"I pray you peace a little season, Brother Rogers. I would not, truly, join with those that single them out for sinners on whom the tower of Siloam fell, but the judgments that come upon us be either for our learning or our chastisement. Therefore, we do suffer loss if we seek not out the Lord's purpose. I would not judge any man. I would desire every man to judge himself. But, behold now, what hath been the end of these men who have risen up against the king, set over us by the Almighty? Have they come to their graves in peace? Have not some of them been cut off in their strength, and have not the remnant of them come to a fearful end in their old age? For in this matter there can be no two opinions, seeing that the Word of Scripture is plain: 'Honour the king,' yea, though he be a very Nero! Therefore, Richard, I do lament that the stain of blood-guiltiness must needs cleave unto thee, seeing that thou wast consenting unto the death of the Lord's anointed king, even as Saul was consenting unto the death of Stephen; thou didst stand by even as he did, although thy hand was not lifted. And I do affectionately pray thee to take the chastisement that has fallen already upon thee as a warning." Mr. Rogers' patience could hold out no longer. He burst in-- "In that, at least, did Richard well! and a glorious thing was it to be numbered among them that called the late Man to account for the blood he had shed." But his interruption was unheeded. Mr. Marshman's steady harangue flowed on, as unmoved as is the bass of a mountain-torrent by the shrieks of the wind that may blow across it. Mr. Marshman appealed to St. Paul, and Mr. Rogers retorted from the Maccabees; the one instanced King David, and the other King Pharaoh, and quotations from the classics and early fathers flew as thick as hailstones in a winter's storm. Richard sat half-stunned, half-amused, but knowing in his soul that no eloquence of either divine could go so far to shake his confidence in his own cause as the words of Audrey Perrient, "My father did not justify the death of the king." It was as much to answer the sudden doubt that rose in his own heart, as to answer Mr. Marshman, that when he took advantage of an instant's lull in the debate to rise, he said-- "I thank you for your counsels, sir, and I will endeavour to profit by them, but give me leave to say one word. I do verily hold, that had the late Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell, seen any way to secure a settlement, save by the death of the king, I am assured he would have embraced it. But to my thinking matters had come to that pass that no choice was left him." "Ay," retorted Mr. Marshman, "when the Gadarene swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, they had no choice but to drown; nevertheless, it was the devil that set them a running at the first."