'Confess now, Cast-down Upstill, had he not both sun and wind of
me--standing, so to say, on his own hearth-stone? Had it not been
so, I could have called hard names with the best of you, though that
is by rights the gift of the preachers of the truth. See how the
good master Flowerdew excelleth therein, sprinkling them abroad from
the watering-pot of the gospel. Verily, when my mind is too feeble
to grasp his argument, my memory lays fast hold upon the hard names,
and while I hold by them, I have it all in a nutshell.'

Fortified occasionally by a pottle of ale, and keeping their spirits
constantly stirred by much talking, they had been all day occupied
in searching the Catholic houses of the neighbourhood for arms. What
authority they had for it never came to be clearly understood.
Plainly they believed themselves possessed of all that was needful,
or such men would never have dared it. As it was, they prosecuted it
with such a bold front, that not until they were gone did it occur
to some, who had yielded what arms they possessed, to question
whether they had done wisely in acknowledging such fellows as
parliamentary officials without demanding their warrant. Their day's
gleanings up to this point--of swords and pikes, guns and pistols,
they had left in charge of the host of the inn whence they had just
issued, and were now bent on crowning their day's triumph with a
supreme act of daring--the renown of which they enlarged in their
own imaginations, while undermining the courage needful for its
performance, by enhancing its terrors as they went.

At length two lofty hexagonal towers appeared, and the consciousness
that the final test of their resolution drew nigh took immediate
form in a fluttering at the heart, which, however, gave no outward