“You must not hope to do that,” said Brandon. “It is decreed that I should lie supine, a helpless log, while night and day my brain is turned into a weaver’s shuttle. I can do nothing, yet I somehow feel that the high gods have called me to do everything. This man has no other friend, and it is for that reason, Joliffe, that I ask you to stand my proxy in his defense.”
“But I assure you no defense is possible,” said Joliffe, with a feeling of growing distress.
“Let us brief counsel.”
“No purpose will be served. As you know, the vicar is a most stubborn man. And if he doesn’t succeed one way he will another. If we doctors are obdurate he will turn to the Bench, and if the Bench won’t oblige he’ll have recourse to the military.”
“It hardly seems credible.”
“I agree. But that’s the man. And the worst of it is that from his own point of view in a time like the present he may be perfectly right.”
“I refuse to believe that he can be right at any time.”
“But surely, a man who sides openly with the enemy ought not to be at large.”
“Has he gone beyond what Jesus would have done in such circumstances?”
“Hardly a practical analogy, I’m afraid. In any case, John Smith is not Jesus, even if his half-witted old mother may think so. The law is bound to regard him as a crack-brained rustic, and in my humble opinion anyone who tries to persuade it that the poor fellow is anything else, will be very unwise.”