ritatively,--"place your head in this hole, and your hands here."

Since resistance would have been vain, Mompesson did as he was bidden. A
heavy beam descended over his neck and wrists, and fastened him down
immovably; while, amid the exulting shouts of the spectators, his ears
were nailed to the wood. During one entire hour the ponderous machine
slowly revolved, so as to exhibit him to all the assemblage; and at the
end of that time the yet more barbarous part of the sentence, for which
the ferocious mob had been impatiently waiting, was carried out. The
keen knife and the branding-iron were called into play, and in the
bleeding and mutilated object before them, now stamped with indelible
infamy, none could have recognised the once haughty and handsome Sir
Giles Mompesson.

A third person, we have said, stood upon the pillory. He took no part in
aiding the tormentor in his task; but he watched all that was done with
atrocious satisfaction. Not a groan--not the quivering of a muscle
escaped him. He felt the edge of the knife to make sure it was sharp
enough for the purpose, and saw that the iron was sufficiently heated to
burn the characters of shame deeply in. When all was accomplished, he
seized Mompesson's arm, and, in a voice that seemed scarcely human,
cried,--"Now, I have paid thee back in part for the injuries thou hast
done me. Thou wilt never mock me more!"

"In part!" groaned Mompesson. "Is not thy vengeance fully satiated? What
more wouldst thou have?"

"What more?" echoed the other, with the laugh of a demon,--"for every
day of anguish thou gavest my brother in his dungeon in the Fleet I
would have a month--a year, I would not have thee perish too soon, and
therefore thou shalt be better cared for than he was. But thou shalt
never escape--never! and at the last I will be by thy side."

It would almost seem as if that moment were come, for, as the words were
uttered, Mompesson fainted from loss of blood and intensity of pain, and
in this state he was placed upon a hurdle tied to a horse's heels, and
conveyed back to the Fleet.

As threatened, he was doomed to long and solitary imprisonment, and the
only person, beside the jailer, admitted to his cell, was his
unrelenting foe. A steel mirror was hung up in his dungeon, so that he
might see to what extent his features had been disfigured.

In this way three years rolled by--years of uninterrupted happiness to
Sir Jocelyn and Lady Mounchensey, as well as