"Allow me to present Mr. Hampden, Celia--Mr. John Hampden," said Margaret, as if in answer to his thought. "My cousin, Miss Kirke, from Boston, Mr. Hampden." John felt a trifle afraid of Miss Kirke, she took the introduction so smilingly and easily. John himself blushed and stammered, and felt more uncomfortable than ever, when she said, laughingly: "How delightful to have one of Gray's heroes escort one home, right after reading his poem! Of _course_, you are a direct descendant of this famous John Hampden?" "I don't know," said John, awkwardly; "I'm afraid not. I don't even know what he did. Mr. Carr didn't explain that passage very fully." "Oh, _nobody_ pretends to know all about the allusions in poetry. He lived somewhere in England, in the dark ages, didn't he--and refused to pay taxes, or something? I forget exactly what." John smiled. He had recovered a little from his embarrassment. "Why, old Mr. Hunt refuses to pay his taxes every year; but they make him do it, just the same." The girls laughed. "Oh, but John Hampden protested against a great act of tyranny," said Margaret. "He must have been very brave to do it, or Gray wouldn't have put him in his poem." "Such a lovely poem!" sighed Miss Kirke. "I've heard that the author was seven years writing it." "Seven years!" John echoed. "Well!" "He kept pruning it, and re-writing some of the verses," Margaret explained. "He wanted to make it a perfect poem." "It's very fine," said John. Then he added, blushingly, "If I had any fields to keep tyrants away from, I'd like to be a village Hampden myself, even if I couldn't become famous like the other one." "Oh, I don't think one need take that line of the poem literally," said Margaret. "I like to have poetry suggest things to me that are not found in the mere words. That is why I'm so fond of Shakespeare--he admits of so many interpretations. Perhaps," she went on, softly and timidly, "if we keep the little tyrants of selfishness and wickedness away from our hearts, we can all become village Hampdens. Such things are often harder to drive away than human tyrants--don't you think so?" "Yes," replied John, gravely, "I'm sure it is true--though I've had no contests with human tyrants." "I know what _my_ greatest tyrant is," said Celia Kirke, who had grown serious with the others; "and whenever I see him trying to get into my fields," she added, more lightly, "I shall 'off with his head' with scant ceremony." As John walked home alone in the frosty night, he vowed half aloud to the silent, listening stars that he _would_ be a "village Hampden," that the tyrant within him should be laid low for all time. John had no need to mention the tyrant by name--he knew very well that it was Carelessness with a capital C. How often had this little tyrant brought him into trouble, and how often had his employer warned him to break his bad habit before it was too late.