fair like her brother in the face, for she
was his twin.

'Ah,' she cried, 'he threated that if I would not give evidence I must
go back to Lincolnshire. You do not know what it is to go back to
Lincolnshire. Ah, God! the old father, the old house, the wet. My
clothes were all mouldered. I was willing to give true evidence to save
myself, but they twisted it to false. It was the Duke of Norfolk ...'

The Lady Mary came slowly over the floor.

'Against whom did you give your evidence?' she said, and her voice was
cold, hard, and commanding.

Mary Hall covered her face with her hands, and wailed desolately in a
high note, like a wolf's howl, that reverberated in that dim gallery.

The Lady Mary struck her a hard blow with the cover of her book upon the
hands and the side of her head.

'Against whom did you give your evidence?' she said again.

The woman fell over upon one hand, the other she raised to shield
herself. Her eyes were flooded with great teardrops; her mouth was open
in an agony. The Lady Mary raised her book to strike again: its covers
were of wood, and its angles bound with silver work. The woman screamed
out, and then uttered--

'Against Dearham and one Mopock first. And then against Sir T.
Culpepper.'

The Queen stood up to her height; her hand went over her heart; the
netted purse dropped to the floor soundlessly.

'God help me!' Mary Hall cried out. 'Dearham and Culpepper are both
dead!'

The Queen sprang back three paces.

'How dead!' she cried. 'They were not even ill.'

'Upon the block,' the maid said. 'Last night, in the dark, in their
gaols.'

The Queen let her hands fall slowly to her sides.

'Who did this?' she said, and Mary Hall answered--

'It was the King!'

The Lady Mary set her book under her arm.

'Ye might have known it was the King,' she said harshly. The Queen was
as still as a pillar of ebony and ivory, so black her dress was, and so
white her face and pendant hands.

'I repent me! I repent me!' the maid cried out. 'When I heard that they
were dead I repented me and came here. The old Duchess of Norfolk is in
gaol: she burned the letters of Dearham! The Lady Rochford is in gaol,
and old Sir Nicholas, and the Lady Cicely that was ever with the Queen;
the Lord Edmund Howard shall to gaol and his lady.'

'Why,' the Lady Mary said to the Queen, 'if you had not had such a fear
of nepotism, your father and mother and grandmother and cousin had been
here about you, a