I am not a robber." He who had been the commander of thousands, the king of the battle-field, at whose name princes grew pale and thrones tottered, was now a wanderer from house to house, rejected at every door.
"I am so hungry," murmured Ester.

"If I had but a morsel of food, I could sleep under a tree." He heard the plaintive appeal, and it wrung his fatherly heart.

Through his teeth he hissed: "If I am made a savage let all the world beware." They were climbing a hill to enter another part of the town, when they came upon a kind old Puritan woman, who paused to gaze in compassion on the wayfarers.

If others kept off from them as though they were creatures to contaminate by a touch, she seemed to entertain no such fears.

Coming quite close, she said: "Prythee, friend, why do you not get this child to bed ?" "I would, good woman, had I a bed for her; but, alas, all doors are shut against us." "Surely not all!" "I have tried the inns and the home of the smith; but they seem to fear us, as if we were polution." "Have you called at that house ?" she asked, pointing to a steep-roofed building, the top of which was just visible over the hill in the light of the rising moon.
"No, who lives there ?" "Mathew Stevens, a very good old man." "Has he a heart?
Is he brave ?" "He has a heart tender enough, and he is brave enough to shelter the oppressed, in spite of other people's opinions." The woman went her way, and the traveller and his weary child went slowly over the hill to the house.