"It is fitting that thanks should be rendered therefor, where thanks are
most due," said the Puritan, folding his hands on his bosom, and sitting
for a moment with closed eyes, like one who communed with an unseen being.
"Is it known by what manner of argument the Lord moved the heart of the
Prince to hearken to our wants; or was it an open and manifest token of
his power?"

"I think it must needs have been the latter," rejoined the visiter, with a
manner that grew still more caustic and emphatic. "The bauble, that was
the visible agent, could not have weighed greatly with one so proudly
seated before the eyes of men."

Until this point in the discourse, Content and Ruth, with their
offspring, and the two or three other individuals who composed the
audience, had listened with the demure gravity which characterized the
manners of the country. The language, united with the ill-concealed
sarcasm conveyed by the countenance, no less than the emphasis, of the
speaker, caused them now to raise their eyes, as by a common impulse. The
word "bauble" was audibly and curiously repeated. But the look of cold
irony had already passed from the features of the stranger, and it had
given place to a stern and fixed austerity, that imparted a character of
grimness to his hard and sun-burnt visage. Still he betrayed no
disposition to shrink from the subject, but, after regarding, his auditors
with a glance in which pride and suspicion were strongly blended, he
resumed the discourse.

"It is known," he added, "that the grandfather of him the good people of
these settlements have commissioned to bear their wants over sea, lived in
the favor of the man who last sat upon the throne of England; and a rumor