Obedience, reentered on his ordeal.

He was now informed by the officer at the other end of the room, that
every man must