fled for his life. Yet this was, as I now learnt, the law. But there
still seemed no possibility of any conviction, for who was there to give
witness against her of the chief fact, namely, that she had known the
man she sheltered to be one that had fought against the King? Her house
was open always to those that were in trouble or danger, and no question
asked. There were none of her neighbours that would have spied upon her,
seeing that she had the reputation of a saint among them; and none to
whom she had given her confidence. She had withheld it even from me, nor
could I certainly say that she had the knowledge that was charged
against her. For Windham was out of the way now--on my business, as I
afterwards discovered; and if he had been nigh at hand he would have had
more wisdom than to show himself at this juncture.

When I was taken before the judge, and, terrified as I was, questioned
with so much roughness that I suspected a desire to fright me further,
so that I might say whatever they that questioned me desired, even then
they could, happily, discover nothing that told against my mistress,
because I knew nothing.

In spite of all my confusion and distress, I uttered no word that could
be used against Elizabeth Gaunt.

I saw now her wise and kind care of me, in that she had not put me into
the danger she was in herself. It seemed too that she must escape,
seeing that there was none to give witness against her.

And then the truth came out, that the villain himself, tempted by the
offer of the King to pardon those rebels that should betray their
entertainers, had gone of his own accord and bought his safety at the
cost of her life that had sheltered and fed him.

When the time came that he must give his evidence, the villain stepped
forward with a swaggering impudence that ill-concealed his secret shame,
and swore not only that Elizabeth Gaunt had given him shelter, but
moreover that she had done it knowing who he was and where he came from.
And so she was condemned to death, and, in the strange cruelty of the
law, because she was a woman and adjudged guilty of treason, she must be
burnt alive.

She had no great friends to help her, no money with which to bribe the
wicked court; yet I could not believe that a King who called himself a
Christian--though of that cruel religion that has since hunted so many
thousands of the best men out of France, or tortured them in their homes
there--could abide to let a wo