ight, from falling again into the pit where all was black or
blood-colour. The pain was appalling, but he thought he had gripped it
at last, and could hold it so, like a wrestler.

As the pain began to resolve itself into throbs and stabs, from the
continuous strain in which at first it had shown itself--a strain that
was like a shrill horn blowing, or a blaze of bluish light--he began to
see more, and to understand a little. There were four or five faces
looking down on him: one was the face of a man he had seen somewhere in
an inn ... it was at Fotheringay; it was my lord Shrewsbury's man.
Another was a lean face; a black hat came and went behind it; the lips
were drawn in a sort of smile, so that he could see the teeth.... Then
he perceived next that he himself was lying in a kind of shallow trough
of wood upon the floor. He could see his bare feet raised a little and
tied with cords.

Then, one by one, these sights fitted themselves into one another and
made sense. He remembered that he was in Derby gaol--not in his own
cell; that the lean face was of a man called Topcliffe; that a physician
was there as well as the others; that they had been questioning him on
various points, and that some of these points he had answered, while
others he had not, and must not. Some of them concerned her Grace of the
Scots.... These he had answered. Then, again, association came back....

"As Thy arms, O Christ ..." he whispered.

"Now then," came the sharp voice in his ear, so close and harsh as to
distress him. "These questions again.... Were there any other places
besides at Padley and Booth's Edge, in the parish of Hathersage, where
you said mass?"

"... O Christ, were extended on the Cross--" began the tortured man
dreamily. "Ah-h-h!"....

It was a scream, whispered rather than shrieked, that was torn from him
by the sharpness of the agony. His body had lifted from the floor
without will of his own, twisting a little; and what seemed as strings
of fiery pain had shot upwards from his feet and downwards from his
wrists as the roller was suddenly jerked again. He hung there perhaps
ten or fifteen seconds, conscious only of the blinding pain--questions,
questioners, roof and faces all gone and drowned again in a whirling
tumult of darkness and red streaks. The sweat poured again suddenly from
his whole body.... Then again he sank relaxed upon the floor, and the
pulses beat in his head, and he thought that Marjorie and her mo