that they would
detain me as their guest for that evening, and on the morrow accompany
me to the magistrate's house, about five miles distant. I was not sorry
to accept their hospitable offer. I longed for a few hours of rest and
respite before embarking on another sea of troubles. The failure of the
expedition, and the departure of the fleet, had overwhelmed me with
grief, and I was in no mood to confront new perils.

If my new acquaintances could have read my inmost thoughts, their manner
toward me could not have displayed more kindness or good-breeding. Not
pressing me with questions on subjects where the greatest curiosity
would have been permissible, they suffered me to tell only so much as I
wished of our late plans; and as if purposely to withdraw my thoughts
from the unhappy theme of our defeat, led me to talk of France, and her
career in Europe.

It was not without surprise that I saw how conversant the newspapers had
made them with European politics, nor how widely different did events
appear, when viewed from afar off, and by the lights of another and
different nationality Thus all that we were doing on the Continent to
propagate liberal notions, and promote the spread of freedom, seemed to
their eyes but the efforts of an ambitious power to crush abroad what
they had annihilated at home, and extend their own influence in
disseminating doctrines, all to revert, one day or other, to some grand
despotism, whenever the man arose capable to exercise it. The elder
would not even concede to us that we were fit for freedom.

"You are glorious fellows at destroying an old edifice," said he; "but
sorry architects when comes the question of rebuilding; and as to
liberty, your highest notion of it is an occasional anarchy. Like
school-boys, you will bear any tyranny for ten years, to have ten days
of a 'barring out' afterward."

I was not much flattered by these opinions; and what was worse, I could
not get them out of my head all night afterward. Many things I had never
doubted about now kept puzzling and confounding me, and I began, for the
first time, to know the misery of the struggle between implicit
obedience and conviction.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

SOME NEW ACQUAINTANCES.

I went to bed at night in all apparent health; save from the flurry and
excitement of an anxious mind, I was in no respect different from my
usual mood; and yet when I awoke next morning, my head was distracted
with a racking pain, cramps