The Duke’s face was very dark and stern, but his sternness was not for his child, as Bride knew by the pressure of the fingers upon her hand. “Eustace should think of this before he sets about playing with explosives. Could he not see that young Tresithny was not a man to be stirred up with impunity? What a man sows, that shall he also reap.” “Ah! truly he does! Oh, papa, I fear me the harvest Eustace will have to reap will be a very bitter one; but, indeed, indeed Saul must not die for Eustace’s fault. Eustace is our kinsman. He was here as our guest. We cannot altogether shirk the responsibility of his deeds. Papa, you will not let Saul die for what is the folly and sin of Eustace. Ah! no. You will save him, I know. You will save him, for the honour of the name of Marchmont!” “What can I do. Bride? I have no power. I am not one of the magistrates.” “You are not a magistrate, but you have more power than any one in the county,” answered Bride, with a smile so like her mother’s, that the heart of the old man contracted first with pain, and then swelled with a sense of new happiness. “Eustace would perhaps call it an abuse, that one man should have so much power in his hands just because he had wealth and lands; but I do not think that. I hold that if he uses his power on behalf of true justice and true mercy, and in the cause of Christ, it can be a power of great good to be used for the glory of God and the blessing of man. _You_ will use your power so, dearest father, will you not? Saul would have striven to do you hurt last night, not from any personal enmity, but because he has been wrongly taught by our own kinsman. You will go to-day and plead for him before his accusers, and show him that the rich do not hate and oppress the poor, that the great ones of the world can feel compassion and tenderness for those who are deceived and led away, and that in them, and not in those who raise the cry of hatred and bitterness, their friends are to be found.” The Duke was silent for several minutes, and Bride did not disturb him by so much as a word. He had laid his hand upon her head, and was looking into her eyes with a glance she could not understand. In very truth he was recalling the parting scene with his wife, the last charge she had given him before the hand of death had been laid upon those lips. It seemed to him as if now, all these months later, he was listening to the echo of those words; and a strange wave of tenderness swept over him, softening the hard lines of his face, and bringing into it something which Bride had scarcely seen there before. “You would have me stand before our ministers of the law as the advocate of one who has been lawless, criminal, and the stirrer-up of sedition? Am I to appear before our townsfolks as the supporter of anarchy and arson?”