Hearing a step without, Prynne laid down the book he had been reading--a pamphlet by John Milton--and advanced, with an air of polite reserve, to meet the entering visitor. This was a man more than ten years his junior, short of stature, with clear-cut features and thoughtful blue eyes contrasting with hair and moustache dark almost to blackness. His neatly brushed garments had a threadbare gloss, and his broad linen falling collar, though white and clean, was somewhat frayed. But his bearing was high-bred and distinguished, with an air of sober yet resolute earnestness. He wore no sword, and the hat which he carried in his hand was plain of shape and without adornment. "M. de Maufant," said Prynne, with the shy courtesy of a student, "will admire that I should seek speech of him after sundry passages that have been between us." "Alack! Mr. Prynne," answered the stranger, with a slight foreign accent, "since your captivity in Mont Orgueil many things have befallen. 'Tis not alone I, Michael Lempriere the exile, changed from the state of Seigneur de Maufant and Chief Magistrate of Jersey to that of an outcast deriving a precarious subsistence from teaching French in your Babylon here; but methinks you yourself have had a fall too, since the days you speak of: when you left Jersey for London you came here in a sort of triumph. But by this time, methinks, you must be cured of your high hopes: I say it not for offence, but rather out of sorrow." "Why no," answered the ex-Member. "Though I be no longer one of yonder assembly, I am still a denizen of London; and, let me tell you, a citizen of no mean city. And I bear my share in advancing the great cause on which so many of us are now engaged. Have you not read what Mr. Milton hath said here as touching this?" And he took up the book which he had dropped in the window-seat "It is well said, as you will find." Motioning Lempriere to a chair, he took another and read as follows:-- "'Behold now this vast city, a city of refuge, the mansion-house of liberty, encompassed and surrounded with its protection ... pens and hands there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas, wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching reformation.' As he saith a little further on, the fields of our harvest are white already; and it is your privilege and mine that live among this wise and active people, to see it coming, perhaps to put in a sickle. The pamphlet is becoming a force stronger than the sword; and those Ironsides and Woodenheads who turn us out of the Chamber where our fellow citizens had seated us, may find an ill time before them when our work is over. But our work will be the work of freedom."