"What is the matter, child, do you need me?" he cried.
Barbara's face was pale in the moonlight, her eyes gleamed strangely and she clutched his arm with desperate eagerness.
"Surely something can be done to save them all," she cried confusedly. "It cannot be impossible."
"What mean you, child?"
"Why, here are fifty brave men, at most but half a dozen guards. Can we not break prison, rush the door, devise some mode of escape? 'Tis intolerable to sit here in idleness while the lives of all these are at stake. 'Tis monstrous. Sure, something can be done!"
"Peace, child," he answered sternly; "you know nought of the matter. We be fifty to six, 'tis true, but those six are armed and behind them are many more. If the door were passed we could not escape the town, or if perchance we won from the town where could we hide? The royal troops are everywhere. 'Twere but a hopeless venture which must cost the lives of all."
"Yet, sure, 'twere better to venture some effort than to sit thus helplessly awaiting their fate," she pleaded impatiently.
"Ah! Mistress Barbara, you have yet to learn that the highest courage may lie in such waiting. And I charge you, child, say nought of this to the men. They are nerved now to meet their fate, I will not have them distressed by false hopes. You have played your part well to-day, your place is with yon poor children. Go to them now, and leave these men to me."
Unaccustomed though she was to contradiction, Barbara was yet too strongly awed by his air of command to disobey. Reluctantly she turned away and with a glance of hopeless pity at the sleepers around her, passed beyond the partition and again took her place beside the weary children.
So the long night hours passed slowly away and the first morning of the Bloody Assize of Taunton grew rosy in the east.