at scant exercise which was permitted
to the Prisoner above, and being waited upon and watched night and day
by the Governor's Daughter, Mistress Ruth Glover, who at nights slept in
a little closet adjoining my Grandmother's chamber. The girl had a
tongue, I suppose, like the rest of her sex,--and of our sex too,
brother,--and she would not have been eighteen, of a lively Disposition,
and continually in the society of a Lady of Birth and accomplishments,
not more than ten years her senior, without gossiping to her concerning
all that she knew of the sorry little world round about her. It was not,
however, much, or of any great moment, that Ruth had to tell my
Grandmother. She could but hold her in discourse of how the Invalid
Matrosses had the rheumatism and the ague; how the Life-guard men in
their room diced and drank and quarrelled, both over their dice and
their drink; how the rumour ran that the poverty-stricken habitants of
the adjoining village had, from long dwelling among the fens, become as
web-footed as the wild-fowl they hunted; and how her Father, who had
been for many years a widower, was harsh and stern with her, and would
not suffer her to read the romances and play-books, some half-dozen of
which the Sergeant of the Guard had with him. She may have had a little
also to say about the Prisoner in the upper story of the Keep--how his
chamber was all filled with folios and papers; how he studied and wrote
and prayed; and during his two hours' daily liberty wandered sadly and
in a silent manner about the Castle. For this was all Mistress Ruth had
to tell, and of the Prisoner's name, or of his Crime, she was, perforce,
mum.

These two Women nevertheless shaped all kinds of feverish Romances and
wild conjectures respecting this unknown man above stairs. Arabella had
told her own sad story to the girl who--though little better than a
waiting-woman--she had made, for want of a better bower-maiden, her
Confidante. I need not say that oceans of Sympathy, or the accepted
Tokens thereof, I mean Tears, ran out from the eyes of the Governor's
Daughter when she heard the History of the Lord Francis, of the words he
spoke just before the musketeers fired their pieces at him, and of
another noble speech he made two hours before he Suffered, when the
Officer in command, compassionating his youth and parts, told him that
if he had any suit, short of life, to prefer to the Lord General, he
would take upon himself to say tha