I am not, for if I lose,
I curse my luck, and am ready to punch somebody's head, and rip out
some swear words, but if I win, I am ready to bless the other fellow
for playing a king when he should have laid down an ace."

His lordship apologized for having tarried so long, and took his
departure.

"She's a Puritan, through and through. As lovely and pure as an angel
in heaven," he said to himself as he walked down the street.

* * * * *

While the months were going by, Roger Stanley, student of Harvard
College, was learning about life in Rumford, as a surveyor of land,
spending his evenings in the house of Joshua Walden, with Robert and
Rachel to keep him company, especially Rachel. He found pleasure in
telling her the story of Ulysses and Penelope. Most of the young men
of Rumford who came to the Walden home could only talk about oxen,
which pair of steers could pull the heaviest load, or whose horse
could out-trot all others. When the surveying was done, Roger accepted
the invitation of the committeemen to keep the winter school. Never
before had there been a master who could keep the big boys in order
without using the ferule, but somehow the great strapping fellows, who
might have put the master on his back in a twinkling, could not find
it in their hearts to do anything that would trouble him. Other
masters were content if they went through the regular daily stint
of reading, writing, spelling, and ciphering, but he told them
about men who made the most of themselves, and who had done great
things,--Caesar, Augustus, Charlemagne, Alfred the Great.

It was the schoolmaster who suggested that the people should meet once
a week in the schoolhouse to discuss the great questions affecting the
welfare of the Colonies, and who wrote out the questions to be
considered:--

"What are the inalienable rights of the people?"

"Has Parliament any right to tax the people of America
without their consent?"

"Is it right ever to resist the authority of the king?"

"Ought the Colonies to unite for self-defense?"

"Ought the Colonies, in any event, to separate from
England?"

People from the back roads came to hear what Esquire Walden, Deacon
Kent, Shoemaker Noyes, Blacksmith Temple, and Schoolmaster Stanley had
to say upon these questions before the parliament of the people, in
the schoolhouse, lighted by two tallow candles and the fire blazing on
the he