Grey shrugged and turned his shoulder upon Wilding, but said no word. There was silence of some few moments. Andrew Fletcher leaned his elbow on the table and took his brow in his great bony hand. Wilding's words seemed an echo of those he himself had spoken a week or two ago, only to be overruled by Grey, who swayed the Duke more than did any other--and that he did not do so of fell purpose, and seeking deliberately to work Monmouth's ruin, no man will ever be able to say with certainty.
Ferguson rose, a tall, spare, stooping figure, and smote the board with his fist. "It is a good cause," he cried, "and God will not leave us unless we leave Him."
"Henry the Seventh landed with fewer men than did Your Grace," said Grey, "and he succeeded."
"True," put in Fletcher. "But Henry the Seventh was sure of the support of not a few of the nobility, which does not seem to be our case."
Ferguson and Grey stared at him in horror; Monmouth sat biting his lip, more bewildered than thoughtful.
"O man of little faith!" roared Ferguson in a passion. "Are ye to be swayed like a straw in the wind?"
"I am no' swayed. Ye ken this was ever my own view. I feel, in my heart, that what Mr. Wilding says is right. It is but what I said myself, and Captain Matthews with me, before we embarked upon this expedition. We were in danger of ruining all by a needless precipitancy. Nay, man, never stare so," he said to Grey, "I am in it now and I am no' the man to draw back, nor do I go so far as Mr. Wilding in counselling such a course. We've set our hands to the plough; let us go forward in God's name. Yet I would remind you that what Mr. Wilding says is true. Had we waited until next year, we had found the usurper's throne tottering under him, and, on our landing, it would have toppled o'er of itself."
"I have said already that we'll overset it with our hands," Grey answered.
"How many hands have you?" asked a new voice, a crisp, discordant voice, much steeped in mockery. It was Nick Trenchard's.
"Have we another here of Mr. Wilding's mind?" cried Grey, staring at him.
"I am seldom of any other," answered Trenchard. "We shall no' want for hands," Ferguson assured him. "Had ye arrived earlier ye might have seen how readily men enlisted." He had risen and approached the window as he spoke; he pulled it open, to let in the full volume of sound that rose from the street below.