"And starving cold it is, too," grumbled Astbury. "Best come to warm countries, Maester Dick!" and so flung himself on the wretched pallet in the corner of the room, and was snoring before many minutes were over. Dick wrapped himself in his cloak and stretched himself on the settle, but sleep was far from him. Many a man of good birth and education he had known driven to take the road and become a highwayman, and think himself none the worse gentleman for it. Pah! that revolted him--that was little better than common thievery. But to sail the South seas! to harry the Spaniard! to free the oppressed Indians! A sort of fever seemed to possess him, and rouse him from the apathy that had fallen on him. He tried to call up his cooler judgment, but in vain; pictures of sunny seas and waving palm groves, of gallant fights and sacked towns danced before him, and his broken slumbers only wove the fancies into dreams. The morning found him still undecided. "I will go a mile or two along with you, Astbury," he said, "before I give my word. Which way are you bound?" "Well," he answered, "the best seaport for our purpose would be either Bristol or London." "No, no," answered Richard. "I may not venture on the back road so as to come to Bristol, and London were worse still. Is there no seaport this side of England would do as well?" "Well, sir, if 'twas a matter of working my passage, I'd be bound to go where there would be ships trading the right way; but if I was with a gentleman as would oblige me with a loan, 'tis easy to take ship from Harwich, or find one lying in Yarmouth Roads that would carry us part way, and then we could take passage from some French or Spanish port. What do you say, sir, to Yarmouth?" Richard assented, and they trudged on silently for some time. The morning air cooled Dick's fevered pulse, and the exercise shook off the sort of dream that had taken hold of him. His sober reason began to awaken, and then, almost with the distinctness of a living voice, the words flashed back on him: "It is to secure the just liberties of the people of God that thou art pledged to live or die for it." What had possessed him? Was he running mad? Was he to draw that sword that had fought for justice and liberty as the comrade of murderers and pirates? Had he sunk so low that he was willing to choose the company of a drunken ruffian; he who had been the comrade of Thomas Harrison? The dead hand still held his. The Fifth Monarchy might be a dream, the hope of a Republic an idle fancy, but he had not been trained to fight for theories alone. Justice, law, liberty were solid facts; those were the watchwords General Harrison had taught him; for those he had lived, to those he would be true, whether good or evil fortune awaited him, whether there were, indeed, a heavenly reward for the victor, or but the abyss of forgetfulness at the end of the strife. He stopped short.