As he was about to speak he felt hands about his neck, and then the
touch of a rope passed across his face. For an indescribable instant a
terror seized on him; he closed his eyes and set his teeth. The spasm
passed, and so soon as the hands were withdrawn again, he began:

* * * * *

"Good people"--(at the sound of his voice, high and broken, the silence
became absolute. A thin crowing of a cock from far off in the country
came like a thread and ceased)--"Good people: I die here as a Catholic
man, for my priesthood, which I now confess before all the world." (A
stir of heads and movements below distracted him. But he went on at
once.) "There have been alleged against me crimes in which I had neither
act nor part, against the life of her Grace and the peace of her
dominions."

"Pray for her Grace," rang out a sharp voice below him.

"I will do so presently.... It is for that that I am said to die, in
that I took part in plots of which I knew nothing till all was done. Yet
I was offered my life, if I would but conform and go to church; so you
see very well--"

A storm of confused voices interrupted him. He could distinguish no
sentence, so he waited till they ceased again.

"So you see very well," he cried, "for what it is that I die. It is for
the Catholic faith--"

"Beat the drums! beat the drums!" cried a voice. There began a drumming;
but a howl like a beast's surged up from the whole crowd. When it died
again the drum was silent. He glanced down at my lord Shrewsbury and saw
him whispering with an officer. Then he continued:

"It is for the Catholic faith, then, that I die--that which was once the
faith of all England--and which, I pray, may be one day its faith again.
In that have I lived, and in that will I die. And I pray God, further,
that all who hear me to-day may have grace to take it as I do--as the
true Christian Religion (and none other)--revealed by our Saviour
Christ."

The crowd was wholly quiet again now. My lord had finished his
whispering, and was looking up. But the priest had made his little
sermon, and thought that he had best pray aloud before his strength
failed him. His knees were already shaking violently under him, and the
sweat was pouring again from his face, not so much from the effort of
his speech as from the pain which that effort caused him. It seemed that
there was not one nerve in his body that was not in pain.

"I ask all Catholics, the