Mr. Rogers' patience could hold out no longer. He burst in—
"In that, at least, did Richard well! and a glorious thing was it to be numbered among them that called the late Man to account for the blood he had shed."
But his interruption was unheeded. Mr. Marshman's steady harangue flowed on, as unmoved as is the bass of a mountain-torrent by the shrieks of the wind that may blow across it. Mr. Marshman appealed to St. Paul, and Mr. Rogers retorted from the Maccabees; the one instanced King David, and the other King Pharaoh, and quotations from the classics and early fathers flew as thick as hailstones in a winter's storm.
Richard sat half-stunned, half-amused, but knowing in his soul that no eloquence of either divine could go so far to shake his confidence in his own cause as the words of Audrey Perrient, "My father did not justify the death of the king."
It was as much to answer the sudden doubt that rose in his own heart, as to answer Mr. Marshman, that when he took advantage of an instant's lull in the debate to rise, he said—
"I thank you for your counsels, sir, and I will endeavour to profit by them, but give me leave to say one word. I do verily hold, that had the late Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell, seen any way to secure a settlement, save by the death of the king, I am assured he would have embraced it. But to my thinking matters had come to that pass that no choice was left him."
"Ay," retorted Mr. Marshman, "when the Gadarene swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, they had no choice but to drown; nevertheless, it was the devil that set them a running at the first."
"Talk not of the subtle reasons of that hypocrite, Oliver Cromwell," cried Mr. Rogers. "General Harrison held no such doctrines of fearful expediency. Cromwell did doubtless talk of expediency, but only as a cloak for his own ambitions, and thereafter catching at greatness he fell from iniquity into iniquity."
"Ay, as a punishment for that crime was he given space to purchase to himself greater damnation," retorted Mr. Marshman. But Richard escaped, and, at last, in the silence and solitude of his sleeping-chamber, could fling himself on his bed and give way to the misery he was ashamed any human eye should see.