“I suppose you think that my sin has found me out,” he said rather bitterly to Bride, when this unpalatable news had become verified as actual fact. “I suppose you believe that I went about the country last year inciting men to arson and pillage and every sort of brutality. You know that is what is said of me by the respectable people of Pentreath, that I provoked and incited riot, and took very good care to be out of the way when it took place, that others might bear the punishment.” “It is cruel to say such things of you,” answered Bride, with a quiet indignation which was very grateful to him. “I know they are not true, and I almost think the people who say them know that there is only a very small substratum of truth in them. But, Eustace,” and she looked up at him with one of her rare smiles, “do you not think you sometimes say things almost as untrue on the other side? Do you not sometimes make out men in high places to be little else than monsters, when all the time they are almost as helpless, and perhaps even less to blame for the effects of a system, than you for those riots at Pentreath, which above all things you disapprove and deprecate?” “I know what you mean,” he said; “I think we all go too far in our attack and defence. But those men _do_ uphold a system of tyranny and iniquity, even if they are not responsible for it, whilst I never uphold violence and lawlessness. I hate and abominate it with my whole heart.” “I know you do; but you will not get ignorant men to believe it, when you teach them how bad the laws are. Their idea of mending the existing state of things is to rebel against it by force.” “Yes; and great present mischief is the result; but, Bride, if all men held your doctrine of patience and submission, no reformation or reform, no redress of abuses, no respite from tyranny and oppression, would ever have been effected in the world’s history. When you have such imperfect material to deal with, imperfections are everywhere. Good is always mixed with evil, and will be to the end of the chapter.” “Yes; until the Kingdom,” answered Bride sadly, yet with a sudden lighting of the eyes. “Yes, Eustace, I know that so long as human nature is what it is, nothing can be done without evil creeping in. But I still think that if men would be content to leave results, and simply strive themselves after the best and highest good, and try and teach the ignorant and the degraded the one true and only way of raising themselves--if men would look to God for His teaching--from the highest to the lowest--trying in all things to do not their will but His--then I think the world would gradually raise itself without these cruel scenes of strife and bloodshed, without these heart-burnings and miserable factions. ‘Thy kingdom come!’ It is a prayer always on our lips; but do men try to apply the laws of God’s kingdom to this earth which He has made and they have marred?”