d and demanded that she should allow her hands to
be bound, and that she should kneel in order to lay her head upon the
block, she refused, and angrily pushed him away. 'Only traitors and
criminals lay their head on the block!' exclaimed she, with a loud,
thundering voice. 'There is no occasion for me to do so, and I will not
submit to your bloody laws as long as there is a breath in me. Take,
then, my life, if you can.'

"And now began a scene which filled the hearts of the lookers-on with
fear and horror. The countess flew like a hunted beast round and
round the scaffold. Her white hair streamed in the wind; her black
grave-clothes rustled around her like a dark cloud, and behind her,
with uplifted axe, came the headsman, in his fiery red dress; he, ever
endeavoring to strike her with the falling axe, but she, ever trying,
by moving her head to and fro, to evade the descending stroke. But at
length her resistance became weaker; the blows of the axe reached her,
and stained her white hair, hanging loose about her shoulders, with
crimson streaks. With a heart-rending cry, she fell fainting. Near her,
exhausted also, sank down the headsman, bathed in sweat. This horrible
wild chase had lamed his arm and broken his strength. Panting and
breathless, he was not able to drag this fainting, bleeding woman to the
block, or to lift up the axe to separate her noble head from the body.
[Footnote: Tytler, p. 430] The crowd shrieked with distress and horror,
imploring and begging for mercy, and even the lord chief justice could
not refrain from tears, and he ordered the cruel work to be suspended
until the countess and the headsman should have regained strength; for
a living, not a dying person was to be executed: thus said the law. They
made a pallet for the countess on the scaffold and endeavored to restore
her; invigorating wine was supplied to the headsman, to renew his
strength for the work of death; and the crowd turned to the stakes which
were prepared on both sides of the scaffold, and at which four other
martyrs were to be burnt. But I flew here like a hunted doe, and now,
king, I lie at your feet. There is still time. Pardon, king, pardon for
the Countess of Somerset, the last of the Plantagenets."

"Pardon, sire, pardon!" repeated Catharine Parr, weeping and trembling,
as she clung to her husband's side. "Pardon!" repeated Archbishop
Cranmer; and a few of the courtiers re-echoed it in a timid and anxious
whisper.

The