“Are you here for the like cause, friend? I mind your face, methinks, though I spake not to you aforetime.”
“Ay, we row in the same boat,” said the woman with a pleasant smile, “and may as well make us known each to other. My name’s Rachel Potkin, and I come from Chart Magna: I’m a widow, and without children left to me, for which I thank the Lord now, though I’ve fretted o’er it many a time. Strange, isn’t it, we find it so hard to remember that He sees the end from the beginning, and so hard to believe that He is safe to do the best for us?”
“Ay, and yet not strange,” said Alice with a sigh. “Life’s weary work by times.”
“It is so, my dear heart,” answered Rachel, laying a sympathising hand on Alice’s. “But, bethink you, He’s gone through it. Well, and what’s your name?”
“My name is Alice Benden, from Staplehurst.”
“Are you a widow?”
Had Tabitha been asked that question in the same circumstances, she would not improbably have replied, “No; worse luck!” But Alice, as we have seen, was tender over her husband’s reputation. She only returned a quiet negative. Rachel, whose eyes were keen, and ears ditto, heard something in the tone, and saw something in the eyes, which Alice had no idea was there to see and hear, that made her say to herself, “Ah, poor soul! he’s a bad sort, not a doubt of it.” Aloud she only said,—
“And how long look you to be here—have you any notion?”
Prisoners in our milder days are committed to prison for a certain term. In those days there was no fixed limit. A man never knew for a certainty, when he entered the prison, whether he would remain there for ten days or for fifty years. He could only guess from appearances how long it might be likely to be.
“Truly, friend, that know I not. God knoweth.”