ng suddenly aroused.

"We must go," the father said, sadly.

She made no complaint, but, rising, with a feminine instinct common even
in a girl of her tender years, adjusted her ruffled hood and dress.

They went out into the night, for the sun had long since set, and the
far-off stars one by one opened their little eyes, until the heavens
were glittering with diamonds. They entered a small street in which
there were numerous gardens, some being merely enclosures with stone
fences. Among these gardens and fences he saw a house the window of
which was illuminated, and he looked through the open casement as he had
done at the inn. It was a cozy, whitewashed room, with a bed, a rude
cradle, a few chairs and an old-fashioned matchlock hanging on a rack
made of deer's antlers on the wall. A plain table was laid for supper in
the middle of the room, a wax taper burned on the mantel lighting up the
interior of the Puritan's home. A man forty years of age sat at the
table with a baby on his knee. Two children, one four and the other two
years old, sat at his side, while the mother was placing supper on the
table. What a tempting sight for a hungry man! Could one conceive a
more happy family picture? The travellers looked on, and the father was
almost maddened when he glanced at his own child.

"Papa, I am so hungry and so tired," she whispered. "Won't you ask them
if we can stay here?"

Fugitives from the law must have a care where they go, and to whom they
appeal, yet Ester's father was growing more desperate every moment. He
went boldly to the door and gave a timid rap with his knuckle. That hand
once bold enough to strike a king from his throne was weak and trembling
on this night. At sound of the knock, the husband and father seemed to
have suddenly changed. The lion may sport and play with his whelps in
his lair, but when the intruder enters his domestic abode, all is
changed. He rose, took up the light and went to the door. He was a tall
man and, judging from his charcoal-begrimed features, a blacksmith, and
he wore a large leathern apron which came quite to his shoulder. As he
threw back his head the shirt-front opened, displaying his bare neck and
hairy chest. His face was sullen, with a bull-dog expression on it.
Without a moment's hesitation, the stranger began:

"I am weary, and my child hath had no food to-day. Would you, for money,
give us a morsel to eat and a blanket and corner in which to sleep?"

"Who ar