But there was no open vision, such as he had
half hoped to see, no unimaginable glories looming slowly through the
veils in which God hides Himself on earth, no radiant face smiling into
his own--only this arena of watching human faces turned up to his,
waiting for his last sermon.... He thought he saw faces that he knew,
though he lost them again as his eyes swept on--Mr. Barton, the old
minister of Matstead; Dick; Mr. Bassett.... Their faces looked
terrified.... However, this was not his affair now.
As he was about to speak he felt hands about his neck, and then the
touch of a rope passed across his face. For an indescribable instant a
terror seized on him; he closed his eyes and set his teeth. The spasm
passed, and so soon as the hands were withdrawn again, he began:
* * * * *
"Good people"--(at the sound of his voice, high and broken, the silence
became absolute. A thin crowing of a cock from far off in the country
came like a thread and ceased)--"Good people: I die here as a Catholic
man, for my priesthood, which I now confess before all the world." (A
stir of heads and movements below distracted him. But he went on at
once.) "There have been alleged against me crimes in which I had neither
act nor part, against the life of her Grace and the peace of her
dominions."
"Pray for her Grace," rang out a sharp voice below him.
"I will do so presently.... It is for that that I am said to die, in
that I took part in plots of which I knew nothing till all was done.
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