And the martyrs had gone home too. No more should the sun light upon them, nor any heat. The Lamb in the midst of the Throne had led them to living fountains of water, and they were comforted for evermore.
“Who was that young woman that swooned and had to be borne away?” asked a woman in the crowd of another, as they made their way back into the town.
The woman appealed to was Audrey Wastborowe.
“Oh, it was Amy Clere of the Magpie,” said she. “The heat was too much for her, I reckon.”
“Ay, it was downright hot,” said the neighbour.
Something beside the heat had been too much for Amy Clere. The familiar face of Elizabeth Foulkes, with that unearthly smile upon it, had gone right to the girl’s heart. For Amy had a heart, though it had been overlaid by a good deal of rubbish.
The crowd did not disperse far. They were gathered again in the afternoon in the Castle yard, when the Mounts and Johnson and Rose Allen were brought out to die. They came as joyfully as their friends had done, “calling upon the name of God, and exhorting the people earnestly to flee from idolatry.” Once more the cry rose up from the whole crowd,—
“Lord, strengthen them, and comfort them, and pour Thy mercy upon them!”
And the Lord heard and answered. Joyfully, joyfully they went home and the happy company who had stood true, and had been faithful unto death, were all gathered together for ever in the starry halls above.
To two other places the cry penetrated: to Agnes Bongeor weeping in the Moot Hall because she was shut out from that blessed company; and to Margaret Thurston in her “better lodging” in the Castle, who had shut herself out, and had bought life by the denial of her Lord.