The day passed slowly on, and at length, towards six o’clock in the evening, the summons came for Mistress Barbara Winslow to attend court. She was the last prisoner for trial that day. Barbara rose to her feet with alacrity on hearing her name, and throwing on her cloak, made haste to follow her guards. Here at length was something to be done, some change from impotent watching and waiting. Now, at length, she was to meet face to face with these tyrant judges, to whom she might at least speak her thoughts. All concern for her own case, her own danger, had fled, prudence had no place in her thoughts, her mind was filled with a wild hatred of the perpetrators of this barbarous cruelty, with a mad desire to fling defiance at their threats, and to cry aloud to their faces what she, Barbara Winslow, thought of their sentences. Escorted by a file of soldiers she was marched rapidly across the market-square and into the court house. There was no great concourse of people in the streets. The majority of the townsfolk sympathised with the prisoners, but dared not openly show their sympathy lest they, too, be accounted rebels; they deemed it more prudent, therefore, to remain quietly within doors, while such as sought merely to derive sensational amusement from the trial had found places within the crowded court. While Barbara waited in the hall outside the chamber where the court was sitting, a prisoner passed her, hurried along between his guards. He was a young man scarcely twenty years of age, slenderly built, with delicate handsome features, but the look on his face made the girl start back with an exclamation of horror. "In Heaven’s name, what hath befallen him? Who is he?" she gasped. "’Tis young Master Tutchin," answered one of her guards carelessly. "A hard sentence, for sure, ’tis scarce likely he will live to see the end o’t." "What is it?" questioned Barbara in horror. "To be imprisoned seven years, and once a year to be flogged through every market town of Dorset, which by calculation should be a flogging twice a month. Aye, aye, ’tis a hard sentence," he continued, meeting her glance; "but what would you? He is a proved rebel." "Oh! that such devils of judges should go unpunished," was Barbara’s fierce rejoinder. It was with a heart burning with rage that she entered the court. And yet, so strange and uncontrollable are the feelings of women that her first thought, when she found herself face to face with the dreaded chief justice, was one of astonishment and pity.