The crowd pressed closer about the roped-off space, and among them was Bess Lukens. As she caught Dicky’s eyes, he gave her a glance of recognition, but forbore to speak or bow, or in any way indicate that he knew her. But poor Bess cried out loudly,—
“God bless and help thee, Mr. Egremont!”
“I trust He will,” answered Dicky, simply.
The people who frequented executions liked to have their excitement spun out, and the best part of the show was to them the last words of the condemned. No officers of the law would have dared to balk a London mob of the pleasure of hearing a victim in his own defence; and so, when a ribald voice shouted out, “Come now, Master Jesuit, tell us how you come to be here,” an instant hush fell upon the assembled multitudes.
“My friends,” said Dicky,—his voice ever the sweetest and clearest, with something in it of the freshness of the larks and blackbirds at Egremont,—“I came here because it was my duty. I will not say how I came.”
At this, the woman who had rebuked Bess’s tormentor suddenly burst into tears and interrupted him by crying out,—
“It was a shame to send thee here, poor boy.”
“I was not sent,” said Dicky; “it was by favor that I came. Every Englishman in the Society of Jesus wished to come in my place. This is our native country, and we love her, although she persecutes us. And I call God to witness, and you, His creatures, to believe that I die joyfully for my King, James Stuart, and for my religion. I was offered my life if I would abjure both, but no true man can barter his honor and his conscience for his life. I ask those of you who have mercy in your hearts to pray of God that I be delivered of my sins, and also, as no man of the Society of Jesus who has fallen under the executioner’s hand has died other than as a man and a Jesuit should die, so pray that an Egremont be not the first to do otherwise. For although at this hour I am about to face the great God before whom gentle and simple are alike, yet I would not die unworthy of my ancestors. And if it be a sin to think of such things at such a time, I humbly ask pardon of God for that, along with my other offences. I pardon all those who have brought me to this, as I hope to be pardoned, and I thank God that after much tribulation His grace has enabled me to say that from my heart.”
As Dicky finished speaking, there was a silence, a silence that was like that of the grave, among all those vast multitudes of people who filled the open space, choked the streets, and made the roofs and windows black with humanity. And in the midst of it the hangman, dressed in red, appeared upon the scaffold so strangely and quickly that he seemed like a spectre. As soon as Dicky saw this scarlet-clad and masked figure, he walked steadily up the rickety steps of the gallows and turned to have his hands untied. This the hangman did, and then went through the usual form of asking pardon of the condemned.
“I pardon thee freely, my friend,” replied Dicky, “and give thee the only thing I have left which will be of service to thee.”