True Stories of Girl Heroines Part 23

She was afraid of learning where we might be. Yet I would fain look upon her face again!"

"Have a care, Margaret--have a care!" cried Archie entreatingly, "the laws are yet unrepealed. There is nothing changed, and this breathing s.p.a.ce may not last long."

"I will not run into needless peril," answered Margaret; "yet why should I so greatly fear? Is not G.o.d strong enough to protect His own, if it be His will?--but if He desire to prove our love by something endured for Him, shall we shrink back in the hour of temptation?"

When Archie came again the next evening, Margaret was not in the cottage, and Agnes's face wore a frightened look.

"Archie, I am glad thou hast come! I have been so unhappy. Patrick Stuart has been here. Tell me, is he one that we may safely trust? He spoke like one full of sympathy with us and our sufferings and wanderings; but at the last he pledged Margaret, and bid her drink to the new King's health. When she would not, there crept an evil and crafty look into his eyes. I have been so frightened since!"

Archie was frightened too, and asked where Margaret was.

"She has slipped out to take one look at mother and the old home, and, perchance, to get speech of mother too. Old Margaret was to go and whisper something to her, and perhaps--perhaps; but they would not let me go; and something seems to tell me that danger is near. Oh, I wish Margaret had not gone away! I am never frightened when I am with her; but alone I am."

Archie was frightened himself. He felt perfectly certain that Patrick had set a trap for the girls, and that already he might be on his way to warn the authorities.

"Agnes," he said, "I would you had never come back. I would that you would fly the place again. Ye are too well known here. Anywhere else would be safer. I will remain with you till Margaret gets back; I will tell her my fears. Then I would beg her to lose no time, but to fly this very night to some place of greater safety."

But, alas!--already it was too late. Soon their straining ears caught the sound of measured tramping. Agnes gave a faint cry, Archie sprang to the door, and an oath leapt to his lips.

"They have got Margaret, and the old woman too! G.o.d in heaven have mercy!--they are coming hither for thee, Agnes. Fly!--fly by yonder door into the coppice behind! I will detain them by any story I can invent.

Fly ere it be too late!"

But the news of her sister's capture seemed suddenly to brace the nerves of the younger girl. She darted out of the open door and flung herself upon Margaret's neck--Margaret, who was being led along by the officers, her hands bound behind her, though upon her beautiful face there was an expression of almost ecstatic exaltation of spirit.

"Here is the third of them!" cried the men, as Agnes appeared; and, ignoring Archie's indignant reproaches of cowardice and cruelty, they bound her hands, and set her beside her sister, and drove them on towards the Gaol of Wigton, as men drive cattle into market.

"Margaret! Margaret!" cried Archie, in an agony; but she turned and gave him one of her deep spiritual glances.

"Pray for us, Archie, that our faith fail not; and remember that we are bidden not to fear those who can hurt the body alone, but only him who can destroy the soul. Fare you well!"

When next Archie saw again the fair face of Margaret Wilson, it was when, after a very harsh and cruel captivity, that had left traces upon her body, though none upon her courageous spirit, she was brought, together with Agnes and the old woman, M'Lauchlan, before the magistrates to answer to the charges laid against her and them.

They had refused attendance at church, it was alleged, had attended forbidden meetings, had been amongst the rebels at the battle of Bothwell Bridge; and the old woman had harboured fugitive Covenanters.

A faint smile played over Margaret's face as she heard some of the indictment. She had been twelve years old and Agnes eight at the time of the battle. They had been staying with relatives in the vicinity at that date; but to be accounted as rebels!

For the rest she had nothing to say. She received instruction from those who preached the pure word of G.o.d, and had followed the example of the Lord, who, when threatened in one place, had quitted it for another, and had addressed His followers in the open air or in secret a.s.semblies, as His followers of all centuries had been forced at times to do.

But there was no mercy in the faces of the men who sat in judgment, and in whose hands were such terrible powers. The three women were p.r.o.nounced guilty, and were sentenced to death. And this was the doom allotted to them: "To be tied to stakes fixed within the floodmark in the water of Blednoch, near Wigton, where the sea flows at high water, there to be drowned."

Margaret heard these words with a strange smile upon her lips, and a great light came into her eyes. She stood for a moment as one who has a vision of some unspeakable glory, vouchsafed to no eyes but her own. In the dead hush of the court all glances were bent upon her, and suddenly a storm of sobbing arose from the women present.

Margaret started from her dream, and looked round at the faces, some of which had been familiar to her from childhood. Her lips moved, as though she would have spoken; but she was hurried away to the rigors of prison; whilst the whole town was thrown into a ferment of indignation and distress, though none dared to raise a protest.

No fear was in Margaret's heart as those bright days of May sped by; and she upheld the courage of her sister by her own tenderness and strength.

But the poor old woman, alone and broken in spirit, was induced to promise that if her life were spared, she would abjure the principles of the Covenant and attend the parish church in future.

When Margaret was told this, and that, if she would join in a similar promise, her submission together with the strenuous efforts being made by her father and friends, might avail to save her life, her face took a grave and almost stern expression.

"Get thee behind me, Satan!" she exclaimed; and, clasping Agnes to her breast, she cried: "My sister and I will lay down our lives for the truth; but we will never, never consent to live by and for a lie!"

"Then your blood be upon your own heads!" cried the angry officer, as he banged the door behind him.

The morning of the appointed day arrived. The sisters were calm and strong in their resolution. Suddenly the door of their prison opened.

Was it the men come to lead them to the stakes in the stream? Agnes gave a little cry of joy and amaze as she saw the white, worn face of her father.

"My child! my child!" he cried, clasping her in his arms. His emotion was so great that for a moment he could not speak. It was Archie Scott, with a face as white as death, who came and stood before Margaret.

"Agnes is saved," he said hoa.r.s.ely; "she is not yet sixteen. She is to be released and set in her father's charge. And the Privy Council in Edinburgh, on receiving old Margaret's submission and the memorial sent by Wigton, promised a postponement of the sentence till the King's mind could be known. But the magistrates will not listen. They will hear nothing; they will go on their own way. Thou art to die to-day, Margaret; and I know not how to bear it!"

She laid her hand upon his arm. Her face was full of joy.

"Nay, if Agnes be spared, my prayers have indeed found their answer. For myself--Archie, Archie, do not look so--I have long thought that to depart and be with Christ is far better; where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest."

There was joy and peace in the girl's face as she was led forth from her prison, and old Margaret, too, repenting her former weakness, held her head high, and spoke with courage and resolution to her friends who had a.s.sembled to see the mournful procession pa.s.s by. All Wigton had come forth to see the martyrs go to their death; and Archie Scott walked near to Margaret, and kept his eyes fixed upon her face, as though to seek to learn something of her spirit.

"Thou wilt be a brother to my sweet Agnes and comfort her," said Margaret to him once. "I trow she will be loyal and true to her faith, even though she may be forced to some outward compliance. The Lord will not judge her harshly!"

It seems sad that such n.o.ble and courageous souls as those that animated the martyrs of the Covenant should regard it as a possible offence against G.o.d to attend a service to His honour and glory, and by consecrated servants set aside for His service. Perhaps as Margaret Wilson stood in the midst of the waters, bound to her stake, watching the rise of the flood which must soon overwhelm her--perhaps something of the wider and grander aspects of the One Church--Holy and Catholic--with the Lord for her Head was vouchsafed in vision to her spirit. For, suddenly, as she saw the last struggles of the aged woman who was tied on somewhat lower ground, and knew that a few minutes more would see the end of her own young life, she first broke into words of psalm and holy writ, and then suddenly exclaimed:

"The King! the King! the poor misguided King! May G.o.d bless and pardon him and open his eyes!"

"She recants! she recants!" cried a mult.i.tude of voices from the bank--the voices of those who believed that in this prayer for the monarch Margaret was making a recantation of faith.

"Bring her out! bring her out!" shouted the crowd, in frenzy; and the magistrates, not daring to withstand this public clamour, gave orders for Margaret to be loosed and carried ash.o.r.e.

"Will you retract your errors, foolish girl, and renounce the Covenant?"

they asked when, astonished, but calm and steadfast as ever, she was brought to them.

"I will not!" she answered, with quiet steadfastness. "As I have lived so let me die! I have nothing to recant. I am Christ's--let me go to Him."

"Throw her into the water, for a pestilent Covenanter" cried the magistrates; and in another moment the deep swirling waters closed over the slight heroic frame of Margaret Wilson. Another Christian martyr had gone fearlessly to her death.

AGOSTINA OF ZARAGOZA

The beautiful young Countess Burita was the first to set the example of heroism and humanity.

Cowering behind their insufficient walls, and hearing the terrible roar and crash of artillery about them, seeing the French take up a firm position on the Torrero, from whence they could sh.e.l.l the devoted city of Zaragoza at their ease, what wonder that the Spaniards--the women and children at any rate--shrank in terror from the thought of a protracted siege, and cried aloud that nothing could save them?

But the old fighting spirit of the past was arousing and awakening in the souls of the men. The tyrannical temper of Napoleon, and his aggressive disposition of the Spanish crown to his own brother, had inflamed the ire of the Spaniards from the n.o.bles to the peasants; and, though a long period of misgovernment had weakened the country, destroyed the vigour of the nation, and rendered the soldiers of little use in the open field, yet it had not killed the old stubborn fighting spirit within them, and when their pa.s.sions were aroused, the flames had still the power to spring forth from the ashes of the past, and there were moments when all the old chivalry of former ages seemed to awake within them.

It was this spirit that animated the defenders of Zaragoza when Aragon revolted against the rule of the French, and they resolved at least to hold the ancient capital against the foe.

Hopeless the task seemed; for the defences were of the most meagre description; the only strong part of the wall being the ancient Roman portion, the high brick houses within having no shelter or means of defence from the sh.e.l.ls and bombs that came screaming and rattling over them.