without which he could not speak from the heart.  He had been right, he knew now:  there was no religious consolation; he felt none of that strange heart-shaking ecstasy that had transfigured other deaths like his; he had none of the ready wit that Campion had showed.  He saw nothing but the clear October sky above him, cut by the roofs fringed with heads (a skein of birds passed slowly over it as he raised his eyes); and, beneath, that irreckonable pavement of heads, motionless now as a cornfield in a still evening, one glimpse of the river—­the river, he remembered even at this instant, that came down from Hathersage and Padley and his old home.  But there was no open vision, such as he had half hoped to see, no unimaginable glories looming slowly through the veils in which God hides Himself on earth, no radiant face smiling into his own—­only this arena of watching human faces turned up to his, waiting for his last sermon....  He thought he saw faces that he knew, though he lost them again as his eyes swept on—­Mr. Barton, the old minister of Matstead; Dick; Mr. Bassett....  Their faces looked terrified....  However, this was not his affair now.

As he was about to speak he felt hands about his neck, and then the touch of a rope passed across his face.  For an indescribable instant a terror seized on him; he closed his eyes and set his teeth.  The spasm passed, and so soon as the hands were withdrawn again, he began: 

* * * * *

“Good people”—­(at the sound of his voice, high and broken, the silence became absolute.  A thin crowing of a cock from far off in the country came like a thread and ceased)—­“Good people:  I die here as a Catholic man, for my priesthood, which I now confess before all the world.” (A stir of heads and movements below distracted him.  But he went on at once.) “There have been alleged against me crimes in which I had neither act nor part, against the life of her Grace and the peace of her dominions.”

“Pray for her Grace,” rang out a sharp voice below him.

“I will do so presently....  It is for that that I am said to die, in that I took part in plots of which I knew nothing till all was done.  Yet I was offered my life, if I would but conform and go to church; so you see very well—­”

A storm of confused voices interrupted him.  He could distinguish no sentence, so he waited till they ceased again.

“So you see very well,” he cried, “for what it is that I die.  It is for the Catholic faith—­”

“Beat the drums! beat the drums!” cried a voice.  There began a drumming; but a howl like a beast’s surged up from the whole crowd.  When it died again the drum was silent.  He glanced down at my lord Shrewsbury and saw him whispering with an officer.  Then he continued: 

“It is for the Catholic faith, then, that I die—­that which was once the faith of all England—­and which, I pray, may be one day its faith again.  In that have I lived, and in that will I die.  And I pray God, further, that all who hear me to-day may have grace to take it as I do—­as the true Christian Religion (and none other)—­revealed by our Saviour Christ.”