“Black tidings these, Mr. Williams,” said he; “blacker never came to New England.  Doubtless you know their purport?”

“Yea, truly,” replied Roger Williams, “for the governor consulted respecting this matter with my brethren in the ministry at Boston, and my opinion was likewise asked.  And His Excellency entreats you by me that the news be not suddenly noised abroad, lest the people be stirred up unto some outbreak, and thereby give the king and the archbishop a handle against us.”

“The governor is a wise man—­a wise man, and a meek and moderate,” said Endicott, setting his teeth grimly.  “Nevertheless, I must do according to my own best judgment.  There is neither man, woman nor child in New England but has a concern as dear as life in these tidings; and if John Endicott’s voice be loud enough, man, woman and child shall hear them.—­Soldiers, wheel into a hollow square.—­Ho, good people!  Here are news for one and all of you.”

The soldiers closed in around their captain, and he and Roger Williams stood together under the banner of the red cross, while the women and the aged men pressed forward and the mothers held up their children to look Endicott in the face.  A few taps of the drum gave signal for silence and attention.

“Fellow-soldiers, fellow-exiles,” began Endicott, speaking under strong excitement, yet powerfully restraining it, “wherefore did ye leave your native country?  Wherefore, I say, have we left the green and fertile fields, the cottages, or, perchance, the old gray halls, where we were born and bred, the churchyards where our forefathers lie buried?  Wherefore have we come hither to set up our own tombstones in a wilderness?  A howling wilderness it is.  The wolf and the bear meet us within halloo of our dwellings.  The savage lieth in wait for us in the dismal shadow of the woods.  The stubborn roots of the trees break our ploughshares when we would till the earth.  Our children cry for bread, and we must dig in the sands of the seashore to satisfy them.  Wherefore, I say again, have we sought this country of a rugged soil and wintry sky?  Was it not for the enjoyment of our civil rights?  Was it not for liberty to worship God according to our conscience?”

“Call you this liberty of conscience?” interrupted a voice on the steps of the meeting-house.

It was the wanton gospeller.  A sad and quiet smile flitted across the mild visage of Roger Williams, but Endicott, in the excitement of the moment, shook his sword wrathfully at the culprit—­an ominous gesture from a man like him.

“What hast thou to do with conscience, thou knave?” cried he.  “I said liberty to worship God, not license to profane and ridicule him.  Break not in upon my speech, or I will lay thee neck and heels till this time to-morrow.—­Hearken to me, friends, nor heed that accursed rhapsodist.  As I was saying, we have sacrificed all things, and have come to a land whereof the Old World hath scarcely heard, that we might make a new world unto ourselves and painfully seek a path from hence to heaven.  But what think ye now?  This son of a Scotch tyrant—­this grandson of a papistical and adulterous Scotch woman whose death proved that a golden crown doth not always save an anointed head from the block—­”