If he defied the man he was probably dead, either struck stiff there in his chair or long afterwards as by an innocent ailment.

If he called in the police promptly, arrested everyone, told all, and set against them the whole energy of England, he would probably escape; certainly not otherwise.

They were a balconyful of gentlemen overlooking a bright and busy square; but he felt no more safe with them than if they had been a boatful of armed pirates overlooking an empty sea.
There was a second thought that never came to him.

It never occurred to him to be spiritually won over to the enemy.

Many moderns, inured to a weak worship of intellect and force, might have wavered in their allegiance under this oppression of a great personality.