e you?" asked the smith.

"We came from New Plymouth, and have walked all day. I will pay you well
for what you give us."

The blacksmith loved money; but those were troublesome times, and people
had to be careful whom they admitted into their houses. The king had
been restored and was pursuing his enemies with a vengeance, and to
harbor a _regicide_ might mean death on the scaffold. The smith thought
of all this, and asked:

"Why do you not go to one of the inns?"

"There is no room there."

"Nonsense! that is impossible. Have you been to Robinson's?"

"I have been to all."

"Well?"

The traveller continued with some hesitation, "I do not know why; but
they all refuse to take us in."

The man knew there was something wrong with the travellers, and turning
about, he held a whispered consultation with his wife. She was heard to
say in a faint whisper: "It is the same, a man with a child." Then the
smith turned on the stranger, and said:

"Be off."

The proud eye of a daring trooper in despair is the saddest sight one
ever gazed upon. Such was the look of the humiliated man, as, with his
starving child, he turned from the last door. At times the spirit of
revenge rose in his breast, and he was inclined to turn on the men who
refused his child food, drink and shelter, and with his stout knotted
stick beat out their brains; but, on second thought, he restrained
himself and said:

"No--no; I will not make an outlaw of myself. I am not a robber."

He who had been the commander of thousands, the king of the
battle-field, at whose name princes grew pale and thrones tottered, was
now a wanderer from house to house, rejected at every door.

"I am so hungry," murmured Ester. "If I had but a morsel of food, I
could sleep under a tree."

He heard the plaintive appeal, and it wrung his fatherly heart. Through
his teeth he hissed:

"If I am made a savage let all the world beware."

They were climbing a hill to enter another part of the town, when they
came upon a kind old Puritan woman, who paused to gaze in compassion on
the wayfarers. If others kept off from them as though they were
creatures to contaminate by a touch, she seemed to entertain no such
fears. Coming quite close, she said:

"Prythee, friend, why do you not get this child to bed?"

"I would, good woman, had I a bed for her; but, alas, all doors are shut
against us."

"Surely not all!"

"I have tried the inns and the home of the smith; but th