excepting my father. "For, good Constance," quoth she, "when a man is blest with a stout heart and cheerful mind, except it be for the sake of others, I pray you what kind of service do you think we render him by delaying the victory he is about to gain, and peradventure depriving him of the long-desired crown of martyrdom? But this good Mr. Watson, who as you well know was a zealous priest and pious missioner, nevertheless, some time after his apprehension and confinement in Bridewell, by force of torments and other miseries of that place, was prevailed upon to deny his faith so far as to go once to the Protestant service--not dragged there by force as some have been, but compelled thereunto by fear of intolerable sufferings, and was then set at liberty. But the poor man did not thus better his condition; for the torments of his mind, looking on himself as an apostate and traitor to the Church, he found to be more insupportable than any sufferings his gaolers put upon him. So, after some miserable weeks, he went to one of the prisons where some other priests were confined for to seek comfort and counsel from them; and, having confessed his fault with great and sincere sorrow, he received absolution, and straightway repaired to that church in Bridewell wherein he had in a manner denied his faith, and before all the people at that time therein assembled, declared himself a Catholic, and willing to go to prison and to death sooner than to join again in Protestant worship. Whereupon he was laid hold of, dragged to prison, and thrown into a dungeon so low and so straight that he could neither stand up in it nor lay himself down at his full length to sleep. They loaded him with irons, and kept him one whole month on bread and water; nor would suffer any one to come near him to comfort or speak with him." "Alas!" I cried, "and is this, then, the place where my father is confined?' "No,", she answered; "after the space of a month Mr. Watson was translated to a lodging at the top of the house, wherein the prisoners are leastways able to stretch their limbs and to see the light; but he having been before prevailed on to yield against his conscience touching that point of going to Protestant worship, no peace is left to him by his persecutors, which never cease to urge on him some sort of conformity to their religion. And, Constance, when a man hath once been weak, what security can there be, albeit I deny not hope, that he shall always after stand firm?" "But by what means," I eagerly asked, '"do you forecast to procure his escape?"