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Colonel Keith died for a wrongful cause?" "God forbid!" she said, gravely. "Colonel Keith did not die for that Cause. He died for right and righteousness, for truth and honour, for faithfulness, for loyalty and love--no bad things to die for. Not for the Prince--only for God and Flora, and a little, perhaps, for Angus. God forbid that I should judge any true and honourable man--most of all that man who gave his life for those we love. Only, Cary, the Cause is dead and gone. The struggle is over for ever: and we may thank God it is so. On the wreck of the old England a new England may arise--an England standing fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made her free, free from priestly yoke and priest-ridden rulers, free not to revolt but to follow, not to disobey, but to obey. If only--ah! if only she resolve, and stand to it, never to be entangled again with the yoke of bondage, never to forget the lessons which God has taught her, never again to eat the sour grapes, and set the children's teeth on edge. Let her once begin to think of the tiger's beauty, and forget its deathly claws--once lay aside her watchword of `No peace with Rome'--and she will find it means no peace with God, for His scourge has always pursued her when she has truckled to His great enemy. Eh, but men have short memories, never name short sight. Like enough, by a hundred years are over, they'll be looking at Roman sugar-sticks as the Scarlet Woman holds them out, and thinking that she is very fair and fine-spoken, and why shouldn't they have a few sweets? Well! it is well the government of the world isn't in old Kezia's hands, for if it were, some people would find themselves uncommonly uncomfortable before long." "You don't mean me, I hope?" I said, laughing. "Nay, child, I don't mean you, nor yet your husband. Very like you'll not see it as I do. But you'll live to see it--if only you live long enough." Well, my Aunt Kezia may be right, though I do not see it. Only that I do think it was a sad blunder to throw out the Bill of Exclusion. It had passed the Commons, so they were not to blame. But one thing I should like to set down, for any who may read this book a hundred years hence, if it hath not been tore up for waste-paper long ere that--that we Protestants who fought for the Prince never fought nor meant to fight for Popery. We hated it every bit as much as any who stood against him. We fought because the contrary s
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