to the court. The crowd
began to sway back against the walls, pointing and crying out; and a lane
with living walls was formed towards the archway that opened into
Newman's Passage.

When the last pursuivants who brought up the rear had reached the door,
an officer, who had been leaning from a first-floor window with the pale
face of Lackington peering over his shoulder, gave a sharp order; and the
procession halted. The women, numbering fourteen or fifteen, were placed
in a group with some eight men in hollow square round them; then came a
dozen men, each with a pursuivant on either side. But plainly they were
not all come; they were still waiting for something; the officer and
Lackington disappeared from the window; and for a moment too, the crowd
was quiet.

A murmur of excitement began to rise again, as another group was seen
descending the stairs within. The officer came first, looking back and
talking as he came; then followed two pursuivants with halberds, and
immediately behind them, followed by yet two men, walked James Maxwell in
crimson vestments all disordered, with his hands behind him, and his
comely head towering above the heads of the guard. The crowd surged
forward, yelling; and the men at the door grounded their halberds sharply
on the feet of the front row of spectators. As the priest reached the
door, a shrill cry either from a boy or a woman pierced the roaring of
the mob. "God bless you, father," and as he heard it he turned and smiled
serenely. His face was white, and there was a little trickle of blood run
down across it from some wound in his head. The rest of the prisoners
turned towards him as he came out; and again he smiled and nodded at
them. And so the Catholics with their priest stood a moment in that
deafening tumult of revilings, before the officer gave the word to
advance.

Then the procession set forward through the archway; the crowd pressing
back before them, like the recoil of a wave, and surging after them again
in the wake. High over the heads of all moved the steel halberds, shining
like grim emblems of power; the torches tossed up and down and threw
monstrous stalking shadows on the walls as they passed; the steel caps
edged the procession like an impenetrable hedge; and last moved the
crimson-clad priest, as if in some church function, but with a bristling
barrier about him; then came the mob, pouring along the narrow passages,
jostling, cursing, reviling, swelled every mo