Proud Wessex! thou hast sunk to this, a spectacle for a common holiday! Thy face will be scanned lest one twitch escape! thy shoulders if they stoop, thy neck if it bend! A thousand eyes will be fixed upon thee in curiosity, in derision--perchance in pity! Ye gods, what a fall! The Lord High Steward of England was expected to arrive at ten o'clock. In the centre of the great court a large scaffold had been erected, not far from the Lord Chancellor's Court. In the middle of this there was placed a chair higher than the rest and covered with a cloth, which bore the royal arms embroidered at the four corners. This was for my Lord High Steward. Each side of him were the seats for the peers who were to be the triers. Great names were whispered, as the servants of the Knight Marshal arranged these in their respective places. There was the chair for the Earl of Kent, and my lord of Sussex, the Earl of Hertford, and Lord Saint John of Basing, and a score of others, for there were twenty-four triers in all. On a lower form were the seats for the judges, and in a hollow place cut in the scaffold itself, and immediately at the feet of my Lord High Steward, the Clerk of the Crown would sit with his secondary. And facing the judges and the peers was the bar, where presently the exalted prisoner would stand. No one was here yet of the greater personages, the servants were still busy putting everything to right, but some gentlemen of the Queen's household had already arrived, and several noble lords who would be mere spectators. His Grace's friends could easily be distinguished by the sombreness of their garb and the air of grief upon their faces. Mr. Thomas Norton, the Queen's printer, was sorting his papers and cutting his pens, and two gentlemen ushers were receiving final instructions from Garter King-at-Arms. There was indeed plenty for the idlers to see. Great ropes had been drawn across the further portions of the Hall, leaving a wide passage from the main entrance right down the centre and up to the Lord High Steward's seat. Behind these ropes the crowd was forcibly kept back. And the gossip and the noise went on apace. Laughter too and merry jests, for this was a holiday, my masters, presently to be brought to a close--after the death sentence had been passed and every one dispersed--with lively jousts and copious sacks of ale. But of all this excitement and bustle not a sound penetrated within the precincts of the Lord Chancellor's Court, where His Eminence the Cardinal de Moreno sat patiently waiting.