Ruth continued blooming and youthful, though maternal
anxiety was soon added to her other causes of care. Still, for a long
season, nought occurred to excite extraordinary regrets for the step they
had taken, or to create particular uneasiness in behalf of the future. The
borderers, for such by their frontier position they had in truth become,
heard the strange and awful tidings of the dethronement of one king, of
the interregnum, as a reign of more than usual vigor and prosperity is
called, and of the restoration of the son of him who is strangely enough
termed a martyr. To all these eventful and unwonted chances in the
fortunes of kings, Mark Heathcote listened with deep and reverential
submission to the will of him, in whose eyes crowns and sceptres are
merely the more costly baubles of the world. Like most of his
contemporaries, who had sought shelter in the western continent, his
political opinions, if not absolutely republican, had a leaning to liberty
that was strongly in opposition to the doctrine of the divine rights of
the monarch, while he had been too far removed from the stirring passions
which had gradually excited those nearer to the throne, to lose their
respect for its sanctity, and to sully its brightness with blood.
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