'Is it, then, with the worshipful the little Prince of Wales that ye are discontented?' Lascelles read, and the printer answered that there was not such another Prince of his years for promise and for performance, too, in all Christendom.
The stranger said from the hearth-place—
'Well! we are commended,' and his voice was bitter and ironical.
'How is it, then,' Lascelles read on, 'that ye say all is not over well in the land?'
The printer's gloomy and black features glared with a sudden rage.
'How should all be well with a land,' he cried, 'where in high places reigns harlotry?' He raised his clenched fist on high and glared round upon his audience. 'Corruption that reacheth round and about and down till it hath found a seedbed even in this poor house of my father's? Or if it is well with this land now, how shall it continue well when witchcraft rules near the King himself, and the Devil of Rome hath there his emissaries.'
A chitter of sound came from his audience, so that it appeared that they were all of a strain. They moved in their seats; the shipman cried out—
'Ay! witchcraft! witchcraft!'
The huge bulk of the stranger, black and like a bull's, half rose from its chair.
'Body of God!' he cried out. 'This I will not bear.'