find, for they burn to the honor of God and of the king. [Footnote:
"Life of King Henry the Eighth, founded on Authentic and Original
Documents." By Patrick Fraser Tytler. (Edinburgh, 1887, p. 440.)]
And the heavenward flaring flames which carries up the souls of the
heretics will give to my God joyous intelligence of His most
faithful and obedient son, who, even on the day of his happiness,
forgets not his kingly duty, but ever remains the avenging and
destroying minister of his God."

He looked frightful as he thus spoke. His countenance, lit up by the
fire, had a fierce, threatening expression; his eyes blazed; and a
cold, cruel smile played about his thin, firmly-pressed lips.

"Oh, he knows no pity!" murmured Catharine to herself, as in a
paroxysm of anguish she stared at the king, who, in fanatical
enthusiasm, was looking over toward the fire, into which, at his
command, they were perhaps hurling to a cruel, torturing death, some
poor wretch, to the honor of God and the king. "No, he knows no pity
and no mercy."

Now Henry turned to her, and laying his extended hand softly on the
back of her slender neck, he spanned it with his fingers, and
whispered in her ear tender words and vows of love.

Catharine trembled. This caress of the king, however harmless in
itself, had in it for her something dismal and dreadful. It was the
involuntary, instinctive touch of the headsman, who examines the
neck of his victim, and searches on it for the place where he will
make the stroke. Thus had Anne Boleyn once put her tender white
hands about her slender neck, and said to the headsman, brought over