nt Agnes, Saint Margaret, and Saint Katherine--girls who had made
such answers to Pagan persecutors, twelve hundred years or so before
that time: but he could not see that the same scene was being enacted
again, and that he was persecuting the Lord Jesus in the person of young
Rose Allen. He took the candle from her hand, and she did not resist
him. The next minute he was holding her firmly by the wrist, with her
hand in the burning flame, watching her face to see what she would do.

She did nothing. Not a scream, not a word, not even a moan, came from
the lips of Rose Allen. All that could be seen was that the empty jug
which she held in the other hand trembled a little as she stood there.

"Wilt thou not cry?" sneered Tyrrel as he held her,--and he called her
some ugly names which I shall not write.

The answer was as calm as it could be. "I have no cause, thank God,"
said Rose tranquilly; "but rather to rejoice. You have more cause to
weep than I, if you consider the matter well."

When people set to work to vex you, nothing makes them more angry than
to take it quietly, and show no vexation. That is, if they are people
with mean minds. If there be any generosity in them, then it is the way
to make them see that they are wrong. There was no generosity, nor love
of justice, in Edmund Tyrrel. When Rose Allen stood so calmly before
him, with her hand on fire, he was neither softened nor ashamed. He
burned her till "the sinews began to crack," and then he let go her hand
and pushed her roughly away, calling her all the bad names he could
think of while he did so.

"Sir," was the meek and Christlike response, "have you done what you
will do?"

Surely few, even among martyrs, have behaved with more exquisite
gentleness than this! The maiden's hand was cruelly burnt, and her
tormentor was adding insult to injury by heaping false and abominable
names upon her: and the worst thing she had to say to him was simply to
ask whether he wished to torture her any more!

"Yes," sneered Tyrrel. "And if thou think it not well, then mend it!"

"`Mend it'!" repeated Rose. "Nay! the Lord mend you, and give you
repentance, if it be His will. And now, if you think it good, begin at
the feet, and burn to the head also. For he that set you a-work shall
pay you your wages one day, I warrant you."

And with this touch of sarcasm--only just enough to show how well she
could have handled that weapon if she had chosen to f