"And did the gaoler never forget thee?" Kate wished to know. "Twice he did," answered Robin, "for a day. But that would not kill me, thou wist. I became very weak ere I came forth. But to continue:--I wept long and bitterly, but it gave me no comfort. I felt as if nothing ever would give me comfort again. The Devil was very near me. It was all folly, he whispered. I had hoped a vision, and had believed a lie. God was dead, if there ever were any God; He never came into Little Ease. None would ever know where and what I was become. I should die here, and if fifty years hence my whitened bones were found, none would know whose they had been. Your dear faces rose around me, and I could have wept again, to think I should never see you any more. But the fountain of my tears was dried now. Mine heart seemed to be freezing into rock than which the walls of Little Ease were no harder. I sat or lay, call it what you will, thinking gloomily and drearily, until at last nature could bear no more, and I slept, even there." "Well, Robin!" said Kate, "if thine heart were frozen, methinks it thawed again afore thou earnest hither." "It did so, sweet heart," said he, smiling on her. "Even as I awoke, a text of Scripture darted into my memory, well-nigh as though one had spoken it to me. A strange text, you will say,--yet it was the one for me then:--`Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish's belly.' Well, I was no worse off than Jonah. It seemed yet more unlike, his coming forth of that fish's belly, than did my coming forth of Little Ease. Methought I, so near in Jonah's case, would try Jonah's remedy. To have knelt I could not; no more, I fancy, could Jonah. But I could pray as well as he. That was the first gleam of inward light; and after that it grew. Ay--grew till I was no more alone, because God companied with me; till I was no more an hungred, because God fed me; till I thirsted no more, because God led me unto living fountains of waters; till I wept no more, because God wiped away all tears from mine eyes. Ere I came forth, I would not have changed Little Ease for the fairest chamber of the Queen's Palace, if thereby I had left Him behind. It gained on me, till my will grew into God's will--till I was absolutely content to die or live, as He would; to be burned in Smithfield, or to come home and clasp you all to mine heart--as should be most to His glory. The heats of summer, I thought, must be come; but on the hottest summer day, there was but cold and damp in Little Ease. The summer, methought, must be passing; and then, it must be past. I had left hoping for change. I only thought how _very_ fair and sweet the House of the Father would be to me after this. So the hours rolled away, until one morrow, out of the wonted order, I heard the door unlocked. `Are you there?' calls the gaoler in his gruff voice. `Ay,' said I. `Feel about for a rope,' quoth he, `and set the noose under