his buff and feathers. He took the order and ran his
eyes over it.

Nicholas explained.

The officer looked at him a moment without answering.

"And the lady too?" he said.

"Why, yes," said Nicholas.

"The lady wishes--" then he broke off. "You will have to see the
Lieutenant," he went on. "I can let you all through to his lodgings."

They passed in with a yeoman to conduct them under the low heavy
vaulting and through to the open way beyond. On their right was the wall
between them and the river, and on their left the enormous towers and
battlements of the inner court.

Chris walked with Morris behind, remembering the last time he was here
with the Prior all those years before. They had walked silently then,
too, but for another reason.

They passed the low Traitor's Gate on their right; Chris glanced at the
green lapping water beneath it as he went--Ralph had landed there--and
turned up the steep slope to the left under the gateway of the inner
court; and in a minute or two more were at the door of the Lieutenant's
lodgings.

There seemed a strange suggestiveness in the silence and order of the
wide ward that lay before them. The great White Tower dominated the
whole place on the further side, huge and menacing, pierced by its
narrow windows set at wide intervals; on the left, the row of towers
used as prisons diminished in perspective down to where the wall turned
at right angles and ran in behind the keep; and the great space enclosed
by the whole was almost empty. There were soldiers on guard here and
there at the doorways; a servant hurried across the wide sunlit ground,
and once, as they waited, a doctor in his short gown came out of one
door and disappeared into another.

And here they waited for an answer to their summons, silent and happy in
their knowledge. The place held no terrors for them.

The soldier knocked again impatiently, and again stood aside.

Chris saw Nicholas sidle up to the man with something of the same awe on
his face that had been there an hour ago.

"My Lord--Master Cromwell?" he heard him whisper, correcting himself.

The man jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

"There," he said.

There were three soldiers, Chris noticed, standing at the foot of one of
the Towers a little distance off. It was there, then, that Thomas
Cromwell, wool-carder, waited for death, hearing, perhaps, from his
window the murmur of the crowd beyond the moat, and the blows of mallet
on wood as hi