The man knew there was something wrong with the travellers, and turning about, he held a whispered consultation with his wife. She was heard to say in a faint whisper: "It is the same, a man with a child." Then the smith turned on the stranger, and said:
"Be off."
The proud eye of a daring trooper in despair is the saddest sight one ever gazed upon. Such was the look of the humiliated man, as, with his starving child, he turned from the last door. At times the spirit of revenge rose in his breast, and he was inclined to turn on the men who refused his child food, drink and shelter, and with his stout knotted stick beat out their brains; but, on second thought, he restrained himself and said:
"No--no; I will not make an outlaw of myself. I am not a robber."
He who had been the commander of thousands, the king of the battle-field, at whose name princes grew pale and thrones tottered, was now a wanderer from house to house, rejected at every door.
"I am so hungry," murmured Ester. "If I had but a morsel of food, I could sleep under a tree."
He heard the plaintive appeal, and it wrung his fatherly heart. Through his teeth he hissed:
"If I am made a savage let all the world beware."
They were climbing a hill to enter another part of the town, when they came upon a kind old Puritan woman, who paused to gaze in compassion on the wayfarers. If others kept off from them as though they were creatures to contaminate by a touch, she seemed to entertain no such fears. Coming quite close, she said:
"Prythee, friend, why do you not get this child to bed?"