Marjorie glanced at him.  She did not understand.

“I mean Catholic prisoners, mistress.  There are several of them in ward here, but we had better speak no names.”

He wheeled suddenly as they came out into the open and moved to the left.

“There is Tower Hill, mistress; where my lord Cardinal Fisher died, and Thomas More.”

Marjorie stopped short.  But there was nothing great to see—­only a rising ground, empty and bare, with a few trimmed trees; the ground was without grass; a few cobbled paths crossed this way and that.

“And here is the gateway,” he said, “whence they come out to glory....  And there on the right” (he swept his arm towards the river) “you may see, if you are fortunate, other criminals called pirates, hung there till they be covered by three tides.”

* * * * *

Still standing there, with Mr. Babington and his sister come up from behind, he began to relate the names of this tower and of that, in the great tumbled mass of buildings surmounted by the high keep.  But Marjorie paid no great attention except with an effort:  she was brooding rather on the amazing significance of all that she saw.  It was under this gateway that the martyrs came; it was from those windows in that tower which the priest had named just now, that they had looked....  And this was Father Campion.  She turned and watched him as he talked.  He was dressed as he had been dressed last night, but with a small cloak thrown over his shoulders; he gesticulated freely and easily, pointing out this and that; now and again his eyes met hers, and there was nothing but a grave merriment in them....  Only once or twice his voice softened, as he spoke of those great ones that had shown Catholics how both to die and live.

“And now,” he said, “with your permission I will go and speak to the guard, and see if we may have entrance.”

* * * * *

It was almost with terror that she saw him go—­a solitary man, with a price on his head, straight up to those whose business it was to catch him—­armed men, as she could see—­she could even see the quilted jacks they wore—­who, it may be, had talked of him in the guard-room only last night.  But his air was so assured and so magnificent that even she began to understand how complete such a disguise might be; and she watched him speaking with the officer with a touch even of his own humour in her heart.  Indeed, there was some truth in the charge of Jesuitry, after all!

Then the figure turned and beckoned, and they went forward.

II

A certain horror, in spite of herself and her company, fell on her as she passed beneath the solid stone vaulting, passed along beneath the towering wall, turned up from the water-gate, and came out into the wide court round which the Lieutenant’s lodgings, the little church, and the enormous White Tower itself are grouped.  There was a space, not enclosed in any way, but situated within a web of paths, not far from the church, that caught her attention.  She stood looking at it.