d movements
within the room. Outside, the crowd which had assembled set
up a lusty cheer, and a number of them pushed into the
chamber. The members stirred uneasily in their seats. Sir
Edmund angrily exclaimed,--

"What means this, gentlemen? Is some treachery at work?
Guard the charter! Light those candles instantly!"

The attendants hastened to obey; but haste in procuring
light in those days had a different meaning than now. The
lucifer-match had not yet been dreamed of. The
flint-and-steel was a slow conception. Several minutes
elapsed before the candles again shed their feeble glow
through the room.

With the first gleam of light every eye was fixed upon the
box which had contained the charter. It was empty! The
charter was gone!

Just what Sir Edmund said on this occasion history has not
recorded. Those were days in which the most exalted persons
dealt freely in oaths, and it is to be presumed that the
infuriated governor-general used words that must have sadly
shocked the pious ears of his Puritan auditors.

But the charter had vanished, and could not be sworn back
into the box. Where it had gone probably no one knew;
certainly no one was willing to say. The members looked at
one another in blank astonishment. The lookers-on manifested
as blank an ignorance, though their faces beamed with
delight. It had disappeared as utterly as if it had sunk
into the earth, and the oaths of Sir Edmund and his efforts
to recover it proved alike in vain.

But the mystery of that night after-history has revealed,
and the story can now be told. In truth, some of those
present in the hall knew far more than they cared to tell.
In the darkness a quick-moving person had made a lane
through the throng to a neighboring window whose sash was
thrown up. Out of this he leaped to the ground below. Here
people were thickly gathered.

"Make way," he said (or may have said, for his real words
have not been preserved), "for Connecticut and liberty. I
have the charter."

The cheers redoubled. The crowd separated and let him
through. In a minute he had disappeared in the darkness
beyond.

Sir Edmund meanwhile was storming like a fury in the hall;
threatening the colony with the anger of the king;
declaring that every man in the chamber should be searched;
fairly raving in his disappointment. Outside, the bold
fugitive sped swiftly along the dark and quiet streets,
ending his course at length in front of a noble and imposing
o