"Please your Highness, from a sailor at Greenwich, a pensioner."
"You had other business in London than seeking out this Walter?"
"Please your Highness, I had."
"What was its nature?"
"Your Highness must pardon me—I cannot say."
Cromwell, during this examination, had walked backward and forward on a portion of the roof, bounded at either end by a double range of turreted chimneys: at the last reply of Robin Hays he suddenly stopped and turned short upon him, paused as if in anger, and then said,—
"Know you to whom you speak? Know you that the Lord hath made me a judge and a ruler in Israel? and yet you dare refuse an answer to my question!"
"Your Highness must judge for me in a righteous cause. From infancy I have been cherished by Hugh Dalton: if my lowly mind has become at all superior to the miserable and deformed tenement in which it dwells, I owe it to Hugh Dalton—if I have grown familiar with deeds of blood, still I owe it to Hugh Dalton that I saw deeds of bravery; and to Hugh Dalton I owe the knowledge, that whatever is secret, is sacred."
"Honour among thieves, and rogues, and pirates!" exclaimed the Protector, chafed, but not angry. "Your Dalton had a purpose of his own to serve in bringing over this scatter-pate Cavalier, who has too much blood and too little brains for aught but a cock-throw. Young man, I know the doings at your Gull's Nest Crag—I have been advised thereupon. Listen! there has been hardly a malecontent for months in the country who has not there found shelter. Were I inclined to pardon vagabonds, I might bestow the mercy with which the Lord has intrusted me upon poor misguided wretches; but Dalton has been a misguider himself. With my own good steed, and aided by only three on whom I could depend, I traced two of those leagued with Miles Syndercomb to their earth, at the very time when Hugh Dalton was lying in his Fire-fly off the coast.—What waited he for there? That Buccaneer has imported Malignants by dozens, scores, hundreds, into the Commonwealth; and now the reever expects pardon! for I have been solicited thereon. Mark me! the Lord's hand is stretched out, and will not be withdrawn until his nest be turned up, even as the plough uprooteth and scattereth the nest of the field-mouse and the blind mole; and mark yet farther, Robin Hays—there is a book, in which is written the name of every one concerned in those base practices; and opposite to each name is a red cross—a red cross, I say—which signifieth the shedding of blood; and as surely as the stars above us know their secret course along the pathway of the resplendent heavens, so surely shall all those traitors, reevers, buccaneers, upsetters, perish by the Lord's hand—unless it pleaseth the Spirit to infuse its moving power into some of their hearts, so that one or more of them may point the secret entrance into this cavern, where there is great treasure, and whereby blood-shedding and much trouble may be spared. If such an influence was happily exercised—was, I say, happily exercised over the minds or mind of any one of this accursed crew, he might not only be spared, but rewarded with much that the heart of man longeth after." Cromwell paused, and fixed his eyes on the Ranger, who spoke no word, and made no gesture of reply.
"Could not such be found?" he continued, addressing Robin more pointedly than before.