o care were such mere
insignificant pin-pricks that it was impossible even to notice them now.

So the Friday evening, and the sleepless night, wore away: and the
Saturday morning broke.

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Note 1. These questions, in point of wording, are very much condensed.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

THE CROWN OF LIFE.

"Welcome scaffold for precious Christ."

_Reverend James Renwick_.

It so happened that the 9th of February, to which the prisoners had been
remanded, was not a day devoted to baking, brewing, cleaning, or
washing, in the household of Mistress Winter; who, not in complimentary
language, gave Agnes her permission to spend half-an-hour in the
Chapter-house.

Already, before the sitting of the Consistory, Bishop Bonner had sent,
first for Pygot and Knight, and afterwards for Tomkins and Hunter, into
his "great chamber," and asked them if they were willing to recant.
They all refused, "not being persuaded in their consciences" that the
doctrines propounded to them were true. These four were then brought
into the Consistory, and a paper was offered them to sign, containing a
synopsis of their belief. The statement appears to have been a fair and
true definition of their creed, for all four attached their names to it
without hesitation.

It was just at this time that Agnes entered the Chapter-house, as these
prisoners were being removed, and John Laurence was brought forward.

"Pray you, come hither to me," said Bonner, with a show of friendliness,
due to his prisoner's priesthood.

Calmly enough, to outward show, Agnes looked on his face as he came up
to the Bishop,--that face so plain and uncomely to other eyes, so dear
and beautiful to hers. There would be time enough for weeping
hereafter, in that dreary future, of which the vista seemed to stretch
before her in illimitable desert: but now she could afford to lose no
tone of that yoke, no moment of the time permitted for gazing on that
face. She might never see him again until they should stand together
before the throne of God.

John Laurence answered every question asked of him calmly and firmly.
He admitted that he was a priest, eighteen years in orders, and sometime
a Black Friar professed. But Bonner's spies had told him more than
this; and it was not his wont to omit the wringing of a heretic's heart.

"Art thou not ensured unto a maid in way of marriage?"

"I am so, my