he whispered, "go."

"Mary," he said again, "make your confession--quickly. Stand back, you
men."

They obeyed him; and he bent his ear towards the mouth he could so dimly
see. There was a sob or two--a long moaning breath--and then the murmur
of words, very faint and broken by gulps for breath. He noticed nothing
of the hoofs that dashed up the road and stopped abruptly, and of the
murmur of voices that grew round him; he only heard the gasping whisper,
the words that rose one by one, with pauses and sighs, into his ear....

"Is that all?" he said, and a silence fell on all who stood round, now a
complete circle about the priest and the penitent. The pale face moved
slightly in assent; he could see the lips were open, and the breath was
coming short and agonised.

"... _In nomine Patris_--his hand rose above her and moved cross-ways in
the air--_et Filii et Spiritus Sancti_. _Amen._"

Then he bent low again and looked; the bosom was still rising and
falling, the shut eyes lifted once and looked at him. Then the lids fell
again.

"_Benedictio Dei omnipotentis, Patris et Filii et Spiritus sancti,
descendat super te et maneat semper. Amen._"

Then there fell a silence. A horse blew out its nostrils somewhere behind
and stamped; then a man's voice cried brutally:

"Now then, is that popish mummery done yet?"

There was a murmur and stir in the group. But Anthony had risen.

"That is all," he said.

CHAPTER XIII

IN PRISON

Anthony found several friends in the Clink prison in Southwark, whither
he was brought up from Stanfield Place after his arrest.

Life there was very strange, a combination of suffering and extraordinary
relaxation. He had a tiny cell, nine feet by five, with one little window
high up, and for the first month of his imprisonment wore irons; at the
same time his gaoler was so much open to bribery that he always found his
door open on Sunday morning, and was able to shuffle upstairs and say
mass in the cell of Ralph Emerson, once the companion of Campion, and a
lay-brother of the Society of Jesus. There he met a large number of
Catholics--some of whom he had come across in his travels--and he even
ministered the sacraments to others who managed to come in from the
outside. His chief sorrow was that his friend and host had been taken to
the Counter in Wood Street.

It was a month before he heard all that had happened on the