"Every minute is precious that may lead these traitors sooner to their punishment." Earl Douglas stepped to the door and opened it.

Three veiled female figures entered and bowed reverentially.
"Ah," whispered the king, with a cruel smile, as he sank back again into his chair, "they are the three Fates that spin the Howards' thread of life, and will now, it is to be hoped, break it off.

I will furnish them with the scissors for it; and if they are not sharp enough, I will, with my own royal hands, help them to break the thread." "Sire," said Earl Douglas, as, at a sign from him, the three women unveiled themselves--"sire, the wife, the daughter, and the mistress of the Duke of Norfolk have come to accuse him of high treason.

The mother and the sister of the Earl of Surrey are here to charge him with a crime equally worthy of death." "Now verily," exclaimed the king, "it must be a grievous and blasphemous sin which so much exasperates the temper of these noble women, and makes them deaf to the voice of nature!" "It is indeed such a sin," said the Duchess of Norfolk, in a solemn tone; and, approaching a few paces nearer to the king, she continued: "Sire, I accuse the duke, my divorced husband, of high treason and disloyalty to his king.

He has been so bold as to appropriate your own royal coat-of-arms; and on his seal and equipage, and over the entrance of his palace, are displayed the arms of the kings of England." "That is true," said the king, who, now that he was certain of the destruction of the Howards, had regained his calmness and self-possession, and perfectly reassumed the air of a strict, impartial judge.