Sir Edmund! Bid the soldiers forward, and give the dotard the same
choice that you give all his countrymen--to stand aside or be trampled
on."

"Nay, nay! Let us show respect to the good grandsire," said Bullivant,
laughing. "See you not he is some old round-headed dignitary who hath
lain asleep these thirty years and knows nothing of the change of
times? Doubtless he thinks to put us down with a proclamation in Old
Noll's name."

"Are you mad, old man?" demanded Sir Edmund Andros, in loud and harsh
tones. "How dare you stay the march of King James's governor?"

"I have stayed the march of a king himself ere now," replied the gray
figure, with stern composure. "I am here, Sir Governor, because the
cry of an oppressed people hath disturbed me in my secret place, and,
beseeching this favor earnestly of the Lord, it was vouchsafed me to
appear once again on earth in the good old cause of his saints. And
what speak ye of James? There is no longer a popish tyrant on the
throne of England, and by to-morrow noon his name shall be a by-word
in this very street, where ye would make it a word of terror. Back,
thou that wast a governor, back! With this night thy power is ended.
To-morrow, the prison! Back, lest I foretell the scaffold!"

The people had been drawing nearer and nearer and drinking in the
words of their champion, who spoke in accents long disused, like one
unaccustomed to converse except with the dead of many years ago. But
his voice stirred their souls. They confronted the soldiers, not
wholly without arms and ready to convert the very stones of the street
into deadly weapons. Sir Edmund Andros looked at the old man; then he