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 214 at the time, he claimed that he was "fetched out of bed by a troup of horse," and carried against his will to the scaffold. Also that he was paid thirty pounds, all in half-crowns, for the work; and had "an orange stuck full of cloves, and a handkerchief out of the King's pocket." The orange he sold for ten shillings in Rosemary Lane.

The shadow that falls across the headsman's path deepens in horror when we contemplate the scaffolds of Charles, of Louis, of Marie Antoinette, and of Mary Stuart. The hand that has shed royal blood is stained forever, yet the very magnitude of the offence lends to it a painful and terrible distinction. It is the zenith as well as the nadir of the headsman's history; it is the corner-stone of the impassable barrier which divides the axe and the sword from the hangman's noose, the death of Strafford from the death of Jonathan Wild.

If we turn the page, and look for a moment at the "gallows tree," we find that it has its romantic and its comic side, but the comedy is boisterous, the romance savours of melodrama. For centuries one of the recognized