Moreover, he had not been blind to the fact that Garret's courage had ebbed very visibly under the stress of personal peril, whilst Clarke's spirit had remained calm and unshaken.

Dalaber had keen sympathy with Garret, in whose temperament he recognized an affinity with his own, and whose tremors and fits of weakness and yielding he felt he might well share under like trial and temptation.

Indeed, he did not deny to himself that, were he not thus fast bound, he might have attempted the escape which yesterday he had scorned.

But he thought upon the words of his beloved master, and spent the long, weary hours in meditation and prayer; so that when the commissary visited him later in the day and questioned him again, although he still refused to implicate others in any charge, he spoke of his own convictions with modesty and propriety, so that the commissary began to question whether he were, after all, so black a heretic as had been painted, and promised that he should have food sent him, together with pens and paper, on which he was desired to set forth a confession of his faith.

He was not, however, released from the stocks until the college was safely shut up for the night, and all gates closed.
Dalaber wrote his confession of faith with great care and skill; and he trusted that he had not committed himself to any doctrine which would arouse the ire of those who would read it.