terrified lady and she was lifted from hand to hand, till at last they placed her by his side, trembling and almost senseless. “Behold,” cried the sexton, lifting the poor girl up before the multitude and flinging back the hair from her pale and affrighted features, that her father might recognise them, and feel to his heart, all the indignity and peril of her position. “Behold, I say, lift but another pike, hurl a stone but the size of a hazelnut against these walls, and this proud lady shall share them all side by side with the humble sexton. My Lord of Somerset,” he shouted, grasping the lady firm with one arm, as if about to hurl her from the window, “Draw off your soldiers, leave these old walls, where we may worship our God in peace, or I will hurl your child into the midst of my brethren, that she may be trampled beneath their feet, even as you have crushed human limbs this day under your iron-shod war horses.” These words were uttered by a rude man, but excitement had made him eloquent, and his voice rang over the crowd like the blast of a trumpet. When he ceased speaking, a silence almost appalling, after the previous wild sounds, fell upon the multitude. The horsemen stayed their swords, and the soldiers stood with their pikes half lifted, and Somerset himself sat like one stupified by the sudden apparition of his child; among all that rude throng there was no hand brutal enough to lift itself against that beautiful and trembling girl, but many a glistening eye turned from her to the stern but now agonized face of the duke, anxious that he should draw off his men. He was very pale, his lip quivered for a moment, and then his face hardened again like marble. “Her blood be upon thy head, young man,” he exclaimed, bending his keen but troubled eyes on Lord Dudley, who stood vainly struggling with his captors; then lifting his voice he cried out, “Tear down the church; neither wall of stone nor human being must stop our way!” Still a profound silence lay upon the multitude. There was something horrible in the command that caused the coarsest heart to revolt at its cruelty. So still and motionless remained the throng that the faint shriek which died on the pale lips of that helpless girl as her father’s command fell upon her ear, was distinctly heard even by the stern parent himself. He lifted his eyes to the place where she was kneeling, her hands clasped, her face like marble, and those eyes, usually so tranquil and dove-like, glittering with terror and fixed imploringly upon his face. He turned away his head and tried to repeat his command, but the words died in his throat, and he could not utter them. Again her locked hands were extended, and her heart seemed breaking with wonder at his cruelty as she uttered the single word, “Father!”