contemporaries, who had sought shelter in the western continent, his
political opinions, if not absolutely republican, had a leaning to liberty
that was strongly in opposition to the doctrine of the divine rights of
the monarch, while he had been too far removed from the stirring passions
which had gradually excited those nearer to the throne, to lose their
respect for its sanctity, and to sully its brightness with blood. When the
transient and straggling visiters that, at long intervals, visited his
settlement, spoke of the Protector, who for so many years ruled England
with an iron hand, the eyes of the old man would gleam with sudden and
singular interest; and once, when commenting after evening prayer on the
vanity and the vicissitudes of this life, he acknowledged that the
extraordinary individual, who was, in substance if not in name, seated on
the throne of the Plantagenets, had been the boon companion and ungodly
associate of many of his youthful hours. Then would follow a long,
wholesome, extemporaneous homily on the idleness of setting the affections
on the things of life, and a half-suppressed, but still intelligible
commendation of the wiser course which had led him to raise his own
tabernacle in the wilderness, instead of weakening the chances of eternal
glory by striving too much for the possession of the treacherous vanities
of the world.

But even the gentle and ordinarily little observant Ruth might trace the
kindling of the eye, the knitting of the brow, and the flushings of his
pale and furrowed cheek, as the murderous conflicts of the civil wars
became the themes of the ancient soldier's discourse. There were moments
when religious submission, and we had almost said religious precepts, were
partially forgotten, as he explained to his attentive son and listening
grandchild, the nature of the onset, or the quality and dignity of the
retreat. At such times, his still nervous hand would even wield the blade,
in order to instruct the latter in its uses, and many a long winter