Chapter 5

ISRAEL IN THE LION'S DEN.

Harassed day and night, hunted from food and sleep, driven from hole to
hole like a fox in the woods, with no chance to earn an hour's wages, he
was at last advised by one whose sincerity he could not doubt, to apply,
on the good word of Sir John Millet, for a berth as laborer in the
King's Gardens at Kew. There, it was said, he would be entirely safe, as
no soldier durst approach those premises to molest any soul therein
employed. It struck the poor exile as curious, that the very den of the
British lion, the private grounds of the British King, should be
commended to a refugee as his securest asylum.

His nativity carefully concealed, and being personally introduced to the
chief gardener by one who well knew him; armed, too, with a line from
Sir John, and recommended by his introducer as uncommonly expert at
horticulture; Israel was soon installed as keeper of certain less
private plants and walks of the park.

It was here, to one of his near country retreats, that, coming from
perplexities of state--leaving far behind him the dingy old bricks of
St. James--George the Third was wont to walk up and down beneath the
long arbors formed by the interlockings of lofty trees.

More than once, raking the gravel, Israel through intervening foliage
would catch peeps in some private but parallel walk, of that lonely
figure, not more shadowy with overhanging leaves than with the shade of
royal meditations.

Unauthorized and abhorrent thoughts will sometimes invade the best human
heart. Seeing the monarch unguarded before him; remembering that the war
was imputed more to the self-will of the King than to the willingness of
parliament or the nation; and calling to mind all his own sufferings
growing out of that war, with all the calamities of his country; dim
impulses, such as those to which the regicide Ravaillae yielded, would
shoot balefully across the soul of the exile. But thrusting Satan behind
him, Israel vanquished all such temptations. Nor did these ever more
disturb him, after his one chance conversation with the monarch.

As he was one day gravelling a little by-walk, wrapped in thought, the
King turning a clump of bushes, suddenly brushed Israel's person.

Immediately Israel touched his hat--but did not remove it--bowed, and
was retiring; when something in his air arrested the King's attention.

"You ain't an Englishman,--no Englishman--no, no."

Pale as death, Israel tried to answer something; but knowing not what to
say, stood frozen to the ground.

"You are a Yankee--a Yankee," said the King again in his rapid and
half-stammering way.

Again Israel assayed to reply, but could not. What could he say? Could