Standing farther out in the open, away from the entrance, she heard the faint thud of a man's feet on the sod, and fainter yet, and fainter still. Then silence, with only the sounds of the river, the sigh of the water among the rushes, the occasional hoot of an owl, the slight swish of the wind on the grass and among the trees, and the movement of some belated creature wandering from his lair in search of food.
The sense of loneliness disturbed her. To be here, in the meadow, with the black river on one hand, the stretch of dark country on the other, and, where the watchmen were on the city wall, some challenge coming, making the loneliness seem the greater.
The feeling sent her to her knees, crouching lower and lower; but another thought swept through her mind. A man of God was being hunted. The hunter of heretics was after him. Her lover was on the path, seeking to save him. Could she not pray? Was not that the recourse for anyone in need?
She rose from the crouching posture until she was fairly on her knees, and with her hands clasped, she prayed for the hunted one. She thought it no shame to pray that the hunters should be undone, that they might fall on some stumbling stone and be broken. She prayed that Herman might speed well on his errand of warning.
How long she prayed she did not know. There was no reckoning of time in those moments of pleading, for the thing that mattered was, that the prayer should be heard by Him who sat on the Mercy Seat.
She got up from her knees and moved slowly towards the entrance, for she must go home. But her courage failed, just as it had done before. She crept into the place in something like desperation, lit the lantern, and essayed to go forward.
She went haltingly, her heart beating wildly. She could hear the sound of its throbbing. Then, to her alarm, something came like a cry through the silence—a cry that must be from those still lips away to her left.
She held up her lantern high, so that the light should the better lessen the darkness, but it showed her that grim forbidding heap on the cavern floor.
What was there to fear? she asked; yet she knew it to be the dread of the intangible which was so overwhelming, following on the strain of so much anxiety when Cochlaeus was searching her father's house, and after that the further mental tension of watching for Tyndale's escape when he appeared to be hemmed in with danger. To her excited imagination, after such a day, the cavern was peopled with horrors. Her mind was under compulsion to think of the dead bodies close by her—to conjure up a story of unspeakable suffering, isolation, hunger, deadly fear, and the terror of the coming of the tormentors.
She thought of this while standing in the open space, one hand holding the lantern high, the other on her bosom to still the wild beating of her heart. Then came the sound of voices, and a cry which was like a challenge, all coming as a jar to her being.