"Madam, dearest aunt, this passion is indeed needless. I will do all you desire; but cherish not these wild hopes, they will but plunge you into deeper sorrow. Think rather that his passage to heaven, though sharp will be short; arm yourself with that confidence that already gives him a foretaste of the joys of the blessed." Richard's eyes were raining tears as he raised the poor lady from the floor, but no persuasion could change the idea that was fixed in her mind. "Go, go!" she cried, "there is no time to lose; inquire out the prince's lodging and make him hear you. Even the unjust judge was moved by importunity to pity a widow, and am not I in worse case than she?" With a heavy heart Dick left the unhappy lady, and set out on what he knew was a hopeless errand. But this was not the first, nor the second, time that his love for his adopted mother had driven him to do what his feelings and common sense equally rebelled against, for the kind and rather foolish lady was but an echo of her husband's stronger nature; and Dick no longer followed General Harrison as his sole leader. When the boy first left his father's house to become a member of his uncle's family, Harrison at once became the object of his youthful adoration. Handsome in person, gracious in manner, point device in dress, the brilliant officer lived in an ideal world, in which he believed all his companions were as simple-minded and heroic as himself. The sturdy independence he inherited from an ancestry of English tradesfolk and yeomen made him cherish the ideal of an English republic with religious fervour, while, whether leading a prayer meeting or heading a cavalry charge, his inspiring enthusiasm carried away all who were near him. No wonder that the boy saw with his eyes and heard with his ears and modelled himself as nearly as he could on the ideals of his hero; and when Colonel Harrison signed the warrant for the king's execution, the boy was as convinced a regicide as any of the judges whose names were written beside that of Harrison on the fatal parchment. Never a doubt nor a scruple entered Richard's mind, even on that memorable thirtieth of January, when on the scaffold at Whitehall the King-- "Bowed his comely head Down, as upon a bed." The boy had learned his uncle's lessons too thoroughly to dream of pity or remorse.