The old man was offended.
"It will oblige me if you reserve your sarcasms for others than your own father. I come home, and you sneer at me."
"Not at all; you mistake. I wondered how the Constitution was to be preserved here, when the great place of doctoring and drenching the patient, of bleeding and cupping, is at Westminster, and you were sent thither to tender your advice as to how that same Constitution was to be dealt with."
"The battle is not to be fought there," said Mr. Crymes, "nor with tongues. The field of conflict will be elsewhere, and the weapons keener and harder than words."
"The field of conflict is, I trust, not to be here," remarked Fox; "your sagacity, father, has assuredly taken you to the furthest possible distance from it. As soon as these weapons stronger than tongues are brandished, I shall betake me to Lundy or the Scilly Isles."
"You are a coward, I believe," said Mr. Crymes, in a tone of annoyance. "I expect to find in you—or, rather, but for my experience of you, I might have reckoned on finding in my son—a nobler temper than that of a runaway."
"But, my good father, what other are you?"
"If you will know," said Mr. Crymes, petulantly, "I have come into the country—here into the West—to rouse it."
"What for?"
"For the cause of the Constitution and Religion."