and I mentally set to scaling rope ladders in and out of those windows.

We drew up before the front garden and entered by a turnstile with
flying arms. Many a ride have little Rebecca Stocking, of the
court-house, and Ben Gillam, the captain's son, and Jack Battle, the
sailor lad, had, perched on that turnstile, while I ran pushing and
jumping on, as the arms flew creaking round.

The home-coming was not auspicious. Yet I thought no resentment
against my uncle. I realized too well how the bloody revenge of the
royalists was turning the hearts of England to stone. One morning I
recall, when my poor father lay a-bed of the gout and there came a roar
through London streets as of a burst ocean dike. Before Tibbie could
say no, I had snatched up a cap and was off.

God spare me another such sight! In all my wild wanderings have I
never seen savages do worse.

Through the streets of London before the shoutings of a rabble rout was
whipped an old, white-haired man. In front of him rumbled a cart; in
the cart, the axeman, laving wet hands; at the axeman's feet, the head
of a regicide--all to intimidate that old, white-haired man, fearlessly
erect, singing a psalm. When they reached the shambles, know you what
they did? Go read the old court records and learn what that sentence
meant when a man's body was cast into fire before his living eyes! All
the while, watching from a window were the princes and their shameless
ones.

Ah, yes! God wot, I understood Eli Kirke's bitterness!