drawing-room—it would make a jolly good axe-head—and it's not too stiff. . . ."
The photograph was unobtrusively borrowed, and put to novel uses. A low stool made an excellent block, and a rug did for the scaffold. Orders, squeaked from a back window, evoked Mowlah, who was ordered to bring a handful of hay. Little did he realise that it was for the seemly absorption of the blood of a Queen as it flowed red upon the gallows of Fotheringay Castle.
"It's straw in the picture," observed the President, "but I don't suppose Mary would have kicked up a row if they'd brought hay."
"No," agreed the Vice, "and she wouldn't care if there were a meth—afterwards."
"Besides, it wasn't her castle and furniture," added the President. "It was Elizabeth's. She'd make all the mess she could."
The block, axe, and straw-strewn scaffold being ready, the dramatis persona made their personal preparations.
The doomed Queen erected an ill-constructed "bun" of her hair on the top of her head, for
