d Christian.

"Because they allow us that time for escape."

"Why, then, do you not avail yourself of it? Wherefore are you here?"
said Christian.

"Nay, rather, why do _you_ not fly?" said Bridgenorth. "Of a surety, you
are as deeply engaged as I."

"Brother Bridgenorth, I am the fox, who knows a hundred modes of
deceiving the hounds; you are the deer, whose sole resource is in
hasty flight. Therefore lose no time--begone to the country--or rather,
Zedekiah Fish's vessel, the _Good Hope_, lies in the river, bound for
Massachusetts--take the wings of the morning, and begone--she can fall
down to Gravesend with the tide."

"And leave to thee, brother Christian," said Bridgenorth, "the charge of
my fortune and my daughter? No, brother; my opinion of your good faith
must be re-established ere I again trust thee."

"Go thy ways, then, for a suspicious fool," said Christian, suppressing
his strong desire to use language more offensive; "or rather stay where
thou art, and take thy chance of the gallows!"

"It is appointed to all men to die once," said Bridgenorth; "my life
hath been a living death. My fairest boughs have been stripped by the
axe of the forester--that which survives must, if it shall blossom, be
grafted elsewhere, and at a distance from my aged trunk. The sooner,
then, the root feels the axe, the stroke is more welcome. I had been
pleased, indeed, had I been called to bringing yonder licentious Court
to a purer character, and relieving the yoke of the suffering people of
God. That youth too--son to that precious woman, to whom I owe the
last tie that feebly links my wearied spirit to humanity--could I have
travailed with _him_ in the good cause!--But that, with all my other
hopes is broken for ever; and since I am not worthy to be an instrument
in so great a work, I have little desire to abide longer in this vale of
sorrow."

"Farewell, then, desponding fool!" said Christian, unable, with all
his calmness, any longer to suppress his contempt for the resigned and
hopeless predestinarian. "That fate should have clogged me with such
confederates!" he muttered, as he left the apartment--"this bigoted fool
is now nearly irreclaimable--I must to Zarah; for she, or no one, must
carry us through these straits. If I can but soothe her sullen temper,
and excite her vanity to action,--betwixt her address, the King's
partiality for the Duke, Buckingham's matchless effrontery, and my own
hand upon the helm, we ma