"Alas, alas! and did I not kneel and entreat my dearest husband to heed the words of those good men if he would not mine? How happy we might have been, even in a hut among the savages! And you, too, Dick," she said tenderly, "you would have liked well to follow Master Perrient's leading; and my dear husband was ready to have you go, seeing all he and Sir Gyles Perrient had set their minds upon for your happiness."
"Oh, think not of my matters," interrupted Richard, almost sharply. "How could I have left him? And how could we be urgent to him to fly when we could not know what extraordinary impulse one of his virtue or courage may have had on his mind? Forget not how he did answer to your entreaties, saying that he would not stir a foot, nor turn his back as though he repented he had been engaged in that great work, or were ashamed of the service of so glorious and great a God! We could not seek to change such a resolve."
"Ah, you are content to see him die! You men can satisfy your hearts with fine words, and so be that you can call it heroic or courageous, or so forth, you care naught, naught! That all comes of the evil men you fell among when you went north in the army of false General Monck. They it was who seduced you from the good old cause in which my dearest husband reared you up so faithfully. When you went to Scotland first, you and he were of one mind, one heart, but when you came hither again, your head was stuffed full of worldly wisdom and time-serving devices, talking of a Lord Protector instead of the glory of God, and hand and glove with that cruel Cromwell who did throw my saint into prison! Your heart was turned from those that reared you, and given to their enemies! And now you can stand by unmoved and see him you once loved haled to prison and death!"
"No, no, dearest madam," cried Dick, "you know in your own heart you do me injustice. What did it matter that in these latter days I did not share General Harrison's faith in the Fifth Monarchy being presently established, nor sit with him to hear Mr. Rogers' sermons? never did he find me backward in the day of battle, and that you, who tended my wounds, can yourself testify. 'Tis more than ten years back I swore to him to live and die for the just liberties of the people of England, and by God's help I have kept the vow. And as in the field, so at home, you know well, my love and reverence for him came little short of idolatry."
"Yes, yes," she murmured abstractedly; "who could fail to love him? so valiant and so goodly to look upon, so tender unto his friends, and to me his poor wife, and ever was the inward joy in his bosom breaking forth in praises to God—and yet"—turning wildly on Dick—"yet you will let him die! You are as hard as the nether millstone! Dick, do not shake your head, you must go! You must force Prince Rupert to hear you. He can—he shall be saved! Cruel! you will not refuse me!"—and she flung herself on her knees in agony.
"Madam, dearest aunt, this passion is indeed needless. I will do all you desire; but cherish not these wild hopes, they will but plunge you into deeper sorrow. Think rather that his passage to heaven, though sharp will be short; arm yourself with that confidence that already gives him a foretaste of the joys of the blessed."
Richard's eyes were raining tears as he raised the poor lady from the floor, but no persuasion could change the idea that was fixed in her mind.
"Go, go!" she cried, "there is no time to lose; inquire out the prince's lodging and make him hear you. Even the unjust judge was moved by importunity to pity a widow, and am not I in worse case than she?"
With a heavy heart Dick left the unhappy lady, and set out on what he knew was a hopeless errand. But this was not the first, nor the second, time that his love for his adopted mother had driven him to do what his feelings and common sense equally rebelled against, for the kind and rather foolish lady was but an echo of her husband's stronger nature; and Dick no longer followed General Harrison as his sole leader.
When the boy first left his father's house to become a member of his uncle's family, Harrison at once became the object of his youthful adoration. Handsome in person, gracious in manner, point device in dress, the brilliant officer lived in an ideal world, in which he believed all his companions were as simple-minded and heroic as himself. The sturdy independence he inherited from an ancestry of English tradesfolk and yeomen made him cherish the ideal of an English republic with religious fervour, while, whether leading a prayer meeting or heading a cavalry charge, his inspiring enthusiasm carried away all who were near him. No wonder that the boy saw with his eyes and heard with his ears and modelled himself as nearly as he could on the ideals of his hero; and when Colonel Harrison signed the warrant for the king's execution, the boy was as convinced a regicide as any of the judges whose names were written beside that of Harrison on the fatal parchment. Never a doubt nor a scruple entered Richard's mind, even on that memorable thirtieth of January, when on the scaffold at Whitehall the King—