But the shores they reached, poor things! wuz up a steep the livin’ has never climbed.
We see on the walls of these prisons words they carved in the hours they waited execution. Arthur Poole, who tried to help Mary up onto the English throne, left these words—
“I. H. S. A passage perillus makethe a port pleasant—1568.—A. Poole.”
I wonder jest how he felt when he writ them words—jest what a heartache and heartbreak spoke through ’em. I dare presoom to say he thought too much of Mary, but I can’t help that now; it’s three hundred years too late.
There wuz elaborate carvin’s of flowers, leaves, figgers, etc., and the names of their unhappy designers, who seemin’ly tried to light up their captivity by formin’ the shapes of the flowers they would never see a-growin’ in freedom agin—poseys without perfume, cold stun rosys, indeed.
And then in one room wuz jest that one word:
“Jane.”
That touched me more’n the more elaborate ones. That wuz spozed to mean Lady Jane Grey, and wuz carved by her pardner, Lord Dudley. It seemed as if Love wuz a-callin’ out to her—“Jane!” jest that one cry acrost the silences of death and eternity.
Then there wuz the autograph of Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, who had his head cut off in 1572 for wantin’ to marry Mary Queen of Scots.
What a havock that woman did make amongst the men!