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Benson, Robert Hugh, 1871-1914

"Come Rack! Come Rope!"

There are three or
four of them here now; but the most of them are in the Fleet or the
Marshalsea."
Marjorie glanced at him. She did not understand.
"I mean Catholic prisoners, mistress. There are several of them in ward
here, but we had better speak no names."
He wheeled suddenly as they came out into the open and moved to the
left.
"There is Tower Hill, mistress; where my lord Cardinal Fisher died, and
Thomas More."
Marjorie stopped short. But there was nothing great to see--only a
rising ground, empty and bare, with a few trimmed trees; the ground was
without grass; a few cobbled paths crossed this way and that.
"And here is the gateway," he said, "whence they come out to glory....
And there on the right" (he swept his arm towards the river) "you may
see, if you are fortunate, other criminals called pirates, hung there
till they be covered by three tides."
* * * * *
Still standing there, with Mr. Babington and his sister come up from
behind, he began to relate the names of this tower and of that, in the
great tumbled mass of buildings surmounted by the high keep. But
Marjorie paid no great attention except with an effort: she was brooding
rather on the amazing significance of all that she saw. It was under
this gateway that the martyrs came; it was from those windows in that
tower which the priest had named just now, that they had looked.... And
this was Father Campion.


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