And what speak ye of James ? There is no longer a popish tyrant on the throne of England , and by to-morrow noon his name shall be a by-word in this very street , where ye would make it a word of terror . Back , thou that wast a governor , back ! With this night thy power is ended . To-morrow , the prison ! Back , lest I foretell the scaffold ! '' The people had been drawing nearer and nearer and drinking in the words of their champion , who spoke in accents long disused , like one unaccustomed to converse except with the dead of many years ago . But his voice stirred their souls . They confronted the soldiers , not wholly without arms and ready to convert the very stones of the street into deadly weapons . Sir Edmund Andros looked at the old man ; then he cast his hard and cruel eye over the multitude and beheld them burning with that lurid wrath so difficult to kindle or to quench , and again he fixed his gaze on the aged form which stood obscurely in an open space where neither friend nor foe had thrust himself . What were his thoughts he uttered no word which might discover , but , whether the oppressor were overawed by the Gray Champion 's look or perceived his peril in the threatening attitude of the people , it is certain that he gave back and ordered his soldiers to commence a slow and guarded retreat . Before another sunset the governor and all that rode so proudly with him were prisoners , and long ere it was known that James had abdicated King William was proclaimed throughout New England . But where was the Gray Champion ? Some reported that when the troops had gone from King street and the people were thronging tumultuously in their rear , Bradstreet , the aged governor , was seen to embrace a form more aged than his own . Others soberly affirmed that while they marvelled at the venerable grandeur of his aspect the old man had faded from their eyes , melting slowly into the hues of twilight , till where he stood there was an empty space . But all agreed that the hoary shape was gone . The men of that generation watched for his reappearance in sunshine and in twilight , but never saw him more , nor knew when his funeral passed nor where his gravestone was . And who was the Gray Champion ? Perhaps his name might be found in the records of that stern court of justice which passed a sentence too mighty for the age , but glorious in all after-times for its humbling lesson to the monarch and its high example to the subject . I have heard that whenever the descendants of the Puritans are to show the spirit of their sires the old man appears again .
When eighty years had passed , he walked once more XXXXX King street .
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