postles will I leave them."

"The man hath no reason in him!" said Kingston. "Have him away
likewise."

"Please your Worships," said the gaoler, "here be all that are indicted.
There is but one left, and she was presented only for not attending at
mass nor confession."

"Bring her up!"

And Elizabeth Foulkes stepped up to the table, and courtesied to the
representatives of the Queen.

"What is thy name?"

"Elizabeth Foulkes."

"How old art thou?"

"Twenty years."

"Art thou a wife?"

Girls commonly married then younger than they do now. The usual length
of human life was shorter: people who reached sixty were looked upon as
we now regard those of eighty, and a man of seventy was considered much
as one of ninety or more would be at the present time.

"Nay, I am a maid," said Elizabeth.

The word maid was only just beginning to be used instead of servant; it
generally meant an unmarried woman.

"What is thy calling?"

"I am servant to Master Nicholas Clere, clothier, of Balcon Lane."

"Art Colchester-born?"

"I was born at Stoke Nayland, in Suffolk."

"And wherefore dost thou not come to mass?"

"Because I hold the Sacrament of the altar to be but bread and wine,
which may not be worshipped under peril of idolatry."

"Well, and why comest not to confession?"

"Because no priest hath power to remit sins."

"Hang 'em! they are all in a story!" said the chief Commissioner,
wrathfully. "But she's a well-favoured maid, this: it were verily pity
to burn her, if we could win her to recant."

What a poor, weak, mean thing human nature is! The men who had no pity
for the white hair of Agnes Silverside, or the calm courage of John
Johnson, or even the helpless innocence of little Cissy: such things as
these did not touch them at all--these very men were anxious to save
Elizabeth Foulkes, not because she was good, but because she was
beautiful.

It is a sad, sad blunder, which people often make, to set beauty above
goodness. Some very wicked things have been done in this world, simply
by thinking too much of beauty. Admiration is a good thing in its
proper place; but a great deal of mischief comes when it gets into the
wrong one. Whenever you admire a bad man because he is clever, or a
foolish woman because she is pretty, you are letting admiration get out
of his place. If we had lived when the Lord Jesus was upon earth, we
should not have found people admiring Him. He was not beautiful. "Hi