tone. At every word of hers he cried, "Tut, tut!" and shook his head. Aware that Henry must have given these councillors leave to worry her, she felt how vain it was to strive with them. If she appealed at all, she must address the King. Anne rose and left the room. Henry was leaning on a windowsill, watching the humours of a crowd in the courtyard. Anne, retiring to her nursery, took up her infant daughter in her arms. A moment afterwards, the crowd-amongst which chanced to be that Pastor Alesse who had brought Melancthon's treatise to the King-was moved as men are only moved by noble words and gracious scenes. They saw the Queen approaching him. The child was in her arms, and as she neared her lord, they saw her hold the infant out, and make a passionate step towards him. Henry, they could see, was ruffled, though he strove to hide his fury; and the Queen, repulsed, abashed, and broken, seemed to go from him in sorrow with her little child pressed tenderly to her bosom. Alesse lived a long and stormy life; but after five-and-twenty years, when sitting in his Leipsic chair, he still saw, in his mind's eye, the figure of that "holy mother," as he calls her, standing with her innocent baby in the presence of that brutal King.

8. After the council rose, Anne called her servants and prepared to leave for Westminster. No one opposed her going, and the royal barge put off from Greenwich stairs. Another boat, in which were Audley, Norfolk, and other conspirators, started in pursuit of her. Cromwell had the grace to stay

behind. Midway from Greenwich to London Bridge, Audley and Norfolk overtook the royal barge, and in the King's name ordered her to stay her course. Then, going on board, they told the Queen she was their prisoner, taken on a charge of infidelity to the King. Of infidelity towards the King! Anne called on heaven to witness for her innocence, and prayed that God would never pardon her if she were guilty of such sin. Audley replied that it was useless to deny her crimes. The King had proofs enough against her. Smeaton had confessed, he said; adding, with yet more daring wickedness, that Norreys had turned King's evidence and confirmed the musician's words. Pulling up sharply at the Tower stairs, they forced her in a nervous swoon to disembark.

CHAPTER IX.

In the Tower.

1536.

1. TORN from her child by force, deserted by her husband, overwhelmed by false charges, the Queen was flung on the Tower wharf. Kingston was

waiting to receive her at the stairs. This rugged soldier had his orders what to do, for her arrest had been determined by the council several days before. She passed the moat, and turning up Water Lane, came suddenly on the gateway of the Bloody tower. Dropping on her knees before that frowning portal, making it, as Lady Wyat said, “a reverent temple," she exclaimed, "Lord, help me! help me, as I am guiltless of this whereof I am accused!" Then rising from her prayer, she passed into the inner ward. "Shall I go into a dungeon?" Facing her rose the piles in which Offaly and Brereton lay-champions of both parties in this unhappy strife. She was herself of Irish race, and all her days she had been rocked in Irish feuds; yet no suspicion crossed her mind that one of the two heroes of this Irish trouble was to die for her. "Shall I go into a dungeon?"

2. "No, madam," answered Kingston, "you shall go into your lodgings that you lay in at your coronation." Anne was startled. After the brutality of her uncle, she was unprepared for kindness, even of

this meaner sort. A fancy flashed into her dizzy brain: "The King is only doing this to prove me." Looking at the Constable, she said, "It is too good for me," and then she lifted up her face and sighed, "Jesus, have mercy on me!" Kingston led the way into her old apartments, which were still arranged in royal state, with throne, and canopy, and stool, as in the day when she had shone in Henry's eyes the brightest star on earth. A little closet opened on this state apartment, which the Queen had used for her devotions. "Pray you, Master Constable," she entreated, "move the King's Highness that I may have the sacrament in this closet; that I may pray for mercy. I am as clear from the company of man as to sin, as I am clear from you, and I am the King's true wedded wife."

3. Rochford rode up from Greenwich to his London house. No one offered to molest him, nor had George the least suspicion of his danger until after Audley's scene on the river, and the Queen's commitment to the Tower. A resolution was then taken to arrest her brother George, her cousins Weston and Bryan, and her poet laureate Wyat. Bryan, luckily for himself, was in the country; but a messenger was sent to bring him up to town. Weston and Wyat were hurried to the Tower. Some of poor Weston's petulant talk had got abroad, and the lad's nonsense about Norreys going into the Queen's cabinet more for the Queen's sake than for that of Madge, was useful as a weapon to be turned against the groom, should Norreys still hold out. Wyat's arrest was nothing but an act of vengeance on the

part of Suffolk. Norreys, when spoken with again, was true and staunch. "The thing is false," he said; "the Queen is innocent; I have never seen wrong in her.” Henry, in his passion, swept his comrade into a dungeon of the Tower.

4. The women placed in Anne's apartments were neither of her own choice nor of her chamber. Some of them were strangers; most of them were enemies. Mrs. Cousins and Lady Boleyn, two of these women, had a personal grudge against the Queen. "I think it much unkindness in the King to put such about me as I never loved," she sighed. These women had their orders. Mrs. Cousins and Lady Boleyn were to stay with her by day and night: to sit in her apartment, to sleep on her pallet, and to jot down every word she spake. These women entered on their odious task with glee, expecting to receive a great reward. Kingston drew his bed across the Queen's door. Two women occupied an outer room. Mrs. Cousins and Lady Boleyn lay within. Surrounded by these guards and spies, the nervous and distracted lady sank on her couch. The spies were watching her. Dead to all feeling for her lonely lot and her disordered brain, these women noted every act and set down every word for Cromwell's eye and Audley's use. Serving for such rewards as Chancellors and Secretaries of State can give, they threw out hints, they tried to make her talk, they listened through the sleepless night; they pounced on every syllable which legal ingenuity could torture into evidence of guilt.

5. Ere Chapuys went to bed that night, he gave