'Poor Grandfather, that was a hard pass for thee,' murmured Mary, smoothing the old man's coat sleeve. 'But did not a great joy follow close upon thy trouble?' she prompted, 'a great joy on a moonshine night, not a dark one like this?'
William Dewsbury's countenance kindled with fresh life and vigour. 'Yea, my child,' he answered, 'light did indeed illuminate us on that same moonshine night of which thou speakest, when we went, my Ann and I, to Lieutenant Roper's house to hear the Stranger preach. All our lives we had both been seeking, but now by the Power of the Lord, the time was come for us to find. We went to hear a Stranger. But no stranger was George Fox. Rather did we recognise him, from the first moment of that meeting, as the own brother of our souls. Up and down the length and breadth of the land I had journeyed, seeking for deliverance and for truth. Now, in my own county of Yorkshire, my deliverer was found. It was not alone the words he spake, though they were forcible and convincing, much more it was the irresistible Power of the Lord breathing through him that brought us to our knees. All men could see as they looked upon his goodly form, not then marred by cruel imprisonments and sufferings, that he was a man among ten thousand. But to me he was also a chosen vessel of the Lord; for power spoke through him, yea, to my very heart. I have told thee, Mary, of my long searchings after truth, and of those of my dear wife. There was no need to mention one of them to George. With the first words he spake it was clear to me that he knew them all, he could read our necessities like an open book. Well hath it been said of him that "he was a man of God endued with a clear and wonderful depth; a discerner of other men's spirits, and very much a master of his own." Our hearts clave unto him at once. We could scarcely restrain ourselves until the meeting should be at an end, to disclose our inmost souls unto him. Then at last, when all the multitude had departed, we watched Friend George set out on his homeward way. We followed him in all haste, my Ann and I, until we came up with him in a lonely field. The moon shone full on his face and on our seeking faces, revealing us to each other. At first he gazed on us as if we were strangers. For all we had longed ardently to tell him, we found no words. Only a long time we stood together silently, we three, with the dumb kine slumbering around us in the dewy meadows; we three, revealed to one another in the full light. Then at last we confessed to the Truth before him, and from him we received Truth again. There is no Scripture to warrant the sprinkling of a few drops of water on the face of a child and calling that Baptism; but there is a Scripture for being baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire. That true essential Baptism did our spirits receive in very deed that night from God's own minister of His Everlasting Gospel.
'Thus, then and there, were we three knit together in soul; and the Lord's Power was over all.'
The old man's voice died away into silence. His thoughts were far off in the past. The loneliness of the prison was forgotten, little Mary knew that her evening's task was done. Very gently she flitted from his side, arranged his bed for the night, and then slipped, noiselessly as a shadow, into her little inner cell, scarcely larger than a cupboard. Here she undressed in the darkness and laid herself down on her little straw pallet on the floor. But she had brought the precious windflowers with her. 'They are so white, they will be like company through the dark night hours,' she said to herself, placing the glass close to her bed. Presently, through a tiny slit of window high up in the prison wall, one sentinel star looked down into the narrow cell. It peeped in upon a small white figure straight and slim amid the surrounding blackness of the cell, with 'dear, long, lean, little arms lying out on the counterpane'; but Mary's eyes were wide open, her ears were listening intently for her grandfather's softest call.
Gradually the ray of starlight crept up the prison wall and disappeared; soon other stars one by one looked in at the narrow window and passed upwards also on their high steep pathways; gradually the eyelids closed, and the long dark lashes lay upon the white cheeks. Drowsily little Mary thought to herself, 'I am glad my mother will soon be here, but it hath been a very happy evening. Truly I am glad I came to help dear grandfather, and to be his little prison maid.'
Only one starry white windflower, clasped tight in her fingers through the long night hours, gradually drooped and died.