Time went on, and the Hadley regicides wasted away in their cellar, while Dixwell thus flourished like a bay-tree in green old age. A letter from Goffe, to his "mother Goldsmith," written in August, 1674, of which a copy is preserved, shows that years had been doing their work on the once bold and stalwart Whalley. "Your old friend Mr. R.," he says, using the feigned initial, "is yet living, but continues in that weak condition. He is scarce capable of any rational discourse (his understanding, memory, and speech, doth so much fail him,) and seems not to take much notice of any thing ... and it's a great mercy to him, that he hath a friend that takes pleasure in being helpful to him ... for though my help be but poor and weak, yet that ancient servant of Christ could not well subsist without it. The Lord help us to profit by all, and to wait with patience upon him, till we shall see what end he will make with us." Boys grew to be men, and little girls marriageable women, while they thus dwelt in the cellar; and the people of Hadley passed in and out of their pastor's door, and doubled and trebled in number around his house, and not a soul dreamed that such inhabitants lived amongst them. This remarkable privacy accounts for the historical fact, given as a story in "Peveril of the Peak."[45] It occurred during the war of King Philip, in 1675, the year following the date of Goffe's letter, and when Whalley must have been far gone in his decline, so that he could not have been the hero, as is so dramatically asserted by Bridgenorth to Julian Peveril. It was a fast day among the settlers, who were imploring God for deliverance from an expected attack of the savages; and they were all assembled in their rude little meeting-house, around which sentinels were kept on patrol. The house of the pastor was only a few rods distant; and probably, through the miserable panes that let in all the sun-light of their cellar, Goffe watched the invasion of the Indians, and all the horrors of the fight, till the fires of Dunbar began to burn again in his old veins, and, overcoming his usual caution, sent him forth to his last achievement in this world, and perhaps his best. On a sudden, as the settlers were giving up all for lost, and about to submit to a general massacre, a strange apparition was seen among them exhorting them to rally in the name of God. An old man, with long white locks, and of unusual attire, led the last assault with the most daring bravery. Not doubting that it was an angel of God, they followed up his blows, and in a short time repulsed the savages; but their deliverer was gone. No clue or trace could be found of his coming or going. He was to them as Melchisedek, "without beginning of life, or end of days;" and their confirmed superstition that the Lord had sent his angel in answer to their prayers, though quite in accordance with their enthusiasm, was doubtless not a little encouraged by the wily pastor himself, as an