“Want letting out again by and by?” he inquired with grim satire, as Mr Ewring put the coin in his hand.
“If you please, Wastborowe. You’ve no writ to keep me, have you?”
“Haven’t—worse luck! Only wish I had. I’ll set a match to the lot of you with as much pleasure as I’d drink a pot of ale. It’ll never be good world till we’re rid of heretics!”
“There’ll be Satan left then, methinks, and maybe a few rogues and murderers to boot.”
“Never a one as bad as you Lutherans and Gospellers! Get you in. You’ll have to wait my time to come out.”
“Very well,” said Mr Ewring quietly, and went in.
He found Agnes Bongeor seated in a corner of the window recess, with her Bible on her knee; but it was closed, and she looked very miserable.
“Well, my sister, and how is it with you?”
“As ’tis like to be, Master Ewring, with her whom the Lord hath cast forth, and reckons unworthy to do Him a service.”
“Did he so reckon Abraham, then, at the time of the offering up of Isaac? Isaac was not sacrificed: he was turned back from the same. Yet what saith the Lord unto him? ‘Because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thou shalt be blessed, because thou hast obeyed My voice.’ See you, his good will thereto is reckoned as though he had done the thing. ‘The Lord looketh on the heart.’ Doubt thou not, my good sister, but firmly believe, that to thee also faith is counted for righteousness, and the will passeth for the deed, with Him who saith that ‘if thou be Christ’s then art thou Abraham’s seed.’”