ENDICOTT. Then it was very sudden; for I saw him Standing where you now stand, not long ago.
BELLINGHAM. By his own fireside, in the afternoon, A faintness and a giddiness came o'er him; And, leaning on the chimney-piece, he cried, "The hand of God is on me!" and fell dead.
ENDICOTT. And did not some one say, or have I dreamed it, That Humphrey Atherton is dead?
BELLINGHAM.
Alas!
He too is gone, and by a death as sudden.
Returning home one evening, at the place
Where usually the Quakers have been scourged,
His horse took fright, and threw him to the ground,
So that his brains were dashed about the street.
ENDICOTT. I am not superstitions, Bellingham, And yet I tremble lest it may have been A judgment on him.
BELLINGHAM.
So the people think.
They say his horse saw standing in the way
The ghost of William Leddra, and was frightened.
And furthermore, brave Richard Davenport,
The captain of the Castle, in the storm
Has been struck dead by lightning.
ENDICOTT.
Speak no more.
For as I listen to your voice it seems
As if the Seven Thunders uttered their voices,
And the dead bodies lay about the streets
Of the disconsolate city! Bellingham,
I did not put those wretched men to death.
I did but guard the passage with the sword
Pointed towards them, and they rushed upon it!
Yet now I would that I had taken no part
In all that bloody work.
BELLINGHAM.
The guilt of it
Be on their heads, not ours.
ENDICOTT.
Are all set free?
BELLINGHAM. All are at large.