and fell on the knot of the hand-kerchief with which her eyes were bound. He struck again, and had only to move the axe across the block to cut the last shred of skin. "So perish all the enemies of the Queen," called out the Dean of Peterborough, as the executioner held out the head at his arm's length. Only the strength of her vitality and her cleverness had kept beauty in her face. The head that was thus held up at arm's length was the head of an old and wrinkled woman. Death grinned. [Illustration: MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS] As they set about stripping the body, a lap-dog, hidden in her clothes, howled and lay down crying out by the neck from which the blood was flowing. It was carried away. Then all her things--dress, beads, Paternoster, hand-kerchief--were taken to the great wood fire which still burned merrily, and burned before all the people. No relics must be left. Henry Talbot, son of Lord Shrewsbury, was given the account of the proceedings, and rode off with them post-haste from Fotheringay along the bad roads to London. So died Mary, Queen of Scots, and her death was one of the surest, most definite steps that was ever taken towards cutting England off from papal authority. Henceforward, England stood alone. Henceforward, the force of patriotism and of religion were to be combined. Such things happened in the time of Walter Ralegh. He may have been present. If he were, the memory of it must have come to his mind some thirty years later, when he touched the edge of another axe with his thumb and approved of its sharpness. CHAPTER VI THE GREAT ENTERPRISE Scheme of colonization--Preparation--The sailing--Queen's interest--Death of Sir Humfrey Gilbert--Another charter obtained--King Wingina--Hospitality--Sir Richard Grenville--Difficulties of first colonists--Personal outfit--Misfortune. Court life, for all its brilliance and excitement, did not monopolize Ralegh's attention. He had gained wealth and position: he was near the Queen. That did not suffice him. He was a man of imagination, who could never rest content with the attainment which, as man of action, he had achieved. Rarely have the two qualities been so often combined as they were in the Elizabethan times, and rarely, even then, were they combined with such force and in so high a degree as they were in great Ralegh. He bent his energies on the scheme for colonization. The old idea was that Paradise lay somewhere on the surface of the world; all through the Middle Ages the dream existed. Columbus thought that the earth was probably shaped like a pear, not spherical but elongated, and "on the summit of the protuberance was situated the earthly Paradise, 'whither no one can go but by God's permission.'" That dream continued. It came to Marlowe and obsessed him. But Marlowe dreamed of no mediæval Paradise. "Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed In one self-place; for where we are is hell And where hell is there must we ever be."