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Of course the Chapmans were entirely satisfied. Indeed Mr. Gusher so turned his guns on Mr. Romer as to make his position extremely uncomfortable. Both were guests at the old City Hotel, where Gusher was a great favorite with all the young ladies, and to whom he related his difficulty with Romer. In short, he so enlisted their sympathies in his behalf that they were ready to join him in ejecting Romer from the house as a slanderer. One said what a mean thing he must be to slander the handsome young foreigner in that way. A second tossed and turned her head aside when she met him, and pouted her pretty lips to let him know what she meant. A third refused to return his bow, while a fourth gave him the cut direct. There was no standing up against such a storm of female indignation as he now found blowing about his ears. He saw, also, that to have attempted to sustain his charges with proof would only be sheer folly. In short, there was nothing for the plain young outspoken American to do but surrender the field to the handsome young foreigner and his female admirers, seek respectful treatment beyond the sound of their voices--and wait.

This was amid a thick undergrowth. Moving on into a passage of large, stately hemlocks, with only here and there a small beech or maple rising up into the perennial twilight, I paused to make out a note which was entirely new to me. It is still in my ear. Though unmistakably a bird note, it yet suggested the bleating of a tiny lambkin. Presently the birds appeared,--a pair of the solitary vireo. They came flitting from point to point, alighting only for a moment at a time, the male silent, but the female uttering this strange, tender note. It was a rendering into some new sylvan dialect of the human sentiment of maidenly love. It was really pathetic in its sweetness and childlike confidence and joy. I soon discovered that the pair were building a nest upon a low branch a few yards from me. The male flew cautiously to the spot, and adjusted something, and the twain moved on, the female calling to her mate at intervals, _love-e, love-e_, with a cadence and tenderness in the tone that rang in the ear long afterward. The nest was suspended to the fork of a small branch, as is usual with the vireos, plentifully lined with lichens, and bound and rebound with masses of coarse spider-webs. There was no attempt at concealment except in the neutral tints, which made it look like a natural growth of the dim, gray woods.

The Archbishop returned to England on the 1st of December, and was joyfully received by the people. His enemies, however, and especially the family of De Broc, did all they could to annoy him; and on Christmas Day he uttered a violent anathema against them. He preached from the text, "I come to die among you," evidently anticipating what might be the personal consequences of his action. He told his congregation that one of the archbishops had been a martyr, and they would probably soon see another; but before he departed home he would avenge some of the wrongs the Church had suffered during the previous seven years. Then he thundered forth his sentence of excommunication against Ranulph and Robert de Broc, and Nigellus, rector of Harrow. Meanwhile news had reached the King that Becket had excommunicated certain bishops who had taken part in his son's coronation. In a fit of exasperation the King uttered some hasty words of anger against the Archbishop. Acting upon these, four of Henry's knights--Hugh de Morville, Reginald FitzUrse, William de Tracy, and Richard Brito--crossed to England, taking with them Ranulf de Broc and a band of men, and murdered the Archbishop in Canterbury Cathedral.

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