And as
for this coming struggle, have I not written to my cousin, humiliating as
it was to me, to beg him to warn you all from me, lest--"
I could not finish the sentence.
"You wrote? He has warned us, but he never mentioned your name. He spoke of
his knowledge as having been picked up by himself at personal risk to his
clerical character."
"The risk, I presume, of being known to have actually received a letter
from a Chartist; but I wrote--on my honour I wrote--a week ago; and
received no word of answer!"
"Is this true?" she asked.
"A man is not likely to deal in useless falsehoods, who knows not whether
he shall live to see the set of sun!"
"Then you are implicated in this expected insurrection?"
"I am implicated," I answered, "with the people; what they do I shall do.
Those who once called themselves the patrons of the tailor-poet, left
the mistaken enthusiast to languish for three years in prison, without a
sign, a hint of mercy, pity, remembrance. Society has cast me off; and,
in casting me off, it has sent me off to my own people, where I should
have stayed from the beginning.
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