the
avenging and destroying minister of his God."

He looked frightful as he thus spoke. His countenance, lit up by the
fire, had a fierce, threatening expression; his eyes blazed; and a cold,
cruel smile played about his thin, firmly-pressed lips.

"Oh, he knows no pity!" murmured Catharine to herself, as in a paroxysm
of anguish she stared at the king, who, in fanatical enthusiasm, was
looking over toward the fire, into which, at his command, they were
perhaps hurling to a cruel, torturing death, some poor wretch, to the
honor of God and the king. "No, he knows no pity and no mercy."

Now Henry turned to her, and laying his extended hand softly on the back
of her slender neck, he spanned it with his fingers, and whispered in
her ear tender words and vows of love.

Catharine trembled. This caress of the king, however harmless in itself,
had in it for her something dismal and dreadful. It was the involuntary,
instinctive touch of the headsman, who examines the neck of his victim,
and searches on it for the place where he will make the stroke. Thus had
Anne Boleyn once put her tender white hands about her slender neck,
and said to the headsman, brought over from Calais specially for her
execution: "I pray you strike me well and surely! I have, indeed, but a
slim little neck." [Footnote: Tytler, p. 382] Thus had the king clutched
his hand about the neck of Catharine Howard, his fifth wife when
certain of her infidelity, he had thrust her from himself with fierce
execrations, when she would have clung to him. The dark marks of that
grip were still visible upon her neck when she laid it on the block.
[Footnote: Leti, vol. i, p. 193]

And this dreadful twining of his fingers Catharine must now endure as
a caress; at which she must smile, which she must receive with all the
appearance of delight.

While he spanned her neck, he whispered in her ear words of tenderness,
and bent his face close to her cheeks.

But Catharine heeded not his passionate whispers. She saw nothing save
the blood-red handwriting of fire upon the sky. She heard nothing save
the shrieks of the wretched victims.

"Mercy, mercy!" faltered she. "Oh, let this day be a day of festivity
for all your subjects! Be merciful, and if you would have me really
believe that you love me, grant this first request which I make of you.
Grant me the lives of these wretched ones. Mercy, sire, mercy!"

And as if the queen's supplication had found an echo, suddenly