and a steeple-crowned hat in the fashion of at least fifty years
before, with a heavy sword upon his thigh, but a staff in his hand to
assist the tremulous gait of age.

When at some distance from the multitude, the old man turned slowly
round, displaying a face of antique majesty rendered doubly venerable
by the hoary beard that descended on his breast. He made a gesture at
once of encouragement and warning, then turned again and resumed his
way.

"Who is this gray patriarch?" asked the young men of their sires.

"Who is this venerable brother?" asked the old men among themselves.

But none could make reply. The fathers of the people, those of
fourscore years and upward, were disturbed, deeming it strange that
they should forget one of such evident authority whom they must have
known in their early days, the associate of Winthrop and all the old
councillors, giving laws and making prayers and leading them against
the savage. The elderly men ought to have remembered him, too, with
locks as gray in their youth as their own were now. And the young! How
could he have passed so utterly from their memories--that hoary sire,
the relic of long-departed times, whose awful benediction had surely
been bestowed on their uncovered heads in childhood?

"Whence did he come? What is his purpose? Who can this old man be?"
whispered the wondering crowd.

Meanwhile, the venerable stranger, staff in hand, was pursuing his
solitary walk along the centre of the street. As he drew near the
advancing soldiers, and as the roll of their drum came full upon his
ear, the old man raised himself to a loftier mien, while the
decrepitude of age seemed to fall from his shoulders, leaving him in
gray but unbroken dignity. Now he marched onward with a warrior's
step, keeping time to the military music. Thus the aged form advanced
on one side and the whole parade of soldiers and magistrates on the
other, till, when scarcely twenty yards remained between, the old man
grasped his staff by the middle and held it before him like a leader's
truncheon.

"Stand!" cried he.

The eye, the face and attitude of command, the solemn yet warlike peal
of that voice--fit either to rule a host in the battle-field or be
raised to God in prayer--were irresistible. At the old man's word and
outstretched arm the roll of the drum was hushed at once and the
advancing line stood still. A tremulous enthusiasm seized upon the
multitude. That stately form, combining the