But this evening Northam is in a stir.  The pebble ridge is thundering far below, as it thundered years ago:  but Northam is noisy enough without the rolling of the surge.  The tower is rocking with the pealing bells:  the people are all in the streets shouting and singing round bonfires.  They are burning the pope in effigy, drinking to the queen’s health, and “So perish all her enemies!” The hills are red with bonfires in every village; and far away, the bells of Bideford are answering the bells of Northam, as they answered them seven years ago, when Amyas returned from sailing round the world.  For this day has come the news that Mary Queen of Scots is beheaded in Fotheringay; and all England, like a dreamer who shakes off some hideous nightmare, has leapt up in one tremendous shout of jubilation, as the terror and the danger of seventeen anxious years is lifted from its heart for ever.

Yes, she is gone, to answer at a higher tribunal than that of the Estates of England, for all the noble English blood which has been poured out for her; for all the noble English hearts whom she has tempted into treachery, rebellion, and murder.  Elizabeth’s own words have been fulfilled at last, after years of long-suffering,—­

     “The daughter of debate,
       That discord aye doth sow,
     Hath reap’d no gain where former rule
       Hath taught still peace to grow.”

And now she can do evil no more.  Murder and adultery, the heart which knew no forgiveness, the tongue which could not speak truth even for its own interest, have past and are perhaps atoned for; and her fair face hangs a pitiful dream in the memory even of those who knew that either she, or England, must perish.

     “Nothing is left of her
     Now, but pure womanly.”

And Mrs. Leigh, Protestant as she is, breathes a prayer, that the Lord may have mercy on that soul, as “clear as diamond, and as hard,” as she said of herself.  That last scene, too, before the fatal block—­it could not be altogether acting.  Mrs. Leigh had learned many a priceless lesson in the last seven years; might not Mary Stuart have learned something in seventeen?  And Mrs. Leigh had been a courtier, and knew, as far as a chaste Englishwoman could know (which even in those coarser days was not very much), of that godless style of French court profligacy in which poor Mary had had her youthful training, amid the Medicis, and the Guises, and Cardinal Lorraine; and she shuddered, and sighed to herself”—­To whom little is given, of them shall little be required!” But still the bells pealed on and would not cease.

What was that which answered them from afar out of the fast darkening twilight?  A flash, and then the thunder of a gun at sea.

Mrs. Leigh stopped.  The flash was right outside the bar.  A ship in distress it could not be.  The wind was light and westerly.  It was a high spring-tide, as evening floods are always there.  What could it be?  Another flash, another gun.  The noisy folks of Northam were hushed at once, and all hurried into the churchyard which looks down on the broad flats and the river.