d to sound him again with regard to
the prisoner; afraid, in spite of herself, of a public execution, the
queen had reverted to her former ideas of poisoning or assassination; but
Sir Amyas Paulet declared that he would let no one have access to Mary
but the executioner, who must in addition be the bearer of a warrant
perfectly in order, Davison reported this answer to Elizabeth, who, while
listening to him, stamped her foot several times, and when he had
finished, unable to control herself, cried, "God's death! there's a
dainty fellow, always talking of his fidelity and not knowing how to
prove it!"

Elizabeth was then obliged to make up her mind. She asked Davison for
the warrant; he gave it to her, and, forgetting that she was the daughter
of a queen who had died on the scaffold, she signed it without any trace
of emotion; then, having affixed to it the great seal of England, "Go,"
said she, laughing, "tell Walsingham that all is ended for Queen Mary;
but tell him with precautions, for, as he is ill, I am afraid he will die
of grief when he hears it."

The jest was the more atrocious in that Walsingham was known to be the
Queen of Scotland's bitterest enemy.

Towards evening of that day, Saturday the 14th, Beale, Walsingham's
brother-in-law, was summoned to the palace! The queen gave into his
hands the death warrant, and with it an order addressed to the Earls of
Shrewsbury, Kent, Rutland, and other noblemen in the neighbourhood of
Fotheringay, to be present at the execution. Beale took with him the
London executioner, whom Elizabeth had had dressed in black velvet for
this great occasion; and set out two hours after he had received his
warrant.

CHAPTER IX

Queen Mary had known the decree of the commissioners these two months.
The very day it had been pronounced she had learned the news through her
chaplain, whom they had allowed her to see this once only. Mary Stuart
had taken advantage of this visit to give him three letters she had just
written-one for Pope Sixtus V, the other to Don Bernard Mendoza, the
third to the Duke of Guise. Here is that last letter:--

14th December, 1586

"My Good Cousin, whom I hold dearest in the world, I bid you farewell,
being prepared to be put to death by an unjust judgment, and to a death
such as no one of our race, thanks to God, and never a queen, and still
less one of my rank, has ever suffered. But, good cousin, praise the
Lord; for I was useless to the cau