"'Ice,' said Ned. 'My boy,' said the Great American
General, and a tear froze upon his face as he spoke, 'you
have saved us all.'"
Here is Ned at Runningmede when King John with his pen
in hand was about to sign the Magna Carta.
"For a moment the King paused irresolute, the uplifted
quill in his hand, while his crafty, furtive eyes indicated
that he might yet break his plighted faith with the
assembled barons.
"Ned laid his mailed hand upon the parchment.
"'Sign it,' he said sternly, 'or take the consequences.'
"The King signed.
"'Ned,' said the Baron de Bohun, as he removed his iron
vizor from his bronze face, 'thou hast this day saved
all England.'"
In the stories of our boyhood in which Ned figured, there
was no such thing as a heroine, or practically none. At
best she was brought in as an afterthought. It was
announced on page three hundred and one that at the close
of Ned's desperate adventures in the West Indies he
married the beautiful daughter of Don Diego, the Spanish
governor of Portobello; or else, at the end of the great
war with Napoleon, that he married a beautiful and
accomplished French girl whose parents had perished in
the Revolution.
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