And now that the priest was in his place, he began again to think over that answer of the Queen.  The very words of it, indeed, he did not know for a month or two later, when Mr. Bourgoign wrote to him at length; but this, at least, he knew, that her Grace had said (and no man contradicted her at that time) that she would shed her blood to-morrow with all the happiness in the world, since it was for the cause of the Catholic and Roman Church that she died.  It was not for any plot that she was to die:  she professed again, kissing her Bible as she did so, that she was utterly guiltless of any plot against her sister.  She died because she was of that Faith in which she had been born, and which Elizabeth had repudiated.  As for death, she did not fear it; she had looked for it during all the eighteen years of her imprisonment.

It was at a martyrdom, then, that he was to assist....  He had known that, without a doubt, ever since the day that Mary had declared her innocence at Chartley.  There had been no possibility of thinking otherwise; and, as he reflected on this, he remembered that he, too, was guilty of the same crime;... and he wondered whether he, too, would die as manfully, if the need for it ever came.

* * * * *

Then, in an instant, he was called back, by the sudden crash of horns and drums playing all together.  He saw again the ranks of heads before him:  the great arched windows of the hall on the other side of the court, the grim dominating keep, and the merciless February morning sky over all.

It was impossible to tell what was going on.

On all sides of him men jostled and murmured aloud.  One said, “She is coming down”; another, “It is all over”; another, “They have awakened her.”  “What is it? what is it?” whispered Robin to the air, watching waves of movement pass over the serried heads before him.  The lights were still burning here and there in the windows, and the tall panes of the hall were all aglow, as if a great fire burned within.  Overhead the sky had turned to daylight at last, but they were grey clouds that filled the heavens so far as he could see.  Meanwhile, the horns brayed in unison, a rough melody like the notes of bugles, and the drums beat out the time.

Again there was a long pause—­in which the lapse of time was incalculable.  Time had no meaning here:  men waited from incident to incident only—­the moving of a line of steel caps, a pause in the music, a head thrust out from a closed window and drawn back again....  Again the music broke out, and this time it was an air that they played—­a lilting melancholy melody, that the priest recognised, yet could not identify.  Men laughed subduedly near him; he saw a face wrinkled with bitter mirth turned back, and he heard what was said.  It was “Jumping Joan” that was being played—­the march consecrated to the burning of witches.  He had heard it long ago, as a boy....