"Save my honour."
"Honour! honour! honour!" and they laughed the word to scorn, till the woods caught the echoes, and seemed to repeat it, "Honour! honour!"
"Get that delusion out of thy mind. To fight for one's country, nay, to die for it, that is true honour; to deliver the outcast and poor, to save them from the hands of the ungodly,—it is for this we have brought thee here. Let me tell thee what I have seen, nay, thou hast seen as much, and of the woes of thy bleeding country, bleeding at every pore. If the memory of thy mother stir thee not up, then thou art NIDDERING."
At the sound of this word—this term of utter reproach to an English ear, worse than "coward" a thousand times, suggesting a depth of baseness beyond conception—Osric started.
"And deservest to die," said the outlaw who had just spoken.
Osric's pride took alarm at once; his downcast look changed.
"Slay me, then," he said; "the sooner the better."
"Nay, brother, that is not the way—thou wilt spoil it all; we would win him by conviction, not by threats."
"Let me have an hour to think."
"Take some food."