ther her soul would go if she were to die." Yet she
sprang after those flowers as gaily as her sisters, and she saith
always that she is well. If only she may keep as she is until her
mother shall come.'

Shaking her head, and full of anxious thoughts, the kind woman pursued
her homeward way. Over the cobble-stones and between the timbered
houses with their steep gables and high-thatched roofs, she passed
through the city until she came to her own small dwelling, William
Dewsbury's home, where his daughter lived alone, and awaited his
return.

II

Have you ever seen a ray of golden sunshine steal in through the thick
blinds, heavy shutters and close curtains that try to shut it out?
People may pull down the blinds and shut the shutters and draw the
curtains, and do their very best to keep the sunshine away. Yet,
sooner or later, a ray always manages to get in somehow. It dances
through a chink here or a hole there, or steals along the floor, till
at last it arrives, a radiant messenger, in the darkened room to say
that a whole world of light is waiting outside.

In spite of her sombre garments, Mary Samm was like such a ray of
sunshine as she stole into Warwick prison. No doors, bolts or bars
could keep her out; and the gaoler seemed to know it, as he preceded
her down the damp, dark, stone passages: the walls and floor oozing
moisture, and the ceiling blackened by the smoke of many candles. The
prisons of England were all foul, ill-smelling, fever-haunted places
at that time; and hardly any of them was worse than Warwick gaol.

William Dewsbury had earned the esteem of his keepers during his
successive imprisonments which lasted altogether for nearly nineteen
years. He was privileged now to lie away from the other criminals, who
were herded together in the main building. He had been given a small
apartment that looked towards the river on the far side of a
courtyard, called the sergeants' ward. There was even a pump in the
centre of this courtyard from whence his granddaughter might fetch him
water daily, and the old man and the child were now privileged to take
exercise together in the fresh air;--a great solace in the weary
monotony of prison life. The gaoler unlocked the door of this
sergeants' ward, and then, putting into Mary's hand the key of her
grandfather's apartment, he retraced his steps to the outer gate. Mary
sped across the cobble-stones of the courtyard with joyful haste,
unlocked the door, set