“Oh,” said Hilary, with a little impatient sigh, “let us have no more doleful tales; these things have nought to do with us. Let us enjoy this happy day while we can.”
Gabriel’s whole face changed at her appeal. The indignation gave place to love and tenderness, and a mirthful look came into his eyes; when, as if in response to her words, they heard the voices of some little village children singing,
The ardent, generous spirit which made him quick to resent any sort of cruelty or oppression also gave him the power to be such a lover as might well content the most exacting of maidens, and there were probably no happier people in England that day than these two lovers as they sat under the shadow of Bosbury Cross.
Meanwhile in the tiled cottage to the east of the churchyard an old clergyman, in the last throes of a lingering and painful death, faintly gasped the words, “Lord, how long?”
The physician sorrowfully watched the havoc wrought by man-inflicted ill, from time to time speaking a word or two of comfort and good cheer, or gently raising the dying man into an easier posture. And at the foot of the bed, his face buried in his hands, knelt Peter Waghorn, his frame shaken with sobs, his heart consumed with hatred of Dr. Laud, and in his mind the psalmist’s passionate cry, “Let there be none to extend mercy unto _him!_ . .. Because that he remembered not to show mercy, but persecuted the poor and needy man, that he might even slay the broken in heart.” A last faint gasping sigh made him raise his head. The physician was gently laying down the worn-out body and closing the sightless eyes.
From the open casement the wind wafted into the quiet room the glad sound of children’s voices, and as the little people ran down the road the words and the clear high notes floated back to the lovers by the cross, and to the bereaved, sore-hearted man:
Dr. Harford noted the strange contrast within the room and without. He laid his hand kindly on Peter Waghorn’s shoulder.
“Your father, too, keeps holiday,” he said; “be comforted, he has entered into rest.”
“_England, it has been said, has been saved by its adventurers--that is to say, by the men who, careless whether their ways were like the ways of others,... have set their hearts on realising first in themselves and then in others, their ideal of that which is best and holiest. Such adventurers the noblest of the Puritans were. Many things existed not dreamed of in their theology, many things which they misconceived, or did not conceive at all; but they were brave and resolute, feeding their minds upon the Bread of Heaven, and determined within themselves to be servants of no man and of no human system._”--S. R. Gardiner.