“Good even, friend,” replied Alice; “and may our Saviour Christ one day say to thee, ‘Inasmuch’!”
Yes, she would be warm enough by-and-by. There should be no more pain nor toil, no more tears nor terrors, whither she was going. The King’s “Well done, good and faithful servant!” would mark the entrance on a new life from which the former things had passed away.
She lay there alone till the evening, when the gaoler’s man brought her supper. It consisted of a flat cake of bread, a bundle of small onions, and a pint of weak ale. As he set it down, he said—“There’ll be company for you to-morrow.”
“I thank you for showing it to me,” said Alice courteously; “pray you, who is it?”
“’Tis a woman from somewhere down your way,” he answered, as he went out; “but her name I know not.”
Alice’s hopes sprang up. She felt cheered by the prospect of the company of any human creature, after her long lonely imprisonment; and it would be a comfort to have somebody who would help her to turn on her bed, which, unaided, it gave her acute pain to do. Beside, there was great reason to expect that her new companion would be a fellow-witness for the truth. Alice earnestly hoped that they would not—whether out of intended torture or mere carelessness—place a criminal with her. Deep down in her heart, almost unacknowledged to herself, lay a further hope. If it should be Rachel Potkin!
Of the apprehension of the batch of prisoners from Staplehurst Alice had heard nothing. She had therefore no reason to imagine that the woman “from somewhere down her way” was likely to be a personal friend. The south-western quarter of Kent was rather too large an area to rouse expectations of that kind.
It was growing dusk on the following evening before the “company” arrived. Alice had sung her evening Psalms—a cheering custom which she had kept up through all the changes and sufferings of her imprisonment—and was beginning to feel rather drowsy when the sound of footsteps roused her, stopping at her door.
“Now, Mistress! here you be!” said the not unpleasant voice of the Castle gaoler.
“Eh, deary me!” answered another voice, which struck Alice’s ear as not altogether strange.