Since Taylor of Hadleigh was already burnt to ashes, this admission could do him no harm.
The accused persons were then remanded until nine o’clock the next morning, and advised in the meantime to “bethink them what they would do.”
It was Cicely Marvell who told all this in a low voice to Agnes Stone, as they stood together under a tree in the meadow behind Cow Lane.
“Keep a good heart, dear maid!” said Cicely encouragingly. “May be it shall be better than we might fear. ‘The Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.’”
But Agnes shook her head. To such a trial she at least anticipated no other end than death. Too well she knew that, like the Master whose servant John Laurence was, “for envy they had delivered him.”
Perhaps, too, her spirituality was of a higher type than that of Cicely. She recognised that the Lord’s tender mercy lies not in sparing pain to His chosen, but in being with them when they pass through the purifying waters, and bearing them in His arms through the fire which is to consume their earthliness, but not themselves. His is a love which will inflict the pain that is to purify, and tenderly comfort the sufferer as he passes through it.
Agnes hardly knew how she passed that Friday evening. Her usual duties were all done; but she went through them with eyes that saw not, with deafened ears on which Mistress Winter’s abuse fell pointless, for which Dorothy’s sarcasms had no meaning. God was in Heaven, and John Laurence and his persecutors were on earth: beyond this there was to her nobody and nothing. The vexations for which she used to care were such mere insignificant pin-pricks that it was impossible even to notice them now.
So the Friday evening, and the sleepless night, wore away: and the Saturday morning broke.
Note 1. These questions, in point of wording, are very much condensed.