“In the name of heaven, good friends, allow me to find shelter for this lady within the church,” exclaimed Lord Dudley, as pale and fearfully agitated he turned in despair from the bolted door which he had reached in spite of the pikes presented by the self-constituted guard, “I am a friend to the people, and this lady”— “Is his sister,” interrupted the attendant hastily, well knowing that her true title would harden the men’s hearts against her, though she was almost lifeless, and only kept from sinking at their feet by the strong arm of her noble protector. “But, even our church may soon be no place of safety,” said one of the men, “a few minutes and this building where our parents worshipped—where our children were baptised—may be a heap of ruins like those of St. Mary. Our holy altar stones may be made into door steps for the Duke of Somerset’s fine palace—yes, our chancels sacked to yield stones to flag his wine-cellars, while the bones and sacred dust of our fathers are cast into the street, and scattered to the four winds of heaven.” Dudley felt the gentle being, who clung to him for safety, tremble and shrink, as if this angry speech had been levelled at her alone. “I know that the people have suffered some wrong,” he said, in a mild but unsteady voice, for he was painfully agitated, both by his late struggle with the crowd, and the torture which the man’s impetuous speech was inflicting on his gentle charge. “But let me beseech you, unclose the door, my—my poor sister is well nigh sinking to the earth with fatigue and terror.” Still the men remained obstinate, not only refusing to open the door, but guarding it with a close row of levelled pikes. The sound of fierce strife, which now arose with appalling violence, within a few roods of the church, seemed to fill them with cold and stubborn bitterness. At last, when a loud and terrible cry swept over them—a cry of triumph from the Somerset men, mingled with a yell of defiance from the mob, in which Somerset, the Lord Protector’s name, was winged by shouts and curses through the dense air, the man who had spoken before turned almost menacingly on the young nobleman. “Did I not tell you,” he exclaimed, “this is no place for a lady? If we cannot guard our dead, how can your charge be safe? Hear that shout—the Duke of Somerset is himself coming up from the river to reinforce his band of pillagers. A curse light upon his sacrilegious head for this day’s work—a curse on him and his!” “Oh no, no; do not curse him!” exclaimed the Lady Jane, starting from Dudley’s arm, and flinging the hood back from her pale face with a wild impulse—“he does not know—he has not thought how dreadful all this is: you do not dream how kind he is. In pity—for sweet mercy’s sake, do not curse my father!” “Her father,” exclaimed the men almost simultaneously, and with menacing looks; “her father!”