The bell tolled! And he who had striven for years to pierce the dark mystery of his lineage was to die, and the secret to be impenetrable. What frightful iniquity lay on the head of those who had reft him from his parents' arms, and brought him to a death like this. The hope of his whole life was to discover his parentage, and to assume his own just rank; but how had such a hope been crushed! And he would die, ignorant of the mother at whose breast he hung.
The bell tolled! And when he beheld the crowd, and the armed men, and the tall gibbet, and the open windows, fierce thoughts rushed like furies through his heart. His death-scene was to be a holiday spectacle; he was to be butchered, like the Gladiator of the Colosseum, to make a holiday. O, how he thought of some grim night, of rain and storm and darkness, when the wild bands of Cheviot would burst upon Warkcliff and make it blaze to heaven!
The bell tolled! The shade of Eleanor again! The memory of the gentle being who loved him! His thoughts could not forsake _her_! And how his death would break her heart!
On with the procession! On to the spot of death. Let the bell toll, and the trumpets blow, and the crowd shout. The prisoner was still undaunted. Not all the triumph and the malice of his foes could shake his stern composure.
He sat down in the cart beside the monk, who, with his missal open, was muttering in a low tone, indistinctly heard by the prisoner, but unheeded by him. The hangman sat watching them twain. But the monk was so tall, so darkly cowled, so gaunt, and so repulsive. What he read, or what he muttered, no one knew. He might have been muttering fiendish spells.
The horsemen in front cleared away the crowd before the slowly-rolling cart. The murmuring of the crowd broke out afresh, and men pressed and fought forward, and children were held high up to look at _him_; and women gazed keenly, and, turning to each other, said how handsome he was, and so noble was his look. A sound of pity here and there was drowned in the general noise; the guards called out for open room, and horses pranced and bore back the eager spectators. And swords and spears flashed, and feathers waved and danced, and the cart slowly rolled on, bearing its doomed burden.