Page:The Children of the New Forest - 1847 - Marryat.djvu/189

 Bible, you must know that we must submit to the will of God, who is our kind father in heaven."

"Ah me!" said the boy, who was awake when Edward went to him; "I know well it is my duty, but it is a hard duty, and I am heart-broken. I have lost my father, the only friend I had in the world: who is there to love and to cherish me now? What will become of me!"

"I promised your father, before he died, that I would take care of you, my poor fellow; and a promise is sacred with me, even if it were not made to a dying man. I will do my best, depend upon it, for I have known myself what it is to want and to find a protector. You shall live with me and my brothers and sisters, and you shall have all we have."

"Have you sisters, then?" replied the boy.

"Yes; I have sent for the cart to take you away from this, and to-night you shall be in our cottage; but now tell me—I do not ask who your father was, or why he was living here in secret, as I found it out by what I overheard the robbers say to one another—but how long have you lived here?"

"More than a year."

"Whose cottage is it?"

"My father bought it when he came, as he thought it safer so, that he might not be discovered or betrayed; for he had escaped from prison after having been condemned to death by the Parliament."

"Then he was a loyal man to his King?"

"Yes, he was, and that was his only crime."

"Then fear not, my good boy; we are all loyal as well as he was, and will never be otherwise. I tell you this that you may dsafely trust to us. Now, if the cottage was his, the furniture and read property were his also?"

"Yes, all was his."

"And it is now yours, is it not?"