tree-trunks as he went, drew near to this grim object.

The bough was perhaps twenty feet above the ground, and the poor fellow

had been drawn up so high by his executioners that his boots swung clear

above Dick's reach; and as his hood had been drawn over his face, it was

impossible to recognise the man.

Dick looked about him right and left; and at last he perceived that the

other end of the cord had been made fast to the trunk of a little

hawthorn which grew, thick with blossom, under the lofty arcade of the

oak. With his dagger, which alone remained to him of all his arms, young

Shelton severed the rope, and instantly, with a dead thump, the corpse

fell in a heap upon the ground.

Dick raised the hood; it was Throgmorton, Sir Daniel's messenger. He had

not gone far upon his errand. A paper, which had apparently escaped the

notice of the men of the Black Arrow, stuck from the bosom of his

doublet, and Dick, pulling it forth, found it was Sir Daniel's letter to

Lord Wensleydale.

"Come," thought he, "if the world changes yet again, I may have here the

wherewithal to shame Sir Daniel--nay, and perchance to bring him to the

block."

And he put the paper in his own bosom, said a prayer over the dead man,

and set forth again through the woods.

The Black Arrow