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the benefit of our country?"
"For heaven's love! Windsor," cried Ryland, "do not mock me with that
title. Death and disease level all men. I neither pretend to protect nor
govern an hospital--such will England quickly become."
"
Do you then intend, now in time of peril, to recede from your duties?"
Duties! speak rationally, my Lord!--when I am a plague-spotted corpse,
"
where will my duties be? Every man for himself! the devil take the
protectorship, say I, if it expose me to danger!"
"Faint-hearted man!" cried Adrian indignantly--"Your countrymen put their
trust in you, and you betray them!"
"I betray them!" said Ryland, "the plague betrays me. Faint-hearted! It is
well, shut up in your castle, out of danger, to boast yourself out of fear.
Take the Protectorship who will; before God I renounce it!"
"And before God," replied his opponent, fervently, "do I receive it! No one
will canvass for this honour now--none envy my danger or labours. Deposit
your powers in my hands. Long have I fought with death, and much" (he
stretched out his thin hand) "much have I suffered in the struggle. It is
not by flying, but by facing the enemy, that we can conquer. If my last
combat is now about to be fought, and I am to be worsted--so let it be!"
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