"No," thundered a voice from a seat in the chimney corner; "the blast of the Lord, that destroyed Sennacherib and his host, will utterly consume the malignants, including Charles Stuart, the son of the enemy of the people of England!"  My father sprang to his feet, white with fury.  All eyes were centred on the speaker. He was a short, thick-set man of about forty years of age, with a bull-neck, huge ears, small ferrety eyes, close-cropped hair, and a clean-shaven face deeply pitted with smallpox. He wore a buff-coloured jerkin, opened at the neck for comfort’s sake, and frayed and soiled from the wearing of armour, his breast- and back-plates of dull steel having been removed.  These, together with a steel helmet with metal guards, and a heavy broadsword, lay on the settle within arm’s length, while a petronel and a well-weighted bandolier hung across the back of a chair on which the man’s feet, encased in long Spanish boots, rested.