were Robert of Merton, William FitzStephen, and Edward Grim, who stood by him, vainly imploring him to flee. Only one concession he made to their entreaties. He would go to the choir, and there, before the high altar, the holiest place in the Cathedral, with all dignity make an end.

It was as he was thus ascending the steps from the transept that the knights burst into the sacred building. Bewildered at first by the almost complete darkness, they could only shout at random, "Where is Thomas Becket, traitor to the King?" No answer. Then, falling over a monk, came an oath, from Fitz Urse, and the question, "Where is the Archbishop? Becket himself answered, and descending again into the transept, confronted them. He stood in front of what was then the the Chapel of St. Benedict, and calmly asked, "Reginald, why do you come into my church. armed?" For answer Fitz Urse thrust a carpenter's axe he had found against his breast, and with a savage oath declared, "You shall die: I will tear out your heart!" "Fly!" exclaimed another, not so eager to commit the sin of sacrilege, before which the medieval world recoiled; "Fly! or you are a dead man!" striking him with the flat of his sword, to emphasise the warning.

Then the four united their efforts to drag him from the Cathedral, but without success. Himself a powerful man, he seized Tracy and flung him heavily upon the pavement. Fitz Urse, advancing upon him with a drawn sword, he called by a vile name, adding, “You profligate wretch, you are my man; you have done me fealty; you ought not to touch me." No fear, it will be seen, in all this,

"

losing the last atom of restraint, and yelling "Strike!" aimed a blow with his great, two-handed sword that, had it been better directed, must have smote off the Archbishop's head. As it was, it merely skimmed off his cap. Becket, who must have been momentarily surprised to find himself still alive, then covered his eyes with his hands, and bending his head, was heard to commend his cause and the cause of the Church to God, to St. Denis of France, to St. Alphege and all the saints of the Church. Tracy then dealt a blow, partly intercepted by Grim, whose arm, protecting the Archbishop, was broken by it. By this time blood was trickling down the Archbishop's face. He wiped it away and murmured, "Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit;" and then, falling at a further blow from Tracy, "For the name of Jesus, and for the defence of the Church, I am willing to die." There he lay, and so lying, received a tremendous stroke from Richard le Bret, who accompanied it with the exclamation, "Take this, for love of my lord William, brother of the King!" That stroke not only clove away the upper part of the skull, but the sword itself was broken in two. Vengeance was accomplished.

When the assassins fled from that scene of blood, it was quite dark. They went as they had come, by the cloisters, shouting that they were "King's men," and cursing and stumbling over unfamiliar steps. A servant of the Archdeacon of Sens was sufficiently unfortunate to be wailing for the cruel death of the Archbishop when they passed, and foolish enough to be in their way. They fell over him, and, still heady with that struggle and the lust

of blood, gave him in passing a mailed kick, and so tremendous a sword-thrust that for long afterwards he had sufficient occasion to lament for himself.

It was something of an anti-climax to their murderous passions that they should, as they now did, repair to the Archbishop's Palace and make a burglarious raid upon the gold and silver vessels of the church, and loot from Becket's stables the magnificent horses he kept. With this personal plunder, and with a mass of the Archbishop's documents and papers seized on behalf of the King, they were preparing to depart when the very unusual circumstance in December of a violent thunderstorm set a final scene of horror upon that closing day.

The news fell heavily upon the people of Canterbury, who reverenced Becket far more than did those within the Church who had immediately surrounded him; and the citizens came rushing like an irresistible torrent into the Cathedral as soon as they heard of the sacrilegious deed.

Like the greater number of our cathedrals, this of Canterbury has been greatly altered since that time. It was into a Norman nave that the excited populace thronged-a building that must have closely resembled the still-existing nave of that period at Gloucester, gloomy and dark at the best of times, but on this December evening a well of infinite blackness, faintly illuminated by the distant lights twinkling in the choir and on the high altar. This horror-stricken crowd was only with great difficulty forced back and at last shut out, and it was long before the monks returned to the transept where the Archbishop had fallen before the blows of

the four. There his body lay in the dark, as it had been left, his blood still wet on those cold stones, as Osbert, the chamberlain, entering with a single light, held out at arm's length in that cavern of blackness and unimaginable gloom, steps in it, and, if he be not quite different from other men, shudders and almost drops his glimmering candle when he finds what awful moisture that is in which he has been walking. Osbert alone has ventured to seek his master. Where, then, are the others of his household? In hiding, like those monks who, now that all is still, venture, like rats, to come from their hiding-holes in chapel and triforium, or from secret places contrived for such emergencies in the roof.

The Archbishop lay upon his face, the upper part of his scalp sliced off by that whirling blow of Tracy's, and the contents of his head spilled over the pavement, just as a bowl of liquid might be overset. Osbert, with rare fortitude, replaces that scalp as one might replace a lid, and binding the head, he and the monks between them place the body upon a bier and carry it to the high altar in

the choir.

There were those among the monks who felt small sympathy for Becket. To them he was but a proud worldling whose remarkable preferment to the Primacy had been scandalous, and whose quarrels with the King had been, they thought, dictated more for the advancement of his own personal authority than for sake of a purely impersonal desire to preserve and cherish the rights of the Church. He had been elected Archbishop by desire of the King and against the feeling of the Priory, and they thought he should, in consequence, have been