When the boy first left his father's house to become a member of his uncle's family, Harrison at once became the object of his youthful adoration.  Handsome in person, gracious in manner, point device in dress, the brilliant officer lived in an ideal world, in which he believed all his companions were as simple-minded and heroic as himself.  The sturdy independence he inherited from an ancestry of English tradesfolk and yeomen made him cherish the ideal of an English republic with religious fervour, while, whether leading a prayer meeting or heading a cavalry charge, his inspiring enthusiasm carried away all who were near him.  No wonder that the boy saw with his eyes and heard with his ears and modelled himself as nearly as he could on the ideals of his hero; and when Colonel Harrison signed the warrant for the king's execution, the boy was as convinced a regicide as any of the judges whose names were written beside that of Harrison on the fatal parchment.  Never a doubt nor a scruple entered Richard's mind, even on that memorable thirtieth of January, when on the scaffold at Whitehall the King--