The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock: rescued my captive, and covered the retreat of my enemies?
And, not content with this, have you now set fire to the castle
in which I intended to take up my royal quarters?"
The little friar quaked like a jelly: he fell on his knees,
and attempted to speak; but in his eagerness to vindicate himself
from this accumulation of alarming charges, he knew not where to begin;
his ideas rolled round upon each other like the radii of a wheel;
the words he desired to utter, instead of issuing, as it were,
in a right line from his lips, seemed to conglobate themselves
into a sphere turning on its own axis in his throat:
after several ineffectual efforts, his utterance totally failed him,
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