'She is a good maid, and a brave one,' she said to herself as she passed down the street between the timbered houses to her home. 'Yet she is not as other children are. For all the comfort she is to my dear father, I would fain think of her safe once more at home with her sisters. Right glad I am that her mother hath sent me word by a sure hand to say she cometh speedily to see of her condition for herself. The Governor is right, the gaol is no place for a child, nor is it the life for her either. She liveth too much in her own thoughts. This morn on our walk to the farm when I asked her wherefore she seemed sorrowful, she replied that she was "troubled in her conscience, that she thought she would not live long and wanted satisfaction from the Lord as to whither her soul would go if she were to die." Yet she sprang after those flowers as gaily as her sisters, and she saith always that she is well. If only she may keep as she is until her mother shall come.' Shaking her head, and full of anxious thoughts, the kind woman pursued her homeward way. Over the cobble-stones and between the timbered houses with their steep gables and high-thatched roofs, she passed through the city until she came to her own small dwelling, William Dewsbury's home, where his daughter lived alone, and awaited his return. II Have you ever seen a ray of golden sunshine steal in through the thick blinds, heavy shutters and close curtains that try to shut it out? People may pull down the blinds and shut the shutters and draw the curtains, and do their very best to keep the sunshine away. Yet, sooner or later, a ray always manages to get in somehow. It dances through a chink here or a hole there, or steals along the floor, till at last it arrives, a radiant messenger, in the darkened room to say that a whole world of light is waiting outside. In spite of her sombre garments, Mary Samm was like such a ray of sunshine as she stole into Warwick prison. No doors, bolts or bars could keep her out; and the gaoler seemed to know it, as he preceded her down the damp, dark, stone passages: the walls and floor oozing moisture, and the ceiling blackened by the smoke of many candles. The prisons of England were all foul, ill-smelling, fever-haunted places at that time; and hardly any of them was worse than Warwick gaol.