"Sit ye down, Barbara," said Robin, "and our friend here will tell you how much he admires our children; they are fine, healthy, and, though I say it, handsome—straight withal—straight as Robin Hood's own arrow; and I do bless God for that—for that especially! I would rather have seen them dead at my feet than——"
"Now, God forgive you, Rob! so would not I. I should have loved them as well, had they been crooked as—" interrupted his wife.
"Their father!"
"For shame, Robin!"
Robin looked at Barbara and laughed, but turned away his head; and then he looked a second time, and saw that a deep red hue had mounted to his wife's cheek, while a tear stood in her eye; and he forgot the stranger's presence, and converted the tear to a gentle satisfied smile, by a kind and affectionate kiss. How little tenderness, how little, how very little, does it take to constitute the happiness of a simple mind!
"There was a strange long preacher here, ages ago," inquired Springall, filling his silver cup with sherris; "he surely did not migrate with the higher powers?"
"No!" replied Dalton, whose eyes had been fixed upon the burning logs, as if recapitulating the events of former days; "he was a staunch and true-hearted Puritan, apt to take wrong notions in tow, and desperately bitter against Papistry, which same bitterness is a log I never could read, seeing that the best all sects can accomplish is to act up to the belief they have. But, as I have said, he was true-hearted, and never recovered the tale we heard, as to the way in which the new directors insulted the remains of one whom they trembled even to look at in his lifetime. He died off, sir, like an autumn breeze, chilly and weak, but praying, and thankful that God was so good as to remove him from the blight of the Philistines, who covered the earth as thickly as the locusts overspread the land of Egypt."
"I never did, nor ever can believe," said Robin, "it was permitted that such cravens should insult the body of so great a soul. The Protector wished to be buried on the field of Naseby, and something tells me he had his wish."
"Your politics changed as well as mine!" replied the sea-captain; "what cavaliers we were in the days of our youth—heh, Commandant!"
"It is very odd, Springall," replied the old Skipper; "but somehow, my heart is too full for words; I seem to be living my life over again; and but now could have sworn I saw poor Sir Robert, as I saw him last, clutching those dreaded papers. What a night that was, and what a day the next!"