The stubborn landlord shook his head and answered:
"It brings ill luck to one having such about. You must away and take her with you."
The large, sad-eyed man bent over the sleeping child and whispered:
"Ester!"
She awoke in a moment and cast a bewildered glance about the room, as a child will on being suddenly aroused.
"We must go," the father said, sadly.
She made no complaint, but, rising, with a feminine instinct common even in a girl of her tender years, adjusted her ruffled hood and dress.
They went out into the night, for the sun had long since set, and the far-off stars one by one opened their little eyes, until the heavens were glittering with diamonds. They entered a small street in which there were numerous gardens, some being merely enclosures with stone fences. Among these gardens and fences he saw a house the window of which was illuminated, and he looked through the open casement as he had done at the inn. It was a cozy, whitewashed room, with a bed, a rude cradle, a few chairs and an old-fashioned matchlock hanging on a rack made of deer's antlers on the wall. A plain table was laid for supper in the middle of the room, a wax taper burned on the mantel lighting up the interior of the Puritan's home. A man forty years of age sat at the table with a baby on his knee. Two children, one four and the other two years old, sat at his side, while the mother was placing supper on the table. What a tempting sight for a hungry man! Could one conceive a more happy family picture? The travellers looked on, and the father was almost maddened when he glanced at his own child.
"Papa, I am so hungry and so tired," she whispered. "Won't you ask them if we can stay here?"
Fugitives from the law must have a care where they go, and to whom they appeal, yet Ester's father was growing more desperate every moment. He went boldly to the door and gave a timid rap with his knuckle. That hand once bold enough to strike a king from his throne was weak and trembling on this night. At sound of the knock, the husband and father seemed to have suddenly changed. The lion may sport and play with his whelps in his lair, but when the intruder enters his domestic abode, all is changed. He rose, took up the light and went to the door. He was a tall man and, judging from his charcoal-begrimed features, a blacksmith, and he wore a large leathern apron which came quite to his shoulder. As he threw back his head the shirt-front opened, displaying his bare neck and hairy chest. His face was sullen, with a bull-dog expression on it. Without a moment's hesitation, the stranger began: