He made a gesture at once of encouragement and warning, then
turned again, and resumed his way.

"Who is this gray patriarch?" asked the young men of their sires.

"Who is this venerable brother?" asked the old men among
themselves.

But none could make reply. The fathers of the people, those of
fourscore years and upwards, were disturbed, deeming it strange
that they should forget one of such evident authority, whom they
must have known in their early days, the associate of Winthrop,
and all the old councillors, giving laws, and making prayers, and
leading them against the savage. The elderly men ought to have
remembered him, too, with locks as gray in their youth, as their
own were now. And the young! How could he have passed so utterly
from their memories--that hoary sire, the relic of longdeparted
times, whose awful benediction had surely been bestowed on their
uncovered heads, in childhood?

"Whence did he come? What is his purpose? Who can this old man
be?" whispered the wondering crowd.

Meanwhile, the venerable stranger, staff in hand, was pursuing
his solitary walk along the centre of the street. As he drew near
the advancing soldiers, and as the roll of their drum came full
upon his ears, the old man raised himself to a loftier mien,
while the decrepitude of age seemed to fall from his shoulders,
leaving him in gray but unbroken dignity. Now, he marched onward
with a warrior's step, keeping time to the military music. Thus