This seemed startling, nay, terrible to Osric.
"Yet, Osric, I can love, and I can reward fidelity; be true to me, and I will be truer to you than God was to me—that is, if there be a God, which I doubt."
Osric shuddered; and well he might at this impious defiance.
Then this strange man was seized with a remorse, which showed that after all there was yet some good left in him.
"Nay, pardon me, my Osric; I wish not to shake thy faith; if it make thee happy, keep it. Mine are perchance the ravings of disappointment and despair. There are times when I think the most wretched of my captives happier than I. Nay, keep thy faith if thou canst."
CHAPTER XX MEINHOLD AND HIS PUPILS
We are loth to leave our readers too long in the den of tyranny: we pant for free air; for the woods, even if we share them with hermits and lepers—anything rather than the towers of Wallingford under Brian Fitz-Count, his troopers and free lances.
So we will fly to the hermitage where his innocent sons have found refuge for two years past, under the fostering care of Meinhold the hermit, and see how they fare.