“Maybe a little of both, old friend. Surely there were four sore weeks when I was shut up in Satan’s prison, no less than in man’s, and I trusted not the Lord as I should have done—”
“Well, forsooth, and no marvel!”
“And as to beds and meat and raiment—well, I suppose they were not good things for me at that time, else should my Father have provided them for me.”
Poor Sens shook her head slowly and sorrowfully.
“Nay, now, Mistress Benden, I can’t climb up there, nohow.—’Tis a brave place where you be, I cast no doubt, but I shall never get up yonder.”
“But you have stood to the truth, Sens?—else should you not have been here.”
“Well, Mistress! I can’t believe black’s white, can I, to get forth o’ trouble?—nor I can’t deny the Lord, by reason ’tisn’t right comfortable to confess Him? But as for comfort—and my poor little maids all alone, wi’ never a penny—and my poor dear heart of a man as they’d ha’ took, sure as eggs is eggs, if so be he’d been there—why, ’tis enough to crush the heart out of any woman. But I can’t speak lies by reason I’m out o’ heart.”
“Well said, true heart! The Lord is God of the valleys, no less than of the hills; and if thou be sooner overwhelmed by the waters than other, He shall either carry thee through the stream, or make the waters lower when thou comest to cross.”
“I would I’d as brave a spirit as yourn, Mistress Benden.”
“Thou hast as good a God, Sens, and as strong a Saviour. And mind thou, ’tis the weak and the lambs that He carries; the strong sheep may walk alongside. ‘He knoweth our frame,’ both of body and soul. Rest thou sure, that if thine heart be true to Him, so long as He sees thou hast need to be borne of Him, He shall not put thee down to stumble by thyself.”