o friends but thee alone."

A large company of the warders and keepers of the castle had been drawn
up at the Traitors' Gate to receive her, as was customary on occasions
when prisoners of high rank were to enter the Tower. As these men were
always dressed in uniform of a peculiar antique character, such a parade
of them made quite an imposing appearance. Elizabeth asked what it
meant. They told her that that was the customary mode of receiving a
prisoner. She said that if it was, she hoped that they would dispense
with the ceremony in her case, and asked that, for her sake, the men
might be dismissed from such attendance in so inclement a season. The
men blessed her for her goodness, and kneeled down and prayed that God
would preserve her.

She was extremely unwilling to go into the prison. As they approached
the part of the edifice where she was to be confined, through the
court-yard of the Tower, she stopped and sat down upon a stone, perhaps
a step, or the curb stone of a walk. The lieutenant urged her to go in
out of the cold and wet. "Better sitting here than in a worse place,"
she replied, "for God knoweth whither you are bringing me." However, she
rose and went on. She entered the prison, was conducted to her room, and
the doors were locked and bolted upon her.

Elizabeth was kept closely imprisoned for a month; after that, some
little relaxation in the strictness of her seclusion was allowed.
Permission was very reluctantly granted to her to walk every day in the
royal apartments, which were now unoccupied, so that there was no
society to be found there, but it afforded her a sort of pleasure to
range through them for recreation and exercise. But this privilege could
not be accorded without very strict limitations and conditions. Two
officers of the Tower and three women had to attend her; the windows,
too, were shut, and she was not permitted to go and look out at them.
This was rather melancholy recreation, it must be allowed, but it was
better than being shut up all day in a single apartment, bolted and
barred.

[Illustration: ELIZABETH IN THE TOWER.]

There was a small garden within the castle not far from the prison, and
after some time Elizabeth was permitted to walk there. The gates and
doors, however, were kept carefully closed, and all the prisoners,
whose rooms looked into it from the surrounding buildings, were closely
watched by their respective keepers, while Elizabeth was in the garden,
to p