“I’m here,” said John Thurston, rising from the pallet-bed where he lay in a corner of the little scullery. “You’d best take me, if you want me.”
“Take them all!” cried Tyrrel. “They be all in one tale, be sure.”
“Were you at mass this last Sunday?” said the Bailiff to Thurston. He was not quite so bad as Tyrrel.
“No, that was I not,” answered Thurston firmly.
“Wherefore?”
“Because I will not worship any save God Almighty.”
“Why, who else would we have you to worship?”
“Nay, it’s not who else, it’s what else. You would have me to worship stocks and stones, that cannot hear nor see; and cakes of bread that the baker made overnight in his oven. I’ve as big a throat as other men, yet can I not swallow so great a notion as that the baker made Him that made the baker.”
“Of a truth, thou art a naughty heretic!” said the Bailiff; “and I must needs carry thee hence with the rest. But where is thy wife?”
Ay, where was Margaret? Nobody had seen her since the Bailiff knocked at the door. He ordered his men to search for her; but she had hidden herself so well that some time passed before she could be found. At length, with much laughter, one of the Bailiff’s men dragged her out of a wall-closet, where she crouched hidden behind an old box. Then the Bailiff shouted for Alice Mount and Rose to be brought down, and proceeded to tie his prisoners together, two and two,—Rose contriving to slip back, so that she should be marched behind her parents.