"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 all sects can accomplish is to act up to the
belief they have. But, as I have said, he was true-hearted, and never
recovered the tale we heard, as to the way in which the new directors
insulted the remains of one whom they trembled even to look at in his
lifetime. He died off, sir, like an autumn breeze, chilly and weak, but
praying, and thankful that God was so good as to remove him from the
blight of the Philistines, who covered the earth as thickly as the
locusts overspread the land of Egypt."
"I never did, nor ever can believe," said Robin, "it was permitted that
such cravens should insult the body of so great a soul. The Protector
wished to be buried on the field of Naseby, and something tells me he
had his wish."
"Your politics changed as well as mine!" replied the sea-captain; "what
cavaliers we were in the days of our youth--heh, Commandant!"
"It is very odd, Springall," replied the old Skipper; "but somehow, my
heart is too full for words; I seem to be living my life over again; and
but now could have sworn I saw poor Sir Robert, as I saw him last,
clutching those dreaded papers. What a night that was, and what a day
the next!"
"And the poor Lady Zillah, when she heard of Sir Willmott's end!" said
Barbara. "She spoke no word, she made no scream; but her trouble came
quickly, and hard and bitter it was; and the child her hope rested on
breathed no breath--there was no heir to the house of Burrell; and she
and her father passed from the land, and were seen no more."