Heralds of Empire | Page 2

have us believe, but a way of
escape from those vampires sucking the life-blood of New France--the
farmers of the revenue. Indeed, His Most Christian Majesty himself
commanded those robber rulers of Quebec to desist from meddling
with the northern adventurers. And if some gentleman who has never
been farther from city cobblestones than to ride afield with the hounds
or take waters at foreign baths, should protest that no maid was ever in
so desolate a case as Mistress Hortense, I answer there are to-day many
in the same region keeping themselves pure as pond-lilies in a brackish
pool, at the forts of their fathers and husbands in the fur-trading country.
[1]
And as memory looks back to those far days, there is another--a poor,
shambling, mean-spoken, mean-clad fellow, with the scars of convict
gyves on his wrists and the dumb love of a faithful spaniel in his eyes.
Compare these two as I may--Pierre Radisson, the explorer with fame
like a meteor that drops in the dark; Jack Battle, the wharf-rat--for the
life of me I cannot tell which memory grips the more.
One played the game, the other paid the pawn. Both were
misunderstood. One took no thought but of self; the other, no thought
of self at all. But where the great man won glory that was a target for
envy, the poor sailor lad garnered quiet happiness.
[1] In confirmation of which reference may be called to the daughter of
Governor Norton in Prince of Wales Fort, north of Nelson. Hearne
reports that the poor creature died from exposure about the time of her
father's death, which was many years after Mr. Stanhope had written
the last words of this record.--Author.

CHAPTER I
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PART I
CHAPTER I
WHAT ARE KING-KILLERS?
My father--peace to his soul!--had been of those who thronged London
streets with wine tubs to drink the restored king's health on bended
knee; but he, poor gentleman, departed this life before his monarch
could restore a wasted patrimony. For old Tibbie, the nurse, there was
nothing left but to pawn the family plate and take me, a spoiled lad in
his teens, out to Puritan kin of Boston Town.
On the night my father died he had spoken remorsefully of the past to
the lord bishop at his bedside.
"Tush, man, have a heart," cries his lordship. "Thou'lt see pasch and
yule yet forty year, Stanhope. Tush, man, 'tis thy liver, or a touch of the
gout. Take here a smack of port. Sleep sound, man, sleep sound."
And my father slept so sound he never wakened more.
So I came to my Uncle Kirke, whose virtues were of the acid sort that
curdles the milk of human kindness.
With him, goodness meant gloom. If the sweet joy of living ever sang
to him in his youth, he shut his ears to the sound as to siren temptings,
and sternly set himself to the fierce delight of being miserable.
For misery he had reason enough. Having writ a book in which he
called King Charles "a man of blood and everlasting
abomination"--whatever that might mean--Eli Kirke got himself
star-chambered. When, in the language of those times, he was

examined "before torture, in torture, between torture, and after
torture"--the torture of the rack and the thumbkins and the boot--he
added to his former testimony that the queen was a "Babylonish woman,
a Potiphar, a Jezebel, a--"
There his mouth was gagged, head and heels roped to the rack, and a
wrench given the pulleys at each end that nigh dismembered his poor,
torn body. And what words, think you, came quick on top of his first
sharp outcry?
"Wisdom is justified of her children! The wicked shall he pull down
and the humble shall he exalt!"
And when you come to think of it, Charles Stuart lost his head on the
block five years from that day.
When Eli Kirke left jail to take ship for Boston Town both ears had
been cropped. On his forehead the letters S L--seditious libeler--were
branded deep, though not so deep as the bitterness burned into his soul.
There comes before me a picture of my landing, showing as clearly as
it were threescore years ago that soft, summer night, the harbour waters
molten gold in a harvest moon, a waiting group of figures grim above
the quay. No firing of muskets and drinking of flagons and ringing of
bells to welcome us, for each ship brought out court minions to whip
Boston into line with the Restoration--as hungry a lot of rascals as ever
gathered to pick fresh bones.
Old Tibbie had pranked me out in brave finery: the close-cut,
black-velvet waistcoat that young royalists then wore; a scarlet doublet,
flaming enough to set the turkey yard afire; the