The Collected Works of D. K. Broster. D. K. Broster

being public, was a spectacle, and a free spectacle to boot; moreover, to-day’s was a special occasion, not a mere hanging for coining, or murder, or a six-shilling theft. Of those there were plenty, with a dozen or more turned off at a time; but Tyburn had not seen an execution for high treason for many years, the Jacobite rebels from Carlisle having all met their deaths on Kennington Common.

      And Ewen Cameron, as he sat in Mr. Falconar’s clothes in the shut carriage, which, with some difficulty at the last, had brought him to Tyburn a little before noon, was appalled at the density and magnitude of the crowd, and almost more at the noise proceeding from it.

      Mr. Falconar had only agreed to the substitution with many tergiversations and much misgiving. He was afraid that he was turning his back upon his duty; he was afraid that the fraud might be discovered by one of the Tower officials, if the coach appointed to take him to Tyburn had to follow in its slow course the sledge on which the condemned Jacobite would be drawn there, a transit which would begin at ten and take a couple of hours or more. But while Ewen was closeted with the clergyman there had come a message from the Deputy-Sheriff of Middlesex, in charge of the execution, to say that, owing to the crowds which were anticipated on the morrow, the carriage was to fetch Mr. Falconar from his house at a later hour, and to go to Tyburn by a less frequented route. So Ewen did not follow Archibald Cameron in his sorry and yet perhaps triumphal procession through the streets of London.

      But he was come now, by a less protracted pilgrimage, to the same heart-quelling goal; and he was come there first. He had not alighted nor even looked out. There was a sheriff’s man on the box beside the driver who would tell him, he said, at what moment his services would be required.

      “Till then I should advise your reverence to stay quietly in the carriage,” he was remarking now. “There’s nothing to be gained by standing about, unless you’d wish to get used to the sight of the gallows, and seeing as you ain’t in parson’s dress, some mightn’t know you was the parson.”

      “I will stay in the coach,” said Ewen.

      “You haven’t never attended a criminal here before, sir, I should suppose?”

      “No.” That was true, too, of the man whom he was impersonating.

      The good-natured underling went away from the step, but came back a moment later. “No sign of ’em,” he reported. “The prisoner’s long in coming, but that we expected, the streets being so thick with people. But we hear he’s had a very quiet journey, no abuse and nothing thrown, indeed some folk in tears.”

      “Thank God for that,” said Ewen; and the sheriff’s officer removed himself.

      Faces surged past the windows, faces young and old, stupid, excited, curious or grave. Some looked in; once a drunken man tried the handle of the door; and the babel of sound went on, like an evil sea. Ewen sat back in the corner and wondered, as he had wondered nearly all night, whether he had undertaken more than he had strength for. He tried to pray, for himself as well as Archie, and could not. Not only was yesterday evening’s rebellion back upon him in all its force, but in addition he was beset by a paralysing and most horrible sensation which he had never known in his life. He seemed himself to be standing on the edge of some vast battlement, about to be pushed off into naked, empty, yawning space that went down and down for ever, blackness upon blackness. In this nothingness there was no God, no force of any kind, not even an evil force . . . certainly there was no God, or He could not allow what was going to take place here, when a life like Archibald Cameron’s would be flung into that void, and those other lives twined with his wantonly maimed. Of what use to be brave, loyal, kind and faithful—of what use to be pure in heart, when there was no God to grant the promised vision, no God to see? Archie was going to be butchered . . . to what end?

      A louder hum, swelling to a roar, and penetrating the shut windows as if they had been paper, warned him that the prisoner’s cortège was at last in sight. And as it seemed to be the only way of summoning up that composure which he would soon so desperately need, Ewen tried, as his cousin had yesterday suggested to him, to imagine that it was he who was facing this tearing of soul from body. The attempt did steady him, and by the time—it was a good deal longer than he expected—that the sheriff’s man appeared at the window again he was tolerably sure of himself. And he had the comfort of knowing that Archie—unless he had undergone a great change since yesterday—was not a prey to this numbing horror.

      “The Doctor’s just gone up into the cart, sir, so now, if you please . . .”

      And with that Ewen stepped out from the coach into the brilliant sunshine and the clamour of thousands of voices and the sight of the gaunt erection almost above his head and of the cart with a drooping-necked horse standing beneath it. In the cart, with his arms tied to his sides above the elbows, stood Archie . . . and another figure. It was then about half-past twelve.

      “You go up them steps, sir, at the back of the cart,” said the sheriff’s man, pointing. “Way there, if you please, for the clergyman!” he shouted in a stentorian voice. “Make way there, good people!”

      There was already a lane, but half-closed up. It opened a little as an excited murmur of “Here’s the parson!” surged along it; showed a disposition to close again as several voices cried, “That’s no parson!” but opened again as others asseverated, “ ’Tis a Roman Catholic priest—or a Presbyterian—let him pass!” And the speakers good-naturedly pressed themselves and their neighbours back to make sufficient space.

      Ewen made his way to the steps. They were awkward to mount; and when he reached the last two there was Archie, in what would have been the most natural way in the world had his arms been free trying to extend a hand to him.

      “So you are come!” he said, and the warmth of greeting in his voice and the smile he gave him was payment enough to Ewen for what he still had to go through.

      Doctor Cameron was newly attired for his death, smarter than Ardroy had often seen him, in a new wig, a light-coloured coat, scarlet waistcoat and breeches, and white silk stockings. Ewen looked at him with a mute question in his eyes.

      “I am very well,” said his cousin serenely, “save that I am a little fatigued with my journey. But, blessed be God, I am now come to the end of it. This is a kind of new birthday to me, and there are many more witnesses than there were at my first.”

      Still rather dizzily, Ewen looked round at the sight which he was never to forget—the sea of lifted faces, indistinguishable from their mere number, the thousands of heads all turned in the same direction, the countless eyes all fixed upon this one spot. There was even a tall wooden erection to seat the better class. Near the cart in which he now stood with Archie were two or three mounted officials, one of whom was having trouble with his spirited horse; not far away was the low wheelless sledge on which the Doctor had made his journey, the hangman sitting in front of him with a naked knife; each of its four horses had a plume upon its head. And on a small scaffold nearer still, its thin flame orange and wavering in the sunny breeze, burnt a little fire. Ewen knew its purpose. By it was a long block, an axe, and a great knife. Archibald Cameron’s glance rested on them at the same moment with an unconcern which was the more astonishing in that it contained not the slightest trace of bravado.

      At this juncture the gentleman on the restive horse tried to attract Ewen’s attention in order to say something to him, but the noise of the multitude made it impossible for his words to be heard, though he beckoned in an authoritative manner for silence; he then tried to bring his horse nearer, but it would not obey. The rider thereupon dismounted and came to the side of the cart.

      “I wished but to ask, sir,” he began courteously, looking up at Ewen, “—the Reverend Mr. Falconar, is it not?—how long you are like to be over your office?”

      But it was Archibald Cameron who answered—to save him embarrassment, Ewen was sure. “I require but very little time, sir; for it is but disagreeable being here, and I am as impatient to be gone as you are.”

      “Believe me, I am not at all impatient, Doctor Cameron,” replied the gentleman, with much consideration in his tone. “I will see to it that you have as much time allowed you