"Well, wouldn't it be safer?" she faltered.
"Safer for my bones, I shouldn't wonder. There's a cowardly few among 'em, I know, who wouldn't scruple to knock me down, if they got a chance of doing it, unbeknown. But I don't mean 'em to have a chance if I can help it. Come, cheer up," said John. "Things 'll come right in the end."
Things seemed very wrong to Sarah at this moment.
"Pope says the men strike for their rights," continued John. "Well, and I'm standing out for my rights. I've my rights as well as they! Don't you see? If Pope's free to take his view of the question, I'm free to take my view of it. And my view don't coincide with Pope's. I've no notion of giving in to tyranny, whether it's tyranny of men or of masters. If the lot of them are free to strike, I'm free to not strike."
"That wouldn't be much help to me if you got hurt."
"Hope I shan't be, but any way I've got to do right," said John. "I've got to do what seems to me right; and a strike just now don't seem to me right. It don't seem to me called for. It don't seem to me likely to bring good. Pope and others says I'm wrong; and they says I'm bound to do what they think right. Now I don't nor can't see that. If Pope's a free and independent Englishman, I'm the same. If I've got to give in my judgment to Pope, and do what I count to be wrong, because he says it's right, I wonder where my freedom is. That's tyranny, and tyranny of the worst sort, because it tries to hold a man's conscience in bondage. I'll not give in to it, Sarah. I wasn't named 'Holdfast' for nothing. So long as I live, I'll 'hold fast' to what is right, so far as I can see what's right."
John spoke quietly, not with a noisy voice or manner; and his words were all the more impressive from their quietness. Sarah fully agreed with all he said, as a matter of principle,—only as his wife she was afraid for him. She would not argue against his convictions, but her eyes grew tearful.
"I think we needn't fear," John said more softly. "We haven't brought ourselves into the difficulty, Sarah, woman. If we had, it 'ud be different. I think we've got just to go straight ahead, and do what's right, and put our trust in God. If it's His will to let me suffer, why, there's some good reason for it. I'm sure of that."
