CHAPTER XXIII. CONCLUSION

HISTORICAL INDEX

CHRONOLOGY

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS:

His tired child was at his side uncomplainingly

Ducking stool

"I'll scratch your eyes out!"

Once more he bent over the sleeping children

Kieft from the ramparts watched the burning wigwams

Stuyvesant

The squaw, with a yell of fear, wheeled to fly for her life

Blanche could not utter a word of consolation

Oliver Cromwell

"Peter the Headstrong," unable to control his passion, tore the letter
into pieces

Tomb of Stuyvesant

The door was thrown open, and the boy Robert entered to take a part in
the scene

His temper flamed out in word

"Are you ready?"

Sir Henry Vane

"Our journey is not one half over!"

"You are not lost, if you follow me!"

He fell upon his face in the mud and water with his gun under him

He flung him down the front steps where he lay in a heap on the ground

"Here! Shoot me! 'Fore God, a fair mark!"

Ruins of Jamestown

The ball struck four or five feet to Robert's left, and in front of him,
splashing up a jet of water

Map of the period

A CENTURY TOO SOON.

CHAPTER I.

THE DUCKING-STOOL.

Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanes, spout
Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world.
--SHAKESPEARE.

[Illustration: ducking stool]

A crowd of bearded men, some in the sad-colored clothes and
steeple-crowned hats of Puritans, others in loose top-boots, scarlet
coats, lace and periwigs of the cavaliers of the Cromwellian period,
intermixed with women, some wearing hoods and others bareheaded, was
assembled on the banks of a deep pond within sight of Jamestown, Va. A
curious machine, one which at the present day would puzzle the beholder
to guess its use, had been constructed near the edge of the water. It
was a simple contrivance and rude in structure; but the freshly hewn
timbers were proof of its virgin newness. This machine was a long pole
fastened upon an upright post, almost at the water's edge, so that it
could revolve or dip at the will of the manipulators. On the heavy end
of the pole was a seat or chair fastened, with a rest for the fe