asking him what he had to say for himself, why sentence of death
should not be passed upon him, being convicted of high treason.

He laughed, and his laugh jarred uncannily upon the deathly stillness
of the court. It was all so grotesque, such a mockery of justice
administered by that wistful-eyed jack-pudding in scarlet, who was
himself a mockery - the venal instrument of a brutally spiteful and
vindictive king. His laughter shocked the austerity of that same
jack-pudding.

"Do you laugh, sirrah, with the rope about your neck, upon the very
threshold of that eternity you are so suddenly to enter into?"

And then Blood took his revenge.

"Faith, it's in better case I am for mirth than your lordship. For
I have this to say before you deliver judgment. Your lordship sees
me - an innocent man whose only offence is that I practised charity
- with a halter round my neck. Your lordship, being the justiciar,
speaks with knowledge of what is to come to me. I, being a physician,
may speak with knowledge of what is to come to your lordship. And I
tell you that I would not now change places with you - that I would
not exchange this halter that you fling about my neck for the stone
that you carry in your body. The death to which you may doom me is
a light pleasantry by contrast with the death to which your lordship
has been doomed by that Great Judge with whose name your lordship
makes so free."

The Lord Chief Justice sat stiffly upright, his face ashen, his lips
twitching, and whilst you might have counted ten there was no sound