In a frenzy that seemed to tear his soul in pieces, he pressed his hands to his ears that they might be closed against the sound. But it was in vain. No human agency had the power to shut out those terrible words, or the awful voice that gave them utterance. “Simon Heriot, if ever you would sleep again, attend that which is said to you.” With the shred of will that remained to him, the guilty man strung all his faculties in order to heed the words that were spoken. “Do you attend, Simon Heriot.” The voice was low, deep and terrible. “Do you take a candle and sit at yonder table, upon which materials for writing are set, and do you write as you are now directed.” It was true that quill, inkhorn and foolscap were laid out on a small table at the other end of the room. At the beck of that which he was powerless to disobey, the unhappy man tottered very slowly towards the table. After a moment of indecision, he sat down and took up the quill. He was as one in a dream, except that his head seemed to be bursting. “Simon Heriot, write as you are directed.” The terrible voice had now grown so loud and so compelling, that it seemed to tear his brain asunder. When he took up the pen, his trembling fingers could hardly hold it. Very slowly and very clearly, the voice then uttered the following: “I, Simon Heriot, in the presence of Almighty God and with the shadow of death upon me, hereby solemnly declare, that I have caused to be borne to our Sovereign Lady the Queen, false testimony in the matter of my nephew, Gervase Heriot. I further declare that I suborned three men, Robert Grisewood, John Nixon and Gregory Bannister by name, to bear false testimony touching the complicity of the said Gervase Heriot in the Round House Plot, by reason of which alleged complicity the said Gervase Heriot has been condemned to death. In the presence of Almighty God, and as I shortly hope for eternal rest, I do hereby most solemnly avow what I have written to be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Given under my hand this second day of July, 1599--Simon Heriot.” Under the goad of terror, the guilty man gathered every fragment of his crumbling will in order that he might set pen to paper. No less slowly than the grim voice pronounced the words, Simon Heriot wrote them down with a kind of automatic precision. It was as if his highly wrought state had become susceptible to a process of hypnotism. When at last the task was finished and he had signed the document which made full confession of his crime, he was commanded to open a window and to fling out the paper into the night. He would have had neither the strength nor the courage to do this of his own volition. But the dread voice compelled him. He rose from the writing-table, but now such was his condition that he could hardly stand. A palsy was on his limbs; he was as one who has lost all control of his mind. “Take heed, Simon Heriot.”