“Gott is dreadfully afraid of them——”
“And he is set apart by the laws to see them executed on these very people,” interrupted Dunscomb, with a sneer; “to levy on their possessions, keep the peace, enforce the laws; in short, to make them feel, whenever it is necessary, that they are governed!”
“Gott says ‘that the people will rule.’ That’s his great saying.”
“Will seem to rule, is true enough; but the most that the mass of any nation can do, is occasionally to check the proceedings of their governors. The every-day work is most effectually done by a favoured few here, just as it is done by a favoured few everywhere else. The door, now, if you please, my good Mrs.[Mrs.] Gott.”
“Yes, sir, in one minute. Dear me! how odd that you should think so. Why, I thought that you were a democrat, Mr. Dunscomb?”
“So I am, as between forms of government; but I never was fool enough to think that the people can really rule, further than by occasional checks and rebukes.”
“What would Gott say to this! Why, he is so much afraid of the people, that he tells me he never does anything, without fancying some one is looking over his shoulders.”
“Ay, that is a very good rule for a man who wishes to be chosen sheriff. To be a bishop, it would be better to remember the omniscient eye.”
“I do declare—oh! Gott never thinks of that, more’s the pity,” applying the key to the lock. “When you wish to come out, ’Squire, just call at this grate”—then dropping her voice to a whisper—“try and persuade Mary Monson to show herself at one of the side grates.”
But Dunscomb entered the gallery with no such intention. As he was expected, his reception was natural and easy. The prisoner was carefully though simply dressed, and she appeared all the better, most probably, for some of the practised arts of her woman. Marie Moulin, herself, kept modestly within the cell, where, indeed, she passed most of her time, leaving the now quite handsomely furnished gallery to the uses of her mistress.