"To help Mr. Crosby I must Speak with Judge Marriott, who is in Dorchester," she told Harriet Payne. "You must find him and ask him to come to me." "Will he come, madam?" "I think so." "Alas, you have need of help yourself now." "Perhaps not such need as may appear. To arrest me does not prove me guilty of treason." "It is not only the guilty who are suffering." "Out upon you, girl, for whining so easily," said Barbara. "Courage lends help against every ill, even against death itself. You will find where Judge Marriott is lodged, and tell him where I am." "They may not let me have speech with the judge." "You must contrive, use art, use--Ah, you are a woman, and need no lesson from me." So Harriet Payne went upon her mission, and Barbara was impatient until her return. Disappointment was upon the girl's face when she came back. It had been easy to find out the judge's lodgings, but impossible to get speech with him. He was too engaged to see anyone that day. "I must try again to-morrow," said the girl. "Yes, and the next day and the next," said Barbara. "Did anyone carry a message for you?" "I contrived so far, but whether it came to the judge's ears or not I cannot tell." "I'll ask this man Watson to take a message," said Barbara. "Not yet," said the girl. "That might be dangerous. Wait until I have entirely failed"; and, to prove how dangerous it might be, she began to tell her mistress some of the gloomy forebodings which were whispered about the town. Dorchester was in terror, and spoke its fears with bated breath. There were three hundred prisoners awaiting judgment, and the dreaded Jeffreys was coming; the cruel, the brutal, the malignant judge whose fame, like an evil angel, came before him, speaking of death. There was to be no pity, no mercy. If Alice Lisle, for no greater fault than compassion for two fugitives, was condemned with all the barbarity that the inhuman law could render possible; if the appeal of clergy, of ladies of high degree, of counsellors at Whitehall, of Feversham himself, could only move the King to grant that she should be beheaded instead of burned alive, what hope for the prisoners in Dorchester who would have no such powerful appeal made in their favour? The Court was already prepared, its hangings of scarlet. Judge Marriott, busily awaiting his learned brother, chuckled at the innovation. It was like Jeffreys--an original thing, a stroke of genius. Men quaked because of those scarlet hangings; this was to be no ordinary assizes, but a marked occasion which should put fear into the souls of all who should even think upon rebellion. Some man, in an awed undertone, spoke of it as a bloody assizes, and the name passed from lip to lip until it reached Judge Marriott's lodging. He chuckled still more, and said to those about him that Jeffreys would act up to the name, here and wherever else in this cursed West Country there were prisoners to be punished.