time; and as the horses that drew the hurdles came round towards the
carts that stood near the gallows and the platform on which the
quartering block stood, a murmur began that ran through the crowd from
those nearest the martyrs.--"But they are laughing, they are laughing!"

The crowd gave a surge to and fro as the horses drew up, and Anthony
reined his own beast back among the people, so that he was just opposite
the beam on which the three new ropes were already hanging, and beneath
which was standing a cart with the back taken out. In the cart waited a
dreadful figure in a tight-fitting dress, sinewy arms bare to the
shoulder, and a butcher's knife at his leather girdle. A little distance
away stood the hateful cauldron, bubbling fiercely, with black smoke
pouring from under it: the platform with the block and quartering-axe
stood beneath the gallows; and round this now stood the officers, with
Norton the rack-master, and Sir Owen Hopton and the rest, and the three
priests, with the soldiers forming a circle to keep the crowd back.

The hangman stooped as Anthony looked, and a moment later Campion stood
beside him on the cart, pale, mud-splashed, but with the same serene
smile; his great brown eyes shone as they looked out over the wide
heaving sea of heads, from which a deep heart-shaking murmur rose as the
famous priest appeared. Anthony could see every detail of what went on;
the hangman took the noose that hung from above, and slipped it over the
prisoner's head, and drew it close round his neck; and then himself
slipped down from the cart, and stood with the others, still well above
the heads of the crowd, but leaving the priest standing higher yet on the
cart, silhouetted, rope and all, framed in the posts and cross-beam, from
which two more ropes hung dangling against the driving clouds and blue
sky over London city.

* * * *

Campion waited perfectly motionless for the murmur of innumerable voices
to die down; and Anthony, fascinated and afraid beneath that overpowering
serenity, watched him turn his head slowly from side to side with a
"majestical countenance," as his enemies confessed, as if he were on the
point of speaking. Silence seemed to radiate out from him, spreading like
a ripple, outwards, until the furthest outskirts of that huge crowd was
motionless and quiet; and then without apparent effort, his voice began
to peal out.

*