ep everything before it. Hutchinson trembled; he
felt, at that moment, that the wrath of the people was a thousand-fold
more terrible than the wrath of a king.

That was a moment when a loyalist and an aristocrat like Hutchinson
might have learned how powerless are kings, nobles, and great men, when
the low and humble range themselves against them. King George could do
nothing for his servant now. Had King George been there he could have
done nothing for himself. If Hutchinson had understood this lesson, and
remembered it, he need not, in after years, have been an exile from his
native country, nor finally have laid his bones in a distant land.

There was now a rush against the doors of the house. The people sent up
a hoarse cry. At this instant the lieutenant-governor's daughter, whom
he had supposed to be in a place of safety, ran into the room and threw
her arms around him. She had returned by a private entrance.

"Father, are you mad?" cried she. "Will the king's name protect you now?
Come with me, or they will have your life."

"True," muttered Hutchinson to himself; "what care these roarers for the
name of king? I must flee, or they will trample me down on the floor of
my own dwelling."

Hurrying away, he and his daughter made their escape by the private
passage at the moment when the rioters broke into the house. The
foremost of them rushed up the staircase, and entered the room which
Hutchinson had just quitted. There they beheld our good old chair facing
them with quiet dignity, while the lion's head seemed to move its jaws
in the unsteady light of their torches. Perhaps the stately aspect of
our venerable friend, which had stood firm through a century and a half
of trouble, arrested them for an instant. But they were thrust forward
by those behind, and the chair lay overthrown.

Then began the work of destruction. The carved and polished mahogany
tables were shattered with heavy clubs and hewn to splinters with
axes. The marble hearths and mantel-pieces were broken. The volumes of
Hutchinson's library, so precious to a studious man, were torn out
of their covers, and the leaves sent flying out of the windows.
Manuscripts, containing secrets of our country's history, which are now
lost forever, were scattered to the winds.

The old ancestral portraits, whose fixed countenances looked down on
the wild scene, were rent from the walls. The mob triumphed in
their downfall and destruction, as if these picture