“I am sorry, Alice, to destroy your faith in the legends of which you are so fond,” remarked he, “but my antiquarian researches have long since made me acquainted with the subject of this picture—­if picture it can be called—­which is no more visible, nor ever will be, than the face of the long-buried man whom it once represented.  It was the portrait of Edward Randolph, the founder of this house, a person famous in the history of New England.”

“Of that Edward Randolph,” exclaimed Captain Lincoln, “who obtained the repeal of the first provincial charter, under which our forefathers had enjoyed almost democratic privileges—­he that was styled the arch-enemy of New England, and whose memory is still held in detestation as the destroyer of our liberties?”

“It was the same Randolph,” answered Hutchinson, moving uneasily in his chair.  “It was his lot to taste the bitterness of popular odium.”

“Our annals tell us,” continued the captain of Castle William, “that the curse of the people followed this Randolph where he went and wrought evil in all the subsequent events of his life, and that its effect was seen, likewise, in the manner of his death.  They say, too, that the inward misery of that curse worked itself outward and was visible on the wretched man’s countenance, making it too horrible to be looked upon.  If so, and if this picture truly represented his aspect, it was in mercy that the cloud of blackness has gathered over it.”

“These traditions are folly to one who has proved, as I have, how little of historic truth lies at the bottom,” said the lieutenant-governor.  “As regards the life and character of Edward Randolph, too implicit credence has been given to Dr. Cotton Mather, who—­I must say it, though some of his blood runs in my veins—­has filled our early history with old women’s tales as fanciful and extravagant as those of Greece or Rome.”

“And yet,” whispered Alice Vane, “may not such fables have a moral?  And methinks, if the visage of this portrait be so dreadful, it is not without a cause that it has hung so long in a chamber of the province-house.  When the rulers feel themselves irresponsible, it were well that they should be reminded of the awful weight of a people’s curse.”

The lieutenant-governor started and gazed for a moment at his niece, as if her girlish fantasies had struck upon some feeling in his own breast which all his policy or principles could not entirely subdue.  He knew, indeed, that Alice, in spite of her foreign education, retained the native sympathies of a New England girl.

“Peace, silly child!” cried he, at last, more harshly than he had ever before addressed the gentle Alice.  “The rebuke of a king; is more to be dreaded than the clamor of a wild, misguided multitude.—­Captain Lincoln, it is decided:  the fortress of Castle William must be occupied by the royal troops.  The two remaining regiments shall be billeted in the town or encamped upon the Common.  It is time, after years of tumult, and almost rebellion, that His Majesty’s government should have a wall of strength about it.”