but this is an ill
look-out! So many of us took off all of a blow belike--"

"Have there been more arrests, then, at Staplehurst? Be my brethren
taken?"

"Not as I knows of: but a lot of us was catched up all to oncet--Nichol
White, ironmonger, and mine hostess of the White Hart, and Emmet Wilson,
and Collet Pardue's man, and Fishwick, the flesher, and me. Eh, but you
may give thanks you've left no childre behind you! There's my two poor
little maids, that I don't so much as know what's come of 'em, or if
they've got a bite to eat these hard times! Lack-a-daisy-me! but why
they wanted to take a poor widow from her bits of childre, it do beat
me, it do!"

"I am sorry for Collet Pardue," said Alice gravely. "But for your
maids, Sens, I am sure you may take your heart to you. The neighbours
should be safe to see they lack not, be sure."

"I haven't got no heart to take, Mistress Benden--never a whit, believe
me. Look you, Mistress Final she had 'em when poor Benedick departed:
and now she's took herself. Eh, deary me! but I cannot stay me from
weeping when I think on my poor Benedick. He was that staunch, he'd
sure ha' been took if he'd ha' lived! It makes my heart fair sore to
think on't!"

"Nay, Sens, that is rather a cause for thanksgiving."

"You always was one for thanksgiving, Mistress Benden."

"Surely; I were an ingrate else."

"Well, I may be a nigrate too, though I wis not what it be without 'tis
a blackamoor, and I'm not that any way, as I knows: but look you, good
Mistress, that's what I alway wasn't. 'Tis all well and good for them
as can to sing psalms in dens o' lions; but I'm alway looking for to be
ate up. I can't do it, and that's flat."

"The Lord can shut the lions' mouths, Sens."

"Very good, Mistress; but how am I to know as they be shut?"

"`They that trust in the Lord shall not want any good thing.'" A sudden
moan escaped Alice's lips just after she had said this, the result of an
attempt to move slightly. Sens Bradbridge was on her knees beside her
in a moment.

"Why, my dear heart, how's this, now? Be you sick, or what's took you?"

"I was kept nine weeks, Sens, on foul straw, with never a shift of
clothes, and no meat save bread and water, the which has brought me to
this pass, being so lame of rheumatic pains that I cannot scarce move
without moaning."

"Did ever man hear the like! Didn't you trust in the Lord, then,
Mistress, an't like you?--or be soft beds a