siasm seized upon the multitude. That stately form, combining the leader and the saint, so gray, so dimly seen, in such an ancient garb, could only belong to some old champion of the righteous cause, whom the oppressor's drum had summoned from his grave. They raised a shout of awe and exultation, and looked for the deliverance of New England.

1. Bigoted, annulled, unprincipled, characteristic, concurrence, mercenary, enterprise, emergency, undismayed, extinct, ejaculation, intervening, antique, patriarch, decrepitude, truncheon, worshiped.

2. At what period in our history and in what city is this scene located? What were the causes of the Revolution? Were they worse than the oppression stated in paragraph 2? Who was the Prince of Orange? Were the people of Boston Pilgrims or Puritans? What is meant by "sober garb"? "scriptural form of speech"? "a herald's cry"? "roll of the drum"? What soldiers of Parliament are meant here? Who was their leader? Did he not drive out the "house of Stuart" from England? Had it been restored?

LXXV. THE GRAY CHAMPION.

PART II.

1. The Governor and the gentlemen of his party, perceiving themselves brought to an unexpected stand, rode hastily forward, as if they would have pressed their snorting and affrighted horses

right against the hoary apparition. He, however, blenched not a step, but glancing his severe eye round the group, which half encompassed him, at last bent it sternly on Sir Edmund Andros. One would have thought that the dark old man was chief ruler there, and that the Governor and Council, with soldiers at their back, representing the whole power and authority of the Crown, had no alternative but obedience.

2. "What does this old fellow here?" cried Edward Randolph, fiercely. "On, Sir Edmund! bid the soldiers forward, and give the dotard the same choice that you gave all his countrymen―to stand aside or be trampled on !"

3. "Nay, nay; let us show respect to the good grandsire," said Bullivant, laughing. "See you not he is some old round-headed dignitary, who hath lain asleep these thirty years, and knows nothing of the change of times? Doubtless he thinks to put us down with a proclamation in Old Noll's name!"

4. "Are you mad, old man?" demanded Sir Edmund Andros, in loud and harsh tones. "How dare you stay the march of King James's Governor ?"

5. "I have stayed the march of a King himself, ere now," replied the gray figure, with stern composure. "I am here, Sir Governor, because the

cry of an oppressed people hath disturbed me in my secret place; and beseeching this favor earnestly of the Lord, it was vouchsafed me to appear once again on earth in the good old cause of his saints. And what speak ye of King James? There is no longer a tyrant on the throne of England, and by to-morrow noon his name shall be a by-word in this very street, where ye would make it a word of terror. Back, thou that wast a Governor, back! With this very night thy power is ended-to-morrow, the prison!-back, lest I foretell the scaffold!"

6. The people had been drawing nearer and nearer, and drinking in the words of their champion, who spoke in accents long disused, like one unaccustomed to converse, except with the dead of many years ago. But his voice stirred their souls. They confronted the soldiers, not wholly without arms, and ready to convert the very stones of the street into deadly weapons. Sir Edmund Andros looked at the old man; then he cast his hard and cruel eye over the multitude, and beheld them burning with that lurid wrath so difficult to kindle or to quench; and again he fixed his gaze on the aged form, which stood obscurely in an open space, where neither friend nor foe had thrust himself. What were his thoughts, he uttered no word which might discover.

7. But whether the oppressor were overawed by the Gray Champion's look, or perceived his peril in the threatening attitude of the people, it is certain that he gave back, and ordered his soldiers to commence a slow and guarded retreat. Before another sun had set, the Governor, and all that rode so proudly with him, were made prisoners, and long ere it was known that James had abdicated, King William was proclaimed throughout New England.

8. But where was the Gray Champion? Some reported that when the troops had gone from King Street, and the people were thronging tumultuously in their rear, Bradstreet, the aged Governor, was seen to embrace a form more aged than his own. Others soberly affirmed that, while they marveled at the venerable grandeur of his aspect, the old man had faded from their eyes, melting slowly into the hues of twilight, till, where he stood, there was an empty space. But all agreed that the hoary shape was gone. The men of that generation watched for his reappearance, in sunshine and in twilight, but never saw him more, nor knew when his funeral passed, nor where his gravestone was.

9. And who was the Gray Champion? Perhaps his name might be found in the records of that stern Court of Justice which passed a sentence too mighty for the age, but glorious in all after times,

for its humbling lesson to the monarch and its high example to the subject. I have heard that, whenever the descendants of the Puritans are to show the spirit of their sires, the old man appears again. When eighty years had passed, he walked once more in King Street. Five years later, in the twilight of an April morning, he stood on the green beside the meeting-house at Lexington, where now the obelisk of granite, with a slab of slate inlaid, commemorates the first fallen of the Revolution.

10. And when our fathers were toiling at the breastwork on Bunker's Hill, all through that night the old warrior walked his rounds. Long, long may it be ere it comes again! His hour is one of darkness, and adversity, and peril. But should domestic tyranny oppress us, or the invader's step pollute our soil, still may the Gray Champion come; for he is the type of New England's hereditary spirit; and his shadowy march, on the eve of danger, must ever be the pledge that New England's sons will vindicate their ancestry.

1. Perceiving, apparition, blenched, encompassed, alternative, dotard, dignitary, vouchsafed, lurid, obscurely, affirmed, abdicated, grandeur, obelisk, hereditary, vindicate.

2. Who were the Round-heads? Why so called? Who was Old Noll? What sentence is referred to in paragraph 9? Is history full of such legends? What does this one teach us?