“Welcome, George!” said Mr Underhill. “Any news abroad?”
“Have you heard none to-night?” said he.
“Not so much as would go by the eye of a needle,” he answered. “Is there tidings?”
“The Bishop of Winchester is dead.”
Mr Underhill sprang to his feet with a cry of exultation.
“‘Glory to God in the highest!’ yea, I might go further—‘on earth peace!’ Jack, let us sing the Te Deum.”
“Not in my house,” said John, quietly.
“Thou recreant faint-heart! What meanest?”
“I am ready enough to sing the Te Deum, Ned,” pursued John, “but not for so terrible a thing as the casting of that poor sinner, with the blood of God’s saints red upon his soul, into the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone.”
“How can you stay to think of it?” cried Mr Underhill in his ringing voice. “Is that blood even now not crying unto God? Are Rogers and Bradford, are Ridley and Latimer, yet avenged? Shall not the saints wash their feet in the blood of the ungodly? Yea, let them fall, and never rise up again! Shall we be thus slack to praise God for freedom?”