From the cross to which they had bound her, Thecla (for such was her name) still kept her eyes fixed upon her children, animating them by gentle smiles and words of comfort to suffer well; while the youngest, an infant only three years old, she held with superhuman courage in her arms during the whole of the terrible scene that followed. Her own anguish had no power to extort a single sigh from her lips; but those who watched her wept to see the useless efforts which she made to diminish the sufferings of her babe. She caressed it, soothed it, hushed its cries, wiped away its tears, sought with her own hands to shelter its tender face from the terrible contact of the fire, and died at last with the little victim so closely folded to her bosom, that it was afterwards found almost impossible to separate the bodies of the mother and the child. These martyrdoms are only specimens of those which during this period continually took place in Japan. Some Christians were crucified, others burnt, others beheaded; numbers again branded upon the cheeks and forehead with the sign of the cross, their fingers and toes cut off, and their eyes forced out; and thus maimed and helpless, they were sent back to their families, who (to their honour be it written) never failed to receive them with all the more pride and affection, the more deeply and hideously they had been disfigured for the sake of Jesus. The great majority of the martyrdoms hitherto recorded had been accomplished by fire; but now a different mode of torture was to be pressed into the service. Water was called into requisition; and Father James Caravail, with several lay Christians, was the leader of many heroic confessors who perished from cold. They were left in the first instance, for three hours in freezing water, during which time one of them died; the rest on being carried back to prison and threatened with the martyrdom of fire in case of perseverance, cried out with one voice; "Oh, happy we, to pass through fire and water to the place of our repose!" Instead of the stake, however, the next day they were again placed up to their necks in water; while, the better to attempt them to apostasy, tents, warm baths, and comfortable clothing, were made ready on the banks of the pool, and as near as possible to the spot where their sentence was to be carried into execution. As the day advanced, the water froze more and more; and heavy drifts of snow beating continually upon them, added greatly to their agony. Scarcely able to endure it any longer, one among them sobbed heavily for breath; but Father Paul hearing it, cried out, "Have patience, son, for yet a little while; and these torments will be changed into everlasting repose." At the sound of the father's voice, and his cheering words, the poor victim regained his courage, and soon afterwards happily expired, at the very moment when another reduced to a similar extremity, exclaimed, "Father, my course is