The grey wood ashes had drifted by now far across the ground, but the heavy logs still lay there, charred and smoked, that had blazed beneath the cauldron where the limbs of the monks had been seethed; and he stared down at them, numbed and fascinated by the horror of the thought.

His mind, now in a violent reaction, seemed unable to cope with its own knowledge, crushed beneath its weight; and his friend heard him repeating with a low monotonous insistence-- "Here it was," he said, "here; here was the cauldron; it was here." Then he turned and looked into his friend's eyes.
"It was here," he said; "are you sure it was here ?" The other made an impatient sound.
"Where else ?" he said sharply.

"Come, brother, you have seen enough." * * * * * He told him more details as they walked home; as to what each had said, and how each had borne himself.

Father Reynolds, the Syon monk, had looked gaily about him, it seemed, as he walked up from the hurdle; the secular priest had turned pale and shut his eyes more than once; the three Carthusian priors had been unmoved throughout, showing neither carelessness nor fear; Prior Houghton's arm had been taken off to the London Charterhouse as a terror to the others; their heads, he had heard, were on London Bridge.
Chris walked slowly as he listened, holding tight under his scapular the scrap of rough white cloth he had picked up near the cauldron, drinking in every detail, and painting it into the mental picture that was forming in his mind; but there was much more in the picture than the other guessed.
The priest was a plain man, with a talent for the practical, and knew nothing of the vision that the young monk beside him was seeing--of the air about the gallows crowded with the angels of the Agony and Passion, waiting to bear off the straggling souls in their tender experienced hands; of the celestial faces looking down, the scarred and glorious arms stretched out in welcome; of Mary with her mother's eyes, and her virgins about her--all ring above ring in deepening splendour up to the white blinding light above, where the Everlasting Trinity lay poised in love and glory to receive and crown the stalwart soldiers of God..