"There!" said Julian, putting her father's letter into his hand. "Read that. If you cannot find a topic, I must help you to one."
Anthony read the letter with an elbow on each knee and his legs wide apart, so that his head was bent low. As he read, Julian's eyes were on him. Involuntarily a sigh escaped her bosom. If he thought of it at all he attributed it to sympathy with her father's anxiety; had he looked up and seen her face, he would have been undeceived. It was well for him that he did not.
The letter interested him greatly. Like the bulk of the young men of the West, he was keenly alive to the political situation, and was a hot partisan. The gathering together of the men in taverns led to eager discussion of politics; the orderly Government of the Protector, and the extravagance and exactions of the restored Royalty, had aroused comparison. Under Old Noll the name of England had been respected abroad, and the English people could not forget and forgive the humiliation of the Dutch fleet in the Medway and the burning of Chatham. Those who had no love for Puritanism were, nevertheless, ardent supporters of Liberty, and firmly resolved that their country should not be brought under Roman Catholic despotism. The ill-treatment of the Waldenses had roused great feeling in England, collections for them had been made in every parish church, the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was not forgotten, the exiled Protestants filled all England with the tale of the cruelties and oppression to which they had been subjected, and had helped to deepen to a dogged determination in men's hearts the resolve never to suffer the Roman religion to obtain the mastery again in the land.
Anthony's brow darkened and his lips tightened as he read. When he had done the letter he started to his feet, planted his hat on his head, and exclaimed:
"My God! I wish it would come to blows, and that I could carry a pike."
"Pshaw!" said Julian; "what excitable creatures you men are concerning matters that move us not a whit. I have forgotten what my father wrote about. Against whom would you trail a pike? With whom come to blows?"
Anthony did not answer, for it was not easy to reply to these questions. He would fight for liberty and religion. But against whom? He dare not breathe even to himself the thought that it would be against his King.
"And, pray, why come to blows?"
"If you had read your father's letter with attention, you would know. For my part, I should hail war, if there were a chance of it, that I might have some occupation for my hands."