CHAPTER XIV.
THE SACRED PURPLE It was a bright morning a few days later when the Bishop of Rochester suffered on Tower Hill.
Chris was there early, and took up his position at the outskirts of the little crowd, facing towards the Tower itself; and for a couple of hours watched the shadows creep round the piles of masonry, and the light deepen and mellow between him and the great mass of the White Tower a few hundred yards away.

There was a large crowd there a good while before nine o'clock, and Chris found himself at the hour no longer on the outskirts but in the centre of the people.
He had served the Prior's mass at six o'clock, and had obtained leave from him the night before to be present at the execution; but the Prior himself had given no suggestion of coming.

Chris had begun to see that his superior was going through a conflict, and that he wished to spare himself any further motives of terror; he began too to understand that the visit to the bishop had had the effect of strengthening the Prior's courage, whatever had been the intention on the part of the authorities in allowing him to go.

He was still wondering why Ralph had lent himself to the scheme; but had not dared to press his superior further.
* * * * * The bishop had made a magnificent speech at his trial, and had protested with an extraordinary pathos, that called out a demonstration from the crowd in court, against Master Rich's betrayal of his confidence.

Under promise of the King that nothing that he said to his friend should be used against him, the bishop had shown his mind in a private conversation on the subject of the Supremacy Act, and now this had been brought against him by Rich himself at the trial.
"Seeing it pleased the King's Highness," said the bishop, "to send to me thus secretly to know my poor advice and opinion, which I most gladly was, and ever will be, ready to offer to him when so commanded, methinks it very hard to allow the same as sufficient testimony against me, to prove me guilty of high treason." Rich excused himself by affirming that he said or did nothing more than what the King commanded him to do; and the trial ended by the bishop's condemnation.
* * * * * As Chris waited by the scaffold he prayed almost incessantly.