The venerable Guildhall, where Brewster and the rest faced the justices, stands in a street containing the queerest of riverside warehouses. One of them, old Gysors' Hall, was once the home of a family belonging to the merchant guilds of Boston, which gave to London two Mayors and a Constable of the Tower in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The Guildhall itself dates from the thirteenth century; the image of St. Mary which once adorned its front shared the fate of the "picture" on the church tower, with the difference that the Virgin vanished more completely than the "Pope." The hall is regularly used by the public; and local authorities with long and honourable history still deliberate in the ancient court-room, with its wagon roof, its arch beams, its wainscoted walls, and the Boston coat-of-arms and the table of Boston Mayors since 1545 proudly displayed to view. Except for its fittings and furniture the chamber presents much the appearance now that it did when the Pilgrim Fathers, brought up from the cells which exist to-day just as when they tenanted them, stood pathetic figures on its floor and were interrogated by a body of justices, courteous and well-disposed, but powerless to give them back their liberty. [Illustration: _Photograph by Hackford, Boston_ THE OLD COURTROOM, GUILDHALL, BOSTON _Where the Pilgrims' Fathers faced the Justices. In the floor on the left is the trap door to the staircase leading down to the Cells. The Court ceased to be held here in 1843_] FOOTNOTES: [1] Dr. John Brown in "The Pilgrim Fathers of New England and their Puritan Successors." [2] "Seeing themselves thus molested, and that there was no hope of their continuance there, they resolved to go into y^e Low Countries, wher they heard was freedome of religion for all men; as also how Sundrie from London, and other parts of y^e land had been exiled and persecuted for y^e same cause, and were gone thither and lived at Amsterdam and in other places of y^e land, so affter they had continued togeither about a year, and kept their meetings every Saboth, in one place or other, exercising the worship of God amongst themselves, notwithstanding all y^e dilligence and malice of their adversaries, they seeing they could no longer continue in y^t condition, they resolved to get over into Hollad as they could which was in y^y year 1607-1608."--Bradford's "History of Plymouth Plantation." II THE ARREST AT BOSTON AND FLIGHT TO HOLLAND [Illustration: _Photograph by Hackford, Boston_ THE RIVER WITHAM, BOSTON] II THE ARREST AT BOSTON AND FLIGHT TO HOLLAND _Well worthy to be magnified are they Who, with sad hearts, of friends and country took A last farewell, their loved abodes forsook, And hallowed ground in which their fathers lay._ WORDSWORTH.