the gloomy bonds of fanaticism. In most cases, the immediate descendants
of Cromwell's soldiers would gladly have made some sort of compromise,
would have surrendered much of their outlying land to obtain secure and
peaceful possession of the rest, and would have emerged from the life of
gloomy seclusion, in which they found themselves; but no whisper of any
such feeling as this would be heard in the household of Zephaniah
Whitefoot, so long as he lived.

He was an old man now, but as hard, as gloomy, and as unlovable as he had
been when in his prime. His wife had died very many years before, of no
disease that Zephaniah or the doctor he called in could discover, but, in
fact, of utter weariness at the dull life of repression and gloom which
crushed her down. Of a naturally meek and docile disposition, she had
submitted without murmuring to her husband's commands, and had, during
her whole married life, never shocked him so much as she did the day
before her death, when, for the first time, she exhibited the possession
of an opinion of her own, by saying earnestly:

"You may say what you like, Zephaniah, but I do think we were meant to
have some happiness and pleasure on earth. If we were intended to go
through life without laughing, why should we be able to laugh? Oh, how I
should like to hear one hearty, natural laugh again before I die, such as
I used to hear when I was a girl!"

Jabez Whitefoot inherited his mother's docility of disposition, and, even
when he grew to middle age, never dreamt of disputing his father's
absolute rule, and remained strictly neutral when his wife, the daughter
of an old comrade of his father, settled a few miles away, fought stoutly
at times against his tyranny.