Thus the prisoner cheered up her attorney, and soon after insisted on his going home to bed; for she saw he was worn out by his exertions.
And now she was alone.
All was silent.
A few short hours, and she was to be tried for her life: tried, not by the All-wise Judge, but by fallible men, and under a system most unfavorable to the accused.
Worse than all this, she was a Papist; and, as ill-luck would have it, since her imprisonment an alarm had been raised that the Pretender meditated another invasion. This report had set jurists very much against all the Romanists in the country, and had already perverted justice in one or two cases, especially in the North.
Mrs. Gaunt knew all this, and trembled at the peril to come.
She spent the early part of the night in studying her defence. Then she laid it quite aside, and prayed long and fervently. Towards morning she fell asleep from exhaustion.
When she awoke, Mrs. Houseman was sitting by her bedside, looking at her, and crying.
They were soon clasped in each other's arms, condoling.
But presently Houseman came, and took his wife away rather angrily.