Twice Told Tales | Page 3

of soldiers, in double rank, brought up the rear.
The whole scene was a picture of the condition of New England, and its
moral, the deformity of any government that does not grow out of the
nature of things and the character of the people--on one side the
religious multitude with their sad visages and dark attire, and on the
other the group of despotic rulers with the high churchman in the midst
and here and there a crucifix at their bosoms, all magnificently clad,
flushed with wine, proud of unjust authority and scoffing at the
universal groan. And the mercenary soldiers, waiting but the word to
deluge the street with blood, showed the only means by which
obedience could be secured.
"O Lord of hosts," cried a voice among the crowd, "provide a champion
for thy people!"
This ejaculation was loudly uttered, and served as a herald's cry to
introduce a remarkable personage. The crowd had rolled back, and
were now huddled together nearly at the extremity of the street, while
the soldiers had advanced no more than a third of its length. The
intervening space was empty--a paved solitude between lofty edifices
which threw almost a twilight shadow over it. Suddenly there was seen
the figure of an ancient man who seemed to have emerged from among
the people and was walking by himself along the centre of the street to
confront the armed band. He wore the old Puritan dress--a dark cloak
and a steeple-crowned hat in the fashion of at least fifty years before,

with a heavy sword upon his thigh, but a staff in his hand to assist the
tremulous gait of age.
When at some distance from the multitude, the old man turned slowly
round, displaying a face of antique majesty rendered doubly venerable
by the hoary beard that descended on his breast. 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 upward, 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 long-departed 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 ear,
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 the aged form advanced on
one side and the whole parade of soldiers and magistrates on the other,
till, when scarcely twenty yards remained between, the old man
grasped his staff by the middle and held it before him like a leader's
truncheon.
"Stand!" cried he.
The eye, the face and attitude of command, the solemn yet warlike peal
of that voice--fit either to rule a host in the battle-field or be raised to
God in prayer--were irresistible. At the old man's word and
outstretched arm the roll of the drum was hushed at once and the

advancing line stood still. A tremulous enthusiasm seized upon the
multitude. That stately form, combining the leader and the saint, so
gray, so dimly seen, in such an ancient garb, could only belong to some
old champion of the righteous cause whom the oppressor's drum had
summoned from his grave. They raised a shout of awe and exultation,
and looked for the deliverance of New England.
The governor and the gentlemen of his party, perceiving themselves
brought to an unexpected stand, rode hastily forward, as if they would
have pressed their snorting and affrighted horses right against the hoary
apparition. He, however, blenched not a step, but, glancing his severe
eye round the group, which half encompassed him, at last bent it sternly
on Sir Edmund Andros. One would have thought that the dark old man
was chief ruler there, and that the governor and council