“My masters, where are your hearts! Now is the time to show yourselves men! How oft have you groaned in my ears under the tyranny of these oppressors, and now is your time to fling off the yoke! Stand to your arms, brethren! Make a move, and I am with you!”
As he recognized the intent of this seditious appeal, Standish sprang forward, his hand upon his sword’s hilt, but Bradford, without rising, made a slight repressive gesture, and ran his eye quickly over the ranks of faces confronting him, marking the expression on each.
A few, notably Billington’s, Hicks’s, Hopkins’s, and some of the new-comers’, wore an anxious, a sheepish, or a frightened air, combined in two or three cases with truculence, and in others with doubt, but the great body of the freemen met the eye of their governor with cordial sympathy and reassurance, and although no man stirred, several handled their weapons and looked around them with an eagerness boding ill for the traitors should they proceed to extremity.
Oldhame also reviewed the fourscore faces arrayed before him, and was quick to perceive and accept his defeat.
“Ye coward dogs! Crouch under your master’s lash till it cut your hearts out! What is it to me or mine!”
The bitter words ground between his teeth reached no ears but those of Lyford, upon whom, as he sank cowering back upon the bench, Bradford next turned his eyes demanding,—
“What is your opinion, Master Lyford, upon this question of opening another’s letters?”
The ex-minister started as if stung by the lash of a whip, passed his hand across his trembling lips, and stammered,—
“I—I—I meant no harm. I”—