A Century Too Soon: The Age of TyrannyMusick, John R. (John Roy)
History
A Century Too Soon: The Age of Tyranny
Musick, John R. (John Roy)
Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 -- Fiction; United States -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 -- Fiction
Though sad and humiliated, the man was proud, and had the consciousness
of right on his side. Only for his child, he might have defied the
landlord and all the people, but the dread of leaving her alone and
uncared for almost made a coward of a lion. They walked on for a long
time, turning down streets new and strange to them, and in their sorrow
forgetting their fatigue. The sun had set and darkness was falling over
the landscape, when the father, roused once more to a sense of duty for
his child, began to look around for some sort of shelter. The best inn
was closed against them, so he sought a very humble ale-house, a
wretched den which he would have shuddered to have his child enter under
other circumstances. The candles had been lighted and the travellers
paused for a moment to look through the windows. Even that miserable
place had something cheerful and inviting about it. Some cavaliers who
had come from England since the restoration were drinking beer, while
over the fire in the broad chimney bubbled a caldron hanging from an
iron hook. The traveller went to the front entrance and timidly raised
the latch and entered the room, bringing his child after him.
"Who is there?" the landlord asked.
"A traveller and his child who want supper and bed."
"Very good. They are to be had here."
A long wooden bench was in the room, and the traveller sat down on it
and stretched out his tired feet, swollen with fatigue. The child fell
into the seat at his side and, laying her soft curly head on his lap,
despite the fact she had travelled all day without food, fell asleep. As
the stranger sat there in the gloom of twilight, for no candle had been
brought into the room, all that could be distinguished of his face was
his prominent nose, and firm mouth covered with beard. It was a firm,
energetic and sad profile. The face was strangely composed, for it began
by being proud and ended with humility, it commenced in stern austerity
and ended in kindness. One moment the eyes beneath the shaggy eyebrows
gleamed with fires of hate, next they were softened in love as the
glance fell on the sleeping, supperless child. The hand was hardened by
grasping the sword-hilt, and the heart, which had so often defied the
bullets of the enemy, was humble and child-like in the presence of the
little girl.
The landlord was about to prepare supper for the hungry wanderers, when
a man suddenly entered by the kitchen door, quite out of breath with
running. His eyes were opened wide with terror, and he was trembling
from head to foot. He proceeded to whisper some words in the ears of the
landlord, which caused him to start and quake with dread.
"What would I better do?" asked the landlord in amazement.
"Drive them hence. No good ever comes to one harboring such."
This being made the plain Christian duty of the landlord, he was not
slow to act. He went into the adjoining room, walked up almost to the
stranger, holding his sleeping child on his knee, and said:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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