d groans were heard coming from the king's
apartment. They were accompanied from time to time with shrieks of
terrible agony. These sounds were continued for some time, and they were
heard in all parts of the castle, and in many of the houses of the town.
The truth was, the executioners whom Mortimer had sent were murdering
the king in a manner almost too horrible to be described.[B] The people
in the castle and in the town knew very well what these dreadful
outcries meant. They were filled with consternation and horror at the
deed, and they spent the time in praying to God that he would receive
the soul of the unhappy victim.

[Footnote B: They came to him while he was asleep, and pressed him
down with heavy feather beds, which they cast upon him to stifle his
cries, and then thrust a red-hot spit up into his bowels through a
horn, as some said, or a part of the tube of a trumpet, according to
others, so as to kill him by the internal burning without making any
outward mark of the fire on his person. Notwithstanding their efforts
to stifle his cries, he struggled so desperately in his agony as
partly to break loose from them, and thus made his shrieks and
outcries heard.]

[Illustration: BERKELEY CASTLE.]

After this, Mortimer and the queen for two or three years held pretty
nearly supreme power in the realm, though, of course, they governed in
the name of the young king, who was yet only fourteen or fifteen years
of age. There was, however, a great secret hatred of Mortimer among
all the old nobility of the realm. This ill-will ripened at last into
open hostility. A conspiracy was formed to destroy Mortimer, and to
depose the queen-mother from her power, and to place young Edward in
possession of the kingdom. Mortimer discovered what was going on, and
he went for safety, with Edward and the queen, to the castle of
Nottingham, where he shut himself up, and placed a strong guard at the
gates and on the walls.

This castle of Nottingham was situated upon a hill, on the side of
which was a range of excavations which had been made in a chalky stone
by some sort of quarrying. There was a subterranean passage from the
interior of one of these caves which led to the castle. The castle
itself was strongly guarded, and every night Isabel required the
warden, on locking the gates, to bring the keys to her, and she kept
them by her bedside. The governor of the castle, however, made an
agreement with Lord Montacute, who was t