ho goes there?' and
the answer is, 'The Keys!' Then says the sentinel, 'Advance, King
George's Keys!' This is a curious old custom. Close by the Bloody Tower
is the Jewel House, where the crowns of the King and Queen and other
royalties are kept. They are made of gold and set with precious stones,
so big that it is difficult to believe that they are real--great rubies
and pearls as large as pigeon's eggs, and huge glittering diamonds. In
this room there is a man always on watch, day and night. Yet the jewels
were once stolen by a daring man called Colonel Blood, who managed to
get away from the Tower, but was caught soon after with the King's crown
under his cloak. This was in the reign of Charles II.

In the White Tower are rooms full of armour worn by English
soldiers--armour of all the different ages, from the time when a man
wore so much iron that if he fell down he could not get up again, and
sometimes was actually smothered before he could get out of it, up to
the present day.

In the White Tower there is one very awful dungeon, a little narrow
cell, without a ray of light, no window at all--nothing but dense
blackness. There must have been many prisoners kept here, for on the
walls there are sad cuttings, now half worn away, which tell how the
poor men occupied their time in chipping their names in the stone. Many
of the martyrs of Queen Mary's reign must have felt this terrible
blackness, for there are texts of which the dates show that they were
cut at that time. One of these is, 'Be faithful unto death, and I will
give thee a crown of life.' The hand that traced out these letters long
years ago is still. The martyr has long since passed from the darkness
of the narrow cell to the great brightness of eternal light.

The torture instruments are shown in the White Tower too, and many of
these brave martyrs felt the torture before they reached the light. The
rack was very commonly used. On it men--yes, and women too--were
sometimes stretched as on a bed; their wrists were tied with cords above
their heads, and their ankles with cords to the other end of the rack.
Then a man turned a handle, and the hands and feet were slowly drawn in
opposite directions. The poor wretch might shriek and scream, or he
might turn as white as death and let never a sound escape him; but it
was all the same: the rack moved on. There was a doctor there to feel
the victim's heart and say when he could bear no more without dying. And
t