nd
half aloud did Dalaber repeat the concluding sentence of that
address: "Then will ye wish ye had never known this doctrine; then
will ye curse Clarke, and wish ye had never known him, because he
hath brought you to all these troubles."

"No, no!" cried Dalaber eagerly, as though crying aloud to one who
could hear his words; "that will I never do, God helping me. Come
what may, I will thank and praise Him that I have been honoured by
the friendship of such a saint upon earth. I thank Him that I have
learned to love and to know the Scriptures as I never could have
known them but for reading them in mine own tongue, and hearing him
discourse upon them. Come what may, none can take that knowledge
from me. Whatever I may have to suffer, I shall ever have that
treasure in mine heart. And since I am no heretic in doctrine, and
believe all that the canons of the church teach, how can they treat
me as one who hates and would confound her? I am no follower of
Martin Luther, though I hold that he is waging war in a righteous
cause. But I would see the church arise and cast forth from herself
those things which defile; and more and more do her holy and pious
sons agree in this, that she doth need some measure of purification,
ere she can be fit to be presented to the Father as the bride of
the Lamb."

Dalaber was just now under the influences of Clarke rather than of
Garret. It was not only fear of what was coming upon him, though
that might have some share in the matter, but he had found of late
more comfort in the spiritual utterances of Clarke than in the
bellicose teachings of Garret. Moreover, he had not been blind to
the fact that Garret's courage had ebbed very visibly under the
stress of personal peril, whilst Clarke's spirit had remained calm
and unshaken. Dalaber had keen sympathy with Garret, in whose
temperament he recognized an affinity with his own, and whose
tremors and fits of weakness and yielding he felt he might well
share under like trial and temptation. Indeed, he did not deny to
himself that, were he not thus fast bound, he might have attempted
the escape which yesterday he had scorned. But he thought upon the
words of his beloved master, and spent the long, weary hours in
meditation and prayer; so that when the commissary visited him
later in the day and questioned him again, although he still
refused to implicate others in any charge, he spoke of his own
convictions with modesty and propriety, so that