"Eh dear, Mistress Hall, I could cut my tongue in leches [slices] that it ever spake a word as didn't please you!" cried the grateful Collet, though Tabitha had spoken a multitude of words which were by no means pleasing to her. "And we'll all pray God bless you when we're on our knees to-night, and all your folks belike. And I _will_ essay to keep the lads better-way, though in very deed I don't know how," concluded she, as Tabitha rose, well pleased, patted Charity on the head, told Beatrice to be a good maid and help her mother, and in a mood divided between gratification and grim plans for giving Mr Benden the due reward of his deeds, set out on her walk home. CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN. COMPANY IN DISTRESS. "Now then, stir up, Mistress Benden! You are to be shifted to the Castle." Alice Benden looked up as the keeper approached her with that news. The words sounded rough, but the tone was not unkind. There was even a slight tinge of pity in it. What that transfer meant, both the keeper and the prisoner knew. It was the preparatory step to a sentence of death. All hope for this world died out of the heart of Alice Benden. No more possibility of reconciliation and forgiveness for Edward!--no more loving counsels to Christabel--no more comforting visits from Roger. Instead of them, one awful hour of scarcely imaginable anguish, and then, from His seat on the right hand of God, Christ would rise to receive His faithful witness--the Tree of Life would shade her, and the Water of Life would refresh her, and no more would the sun light upon her, nor any heat: she should be comforted for evermore. The better hope was to be made way for by the extinction of the lower. She lifted up her heart unto the Lord, and said silently within herself the ancient Christian formula of the early Church-- "Amen, Lord Christ!--so let it be." In a chair, for she was too crippled to walk, Alice was carried by two of the gaoler's men outside the Cathedral precincts. She had not been in the open air for a month. They carried her out eastwards, across Burgate Street (which dates from the days of King Ethelred), down by the city wall, past Saint George's Gate and the Grey Friars, up Sheepshank's Lane, and so to the old Norman Castle, the keep of which is the third largest of Norman keeps in England, and is now, to the glory of all the Huns and Vandals, converted into a gasometer! In the barbican sat several prisoners in chains, begging their bread. But Alice was borne past this, and up the north-east staircase, from the walls of which looked out at her verses of the Psalms in Hebrew--silent, yet eloquent witnesses of the dispersion and suffering of Judah--and into a small chamber, where she was laid down on a rude bed, merely a frame with sacking and a couple of blankets upon it. "Nights be cold yet," said the more humane of her two bearers. "The poor soul 'll suffer here, I'm feared."