is on his shoulder, shaking him up; he opens his eyes, and the broad sunlight is in the room, and a large face of real flesh and blood, but full of human sunshine, is bent over him. It is Job, of whom the reader will know more.

"Master Richard, it is late, and the horses are ready."

"Never mind, Job. We won't hurry, and I shall go over to the Bridge before we start."

To the Bridge he goes, drawn by the strange fascination of the face on Traitor's Tower, into which he looks for the last time. There it stands again, benignant as ever, coming back every day to the manly bloom and comeliness of which age had bereft it; sending down its benediction on the passersby, who still throng thither to receive it.* But while he is looking up, the "King's Barge" is announced as in sight; and there it is! coming up the river

* The following is the curious account of this prodigy, as given by Hall, the biographer of Fisher: —

"The head, being parboiled, was prickt upon a pole, and set on high upon London Bridge, among the rest of the holy Carthusians' heads that suffered death lately before him; and here I cannot omit to declare to you the miraculous sight of this head, which, after it had stood up the space of fourteen days upon the bridge, could not be perceived to waste or consume, neither for the weather which was then very hot, neither for the parboiling in hot water, but grew daily fresher and fresher, so that in his life he never looked so well; for his cheeks being beautiful with a comely red, the face looked as though it had beholden the people in passing by, and would have spoken to them. Wherefore the people coming daily to see this strange sight, the passage over the bridge was so stopped with the going and coming, that almost neither cart nor horse could pass; and therefore at the end of fourteen days the executioner was ordered to throw down the head in the night-time into the Thames."

from Greenwich, silken banners and streamers floating over it as it rows up the "silent highway."

In these times the Thames was the principal means of communication between the different parts of London, and between London and the suburbs up and down the river. The finest streets in the city were those which ran along the water's side, where a long row of splendid mansions and palaces had arisen, and where, instead of his stables, his horses and carriages, every nobleman had his barge and bargemen, his wharf and wherry. The sight of the Thames of a summer's day was therefore wonderfully lively and picturesque, bearing my lords and ladies from house to house, to the afternoon's dance or masquerade, the bargemen perhaps keeping time with their oars to music and song. This too was the royal road from Greenwich to Whitehall, and the royal barge was known at sight by its streamers and decorations. Traitor's Tower

stood on one of the piers that supported the drawbridge, so that passengers up and down the river might have all the benefit of the spectacle, and sail right under the blackening visages above.

And

The royal barge is nearing the bridge, and the crowd of gazers who are choking the street at Traitor's Tower have their attention drawn away, and the sea of heads is instantly uncovered. here for the first time the hero of our narrative gets sight of the "Supreme Head of the Church," to whose features Holbein himself found it pretty hard to give a flattering touch. The "Head of the Church" sits looking out upon the water, receiving

with slight notice the homage from the boats that glide by. Passing through the draw, he looks up at the seven days' wonder which has kept the whole city astir for a week or more, and on account of which the Privy Council have once been summoned together. His dull, red, rheumy eye, his cheeks bloated and hanging, and blotched with scrofula, reveal nothing of superstitious wonder, but enough of lust, beastliness, and gluttony to make one marvel how there could be so much room for the demon where

there was so much of the brute. The " new Herodias was there also, invested with all the interest of recent maternity.

She who had urged on the execution of Fisher, and to whom his head was sent that she might feast her eyes upon it before it was set up on the bridge,she who was still plying all her woman's arts for the destruction of More, and keeping the devil from sleeping in the mind of the glutton King,—she is there too, stretching her "little neck" out of the silk awning and the tapestry of starred blue and purple, so blended as to represent the sky at dawn; and she is looking up with a woman's curiosity to see the new London sight on the bridge.

She looks, laughs, curves her little neck round, and ogles with her maids, in whose arms dangles the lion-hearted Queen Bess that is to be; she plies the King with jokes and pleasantries, among which was this, that Fisher had kept watch up there so long that his old eyes were getting dim, and that More had better come and take his place. The King looks complacently upon his queen, laughs wanton

out of his rheumy eyes, and shakes merrily his "huge parcel of dropsies,” — and so the barge passes on. Poor Anne! you have a heart of marble under a pretty face, and older and wiser people than you are slow to learn that those who evoke the demon in others may be devoured by the demon! Sayer looks long after the royal barge, the swans swimming in flocks before it, till the sound of the oars and the music to which they keep time have died away, and only a red-gleaming speck is seen nearing the wherry-stairs of Whitehall. "And this is the new Pope!" he said to himself, and hastened back to St. Clement's Inn.

CHAPTER IX.

TO COLCHESTER.

JOB was waiting with the horses. They mount and pass Temple Bar into Fleet Street, thence down the Old Bailey, cross over Smithfield Square, turn and look at the spot in the centre burnt black with roasted Lollards, shudder and cross over into Bishopgate Street, and the city is soon behind them, with its death's-heads, and, what is worse, its visages of unmerciful men. Its distracting noises have all died in the distance; it is folded into its own fog and smoke, its blood and sin, and the broad, open fields of Essex are before them, fanned with buxom air.

It is time the reader knew something of Job. Retiring as he is in his habits, we shall not get on any longer without his company, which will be found of considerable importance to at least three individuals. Job was an heirloom in the Sayer family, and now filled the offices of porter and chief butler, besides being superintendent of things in general. Where there was any matter that required great carefulness and perfect trust, Job was always