“Would that I had the treasures of Ophir for thy sake,” exclaimed Spikeman; “but I am a ruined man if thou require so much, Ephraim Pike.  But there, take the Carolus, and let it be an incentive to godly action.”

Ephraim received the gold piece, and his features relaxed into something like a smile.

“Truly,” said he, “did David, the man after God’s heart, speak by inspiration when he declared—­’Never saw I the righteous forsaken, or his seed begging bread.’”

Spikeman made no reply, and the man having attained his object, and observing the other’s desire to be rid of him, withdrew.

The countenance of the Assistant expressed chagrin and displeasure as he looked after the retiring form of the serving-man; but presently he buried his face in his hands, leaning his elbows on the tall writing-table that stood before him.  In this attitude he remained some little time, and when he removed them, the expression of his face was changed, and his mind evidently filled with other thoughts.  The look of vexation had been succeeded by one it is difficult to describe—­a kind of smile played around his lips, his eyes sparkled, his color was heightened, and a slight moisture exuded from the corners of his mouth—­he was uglier and more repulsive than before.  He bent over, and on a piece of paper which lay before him, wrote with a hand that trembled a little—­“How fair and how pleasant, art thou O love, for delights.”  This sentence he scrawled several times, and then taking up the piece of paper, he tore it into small fragments, and scattered them on the floor, after which, composing his face into an austere seeming, he placed his high steeple-crowned hat on his head, and, leaving the building, proceeded in the direction of his dwelling-house.  As he advanced leisurely along, he soon heard the sound of a drum beaten through the streets, to summon the people to one of those weekly lectures, in which spiritual instruction was not unfrequently leavened with worldly wisdom and directions for political conduct.

Meetings for religious lecture, on week days, were exceedingly common, and held in high favor; indeed, so attractive were they, that in the language of an old historian, an actor on the spot—­“Many poor persons would usually resort to two or three in the week, to the great neglect of their affairs and the damage of the public.”  To these, the people were summoned by beat of drum, the martial roll of which instrument called them also to muster for defence, upon a hostile alarm, a different tattoo being adopted for the latter purpose.  An attempt was at one time made by the magistrates to diminish the frequency of these meetings, as a serious inroad upon the industry of the colony; but the effort was resisted, and that successfully, by the elders, “alleging their tenderness of the church’s liberty, as if such a precedent might enthrall them to the civil power, and as if it would cast a blemish upon the