"
"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 heartbroken. 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 brother 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.
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