catch the slightest sound. More and more distinctly they heard shouts, and then the trampling of many feet. While they were listening one of the neighbors rushed breathless into the room.

"A mob! a terrible mob!" cried he. "They have broken into Mr. Storey's house and into Mr. Hallowell's, and have made themselves drunk with the liquors in his cellar, and now they are coming hither, as wild as so many tigers. Flee, lieutenant-governor, for your life! for your life!"

"Father, dear father, make haste!" shrieked his children.

But Hutchinson would not hearken to them. He was an old lawyer, and he could not realize that the people would do anything so utterly lawless as to assault him in his peaceful home. He was one of King George's chief officers, and it would be an insult and outrage upon the king himself if the lieutenant-governor should suffer any wrong.

"Have no fears on my account," said he. "I am perfectly safe. The king's name shall be my protection."

Yet he bade his family retire into one of the neighboring houses. His daughter would have remained, but he forced her away.

The huzzas and riotous uproar of the mob were now heard close at hand. The sound was terrible, and struck Hutchinson with the same sort of dread as if an enraged wild beast had broken loose and were roaring for its prey. He crept softly to the window. There he beheld an immense concourse of people filling all the street and rolling onward to his house. It was like a tempestuous flood that had swelled beyond its bounds and would sweep every

thing before it. Hutchinson trembled; he felt at that moment that the wrath of the people was a thousandfold more terrible than the wrath of a king. That was a moment when a loyalist and an aristo

THE RIOTERS BROKE INTO THE HOUSE

crat like Hutchinson might have learned how powerless are kings, nobles, and great men when the low and humble range themselves against them. King George could do nothing for his servant now. Had King George been there he could have done nothing for himself. If Hutchinson had understood this

lesson and remembered it, he need not in after years have been an exile from his native country, nor finally have laid his bones in a distant land.

There was now a rush against the doors of the house. The people sent up a hoarse cry. At this instant the lieutenant-governor's daughter, whom he had supposed to be in a place of safety, ran into the room and threw her arms around him. She had returned by a private entrance.

"Father, are you mad?" cried she. "Will the king's name protect you now? Come with me or they will have your life."

"True," muttered Hutchinson to himself; "what care these roarers for the name of king? I must flee, or they will trample me down on the floor of my own dwelling."

Hurrying away, he and his daughter made their escape by the private passage at the moment when the rioters broke into the house. The foremost of them rushed up the staircase and entered the room which Hutchinson had just quitted. There they beheld our good old chair facing them with quiet dignity, while the lion's head seemed to move its jaws in the unsteady light of their torches. Perhaps the stately aspect of our venerable friend, which had stood firm through a century and a half of trouble, arrested them for an instant. But they were thrust forward by those behind, and the chair lay overthrown.

Then began the work of destruction. The carved and polished mahogany tables were shattered with heavy clubs and hewn to splinters with axes. The marble hearths and mantelpieces were broken. The volumes of Hutchinson's library, so precious to a

studious man, were torn out of their covers and the leaves sent flying out of the windows. Manuscripts containing secrets of our country's history which are now lost forever were scattered to the winds. The old ancestral portraits whose fixed countenances looked down on the wild scene were rent from the walls. The mob triumphed in their downfall and destruction, as if these pictures of Hutchinson's forefathers had committed the same offenses as their descendants. A tall looking-glass which had hitherto presented a reflection of the enraged and drunken multitude was now smashed into a thousand fragments. We gladly dismiss the scene from the mirror of our fancy.

Before morning dawned the walls of the house were all that remained. The interior was a dismal scene of ruin. A shower pattered in at the broken windows, and when Hutchinson and his family returned they stood shivering in the same room where the last evening had seen them so peaceful and happy.

NORTH CHURCH
TOWER Berton

THE BOSTON MASSACRE'

By NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

T was now the 3d of March, 1770. The sunset music of the British regiments was heard as usual throughout the town. The shrill fife and rattling drum awoke the echoes in King Street while the last ray of sunshine was lingering on the cupola of the Town-house. And now all the sentinels were posted. One of them marched up and down before the custom-house, treading a short path through the snow and longing for the time when they would be dismissed to the warm fireside of the guard-room. Meanwhile, Captain Preston was perhaps sitting in our great chair before the hearth of the British Coffee-house. In the course of the evening there were two or three slight commotions which seemed to indicate that trouble was at hand. Small parties of young men stood at the corners of the streets or walked along the narrow pavements. Squads of soldiers who were dismissed from duty passed by them, shoulder to shoulder, with the regular step which they had learned at the drill. Whenever these encounters took place it appeared to be the object of the young men to treat the soldiers with as much incivility as possible.

"Turn out, you lobster-backs!" one would say.