"To the bottomless pit with your liking," answered Anthony shaking from head to feet with passion. "What have you to do with me and my friends? This is my house, not yours."
"You are none of Cromwell's friend. Many people beside me say that of you."
"I am glad they do me so much honour. Cromwell! Who is Cromwell? A man to joy the devil. No, I am not his friend!" and with a radiant smile—"I thank my Maker for it."
He spoke with increasing difficulty, scarcely above a whisper, though he had risen to his feet, and believed himself to have the strong, resounding voice of his healthy manhood. The sheriff turned to his attendants—
"You hear the traitor!" he cried. "You heard Anthony Lynn turn his back on himself! I knew him always for a black heart and a double tongue. We must have a warrant for him, and that at once."
"Fool!" said the trembling, tottering old man, with a superhuman scorn, as his clay-like face suddenly flamed into its last colour. "Warrant! warrant! Oliver Cromwell has no warrant to fit my name. I go now on the warrant of the King of kings. Put me in the deepest dungeon, His habeas corpus sets me free of you. Matilda! Stephen! I am going to my dear lord—to my dear King—to my dear God!" and as a strong man shakes off a useless garment, so Anthony Lynn dropped his body, and in that moment his spirit flew away further than thought could follow it.
"What a villain!" cried the sheriff.
"Villain, in your face," answered Matilda passionately. "Out of the presence of holy death! You are not fit to stand by his dead body! Go, on this instant! Sure, if you do not, there are those who will make you!"
With these words she cried out for her servants in a voice full of horror and grief, and the first person to answer her cry was Cymlin Swaffham. He came in like some angry young god, his ruddy face and blazing eyes breathing vengeful inquiry. Matilda went to his side, clung to his arm, pointed to the dead man on the hearth and the domineering figure of the sheriff above it, and cried, "Cymlin, Cymlin, send him away! Oh, 'twas most unmercifully done!"
"Sir," said Cymlin, "you exceed your warrant. Have you arrested Stephen de Wick?"