"You are welcome to revile my wife as much as you please, Father," said Gilbert, calmly. "I can't think how in the world I ever came to marry the daughter of an old, ranting, canting Covenanter. The devil must have set me up to it."
"Probably he did, my friend," was the reply of Cuthbert. "But to relieve your mind: I came here on secret service—you will not ask me what it was. Suffice it you to know that it was at once for Church and King."
"Well!" sighed Gilbert, "the Church is infallible—is she not?—and immortal: she will get along all right. But for the King"—
An expressive pantomime of Gilbert's hands and shoulders completed the sentence.
"Faint-hearted, Gilbert?" asked Stevens, with a smile.
"Faint-hoping, Father," said he. "The King will never 'have his ain again.' Ay! that song you were whistling by way of signal is to me the saddest of all our songs. 'Tis easy to chant 'It was a' for our richtfu' King,'—or I can even stand 'Lilliburlero;' but 'The King shall have his ain again'—it but saddens me, Father Cuthbert. He will never have it."
"Why, Gilbert, has your solitude made you hopeless? You used to have more faith in right, and in the final triumph of the good cause."
"The cause is lost, Father Cuthbert," said Gilbert, stooping to pick up one of the dry twigs which lay before him. "'Tis as dead and dry as this branch; and as easily to be broken by the Princess and her Ministers, or by the Elector of Hanover and his, as I can break this—so!"
And the broken twig fell at Stevens' feet.
"Come, Gilbert, come!" said Stevens, encouragingly. "Remember how many friends the King has throughout England, and Scotland, and Ireland."