So she broke off again, but presently recovered and went on talking. In time of great trouble the mind wanders backwards and forwards, and though one talks still, it is disjointedly. So she went back to the prison.

'The boys have been well, though the prison is full and the air is foul. Yet there hath been as yet no fever, for which they are thankful. They had no money, the soldiers who took them prisoners having robbed them of their money, and indeed stripped them as well to their shirts, telling them that shirts were good enough to be hanged in. Yet the people of Exeter have treated the prisoners with great humanity, bringing them daily food and drink, so that there has been nothing lacking. The time, however, doth hang upon hands in a place where there is nothing to do all day but to think of the past and to dread the future. One poor prisoner I was told had gone distracted with the terror of this thought. Child, every day that I visited my son, while he talked with me, always cheerful and smiling, my mind turned continually to the scaffold and the gibbet.' Then she returned to the old subject from which she could in no way escape. 'I saw the hangman, I saw my son hanging to the shameful tree—oh! my son! my son!—till I could bear it no longer, and would hurry away from the prison and walk about the town over the fields—yea, all night long—to escape the dreadful thought. Oh! to be blessed with such a son and to have him torn from my arms for such a death! If he had been killed upon the field of battle 'twould have been easier to bear. But now he dies daily—he dies a thousand deaths in my mind. My child!'—she turned again to the churchyard—'the rooks are cawing in their nests; the sparrows and the robins hop among the graves; the dead hear nothing; all their troubles are over, all their sins are forgiven.'

I comforted her as well as I could. Indeed, I understood not at all what she meant, thinking that perhaps all her trouble had caused her to be in that frame of mind when a woman doth not know whether to laugh or to cry. And then, taking my basket, I sallied forth to provide the day's provisions for my prisoners.

'Barnaby,' I said, when he came to the wicket, 'I have good news for thee.'

'What good news? That I am to be flogged once a year in every market-town in Somersetshire, as will happen to young Tutchin?'

'No, no—not that kind of news, but freedom, Brother, hope for freedom.'

He laughed. 'Who is to give us freedom?'

'Benjamin hath found a way for the enlargement of all.'

'Ben Boscorel? What! will he stir finger for the sake of anybody? Then, Sis, if I remember Ben aright, there will be something for himself. But if it is upon Ben that we are to rely we are truly well sped. On Ben, quotha!'

'My Brother, he told me so himself.'