hen, when that happened, perhaps he fainted with the agony and was
released, and carried away to be allowed to recover a little, only to be
brought back another day. Sometimes he would bear it bravely enough the
first time, but at the second time his courage would give way, and he
would cry out and say he would do whatever it was his persecutors
wanted, perhaps change his religion, perhaps reveal the names of his
companions in a plot. There were other tortures, too--a kind of iron
cage, called the Scavenger's Daughter, with a collar of iron to fasten
round a man's neck and irons round his arms and legs, which cramped him
up in an awful position, in which he was left for hours, until every
bone ached as if it were red-hot. The thumbscrew was a little thing, but
caused great agony. It was fixed on to anyone's thumb, and then made
tighter and tighter, until sometimes the wretched victim fainted away.
Another way that people were tortured was by being hung up by their
thumbs, so that the whole weight of their bodies rested on the cords. In
this position they were left for hours together.

There is a very beautiful chapel in the White Tower which we must
certainly see. Outside in the garden, opposite to another chapel, called
St. Peter ad Vincula, is the execution ground, where so many people were
beheaded. But I think this is enough for one chapter, and we will learn
something more about the Tower in the next.

CHAPTER XIX

THE TOWER OF LONDON--_continued_

Nearly all the people condemned to be beheaded at the Tower were
executed on Tower Hill, which lies outside the walls; only a few who
were of royal birth or especially favoured were beheaded inside the
walls, where they could not be seen by the great multitude. And the plot
of ground outside the chapel is the place where these favoured few were
killed. We can stand now on the spot where gentle Lady Jane Grey laid
her little head on the block. She was not the first near the throne to
have been executed here. Two of the Queens of the bloodthirsty Henry
VIII. had died at the same place--Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard. Both
these Queens had been received here by Henry in great state before their
marriages, and little had they thought when they arrived and were
greeted with guns firing and flags flying that very soon the bell would
be tolling for their death. It is difficult to believe in the
cold-heartedness of a man like Henry. Anne Boleyn was a bright, gay
li