irke, whose virtues were of the acid sort that
curdles the milk of human kindness.

With him, goodness meant gloom. If the sweet joy of living ever sang
to him in his youth, he shut his ears to the sound as to siren
temptings, and sternly set himself to the fierce delight of being
miserable.

For misery he had reason enough. Having writ a book in which he called
King Charles "a man of blood and everlasting abomination"--whatever
that might mean--Eli Kirke got himself star-chambered. When, in the
language of those times, he was examined "before torture, in torture,
between torture, and after torture"--the torture of the rack and the
thumbkins and the boot--he added to his former testimony that the queen
was a "Babylonish woman, a Potiphar, a Jezebel, a--"

There his mouth was gagged, head and heels roped to the rack, and a
wrench given the pulleys at each end that nigh dismembered his poor,
torn body. And what words, think you, came quick on top of his first
sharp outcry?

"Wisdom is justified of her children! The wicked shall he pull down
and the humble shall he exalt!"

And when you come to think of it, Charles Stuart lost his head on the
block five years from that day.

When Eli Kirke left jail to take ship for Boston Town both ears had
been cropped. On his forehead the letters S L--seditious libeler--were
branded deep, though not so deep as the bitterness burned into his soul.

There comes before me a picture of my landing, showing as clearly as it
were threescore years ago that soft, summer night, the harbour waters
molten gold in a harvest moon, a waiting group of figures grim above
the quay. No firing of muskets and drinking of flagons and ringing of
bells to welcome us, for each ship brought out court minions to whip
Boston into line with the Restoration--as hungry a lot of rascals as
ever gathered to pick fresh bones.

Old Tibbie had pranked me out in brave finery: the close-cut,
black-velvet waistcoat that young royalists then wore; a scarlet
doublet, flaming enough to set the turkey yard afire; the silken hose
and big shoe-buckles late introduced from France by the king; and a
beaver hat with plumes a-nodding like my lady's fan. My curls, I mind,
tumbled forward thicker than those foppish French perukes.

"There is thy Uncle Kirke," whispers Nurse Tibbie. "Pay thy best
devoirs, Master Ramsay," and she pushes me to the fore of those
crowding up the docks.

A thin, pale man with a scarred