"I will do precisely as you say," said Robin easily. "And now for the
news of her Grace's servants."
He had already again and again told the tale of Fotheringay so far as he
had seen it in this very parlour. At first he had hardly found himself
able to speak of it without tears. He had described the scene he had
looked upon when, in the rush that had been made towards the hall after
Mary's head had been shown at the window, he had found a place, and had
been forced along, partly with his will and partly against it, right
through the great doors into the very place where the Queen had
suffered; and he had told the story so well that his listeners had
seemed to see it for themselves--the great hall hung with black
throughout; the raised scaffold at the further end beside the fire that
blazed on the wide hearth; the Queen's servants being led away
half-swooning as he came in; the dress of velvet, the straw and the
bloody sawdust, the beads and all the other pitiful relics being heaped
upon the fire as he stood there in the struggling mob; and, above all,
the fallen body, in its short skirt and bodice lying there where it fell
beside the low, black block. He had told all this as he had seen it for
himself, until the sheriff's men drove them all forth again into the
court; and he had told, too, of all that he had heard afterwards, that
had happened until my lord Shrewsbury's son had ridden out at a gallop
to take the news to court, and the imprisoned watchers had been allowed
to leave the Castle; how the little dog, that he had heard wailing, had
leapt out as the head fell at the third stroke, so that he was all
bathed in his mistress' blood--one of the very spaniels, no doubt, which
he himself had seen at Chartley; how the dog was taken away and washed
and given afterwards into Mr.
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