Maurice Hewlett

“ A thin stream of persons of both sexes was maintained throughout the day, to and from the buttery. Mendicant friars came to fill their sleeves with broken victuals, widows and orphans, half-pay soldiers, murderers out of work, and other unfortunates, received their daily sustenance from the overflowings of the kitchens. But for them the Castle had been like a house of the dead, for the whole Castle world was gone to see the slaying of the Anabaptists. Captain Brazenhead watched them now darkly from his corner, chewing a bitter cud and reading a soured judgment upon every comer. ”

“ Captain Brazenhead's invention, for lack of nourishment, wilted and faltered out. His eloquence, for that turn, was not ready at call—or it may be that his patron had heard it all before. When the best is said, the variations you can play upon the death of a man are very few, at least in Europe. They say that the Chinese have contrived better, or perhaps they have greater vitality to work upon. However that may be, Captain Brazenhead stopped—and there followed a painful pause. ”

“ Then and there the halberdiers deprived him of his weapons; he was led to the door and turned loose into the corridors of the Castle, a disgraced man. I must observe upon this that it is not given to the most generous to foresee the full scope of their magnanimity; or it may well be that our Brazenhead's circle of acquaintance was too wide or his instincts too warm to make him a tolerable murderer. For if every murderer were to fight with the man he proposed to slay, the work would never be done ”