last words of this record.--_Author_.




PART I


CHAPTER I

WHAT ARE KING-KILLERS?

My father--peace to his soul!--had been of those who thronged London
streets with wine tubs to drink the restored king's health on bended
knee; but he, poor gentleman, departed this life before his monarch
could restore a wasted patrimony. For old Tibbie, the nurse, there was
nothing left but to pawn the family plate and take me, a spoiled lad in
his teens, out to Puritan kin of Boston Town.

On the night my father died he had spoken remorsefully of the past to
the lord bishop at his bedside.

"Tush, man, have a heart," cries his lordship. "Thou'lt see pasch and
yule yet forty year, Stanhope. Tush, man, 'tis thy liver, or a touch
of the gout. Take here a smack of port. Sleep sound, man, sleep
sound."

And my father slept so sound he never wakened more.

So I came to my Uncle Kirke, whose virtues were of the acid sort that