was that young woman that swooned and had to be borne away?" asked
a woman in the crowd of another, as they made their way back into the
town.

The woman appealed to was Audrey Wastborowe.

"Oh, it was Amy Clere of the Magpie," said she. "The heat was too much
for her, I reckon."

"Ay, it was downright hot," said the neighbour.

Something beside the heat had been too much for Amy Clere. The familiar
face of Elizabeth Foulkes, with that unearthly smile upon it, had gone
right to the girl's heart. For Amy had a heart, though it had been
overlaid by a good deal of rubbish.

The crowd did not disperse far. They were gathered again in the
afternoon in the Castle yard, when the Mounts and Johnson and Rose Allen
were brought out to die. They came as joyfully as their friends had
done, "calling upon the name of God, and exhorting the people earnestly
to flee from idolatry." Once more the cry rose up from the whole
crowd,--

"Lord, strengthen them, and comfort them, and pour Thy mercy upon them!"

And the Lord heard and answered. Joyfully, joyfully they went home and
the happy company who had stood true, and had been faithful unto death,
were all gathered together for ever in the starry halls above.

To two other places the cry penetrated: to Agnes Bongeor weeping in the
Moot Hall because she was shut out from that blessed company; and to
Margaret Thurston in her "better lodging" in the Castle, who had shut
herself out, and had bought life by the denial of her Lord.

The time is not far-off when we too shall be asked to choose between
these two alternatives. Not, perhaps, between earthly life and death
(though it may come to that): but between faith and unfaithfulness,
between Christ and idols, between the love that will give up all and the
self-love that will endure nothing. Which shall it be with you? Will
you add your voice to the side which tamely yields the priceless
treasures purchased for us by these noble men and women at this awful
cost? or will you meet the Romanising enemy with a firm front, and a
shout of "No fellowship with idols!--no surrender of the liberty which
our fathers bought with their heart's blood!" God grant you grace to
choose the last!

When Mrs Clere reached the Magpie, she went up to Amy's room, and found
her lying on the bed with her face turned to the wall.

"Amy! what ailed thee, my maid?--art better now?"

"Mother, we're all wrong!"

"Dear heart, what does the child me