the very spot which, six years before, had been reddened by
the blood of the Boston massacre. The chief justice stepped cautiously,
and shuddered, as if he were afraid that, even now, the gore of his
slaughtered countrymen might stain his feet.

Before him rose the Town House, on the front of which were still
displayed the royal arms. Within that edifice he had dispensed justice
to the people in the days when his name was never mentioned without
honor. There, too, was the balcony whence the trumpet had been sounded
and the proclamation read to an assembled multitude, whenever a new king
of England ascended the throne.

"I remember--I remember," said Chief Justice Oliver to himself, "when
his present most sacred Majesty was proclaimed. Then how the people
shouted! Each man would have poured out his life-blood to keep a hair of
King George's head from harm. But now there is scarcely a tongue in all
New England that does not imprecate curses on his name. It is ruin and
disgrace to love him. Can it be possible that a few fleeting years have
wrought such a change?"

It did not occur to the chief justice that nothing but the most grievous
tyranny could so soon have changed the people's hearts. Hurrying from
the spot, he entered Cornhill, as the lower part of Washington Street
was then called. Opposite to the Town House was the waste foundation of
the Old North Church. The sacrilegious hands of the British soldiers had
torn it down, and kindled their barrack fires with the fragments.

Farther on he passed beneath the tower of the Old South. The threshold
of this sacred edifice was worn by the iron tramp of horses' feet;
for the interior had been used as a riding-school and rendezvous for a
regiment of dragoons. As the chief justice lingered an instant at the
door a trumpet sounded within, and the regiment came clattering forth
and galloped down the street. They were proceeding to the place of
embarkation.

"Let them go!" thought the chief justice, with somewhat of an old
Puritan feeling in his breast. "No good can come of men who desecrate
the house of God."

He went on a few steps farther, and paused before the Province House.
No range of brick stores had then sprung up to hide the mansion of the
royal governors from public view. It had a spacious courtyard, bordered
with trees, and enclosed with a wrought-iron fence. On the cupola that
surmounted the edifice was the gilded figure of an Indian chief,
ready to let fly a