In the meantime, the Burmese government was sending army after army down the river to fight the English; and constantly receiving news of their defeat and destruction.  One of its officers, however, named Bandoola, having been more successful, the king sent for him to Ava, and conferred on him the command of a very large army, destined against Rangoon.  As he was receiving every demonstration of court favor, Mrs. Judson resolved to wait on him with a petition for the release of the prisoners.  She was received in an obliging manner, and directed to call again when he should have deliberated on the subject.  With the joyful news of her flattering reception, she flew to the prison, and both she and her husband thought deliverance was at hand.  But on going again with a handsome present to hear his decision, she was informed by his lady—­her lord being absent—­that he was now very busy, making preparations for Rangoon, but that when he had retaken that city, and expelled the English, he would return and release all the prisoners.

This was her last application for their enlargement, though she constantly visited the various officials with presents in order to make the situation of the prisoners more tolerable.  The governor of the palace used to be so much gratified with her accounts of the manners, customs and government of America, that he required her to spend many hours of every other day at his house.

Mrs. Judson had been permitted to make for her husband a little bamboo room in the prison enclosure far more comfortable than the shed he had occupied and where she sometimes was allowed to spend a few hours in his society.  But her visits both to the prison and to the governor were interrupted by the birth of a little daughter—­truly

    ‘A child of misery, baptized in tears!’

About this time the Burmese court was thrown into consternation by news of the disastrous defeat of Bandoola, the vain-glorious chief who was to expel the English from the kingdom; and the rapid advance of the British troops towards Ava.  The first consequence of such intelligence would of course be increased rigor towards the white prisoners; and accordingly, before she had regained her strength after her confinement, Mrs. Judson learned that her husband had been put into the inner prison, in five pairs of fetters, that the room she had made for him had been torn down, and all his little comforts taken away by his jailers.  All the prisoners had been similarly treated.

Mrs. Judson, feeble as she was, hastened to the governor’s house.  But in her long absence she had lost favor; and she was told that she must not ask to have the fetters taken off, or the prisoners released, for it could not be done.  She made a pathetic appeal to the governor, who was an old man, reminding him of all his former kindness to them, and begging to know why his conduct was so changed to them now.  His hard heart melted and he even “wept like a child.”  He then confessed to her that he had often been ordered to assassinate the prisoners privately, but that he would not do it; and that, come what would, he would never put Mr. Judson to death.  At the same time he was resolute in refusing to attempt any mitigation of his sufferings.