g
them. Nothing was said to Mr. Warren and Mary, however, who were
permitted to go into the meeting-house, unmolested; but two of these
disguised gentry placed themselves before me, laying their rifles across
my path, and completely intercepting my advance.

"Who you?" abruptly demanded one of the two;--"where go--where come
from?"

The answer was ready, and I trust it was sufficiently steady.

"I coomes from Charmany, und I goes into der kerch, as dey say in mine
coontry; what might be callet meetin'-us, here."

What might have followed, it is not easy to say, had not the loud,
declamatory voice of the lecturer just then been heard, as he commenced
his address. This appeared to be a signal for the tribe to make some
movement, for the two fellows who had stopped me, walked silently away,
though bag of calico went to bag of calico, as they trotted off
together, seemingly communicating to each other their suspicions. I took
advantage of the opening, and passed into the church, where I worked my
way through the throng, and got a seat at my uncle's side.

I have neither time, room, nor inclination to give anything like an
analysis of the lecture. The speaker was fluent, inflated, and anything
but logical. Not only did he contradict himself, but he contradicted the
laws of nature. The intelligent reader will not require to be reminded
of the general character of a speech that was addressed to the passions
and interests of such an audience, rather than to their reason. He
commented, at first, on the particular covenants of the leases on the
old estates of the colony, alluding to the quarter-sales, chickens,
days' work, and durable tenures, in the customary way. The reservation
of the mines, too, was mentioned as a tyrannical covenant, precisely as
if a landlord were obliged to convey any more of the rights that were
vested in him, than he saw fit; or the tenant could justly claim more
than he had hired! This man treated all these branches of the subject,
as if the tenants had acquired certain mysterious interests by time and
occupation, overlooking the fact that the one party got just as good a
title as the other by this process; the lease being the instrument
between them, that was getting to be venerable. If one party grew old as
a tenant, so did the other as a landlord. I thought that this lecturer
would have been glad to confine himself to the Manor leases, that being
the particular branch of the subject he had been