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"Couldn't the King draw his sword and..."

"No."

And Miss Stuart did then and there give young Anthony his first history lesson, by telling him her version of the story of the doings of the Wicked Man in the picture.

And on that subject she was eloquent, inspired. At the end of that first long lesson, the first of an endless series spread over several years, the Wicked Man in the picture was firmly established with the Giant Blunderbore, the hypocritical Wolf and the ever-hungry Bear, as a living evil; one of the Powers of Darkness that, in the darkness, grow so powerful; one of the Things to be fought with a sword in the garden by day, and to be hidden from, beneath the bed-clothes, by night. By day, indignation, hatred and vengeance; by night, quaking terror.

So impressive was Miss Stuart's discourse on this almost daily recurrent subject, that ere long Oliver Cromwell was the child's Private Enemy Number One, as it were; ranking before, and far ahead of, Giant Blunderbore in wickedness, malice and power; a terror that stalked by night, making night itself a terror; so that in course of time, young Anthony Calderton was as richly and completely endowed with a Cromwell-complex as was Miss Mary Stuart herself.