When she was not tending the prisoners or waiting on her husband she was praying, this marvellous woman, in whom verily the blood of martyrs must have flowed. She grew gaunter and gaunter, but there came into her face a look of enthusiasm, as if she no longer belonged to this world, but to the heaven of which she spoke.
"If Ann is to see my father alive, I must bring her soon, Mother," said Reginald, on the eighteenth day of the colonel's illness.
"He will not die until the twenty-first," she answered.
On the morning of the twenty-first it was evident that he was sinking, that he would not outlive the day, and so Reginald went for Ann and brought her to the prison. He had told her something of their mother's doings, but it was difficult for anyone who did not see it to know what that prison life was, and Ann was spared the horror. In the cell where her father lay dying everything was spotless. There was scarcely standing room for two or three people, but the door was left open; there was no fear of his escaping--the spirit would go, but the shell would remain, until it was given back to earth. Man could not hurt him; he need not fear being called to any earthly judgment.
So changed was he that Ann hardly knew him. If she had not known he was her father she would not have recognized him. Looking at her mother, she saw it was the same with her.
"Can this be my father," she thought, "by whose side I have ridden over moor and fell, whose voice was so strong to command, whose presence was so good?" And then, looking at her mother, she grew faint with fear.
There was something unearthly in Mistress Newbolt's appearance: her tall figure had grown supernaturally thin, her hands and face were transparent in their whiteness, her eyes shone with kind and tender pity--they were no longer cold and hard as they had been.
When Ann, overcome with grief, sank by her father's bedside and sobbed out her sorrow, she felt her mother's hand on her head, and her voice whispering:
"Nay, my child, do not weep; it is well with him. We have prayed together, he and I, when God has vouchsafed to him short glimpses of reason, and I am persuaded that his soul is safe in the hands of his Maker. Do not trouble; it is well with him."
Then she knelt beside her and poured forth her soul in prayer. It was wonderful to hear her; she was as one inspired; the words flowed forth in a stream of unbroken eloquence. The warders, the keepers, the women of the prison, all gathered round to hear her, and many having come to mock, remained to pray. Throughout the day this went on.