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.
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