Chapter Thirty Two.
“Ready! Ay, Ready!”
It was the evening of the first of August. The prisoners in the Castle, now reduced to four—the Mounts, Rose, and Johnson—had held their Bible-reading and their little evening prayer-meeting, and sat waiting for supper. John and Margaret Thurston, who had been with them until that day, were taken away in the morning to undergo examination, and had not returned. The prisoners had not yet heard when they were to die. They only knew that it would be soon, and might be any day. Yet we are told they remained in their dungeons “with much joy and great comfort, in continual reading and invocating the name of God, ever looking and expecting the happy day of their dissolution.”
We should probably feel more inclined to call it a horrible day. But they called it a happy day. They expected to change their prison for a palace, and their prison bonds for golden harps, and the prison fare for the fruit or the Tree of Life, and the company of scoffers and tormentors for that of Seraphim and Cherubim, and the blessed dead: and above all, to see His Face who had laid down His life for them.
Supper was late that evening. They could hear voices outside, with occasional exclamations of surprise, and now and then a peal of laughter. At length the door was unlocked, and the gaoler’s man came in with four trenchers, piled on each other, on each of which was laid a slice of rye-bread and a piece of cheese. He served out one to each prisoner.
“Want your appetites sharpened?” said he with a sarcastic laugh. “Because, if you do, there’s news for you.”
“Prithee let us hear it, Bartle,” answered Mount, quietly.
“Well, first, writs is come down. Moot Hall prisoners suffer at six to-morrow, on the waste by Lexden Road, and you’ll get your deserving i’ th’ afternoon, in the Castle yard.”