'I will think over it,' I answered, and with a nod to the kindly couple
proceeded on my way.

Zachariah Palmer was planing a plank as I passed. Looking up he bade me
good-morrow.

'I have a book for you, lad,' he said.

'I have but now finished the "Comus,"' I answered, for he had lent me
John Milton's poem. 'But what is this new book, daddy?'

'It is by the learned Locke, and treateth of states and statecraft.
It is but a small thing, but if wisdom could show in the scales it would
weigh down many a library. You shall have it when I have finished it,
to-morrow mayhap or the day after. A good man is Master Locke. Is he
not at this moment a wanderer in the Lowlands, rather than bow his knee
to what his conscience approved not of?'

'There are many good men among the exiles, are there not?' said I.

'The pick of the country,' he answered. 'Ill fares the land that
drives the highest and bravest of its citizens away from it. The day
is coming, I fear, when every man will have to choose betwixt his
beliefs and his freedom. I am an old man, Micah boy, but I may live
long enough to see strange things in this once Protestant kingdom.'

'But if these exiles had their way,' I objected, 'they would place
Monmouth upon the throne, and so unjustly alter the succession.'