Page:Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field.djvu/39

 had, of course, always fought on the winning side. Later, when the company was looking at some engravings, Mr. Phelps, in a joke, pointed to the figure of a Puritan, saying, with a merry twinkle in his eye:

"Ancestor of mine."

The picture happened to illustrate the trial of Charles the First of England. Now, not to be outdone, Twain pointed to the Lord Judge on the woolsack, and matched Phelps' lie.

"My ancestor, if you please." He made the statement at the very moment when Count Seckendorff looked at the picture. Hence, Mark's awful apprehensions.

"Regicide," he told us, "is never outlawed by the lapse of time. When Charles the First's son was restored to the throne, hundreds of dead regicides were pulled out of their graves by the ears and hanged and quartered. As to the living, they were treated as I described, and I am afraid that if Seckendorff reports me (Willie being half English) I will be punished just as if I had made Charles a head shorter myself, yesterday afternoon." 35