whether we die, we die unto the Lord. Therefore whether we live or whether we die we are the Lord's." The words were scarcely uttered before the sheriff attempted some interruption; but silence being regained, the young priest continued, craving of the "most clement God and Father of Mercies," forgiveness "for all things wherein I may have offended since my infancy. Then, as regards the Queen (to whom I have never done nor wished any evil), I have daily prayed for her, and now with all my heart do pray, that from His great mercy . . . He may grant that she may use the ample gifts and endowments wherewith He hath endowed her to the immortal glory of His name, the prosperity of the whole nation, and the eternal welfare of her soul and body. For my most miserable and with all tears to be pitied country, I pray the light of truth whereby, the darkness of ignorance being dispelled, it may learn in and above all things to praise God, and seek its eternal good in the right way."
There is a quite superlative pathos in these prayers of the condemned man for the Queen and country which thus repudiated him. Far ahead into the future of England his thoughts were wandering, when suddenly he returned to the awful present. "For what may be done to my body," he cried, "I have no care. But since death, in the admitted cause for which I die, cannot be otherwise than most happy and desirable, I pray the God of all comfort that it may be to me the complete cleansing of my sins, and a real solace and increase of faith to others. For I die because I am a Catholic priest, elected unto the Society of Jesus in my youth; nor has any other thing, during the last three years in which I have been imprisoned, been charged against me. This death, therefore, although it may now seem
