Page:An English Garner Ingatherings from Our History and Literature (Volume 1 1877).pdf/401

 "traitors," because they would not; and threatened them: but they scorned him and bid him do his worst, and would never be persuaded to be soldiers under him; saying, that "it was not so much his zeal to the King's service, as his own pride to make himself greater, by having more men under him."

*      *       *       *       *

I will now turn to the progress of my own story.

It was now about the year 1672. I related before, that my family was reduced to two, myself and one honest man more. We lived solitarily and contented, being well settled in a good house of my own. Now we fell to breeding up goats. We begun with two, but, by the blessing of God, they soon came to a good many; and their flesh served us instead of mutton. We kept hens and hogs also. And seeing no sudden likelihood of liberty, we went about to make all things handsome and convenient about us; which might be serviceable to us while we lived there, and might further our liberty, whensoever we should see an occasion to attempt it: which it did, in taking away all suspicion from the people concerning us; who—not having wives as the others had—they might well think, lay the readier to take any advantage to make an escape. Which indeed we two did plot and consult about between ourselves, with all imaginable privacy, long before we could go away: and therefore we laboured, by all means, to hide our designs, and to free them from so much as suspicion.

We had now brought our house and ground to such a perfection, that few noblemen's seats in the land could excel us. On each side was a great thorn gate for entrance, which is the manner of that country. The gates of the city are of the same. We built also another house in the yard, all open for air; for ourselves to sit in, or any neighbours that came to talk with us. For seldom should we be alone; our neighbours oftener frequenting our house than we desired: out of whom to be sure, we could pick no profit; for their coming was always either to beg or to borrow. For although we were strangers and prisoners in their land, yet they would confess that Almighty God had dealt far more bountifully with us than with them, in that we had a far greater plenty of all things than they.

I now began to set up a new trade. For the trade of knitting was grown dead: and husbandry I could not follow,