Oliver Cromwell eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 58 pages of information about Oliver Cromwell.

Oliver Cromwell eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 58 pages of information about Oliver Cromwell.

Amos: There wasn’t a better lad in the shire, sir.

Cromwell: What has been done?

Bridget: We don’t know.  I brought Amos up at once to find you.  I wanted to come alone, but he wouldn’t let me.

Amos: I couldn’t stay, sir.  They’ll not have hurt him surely?

Bridget: What will they do?  Is it too late?  Can’t it be stopped?

Cromwell: Bassett.

(The officer comes.)

Bassett: Yes, sir.

Cromwell: Have you heard any Star Chamber news these last days?

Bassett: Nothing out of the way, sir.  A few croppings and brandings.

Cromwell: Any names?

Bassett: Jollyboy was one.  That’s an anyhow name for a man, now, isn’t it?  Lupton there was, too.  He was cropped, both ears—­said a bishop was a man.  That was blasphemous.  And a fellow about ship money.  That was savage.  Tanner his name was.

Amos: Yes—­but not Seth—­it wasn’t Seth Tanner?

Bassett: Tanner was all I heard.

Amos: It wouldn’t be Seth.

Bridget: What did they do to him?

Bassett: It’s not proper hearing for your sort.  But they let him go.

Cromwell: What was it?  The girl has heart enough.

Bassett: Both thumbs, both ears, the tongue, and a T on the forehead.

Amos: It wasn’t Seth, sir.  It couldn’t be Seth—­not like that.  He was the beauty of the four parishes.

Bassett (to CROMWELL):  Was he something to do with you, sir?

Cromwell: There is a boy, Seth Tanner, we have a care for.

Bassett: Because I made bold to take him in.  He was dazed, as it were—­didn’t seem to know where to go.

Cromwell: It was a good man’s doing.  Where is he?

Bassett: I live under the walls here, as you might say.

Cromwell: Could we see him?

Bassett: Nay—­it’s no place to take you to.  But I’ll fetch him if you will.  He doesn’t sleep.

Cromwell: Do, then.

(BASSETT goes.)

Amos: It’s not my Seth, is it, sir?  Not his tongue—­and a bloody T. They would know how he could sing, and he looked like Gabriel in the books.

Hampden: Shall we go, Oliver?

Cromwell: No.  Let us all see it out.

Bridget: Father, it’s horrible.  They don’t do things like that, do they?

Amos: Dumb—­and a bloody T—­and the thumbs.  It’s some other poor lad.

(BASSETT returns; with him a figure, the hands and ears bound up in rough thick bandages, and on his forehead a burning red T. He looks at them, with reason hardly awake.)

Amos (going to him):  Seth—­Seth, boy.

(SETH moves his lips, but makes no sound.  They look at him in horror.)

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Oliver Cromwell from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.