there, but also Romanists. It appears to me then that we have justly
and impartially, as always, punished only criminals and given over
the guilty to justice."

"Oh, had you seen what I have seen," said Anne Askew, shuddering,"
then would you collect all your vital energies for a single cry, for
a single word--mercy! and that word would you shout out loud enough
to reach yon frightful place of torture and horror."

"What saw you, then?" asked the king, smiling. Anne Askew had stood
up, and her tall, slender form now lifted itself, like a lily,
between the sombre forms of the bishops. Her eye was fixed and
glaring; her noble and delicate features bore the expression of
horror and dread.

"I saw," said she, "a woman whom they were leading to execution. Not
a criminal, but a noble lady, whose proud and lofty heart never
harbored a thought of treason or disloyalty, but who, true to her
faith and her convictions, would not forswear the God whom she
served. As she passed through the crowd, it seemed as if a halo
encompassed her head, and covered her white hair with silvery rays;
all bowed before her, and the hardest natures wept over the
unfortunate woman who had lived more than seventy years, and yet was
not allowed to die in her bed, but was to be slaughtered to the
glory of God and of the king. But she smiled, and graciously
saluting the weeping and sobbing multitude, she advanced to the
scaffold as if she were ascending a throne to receive the homage of
her people. Two years of imprisonment had blanched her cheek, but
had not been able to destroy the fire of her eye, or the strength of
her mind, and seventy years had not bowed her neck or broken her