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6. As a specimen of Hawthorne's crystal clearness of style, and the interest which he throws around his writings, we take his account of an event which he supposes to have occurred in Boston on an afternoon of April, 1689, when the hated Sir Edmund Andros, who had succeeded the good Governor Bradstreet, was the royal governor of New England. Just at the time referred to there were whispers that the Prince of Orange had ventured on an enterprise for deposing the obnoxious King James; and all through New England there was a subdued and silent agitation that boded no good to Andros and his adherents if the news should prove true, and the enterprise successful. Andros, aware of the agitation, assembled the red-coats of his guard, and his favorite councillors, and at the sound of fife and drum made his appearance, in martial array, in the streets of Boston, to overawe the turbulent spirit of the people. The striking incident of the occasion is the appearance, upon the scene, of "The Gray Champion.”

II.-The Gray Champion.

1. On one side the religious multitude, with their sad visages and dark attire; and on the other, the group of despotic rulers, all magnificently clad, flushed with wine, proud of unjust authority, and scoffing at the universal gloom. And the mercenary soldiers, waiting but the word to deluge the street with blood, showed the only means by which obedience could be secured.

"O Lord of Hosts!" cried a voice among the crowd, "provide a Champion for thy people!"

2. The ejaculation was loudly uttered, and served as a herald's cry, to introduce a remarkable personage. The crowd had rolled back, and were now huddled together nearly at the extremity of the street, while the soldiers had advanced no more than a third of its length. The intervening space was empty,-a paved solitude, between lofty edifices, which threw almost a twilight shadow over it. Suddenly there was seen the figure of an ancient man, who seemed to have emerged from among the people, and was walking by himself along the centre of the street, to confront the armed band. He wore the old Puritan dress, a dark cloak and a steeple-crowned hat, in the fashion of

at least fifty years before, with a heavy sword upon his thigh, but a staff in his hand to assist the tremulous gait of age.

3. When at some distance from the multitude, the old man turned slowly round, displaying a face of antique majesty, rendered doubly venerable by the hoary beard that descended on his breast. He made a gesture at once of encouragement and warning, then turned again and resumed his way.

"Who is this gray patriarch?" asked the young men of their sires.

"Who is this venerable brother?" asked the old men among themselves.

4. But none could make reply. The fathers of the people, those of fourscore years and upwards, were disturbed, deeming it strange that they should forget one of such evident authority, whom they must have known in their early days, the associate of Winthrop and all the old councillors, giving laws, and making prayers, and leading them against the savage. The elderly men ought to have remembered him, too, with locks as gray in their youth as their own were now. And the young!-how could he have passed so utterly from their memories,-that hoary sire, the relic of long-departed times, whose awful benediction had surely been bestowed on their uncovered heads in childhood.

"Whence did he come? What is his purpose? Who can this old man be?" whispered the wondering crowd.

5. Meanwhile, the venerable stranger, staff in hand, was pursuing his solitary walk along the centre of the street. As he drew near the advancing soldiers, and as the roll of their drum came full upon his ear, the old man raised himself to a loftier mien, while the decrepitude of age seemed to fall from his shoulders, leaving him in gray but unbroken dignity. Now he marched onward with a warrior's step, keeping time to the military music. Thus the

aged form advanced on one side; and the whole parade of soldiers and magistrates on the other, till, when scarcely twenty yards remained between, the old man grasped his staff by the middle, and held it before him like a leader's truncheon.

"Stand!" cried he.

6. The eye, the face, and attitude of command; the solemn yet warlike peal of that voice, fit either to rule a host in the battle-field or be raised to God in prayer, were irresistible. At the old man's word and outstretched arm, the roll of the drum was hushed at once, and the advancing line stood still. A tremulous enthusiasm seized upon the multitude. That stately form, combining the leader and the saint, so gray, so dimly seen, in such an ancient garb, could only belong to some old champion of the righteous cause, whom the oppressor's drum had summoned from his grave. They raised a shout of awe and exultation, and looked for the deliverance of New England.

7. The Governor, and the gentlemen of his party, perceiving themselves brought to an unexpected stand, rode hastily forward, as if they would have pressed their snorting and affrighted horses right against the hoary apparition. He, however, blenched not a step, but, glancing his severe eye round the group, which half encompassed him, at last bent it sternly on Sir Edmund Andros. One would have thought that the dark old man was chief ruler there, and that the Governor and Council, with soldiers at their back, representing the whole power and authority of the Crown, had no alternative but obedience.

8. "What does this old fellow here?" cried Edward Randolph fiercely. "On, Sir Edmund! Bid the soldiers forward, and give the dotard the same choice that you give all his countrymen,-to stand aside, or be trampled on!"

'Nay, nay, let us show respect to the good grandsire,” said Bullivant, laughing. "See you not, he is some old round-headed dignitary, who hath lain asleep these thirty

years, and knows nothing of the change of times? Doubtless, he thinks to put us down with a proclamation in Old Noll's name!"

"Are you mad, old man?" demanded Sir Edmund Andros, in loud and harsh tones. "How dare you stay the march of King James's Governor ?"

9. "I have stayed the march of a king himself, ere now," replied the gray figure, with stern composure. "I am here, Sir Governor, because the cry of an oppressed people hath disturbed me in my secret place; and, beseeching this favor carnestly of the Lord, it was vouchsafed me to appear once again on earth, in the good old cause of his saints. And what speak ye of James? There is no longer a tyrant on the throne of England, and by to-morrow noon his name shall be a by-word in this very street, where ye would make it a word of terror. Back, thou that wast a Governor, back! With this night thy power is ended,-to-morrow, the prison!-back, lest I foretell the scaffold!"

10. The people had been drawing nearer and nearer, and drinking in the words of their champion, who spoke in accents long disused, like one unaccustomed to converse, except with the dead of many years ago. But his voice stirred their souls. They confronted the soldiers, not wholly without arms, and ready to convert the very stones of the street into deadly weapons. Sir Edmund Andros looked at the old man; then he cast his hard and cruel eye over the multitude, and beheld them burning with that lurid wrath, so difficult to kindle or to quench; and again he fixed his gaze on the aged form, which stood obscurely in an open space, where neither friend nor foe had thrust himself.

11. What were his thoughts, he uttered no word which might discover. But whether the oppressor were overawed by the Gray Champion's look, or perceived his peril in the threatening attitude of the people, it is certain that he gave back, and ordered his soldiers to commence a slow and

guarded retreat. Before another sunset, the Governor, and all that rode so proudly with him, were prisoners; and long cre it was known that James had abdicated, King William was proclaimed throughout New England.

12. But where was the Gray Champion? Some reported that when the troops had gone, and the people were thronging tumultuously in their rear, Bradstreet, the aged exGovernor, was seen to embrace a form more aged than his own. Others soberly affirmed, that while they marvelled at the venerable grandeur of his aspect, the old man had faded from their eyes, melting slowly into the hues of twilight, till where he stood there was an empty space. But all agreed that the hoary shape was gone. The men of that generation watched for his reappearance, in sunshine and in twilight, but never saw him more, nor knew when his funeral passed, nor where his gravestone was.

As a sequel to the foregoing, it may be mentioned that the "Gray Champion" is believed to have been one of the regicide judges who condemned Charles the First and brought him to the scaffold, and who had been concealed in Boston ever since the restoration of monarchy in England. In the popular legend, it is supposed that the "Gray Champion" appeared again in the streets of Boston, eighty years later, at the time of the popular rising against the soldiers who, under Captain Preston, had fired upon the people, and that, "five years later, in the twilight of an April morning, he stood on the green, beside the meeting-house, at Lexington, where now the obelisk of granite, with a slab of slate inlaid, commemorates the first fallen of the Revolution."

CHAPTER LXXII.-MISCELLANEOUS.

Sunrise.

1. There's a rustle through leagues of forest; the ocean stirs, Quivering with joy and light.

The last star swoons and dies; only the firs,
And the sombre cedars, and cypresses tall,
Solemn, dark, and funereal,
Remember the vanished night.

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