invisible strings were stretched across the kitchen where
she was sure to fall over them,--in order, as Dorothy tenderly
intimated, to turn her thoughts from the painful anxiety which she must
be enduring. It seemed to Agnes as if night and certainty would never
come. Yet how could she wish it, when she felt so sure what the awful
certainty would be? The hours wore on; the dark came at last; and when
the night had fairly set in, Cicely Marvell's soft tap was heard on
Mistress Winter's door. Agnes opened it herself. Dorothy had indeed
rushed to do it, but fortunately Agnes contrived to reach it before her.
It was evident that Cicely was loth to tell her terrible news, though
Dorothy begged her, over Agnes' shoulder, to relieve her heartrending
suspense. Was it from one faint throb of womanly feeling in her usually
hard heart, that Mistress Winter, in sharp tones, summoned Dorothy
within, and left Agnes to hear the news alone?

"Speak, Mistress Marvell," said Agnes, in that preternaturally calm
manner which she had worn from the first. "It is death."

"Ay, poor Agnes! It is death by fire."

"And in the meantime?--"

"They lie in Newgate. He shall be taken to Colchester to suffer, being
he was there born, the 28th of this March."

"Then he dieth on the 29th?"

"E'en so."

He was to die on the very day they had fixed for their marriage. To
_what_ had Agnes been looking forward so joyfully during those past
weary months?

When the prisoners had reappeared before Bonner in the afternoon, they
were asked, for the last time, if they would recant their heresy.

"We are not heretics," they replied; "the contrary is heresy."

Then, on these six contumacious men, was passed in due form the sentence
of death.

Each was to suffer at the place of his birth: Thomas Tomkins in
Smithfield, on the 16th of March; William Hunter, the poor
apprentice-boy, at Brentford, on the twenty-sixth; William Pygot at
Braintree, and Stephen Knight at Maldon, on the twenty-eighth.

It was only one interview with the prisoner for which Agnes dared to
hope, and she waited for it until the day before he was to be degraded
from his priestly office. Mistress Winter's momentary sympathy, if it
had existed, was over, and she grumbled a good deal when Agnes preferred
her request for a few hours' leave of absence. But she granted the boon
at last.

"It will be the last time," said Agnes quietly.

No more meetings at Paul's Cross,--n