Colonel
Keith died for a wrongful cause?"

"God forbid!" she said, gravely. "Colonel Keith did not die for that
Cause. He died for right and righteousness, for truth and honour, for
faithfulness, for loyalty and love--no bad things to die for. Not for
the Prince--only for God and Flora, and a little, perhaps, for Angus.
God forbid that I should judge any true and honourable man--most of all
that man who gave his life for those we love. Only, Cary, the Cause is
dead and gone. The struggle is over for ever: and we may thank God it
is so. On the wreck of the old England a new England may arise--an
England standing fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made her
free, free from priestly yoke and priest-ridden rulers, free not to
revolt but to follow, not to disobey, but to obey. If only--ah! if only
she resolve, and stand to it, never to be entangled again with the yoke
of bondage, never to forget the lessons which God has taught her, never
again to eat the sour grapes, and set the children's teeth on edge. Let
her once begin to think of the tiger's beauty, and forget its deathly
claws--once lay aside her watchword of `No peace with Rome'--and she
will find it means no peace with God, for His scourge has always pursued
her when she has truckled to His great enemy. Eh, but men have short
memories, never name short sight. Like enough, by a hundred years are
over, they'll be looking at Roman sugar-sticks as the Scarlet Woman
holds them out, and thinking that she is very fair and fine-spoken, and
why shouldn't they have a few sweets? Well! it is well the government
of the world isn't in old Kezia's hands, for if it were, some people
would find themselves uncommonly uncomfortable before long."

"You don't mean me, I hope?" I said, laughing.

"Nay, child, I don't mean you, nor yet your husband. Very like you'll
not see it as I do. But you'll live to see it--if only you live long
enough."

Well, my Aunt Kezia may be right, though I do not see it. Only that I
do think it was a sad blunder to throw out the Bill of Exclusion. It
had passed the Commons, so they were not to blame. But one thing I
should like to set down, for any who may read this book a hundred years
hence, if it hath not been tore up for waste-paper long ere that--that
we Protestants who fought for the Prince never fought nor meant to fight
for Popery. We hated it every bit as much as any who stood against him.
We fought because the contrary s