"_Four!_" echoed Nathan, looking wonder and alarm together: "does thee think to have _me_ do the wicked thing of shedding blood? Thee should remember, friend, that I am a follower of peaceful doctrines, a man of peace and amity." "What!" said Roland, warmly, "would you not defend your life from the villains? Would you suffer yourself to be tomahawked, unresisting, when a touch of the trigger under your finger, a blow of the knife at your belt, would preserve the existence nature and heaven alike call on you to protect? Would you lie still, like a fettered ox, to be butchered?" "Truly," said Nathan, "I would take myself away; or, if that might not be, why then, friend,--verily, friend, if I could do nothing else,--truly, I must then give myself up to be murdered," "Spiritless, mad, or hypocritical!" cried Roland, with mingled wonder and contempt. Then grasping his strange companion by the arm, he cried, "Harkee, man, if you would not strike a blow for yourself,--would you not strike it for another? What if you had a wife, a parent, a child, lying beneath the uplifted hatchet, and you with these arms in your hands,--what! do you tell me you would stand by and see them murdered?--I say, a wife or child!--the wife of your bosom,--the child of your heart? would you see _them_ murdered?" At this stirring appeal, uttered with indescribable energy and passion, though only in a whisper, Nathan's countenance changed from dark to pale, and his arm trembled in the soldier's grasp. He turned upon him also a look of extraordinary wildness, and muttered betwixt his teeth an answer that betokened as much confusion of mind as agitation of spirits: "Friend," he said, "whoever thee is, it matters nothing to thee what might happen, or has happened, in such case made and provided. I am a man, thee is another; thee has thee conscience, and I have mine. If thee will fight, fight; settle it with thee conscience. If thee don't like to see thee kinswoman murdered, and thee thinks thee has a call to battle, do thee best with sword and pistol, gun and tomahawk; kill and slay to thee liking: if thee conscience finds no fault with thee, neither will I. But as for me, let the old Adam of the flesh stir me as it may, I have no one to fight for,--wife or child, parent or kinsman, I have none: if thee will hunt the world over, thee will not find one in it that is my kinsman or relative." "But I ask you," said Roland, somewhat surprised at the turn of Nathan's answer, "I ask you, if you _had_ a wife or child--" "But I have _not_," cried Nathan, interrupting him vehemently; "and therefore, friend, why should thee speak of them? Them that are dead, let them rest: they can never cry to me more.--Think of thee own blood, and do what seems best to thee for the good thereof."