"God bless you!" he answered in a hoarse voice, and opened the door of the room in which his sweet lady was sitting in her bed, with a wild look in her pale blue eyes, which seemed to start out of her head.
"Sir," I heard her say, as he approached, "what hath befallen the poor man you would not dismiss?"
I took a light in my hand, so that she should see my face, and smiled on her with such good cheer, as God in his mercy gave me strength to do even amidst the two-fold anguish of that moment. Then she threw her arms convulsively round my neck, and her pale lips gasped the same question as before. I bent over her, and said, "Trouble yourself no longer, dear lady, touching this prisoner. He is safe (in God's keeping, I added, internally). He is where he is carefully tended (by God's angels, I mentally subjoined); he hath no occasion to be afraid (for God is his strength), and I warrant you is as peaceful as his nearest friends should wish him to be."
"Is this the truth?" she murmured in my ear.
"Yea," I said, "the truth, the very truth," and kissed her flushed cheek. Then feeing like to faint, I went away, Sir Hammond leading me to my chamber, for I could scarce stand.
"God bless you!" he again said, when he left me, and I think he was weeping.
I fell into a heavy, albeit troubled, sleep, and when I awoke it was broad daylight. When the waiting-maid came in, she told me Lady l'Estrange had been delivered of a dead child and Sir Hammond was almost beside himself with grief. My lady's mind had wandered ever since; but she was more tranquil than in the night. Soon after he sent to ask if he could see me, and I went down to him into the parlor. A more changed man, in a few hours, I ween, could not be seen, than this poor gentleman. He spoke not of his lady; but briefly told me he had sent in the night a messenger on horseback to Norwich, with a letter to the governor of the gaol, praying him to show as much consideration, and allow so much liberty as should consist with prudence, to the prisoner in his custody, sent by him a few hours before, for that he had discovered him not to be one of the common sort, nor a lewd person, albeit by his own confession amenable to the laws, and escaped from another prison. Then he added, that if I wished to go to Norwich, and visit this prisoner, he would give me a letter to the governor, and one to a lady, who would conveniently harbor me for a while in that city, and his coach should take me there, or he would lend me a horse and a servant to attend me. I answered, I should be glad to go, and then said somewhat of his lady, hoping she should now do well. He made no reply for a moment, and then only said,
"God knoweth! she is not like herself at the present."
The words she had so mournfully [{168}] spoken the day before came into my mind, "I shall never be like myself again, and there shall be no more joy in this house." And, methinks, they did haunt him also.
I sat for some time by her bedside that day. She seemed not ill at ease, but there was something changed in her aspect, and her words when she spoke had no sense or connection. And here I will set down, before I relate the events which followed my brief sojourn under their roof, what I have heard touching the sequel of Sir Hammond and his wife's lives.