Cuthbert gave one swift backward thought to his companion of the road and the strange words he had uttered; and he asked with increasing interest of his lively neighbour: 

“But what do men think to gain by such plots?  What is the object of them?”

“Beshrew me if I know or care!  My father says they be all mad together, the moonstruck knaves!  They say that the ‘Bye’ was an attempt to make prisoner of the King’s Majesty, and to keep him in captivity till he had sworn to change his laws and his ministers—­as they say was done once in Scotland, when he was trying to rule his turbulent subjects there.  As for the ‘Main,’ that was worse; nothing better than the murder of the King and Royal family, so that the Lady Arabella might be Queen in his stead.  But neither came to good; it seemeth to me that these villainous plots never do, And all that results from them is that the laws are made harsher and harsher, and men groan and writhe under them, and curse the King and his ministers, when they had better be cursing their own folly and wickedness in trying to overthrow the government of their lawful rulers.”

“That is one side of the question, Mistress Rachel,” said Walter Cole, in his quiet voice; “but if none had ever revolted against tyranny, we had all been slaves this day instead of a free nation of subjects, imposing our just will upon a sovereign in return for the privileges he grants us.  There be limits to endurance.  There be times when those limits are over past, and to submit becomes weakness and coward folly.  Thou speakest as one swimming easily with the stream.  Thou knowest little of the perils of the shoals and quicksands.”

Rachel tossed her head, but was too wary to be drawn into an argument with the man of books.  She could air her father’s opinions second hand with an assumption of great assurance, but she was no hand at argument or fence, and had no desire for an encounter of wits.

But Cuthbert stepped eagerly into the breach, and the two men became engrossed in talk.  Cuthbert heard of acts of tyranny and oppression, cruel punishments and ruinous fines imposed upon hapless Romanists, guiltless of any other offence than of growing up in the faith of their forefathers.  He heard, on the other hand, of Puritan preachers deprived of their cures and hunted about like criminals, though nothing save the crime of unlicensed preaching could be adduced against them.  Cuthbert’s blood was young and hot, and easily stirred within him.  He began to understand how it was that the nation and this great city were never at rest.  It seemed to him as though he had stepped down out of a region of snow and ice into the very crater of some smouldering volcano which might at any moment burst out into flames.  The sensation was strange and a little intoxicating.  He marvelled how he had been content so long to know so little of the great world in which he lived.

The party broke up all too soon for him; but after the guests had gone he had yet another interview to go through with his uncle, after the womenkind had been dismissed to bed.