would be
decidedly irreligious to doubt it--wouldn't it, Gashford? Though there
certainly were,' he added, without waiting for an answer, 'some plaguy
ill-looking characters among them.'

'When you warmed,' said the secretary, looking sharply at the other's
downcast eyes, which brightened slowly as he spoke; 'when you warmed
into that noble outbreak; when you told them that you were never of
the lukewarm or the timid tribe, and bade them take heed that they were
prepared to follow one who would lead them on, though to the very death;
when you spoke of a hundred and twenty thousand men across the Scottish
border who would take their own redress at any time, if it were not
conceded; when you cried "Perish the Pope and all his base adherents;
the penal laws against them shall never be repealed while Englishmen
have hearts and hands"--and waved your own and touched your sword; and
when they cried "No Popery!" and you cried "No; not even if we wade in
blood," and they threw up their hats and cried "Hurrah! not even if we
wade in blood; No Popery! Lord George! Down with the Papists--Vengeance
on their heads:" when this was said and done, and a word from you, my
lord, could raise or still the tumult--ah! then I felt what greatness
was indeed, and thought, When was there ever power like this of Lord
George Gordon's!'

'It's a great power. You're right. It is a great power!' he cried with
sparkling eyes. 'But--dear Gashford--did I really say all that?'

'And how much more!' cried the secretary, looking upwards. 'Ah! how much
more!'

'And I told them what you say, about the one hundred and forty thousand
men in Scotland, did I!' he asked with evident delight. 'That was bold.'

'Our cause is boldness. Truth is always bold.'

'Certainly. So is religion. She's bold, Gashford?'

'The true religion is, my lord.'

'And that's ours,' he rejoined, moving uneasily in his seat, and biting
his nails as though he would pare them to the quick. 'There can be no
doubt of ours being the true one. You feel as certain of that as I do,
Gashford, don't you?'

'Does my lord ask ME,' whined Gashford, drawing his chair nearer with
an injured air, and laying his broad flat hand upon the table; 'ME,'
he repeated, bending the dark hollows of his eyes upon him with an
unwholesome smile, 'who, stricken by the magic of his eloquence in
Scotland but a year ago, abjured the errors of the Romish church, and
clung to him as one whose timely hand had p