preserve it?

Ralph returned to his old conviction--God's hand was on him. The idea,
morbid as it might be, brought him solace this time. Once more he
stopped, and turned his eyes afresh towards the north and the fifty
miles of darkness that lay between him and those he loved.

It was at that very moment of desolation that Rotha heard the neigh of
a horse as she leaned out of her open window.


II.

"Aye, poor man, about Martinmas the Crown seized his freehold and all
his goods and chattels."

"It will be sad news for him when he hears that his old mother and the
wife and children were turned into the road."

"Well, well, I will say, treason or none, that John Rushton was as
good a subject as the loudest bagpipes of them all."

Ralph was sitting at breakfast in a wayside inn when two Lancashire
yeomen entered and began to converse in these terms: "Aye, aye, and
the leaven of Puritanism is not to be crushed out by such measures.
But it's flat dishonesty, and nothing less. What did the proclamation
of '59 mean if it didn't promise pardon to every man that fought for
the Parliament, save such as were named as regicides?"

"Tut, man, it came to nought; the King returned without conditions;