"Work 'll never kill thee, Jack Perkins," replied the verger, with a laugh. "Thou'dst best not get across with Dick o' Dover; he's an ugly customer when he's in the mind." The right reverend prelate to whom allusion was thus unceremoniously made, was already seated on his judgment bench when, at nine o'clock the next morning, Perkins threw open the door of Monday's Hole. "Come forth, Mistress; you're to come afore the Bishop." "You must needs help me up, then, for I cannot walk," said Alice Benden faintly. Perkins seized her by the arm, and dragged her up from the straw on which she was lying. Alice was unable to repress a slight moan. "Let be," she panted; "I will essay to go by myself; only it putteth me to so great pain." With one hand resting on the wall, she crept to the door, and out into the passage beyond. Again Perkins seized her--this time by the shoulder. "You must make better speed than this, Mistress," he said roughly. "Will you keep the Lord Bishop a-waiting?" Partly limping by herself, partly pulled along by Perkins, and at the cost of exquisite suffering, for she was crippled by rheumatism, Alice reached the hall wherein the Bishop sat. He received her in the suavest manner. "Now, my good daughter, I trust your lesson, which it was needful to make sharp, hath been well learned during these weeks ye have had time for meditation. Will you now go home, and go to church, and conform you to the Catholic religion as it now is in England? If you will do this, we will gladly show you all manner of favour; ye shall be our white child, I promise you, and any requests ye may prefer unto us shall have good heed. Consider, I pray you, into what evil case your obstinacy hath hitherto brought you, and how blissful life ye might lead if ye would but renounce your womanish opinions, and be of the number of the Catholics. Now, my daughter, what say you?" Then Alice Benden lifted her head and answered. "I am thoroughly persuaded, by the great extremity that you have already showed me, that you are not of God, neither can your doings be godly; and I see that you seek mine utter destruction. Behold, I pray you, how lame I am of cold taken, and lack of food, in that painful prison wherein I have lain now these nine weary weeks, that I am not able to move without great pain." "You shall find us right different unto you, if you will but conform," replied the Bishop, who, as John Bunyan has it, had "now all besugared his lips." "Find you as it list you, I will have none ado with you!" answered the prisoner sturdily. But at that moment, trying to turn round, the pain was so acute that it brought the tears to her eyes, and a groan of anguish to her lips. The Bishop's brows were compressed. "Take her to West Gate," he said hastily. "Let her be clean kept, and see a physician if she have need."