pillar of wood, which was one of the supports of this vast crypt.” Father Gerard was then hung up by his hands, these having first been placed in iron gauntlets which were attached to an iron rod fixed in the pillar. A stool upon which he stood was taken from under him, and he hung by his wrists, the whole weight of his body depending from them. He was a heavy man, and his sufferings were acute. Whilst in this position the Commissioners looked on, pressing the suffering man with questions, but receiving no reply they left him, and for the next hour the wretched priest hung suspended by his tortured wrists. He fainted several times from the anguish; later in the afternoon Sir William Waad returned and again tried to obtain some confession from Gerard, but when nothing could be wrung from him, Waad turned on his heel in a rage, crying, “Hang thou then, till you rot.” Raleigh’s description of the Lieutenant of the Tower as “that beast Waad” had certainly some justification. When the tolling of the bell in the Bell Tower gave the signal that the fortress would be closed, the Commissioners were obliged to leave the Tower, and the poor, tortured, half-dead priest was taken down, and, scarcely able to crawl, was led back to his prison in the Salt Tower. On the following day Gerard was again taken to the Lieutenant’s Lodging, where Waad informed him that he had been with “Master Secretary Cecil,” who knew for a fact that Father Gerard had been mixed up with other plotters in schemes against Elizabeth’s life, and that more details would have to be given by him on this matter. Again Gerard refused to say anything that could compromise others, upon which Waad summoned a terrible personage, the chief superintendent of the torturers of the prison, to whom Sir William said, “I deliver this man into your hands. You are to wrack him twice a day until such time as he chooses to confess.” Thereupon, says Father Gerard, they went down again to the torture chamber with the same solemnity as on the previous day, and he was again subjected to the torture of the gauntlets, made additionally painful from the swollen state of his hands and wrists. He swooned repeatedly, and was revived with some difficulty. All through these hours of agony he refused to give one name, or to make any kind of confession of guilt, and Waad swore and raged in vain. As long, Gerard declared, as he lived he would say nothing. For the third time he was tortured and hung up by the wrists. But when Waad at length saw the futility of torturing him to death he ordered him to be taken back to his prison, whence, as we shall see, he effected his escape.