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Updated: June 4, 2025
The headsman had been aroused by the noise outside his window, and was now looking down into the courtyard. He there perceived a man quite unknown to him clambering up the fence, while the dog was tugging away at him to bring him down. "Ho, there! stop, whoever you are!" he thundered, and mad with rage he seized the musket and took aim at the fugitive. His eyes were wild and bloodshot.
Fox, preaching through his prison- gates or rebuking Oliver Cromwell in the midst of his soldier-court Henry Vane beneath the axe of the headsman; Mary Dyer on the scaffold at Boston; Luther closing his speech at Worms with the sublime emphasis of his "Here stand I; I cannot otherwise; God help me;" William Penn defending the rights of Englishmen from the baledock of the Fleet prison; Clarkson climbing the decks of Liverpool slaveships; Howard penetrating to infected dungeons; meek Sisters of Charity breathing contagion in thronged hospitals, all these, and such as these, now help me to form the loftier ideal of Christian heroism.
The Venetian seemed to have touched the climax of his passion in the mere demonstration of hostility, and gently gathering up his oar gave the countryman the right of way. The courage of the latter rose as the danger passed, and as far as he could be heard, he continued to exult in the wildest excesses of insult: "Ah-heigh! brutal executioner! Ah, hideous headsman!" Da capo.
Only that day six of her noblest citizens had come forth, bearing the keys of the fortress, clad in white shirts, with ropes about their necks, and been rescued from instant death at the hands of the headsman by the prayer of Queen Philippa.
Treason they feel to be their crime; each individual carter feels himself under the ban of confiscation and attainder: his blood is attainted through six generations, and nothing is wanting but the headsman and his axe, the block and the sawdust, to close up the vista of his horrors.
Something was now said of the curse that had alighted on the vessel, in consequence of its patron's intention to embark the headsman. Baptiste trembled to the skin of his crown, and his blood crept with a superstitious awe. "Dost think there can really be aught in this!" he asked, with parched lips and a faltering tongue. All distinction of faith was lost in the general ridicule.
"The whole thing is a lie, a shameless, scandalous calumny! What! my daughter-in-law, Milly, the wife of the headsman of Zeb! Step forth, you scarlet juggler! Produce the marriage certificate which can show that my daughter-in-law, Milly, was ever married to the knacker of Zeb! Your wife, forsooth, you red dog! This gentle, pious creature, who is a veritable angel!
At eight o'clock next morning she entered the hall of execution, having taken leave of the weeping envoy from Scotland, to whom she gave a brief message for her son; took her seat on the scaffold; listened with an air of even cheerful unconcern to the reading of her sentence; solemnly declared her innocence of the charge conveyed in it, and her consolation in the prospect of ultimate justice; rejected the professional services of Richard Fletcher, Dean of Peterborough; lifted up her voice in Latin against his in English prayer; and when he and his fellow-worshippers had fallen duly silent, prayed aloud for the prosperity of her own Church, for Elizabeth, for her son, and for all the enemies whom she had commended over night to the notice of the Spanish invader; then, with no less courage than had marked every hour and every action of her life, received the stroke of death from the wavering hand of the headsman.
"Thou art not less the Beloved and cherished of thine own parent than was my excellent mother of her's!" "Sigismund, thy manner is startling! What wouldst thou say?" "Neufchâtel, and other countries besides Berne, have their privileged! My mother was the only child of the headsman of the first. Thus thou seest, Adelheid, that I boast my quarterings as well as another.
Here, so we were told, countless wretched beings, awaiting the tardy pleasure of the torturer or the headsman, had moldered in damp and filth and pitchy blackness, knowing day from night only by the fact that once in twenty-four hours food would be slipped through a hole in the wall by unseen hands; lying here until oftentimes death or the cruel mercy of madness came upon them before the overworked executioner found time to rack their limbs or lop off their heads.
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