"Gentlemen," said Morton, "if you mean to bear me down by clamour, and take my life without hearing me, it is perhaps a thing in your power; but you will sin before God and man by the commission of such a murder." "I say, hear the youth," said Macbriar; "for Heaven knows our bowels have yearned for him, that he might be brought to see the truth, and exert his gifts in its defence. But he is blinded by his carnal knowledge, and has spurned the light when it blazed before him." Silence being obtained, Morton proceeded to assert the good faith which he had displayed in the treaty with Monmouth, and the active part he had borne in the subsequent action. "I may not, gentlemen," he said, "be fully able to go the lengths you desire, in assigning to those of my own religion the means of tyrannizing over others; but none shall go farther in asserting our own lawful freedom. And I must needs aver, that had others been of my mind in counsel, or disposed to stand by my side in battle, we should this evening, instead of being a defeated and discordant remnant, have sheathed our weapons in an useful and honourable peace, or brandished them triumphantly after a decisive victory." "He hath spoken the word," said one of the assembly--"he hath avowed his carnal self-seeking and Erastianism; let him die the death!" "Peace yet again," said Macbriar, "for I will try him further.--Was it not by thy means that the malignant Evandale twice escaped from death and captivity? Was it not through thee that Miles Bellenden and his garrison of cut-throats were saved from the edge of the sword?" "I am proud to say, that you have spoken the truth in both instances," replied Morton. "Lo! you see," said Macbriar, "again hath his mouth spoken it.--And didst thou not do this for the sake of a Midianitish woman, one of the spawn of prelacy, a toy with which the arch-enemy's trap is baited? Didst thou not do all this for the sake of Edith Bellenden?" "You are incapable," answered Morton, boldly, "of appreciating my feelings towards that young lady; but all that I have done I would have done had she never existed." "Thou art a hardy rebel to the truth," said another dark-brow'd man; "and didst thou not so act, that, by conveying away the aged woman, Margaret Bellenden, and her grand-daughter, thou mightest thwart the wise and godly project of John Balfour of Burley for bringing forth to battle Basil Olifant, who had agreed to take the field if he were insured possession of these women's worldly endowments?" "I never heard of such a scheme," said Morton, "and therefore I could not thwart it.--But does your religion permit you to take such uncreditable and immoral modes of recruiting?"