Produced by Charles Keller. HTML version by Al Haines. TWICE-TOLD TALES by Nathaniel Hawthorne CONTENTS The Gray Champion The Wedding Knell The Minister's Black Veil The May-Pole of Merry Mount The Gentle Boy Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe Wakefield The Great Carbuncle David Swan The Hollow of the Three Hills Dr. Heidegger's Experiment Legends of the Province House I. Howe's Masquerade II. Edward Randolph's Portrait III. Lady Eleanore's Mantle IV. Old Esther Dudley The Ambitious Guest Peter Goldthwaite's Treasure The Shaker Bridal Endicott and the Red Cross FROM TWICE-TOLD TALES THE GRAY CHAMPION There was once a time when New England groaned under the actual pressure of heavier wrongs than those threatened ones which brought on the Revolution. James II, the bigoted successor of Charles the Voluptuous, had annulled the charters of all the colonies, and sent a harsh and unprincipled soldier to take away our liberties and endanger our religion. The administration of Sir Edmund Andros lacked scarcely a single characteristic of tyranny: a Governor and Council, holding office from the King, and wholly independent of the country; laws made and taxes levied without concurrence of the people immediate or by their representatives; the rights of private citizens violated, and the titles of all landed property declared void; the voice of complaint stifled by restrictions on the press; and, finally, disaffection overawed by the first band of mercenary troops that ever marched on our free soil. For two years our ancestors were kept in sullen submission by that filial love which had invariably secured their allegiance to the mother country, whether its head chanced to be a Parliament, Protector, or Popish Monarch. Till these evil times, however, such allegiance had been merely nominal, and the colonists had ruled themselves, enjoying far more freedom than is even yet the privilege of the native subjects of Great Britain.