the
entrance of his colleagues in office.

"What has brought ye hither?" said Burley, hastily. "Is there bad news
from the army?"

"No," replied Morton; "but we understand that there are measures adopted
here in which the safety of the army is deeply concerned--Lord Evandale
is your prisoner?"

"The Lord," replied Burley, "hath delivered him into our hands."

"And you will avail yourself of that advantage, granted you by Heaven, to
dishonour our cause in the eyes of all the world, by putting a prisoner
to an ignominious death?"

"If the house of Tillietudlem be not surrendered by daybreak," replied
Burley, "God do so to me and more also, if he shall not die that death to
which his leader and patron, John Grahame of Claverhouse, hath put so
many of God's saints."

"We are in arms," replied Morton, "to put down such cruelties, and not to
imitate them, far less to avenge upon the innocent the acts of the
guilty. By what law can you justify the atrocity you would commit?"

"If thou art ignorant of it," replied Burley, "thy companion is well
aware of the law which gave the men of Jericho to the sword of Joshua,
the son of Nun."

"But we," answered the divine, "live under a better dispensation, which
instructeth us to return good for evil, and to pray for those who
despitefully use us and persecute us."

"That is to say," said Burley, "that thou wilt join thy grey hairs to his
green youth to controvert me in this matter?"

"We are," rejoined Poundtext, "two of those to whom, jointly with
thyself, authority is delegated over this host, and we will not permit
thee to hurt a hair of the prisoner's head. It may please God to make him
a means of healing these unhappy breaches in our Israel."

"I judged it would come to this," answered Burley, "when such as thou
wert called into the council of the elders."

"Such as I?" answered Poundtext,--"And who am I, that you should name me
with such scorn?--Have I not kept the flock of this sheep-fold from the
wolves for thirty years? Ay, even while thou, John Balfour, wert fighting
in the ranks of uncircumcision, a Philistine of hardened brow and bloody
hand--Who am I, say'st thou?"

"I will tell thee what thou art, since thou wouldst so fain know," said
Burley. "Thou art one of those, who would reap where thou hast not sowed,
and divide the spoil while others fight the battle--thou art one of those
that follow the gospel for the loaves and for the fishes--that love their
o