The gaoler now approached her to place the faggots closer, and Banks was reluctantly compelled to retire. From her waist Alice took a white lace which she had tied round it, and handed it to the gaoler, saying, “Keep this, I beseech you, for my brother Roger Hall. It is the last bond I was bound with, except this chain.”
Then the torch was put to the faggots.
“Keep this in memory of me!” reached John Banks, in the clear tones of Alice Benden; and a white cambric handkerchief fluttered above the crowd, and fell into his outstretched hands. (These farewells of Alice Benden are historical.)
And so He led them to the haven where they would be.
“No, not one looked back, who had set his hand to this ploughing!”
There was a hard task yet before John Banks. He had to visit eight houses, and at each to tell his awful tale, to father and mother, brother and sister, son and daughter—in three instances to husband or wife—of the martyrs who had gone home. His first visit was to Seven Roods.
“Well, Jack Banks! I thought you’d been dead and buried!” was Tabitha’s sarcastic intimation that it was some time since she had seen him.
“Ah, Mistress Hall, I could well-nigh wish I had been, before I came to bring you such tidings as I bring to-day.”
Tabitha looked up in his face, instantly dropped the mop in her hand, and came over to where he stood.
“’Tis more than ‘may be,’” she said significantly, “and I reckon ’tis more than ‘must be.’ John Banks, is it done?”