f the thought. His mind, now in a violent reaction, seemed
unable to cope with its own knowledge, crushed beneath its weight; and
his friend heard him repeating with a low monotonous insistence--

"Here it was," he said, "here; here was the cauldron; it was here."

Then he turned and looked into his friend's eyes.

"It was here," he said; "are you sure it was here?"

The other made an impatient sound.

"Where else?" he said sharply. "Come, brother, you have seen enough."

* * * * *

He told him more details as they walked home; as to what each had said,
and how each had borne himself. Father Reynolds, the Syon monk, had
looked gaily about him, it seemed, as he walked up from the hurdle; the
secular priest had turned pale and shut his eyes more than once; the
three Carthusian priors had been unmoved throughout, showing neither
carelessness nor fear; Prior Houghton's arm had been taken off to the
London Charterhouse as a terror to the others; their heads, he had
heard, were on London Bridge.

Chris walked slowly as he listened, holding tight under his scapular the
scrap of rough white cloth he had picked up near the cauldron, drinking
in every detail, and painting it into the mental picture that was
forming in his mind; but there was much more in the picture than the
other guessed.

The priest was a plain man, with a talent for the practical, and knew
nothing of the vision that the young monk beside him was seeing--of the
air about the gallows crowded with the angels of the Agony and Passion,
waiting to bear off the straggling souls in their tender experienced
hands; of the celestial faces looking down, the scarred and glorious
arms stretched out in welcome; of Mary with her mother's eyes, and her
virgins about her--all ring above ring in deepening splendour up to the
white blinding light above, where the Everlasting Trinity lay poised in
love and glory to receive and crown the stalwart soldiers of God.

CHAPTER XI

A CLOSING-IN

Ralph kept his resolution to pretend to try and save Sir Thomas More,
and salved his own conscience by protesting to Beatrice that his efforts
were bound to fail, and that he had no influence such as she imagined.
He did certainly more than once remark to Cromwell that Sir Thomas was a
pleasant and learned man, and had treated him kindly, and once had gone
so far as to say that he did not see that any good would be served by
his death; but he h