“Alack!  Mr. Prynne,” answered the stranger, with a slight foreign accent, “since your captivity in Mont Orgueil many things have befallen.  ’Tis not alone I, Michael Lempriere the exile, changed from the state of Seigneur de Maufant and Chief Magistrate of Jersey to that of an outcast deriving a precarious subsistence from teaching French in your Babylon here; but methinks you yourself have had a fall too, since the days you speak of:  when you left Jersey for London you came here in a sort of triumph.  But by this time, methinks, you must be cured of your high hopes:  I say it not for offence, but rather out of sorrow.”

“Why no,” answered the ex-Member.  “Though I be no longer one of yonder assembly, I am still a denizen of London; and, let me tell you, a citizen of no mean city.  And I bear my share in advancing the great cause on which so many of us are now engaged.  Have you not read what Mr. Milton hath said here as touching this?” And he took up the book which he had dropped in the window-seat “It is well said, as you will find.”

Motioning Lempriere to a chair, he took another and read as follows:—­

“’Behold now this vast city, a city of refuge, the mansion-house of liberty, encompassed and surrounded with its protection ... pens and hands there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas, wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching reformation.’  As he saith a little further on, the fields of our harvest are white already; and it is your privilege and mine that live among this wise and active people, to see it coming, perhaps to put in a sickle.  The pamphlet is becoming a force stronger than the sword; and those Ironsides and Woodenheads who turn us out of the Chamber where our fellow citizens had seated us, may find an ill time before them when our work is over.  But our work will be the work of freedom.”

What more would have been said, now that Prynne was setting forth on his dearly-loved hobby, of which the name was Cedant arma, is unknown; for the serving-man entered at this moment with a simple but plentiful repast carried on his head from the adjacent tavern; and even Prynne’s eagerness was dashed with caution enough to keep him to ordinary topics of talk so long as the man was in the room.  But Lempriere had seen and heard enough to put him in good humour with his host.  The intimacy of the latter with the Carterets, and a suspicion of general lukewarmness in the popular cause, had begotten old enmities, of which Lempriere, in the long probation of failure, exile, and poverty, had already learned to be ashamed; and to see the man he had misjudged, looking him eagerly and earnestly in the face as he uttered the language of a genuine reformer, completed the Jerseyman’s conversion.  After the servant had brought pipes and glasses and left the gentlemen to their tobacco and their wine, their talk grew more familiar as they looked at the flowing river, and the deserted towers of Lambeth away on the other side.