descending toward the door.  The foremost was a man of stern visage, wearing a steeple-crowned hat and a skull-cap beneath it, a dark cloak and huge wrinkled boots that came halfway up his legs.  Under his arm was a rolled-up banner which seemed to be the banner of England, but strangely rent and torn; he had a sword in his right hand and grasped a Bible in his left.  The next figure was of milder aspect, yet full of dignity, wearing a broad ruff, over which descended a beard, a gown of wrought velvet and a doublet and hose of black satin; he carried a roll of manuscript in his hand.  Close behind these two came a young man of very striking countenance and demeanor with deep thought and contemplation on his brow, and perhaps a flash of enthusiasm in his eye; his garb, like that of his predecessors, was of an antique fashion, and there was a stain of blood upon his ruff.  In the same group with these were three or four others, all men of dignity and evident command, and bearing themselves like personages who were accustomed to the gaze of the multitude.  It was the idea of the beholders that these figures went to join the mysterious funeral that had halted in front of the province-house, yet that supposition seemed to be contradicted by the air of triumph with which they waved their hands as they crossed the threshold and vanished through the portal.

“In the devil’s name, what is this?” muttered Sir William Howe to a gentleman beside him.  “A procession of the regicide judges of King Charles the martyr?”

“These,” said Colonel Joliffe, breaking silence almost for the first time that evening—­“these, if I interpret them aright, are the Puritan governors, the rulers of the old original democracy of Massachusetts—­Endicott with the banner from which he had torn the symbol of subjection, and Winthrop and Sir Henry Vane and Dudley, Haynes, Bellingham and Leverett.”

“Why had that young man a stain of blood upon his ruff?” asked Miss Joliffe.

“Because in after-years,” answered her grandfather, “he laid down the wisest head in England upon the block for the principles of liberty.”

“Will not Your Excellency order out the guard?” whispered Lord Percy, who, with other British officers, had now assembled round the general.  “There may be a plot under this mummery.”

“Tush! we have nothing to fear,” carelessly replied Sir William Howe.  “There can be no worse treason in the matter than a jest, and that somewhat of the dullest.  Even were it a sharp and bitter one, our best policy would be to laugh it off.  See! here come more of these gentry.”