been spilled and wasted to raise up a throne for obscenity and folly!
Chambering and wantonness walk together as twin-born, along the very
halls where Cromwell, and Ireton, and Milton, and--my head's too hot to
recollect their names; but they are graven on my heart, as men who made
England a Queen among the nations."

"Then their Popery plots!" chimed in the Buccaneer; "the innocent blood
that has flooded the scaffold, as if the earth was thirsty for it--and
upon what grounds? the evidence, I hear, of one villain, supported by
the evidence of another! I grieve for one thing, truly--that I was ever
instrumental in forwarding the King's views. Robin said a true word in
jest the other day, that men as well as puppies were born blind, only it
takes a much longer period to open our eyes, than those of our
four-footed friends."

"So it does," said Springall, laughing; "that was one of Robin's wise
sayings. Barbara!--I beg your pardon,--Mistress Hays--do you think him
as wise as ever?"

"I always thought him wise; but I know it now," she replied, smiling.

"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