More had been tried in Westminster Hall, of which you have heard already, and inside there it was very dark; but when he came out into the bright sunshine he was quite dazzled for the moment and could not see. But there was someone else who saw--someone who had been waiting in the crowd in terrible anxiety, and when he saw that axe turned with the sharp edge toward More he knew it meant death; and he gave a great shriek, and thrust himself through the guards and flung himself at More's feet. This was his son-in-law, William Roper, Margaret's husband. More was allowed to go back to the Tower by boat, and a sorrowful voyage it must have been, not for himself, but for thinking of all those dear ones he must leave. When he arrived at the Tower he saw standing on the quay two figures--his son John, then a man of twenty-five, and a tall, slight woman in deepest black, his dear Meg. Even the soldiers made way for her as she flung her arms round her father's neck and cried out of her breaking heart, 'My father! oh, my father!'--a cry which so touched some of those rough guards that they turned aside to hide the tears in their own eyes. More tried to comfort her, and presently gently drew himself away. He felt it was almost too much for him; but as she turned away she could not bear to let him go, and once more threw her arms round him with that pitiful cry, and only gave way when at last she sank fainting on the ground. More then went on and left her so, and when she came to herself she knew it was all over, and that she had no more hope. Six days later, at nine o'clock in the morning, More was led out to suffer beheading, as Bishop Fisher had already suffered. When he had first gone to the Tower he had been a man of middle age with a brown beard and brown hair; now after a year of confinement and anxiety his hair was quite gray. When he was told to make ready for his execution, he put on a silk robe, which when the gaoler saw he asked him to change for a common woollen one. More asked why, and was told that the clothes he was killed in became the property of the executioner, and the clothes he left behind in the Tower were taken by his gaolers, and that this gaoler thought the silk robe too good for the executioner. So More quietly changed to a commoner dress, for it mattered little to him. When he reached the scaffold, he found he was too feeble to climb up the steps without help, and he asked one of the men to give him an arm, adding: 'I pray you see me safe up; as for my coming down, I may shift for myself.' The executioner asked his forgiveness, which was granted; and then More knelt before the block, and carefully put his beard aside, saying: '_That_ at least has committed no treason.' Then with one stroke his head was cut off. His body was buried near the chapel in the Tower; but, according to the custom of that time, his head was stuck up on London Bridge. [Illustration: THE TRAITOR'S GATE, TOWER OF LONDON.]