As she walked through the streets by her father’s side, and marked the gathering crowd thronging towards Carfax and the route to be taken by the procession, she seemed to hear the words beaten out by the tread of hurrying feet:  “Faithful unto death—­faithful unto death—­unto death!” till she could have cried aloud in the strange turmoil of her spirit, “Faithful unto death—­unto death!”

There was a convenient window in the house of a kindly citizen, which had been put at her father’s disposal.  When they took their places at it they saw the men already at work over the bonfire in the centre of the cross roads.  All the windows and the streets were thronged with curious spectators, and almost at once the tolling of the bells of various churches announced that the ceremony was about to begin.

The procession, it was whispered about, was to start from St. Mary’s Church, to march to Carfax, where certain ceremonies were to be performed, and then to proceed to St. Frideswyde, where a solemn Mass would be performed, to which the penitents would be admitted.  Then, with a solemn benediction, they would be dismissed to their own homes, and admitted to communion upon Easter Day.

Freda sat very still at the window, hearing little beside the heavy beating of her own heart and the monotonous tolling of the bells.  The crowd was silent, too, and almost all the people were habited in black, partly out of respect to the season of the Lord’s passion, partly because this ceremony took the nature of a solemn humiliation.

Perhaps there were many standing in that close-packed crowd who knew themselves to have been as “guilty”—­if guilt there were—­as those who were compelled to do penance that day.  There was evident sympathy on many faces, and the girl, looking down from above, noted how many groups there were talking earnestly and quietly together, and how they threw quick glances over their shoulders, as though half afraid lest what they were saying might be overheard.

“I trow there are many here who have dared to read the Word of God and discuss it freely together, and compare the church as it now is with the church, the Bride of the Lamb.  I wonder if they would have all submitted, had it been their lot to stand before those judges and hear the sentence pronounced.”

A thrill seemed suddenly to pass through the crowd; the people pressed forward and then surged back.

“They are coming! they are coming!” the whisper went round, and Freda felt the blood ebbing away from her cheeks, and for a moment her eyes were too dim to see.

The solemn procession of heads and masters, clerks and beadles, seemed to swim before her in a quivering haze.  Her strained eyes were fixed upon those other figures bringing up the rear—­those men in the garb of the penitent, each bearing a fagot on his shoulder, and carrying a lighted taper in his hand.