They had set up the scaffold in Winchester's old market place. Half the population of the city had gathered there and many from the Forest too. The Prides were there. So were the two Furzey brothers, although the Prides entirely ignored them.

She looked pale and smaller than the crowd had imagined when they brought her out. Her hair, just a few sad strands of red remaining in the grey, had been scooped up on top of her head and tied, leaving her bare neck looking thin and rather scrawny. There was to be no address on this occasion for she had not wished to make one.

The fact was that Alice was now in something of a daze. A few minutes before, with a large trooper on each side towering above her, she had known great fear. But now, like an animal which, at the end of a long chase, knows that it can do no more, and that the desperate game is up, she had yielded finally to resignation. She felt limp and numb, and she wanted only to get it over.

She scarcely saw the faces as they led her out. She didn't see Betty, nor the Prides, nor the Furzeys. She didn't see, some way off, Thomas Penruddock with a sad, grave face, sitting on his horse.

She saw the block as they helped her kneel down beside it, but scarcely took note of the axe. She saw the wooden boards, clumsily nailed, just below the block as they stretched out her neck upon it. And she realized that there would be a mighty bite, a blow that would crunch through her neck bones as the axe fell.

The axe fell and she was conscious of the huge thud.

It must have been a summer day, as they walked along the lane and turned down the track into the wood. The sun was slanting through the light-green lattice of the canopy; the saplings spread their leaves like trails of vapour through the underwood; birds were singing. She was so pleased that she had started to skip; and her father was holding her hand.

ALBION PARK

1794

There could be no doubt, no doubt of it at all: great things were afoot in Lymington nowadays - indeed, in the whole Forest.

'And when you think,' said Mrs Grockleton to her husband, 'when you think of Mr Morant at Brockenhurst Park with I don't know how many thousands a year and Mr Drummond now at Cadland, and Miss ...' For a moment her memory failed her.

'Miss Albion?'

'Why, yes, to be sure, Miss Albion, who must have a large inheritance ...'