Brave Rose Allen! she lifted her eyes to the face of her insulter, and replied,—“Sir, with that which you call heresy, do I worship my Lord God, I tell you truth.”
“Then I perceive you will burn, gossip, with the rest for company’s sake,” said Mr Tyrrel, making a horrible joke.
“No, sir, not for company’s sake,” said Rose, “but for my Christ’s sake, if so be I be compelled; and I hope in His mercies, if He call me to it, He will enable me to bear it.”
Never did apostle or martyr answer better, nor bear himself more bravely, than this girl! Mr Tyrrel was in the habit of looking with the greatest reverence on certain other young girls, whom he called Saint Agnes, Saint Margaret, and Saint Katherine—girls who had made such answers to Pagan persecutors, twelve hundred years or so before that time: but he could not see that the same scene was being enacted again, and that he was persecuting the Lord Jesus in the person of young Rose Allen. He took the candle from her hand, and she did not resist him. The next minute he was holding her firmly by the wrist, with her hand in the burning flame, watching her face to see what she would do.
She did nothing. Not a scream, not a word, not even a moan, came from the lips of Rose Allen. All that could be seen was that the empty jug which she held in the other hand trembled a little as she stood there.
“Wilt thou not cry?” sneered Tyrrel as he held her,—and he called her some ugly names which I shall not write.
The answer was as calm as it could be. “I have no cause, thank God,” said Rose tranquilly; “but rather to rejoice. You have more cause to weep than I, if you consider the matter well.”
When people set to work to vex you, nothing makes them more angry than to take it quietly, and show no vexation. That is, if they are people with mean minds. If there be any generosity in them, then it is the way to make them see that they are wrong. There was no generosity, nor love of justice, in Edmund Tyrrel. When Rose Allen stood so calmly before him, with her hand on fire, he was neither softened nor ashamed. He burned her till “the sinews began to crack,” and then he let go her hand and pushed her roughly away, calling her all the bad names he could think of while he did so.
“Sir,” was the meek and Christlike response, “have you done what you will do?”
Surely few, even among martyrs, have behaved with more exquisite gentleness than this! The maiden’s hand was cruelly burnt, and her tormentor was adding insult to injury by heaping false and abominable names upon her: and the worst thing she had to say to him was simply to ask whether he wished to torture her any more!