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Patroon Van Volkenberg

“HE WHEELED ROUND IN
AMAZEMENT AND DROPPED
THE GIRL’S HAND.”—p. 23

Patroon Van

Volkenberg

A Tale of Old Manhattan in the Year

Sixteen Hundred & Ninety-nine.

BY

HENRY THEW STEPHENSON

ILLUSTRATED BY

C. M. REYLEA

Fifth Edition

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS :: NEW YORK

Copyright, 1900

The Bowen-Merrill Company

All Rights Reserved

In memory of my aunt, Mary T. W. Curwen, whose kindness and care for many years has been greater than my utmost gratitude and affection can express

Contents

PATROON VAN VOLKENBERG

CHAPTER I
THE FLIGHT FROM PARIS

The long-boat of Captain Tew had set me ashore on the southwest end of Long Island in a cove near the village of Gravesoon, which is just across the end of the island from New York. In those days the pirates were in bad repute with the government and Captain Tew durst not land me nearer the town for fear of the king’s officers; so I had to make the rest of my way alone. I was not cast down, however, for I had always a hopeful heart, and, in addition to this fact, I was sick and tired of the bad-smelling ship and of its lawless crew of buccaneers. Yet I ought not to cry out against their captain. He and I possessed a strong bond of friendship. I had done him one good turn and he had done me another, though, at that moment, neither of us foresaw what the latter would amount to in the end.

I turned on my heel to look at the town in which I intended to lodge for the night. It was now late and fully dark, and one or two dim lights were all that I could see in Gravesoon by way of welcome. At that moment a feeling of loneliness took such strong hold of me that I cast my eyes once more upon the open sea for the meagre companionship of the pirate crew that was gliding away into the dark. But the ship was already so far from shore that the sounds that always accompany getting under way could no longer reach me, though I strained hard to hear them. In ten minutes even the vague outline of the vessel against the sky had completely blended with the darkness. Then I realized for the first time that I was all alone in a strange land. My only companions were the heavy sorrow in my heart and a strong hope that this sorrow would soon be turned to joy by virtue of the errand that was now bringing me to New York.

I had nearly reached the middle time of life and knew by hard experience that when the future looks the darkest one is most likely to be near the light. This thought gave me fresh comfort and put new life into my step as I set out briskly along the shore of the cove. The wind blew strong in my face, and I had to bend over and lean upon it, as it were, to prevent my slipping upon the rocks. Whatever a misstep might mean to me, it would certainly bring misfortune, perhaps death, to one whom I loved better than myself a hundred times. So I picked my way carefully over the rough places, balancing myself upon the wind and setting my feet firmly when I came to rocks that were wet and slippery. By dint of much perseverance I made fair progress towards the lights of Gravesoon, for all it was so dark upon the shore. As I drew near the town I spied more lights, and at last I came to the lamp hanging over the doorway that betokened a house of public entertainment. I opened the door of the ordinary and went in. The room was quite deserted and I rapped twice upon the table before the host appeared in answer to my summons.

He was a pleasant looking man of no particular appearance. He served me quickly with something to eat and drink, and then sat down on the other side of the table, rippling with questions. I am not given to talking and never was; yet, because I saw here an opportunity to gain information that I should not otherwise possess until I reached New York, I did not turn away from my host’s cross-examination as my temper at first prompted me to do.

He had seen the pirate ship in the offing that afternoon and would like to know its name, guessing shrewdly how I had come ashore; but I put him off with an indirect reply and he was fain to be content with my own name, a poor substitute, though he made the most of it.

“Le Bourse,” he said thoughtfully. “That sounds like a French name. Are you going to friends in Yorke?”

“I am a stranger there, but I am seeking a person who may help me to a sight of friends.”

“What is his name?”

“Van Volkenberg: one of the patroons I think.”

“Ah, yes, Patroon Kilian; the armed patroon is what the burghers call him. We know him well.”

“Is he in New York now?”

“Yes, indeed. He never leaves the island. Kilian Van Volkenberg is too great a man to let himself go far from port. His ships need his attention every day. Now, when I saw yon ship in the offing, I said to myself, ’Tis a ship of the patroon’s.’ But you seem to say not.”

I had said nothing of the kind; but I let the matter pass without correction, knowing that it was only another effort on his part to learn the mystery of my arrival.

“How can I get to New York from here?” I asked after a short pause.

“There is a good road direct, not more than eight or ten miles, with a ferry at the end of it. You will see a tree with a shell tied up to blow for the ferryman—he is likely to be on the Yorke side of the river. Can you blow a shell?”

I could not, never having seen this custom before, whereupon the obliging host bustled out to find one. He returned shortly with a huge sea shell in his hands, by means of which he instructed me in the manner of using it as a horn. The trick was not difficult to learn, not so hard by half as whistling with your fingers in your mouth, which feat I never did learn to do well. But after five minutes practice with the shell I could blow as mournful a tone as you ever heard on the moors of a spooky night.

My music lesson over, I went to my room. As soon as I was alone I took out the pocket Bible that had been the companion of all my wanderings. I opened it at the book of Ruth; this book was my favorite reading, for my sister’s name was Ruth. My separation from her long years before this, my great search and heavy disappointment had at last led me to this point in my wanderings. But there was still a strong hope in my heart; and hope will keep the pulse bounding even when the shadows are dark.

But before I continue my story, let me go back and relate the strange events which resulted in my being set on shore in the dead of night like a criminal, from one of the ships which was under the displeasure of his royal majesty the king.

When I was but a lad of three and twenty my parents both died and I was left the only protector of little Ruth, my sister, who was then a child, scarce fifteen years of age.[age.] She was a bright-faced, cheery sister, who did as much as a full-grown woman could have done to make our modest home in Paris comfortable and happy. I prized her more than life and would not let her go out of my sight. In this respect the more caution was needed because the long Huguenot peace was drawing to a close and people of our faith were subject to all manner of persecution.

Our heaviest troubles began, of course, in the year 1685, when King Louis revoked the Edict of Nantes; but for years before that the Huguenots were afflicted with innumerable unjust restrictions. There was one of the king’s decrees that caused more confusion than all the others put together. This was the law permitting children at the age of seven to renounce the faith in which they had been bred, and to enter the Roman church. Every kind of inducement was held out to persuade them to acknowledge belief in the Catholic religion. Once confessed, they were considered to be under the jurisdiction of the priesthood. When dolls, fairy stories, idle promises of childish pleasures, failed to make a mere infant nod to some statement mumbled by the priest—when all such ways of seducing little children failed, they were often shamelessly kidnapped and carried away to a convent by force. It was mainly against this latter danger that I had to protect Ruth, for she clung so tenaciously to me and to our Protestant faith that I had no fear of their cajoling her by any fair and open means.

One day Ruth and I were walking in the fields near the edge of Paris. We were on our way home about twilight, and Ruthie, as I called her then, danced ahead of me like a golden-haired butterfly. She always danced—bless her heart!—and carried sunlight wherever she went. Suddenly, while she was passing the dark gateway of a court-yard, a priest in a black mantle stepped out from the covered way and caught my sister by the arm.

“Come in here,” he cried insinuatingly, at the same time drawing her swiftly towards the doorway.

Ruth resisted, and then the priest clapped a big hand over her mouth so she could not scream.

Shame on him! And she a mere child! But he was reckoning without me when he made that false move. I was at her side even before he noticed me. He called for help and soon brought another priest to his assistance. Even so, it was only two to one, which was hardly fair considering my size and the fact that I had been bred to arms. It was a dreadful thing for me to do, but, in a trice, and without even stopping to draw my sword, I had stretched one of them unconscious upon the ground and sent the other crying for help, with his blood dripping all the way.

For the moment, the rashness of my deed quite overcame me. I had struck a priest. In those days the penalty for such an offence could be none other than death; and Ruth would be left alone to worse than death. She and I resolved to fly from the capital and to escape from the country altogether if we could. We packed what little of value we possessed, and in twenty minutes had left our lodgings behind us. It was our haste only—always excepting the grace of God—that saved us from immediate pursuit. Even so, it seems a miracle that we got out of the city and found ourselves safe upon the road to La Rochelle.

Ruth bore up very bravely in those hard times and never spoke a single word to reproach me for my hasty act. She sang pleasant songs to me on the way and would comfort me by saying that she was not tired, though I knew she must be weary enough to lie right down in the road and give up. On the third day after leaving Paris we fell in with a party of Protestants and continued our journey with them. We were thankful for their company at the time, but it would have been better had we not met them, for their flight was known to the authorities and was the ultimate cause of my separation from little Ruth.

These fugitives had already made arrangements with a ship owner at La Rochelle to transport them to England. We had at last come to a little stream almost within sight of the town and of safety when we were overtaken by four of the troopers of the Paris guard. A narrow way led down to the place where we should cross the stream. We thought that the advantageous position of this path would enable two of us to keep back all four of the guardsmen. We cast lots to see which of us should defend the others and one of the lots fell to me. Ruth was much grieved at heart when she knew that I must stay behind and risk capture while she and the others went forward; but she said bravely, “Do your duty, Vincie boy, and the Lord will take care of us.”

The guards fortunately had no guns and were armed only with short swords. We held them at bay for some time; then, making a charge together, they killed my companion and I was left alone to bar the path, with a deep wound in my shoulder which prevented my using my cloak as a guard. The rest of our party of fugitives escaped, but, on the arrival of some more soldiers, I was disarmed and taken to prison.

For some reason, I never discovered what, I did not suffer the penalty I expected. Instead of being led immediately to the scaffold, I was kept close in prison among others of my faith whose only crime was an attempt to avoid the oppressive hand with which the church of Rome strove to drain the lifeblood of the Protestants.

During the long months of my captivity, I pondered much upon little Ruth. Where had she gone? I thought that England was the destination of the party we had fallen in with. Sometimes I pictured my sister in America, alone in that far off land; but a little thought would convince me that she was not there. Ruth was a hopeful girl. She would never bring herself to think—unless she heard of my actual death—that I should not come to her eventually. In that case, where would I be so likely to look as in England? No, Ruth would not go to the colonies. As I thought about her whereabouts I became more and more sure, and at last I was certain, in my own mind at least, that she had taken refuge in England.

At the end of a year a happy accident opened the way to my escape. I shall never forget the burden that fell from my shoulders, the long breath of unutterable, thankful relief that I drew upon the day I crossed the French frontier into Holland. I left my native land with my mind firmly resolved upon two things: the first was to find Ruth; the second was to bring confusion to the church of Rome, the slayers of God’s people, the tormentors of me and mine. Wherever I should meet a Catholic,—sleeping or waking, in sickness or in health,—he was my enemy.

I made my way at once for England, where I inquired diligently for my sister in all the great cities. A year of this searching brought me no tidings and exhausted my slender means of support. Then I fell back upon military service for a livelihood. My great strength and my skill of fence soon found me employment. I could even choose my master in a way, and managed to take service with those who would lead me into distant parts. You may be sure that during all my foreign campaigns I never lost sight of the darling desire of my heart. But as time wore on and I did not find her, I became less and less positive that Ruth was still alive.

In the years that followed I walked in many strange cities; in all of them I searched the streets hungrily for Ruth. I glanced up into windows; I peered down into cellar ways; but I never saw a familiar face. Once I penetrated in disguise to La Rochelle itself. Even there I could hear nothing of Ruth or of the ship-master who had taken her to England. I began to doubt whether she had escaped at all. At such moments my fierce resentment against our oppressors grew bitter as gall. More than once in those stern, tumultuous times, I fought under the banners of the Protestant chiefs of Europe, and my blade was no sluggard.

At last a new fear began to haunt me day and night. What if I should meet Ruth and not recognize her! She was fifteen years old when I lost her. How a girl changes between fifteen and twenty! I must look now, not for the slim childish figure I remembered, but for the full roundness of a woman. How often I had—and as I grew older it occurred ever the more often—how often I had looked into faces that I felt sure I had seen somewhere before. Then, when it was too late to follow, I would be startled with the idea that perhaps the person I had just seen was Ruth. Such moments wrung my heart.

At last, after eight or nine years of fruitless hunting, I found myself again in England. I had long since abandoned all hope of finding Ruth. I became the trusted servant of an English lord. I was now three and thirty years of age, though people who judged from my appearance thought I was older. King William was on the throne and my master stood well in the sovereign’s graces. Everything, so far as worldly prospects went, gave promise of a happy life. Then of a sudden my master fell under the displeasure of the government. With the quickness of a summer storm, misfortune came upon him. Two months after the first thunder-clap he was a condemned prisoner in the Tower, and I once more masterless and adrift.

This calamity occurred in the year 1698, a twelvemonth before my arrival in New York. I had saved some money and, strange to say, there came to me suddenly and without reason a new conviction that I should yet find Ruth. But where? There was only one place in the world where she might be and in which I had not sought for her: America. My resolution was immediately taken to set out over sea and resume the hunt that I had latterly neglected. With this intent I journeyed to Bristol, where I intended to take ship at once.

CHAPTER II
THE MAID AT THE MARINER’S REST

Bristol was then the second seaport of the kingdom; only London surpassed it in the number of ships sailing from its docks and in the amount of hurly-burly, shuffling traffic in its streets. I arrived in the city near sundown of an evening. As soon as I had had a bite to eat I set out for the water front. The Mariner’s Rest was the principal tavern, and thither I went to begin my inquiry for a passage to New York.

A maid served behind the bar and soon brought me a mug of ale. I could not help but notice her frail figure and sorrowful eyes; she looked some two or three and twenty years of age, and had evidently seen much trouble in her short life. Her refined face was wonderfully out of keeping with her coarse surroundings. Sometimes, when she had been rudely spoken to by a tipsy sailor, she would retreat to the back of the room and rest her head in her hands as if from weariness. Though I pitied her in my heart, I soon fell to musing upon other things. My mind was always on the alert now about New York. I constantly pictured myself wandering along its streets, casting searching glances to this side and that, as I had so often wandered here in England when I still believed that Ruth was somewhere near at hand.

I was so wrapped up in my fancy-hope that I did not notice how the room was filling nor how the noise of mingled oaths and ribald laughter of the common herd had risen to a din. I did look up soon, however, in time to notice the entrance of a seaman whose appearance was exceedingly unlike the rest. He wore rich clothes, and a jeweled sword by his side; he was tall, kindly and benevolent looking. This man—I took him for a prosperous merchant who commanded his own ship—made his way laboriously through the crowd of tables, nodding now and then to someone he knew. When he reached the farther side of the room he sat down a few chairs away from me. There was a patronizing look of contempt on his face and he turned his back squarely upon the company. The girl, perhaps, had been the first to notice him, and her face brightened at his appearance.

“Will you take me?” she asked, eagerly, as if her life depended on the answer, as she set his glass before him.

“This is no life for the like of you to lead,” replied the seaman. “Yes, I’ll take you and I’ll do the best I can to find a home fit for you and your pretty face to live in.”

At that moment a cry of “Wench, wench, I want some rum,” took the girl back to her uncongenial task behind the bar. As soon as she was gone I moved my chair nearer to the new comer.

“Will you pardon me, sir?” I began. “I have arrived from the country only to-day and am a stranger here. Can you set me on the track of a ship for America?”

“That I can very quick. I am Captain James Donaldson of the Royal Lion. She sails for New York the day after to-morrow. I can let you have a first-rate cabin and good rations to boot if you don’t eat too much. You have no idea what a swift and steady craft she is.”

“Good,” I exclaimed joyfully. “You may count upon me as a passenger.”

“Tut, tut, you are as hasty as the girl there. You have not seen the cabin yet, nor do you know my price.”

“I dare say we can arrange that to our satisfaction.”

“One can never tell,” he said, with a shrug of his shoulders. “Folk are so particular in these days; but come to me in the morning and I will show you over. I know you will like her. I must be going now. I only stopped in to speak a word with yon lass. The pretty little wench is going with me on the voyage.”

He left the tavern immediately, and I remained for some time longer watching the girl come and go about the room with her easy grace and soft manner. Suddenly her attractive face filled me with a sort of half fear. A fortune teller had once foretold that I should meet my wife in some such place as this. What if this girl were—! Bah! I should not let such a thing as that get between me and my hunt for Ruth. You cannot appreciate the force with which this recollection took hold of me unless you remember the new conviction, a sort of presentiment that I should at last find Ruth. I always profess great disregard for superstition, but in my heart of hearts I am more or less affected by it. For this reason I got up hastily to go out, meaning to escape from the attractive presence of the pathetic looking maiden. As I stopped at the bar to settle my score I was again impressed by the fineness of the girl’s features and could not suppress my curiosity.

“Yours is a strange face to see here,” I said while she was counting out my change.

“No stranger than yours,” she answered. “You and Captain Donaldson are the only gentlemen who have been here to-night[to-night].” She heaved a sigh. “I wish they came oftener.”

“You are going across the water with him, I believe.”

“Did you hear?” she asked in a low, earnest tone. “Please do not speak of it aloud. My master would treat me ill if he knew I was going to leave him.”

“Never fear,” I said, turning to go. “God be with you.”

“Pardon me,” she said as if to call me back. And then, “Oh, pardon me again. I made a mistake.”

I left the tavern wondering what the last exclamation meant, for she had dropped her eyes when I turned round to look at her again, and her face assumed a look of disappointment. Yet I was glad to be free of the place, for I still feared that she might come between me and Ruth. For the moment I quite forgot that we should be together throughout the long voyage.

The next morning I left my lodgings early and threaded the badly paved streets that led to the harbor. The ships were headed close up against the shore and I walked beneath their high bows that projected over my head in a row like the half of an arched passage. Before long I came to the Royal Lion. Captain Donaldson was busy directing the movements of his crew, who were engaged with crows and ropes in stowing away the last portions of the ship’s cargo. When he saw me, he called to his mate to take his place, and kindly offered to explore the ship with me himself. It was a staunch brig, for the most part fitted out with new canvas and fresh rigging. What struck my soldier eye immediately, and what gave the Royal Lion its best claim as a safe conveyance for passengers, was its preparation for military[military] defense. A goodly number of large brass cannons were mounted upon the deck, and Captain Donaldson assured me that his magazine was well stocked with small arms and ammunition.

An ocean voyage at the end of the seventeenth century was a dangerous undertaking. The sea swarmed with pirates. Many a ship returned to port battered up with cannon shots and its decks reeky with blood stains. Other ships never came back at all, and it was as common to attribute their loss to the attacks of the buccaneers as to the furious tropic storms.

Captain Donaldson and I soon came to terms about my passage. As I left the ship in his company—for he would go part way along the dock to point out less favored ships and make comparisons to their disadvantage—as we walked along he told me what he knew of the lass at the Mariner’s Rest. She had come of better folk, he told me, and could no longer endure her present occupation. Her determination was to go to the colonies and take service in some respectable family till she could save enough to buy her a little home in one of the Huguenot settlements.

“But that is not what she will really do,” said the Captain. “She is too pretty a wench for that. Who knows but that you—tut, tut, man, you are not married, are you?”

He had recalled my fearfulness of the night before and there was particular force in its being put into words by a perfect stranger. He continued to chaff me about the girl till, when I left him, I half repented the bargain I had made to sail in his ship. Yet for all that, and in spite of myself, when night came I was sitting in the corner of the Mariner’s Rest. I fretted inwardly that I was there; but I persuaded myself that I had better get used to her face amid the distractions of other interests than to wait and make her acquaintance in the lonely isolation of the ship.

I found the inn, if possible, more noisy than on the night before. During the day two or three ships had come in from distant parts and many of their crews were carousing heavily after the long voyage. Some of the sailors had already drunk themselves into a stupor, but by far the greater number swore and shouted lustily in their cups. The cry of wench, wench, rose repeatedly, and at times the accompaniment of jocose obscenity was disgusting.

The maid shrank pitifully from contact with the rude atmosphere about her; yet there was a hopeful look in her bright, sparkling eyes. This expression I set down as due to the fact that to-morrow she would be free of all this and once more in the way of a decent life. There were plenty of respectable homes to be had in the colony of New York, and I had no doubt but that the good captain would look out for her to the best of his ability.

Two or three times during the evening the drinkers fell to brawling. Once at a game of cards a Portuguese sailor clapped his cutlass across a comrade’s head and threatened to lop off his pate if he said a word more. His opponent was a sniveling bit of a coward who whined at this threat, but swallowed it as best he could, which, however, he did with a bad grace, being neither a bully nor a thorough-going jelly fish of a coward.

I could hardly stand the vile smell of their tobacco, or the look of the sloppy pools upon the floor where they splattered the foam from their ale. I was minded once to quit the room altogether, and had even risen from my feet to go; but I noticed that the clatter of mugs and the din of voices and the stamping of feet was growing louder with every minute. The hopeful look had crowded out of the girl’s face, and at that moment the cry of wench was thundered out, together with an indecent oath that made me wince. She cast a scared glance of appeal in my direction. I sat down again, minded to wait and be on hand in case she should need my protection.

She approached timidly the table of the boor who had summoned her. She set down the contents of her tray and was about to retreat when he caught her roughly by the arm. He tried to pull her down upon his knee and made as if to kiss her. I was on my feet in an instant; but before I could stir a step the landlord had taken her part. He fetched the drunken sailor a blow in the face that stretched him on the ground with the blood dripping from his nose.

“I guess she’s my brat, not yours,” cried the landlord angrily. “Wench, get back to your place.”

The sailors are such clannish folk that I fully expected a desperate brawl to follow the landlord’s attack. There was some violent shuffling of feet in the corner, and one or two men started up and took a step or two in the direction of the affray, eager for a row. But before the mob’s anger could come to a focus, someone cried out in a mocking voice:

“Portuguese Tom’s got his lobster now.”

There must have been some local quip to this phrase that I did not understand, for it produced a storm of laughter, after which they fell to drinking again in the best of jovial good humor. Tom picked himself up, a little crestfallen; but even he joined in the laugh against him. As soon as the crisis was passed I turned my attention to the girl. She had not moved a step from where she stood with her hands clenched and her lips tightly pressed together. Her position and the expression of her face were both so full of fearless scorn that I could not repress an exclamation of delight.

“Bravo!” I cried.

She looked at me and relaxed into the sensitive woman instantly. “Sit down,” she said lightly, motioning me to resume my seat. “It is not often so bad as it is to-night; but it is over and well over, too. Thank you, sir; thank you.”

Though I had done nothing she had seen that I had been ready to come to her assistance. “I shall stay till the room is cleared,” I whispered as she passed me, and then sat down in my place again to watch.

I remained in the tavern for some time; in fact, till it wore on towards midnight. Then, a bell ringing in the town, the landlord rose and advised his guests to depart. A rule of the city closed all public houses at that hour. Slowly, by ones and twos, the riotous sailors took their leave, helping along those who were too drunk to walk alone. My seat was in the corner where a high buffet threw me into the shadow. For this reason probably the host overlooked me, and, for I remained till the last, he thought that the room was quite empty, though I still lingered in the shadow. He stepped to the door to usher out the last guest. On his return he faced the girl menacingly.

“What is this you told me to-day?” he demanded in a fierce tone.

“I am going to leave you, sir.”

“Ha, hussy, I don’t know about that. By whose authority are you going to leave?”

“By my own.” She did not quail at his brutal tone, but stood unflinching as she had stood before the brute of a sailor who had insulted her in the early evening. “There is nothing in my agreement to prevent my going when I like.”

“There is this in our agreement, wench,” he said, gripping her hand. “We are here alone, and I tell you plainly that you do not leave this house. You know what I can do when I am in earnest.”

“Let go my hand,” she answered. “You hurt me.”

Instead of releasing his grip he squeezed her wrist so hard that she cried out in pain.

“Yes, let go,” said I, stepping into view.

He wheeled round in amazement and dropped the girl’s hand.

“Who the devil are you?”

The excitement of the evening had told on the girl’s nerves. Her spirit was weakened as we stood in the deserted room that a moment before had been a very bedlam. “Oh, take me away,” she cried piteously. “He will beat me if you leave me here.”

The landlord caught up a chair and lifted it above his head.

“Get out of here,” he cried, coming toward me with a swing of the chair aloft.

“Too fast,” I replied, drawing my sword. “Too fast, my friend. Put down that chair.”

He obeyed with a vengeance and I sprang aside just in time to avoid the blow. The chair broke to pieces and then I had him at the mercy of my sword. He was a bully by nature and a coward at heart. He was soon whimpering in the corner and begging for grace. I directed the girl to go to her room and get ready to leave. The main part of her luggage was already aboard the brig and she had left but a few things to take with her. While she was doing as I bade her, I guarded the innkeeper and enjoyed the scared replies he made to my continual threats. We soon left him to shut up the shop alone and went out into the street.

“You can obtain respectable lodging for the night in the house next to where I am stopping,” I said. “Will you let me take you there?”

A chill breeze was blowing from the sea and as we walked along it cooled my heated temper. It must have had the same effect upon the girl, for her tight grip upon my arm gradually relaxed, and by the time we reached the second street she was walking with her usual alert step.

“Monsieur,” she said after a while, “from your accent you must be French.”

“Ah, yes, from Paris; but that was many years ago. There is the house I am taking you to.”

“Indeed,” she said musingly. “I am from Paris, too. Are we so near the place? I am almost afraid to go to a strange house alone.” We had stopped beneath one of the occasional lanterns that were hung out from houses to light the street. “May I know,” she continued, “who has helped me to-night?”

“My name is Le Bourse.”

“What! What did you say?”

“Michael Le Bourse. Is my name a strange one?”

“Strange?” She caught me by the shoulders and twisted me towards the light, looking eagerly in my face. “Was I right last night?” she continued, all of a tremble with excitement. “Is it—can it be?” Then she threw herself into my arms. “Don’t you know me, Vincie, don’t you know me?”

I held her from me in the light; then I knew. “Ruth,” I cried. I took her in my arms and covered her face with kisses. For a moment we had nothing to say to each other there in the still street under the solitary lantern. There seemed to be no world outside; only we two: I and Ruth, for whom I had sought so many years.

“Ruthie,” I kept whispering again and again. “I have found my little Ruth.”

CHAPTER III
THE ROYAL LION

How long we stood there in the joy of that moment I can never say. We were brought back to a sense of our surroundings by the jarring voice of someone speaking to us from the sidewalk.

“Ah ha! Bless my stars if it isn’t my two passengers all in one.”

It was Captain Donaldson who had spoken, and I was glad of a friend to turn to, for I was at my wits’ end to know what to do. Only a few words were necessary to acquaint him with our story. His genial eyes stood out in amazement as the tale of our long separation and accidental meeting unfolded itself to his willing sympathy.

“God-a-mercy me,” he cried, striking his chest. “It is hard to believe how the Lord does go about it to work His will. ’Twas only yesterday, Mistress Ruth, that I was charging him to fall in love with you, and now I suppose I shall lose both my passengers.”

He took on a thoughtful look at the idea of losing us. After a moment’s deliberation, however, he clapped his hands together.

“Well, that shall not prevent my sailing at the usual hour; no, not if I have to go empty-cabined inside and out.”

Ruth, who clung to my arm affectionately as if she feared to lose me again, assured the good captain that she saw no reason why we should not go on as we had planned. In fact, though we had not thought it all out, we saw our way clear to continue our journey to America. It was a long distance, to be sure, but we had overcome the greatest obstacle when we had first made up our minds to go; besides, both Ruth and I were full of anxious curiosity to see the new land where so many of our countrymen had found homes of comfort and prosperity. Suddenly the captain broke out anew with a surprised question:

“What are the two of you doing here locking arms at midnight?”

I told him our adventure and all about the brawl at the tavern, and where I intended to take Ruth to.

“It will never do,” he said. “It will never do to rouse decent folk up at this time o' night. Odds man, they’ve been in bed this three hours past, and it’s a warm welcome you’d get at one o’clock. No, no, it will never do. Come with me to the ship and I’ll make stowaways of ye both till morning.” The three of us set out together along the quiet[quiet] streets to the dock. Now that the distracting noise of traffic was all spent, I found the vague roof of ship fronts under which we picked our way silently far different from what it was by day. Every vessel creaked and groaned in a thousand joints; the air fairly reeked with the smell of tar and cordage; the heaving hulks and the tall figureheads looming upon the prows were ghostly in their slow rise and fall. I was glad to get away from the lonely neighborhood and reach the Royal Lion; Ruth no less so, for she was a timid child when the excitement of the moment was passed.

Captain Donaldson offered to provide for us, but we had so much to talk about that we were quite content to huddle upon the deck with a pair of shawls to shield us from the wind.

Ruth told me that she had escaped from La Rochelle in safety ten years before and had found a good home in England, where she had wearied through the years waiting for me. Her experience had not been wholly unlike my own. After many years her mistress had died and, about the same time that my good master was sent to the Tower, Ruth was cast upon her own resources. Before this event occurred, however, she had given up all hope of my coming. Upon her mistress’ death she made up her mind to go to one of the Huguenot settlements in America. With this intent she had set out for Bristol. Footpads and highwaymen on land were then as likely to be met with as buccaneers upon the sea. The van which brought her to Bristol was waylaid and Ruth, as well as the other passengers, robbed of all they had. She arrived in Bristol penniless and had to take what employment came to hand in order to earn a living. Thus it happened that she was compelled to such base labor at the Mariner’s Rest.

“Oh, Vincie,” she sobbed. “It was so hard.”

An angry tremble shook me as I thought of her harsh treatment; then I recalled the threat the landlord had made in my hearing.

“What did he mean when he said that you knew what he could do when he was in earnest?”

“Do not think of that,” she answered softly. She was always so forgiving. “It is all past now.”

“Tell me what he meant,” I continued fiercely. “Did he ever dare to—”

“Hush, Vincie,” she murmured, putting her fingers over my mouth; but I shook her hand down. “He—must I tell you?” she continued with hesitation, not wanting to anger me further. But I insisted that she should speak out. “Well, he beat me once,—but not hard. What are you going to do?”

I sprang to my feet and took two steps toward the gangway; then Ruth was at my elbow. She gripped me by the arm.

“What are you going to do?”

“Never mind what I am going to do. Let me go.”

“I shall not let you go,” tightening her grip. “Stop.”

I looked at her in amazement. I remembered her as a timid child when I used to think out and plan everything she did. But the case was different now. I had a notion to shake her off and was almost on the point of saying as I used to, “Hush, you are a mere child.” But there was a look in her eyes which told me plainly that childhood was past and that, between us two, I was no longer the master.

“Let me go, Ruth,” I said. But I spoke without spirit, and when I added “Please” she only shook her head and began to draw me back to where we had been sitting.

“I am ashamed of you,” she said, but very gently. “Do you no longer read your Bible, Vincie?”

“Aye,” I answered, jumping at the chance her reference gave me. “And it says that whoso sheddeth man’s blood by man shall his blood be shed.”

“But he did not shed my blood.”

“Give eye for eye, tooth for tooth,—blow for blow.”

“Ah, Vincie, you read only where you like; love thy neighbor as thyself. Have you forgot the parable of the cloak? You must love your enemies and pray for them who persecute you. Were we driven out of home for Jesus’ sake to deny all His teachings and forswear His word? No, no, brother, do not forget the woman taken in adultery, and how she was brought before the Christ? Where were her accusers then? Vincent, turn the word of God into your own wicked heart before you judge your neighbor. What shall I say at the great day if they say to me: ‘Your brother did this or that wrong act in your name?’ Answer me, Vincent, what shall I say then?”

I could make no answer. Her pure spirit overcame me. I could only ask her to forgive me. She bade me kneel down upon the deck just as we used to kneel when we were children. Ruth prayed that I might come into a better spirit. I was in much need of her gentleness, and with great diligence she set to work to curb my resentment against the Catholics, which ten long years of disappointment and continual warfare had tempered to the hardness of steel. Every morning upon the deck as we sped across the wide ocean she wrought against my contrary spirit till it was partly broken. My little Ruth, whom I had protected so zealously in her childhood, wound me around her finger and ruled me firmly, but with all the gentleness of love.

“For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.” Her words and the promises she talked about in the good Book were like music, and I was beginning to be a better man. “Did we not prophesy in thy name, and by thy name cast out devils?” She showed me what all this meant, and that if I went on in the way I had begun I should some day be face to face with the great denial: “And then shall I profess unto them, I never knew you; depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”

Such was the burden of her teaching. She spoke much of the golden rule, and by that text she brought me to see how my fierce zeal against the Roman church was but persecution under cover of my own selfish faith as the Catholics persecuted under theirs. I remember one afternoon in particular when we were more than half way across the Atlantic. We were nestling in the bow of the ship beneath a flapping sail, and Ruth sat by my side, and teaching me, just as Jesus may have taught his disciples not to forget what He was telling them. The sun beat down warm and comfortable upon the deck. The merry surface of the water laughed in skipping sunlight. She had talked to me a long time that afternoon, and as she talked a great peace came upon me and little by little the remorse for my evil ways slipped away and vanished at her forgiving words.

Suddenly our attention was attracted by a commotion on the main deck where the cannons were. The sailors began to run this way and that in great confusion. Half a dozen of them started to drag the canvas covers off the guns and to get them ready for use. Others ran below to the magazine to bring up powder and small arms. I could not make out what all this rumpus was about till I glanced in the direction of the cannons’ aim and saw a large, square-rigged vessel about a mile away, bearing down upon us like a tower tilted against the sky. Surely all this preparation must be to repel an attack, and I guessed at once that the strange ship was a buccaneer. Our passengers were in a great scare when they found out the truth. A little baby whose mother lay sick in the cabin set up a wail of fright at the unusual sounds. No notice was taken of the child, however, till Ruth took it up in her arms and hushed it to sleep.

Captain Donaldson was the coolest head among us. He spoke some hearty words to his crew and bade them get ready to fight. Some of them went forward to man the guns in the bow; others climbed into the rigging to shoot down upon the enemy’s deck when she came alongside; small arms were dealt out to the rest of us who stood waiting near the main hatch. By the time all our operations were complete the hostile ship was not more than a quarter of a mile away, and soon she spread the flag of the buccaneers.

“I knew it,” shouted our captain, and the crew responded with a rousing cheer. I could scarce understand the reason of their joy, but put it down to their love of a good fight, and the escape from the humiliation that would have followed all their hurry if the ship had turned out a peaceful trader. I think the shame of having made a mistake as to the character of the approaching vessel would have smote them harder than a battle. Before the ship had got near us, all the women were sent below as a matter of precaution. Very soon two long-boats, bristling with weapons, put off from the buccaneer.

The two boats tilted merrily along the waves till they were half way to our ship. By that time some men in the pirate’s rigging must have made out the strength of our defenses, for the long-boats were hastily summoned back and taken on board the ship again. The buccaneer now came on under full sail. As it drew near we could see a squad of men at each end with ropes and grappling irons ready to lash us fast the moment we touched.

Ten minutes later, after a harmless exchange of cannon shots, the two ships were lashed fast together and the pirates were popping over our side like frogs into a pond. Captain Donaldson had placed his men in two lines in such a position that the buccaneers had to jump aboard between them. The pirates set themselves back to back in the middle of the ship and fought both ways at once. Donaldson cut down the leader of the band opposed to us. At this his party lost heart and gave back a step or two upon their comrades. They were now so close together that one party of the pirates hampered the other. They fell into confusion, and in two minutes we were chasing them back into their own ship.

It is always easier to defend than to attack. The moment the situation was reversed and we stood upon the offensive, we found our difficulties grown tenfold. Captain Donaldson’s voice rang clear above the din, bidding his men to stand firm and capture the ship. Suddenly the clamor increased at a great rate, and I heard hasty orders given to retreat to the Royal Lion. There was scuffling on the deck, shouts, and orders given in quick succession; then one of the grappling chains broke with a noise like the report of a cannon. Just at that moment I was engaged in a close fight with one of the pirates and could not turn my head to see what was happening. So long as he kept his sword flashing before my eyes I had no desire to look otherwise than to my guard, and my pride would not let me run. But soon I had him, for all he was a good fighter, and, by the time he slumped backward with a groan, the ships had drifted apart, and there was fifty feet of clear water between me and my friends.

Captain Donaldson made every effort to put his ship alongside again; but the pirates had had enough of fight for that day and their ship was the faster sailer. My heart sank as I saw the gulf widening between us; nor could I catch a last glance of Ruth, who had gone below with the sleeping baby in her arms at the beginning of the engagement.

In this way our short-lived reunion came to an end. I watched the Royal Lion drop behind till, night coming on, I could no longer see her. Strange to say, my captors had nothing to say to me for a while, and left me quite alone as long as I wished to keep my eyes on the vessel that contained my sister. In fact the treatment I met with at the hands of the buccaneers was such as to belie much of what I had heard concerning their reprobate character. When I passed my word of honor, they allowed me the freedom of the deck and set no sort of watch upon me. Some of them who thought that I had showed bravery in the fight even pressed me to join their crew, offering me equal rights with the buccaneers who had ventured money in the ship. Though I would not hear to this, I won favor in other ways, particularly by casting their accounts and by writing fair in the logbook. I practiced a good hand for the latter business, which was eventually the means of saving my life. One day when I was engrossing the date in large round letters at the top of the page, the captain, who was looking over my shoulder, began to laugh. He would not tell me what amused him, though he imparted it to his companions. Each one as he heard it looked at me and clapped his hands for fun. It was not long, however, before I understood how they intended to make use of my scanty store of learning.

About a week later we sighted a point of land. Though we soon passed this cape, I knew by many signs that we were making for the coast. That afternoon the chief spoke to me in the cabin.

“Monsieur Le Bourse, you know very well that you are our prisoner, and we paid dear for you, too; that was a jolly brush we had with the Royal Lion. Once more, and this is the last time I’ll say so, you can have full freedom and a share in the prize money if you will sign our articles.”

“I shall not do it,” I replied haughtily. “Take your own way with me.”

At that he opened a locker, not at all offended by my manner, and drew out a suit of black clothes and a powdered wig which he told me to put on. This done he handed me a book and a silver-topped cane.

“Now walk,” he cried, “from here to the porthole and back again. There, there, you’ll do,” he went on, chuckling with delight. “Now, look you here, Monsieur Le Bourse, we are going to redeem you in the plantations for a schoolmaster, for they are sore in need of a little sense in Lord Baltimore’s colony. That’s where we shall set you. On my life, we’ll do it! And a brave dominie you’ll make in your black coat and wig.”

I did not resent this arbitrary disposition of my services. I had expected to walk the plank, and this was a great sight better than that. So I waited patiently for this new change in my fortunes. On the evening before we reached port I was seated in the bow of the ship alone. No one was near me, and soon the captain crept stealthily to my side.

“We’ll bind you out for five years of service,” he began. “Whoever takes you will pay us twenty pounds.” He tossed a purse into my lap. “There’s the money in good pieces of eight, Spanish gold. Never say Ned Teach of Bristol’s not a gentleman of honor.”

I pressed him to know the cause of so much generosity; and I learned that the man I had killed in the fray was a desperate mutineer who threatened to overthrow the captaincy of Teach.

“Now,” continued the buccaneer, “you’ve got some money, and if you don’t find a way to escape in less than six months you deserve to hang.”

The approach of some of the crew prevented any further talk between us. The next day we ran into port. I was duly bound out to service in the capacity of what is called a redemptioner. This kind of service, I was told, received its name from the fact that the redemptioner, or bond-servant, could buy back his freedom by paying a certain sum of money at any time after five years of service. It was into this kind of bond that Ruth had intended to enter before I found her in Bristol. As I had given her but little ready money, I feared that fate had again laid its harsh hand on Ruth and me alike.

The immediate effect upon me of my service, or imprisonment, for such it really was, was to undo what small tolerance towards the Roman church I had learned from Ruth. The buccaneers bound me out to a Catholic owner of plantations, and soon, upon an attempt to escape, he had me stripped and flogged at the public whipping post on a crowded market day. I was kept close after that and not allowed to stray from the spot of my labors.

For some time, in memory of Ruth, I struggled hard against a change of heart. But little by little my bitter hatred came back to me, and the mere shadow of a Catholic was something to be trampled under foot and spat upon. I resolved to make my escape, come what would, and to this end I was alert to every accident that could be turned to my advantage.

At that time the governments of Europe, and especially of England, were determined to put down the evil practices of the buccaneers. Orders were sent to all the American colonies to arrest the pirates wherever found. They were by this means driven from the larger ports and forced to frequent the smaller villages on the sea. Sometimes, nay, generally, their visits were connived at because of their liberal exchange in captured goods and of the cupidity of the merchants. It chanced, however, that an occasional honest magistrate made a rapid descent upon some unexpected place and captured a rover in an out of the way anchorage.

I had been in Maryland nearly a year when an event occurred that offered me a desperate chance of freedom. Captain Tew, a noted pirate, was discovered lying in a cove not far away. The planter to whom I was bound out, and who was also magistrate of the district, prepared to capture the buccaneer. By accident I learned his plans. They were so well laid that, if carried out in secrecy, they could not but be successful. I made up my mind to warn the pirate of his danger, to win thereby his gratitude, and purchase the means of flight. I succeeded in my venture by so narrow a margin that Captain Tew was quite aware that I had rendered him a great service. His gratitude knew no bounds. Though he had intended to sail farther to the south, he set his vessel northward again in order to land me near New York, where I hoped to find Ruth awaiting me. But before we reached our destination he did me the service I have already spoken of. Upon the gift he gave me the day before we reached Long Island turned an important part of my career in the province of New York.

CHAPTER IV
THE BUCCANEER’S GIFT

We made a quick sail from Maryland to the neighborhood of New York and drew near Long Island on a bright day in August. The stiff wind caught up the jetting water from the prow of our ship and rained it down upon the slant of the waves with a rattle like sand falling upon the deck. I clung to the rail with both my hands and my heart rose higher with every bound of the ship.

“You look merry to-day,” cried Captain Tew at my elbow. “I have good news. The lookout on the mizzen top has sighted land.”

I stretched one hand towards the horizon as if I could reach Ruth. The buccaneer seemed to understand my gesture for he continued:

“She’s been there a year, you say? That’s a long time to stay in Yorke. I suppose she took service up the Hudson, perhaps even as far as Albany on the great Van Rensselaer estate. Do you know any one in Yorke?”

“Not a soul,” I answered, the admission damping my spirits somewhat. “But I shall hunt up the Huguenot pastor and inquire of him.”

“I mean no offense, Monsieur Le Bourse,” continued the pirate. “But if you will take my advice you will go slow in your dealing with your countrymen in Yorke. I hear they have been on the fence since the Rebellion:—one year Leisler men; the next, Jacobites to a man. I don’t know much of the new governor either, curse him, except that he keeps us out of the port.”

He stopped talking and looked down absently at the buttons of his coat, fondling them tenderly and turning them up one by one so that he could look at the device engraved on them.

“Fine buttons, Monsieur, fine buttons. Did you ever stop to look at the workmanship and the coat of arms on the back? It goes hard with me to part with them, it does indeed.” Then he cried out more to himself than to me, as if he had made up his mind to a difficult task: “You old ungrateful dog! Off with the pair, I say, off on the instant!”

With that he drew his cutlass and slashed away clumsily at two of the buttons which he presented to me, holding them out on the flat of his hand.

“I’m an ungrateful dog to think twice about letting them go, but you must know their value. They came to me from his Excellency, Colonel Benjamin Fletcher. Ah, he was a merry soul. When he was governor of Yorke we had no trouble to land, but the present earl sets close watch upon the ports. You’ll find the city as full of brawls as tobacco is of smoke. There are Jacobites and Earl’s men and the devil knows what besides. You may be sure of one thing: whatever is at stake, Kilian Van Volkenberg will be at logger-heads with the new earl. When you get there, show these buttons to Kilian. He brought them to me from Fletcher. I’ll stake my ship and cargo he’ll do all that the love of a good fat bargain can make a Dutch merchant do.”

Soon after this conversation the buccaneer took me into his cabin where he presented me with a purse of money, a pair of pistols, and a handsomely mounted sword. All these articles put together, he assured me, were not worth the eye-hole of one of the buttons. “For,” as he said, “old Ben Fletcher was a merry dog and profitable to the jolly sea-rovers.”

An hour later we sighted land from the deck. During the rest of the afternoon our ship stood off and on, waiting for night. As soon as it grew dark enough to conceal my landing, a long-boat was lowered and they put me ashore at Gravesoon. As I went down the side of the ship, Captain Tew bade me a last farewell. He thanked me again and again for the warning I had given him, assuring me that I had saved him and his ship and all his crew.

“Commend me to Kilian,” he said. “And to Ben Fletcher, and mind the factions in the city—and—and—oh, yes, there’s Mistress Miriam, the patroon’s daughter. Tell her that old Tommy Tew hasn’t forgotten her pretty face, and he’ll bring her something from the east when he returns. God speed!”

The long-boat shoved off and soon I was on land. I have already told how I made my way to Gravesoon where the host of the ordinary was curious to know the manner of my arrival, as well as anxious to teach me how to blow a summons upon a conch.

I went to bed that night, as I have already stated, and rose early the next morning to set out on foot. The distance to Breuckelen was about ten miles across the end of the island. The day was bright and cheery, and the road passed through a rich country of farms. This region supplied most of the food for the city and was carefully tilled by the various tenants of the island. On nearing the Sound the road, which was a poor, rutty track at the best, dipped steeply from a crest and in a hundred yards I was at the water’s edge. A small wooden platform floated on the surface and near, tethered to a tree by a thong of buckskin, hung the sea shell. I put it to my lips and, thanks to my practice of the night before, I was able, after one or two unavailing attempts, to send forth a dull wail that echoed over the water and back again half a dozen times.

While I was waiting for the ferryman to come from the Yorke side of the river, my eyes scanned the town impatiently. The city lay huddled on the side of a hill covered with verdure. The tiers of flaming red-tiled roofs extended nearly to the water’s edge where the white walls of the lower houses made visible the cluster of masts swaying in the harbor. Two structures stood out in conspicuous prominence before the rest of the town. High on the right loomed the Stadt Huys, topped by a pointed belfry. To the left on a bold hump of rock squatted the low fort. There the eye lingered with most interest. The slender staff floated the flag of England. In one corner the double gable of the fort chapel peeped above the top of the bastions. What must have been the portholes were mere black blotches upon the gray face of the wall; and below, at the foot of a steep cliff, the climbing surf fretted the rocks with foam.

My eyes were not drawn from the pleasing scene for fully half an hour. By that time the boatman had crossed the river. On the way back both wind and tide were against us and the crossing took much longer. We passed beyond the greater part of the town, having it upon our left, and landed at a little half-moon battery which projected into the East River near what was called the Water Gate. This gate was the eastern entrance to the city through the Wall, a line of palisades backed by a ditch that extended quite across the city from the East River to the Hudson. It formed the northern boundary of New York, and thus it happened that I entered the city from the rear or landward side.

“There is the way to Van Volkenberg manor,” said the ferryman, advancing one arm like a guidepost and pointing along a road that vanished northward among the wooded hills. “But you’ll do no good to follow it now. The patroon will be in the city to-day. It is all furred up with excitement at the meeting of the new assembly. What are you, white or blue?”

I assured him that I was a stranger and that I belonged to neither party as yet; at this information he lost all interest in my affairs. Even from that distance I could hear the confused din of shouting crowds bowling along the streets in the lower part of the town. While I stood irresolute, trying to decide whether to go north towards the manor-house or south into town, I caught sight of a woman in the distance. I made off hastily in her direction with my mind constantly upon Ruth. I laughed to myself when, all out of breath, I caught up with the woman and found her a squalid wife with clumsy wooden shoes that clattered noisily over the stepping stones of the unpaved street.

In this pursuit I had followed the street next the Wall which was bordered on the left by the houses of the chimney sweeps. Now and then a besooted urchin would run out in front of me, point to his grimy rags and call out: “Hi, mynher! I’m an Earl’s man.” This would set him and half a dozen other sweeps to laughing. I did not understand the humor of the youngster’s joke till later when I found that white was the color of the Earl’s party. Then the thought of his little partisans dressed in their sooty rags would set me laughing with a will.

There was a smell of slops to the street next the Wall and nothing attractive about its appearance. I soon came to a turning and, as I glanced down an avenue curving broadly to the left, I stood still with wonder. As far as I could see the street was loosely filled with people. They were in constant motion; now opening into a gap, now closing into a compact mass from house to house; yet the crowd did not grow smaller nor did it move one way more than another.

Above their heads flags projected from every house-front. Many were white, a few were blue; the most distant were indistinguishable as to color, being mere silhouette patches against the sky. They made a pretty sight, fluttering together in the breeze as if the houses trembled with the same excitement that throbbed in the streets below. Bunches of white ribbons hung from the doorknobs and polished knockers. Festoons of the same color looped across the street. Just overhead, so near me that I had not noticed it at first, a large placard was suspended over the middle of the street. It bore in tall figures the inscription “19 to 5.” I accosted a bystander, or runner-by, for no one was still an instant, and asked the meaning of the numbers.

“Good lack! Are you a stranger? That is our majority. Ours!”

He twirled a bunch of white ribbons in my face by way of explanation and then made off towards the scene of a new excitement. I followed his direction and began to hear the cry “Marmaduke, Marmaduke,” which was swelling farther down the street. I followed the crowd which was all moving in one direction now, and elbowed my way along with the others. Men, women and children pressed eagerly forward in the direction of a low building with a peaked gable that stood on the corner of the next street. Soon I fell into a walk; and then we were so jammed together that I had to fight my way tooth and nail to gain a yard. I looked over the tops of people’s heads to where a coach drawn by six white horses had been brought to a stand. A lady had stepped half out of the vehicle and was about to address the people. She was a strong, dignified looking woman with angular features and flashing eyes. She lifted one hand and everyone became still.

“Men of New York,” she began in a rich melodious voice that won its way to my heart immediately, “on this day of victory and joy, it does my old heart good to see the people alive to their rights. When the liberty of the citizens is at stake, who is their friend?”

The crowd broke into a shout of “Marmaduke, Marmaduke.” A woman who stood next me in the street flourished a white flag and cried: “Three cheers for Lady Marmaduke, the friend of the people!” The lady who stood on the step of the coach caught the flag in her hands and motioned for silence.

“Yes, the Marmaduke is the friend of the people. But that is not what I meant. Our bulwark is the Earl. Stand by Earl Richard, friends. You are the strength of Yorke. He is your champion against the blue.” She waved above her head the flag she had taken from the woman and cried: “Three hearty cheers for the Earl of Bellamont!”

By the time the ringing response had died away and order was once more restored the whole attitude of Lady Marmaduke had changed. Tears stood in her eyes and her voice trembled with emotion.

“Dear people, when it pleased God to take my husband, He took from you your staunchest friend. ‘Helen,’ he once said to me, 'if by chance you should be left alone, never forget the people.'” Then she grew brave again, and her deep voice rang clear and distinct. “I shall do all I can, but—remember—remember what I say: our bulwark is Earl Richard.”

She sprang back into the carriage. The driver struck out with his lash. For a moment the six white horses reared and plunged till the swaying crowd gave way in front. The huge vehicle lumbered forward over the uneven street, followed by the cheering of the people.

I turned into a deserted by-way, wondering who this woman was and hoping to make progress more quickly towards the lower part of the town. Even here I met with the same assertion of victory. Three little bare-legged urchins were belaboring a fourth who was scarce able to toddle. He stood on a doorstep warding off the blows of his assailants with a stick. The cause of their attack was the blue blouse he wore;—blue was the color of the defeated party.

“Hiky tiky, you Jacobite!” cried the three little soldiers of the Earl. “Come down and fight fair, you coward.”

I caught up the nearest of the three boys and spanked him well for a bully; upon which the other two fled precipitately into the midst of a duck pond where they stood knee deep in the slimy water and dared me to follow them at my peril.

“I’m as good an Earl’s man as them,” cried the defender of the doorstep. “But I’ll be a Jacobite now for spite. Don’t come near me, you rebel brats.”

He shouldered his stick like a musket and strutted ahead, offering to accompany me to the next corner if I was afraid.

I took the little fellow safely to his mother’s doorstep and then continued my way through King Street to the Slip, whence I could see the whole water front and the merchant ships lying at anchor. I had scarcely reached the battery by the Stadt Huys when a crowd of people came pell mell along the square. They were shouting and yelling at a score of persons who went before and were provided with brooms decked in the victorious white ribbons of the Earl’s party. They were sweeping the street industriously. As they drew near I saw that the ground in front of them was plentifully strewed with little blue marbles the size of birds’ eggs. The sweepers were thus in play cleansing the town of the blue taint of their enemies. They drew near the water, each vying with his neighbor to be the first to get the marbles in front of him into the bay. Ere long they were popping merrily upon the surface. At that moment a diversion occurred in the form of a charge by a company of marines from one of the merchant ships in the harbor. The marines came up the Slip on the run, and in two minutes a hot fight began.

The brooms were not bad weapons of defense. The cutlasses of the sailors got entangled in the brushy ends and sometimes the weapons of the sailors were jerked clean out of their hands. Now and then a stinging thrust in the face would set a man yelling with pain and anger. Meantime the bystanders amused themselves by egging on the combatants as if it were a cock fight.

This sort of thing could not last long. One by one the ends of the brooms were lopped off. The sweepers gave back and at last broke into flight just as the sheriff and a guard of six men came to their relief. Not at all daunted by the appearance of the officers of the law, the marines continued the attack, now gaining ground, now losing, but keeping to it with a will.

My blood was up. Swords ringing and mine in its sheath was a craven plight. I was for joining in but did not know which side to join. Suddenly the sheriff fell wounded and his men turned tail to run.

“Cowards,” I yelled, flourishing my sword, “follow me.”

They plucked up courage and did as I bade them. I led them aside some twenty yards to the mouth of a narrow lane where we were protected on the flanks by a fence on one side and a house on the other. Here the fray began again with redoubled spirit. I had time to notice that each of the sailors wore about his arm a band of red cloth that gave his dress somewhat the appearance of a uniform. Three of them soon lay on the ground by the mouth of the lane, and I doubt not that they were killed, for there seemed to be great enmity between the marines and the city officers. The sailors continued to fight like fiends, yelling and cursing between their blows like so many madmen. I have no doubt they were full of drink, for they did not fight well together but often turned on one another, or hampered themselves by crowding shoulder to shoulder too close to fight to good advantage. In twenty minutes we had reduced their number by half. The sobering effect of this lively scrimmage put a little reason into the heads of those who were still upon their legs. It was now their turn to run, which they did with a marvelous speed considering the fact that they were sailors.

The battle at an end, I wiped the blade of my sword and continued down the Slip, casting my eyes curiously upon the tradesmen’s signs. There were but a few names on the street, though a symbol of some sort stood over the entrance to each shop. At one place a pair of scissors indicated the dock barber and peruke maker. A red ball hung before a vender of cheese; and an empty cask before every third or fourth door showed where spirits was sold. I made my way past a long row of petty shops and small ordinaries till my eyes fell upon that for which I was looking.

This was a tall, pretentious building decked from top to bottom in blue hangings. Within the ample doorway I could see piles of boxes, casks, bales of cotton, and to the rear there were many clerks bending over huge account books, or skurrying about with pots of paint in their hands to mark the numerous parcels for shipment. What made this warehouse of more interest to me than all the others was its sign and the name of its owner. It read “KILIAN VAN VOLKENBERG—MERCHANT.”

CHAPTER V
THE JACOBITE COFFEE-HOUSE

When I recognized the name on the front of Van Volkenberg’s warehouse I dipped my hand into my pocket to make sure that the silver buttons Captain Tew had given me were safe and ready to be produced by way of introduction. I crossed the street and entered the open doorway. A courteous young clerk who desired to be of service to me regretted that his master was not on the premises.

“Patroon Van Volkenberg went out not long ago with Colonel Fletcher,” he said. “You know that the town is in such excitement that the patroon, who is the chief merchant of the city and also a member of the governor’s council, has many cares upon him. But I am in his confidence and should be glad—no, is it a personal matter? I am sorry that I cannot attend to your business. I should advise you to return this afternoon if you desire to see him in person. He will probably dine with Colonel Fletcher or perhaps with the governor. You know that Patroon Van Volkenberg is one of the most representative men of the city. I see you are a stranger. Would you like to look at our cellars and see our ships? There are none equal to them in the whole province.”

I thanked him for his kindness, but said that I wished to explore the city and would wander about on the chance of seeing the patroon at large. I passed out into the busy street and stood at the door of the patroon’s warehouse for a moment in hesitation which way to turn. A large sign which projected into the street not far away on my right indicated the Leisler Tavern. I turned that way, intending to find a suitable place to lodge until my plans became more settled. At the door, however, I stopped. The room within was noisily full of people all of whom wore white cockades and badges. These decorations represented the Earl’s party and reminded me of the fact that the hangings on Van Volkenberg’s house were blue. The Leisler Tavern was evidently not frequented by the partisans of the patroon. I had better seek farther; perhaps I should come upon an inn of another color.

I wandered along, keeping a sharp lookout on all sides. My attention was much taken up with the quaint little houses and the curious sights of this strange city. Before long, on returning from a near view of the fort which I had already seen at a distance from my point of vantage on Long Island, I ran suddenly upon the Jacobite Coffee-House. This ordinary was draped in blue, and the empty neighborhood cast upon it the melancholy atmosphere of defeat.

The large interior was portioned off upon three sides into stalls containing tables like those I had seen in London. Most of the chairs at these tables were occupied by persons drinking; but by far the greater number of people present stood mug in hand in the open center of the room. Upon my entrance there was a sudden lull in the conversation; then they began to whisper among themselves and look at me. Every person in the room was soon staring at me as if I were some public curiosity on exhibition. There was a hostile expression in their eyes, too, that I could not comprehend. I wondered whether, after all, this was really a public ordinary. Had I made a mistake and blundered into some private place of meeting? On one side of the tap-room in plain sight hung the governor’s license to keep open house. No, I had not made a mistake. What, then, was the meaning of this obvious turning of eyes in my direction? How could I account for the hostile contempt they showed towards me, an utter stranger?

I crossed the room to where I saw a vacant chair in one of the stalls. At once two men who were also seated at the table I was moving towards, arose, making a great parade of their efforts to get out of my way. The laugh that followed this treatment vexed me much. I called out in an ill temper to the host to fetch me some rum and not to keep strangers waiting.

“Have you a room to let?” I inquired as he set my liquor down on the table in front of me.

“No,” he replied curtly, turning on his heel, and showing me his back across the room.

Shortly the attention fell off from me somewhat and the inmates began to talk again. Kirstoffel, as they called the host, was a merry fellow. He soon seemed to repent of the rude way in which he had answered my question, for he saw when I took out my purse that I had plenty of ready money. Taking advantage of a moment when attention was diverted to the some disturbance in the street, he came across the room to me and made a qualified apology.

“Gott, man,” he began. “Your demand was too sudden. I have got no rooms here to let out. They were all thrown into one for that what-you-call-it Jacobite Club to meet in. No, I have no rooms.”

As he seemed to be friendly, I asked him why my entrance had been the cause of so much attention. He was about to answer when the people who had been temporarily attracted to the door came pouring back. The tapster laid his finger on his lips, shook his head at me in a warning sort of way, and then stalked haughtily back to his place as if to affect his customers with the largeness of his contempt for me.

I was all alert to discover the clew to this treatment. As each of several new people entered I was pointed out amid whispering and shaking of heads and threatening glances. One fellow, a sailorly looking man, cried out an angry oath and took a step or two in my direction. A comrade caught him by the arm and whispered something in his ear. At that the fellow gave up his notion, whatever it was, and soon their interest in me waned.

Everyone I had seen in the room so far wore somewhere on his coat or hat a bit of the blue ribbon that stood for the Merchants’ party. It was not long, however, before I noticed in one corner a slight, alert man who looked as if he might be a native of my own country. Furthermore, so far as I could see, he wore none of the blue ribbon. I changed my seat so as to come near him. He was an affable sort of fellow and spoke to me at once.

“You and I seem to be on the under side,” he began. “I wonder you don’t wear white.”

I told him, as I had told the ferryman, that I was a stranger in the city and that I had not yet learned the difference between the parties. He at once began a long explanation, telling me all about the Earl of Bellamont and the People’s party whose color was white, and of the Merchants’ party, whose color was blue. Thus begun, I pressed the conversation further to learn why I had been treated with so much attention when I came into the coffee-house. He did not know. Had I worn white or no color at all, as he did, they would have let me alone. There must be something more than that. Did I not know? “How could I?” I said, in answer to his question, for I had been in New York scarce above two hours. All this mystery was very annoying to me, for every few moments I was pointed out and showed off to some new comer like an animal in a cage.

In the meantime my chance acquaintance, who informed me that his name was Pierre, drank continually and was in the merrier mood therefor. “I hate these Dutchmen,” he said, “with their dozen pairs of breeches like barrels round their middles. And the women, ha! I’ve seen a very bean-pole swell out below like a double jib.”

This reference to the Dutchmen reminded me of my desire to see the patroon, and I asked Pierre if he knew Van Volkenberg.

“Know him? I’d know his bones in a button shop. You couldn’t polish the crabbedness out of him. I could tell you where he is at this very moment only—I declare, my head is getting fuddled. I must have a gill of rum to settle this weak beer with.” In a moment he came back from the tap-rail, empty-handed and shaking his head disconsolately. “He will not trust me, not another stuyver. I’m plum fuddled. Where was I?”

I suggested Van Volkenberg, but he did not seem to know the name. I handed him half a crown, but he would not take it.

“No, sir; I’m not a beggar,” he said with a little dignity. “That would hurt me to the heart, and what would Annetje say?” Then he added cunningly: “You are a man of influence. If you would speak to him and ask him to extend my score on credit a little he would do it out of respect to you.”

A moment later Pierre was sipping rum to his satisfaction and I was secretly a shilling out to the landlord.

“Where was I?” continued Pierre, whose memory was improving now that I had got him some liquor without offending his dignity with money. “Where was I? Oh, yes, Van Volkenberg. He is in the room above this one—president of the Jacobite Club. If you wait here you will see him. They always come in for a sup all worn out and dry with thinking.”

Pierre soon fell asleep and I awaited the appearance of the patroon. In a short space of time I was again quite out of the consideration of every person in the room. They talked in low tones as people will who have not the honorable sense of success to be noisy over. They no longer paid any heed to me, not even when further additions were made to their number.

I kept my ears open and I soon learned from the drift of conversation what was the present state of politics in New York. The recently defeated Merchants’ party had been in power for many years; in fact, ever since the trial and execution of the leader, Jacob Leisler. This party’s grip on affairs had, however, been steadily failing ever since and it was quite loosened by the arrival of a new governor. This governor was the Earl of Bellamont. Upon his arrival in New York he had at once espoused the cause of the Popular party, as the adherents of Leisler were called. He made it his especial duty to enforce the Acts of Trade and to put down the illegal traffic with the buccaneers. This unlawful trade was the chief bone of contention between the two parties. To the Merchants’ party belonged all the great tradesmen of the city, hardly one of whom had not in times past, or was not at that very moment engaged in the profitable but unlawful exchange of smuggled goods. It was to continue this trade in defiance of the law that they stood together against the Earl. In the recent election they had been overthrown by a large majority. Their defeat was due mainly to the Frenchmen, which portion of the population of New York was then quite under the control of Lady Marmaduke. She was the lady I had already seen addressing the people from the step of her coach.

While I was gathering the above information piecemeal from the subdued conversation about me in the coffee-room, my acquaintance, Pierre, had roused himself occasionally, swallowed another draught of rum, and then relapsed into sleepy unconsciousness. The group in the room was continually changing, but the people composing it had ceased to point me out as an object of interest. Two or three men had latterly come in who wore upon their arms a band of red cloth like what I had seen on the sailors I had fought against in company with the sheriff’s men. But these fellows took no notice of me, nor did I recognize them as belonging to the band we had fought with.

Before long a sudden lull in the conversation greeted the appearance of two men. Heretofore I had examined the face of every visitor as he came in, wondering if he were Van Volkenberg. I now scanned these two with like attention. The older looking of the two was a large man, powerful but spare in build, with a sharp passionate eye. He returned cordially the numerous greetings with which he was welcomed. Then, for everyone in the room stood silent as if in expectation of a speech, he struck his ebony cane with decision on the floor and began to speak.

“Friends, we have suffered a severe defeat and to-day the Assembly goes into session that will unmake our laws. But the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong. We are not yet dead. Power shall return to us. Hush——” He raised his cane and made a motion to cut short a slight attempt to cheer. “Our enemies have triumphed through the vote of the Frenchmen. But you must not let this turn you against them. They are led by the black Lady Marmaduke. We must bring them back to our support. They are willing to come, but we must not drive them sharply. There is one thing I have to tell you that will make you glad at heart. To-day I have been at the governor’s council board. He is at heart our friend. To be sure, he has restored the confiscated property to the family of the traitor Leisler. That strikes home against us, but he could not help himself. The attainder was removed in England and he was bound to carry it out whether he liked to do so or not. This victory has been won in his name, but it is not of his heart. Do not the two traitors still lie at the foot of the gallows?”

A sullen murmur of dissatisfaction followed this appeal. “Ay, they have lain there these eight years,” cried one. “May they rot in their graves forever,” said another. For a moment the air was full of sharp, savage curses directed against the memory of the two leaders of the people.

“And now,” continued the speaker, as Kirstoffel handed him a cup, “let us drink to the health of our stout friend, Colonel Benjamin Fletcher.”

Fletcher! I remembered that name. He was the person who had sent to Captain Tew the buttons that I now had in my pocket. The toast was drunk enthusiastically. Then someone sprang upon a chair and began to beat time; the company followed his example and soon they were all singing this song which they accompanied boisterously with the jingle of mugs and the clatter of feet:

“Hi! Ho! Kirstoffel’s brew,

Gi' good den to Kilian’s crew;

Klink the can,

Let every man

Drink to Van Volkenberg.”

At the last word the tall speaker bowed right and left, whereby I knew he was the patroon.

I felt in my pocket for the silver buttons and, taking one of them in the hollow of my hand with my fingers closed over so as to conceal it till the proper moment, I rose to approach the patroon. This act drew all eyes upon me. There was the same ominous silence as before, accompanied now, however, with ten times the contempt and anger shown at my first entrance. The ill feeling against me was so evident and, so far as I knew, so without cause, that I was fairly nonplussed. No one spoke. The only sounds were the ticking of the tall clock in the corner and a few taps of Van Volkenberg’s cane upon the floor. He likewise seemed to share the general resentment against me.

“Mynher,” said I, as yet holding the button in my hand. “I came to ask——”

“Ask nothing of me, villain.”

“Ay, he is a villain,” chorused several voices.

“Mynher,” I began again, astonished at this reception from a perfect stranger.

“Not a word, wretch, not a word to me. I have no dealings with vagabonds, scum of the streets. If you have anything to say, go talk to my dogs. Zounds! Away! Out of my sight!”

I was about to expostulate, having no idea whatever how to account for this sudden burst of anger, but he raised his cane to strike me. Then I noticed a narrow band of red cloth about his left arm just beyond the elbow.

“Hush, Kilian,” said the companion who had entered with him. “Do not anger yourself.”

“Pish! May I not strike a dog?”

“’Tis not for him but for yourself. Beware, Kilian.”

The patroon was visibly affected by this rejoinder and made an effort to control himself.

“You say you don’t understand what I mean?” he continued in disdain, for he had given me a chance to profess myself ignorant of offense. “Have you not stood against my men? Have you not drawn your sword against the Red Band? Bah, dog! You shall know what it is to kill the men of the Red Band. You shall hang for this if there is a law left in the province.”

He had begun this speech with a measure of self-control. But as the words followed one upon another, he spoke quicker and quicker, and with more and more anger, till he had worked himself to such a height of passion that his friend interfered a second time.

“Be careful, Kilian. These are grave times and we must be on our guard. You know your failing. What if you should make some——” He spoke the rest so low that I could not hear it. It had the effect, however, of calming the patroon. “Hear the man,” continued his friend. “Hear what he has to say.”

“Mynher Van Volkenberg,” I explained, “if the men I fought with on the Slip this morning were your men, I can only say that we gave and took fair blows. Half a score of men fighting two or three or four is what no man of honor will stand by and see unstirred. I fought fair and I confess no crime. I should do the same against the very troops of the Earl.”

“Damn the Earl!” burst out the patroon.

He shook and trembled with rage. This time there was no holding him back. He stormed up and down the room, cursing me, and the Earl, and even his companion, for trying to quiet him. What had been the outcome of our altercation but for an accident I do not know. Just at that moment Pierre, who had been sleeping quietly on my rum all this while, roused himself and stumbled to his feet. When I had first spoken to him a short time before, he was merrily drunk; by now he had swallowed himself into a royal state for quarreling.

“Hi, my duck!” he hiccoughed, as he lurched across the room. “At it again, eh?”

The room was dumb at this sudden outbreak from an unexpected quarter. Pierre drew upon him the attention of us all except the man who had entered with the patroon. His eyes were fixed upon Van Volkenberg, his hand was laid upon the patroon’s arm.

“Come with me, Kilian,” he said in a voice so low that few heard it. “You are wrought up to-day. You cannot trust yourself. Come home with me. Remember how much depends upon your coolness.”

“Old man,” Pierre cried as he tottered indirectly out of the corner where he had been asleep. “You will set your dogs on me, will you?”

There was almost no sound from anyone. Only the slow tick of the clock and the sand crunching beneath Pierre’s feet. Van Volkenberg trembled with fury, but was unable to speak. His companion tried in vain to drag him from the room. Pierre stopped two steps in front of them.

“Take that,” he cried savagely, emptying a glass of rum on the patroon’s waistcoat. Then, waving his arms drunkenly, he began to sing:

“Klink the can,

Let every man—

Down with Van Volkenberg.”

In the uproar that followed I was aware of but two facts. The patroon was dragged off by his companion through one door, and Pierre by the crowd through another. In the midst of the pushing and shoving about the street door someone plucked my elbow. It was Kirstoffel, the host, with his finger to his lips.

“His offense is ducking,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder towards Pierre. “But you. Gott, man! You’ve killed three of the patroon’s best men. I would not be in your shoes for a month’s brew. You will be up for——.” He pointed significantly, first at his neck and then at a beam over head. “Take my advice. Seek you the French dominie. He has got a great hold on Lady Marmaduke as well as the governor. But don’t stand still on your legs or you will hang fast by your neck.”

The fact that I was in unusual danger on account of my part in the brawl of the morning came home to me now for the first time. I resolved to take Kirstoffel’s advice without delay, feeling keenly the danger of my situation. I inquired where the house of the Huguenot pastor was and then asked the name of the person who had been so eager to restrain the patroon’s wrath.

“That? That was Colonel Fletcher, the governor of the province before this one came to the fort.”

It was a strange coincidence that I should be thus thrown against the only two men in New York from whom I had expected any help. All this time I still held the silver button clasped in my hand. I put it back into my pocket and set out along the street in search of the minister who I hoped would be able to assist me out of my difficult situation.

CHAPTER VI
AN INTERVIEW WITH THE EARL

The French pastor met me at his door with a cordial welcome. I laid my case before him without reservation, telling him how I had joined in with the weaker party in the street attack that morning, and how I had encountered Van Volkenberg in the tavern.

“It is a bad business,” he said. “I wish it had not happened. What can be done? Let me see. What can be done?” He was thoughtful for a few moments. “We must go to the Earl. He is a fine gentleman and a kind man. He sets great value on the city officers. Yes, he will do what he can for you. You say that some of the men were killed?”

“I was told as much by the tavern keeper, and, in truth, I guess there were. It was very stirring for a time. I think the sheriff was also killed.”

“It’s a bad business, as I said. Van Volkenberg and his Red Band will ruin the city yet. I must speak of your case to Lady Marmaduke as well as to the governor. She is very popular with the people and stands as leader of our countrymen here, for all she is an Englishwoman.”

“I have already seen her,” said I. “And I heard them speak of her at the coffee-house as the black Lady Marmaduke.”

The minister smiled. “There are two meanings to that. She has black eyes and a dark skin; and Lady Marmaduke is a black enemy to the patroon and his band of soldiers. Ay, she’s the black lady sure enough. But what was your message to the patroon that he cut short before you had the chance to deliver it?”

This question reminded me that I should be thinking of something else besides my own selfish needs.

“I had hoped to inquire of him some way to find my sister.”

“Your sister?”

“Yes. I have some hope that she is in the province of New York.”

“How comes it that you are here with so little knowledge of her whereabouts?”

I gave him an account of the last sad year of our life; our meeting in Bristol; our second separation on the high seas; and, last of all, the year I had spent in Maryland. “Thus it was,” I ended, “that I expected to find my sister waiting for me when I got to New York.”

“Ay, take cheer. She is doubtless somewhere near at hand. Last July, you say? I was in Albany then. I have forgotten it; what did you say your surname is?”

“Le Bourse.”

He repeated the name over again half aloud. “I have heard that name somewhere,” he muttered. “Yet I was in Albany this time twelve-month.” He was silent several minutes longer, and then he broke out with, “Where have I heard that name?”

How I hoped he would remember! I durst not speak to him lest I disturb his thoughts. Suddenly he fixed his eye on me and, while he gazed, a look of recognition overspread his features.

“I have heard it,” he said, his eyes opening wider and wider; “and I have seen—can I be mistaken?” He took both my hands in his and I could feel that they were all of a tremble with emotion. “It is you I have seen. Don’t you mind the brook by La Rochelle, and how we cast lots years agone, and how one fell to you and one to my brother? I recall you plain now. I looked back and saw my brother fall. The Lord giveth and He taketh away, blessed be His name. But you stood firm and the rest of us were saved. How many times, my lad, an old man’s prayers have gone up to the Throne that you might be safe.”

We clasped hands in silence; my feelings were too deep for words. The change brought about by the lapse of ten years in even the happiest life is stuff for sorrow. What must I have felt after ten unhappy years of wandering and fight, of sorrow and disappointment, year in and year out? The minister’s voice was the first to break a long silence.

“Let us go to the Earl,” he said, but he was not yet master of his voice.

As we made our way to the fort through crooked narrow streets my companion was at great pains to enlighten me still further in regard to the condition of affairs in the city.

“Friend Michael, you must know somewhat, so that you can talk well to his Excellency. He and Patroon Van Volkenberg are at swords points day and night. I count much on that as telling in your favor. But his hands are half tied in spite of all. I wonder that you can look so calm, for I must say plain the patroon is a powerful man and clever at the law-twisting. Kirstoffel told you what it would be, but I hope he cannot bring it to that. He’s a cruel man, a cruel man. What little Pierre said about the dogs—that was some of it. Poor little Pierre! He had gone up to see his sweetheart, Annetje Dorn, at the manor-house. But the patroon set the dogs on him and now he will have to be ducked. But it is your case that worries me.”

We had nearly reached the fort. A large green sloped gently up to the walls. Near the entrance a dozen soldiers in the gray uniform of the Governor’s Guards loitered about a public pump.

“Do you see yon dipping trough of stone?” queried my companion, pointing towards the pump. “When you get close you can see the Marmaduke arms cut in the side. That is only one of the things she has done to make the people throw up their hats when she comes along. We used to get the water we drink from the Tea-Water pump, which is more than a mile beyond the city wall to the north. All the wells in this part of town were brackish till this one was dug and presented to the city free of cost by Lady Marmaduke. Ask anyone—yon tradesman in his shop door, for instance—who is Lady Marmaduke. Like as not he will answer that she dug the Marmaduke well. She has been a great benefactor to the city in other ways than that, and there is a warm spot for her in everybody’s heart.”

Thus, doing his best to keep my mind off the subject of my suspense, the minister led me through the great stone gateway into the fort. The buildings were ranged along the four sides of an open court which we crossed to reach the governor’s mansion. We entered this through a wide door and were shown into a spacious reception room, from the end of which the Earl came forward to greet us. He was a tall man of much dignity, with a calm, benevolent face and bright, understanding eyes. He welcomed my friend cordially and then addressed me in a gracious tone.

“Monsieur Le Bourse, I have already heard of you. Patroon Van Volkenberg has killed one of my best officers, and he says that you did the same by three of the sailors of the Red Band. But he smiled when he said it and added, ‘If you will not prosecute, neither shall I.’ The patroon does not often smile in a case like this, but he smiled to-day and you are to be congratulated.”

The three of us passed words of mutual congratulation at my fortunate escape from the evil eye of the patroon. Then my story and Ruth’s was related to the governor.

“And you say it was your intention to communicate with mynheer for assistance?”

“Yes. I had an introduction to him in the shape of a button given me by Captain Thomas Tew.”

Bellamont started perceptibly and his face clouded when I mentioned the name of the buccaneer. I stopped short in my talk. More than once during the account of my adventures my voice had faltered when I came to speak of my sister; hence it was that the governor misunderstood my hesitation.

“Do not haste, my friend. You have my kindliest sympathy in your distress. Take your time and recover yourself.”

“It was not for that I stopped, your Excellency.”

His eyebrows lifted. “No? What then?”

“I am a plain spoken man, Earl Bellamont; shall I have free leave to speak what I feel? Your face showed disfavor when I mentioned the name of Captain Tew. I am ignorant of what he may be to you, but I do not wish to compromise one who has played the part of a good friend to me.”

I stopped. There was a look of amusement in the Earl’s eyes as he put out his hand and touched a bell. A servant appeared who, at the governor’s bidding, fetched a tray with wine and glasses for three upon it, and a dish of salt. I could hardly contain my surprise at this unusual proceeding, nor did I understand its import till the Earl, after moistening his finger in the wine, placed it on the salt and then touched his tongue.

“It is an old custom we have in Yorke,” he said, smiling.

“You honor me more than I deserve,” I cried in admiration at the way he had put it out of his power to use these communications to his own advantage. For the observation of this custom meant that we were friends and guests, and that our talk would be held in the strictest confidence.

“I think you will trust me now,” he continued gravely. “If I read your face aright, Monsieur Le Bourse, you are the kind of man we need in these troublesome times. Now—if you will be kind enough to continue your narrative.”

I told him all I knew, holding back nothing, for I had full faith in the man whom I already looked upon as a sort of patron. He listened with grave attention, now and then expressing his hearty sympathy in a way that was at once delicate and reassuring.

“Here is to the safety of Mistress Ruth,” he said lifting a glass.

“Safety!” I cried. “You do not doubt?”

“Not in the least. Drink. To a quick search and a happy.”

He rang the bell again and bade the servant call Bromm, the aged bell-ringer who lived by the church in a corner of the fort. In a few minutes a slow deliberate tap, tap resounded upon the paved courtyard without; next the old man entered, leaning upon his staff, which he grasped high up at the level of his head. The Earl advanced to meet him and took the faithful old man by the hand.

“How is it with you to-day, my Bromm; and how is the Juvrouw Betchen?”

“Please your Excellency, she is well, considering her age. But she was a fair wench in her day.”

Then he caught sight of me. It took a moment of deliberation for him to adjust himself to the unexpected surprise of a stranger in the room. He made me a low bow, slipping his hand down the body of his staff as he did so.

“Pardon me, sir, but I am turned eighty and I did not see you at first. No offense I hope. My sister always says—you don’t know the girl, do you? Of course not, but she was a wench in her day though she’s not so comely now. There is a sad look in her face for her man—him that was to be her man went to sea and she’s waiting for him yet. That’s forty years ago and the girl’s turned sixty-four last Niewe Jarre. Oh, our family has memory.”

“It is your memory I want to test, Bromm,” said the governor. “We have good reason to believe that within a twelvemonth Ruth Le Bourse was bound into service before the Stadt Huys. If such be the case you may have cried the proclamation for her sale. Have you any recollection of it? Now make an effort to remember. The name is Ruth Le Bourse.”

The old man planted his staff firmly on the floor and grasped it with both his hands while he thought. His memory seemed to give him no clue. He knit his brows, changed the position of his hands upon his staff, hemmed and hawed. But at last, just as he seemed about to give it up, his face brightened.

“Ay, Sir Richard, I have it. My cousin’s second wife’s sister’s girl’s name was Ruth. I knew we had a Ruth in the family. Ah, we have memory, we Bromms.”

I sighed in disappointment. The Earl suppressed a smile and led the crier’s vagrant thoughts back and forth among his confused recollections of the past year. But to no avail. He had not the slightest information to give us and we were no better off than before.

“Well,” the Earl said at last. “I shall request you to be on hand at two o’clock this afternoon, Bromm, to make public proclamation in the market place. It is not unlikely that someone will have heard of her and can give me information that we are desirous to obtain.”

This broke up our meeting. There was now nothing left to do till the advantage of the proclamation had been put to the test. As we moved toward the door of the reception hall, the minister walked first with Bromm. The governor laid his hand upon my arm and quietly motioned me to step back into the room with him.

“Monsieur Le Bourse, we have gone so far in our mutual confidence that it may be well to extend it a little farther. There were words of high contention in the council meeting to-day between me and Patroon Van Volkenberg. What I now impart to you is strictly entre nous, as you Frenchmen say. I trust the patroon’s word no more than—at least I do not understand this sudden spleen of friendliness. You say that Colonel Fletcher was trying to soothe him in the coffee-house?”

“Yes, continually.”

“Well, you will observe when you come to know more of our politics that that is unlike Fletcher too. He is a savage cur. I do not trust either of them. I should be more at my ease to have the men of the Red Band baying at my window like hounds than to have them feed me with words of honey. Keep your own counsel, my friend. Stay out of the narrow streets after nightfall. I should advise you to take lodgings at the Ferry-House. It is a quiet place of entertainment, modest, and remote from the turmoil of the lower town. It may be that I shall desire to communicate with you. If I do, I shall send there to find you. Say as little of your name as suits your convenience till this mystery unravels itself somewhat. Farewell; I may send for you before the day is over.”

CHAPTER VII
PIERRE’S SECRET

Good humored little Pierre was ducked for his offense in the coffee-house. He was taken before the magistrates who sat in the great room in the Stadt Huys, and they tried him legally for unbecoming conduct towards a member of the upper class. Against this charge there was very little Pierre could offer in defense. In vain he pleaded that he had seen indirectly and meant to empty the rum upon Kirstoffel. The charge was immediately changed by the grave Dutch magistrates to drunkenness in order that there should be no mistake. Pierre perforce gave way to the inevitable. Through the influence of Van Volkenberg who had not yet recovered from his anger, Pierre was sentenced to the ducking stool. The indignity of this punishment was particularly galling to Pierre because it was commonly reserved for scolding wives and spinster crones whose tongues were too long for their mouths.

“I’ll go to the pillory, your honor,” he said piteously, “or ride the pinch-back horse a week of market days; but to be ducked like a woman! And they say there are great fish in the bay who will nibble my toes. Your honor, I was only a little drunk.”

But the magistrates’ hearts could not be softened away from duty. They were bringing the culprit out of the Stadt Huys at the very moment that the dominie and I were returning from our visit to the fort. We met them with half the town flocking at their heels and clamoring for the sport to come. Pierre, slightly sobered by his experience at the court-room, had plucked up a small amount of dignity. He walked erect as if he had made up his mind to take his punishment like a man. I looked at him closely and believed that there was more stuff to the fellow than at first appeared. His face wore a look of dogged resentment; such a look as I should not care to see in the face of an enemy.

The ducking-stool, which was attached to a low, wheeled platform, was soon pushed to the edge of the water. Pierre was securely bound into the chair so that he could move neither hand nor foot, and then he was swung out in mid air over the water. The magistrate mounted on a platform near. He took out of his pocket a string about a yard long with a small iron ball attached to the end of it. He held one end of the string in his hand and set the ball to swinging like a pendulum.

“Let him go down,” he cried.

At this command Pierre was soused into the water. The crowd gave a cheer and fell to counting the swings of the pendulum. At first there were not many voices, but the number grew with the seconds. At twenty they sounded like a dull roar. At thirty the people were clapping their hands and stamping their feet and yelling like mad.

“Thirty-eight,” rumbled the mob. “Thirty-nine, forty.”

“Fetch up,” shouted the magistrate.

Pierre was lifted out of the water, dripping and snorting from his forty seconds beneath the surface.

“Have you had enough?” asked the magistrate.

“No,” answered Pierre defiantly.

“Dip him again.”

Once more he was mercilessly ducked into the cold water. The pendulum was again set in motion. The crowd fell into its boisterous count. I looked around in dismay.

“Is there nothing we can do?” I asked the dominie.

“Nothing,” answered a strange voice over my shoulder.

I whirled about to see who had spoken, and stood face to face with Patroon Van Volkenberg. He was no longer the anger-tossed man I had seen in the coffee-house. He was now cool and collected. A sinister smile scarcely ruffled his calm features. But when he spoke to me his voice bit like a cold wind.

“No, Monsieur Le Bourse—you see I know your name—no, there is nothing you can do. But we shall meet again.”

He turned away instantly and was swallowed in the crowd. There was no mistaking the expression of his fierce eyes. I recalled the warning Earl Bellamont had given me and I clinched my fists.

At that moment Pierre was ducked for the third time. When he came up the magistrate put the usual question.

“Have you had enough?”

Pierre’s head dropped forward upon his breast.

“Yes, yes,” shouted all. “He nods yes.”

They unbound him and stood him on his feet. He fell full length upon the ground, unconscious and half drowned. At that moment the report of a cannon boomed over the city.

“A ship, a ship!” shouted a hundred voices.

This signal, fired from the Battery, was the way of announcing the arrival of a vessel in the port. The crowd forgot all about Pierre and his helpless condition. In two minutes the square was vacant save for three men: Pierre, the dominie, and myself.

Pierre was not long in regaining consciousness. He was, however, too weak to walk alone. I lifted him in my arms and was about to carry him away when we met Lady Marmaduke in her chair. She bade the negro carriers set her down, and inquired what was the matter.

“Good lack! Little Pierre ducked for being drunk! You naughty fellow. How often have I told you not to do that or I should never speak you well again to sweet Annetje Dorn?” She paused; her face clouded and grew hard and bitter. I heard her mutter the name of the patroon. “Here, put him in my chair,” she said at last. “I will attend to him.” She got in herself after he was comfortably stowed away, and then left us alone upon the Slip.

“Just her way,” said the dominie. “She’ll take care of him and nurse him and feed him up as if he were her own child. She is good to every one, friend or slave, it makes no matter which.”

I accompanied the dominie as far as the door of his house, where I left him in order to continue my way to the Ferry-House. It was in this quiet ordinary that the governor had advised me to seek temporary lodgings. I reached the place without difficulty and was surprised to find that it was the very house before which Lady Marmaduke had halted her coach when I heard her speak to the people and bid them to stand fast by the Earl of Bellamont.

I went in and made the necessary arrangements to stay there that night, and then sat down to eat my dinner and to think over the events of the day. By the time I was ready to rise from the table the hand of the clock was close upon the stroke of two. This was the time set for Bromm’s proclamation concerning my sister. I betook myself to the square before the Stadt Huys, where I walked up and down in momentary expectation of the crier. The public excitement of the morning was somewhat abated; but a fair crowd had gathered by the time Bromm appeared, marching behind two drummers, who beat a sober rap-tap suited to the aged man’s deliberate step. Bromm mounted the platform near the public scaffold and began to read his proclamation. It was short, simply requesting in the name of the governor any information concerning the whereabouts of Ruth Le Bourse. At the first reading no one came forward to volunteer any information. The drums beat again and Bromm read the proclamation a second time. Just as he finished, some one touched my arm from behind. It was Van Volkenberg at my elbow for the second time that day. He smiled as before, the same cutting smile of contempt. He spoke but a word or two before he vanished in the cover of the crowd; but he had said enough to rouse my anger.

“Good luck, Monsieur Le Bourse; but, as I said before, we shall meet again. Beware of the Red Band.”

That was all he said. His words were nothing but a mere threat. But he had done something that set every drop of blood in my body to tingling with hot anger. I should have followed him had he not disappeared instantly. From the moment I had first laid eyes on this man in the Jacobite Coffee-House I had taken an unaccountable dislike to him. Even when I advanced to meet him in the tap-room, I had kept the silver button hid in my closed hand as if I were unwilling to acknowledge my claim upon him. Now I understood what had given birth to my unreasonable antipathy. As he turned away after speaking the above words, Van Volkenberg made the sign of the cross. The patroon was a Catholic. How I thanked God I had received no favor from him! Instantly, as one sees the landscape at night when the lightning flashes, there lay before me that scene in Paris of the black robed priest who years before had caught my sister by the arm, and whom I had struck down upon the spot as he deserved. In quick succession there passed before my mind’s eye our flight to La Rochelle, my ten years of fruitless search, the Mariner’s Rest at Bristol, our last separation—finally the public flogging I had received in Maryland. All these troubles had been brought upon me by Catholics. A Catholic was once more threatening my peace of mind, telling me to beware. I little knew then how much greater cause I had to hate the patroon for wrongs already done to me and mine. I thought only of the present instant. I felt that we two were fated to—God knows what! I gripped my hands together and wished that I could hurry time.

Bromm repeated the proclamation again, but received no response. He marched back to the fort and soon the crowd drifted into smaller groups. I returned to the Ferry-House to nurse my disappointment alone, hoping also that some word would come from the Earl concerning news received at the fort. I found Pierre sitting alone in a corner of the public room when I entered the Ferry-House.

“Well,” I said. “Have you recovered?”

“Quite,” he answered; then he blew out his lips with an explosive shiver. “Ow, it was cold! But I was in great luck.”

“Luck, Pierre, to be ducked?”

“No, not to be nibbled. There are great fish in the bay.” He leaned forward and continued in a low confidential voice. “Lady Marmaduke gave me such a dinner. You cannot imagine it. There was wine right out of France. Do you think if I should happen to be ducked again she would happen to come along?”

I could not forbear to laugh and Pierre smiled too. His face, however, soon changed, and his jovial expression was replaced by the hard look that I had seen in his face when he walked to the place of his punishment.

“I came here for a purpose, Monsieur Le Bourse, but—” He stopped and looked about him as if fearful of being overheard. His lips almost touched my ear as he said, “I don’t mind the ducking. I have been ducked before. It was the man who did it. I shall have my revenge. Are we together on that?”

He put out his hand and I clasped it.

“I thought so,” he continued. “But you do not know the half.”

Again he manifested some fear of being overheard. He said that the patroon was too great a man to be talked about in a public place like this. Would I walk a short distance into the country, beyond the Wall? He had news that should be heard only by me. I was indeed glad to go with him. We left the city by the Land-Gate, and soon came to a little bridge over a narrow creek.

“This is the Kissing Bridge,” he said with a forlorn sigh. “Annetje will never cross the bridge with me. She always makes me walk in front.”

Annetje Dorn, he told me, was his sweetheart. She was a bond servant at Van Volkenberg manor-house and maid to the patroon’s daughter Miriam.

“Ay, that she is; bond servant to the patroon just like your sister.” He clapped his hand quickly over his mouth. “Oh, I did not mean to let it out so soon.”

I gripped him by the arm. “What do you mean?”

“I said that you did not know half of what you have to hate him for,” replied Pierre fiercely. “Your sister Ruth was bound out in service to Kilian Van Volkenberg.”

I was now to learn the stuff that was in Pierre. His jolly manner was but a garment. He cast it aside, and, as we walked along, he spoke to me with a fierce zeal that I had not suspected in him.

“There are but half a dozen persons in New York who know what happened to your sister. I dared not speak openly to-day when Bromm was crying the proclamation, but I knew that my time had come. He set his dogs on me one night; but he made a mistake. He called me a giggling monkey. I’ll monkey him. Do you——”

“For God’s sake, Pierre,” I interrupted. “Tell me what you know of my sister.”

His vague hint that I did not know half of what I had to hate the patroon for filled me with dread. The earnestness of my voice affected him. He dropped the side threads of his own affairs and fell into a direct relation of my sister’s fate. She had arrived safely with Captain Donaldson and had lived in the city for a short time. Then her money gave out and she took service with Van Volkenberg, laying the condition, however, of redeeming herself at any time if I should return.

“I saw her more than once,” said Pierre. “She was a sweet girl. Annetje boxed my ears once for looking at her. She said that it was rude. God knows I did not mean it, but she had a winsome face. Every one said that, Annetje like the rest. Her lot was none too easy at the manor. They say that Mistress Miriam took great abuse for standing between her and the patroon.”

“Was she abused by him?” I asked.

“Ay, that she was.”

I was past being angry. My thoughts did not take in the situation at the manor-house all at once; instead I found myself thinking of the Mariner’s Rest and of Ruth’s treatment there. Something in Pierre’s face bade me give up hope, as if a heavy blow had fallen. Suddenly I turned and caught him by the shoulders with so quick a motion that he uttered a startled cry.

“Tell me, Pierre. For God’s sake make short work of this. What has happened to her?”

Instead of answering me, the kind hearted fellow burst into tears. “I cannot,” he wailed. “Oh, I cannot; it will break your heart.”

“It is past that, Pierre. Is she dead?”

“You have guessed it. God forgive me that I have to say it.”

“Pierre,” said I. “Go over there by the bridge and wait for me till I come to you. I shall follow you soon.”

When I was next aware of outside things, Pierre stood by my side with his hand upon my shoulder.

“You said you would come to me soon and you didn’t. That is why I came back.” He put out his hand kindly. “It is hard work to bear ill news. I would have spared you if I could.”

We walked silently around the small lake by which we had stopped. I felt in a daze and was more than once aware of the pressure of Pierre’s hand as he guided me gently by some obstruction over which I might have fallen. Under the first weight of this piece of news, I felt only grief at the death of my beloved sister. It was not until I had in a measure recovered my self-control that I began to think of the manner in which she had met her death and of the vague hints about the patroon that Pierre had dropped. Then, with the pain of comprehension when it comes too late, I recalled the sneering smile upon the patroon’s face as he accosted me in the crowd before the Stadt Huys.

“But we shall meet again,” I cried aloud, unconsciously repeating his words to me. “He knew it when he spoke to me, and he sneered at me.” I turned upon Pierre. “Tell me further. What had he to do with her death?”

To this question Pierre would give no answer. He could hardly say, he said. My heart sank, for I saw from his face that he was afraid to tell the truth.

“Come back with me, Monsieur Le Bourse. Let me take you to Lady Marmaduke. She knows the whole story. She will tell you.”

Impatient as I was, I was content to wait. The blow that had fallen upon me was so great that I could scarcely think. A child could have led me. For the time being I had no will of my own. Pierre took me by the arm and led me forward. We had nearly reached the bridge on our return when the clatter of horse hoofs fell upon our ears along the road.

“Hush,” said Pierre. “It is the patroon.”

He drew me back behind some bushes, where we waited in silence the approach of a numerous armed cavalcade.

CHAPTER VIII
LADY MARMADUKE

We had halted behind some willows that overhung the brook beneath the Kissing Bridge. Over this bridge ran the road, which led north from the city through the length of the island to Harlem, passing on the way the manor-house and park of Patroon Van Volkenberg. We had scarcely concealed ourselves behind the bushes when the forward members of the cavalcade came in sight. Two horsemen led the way, wearing the red band upon their arms and carrying blue pennants upon staves that were thrust into their stirrups. Next came the patroon. At his side rode a slight, almost dwarflike man with pale features and snow white hair.

“That is Louis Van Ramm,” whispered Pierre as the dwarf drew near the bridge. “It was he let loose the dogs on me.”

The patroon himself, who sat his horse firm and erect, looked forty-five or fifty years of age. From time to time he would turn in the saddle and glance back with satisfaction upon his score of followers, who rode two and two behind him. He was their feudal chief. The clanking of their harness, the irregular clatter of the horses’ feet upon the hard road, the look of respect with which every eye met his—all this inspired the patroon with the feeling of satisfaction that showed so plainly in his finely modeled face. They rode by, over the hollow sounding bridge and up the long hill, till the last sharp sounds fainted in the distance. Only the rustling tree tops and the rippling brook remained to disturb the soft stillness of the autumn afternoon.

Pierre rose and I followed him; first up a steep footpath and then along the highroad till we came within sight of the town. When we arrived at Lady Marmaduke’s, Pierre led the way to the back entrance, telling me to wait in the servant’s hall while he sought admittance to my lady’s presence. He soon returned to me with the command to follow him.

“She will talk to you,” he said, as we threaded a long, dimly lighted corridor. “Do not fear. She is a good friend though a hard woman. I have let her know what I have already told you. She will tell you what else there is to be known.”

In answer to Pierre’s knock a soft voice bade me enter. It was not such a voice as would suggest the “hard woman” of Pierre’s description. It was the tender, feeling voice I had heard when Lady Marmaduke spoke to the people about her husband—when she spoke to them tremblingly, straight from the bottom of her heart. Pierre thrust aside the drapery of the door and I stepped into the room alone.

Lady Marmaduke was in the farther end of it, half leaning, half sitting upon the arm of a chair. One hand rested against her hip, the other shaded her eyes while she watched my entrance. I had not taken three steps before she rose and came forward to greet me with kindness. Even in the half light of the room I could catch the sweet expression of her face. Despite the sorrow in my heart, I noticed how tall and straight she was, and how well formed. Though her face looked sweet and soft, when she took my hand she gripped it with the strength of a man, looking me withal squarely in the face as if she would read me through and through.

“Sit down,” she said with a firm air of command. The very tone of her voice was soothing and made me want to do her will. When I had obeyed her, she seated herself by my side and took my hand again. “How old are you?”

“Thirty-five,” I answered mechanically, for I was still half dazed.

“Then I shall call you Michael, for we are to be good friends and I am old enough to be your mother. Pierre has told me about you and what it is you want. It is sad news I have to tell you, sadder news than his; yes, much sadder. But I should not hold back. You are a brave man, are you not?”

She paused and cast her eyes upon the floor. In spite of her assertion that she should not hold back, she found her task a hard one, and she was loth to begin it. “I think I have seen you before. Were you not with the dominie when I found Pierre?”

I nodded and for a while we were both silent.

“Madam,” I said at length. “Anything is better than suspense.”

“Poor child,” she murmured tenderly.

Even yet she must cross the room to adjust the curtains before she found voice to continue. She resumed her seat by my side and cleared her throat two or three times.

“It is seven or eight months since your sister entered service at the manor-house. For a while all went well enough. I heard often about her through Annetje Dorn. But things never go well there for long at a time. I saw Ruth now and then and her cheeks grew pale and her eyes hollow. I think she must have done much weeping. She found her lot a hard one, much harder perhaps because the patroon cast longing glances at her pretty, winsome face. Yet he held her only as his chattel. One morning she was found in her bed—dead, Michael Le Bourse—dead on the twelfth day of last July—I say the twelfth of July.”

Short as her narrative had been, Lady Marmaduke had worked herself into a state of excitement that I could not comprehend. It was certainly not due to me nor to her interest in my affairs, for she rose and strode up and down the room as if talking to herself and utterly oblivious of my presence, all the time snapping her long fingers in anger. A hound asleep in one corner of the room awoke and came leaping towards her. She exclaimed a sharp word of rebuke and the dog slunk back with his tail between his legs. After five minutes more of this behavior she stopped in front of me, her tall, spare figure swaying slowly like a tree trunk. I rose instinctively.

“Yes, Monsieur Le Bourse, I remember the day well. On the twelfth of July Sir Evelin Marmaduke was lost on the river. His boat drifted with the tide and was crushed to kindling wood in Hell-Gate. So runs the tale of my husband’s death. It was Kilian Van Volkenberg brought that news. Why should he be the first to know it? Before God, he shall have his reward! And the next day your sister was found dead in her bed.”

Again she fell to walking back and forth through the room, now like a moving statue between me and the window, now rustling darkly against the hangings on the wall. Soon she was master of her passion and returned to my side.

“There is no truth known of how she met her death. Without doubt she tried once to escape. She was followed and captured by the patroon, brought back and branded on the shoulder with a red hot iron.”

A cry of horror burst from my lips. She caught me by the arm.

“Hush! It was unskilfully done, says the patroon. Her weak body could not stand the torture and she died. That is his story, but it is a lie. It is a lie—for I—I stood in the dead of night and saw the grave dug up. I looked at her body with my own eyes. She had not been branded.”

We had resumed our seats. I felt like moaning but I had no voice for words. This strong woman charmed me as by a spell. Her manner showed that there was still worse to come.

“Yet she had died, and in some way that the patroon found it necessary to lie about in order to conceal the truth. Annetje has told Pierre that on the night your sister died she is sure she heard the patroon visit your sister’s room.

“Don’t,” I cried. “Anything but that. I cannot stand that. My Ruth, my little Ruth!” I fell to weeping and found great relief in tears. Lady Marmaduke became all tenderness. She stroked my hands, and then put her arm about me and walked up and down the room as if I were a girl. It was long since I had felt the need of an arm to rest on, but I turned to the strength of hers like a child to its mother.

At length she stopped short and took her supporting arm away from me. “You will have time enough to grieve,” she said. “You must be a man now.” I looked into her face and understood why Pierre had called her a hard woman. But perhaps he had never seen her other side as I had! “Yes, Michael,” she continued. “It is time you trod upon your weakness and became a man. Do you not see your duty? Are you not ready to take your right?” She held me off at arm’s length and looked sternly into my eyes as she pronounced the word “Revenge.”

“I shall kill him to-night,” I answered.

Her only response was a sharp snap of her fingers. The hound she had rebuked before bounded joyfully to her side. She stooped and parted his shaggy hair with her fingers.

“See,” she said, showing me a deep scar upon his side. “This was the work of the patroon. The dog would have torn him to pieces but I called him back. Would you have me kill him with a dog? No—I have a score of servants in my house who would do as you say you would do, servants who would kill him to-night if I lifted my hand. But you are not my servant nor shall you do it either.”

“But——” I remonstrated, and got no further before she interrupted me.

“Don’t but me! You and Pierre and I—each of us has his word to say to the patroon. But we shall say it like men. Though Van Volkenberg is a merchant he knows what war is and understands the game of life. What is death to such a man as he is if he does not know why he dies. I shall ruin him first. With the help of Earl Richard, I shall make him taste of the bitterness of life before I give him death to sweeten his woe. Before God, he shall find death sweet unless I fail. You shall not kill him till I give the word. Do you promise?”

She laid her hand upon the cross-shaped hilt of my sword.

“Will you swear upon your sword? Will you stay here, not as my servant but as my friend? Will you work with me to bring God’s judgment on this Roman Catholic?”

Her last reference wakened all my bitter thoughts. I fell on my knees before her and took one of her hands between mine as the old custom is.

“I swear to be your man,” I cried. “I will be loyal to you and to the Earl, who is your friend. My sister’s blood shall not dry unavenged, but I surrender myself to you. Henceforth I swear to be your man.”

She lifted me and kissed me on the forehead. “We have free manners here, Michael. If you have a sister whose blood cries out, I have a husband’s. The patroon brought the news of his death. I know he murdered Sir Evelin. I have seen it in my dreams. This great hate of mine could not come without some cause in nature. We shall play well together, Michael, you and I.”

She took me by the arm and led me through the passages of the house, through many turnings and up narrow stairs to a little gable room.

“This shall be your room. I will instruct the servants that you are to come and go as you please. I am setting out now to keep an appointment with the Earl. He too is engaged in a death struggle with the patroon. Methinks the three of us shall win a victory.”

With that she left me alone. I glanced about the room which contained everything for a person’s comfort. From the window I could look out beyond the Wall to the rolling hills covered with woodland. Then I threw myself upon the bed and put my face in my hands.

CHAPTER IX
THE RED BAND AT DRILL

When I think back upon the mysterious occurrences of the night which followed my introduction into the household of Lady Marmaduke, I hardly know how to tell them. It was not till long afterward that I knew exactly what I had done that night. I was like a man gone half asleep. Surely I ought to bear no blame for my lack of reason. For the last ten years, with the exception of those short weeks in Captain Donaldson’s ship, I had been searching endlessly for my sister. During that long period there had been moments of despondency; at times my search was quite neglected; yet never for an instant had I given up all hope. Now everything was at an end. My life seemed snapped in two. Had such a blow come ten years before I might have cursed God in my folly. I might have plunged recklessly into the first danger that awaited me. But years of restrained impulse had greatly changed my character. I had passed the rash age of youth, and now I almost sank beneath the burden that seemed greater than I could bear.

“SOON I CAME UPON A WOMAN KNEELING
IN THE GRASS.”—p. 103

In this state of mind my little room in the gable of Marmaduke Hall was too confining. It seemed as if I could not get my breath, and it made my head reel to look down from the high window. I could see the swaying trees upon the hills beyond the city, and they seemed to beckon me to come to their solitary shade for comfort, and I went. I can recollect very little of what followed. I remember that I paused once by the city gate to look back at the house which I had left. A picture came into my eye of the relentless woman who had told me news that was bitter as wormwood; yet she was kind and considerate withal. I turned away and set my face towards the sighing woodland.

I threw myself down on my back beneath an oak tree. There was a small patch of blue sky visible, and now and then a bird swam lazily across it. Did I fall asleep and dream, or did I rise and walk about unconsciously? I do not know much of what I did; but soon I was walking. I was not aware of the exact moment when I began to move, nor how long I had been winding my way in and out among the trees when the sound of sobbing grew upon my ears. It startled me and I began to look around and to follow the sound without knowing just where I went, in that vague way one is so used to in dreams. Soon I came upon a woman kneeling in the grass. She was very beautiful and my heart went out to her for she was weeping bitterly and seemed in great distress. My appearance must have scared her for she hastily covered something upon the ground and then sprang up in great alarm. She was dressed in a white robe that floated about her like an angel. For just a moment she let me see her sweet tear-stained face; then she was gone. Her dark hair and sorrowful expression made such a lifelike impression upon me that I almost thought it could not be a dream. Yet in a moment she had vanished like a breeze. Near the spot where she had stood the grass curved upward over a small mound. I drew near to examine what from its appearance I thought should be a grave.

When I first came upon the woman she made a hasty move to cover something upon the ground. At the head of the grave I spied a loose sod which I lifted. Beneath it was a flat stone inscribed with the one word “Ruth.” I fell on my knees and wept. Surely God had sent me a vision! I lay full length on the grave, kissing the cold stone and plucking blades of grass to strew upon it in place of flowers. How I thanked God for this dream! He had led me into green pastures. Thy rod and Thy staff, O God, they comfort me!

Suddenly the visitant reappeared.

“Sir,” she said. “You are in sore trouble.”

I pointed to the grave. “She was my sister.”

She was startled by this and eyed me with a doubtful anxious look. I cannot recall what she said to me, but after a while she opened the bosom of her robe, whence she drew forth a small ivory miniature[miniature] enclosed in a gold rim.

“See; your sister wore it before she died.”

I looked. It contained the counterfeit of my own face, like one I had given Ruth upon the ocean. God is merciful, but His mercies are quick to come and go. The vision disappeared; yet its blessed presence had made me feel that I had stood close in Ruth’s heart to the very end of her life even as she had stood in mine.

There follows a blank space in my memory during which I can remember nothing. The trees at last seemed to force themselves into my consciousness again. They tramped by me in an endless procession. I grew cold and began to shiver. A sharp pricking attacked my legs. I looked down to discover the cause of this sensation and saw that I was standing in water up to my knees. Like a flash it all came over me; I had been walking in my sleep.

I waded back to the shore and sat down to think. The place was all new to me, I had not the least idea where I was. A narrow rim of gravely beach encircled the little lake into which I had stumbled; but this told me nothing, nor could I see the least sign of a path. So, after a few moments, I got up to walk around in the hope of discovering some beaten path that would lead me out of the woods.

As I walked I kept dwelling upon what I had seen in my dream. It never occurred to me that perhaps I had seen a real person. To be sure, my memory was so vivid that I was tempted to say: “How could it be a dream?” For all that, I never doubted that it was a supernatural appearance. My only thought was that our Heavenly Father had sent me this in my distress to comfort me, and to assure me that Ruth’s last thoughts were of me, and that she still watched over me in heaven as on earth.

As I said, when I came to myself in the water I was in full possession of my wits though I did not recognize where I was. I had wandered into a narrow lake whose cold water had chilled me into consciousness. I waded back to the shore and set out along the ribbon of pebbly beach, hoping to find a path. The trees were close together, overhanging the steep bank. By this time I must have been abroad in the woods for some hours for it had now become dark and the moon was up. It was not long before I discovered an ascending footpath, very narrow, and cut in steps up the bank. From the top of the cliff to which this path led, the ground sloped gently through the woods towards the north. The trees became more and more thinly scattered as I went forward. Soon I was aware of a reddish glow in the branches ahead of me. As I drew near the light became brighter and flickered like a fire. Sharp sounds of clanking metal fell upon my ears and, from time to time, a quick word or two of command in a ringing voice.

Twenty steps farther brought me to where I could see the source of the light and sound. The woodland ended at a level, grassy plain that extended a quarter of a mile towards a towered building, a huge pile of shadows and dim walls. At regular intervals before it were planted burning cressets. They were arranged in a large square on the lawn so as to send their vagrant lights and shadows dancing over its gloomy walls. A company of men stood motionless within the square of torches, like troops in regular order. Suddenly another sharp word of command broke the stillness. A sparkling flash from every man showed, what I had not noticed before, that each man was armed with a sword. I looked close for the commander; but not till he spoke a second time could I make out his position on a terrace in front of the house. I started violently when my eyes fell upon him. The leader of this band of troopers was Kilian Van Volkenberg. I had come upon the Red Band at drill in the dark woods at night. “The patroon and his Red Band will ruin this city yet,” the dominie had said to me. A hundred or more of his armed men were now before me. Surely this was a dangerous gathering! They were well-armed and perfectly drilled like the regular soldiers of the king.

The host at Gravesoon had spoken of Van Volkenberg as the Armed Patroon. Now I understood the meaning of the term, though I did not know till later that he was the only patroon in New York who had organized his retainers into a regular military band. No wonder the authorities looked askance upon this new departure in the province, and feared a serious clash between him and the governor. How just these fears were will soon become apparent; but at that time I was so ignorant of affairs that I thought this company—so suggestive of European customs—quite an ordinary sight.

While I stood in the shadow of the trees, gazing upon this group of soldiers, a woman came out of the house upon the platform. Though I could not see her face at first because of the shadow where she stood, most of her body was in the compass of the light. She was dressed in white and, like me, watching the drilling of the Red Band. After ten minutes had elapsed, she stepped forward and touched the patroon upon the arm. When the light fell upon her face I was startled into a cry of recognition that would have betrayed my presence had the troopers been alert for signs of intrusion. She was the woman who had appeared to me in my dream.

The patroon turned to her and made an angry gesture to depart. She withdrew into the house immediately and I saw no more of her. When the company of soldiers broke up for the night, they disappeared right and left, passing around and behind the house. Van Volkenberg entered the manor-house by the same door through which the woman had retreated. From what I had been told about the position of the manor I was able to find without difficulty the road that led to New York. As I walked along it my mind was full of the mystery of the strange woman I had seen upon the terrace, and of her I had seen in my dream. Had I really met some one, and had I been but partly conscious of the fact? I could not tell. Of one thing, however, I was aware. My spirit had returned to me. As Lady Marmaduke would have said, I was a man again. I was now firm with determination. I had been through the valley of the shadow. I had come out with new strength ready to fight the good fight. I felt myself to be God’s avenging minister, destined to bring punishment upon my sister’s murderer. I knelt down in the dusty road, where I prayed to God for power and guidance. I rose from my prayer buoyant and eager in spirit.

Still I could not get my mind away from the woman. Were they one and the same person or had I made a mistake? The woman upon the terrace must have been the person Captain Tew had spoken of as Miriam Van Volkenberg. But if she was the patroon’s daughter, how came she to figure in my dream? What trick of fate had coupled her and Ruth and me together in this fashion? Then I recalled what Pierre had said: That the patroon’s daughter had loved Ruth and had been treated badly on account of her affection. That seemed to explain the fitness of it all, but it did not reconcile the reality with the dream.

In this frame of mind I approached New York. I continued to ponder that sweet, wistful face. Gradually, as I walked along in the dust and dark, I became aware of a narrow pressure about my neck. I put up my hand and touched a strange piece of ribbon. I caught at it in surprise. My fingers closed on a small locket. I held it before me in the moonlight. It was the ivory miniature in a gold rim; the very picture of myself that the woman had shown me in my dream. Then I understood. I had met Miriam Van Volkenberg in the woods. She had recognized me from the picture in the locket and had given me this keepsake from my sister.

CHAPTER X
MY FIRST COMMISSION

When I returned to Marmaduke Hall I found every one in bed asleep except a lad who had been left to attend me to my room. He informed me that his mistress had been impatient at my absence, had inquired again and again where I could be, and at last had given up waiting for me, very much vexed at my failure to return.

“She was in a great state to see you,” said the lad, “and she left word for you to be at her breakfast table early, by nine o’clock.”

In spite of the fatigue of my wanderings, I was awake betimes. While the clock was still striking nine I entered the dining hall. Lady Marmaduke sat alone at a table in an alcove that opened out of the main room. When she rose to greet me, which she did cordially, I noticed that she held a sheet of paper in her hand.

“If this letter from his Excellency,” she said, pointing to the paper in her hand, “had not arrived before you did, you would have tasted of my tongue. I had a round scolding ready for you, but this letter shall give you a chance to explain yourself.”

She was playful in her manner, yet I could see that she had been considerably put out by my absence the night before. I made haste to acquaint her with my story, though I said nothing of the mysterious woman I had seen.

“Ah, Michael,” she said when I was done. “I forgive you and you must forgive me for being angry with you. Yet I had better cause than you think. Listen to this passage from the governor’s note which came to me less than an hour ago.

“‘Fortune seems to smile graciously upon us. The ship came no nearer shore, nor did any of its crew condescend to visit the town. Perhaps they have concluded to wait till to-night.’

“Do you understand that, my Michael? A strange ship has anchored in the lower bay. It is probably a pirate ship and Earl Richard and I had planned to have you watch it; but when I came home you were not to be found. However, it has turned out all right after all.”

She glanced out of the window, but soon resumed her speech.

“You know of course that the buccaneers are forbidden the use of the port. Van Volkenberg has much dealing with them. This fact I know but we cannot prove it. Oh, if we could only trap him once in a secret meeting! We want a handle against him.” She brought her fist down on the table with a blow that made the dishes rattle. “I tell you we must have a handle against the scoundrel or we can do nothing. You need not look so amazed; but I forget how ignorant you are. We are to meet the Earl at eleven o’clock. I must give you a lesson in affairs so that you will know what we are talking about. You remember Fletcher? He was the man you saw with the patroon at the coffee-house. He was the former governor and a worse wretch never walked the streets of Yorke. The pirates bribed him, and the merchants bribed him, and he bribed them back for he was sore in need of friends. Then, to curry himself into further favor, he began to deal out the land of the province. He gave a hundred square miles to William Pinhorne to make him a patroon in the Mohawk valley. He sold both sides of the Hudson River as far north as Albany. There is hardly a square mile in the whole province that can be bought honestly for love or money.”

I interrupted her to ask information concerning the geography of the province, for I was as ignorant of that as of affairs. When she had satisfied my curiosity she continued.

“That is why the king appointed another governor. As soon as Fletcher heard of this check upon his practices, he showed his knavery in a new light. He leased the King’s farm, which should by right go to the support of Earl Richard’s household. He gave the center of the island to Van Volkenberg so as to have a friend near at hand. The dog had the impudence to title the patroon with this very house. This estate was deeded to my husband during his lifetime, and Fletcher gave it to the patroon from the day of his death, notwithstanding the fact that Sir Evelin was alive at the time of the grant. Earl Bellamont has reversed the grant and only yesterday, the first day of the new Assembly, this estate was given to me and my heirs forever. Van Volkenberg swears he will have it yet if he has to fight for it. We shall see about that.”

A servant came to the door to take orders for my lady’s coach. She told him to have it ready before eleven, as she intended to wait upon the Earl at that hour.

“Bellamont prides himself on his gentle blood,” she continued as soon as the servant had left us alone. “But it is a great clog to him at times. It was all I could do to get him to permit you to watch secretly upon the strange ship that has come into the bay. He is greatly addicted to open means and he said that it would be taking an unfair advantage to spy on people of whom we knew no absolute harm. But I urged necessity and told him flatly that if he did not I should commission you to do it myself. That fetched him. In spite of his fine blood he is jealous withal. The very idea of someone plotting without his help sets him on end with curiosity. Mark my word, before we are done with this affair we shall have to jog our own gait if we are to jog at all. You must fight a rogue with a rogue’s tricks. Never forget that. However, we must be careful not to ruffle the Earl and not to set his jealousy agog.”

A little later I was booted and spurred and ready to ride at the side of my mistress’s coach. We set out, accompanied by her numerous retinue of state. At every street corner we were greeted with cheers, for the common people loved her well. I noticed that more than one of the persons we passed on the way showed surprise in his face at seeing a well-mounted stranger in the place of honor by the coach. We passed the Jacobite Coffee-House and among those who stood upon the upper balcony to see us pass was the patroon. He frowned sullenly in answer to Lady Marmaduke’s dignified bow of recognition, which sign of displeasure caused her to break into merry laughter.

“I shall drive the old fox into his hole yet,” she said in an undertone, when we had passed the tavern. “But he is a crafty old fox. No one can deny that.”

At the outer entrance of the fort I dismounted and led Lady Marmaduke through the stone arch and across the paved court to the governor’s mansion.

“The Earl was struck with your hatred of the patroon yesterday, even before I told him the story about Ruth,” whispered Lady Marmaduke. “Do not be too nice about accepting his commissions. He will be glad of whatever you do, though he may not altogether approve in advance. His great fault is in delay. Sometimes he gets stirred up and acts like a whirlwind, but generally he wastes time by waiting for a better chance. I have persuaded him this time; that is, if he has not cooled over night.”

Lady Marmaduke explained to the Earl in a few words whatever was necessary to account for my non-appearance the night before. He then proceeded to interrogate me closely about all that had passed between me and Captain Tew.

“You see, Monsieur Le Bourse, these enormous tracts of land that have been granted by my predecessor in office must be annulled or the proper revenues cannot be forwarded to my royal master, his majesty, the King.”

“Your own table cannot be furnished either,” added Lady Marmaduke, “unless you get back the King’s farm.”

“Quite true, but that is a small matter compared with what is due to my beloved King and master. I well remember the day on which he informed me of the high honor he had conferred upon my unworthy self, which fact he graciously made known to me with his own royal lips. ‘Richard,’ he said, 'you have used your sword well for me. Now, I want you to use your head. These enormous grants by Fletcher must be annulled. But it must be done legally; I will not have a bad example set in the use of the law. I have implicit trust in you.'”

“Indeed, your Excellency,” broke in Lady Marmaduke. “I wish he had shown that trust to a little more practical advantage. He might have given you more power to act for yourself.”

“I am somewhat restricted,” replied the Earl. “Beshrew me! That is an ungracious reflection. The King has planned all for the best. Though I must report to his council for approval, the delay gives me all the more opportunity to make certain, to collect more weighty evidence. I wish I could utilize this matter with Tew. I shall not, however, lest I compromise Monsieur Le Bourse.”

“The transaction is so old I don’t believe it would do us much good,” said Lady Marmaduke.

“I have no doubt but that we shall soon stand on firmer ground,” continued the governor. “Has Lady Marmaduke informed you of what I intend you to do?”

“In part,” I answered.

“The matter as it stands at present is as follows. At noon yesterday a ship was sighted coming into the bay. As is our custom always upon the arrival of a ship, a welcome gun was fired from the Battery. Instead of coming up to the city like an honest trader, the ship cast anchor and has remained in one place ever since. She is a suspicious looking craft, probably a buccaneer who is afraid to enter the port now that the laws are so stringent against them. It may be one chance in a hundred—”

“I should say one in ten or two,” interrupted Lady Marmaduke.

“By your gracious leave,” answered the Earl with a courtly bow. “The chances are even that the ship is here to communicate with Patroon Van Volkenberg. If you are willing to help me, what I want you to do is this: To be ready at a moment’s notice to keep an eye on any sailors who may put off from the ship, for the purpose of coming into the town. I shall cause a sharp lookout to be kept and send you instant notice of their arrival.”

We soon made all the necessary arrangements in order to carry out this plan. The Earl did not expect any one to come ashore from the stranger ship before night. He knew, however, that I should be prepared to act quickly when the moment for action came. He gave me a key that would enable me to come and go in the fort at will, but told me not to make use of it unless in absolute necessity. He also gave me another key to the private postern that opened through the wall of palisades on the west side of the city next the Hudson River. I had a few additional preparations to make on my own account and engaged, when they were done, to remain at Marmaduke Hall till sent for by the Earl. I attended Lady Marmaduke back to her coach and bade her farewell for the time being at the gate of the fort.

“I have business on the Slip,” I said when she was seated.

Her eyebrows lifted in curiosity. “What is it?” she asked.

I wondered to myself who was jealous now of plotting without her knowledge.

“I must learn my way about the city.”

“Nothing else?”

“And obtain some sort of disguise.”

“Anything else?”

“That is all I think of.”

“Ah, very well. Be back in time to dine with me. I do not like to sit alone when there is news in the air.”

We set out on our several ways. I had not felt in such good spirits for many a day. The likelihood of danger, the opportunity to do something, above all, a good horse between my legs, put me in countenance again and joyed me in spite of fate.

Pierre, my acquaintance of the day before, was a barber. I set out for his shop immediately upon leaving Lady Marmaduke. I found him alone and explained to him that I was employed on important business, and that he must make haste to procure me a suit of clothes in which I could disguise myself as a sailor. Instead of setting about the task which I thus imposed upon him, he made a comical gesture of dismay and stood fast where he was.

“It’s of no use,” he said. “The Red Band will see me. They watch everywhere. If they see me buying clothes and get a look at what they are like, where will be the use of the disguise?”

I reflected a moment, for what he said had some show of truth in it. After a moment’s thought, however, I concluded that his fears were idle.

“Pish, Pierre! You are too cautious. Do as I tell you.”

“I tell you it cannot be done. They have their eye on you; and now that you have come here they will have their eye on me. What did I tell you?”

At that moment, a sailor of the Red Band entered the shop and asked to be shaved. Pierre tried not to look surprised as he set about the task. Once, when he stood with his razor in the air, I saw the fellow’s cheek go white as the lather itself. Perhaps he was thinking of what might happen if Pierre suspected what had really brought him into the shop. A person while being shaved is in an ill position to defend himself if the barber is murderously inclined. For all that, I set the fellow down as a bully and a coward. The change in his face convinced me beyond a doubt that he had come there to spy. It confirmed what Pierre had said a moment before concerning the watchfulness of the Red Band; and it was not to be long before I should have another example of their alert interest in my affairs.

When Pierre had finished shaving his customer, the man arose and adjusted his neckband slowly. Then he tossed a coin into the corner. I soon saw that this was but a ruse to get Pierre out of the way for the visitor had a word to say to me. Pierre went after the coin, which rolled into the farthest corner. The sailor, as he passed me on the way to the door, said in a low voice,

“The Red Band is not asleep. Beware.”

“Ay, beware!” I flung back into his teeth as he went out of the shop.

“I told you it would not do,” said Pierre, when I informed him of this little episode. He put the coin into his mouth and bit it. “This is good money. That is more than I expected. Now what do you intend to do?”

I confessed that I was wholly at a loss and should depend upon his judgment this time.

“Then I shall help you out. I have the very thing you want up stairs.”

“Why did you not say so at first?”

Pierre laughed. “You said that I must go out and buy it and I wanted to convince you that you were wrong first.”

It was now my turn to laugh at Pierre’s manner of doing things. I bade him take his own way of procuring what I wanted. He wrapped up some clothes and a couple of pistols in a bundle, telling me that, as a rule, sailors did not wear cutlasses when they came ashore. The custom was falling out of use now that the laws against the buccaneers had become so strict.

“The Red Band always wear swords,” added Pierre. “That is another reason why I wouldn’t if I were you.”

Pierre promised to take the clothes to Marmaduke Hall within the hour. I left him engaged busily in his shop, and rode forth into the town in order to acquaint myself as perfectly as possible with the crooked streets. I had occupied enough time in this examination of the city when I turned my steps homeward. I was walking my horse slowly up the steep hill of Petticoat Lane when I heard a cry of distress ahead of me. Three men were having a sharp scuffle over the possession of a bundle. One of the men was Pierre, and I knew the bundle must be my disguise. I must protect it at all hazards, for each of the other two wore the red band upon his sleeve. I dashed spurs into my horse’s side. In two minutes I had ridden down one of the men, and with a blow of my fist sent the other sprawling in the mud. Pierre caught up the bundle and scuttled away so quickly that I hardly knew which way he had gone. I drew my sword and dismounted.

“Get up,” I said sharply to the fellow I had knocked down—the other had already stumbled to his feet, but he was not good for much. “Get up,” I repeated, “or someone will think he has found the Red Band asleep.” He got upon his legs, grumbling and looking sourly at me. “Beware,” I said, as they turned away. “Eat your own word, beware.” This fellow was the very one who had defied me in Pierre’s shop. “Beware,” I called after him again, for they made such good use of their legs that by this time they were the width of the street away from me.

When they were gone I continued my journey, much impressed by this example of their watchfulness. I was not cast down by it, however, though I mused so deeply on the event that I lost my way. Before I knew it, I found myself again in the center of the town. I took my bearings afresh and started back, this time meeting with no further confusions on the way. While passing the Ferry-House, I remembered that I had not returned there the night before to occupy the room I had engaged. I dismounted and entered the ordinary to find the landlord and settle my score. I was surprised to see Pierre at one of the tables drinking. As soon as I had settled the reckoning I went across the room to speak to him.

“They didn’t see it,” he said significantly. “It is in your room and you can wear it safely”[safely”]. He told me how he had been surprised and set upon suddenly in the street. “You were just like Lady Marmaduke coming along when I was ducked. That wine! Don’t tell me there is no such thing as luck!”

I told Pierre that for the rest of the day he must hold himself in readiness to do my bidding. “Yes,” I answered to a question he asked. “Yes, it is against him, and you must keep yourself sober.”

Pierre tilted up his tankard and began to pour the beer in a small stream upon the sanded floor.

“I hate to let it go,” he said, disconsolately. “But if it is against him, I had rather keep sober.”

He looked wistfully at the floor where the beer had drained off into a thick layer of sand, leaving on the surface only a shrunken mass of breaking bubbles.

“Ah me!” sighed Pierre, rising. “I’ll wait in the Marmaduke kitchen. I hope they won’t offer me wine. It would bring tears to my eyes. But I’ll keep sober, never fear.”

I was sitting in my little gable room late that afternoon when I received a summons from Lady Marmaduke to attend her. She wanted to know whether I should like to go with her on her daily round of inspection of the offices. I was indeed glad of the opportunity. We visited the kitchens first, which were large and well appointed. Marmaduke Hall, from top to bottom, contained fully two score of people, and all the cooking for this numerous household was done here. Beyond the kitchen, in a bare, clay-floored outbuilding was a row of great iron pots, each one of which was large enough to boil an ox whole. Into one of them, beneath which roared a huge fire of logs, the servants were lowering some bags of food that were to be boiled for the live stock. I watched the process with interest. When the ponderous iron lid, which rose and fell by means of a pulley and chain, was put in place, the steam jetted out on all sides of it, rocking the lid with a loud clatter, and spurting from under the edge like the spokes of a wheel.

We passed thence to the dairy. Then we examined the stables and various other offices in succession till we reached the kennels. The thirty or more hounds barked and yelped at the appearance of their mistress. She patted them in turn and then we passed on.

“You may wonder at my attending to such things myself,” she said to me when we had returned to the Hall. Then she sighed. “I try to do everything myself just as Sir Evelin used to do.”

She fell into a reverie and did not seem to notice when I left her. With one thing and another I whiled away the time till dinner was over, and it had fallen quite dark outside. Then, just as I was beginning to grow impatient, came the summons from the Earl. It was but a line and was dated from the fort at half past seven.

“Four suspicious looking sailors have just proceeded to the Ferry-House. I think they are the men we spoke of. You will watch them and report as soon as possible.—Bellamont.”

I slipped on my disguise, thrust the two pistols Captain Tew had given me into my belt, and, taking Pierre with me, set out through the dark streets to the tavern.

CHAPTER XI
THE ESCAPE FROM THE RATTLE-WATCH

Within a few minutes after leaving Marmaduke Hall I arrived at the Ferry-House alone, having stationed Pierre in a dark court-yard across the street. I looked in through the door and saw the four sailors huddled close together around one of the tables. They talked in careful whispers with their heads close together as men are wont to do when they are engaged in underhand business. From time to time they glanced uneasily about the room, as if they thought that someone should be watching. When I came near them, they seemed to suspect my presence in the first breath. I tried to draw them into conversation, but succeeded no better than if I had spoken in a foreign tongue. One after another of them, as he could find an opportunity, managed to slip away to some other part of the room; soon I was sitting quite lonely and deserted at the table where I had joined them. They, however, had their heads close together again and were in conversation in another part of the room. I made a feint at yawning, put my feet on the table, folded my hands, and in five minutes, for all they knew, I was fast asleep. In reality, I was listening with both my ears and squinting through my half shut eyes to see what they were doing.

They took care at first that I should not hear a word of what they said; but by degrees, thinking, I suppose, that I was asleep, they grew more careless in their speech. For all that, I could learn only that they were to keep an appointment somewhere at nine o’clock that night. They glanced often and so anxiously at the clock that I knew the meeting must be of considerable importance. Before long they ceased talking altogether; then they fell to dozing in their chairs.

When I saw that they were not likely to notice my absence, I left the room. I walked along Garden Street towards the new Dutch church for the distance of fifty yards; then I crossed to the shadow side of the thoroughfare and retraced my steps. Opposite the Ferry-House is a narrow alley that leads into a court-yard. It was in this passage, dark as pitch, that I had stationed Pierre. I turned in when I reached the entrance along which I groped my way with one hand on the wall and the other raised to shield my face.

“St,” I said cautiously. Pierre answered with the same signal. I took two more steps in the dark, and then my outstretched hand touched him.

“Pierre,” I said. “They are in there, but I cannot make them say a word. Go quickly and rouse the rattle-watch. These fellows must be taken up. I’ll make some sort of disturbance against your coming back to color the arrest with. As soon as the watchmen have started, run as fast as your legs will carry you and let me know that they are on the way.”

When Pierre set out along Broad Street, I returned to my seat in the ordinary where I intended to resume my watch till his return. My absence, I thought, had not been noticed by the sailors. I settled myself quietly, well satisfied with the way things were going. Nothing, however, was further from my intention than my proposal to arrest these men. In fact, I intended to outwit the rattle-watch, notwithstanding the fact that I had summoned it.

By the time Pierre returned all out of breath to announce the approach of the watch, the clock had crept round to half past eight. The officers of the watch, Pierre informed me, were not more than the space of two streets away. I rose instantly and approached the sailors.

“May I speak to you a moment?” I said in feigned excitement to him who seemed to be their leader. He arose, rather fearful, as if he shared my assumed alarm, and stepped with me towards the corner of the room. I said to him: “You come from the ship that anchored in the lower bay yesterday?”

“Who told you?” he blurted out. Then, seeing that he had made a mistake, he blundered still further in his attempt to contradict himself. “No, by God, we don’t!”

“I thought so,” I answered, for his manner said “Yes,” though his words said “No.” I continued: “Is it a free-trader?”

The fellow turned white, his lips quivered, and his hand sought the butt of his pistol.

“Softly, friend, you have no enemy to deal with,” I said. “I have been in the jolly trade myself. Look at this.”

I threw open my blouse part way and gave him a glimpse of one of the richly mounted pistols that Captain Tew had presented to me.

“Have you ever seen that name before?”

His eyes gleamed recognition as he read the buccaneer’s name engraved in big letters on the hilt. “Ay, we sighted him two days ago.”

“Quite true. Bound for Martinique. I thought you would know the name. Now will you trust me? You have been suspected and even now the city officers are almost here to arrest you and your companions.”

At that moment the shrill rattle of the watchman’s whistle sounded from the street outside. The person who blew it may have meant to give them some chance to escape, for the free-booters were prime favorites with all who were not strictly addicted to honorable practices. However good the guard’s intention might be, I was not willing to allow my new acquaintances to profit by it. I was bound to have for myself the credit of saving the buccaneers. Their gratitude might be of service to me.

“Hurry,” I said. “We must barricade this corner of the room.”

Quick as thought I overturned two of the tables. All five of us began to pile up the other furniture. The landlord gaped in open-mouthed amazement at our proceeding. Whatever leniency may have been in the watchman’s mind at the moment he blew his warning whistle in the street, it all vanished as soon as he entered the room. For he and his men had no sooner crowded through the door than I hurled a heavy pewter tankard at the leader’s portly belly. It struck well and sent him sprawling on the floor.

“Quick,” I said to the pirates. “Follow me.”

The corner of the room that was enclosed by our barricade contained a door that opened on Garden Street near the church. We made our way out in this way and then set out across the town towards the North River. We had hardly cleared the front of the tavern when we heard the rapid steps of the watchmen coming after us pell-mell. We ran on till the high wall of palisades along the river bank rose in front of us. They seemed to cut off all escape in that direction, and I do not wonder that the sailors thought I had betrayed them.

“You have trapped us,” hissed one of them between his teeth. At the same moment he drew his pistol.

“Go on,” I shouted. “Turn to the left. There is a gate.”

We continued our way along the ditch behind the wall, running at the top of our speed. The steps of the watchmen sounded closer and closer behind us. My companions, being sailors, and consequently poor runners, were continually losing ground. I feared we should be caught up with and I had no mind for a fight. That was more than I had bargained for. But luck favored us. We soon reached the postern that opens through the palisades to the rocky bank of the river. Our pursuers were scarce fifty feet behind us. If the key would not fit we were lost. But all happened to our advantage. In a moment I had thrust in the key that Governor Bellamont had given me. The lock clicked. We sprang through the open gateway and managed to relock the gate just as the officers dashed against it. But the door was of solid oak and held fast.

“That was a good turn,” said the leader, mopping his face. “I’m sweating in every inch of me.”

“This chill wind will soon stop that,” I answered. “Where did you leave your boat?”

Fortunately they had left it afloat in the care of one of their comrades. They whistled to him and in a few minutes I heard the squeaking of oars as the boat approached. The leader of the band put out his hand, saying all sorts of things in gratitude for what I had done. It made me feel ashamed to hear his profuse thanks, for, after all, I had played him a trick in my own interest; but I steeled my heart by thinking of the patroon.

“I don’t know who you are,” continued the sailor. “But now that you have done me one good turn perhaps you will do me another. We must be at Wolfert Webber’s tavern by nine o’clock to-night. Can we get there?”

It was well for the success of my plans that I had spent a large part of the afternoon studying a map of Manhattan Island.

I knew, therefore, that a stream of water of depth sufficient to float a long-boat connected the small lake known as the Collect with the North River. I told the pirate of this stream and that, after having crossed the lake, a short walk would bring him to Webber’s tavern.

Meanwhile the long-boat was approaching the shore. Soon we were all seated—I going along to point out the way—and four of the sailors were pulling sturdily at the oars. We shot quickly over the water. The half moon gleamed in a flickering path behind us. Between the narrow banks of the stream by which we made our way into the Collect scarcely a ray of light could penetrate. We had much ado to evade the overhanging branches, which, in spite of all our care, struck us in the face time and again. Then everything changed like scenery on the stage as we shot into the shadow-rimmed lake, smooth as glass, reflecting the moon like the half of a broken plate, lying upon the bottom.

“Dip easy, men,” whispered the leader, who had seated himself next to me in the stern of the boat. “No need to let anyone know that we are coming.”

He and I had fallen into conversation while the others rowed. I tried cautiously to win from him some information as to what his errand was about. I succeeded, however, no better than when I had made the like attempt earlier in the evening. He was as mum as a stone concerning his own business. When we landed on a narrow beach of pebbles, he commanded his followers to remain with the boat while he went forward under my guidance. On the way I was of two minds. At one moment I wanted to strike him down, rob him of his letters, and take to my heels. At the next, I was much ashamed of such a dishonorable impulse. My hesitation, however, was soon overcome in an unexpected way. When I saw the light of Webber’s tavern twinkling a hundred yards ahead of us, I informed my companion that his destination was in sight. He put out a great clumsy hand and took mine cordially.

“Thanks, mate, whatever your name is. Here you and I must part company. You’ve done us a good turn, and I’d do the same by you if I had the chance. But I must go on alone, for what I’ve got to say is very secret and must be said alone. It ain’t as if I had some writing that I could just hand over before your eyes and you none the wiser for looking at the outside. It doesn’t look handsome, does it? But I’m on other people’s business, and honor is honor, as you know yourself.”

Since there was nothing to be gained by staying with him against his will, I shook hands in a friendly way, saying that I should go back to New York by land, it being nearer for me than the way we had come. The moment he was gone, however, I took after him and set myself to watch the tavern door. The person he had come to meet had evidently arrived before him. In two minutes the sailor came out again, accompanied by a boy. As they passed through a patch of moonlight I caught a glimpse of this second person. He was not a boy at all, but Van Volkenberg’s dwarf[dwarf], Louis Van Ramm.

They passed close to me and I followed them a short way into the woods, where they held a long whispered consultation; but I could not catch a word of what they said. At the end of their talk they parted company without returning to the tavern. The pirate went back to the boat the way he had come; the dwarf set out towards Van Volkenberg manor. I had no further interest in the sailor, and, though I expected little gain from following Van Ramm, I resolved to dog his footsteps.

CHAPTER XII
VAN VOLKENBERG’S WINDOW

Louis Van Ramm continued his way towards the manor-house, walking rapidly, I following on the turf at the roadside. Suddenly I came upon the place where I had joined the high road in my retreat from the park the night before. Knowing that the path that led to this point was a short cut through the woods, I ran along it in the hope of finding some place of vantage, whence I could observe what went on outside the manor-house. When I reached the edge of the wood I saw the shadowy building, its front all shot with lighted windows. One of these windows was on the lower floor near the ground. I wondered whether it would offer me any advantage as a means of discovering what was going on inside the building. Some high bushes grew near it and in these I managed to conceal myself so near the window that I could see inside quite well. I presume that the fire of logs within made the room too hot, for the window was open, in spite of the chill wind that bit me to the bone. The patroon was sitting at a table in plain sight of the window. Between him and the door and facing him was the woman I had seen the night before on the terrace, evidently his daughter.

“Go to your room, Miriam,” I heard him say to her. “I have no use for you here. As for this man Le Bourse, if you have any dealings with him I shall lock you up. Go. Do you hear me?”

The girl did not move. She folded her arms across her breast, at the same time drawing herself up proudly. She was tall and slender, and of a fine, dignified figure.

“Father,” she replied, “there is no use threatening me. You know that I am not a coward. If you do not intend to make some reparation to this man who has come to seek his sister, I shall. You can at least be kind to him. You know only too well that unkindness here hastened, perhaps caused, the poor girl’s unhappy death.”

She brushed her hand across her eyes. I blessed her in my heart for that little act. The patroon, however, grew angry. He lifted a wine glass from the table and held it in his hand, as if he intended to throw it at her.

“Do not talk to me of her,” he burst out. “Not a word of her or you shall repent it. Now go. You have already seen too much of this man. I shall not tolerate it.”

The girl bowed with proper dignity, but she did not move. She had still a word of protest that must be said.

“I shall obey you, sir, but I must say what I feel. I shall not act behind your back. You shall know exactly what I intend to do. I shall see him again and tell him all I can of the miserable fate of his sister and I shall do all in my power to sooth his sorrow. I loved Ruth even if she was but—”

Her words were cut short by the crash of breaking glass. She had sprung to one side just in time to evade the flying goblet which her father hurled at her.

“Will you not obey me? Are you not my daughter?”

“I am you daughter, but for all that, father—”

She stopped speaking and left the room abruptly, for at that moment another door was opened, which I could not see, though I heard the latch click distinctly. Then Louis Van Ramm entered the room and came to his master’s side. I heard the patroon say something to him about the “Wench, my daughter.” Then he and the dwarf fell to talking in tones so low that I could only hear now and then an excited exclamation of surprise.

I can hardly express the feelings that I experienced at that moment. From where I crouched in the shrubbery, shivering with cold, I could look upon the wide space where I had seen the Red Band drilling the night before, surrounded by the jumping shadows of the torches. The picture of the girl dressed in white, standing upon the platform while the troopers obeyed the commands of their chief, and the impatient gesture with which she had been dismissed by her father, were all clear in my mind’s eye. I had not thought then that within a day I should have found a friend within the walls of the manor. Yet such was the case. The girl was disposed to treat me kindly. I did not care so much for that. My heart was drawn towards her because she had loved Ruth, and because she was now suffering for that affection. I could not but admire her spirit, and the quiet dignity with which she stood to her convictions before the hot anger of her parent; nor could I observe without still greater admiration the noble pride that prompted her to be silent the moment another person entered the room. Of course I did not know then as I knew later how unlike her usual manner this severity towards her father was. But I soon learned that there were moments when his peculiar infirmity demanded such firmness and that this was one of them.

While I mused upon the scene before me and all it stood for, the patroon and his retainer sat at the table in busy conversation. At last Van Volkenberg leaned back in his chair and fitted the palms of his hands together, tapping the finger tips slightly.

“Good news, Louis,” he said, for the first time raising his voice so that I could hear him distinctly. “This time we trip the Earl, God’s curse upon him.”

For a moment they sat silent, the master lost in thought. Evidently the news communicated to Louis in the meeting by Webber’s tavern was vitally connected with the welfare of the Earl of Bellamont. At last Van Volkenberg was roused by some question from his companion that I could not hear.

“You are right,” the patroon answered. “On my life we must not let this chance slip. Before day-light—” I lost what followed, for he bent over the table with a pen in his hand and began to write.

For some time I watched the end of the quill nodding back and forth as he wrote, evidently in great haste and excitement. Twice he tore the paper across several times and began to write upon a new sheet. When he had finished, he rose, folding what he had written carefully as he did so. He took a step or two away from the table towards the window. This movement brought him so close to me that I overheard what followed without difficulty.

“This must be printed and posted before day-light, Louis. Take it to Bradford. Rout him out of bed. Give him good reasons. It must be done at once. Do not take no from him. Hurry, Louis, my gay hawk. We shall peck the fine Earl to the bone by noon to-morrow.”

At that both men left the apartment. I set out immediately along the footpath that joined with the road to the city. I had not far to go in order to reach the main road, but the distance was far enough to bring me for a moment in peril of my life. I was still within hail of the house when I heard dull, heavy thuds falling in quick succession behind me, and growing louder with every step. I turned to look back. A hound was making towards me in great leaps across the moonlight. The next moment he sprang upon me. Though I braced myself for the shock, I fell heavily to the ground. In this moment of danger, I had enough presence of mind to thrust my hand into the brute’s mouth and to grip tight hold of his lower jaw. We writhed and twisted about the ground for several minutes. Once I was knocked so violently against the trunk of a tree that it was a miracle that I did not lose my hold. We rolled back together and in some way, I know not how, I fell uppermost with the point of my knee on the dog’s side. Quick as a flash, I gripped my free hand on his throat. He gasped for breath till his whole body shook and I with it. But I had won the fall and did not rise till he lay motionless at my feet.

Such an escape as that makes a man sober. I continued along the road, thinking of many things; above all, of how it might have ended. By what a slender thread and how tenaciously we cling to life! Yesterday, when my sorrow first fell upon me with its full weight, there was nothing terrible about the face of death; but to-night, with his grim features close before me, I felt that heedless courage which even the most miserable always feel, though they would thank God for cowardice. With this thought came another: How Ruth must have felt! She had crossed the gulf that I had fought to draw back from. Not till then did my thoughts return to the work in hand—the paper and the dwarf’s errand. Almost immediately I heard the clatter of horse hoofs breaking the silence behind me.

In a moment Louis Van Ramm dashed by me at full gallop, raising a cloud of dust as he rode, and sending a flaw of wind into the roadside bushes where I had concealed myself at the first sound of his approach.

“So you will trap the Earl, will you?” thought I. “Do not reckon without me, Louis Van Ramm.”

Then I set out running, and was soon at the fort.

It had been scarce six years since William Bradford had come from Philadelphia to set up his printing press in New York. As I passed the mouth of the street where Bradford lived I could hear Louis kicking and pounding at the printer’s door, for what reason beyond his master’s hest I was soon to learn.

At the fort I found some difficulty in gaining access to the Earl; but, by means of the password which he had communicated to me, and a little threat and bluster on my own account, I was soon inside the walls. The Earl heard my fragmentary tale with interest.

“I can easily imagine what has been communicated to him,” said Bellamont. “But what Bradford has to do with it is beyond my penetration.”

He rang a bell upon the table. A man-at-arms appeared, whom he bade summon the captain of the guard.

“Take a squad of men,” commanded the Earl as soon as the man had appeared for duty. “Take a squad of men and arrest William Bradford and anyone else whom you may find at his shop. At once. To your duty.”

The Earl at a pinch, as Lady Marmaduke had said, was no man to bandy words, though, to be sure, he said to me as soon as the soldiers had set out that he wished I had got my information in any other way than spying. I did not remind him that he had set me to watch, or that there was no other way on earth by which I could have followed his instructions, for I knew that if I said anything his conscience would suggest some kind of harmless watchfulness from a distance.

“Your Excellency’s welfare is always above my own,” I said humbly, though I shared none of his scruples.

“Ay, doubtless,” he answered musingly. “Well, let us see how it turns out.”

Thirty minutes later the prisoner was under arrest in the fort. The Earl’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction over the intelligence he had received through the arrest. For the second time he summoned the man-at-arms.

“As soon as it is late enough I want you to dispatch a messenger to Patroon Van Volkenberg, and to the other members of my council, notifying them individually that there will be a meeting of my privy-council at ten o’clock to-morrow.” Then he turned to me. “The clouds are breaking, Le Bourse. I doubt not there will be a flash of light and a clap of thunder hard upon ten o’clock.”

CHAPTER XIII
VAN VOLKENBERG IN DISGRACE

At ten o’clock the next morning the governor’s privy-council was assembled. The members of the board were seated along both sides of a huge mahogany table, carved around the edges in the old Dutch style. Governor Bellamont sat at one end of the table; on his right hand was Colonel De Peyster, then accorded by everyone the handsomest man in the province. At the end opposite to Nicholas Bayard sat the patroon. He was quiet in his manner and evidently much dejected over the miscarriage of his plan, though, as yet, he could have had no idea as to how it had gone wrong. When the soldiers arrested Bradford, they found him alone, busily engaged in setting up type with which to print the patroon’s paper. By the time the arrest was made, Louis Van Ramm had evidently returned to the manor-house to inform his chief that all the arrangements necessary to the plan had been successfully made. The patroon therefore, on his arrival in the town, must have expected to see his posters placed conspicuously in many public places. He found instead, only the locked door of the printing office and no posters. Immediately after this disappointment he presented himself at the council table in the fort.

The Earl of Bellamont informed the members of his privy-council that he had summoned them thus hurriedly in order to communicate to them some important information. Then, drawing towards him a bundle of papers which lay close at hand, he addressed his advisors in these words:

“Gentlemen and Friends: Shortly after his most gracious majesty was pleased to appoint me to the governorship of this province, he called me to a private interview, in which he spoke of certain affairs in New York. He spoke in these words, as nearly as I could remember them when I wrote down the substance of our conversation shortly after our interview.

“‘The buccaneers,’ said his majesty, ‘have so increased in the East and West Indies, and all along the American coast, that they defiantly sail under their own flag. They penetrate the rivers; land in numbers sufficient to capture cities, robbing palaces and cathedrals, and extorting enormous ransom. Their suppression is vital to commerce. They have possessed themselves of magnificent retreats, in Madagascar and other islands of the Pacific ocean. They have established their seraglios, and are living in fabulous splendor and luxury. Piratic expeditions are fitted out from the colonies of New England and Virginia; and even the Quakers of Pennsylvania afford a market for their robberies. These successful free-booters are making their homes in the Carolinas, in Rhode Island, and along the south shore of Long Island, where they and their children take positions among the most respectable in the community.

“‘The buccaneers are so audacious that they seek no concealment. Their ships are laden with the spoils of all nations. The richest prizes that can now be taken upon the high seas are the heavily laden ships of the buccaneers. I have resolved, with the aid of others, to fit out a private expedition against them. We have formed a company for the purpose. By attacking the pirates we shall accomplish a double object. We shall, in the first place, check their devastating operations, and we shall also fill our purses with the proceeds of the abundant spoil with which their ships are laden.’”

The Earl laid down the paper from which he had been reading, and, looking directly at Mr. Livingston, who was on his left, bowed. “My trusted friend and councillor, who was in London at the time of my interview with our gracious majesty, was able to recommend to our notice a mariner upon whom we could confidently confer the responsible task of commanding this expedition. You all know him, gentlemen. I refer to the estimable William Kidd, of this city, whose house on Liberty Street we all remember because of the noble tree growing beside the stoop. It was planted to commemorate the arrival of Governor Petrus Stuyvesant, rest his soul, for he was a gallant gentleman and a valiant warrior. In Captain Kidd’s hands, with the consent of the Lord Chancellor and the Duke of Shrewsbury, together with the approval of the King, we have placed our frigate, the Adventure.

“Now, gentlemen,” continued the Earl, at the same time taking up another paper from the table. “You are aware of the steps I have already taken to diminish the practice of buccaneering in New York. It behooves me to make you acquainted forthwith with the commission the King has granted to Captain Kidd.”

Bellamont unfolded the paper in his hand and began to read in a loud, steady voice the King’s commission.

“‘William the Third, by the grace of God, King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, to our true and well-beloved Captain William Kidd, commander of the Adventure. Whereas, divers wicked persons commit many and great piracies, robberies and depredations on the seas, upon the coasts of America, and other parts, to the hindrance of trade and the danger of our subjects, we have thought fit to give to the said William Kidd full authority to seize all such pirates upon the seas, whether our subjects or the subjects of other nations, with their ships and all merchandise or money which shall be found on board, if they willingly yield themselves. But if they will not yield themselves without fighting, then you are, by force, to compel them to yield. We do also require you to bring, or cause to be brought, such pirates, free-booters, or sea rovers, as you shall seize, to a legal trial, to the end they may be proceeded against according to the law in such cases.

“‘We enjoin you to keep an exact journal of your proceedings, giving the names of the ships you may capture, the names of their officers and crew, and the value of their cargoes, and stores. And we command you at your peril, that you do not molest our friends or allies under any pretense of authority hereby granted. Given the 26th of January, 169—.’”[^[A]]

[A]. For the text of Governor Bellamont’s conversation with the King, and of the commission granted to Captain Kidd, the author is indebted to Mr. Abbot’s life of William Kidd.

In the discussion of the King’s plan which followed the reading of it, every gentleman present, with the one exception of Van Volkenberg, expressed his unqualified approval of what had been done. The patroon, however, sat silent and moody. He was unable to imagine why the Earl had chosen this time to explain in detail a plan that he had heretofore guarded with the utmost secrecy.

“I am glad of your approbation,” said the Earl. “I could expect no other reception of this frank expression (touching the King’s commission with his forefinger) of the honor and candor of our gracious sovereign and of his confidential advisers. Yet it appears that our colleague, Patroon Van Volkenberg, has not yet expressed his satisfaction in words.”

[Footnote A: For the text of Governor Bellamont’s conversation with the King, and of the commission granted to Captain Kidd, the author is indebted to Mr. Abbot’s life of William Kidd.]

There was a slight smile upon the Earl’s face as he made this remark, for the patroon’s manner spoke discontent plain enough. As all eyes turned upon him, Van Volkenberg felt the need of saying something.

“Your Excellency, I hope, has always found me quick in the support of all our sovereign’s mandates.”

More than one of the persons present exchanged intelligent glances with his neighbor when he heard this qualified approval. Each member of the council interpreted it for himself, according as he believed or disbelieved certain vague rumors that had got abroad concerning the patroon’s interest in the illicit trade.

“I am glad that we are unanimous,” the Earl went on, a bitter smile breaking across his face in spite of his effort to control his features. “I say that I am glad we are unanimous, because I have a question to bring before you for your consideration, which closely concerns the matter in hand.”

He glanced at the patroon. Van Volkenberg for the first time seemed to suspect that a trap had been laid for him. His fingers opened and closed with short nervous movements. His face began to grow white; but it was the whiteness of anger, not of fear. At that moment I saw—for I had been stationed where I could both see and hear what was passing in the council chamber—I saw that the Earl had won only a skirmish, not a battle. The patroon might be defeated for the present, but the spirit that showed in his face was not to be crushed by this blow. Strangely enough, the Earl’s next words pointed the anger of the patroon in a new direction, a direction that in the end almost brought the Earl and his followers to their ruin.

“Captain Kidd,” the Earl resumed, “is now on his way to New York. His crew, which, at present, is but half made up, is to be completed in this city.”

This was the fact that was news to the patroon. He started and turned his face with renewed interest towards the governor, who continued in an unruffled voice.

“A conspiracy has been nipped in the bud, gentlemen—a conspiracy tending to prevent honest men from entering our service and therefore tending to diminish the integrity of Captain Kidd’s crew.”

He paused, looked slowly over his audience, who were breathless with interest, and let his eyes rest upon Van Volkenberg.

“At midnight last, William Bradford, the printer, was arrested by my order. At the time of his arrest he was engaged in putting into type this paper, which I shall now read aloud and then give into your hands for further examination:

“‘CITIZENS OF NEW YORK, BEWARE! Captain William Kidd, famous for his knowledge of the haunts and practices of the buccaneers, will soon arrive in New York to lay in stores and take commissions for the South Seas. He sails under cover of a patent, granted by the Earl of Bellamont, Governor of His Majesty’s province of New York, granting him power to cruise against the buccaneers. This alleged purpose is a trick to deceive the people. Captain Kidd’s real purpose is to cooperate with the pirates, to evade the laws of the province, and to enrich the pocket of the governor. Beware how you countenance this betrayal of your laws.’” Then the Earl added: “How inimical the sentiment expressed herein is to the interests and procedure of our royal master is forthwith apparent. Gentlemen, examine the document for yourselves.”

He handed it to Mr. Livingstone, who in turn passed it on to Mr. Pinhorne. The paper traveled slowly down the table. Suddenly one of the councillors exclaimed, “By my soul! This is Van Volkenberg’s hand.”

“And what if it is?” the patroon cried out, at the same time bringing his fist down on the table with an angry blow.

There was the silence of amazement at this sudden explosion.

“Do not deliberate hastily,” said the Earl, with a smile. “Let me make clear the manner in which this paper came into my hands.” He rang a bell for a servant. “Fetch Monsieur Le Bourse.”

I shall never forget the blank expression on the patroon’s face at the moment I stepped into the room in obedience to the Earl’s command; nor shall I forget the thrill of joy I experienced when I saw that the patroon knew who had driven him to bay. I related in as few words as possible what had happened during the night, dwelling on the damning evidence which my story furnished of the truth of the rumors that Van Volkenberg had secret dealings with the buccaneers. When I had finished my tale, Mr. Livingstone rose and claimed the floor.

“Your Excellency,” he said, “this is worse than I could have imagined. It is enough to justify expulsion from the council.”

“I shall not remain to embarrass your consideration,” said the patroon.

He got upon his feet, ashy pale, and trembling with suppressed rage, but with a noble dignity in his disgrace withal.

“I acknowledge your accusation,” continued the patroon. “If your clemency (bowing to the governor), which is well known to all of us, will permit a fallen man to resign the honor of a seat at your council board before he is deprived of it by force, I shall be everlastingly in your debt.”

With that he bowed again, first to the Earl, then to the company, and left the room.

For a moment, I, who was the cause of this disgrace, felt almost as if the victory were the patroon’s. Every person present, even the Earl, sat abashed as if he had done something wrong. For a moment I almost agreed with the Earl, and wished I had not spied through the window. How nobly the patroon had sustained his defeat! There was no storming, no begging; he simply accepted the inevitable and bowed with dignity in his ruin. He was such a man as one would gladly serve if he were only upon the side of right and honor. Sympathy with the manliness of the patroon, however, soon gave way as the consciousness of his treachery and double dealing again grew uppermost in my mind. The only lasting effect of this scene upon me was a deep-seated joy such as a man feels when he meets a worthy foe. My determination was strengthened, not weakened, by this short-lived attack of sympathy for my enemy.

Meantime the patroon mounted his horse at the entrance of the fort. Scarcely was he through the massive stone gateway before a great change came over him. He broke out into loud peals of laughter. He clapped spurs to his horse and rode furiously to the house of Colonel Fletcher. All the way from the fort to the house of his friend he was laughing and calling out at the top of his voice and waving his arms about his head like a man taken in a fit. An hour later he was carried out of the house like a sick man, deposited in a sedan chair, and in this conveyance taken to his home.

CHAPTER XIV
PLOTTING WITHOUT THE EARL

Later in the day of Van Volkenberg’s disgrace, Lady Marmaduke and I were talking together in no very pleasant frame of mind. We both knew the far-reaching power of the Red Band, and the extremes to which the patroon would go in order to carry out his designs. He now knew that it was I who had brought his disgrace upon him. People are always likely to suspect and hate those whom they have injured beyond repair. The death of Ruth was enough to account for any blow that the patroon might aim at me. Add to this motive the fact that I had brought humiliation upon him, that I had been the cause of his expulsion from the council, and one can easily imagine how little reason there was to believe that I should be overlooked in his subsequent meditations. The injury I had done to the patroon not only held him up to ridicule and scorn, but also, by removing him from the governor’s council, deprived him of his most potent means of plotting against the Earl. Take it all in all, I was treading in dangerous water, and both Lady Marmaduke and I knew it.

“How do you expect to escape his vengeance?” she said in a significantly despondent tone. “How will you keep your head on your shoulders till tomorrow morning or next day?”

I smiled grimly, but made no reply to her question. In fact, I was all at sea as to what to do, and I knew that she was in the same state of mind. For several minutes there was silence between us; neither of us had a word further to say. Of a sudden my mistress snapped her fingers and a light as of a new idea began to sparkle in her eyes.

“He is a Catholic,” she said. “I wish the laws that apply to priests would apply to him.” She muttered these words half aloud as if she was talking to herself. But her next sentence was addressed to me. “You know that when a Jesuit priest steps across the boundary of our province we hang him. That is our law.” She dropped her eyes again and seemed, as before, to muse aloud. “Poor little Ruth. Such sweet, sweet eyes; so sad. They were not sad at first—they grew sad. Had it been only trouble that won her young life away! But to be robbed of it by a Roman Catholic. If you could have seen her face, so cold and pale when I went to see the mark of the hot iron!” She turned her eyes towards me suddenly. “Have you ever smelt burning flesh?” she demanded.

“For God’s sake!” I cried. “You pierce me to the heart.”

Words cannot express the agony I felt at this mention of the manner of my sister’s death; but, in spite of my misery, Lady Marmaduke went on without pity.

“He did not brand her, but he did worse. He went to her room at night and murdered her in bed. Why? Because—”

I put out my hand in a gesture of appeal. She left the sentence unfinished and began anew.

“Can you not see, friend Michael, why I twist this knife of recollection till it galls you to the quick? Le Bourse, did you love your sister?”

“What of that?” I answered hoarsely, wondering why she asked me such a question.

“Do you think that you will be able to keep your life in your body for a week now that you have given such offense to the leader of the Red Band? You hesitate. Nay, answer me honestly. Unless you skulk like a coward and hide yourself inside my house, how long will you escape their vengeance?”

I shook my head. Indeed there was no limit of time too brief to suit the truth.

“Did you love your sister?”

“Why do you ask that question as if you doubted it?” I answered petulantly. “Do you not know that—”

“Tut, tut, I do not doubt you, but I wonder whether you will stand the test. This is no common enemy you have to deal with. He is a wily man and wields much power. By your own reckoning your life is not worth that.” She snapped her fingers. “You must take the game into your own hands. If you should die, who would avenge Ruth?”

“Or Sir Evelin?” I responded.

Her brows darkened. A flush spread slowly over her swarthy features like a storm cloud. I knew that I was standing before the Black Lady Marmaduke, and from that moment I understood why they had given her that name. She was the very image of deep passion, yet of passion that was under control withal. She was such a leader as a man could trust himself to in full confidence of finding bravery, loyalty and—for I had no doubt of the result—victory.

“Yes,” she answered. “Or Sir Evelin! Ruth and Sir Evelin! You and I must keep alive. Will you make a desperate cast for the prize? Will you stake all upon one bold throw?”

The swift nervous clutch of her hand on my shoulder which accompanied her last words, and the sound of her breath, hard and rasping like a person in a trance, told me better than words why she had been probing me to the depths of my misery. I knew that the plan she was about to propose would be full to the brim of peril.

“I’ll play it,” I answered, responding in every nerve to the spell of her fierce passions. “What is the cast?”

“Your life.”

“Explain.”

“You cannot live as it is. Assume a disguise. Be someone else.”

“That is easy, but to what does it lead?”

“To the house of the Red Band. You have still the silver buttons that the buccaneer gave you. Take them boldly, according to your first intention, and present them to the patroon. Tell him you want to enlist in the Red Band. With you in the very center of the board, we can soon sweep it clean.”

She had suggested a desperate enterprise indeed, one that took my breath away. Yet, upon consideration, I found it no more desperate than the situation as it stood at that moment. Of course I should not consent to hide myself away from danger, in which course, according to Lady Marmaduke, lay my only hope of safety. Nor could I expect to escape the patroon’s wrath in any other way. The members of the Red Band were not above the secret blow under cover of the night, and I might fall at any moment. Perhaps, after all, it was really safer for me to go boldly into the midst of my enemies than to let them come at me from a distance. Yet I hesitated.

“Are you afraid?” flashed Lady Marmaduke in scornful anger.

“Had I been afraid, madam, I had never hesitated,” I replied.

“SHE THRUST HER HAND
INTO THE CANDLE FLAME.”—p. 160

What really troubled me and made it hard for me to decide was not the danger, nor even a doubt of my success. On the contrary, I hesitated over a point of honor. I knew very well that the Earl would not approve of this. Could I? I had never, save on the night before, played the part of a spy, and my own name was the last thing in the world I should be ashamed to own. I could fight; but no—I could never be capable of this kind of work. Then I glanced at Lady Marmaduke. There were tears in her eyes, and I knew she must be thinking of her husband. Could I desert her now? I had sworn to be her man. Was it honest and just to turn away from her in the critical moment—the first time she had desired my help? My mind was swaying in the opposite direction when the thought of what Ruth would have said clutched my wavering mind back to the side of truth and honor.

Lady Marmaduke must have seen all this passing in my mind or shadowed in my face. It was time for her to put her firm hand upon me and force me the way she would have me go, whether I would or not. It was to my brute passions she appealed, not to my reason.

When I had entered the room ten minutes before, she was writing letters, and the candle she used to soften her wax with was still burning upon the table. She took a step towards me and as she did so I noticed the candle flame wave delicately to one side.

“Michael,” she said, putting her hand upon my shoulder. “You hesitate and I am ashamed of you.” Her hand moved along my shoulder till her fingers played upon my neck. “I said that I saw no mark upon her body. What if there were prints upon her neck?” At that instant her iron fingers closed on my throat with a grip that made me cry out.

“Hush, fool,” she said fiercely, relaxing her grip. “I am not going to choke you; but her throat was delicate and you know how it feels.” Then her manner changed. She spoke quickly and looked towards the candle. “He said he branded her. Perhaps he did. It was night when I looked at her body. One cannot see plain by night. Perhaps he did after all. Did you ever see a person branded? Smell, Michael, smell.”

She thrust her left hand into the candle flame.

“For God’s sake!” I cried, trying to snatch her hand away.

“Stop,” she replied, in her terrible deep voice. At the same moment she caught my rescuing hand and held it in a vise.

“Smell. This is what it is like to be branded.”

A spell seemed to take hold of me. I had no power to move, but stood still watching her finger scorch in the tall flame. Once I saw it tremble, but she bit her lip and grew steady again. The flesh began to shrivel and then—my God! I caught that horrible stench of burning flesh.

“Stop,” I shrieked.

“Oh Ruth, Ruth, how I pity you in your pain,” cried my mistress, who held on, enduring that bitter agony to make me succumb to her will.

Then the sickening smell came again stronger than ever.

“Ruth, Ruth, Ruth! The bloodhound! Stop. I’ll go, I’ll go. Oh my God, my God, my God!”

I threw up my hands with a cry of horror and shut my eyes upon the terrible suggestion of that cruel sight. Lady Marmaduke bent close to me and spoke in my ear.

“Methinks I can hear her scream in agony. God, how she must have suffered!”

My mistress told me afterwards that I groaned and reeled backward. I should have fallen had she not caught me by the arm. In a moment the passion spent itself and I was sane once more. But the temptation of that smell had prevailed against the prompting of my conscience. I determined to run the risk. My life if it must be! Yes, my life, but his too.

So I resolved to join the Red Band. The elaborate precautions I took before I assumed my disguise were not excessive. There were many accidents to be provided against. In the first place, though Lady Marmaduke would be able to account plausibly for my disappearance from New York, I might be tolerably sure that the patroon would scent danger in the circumstance. I must be doubly careful not to leave any tracks that would point either forward or backward from the moment I changed my identity.

Paradoxical as it sounds, I must accomplish my disguise without the help of any disguise at all. If my bold plan succeeded and resulted in my becoming a member of the Red Band, I must be able to strip and wash myself before my fellow members, or to stand a merry bout of leapfrog or wrestling in the servants’ quarters. In such a situation I could not guard myself against discovery by means of a painted face that would wash off at the first touch of water, nor rely upon a wig or any other outward changes of my face. I could put on different clothes; I could cut off my beard and moustache; for the rest, I must trust to the very boldness of the deception to bring me through with safety.

When night came I had prepared a plan by which I hoped to annihilate every trace of my presence as completely as if I had flown away on the wings of the wind. In the course of the day it got abroad that I should set out early the next morning for Albany on business of Lady Marmaduke’s. In this simple way was my disappearance on the morrow to be accounted for.

About midnight Pierre and I left the city stealthily and paddled in a canoe to the shore of Long Island. Little Pierre, as I have said, was a barber. He had brought his shaving utensils with him, and by the light of the moon he shaved me, lip and chin. I then put on the one suit of clothes that I had brought with me and which, fortunately, I had not yet worn in public. Pierre made a bundle of my discarded garments and prepared to set out with them to Marmaduke Hall. We shook hands at the edge of the water. Pierre tried once or twice to say something, but he could not find the voice. He seemed to feel the danger of the situation even more than I did. At last he blurted out:

“Well, if we don’t see you again, here’s luck.”

He gave the canoe a prodigious shove. A moment later he was paddling steadily towards the North River. I watched him until he was lost in the darkness; then I set out across the island to Gravesoon, for I intended to repeat the journey that I had formerly made when I first came to New York. If, when I appeared at the manor-house, Van Volkenberg should doubt the truth of the story I was going to tell him, he would be likely to inquire into the circumstances of my arrival. I resolved to let him trace me to the very edge of the broad Atlantic. There he might stare to his heart’s content. He would see nothing but the wide blue circle of the sea.

Fortune was on my side that morning. By day-light I was standing on the shore of the cove where I had been set down a few days before by Captain Tew. There was, by accident, at that very moment a great ship hull down in the offing. The presence of this vessel did me good service. When I approached the ordinary at Gravesoon, in spite of the early hour of the morning, I found a number of people about the door. One of them held a spy-glass in his hand and was trying to make out the identity of the distant ship.

I was much relieved to find, when I came to speak with the landlord, that he had but the vaguest recollection of my former appearance. To be sure, he had seen me only once; yet he had a slight remembrance of the fact. When I hinted pretty plainly that I had come ashore from the ship, which by that time was almost out of sight, he said:

“You are the second man this week. The other fellow came at night and, bless you! not a word would he say of where he came from or where he was going to.” This reassured me, for I had inquired after Van Volkenberg, and I was glad that the landlord had forgotten the fact. Then he said abruptly, “Can you blow a shell?”

I assured him that I could.

“Well, he couldn’t; he was a poor piece.”

That ended our consultation. By noon I had left the ordinary at Gravesoon far behind me and had crossed the East River once more into New York. On different occasions during the day I met both my mistress and the Earl of Bellamont. I smiled to myself to think how I could have astonished them had I wished to speak out. I spent so much of the afternoon bartering for a horse and attending to other small matters that it was nearly sunset before I was ready to set out for the manor-house. To tell the truth, I had another reason for delay. I was minded to put my disguise to a more thorough test before I threw myself into the power of the patroon. With this end in view,[view,] I presented myself at Marmaduke Hall and inquired for the mistress.

I had not forgotten what she had told me about the title to her estate, nor that Van Volkenberg had vowed that he would get possession of it in spite of all law to the contrary. So, when I sent my new name, Henrie St. Vincent, to Lady Marmaduke, I sent word also that I was a messenger from Patroon Van Volkenberg and wished to see her on business concerning her estate. She received me in a high state of dignity, standing erect at one end of the long room with her hand gripped on the collar of a dog.

“Madam,” said I, and got no further before she interrupted me.

“Sir,” she replied. “I understand that you come from Kilian Van Volkenberg. I can guess your errand. Will you be pleased to follow me.”

She was very angry, for which I could see no reason since she had not heard a word of what I had to say. Perhaps it was the mere impudence of a messenger from the patroon. She strode out of the apartment with me trooping behind her, wondering what she was going to do next. She led the way through the kitchen to the little outbuilding where I had seen the huge iron pots a few days before. Fire raged under three of them. The massive covers tilted and rocked above the steam. Lady Marmaduke signed to the servants to remove one of the lids. They caught hold of the chains and began to pull. As the lid rose a cloud of steam filled the room. I could feel my newly shaved cheeks go damp and moist with the vapor. Lady Marmaduke looked at me, but I could only see her face at times, for the steam came and went in clouds between us.

“Do you see that?” she asked in a high voice, hard with anger. “If you or any other of your accursed Red Band dare to set foot in Marmaduke Hall again, I shall put you in that pot. Ay, if it is old Kilian himself, I shall drop him in. Do you hear me?”

She looked as if she meant what she said; for all that, I could not forbear a smile. She peered into my face for a moment and then her expression seemed to relax a little.

“Why do you laugh?” she asked. “You are impudent like your master. I have a mind to let my dogs loose on you. I understand that that is a favorite trick at the manor-house. But I shall not do it. Come with me. I have a last message to send the honorable patroon.”

When we were back in the great room again she closed the door behind her. Then she fell into a spell of laughter which was so loud and hearty that I thought she was in hysterics. After a moment she stopped as violently as she had begun, though her body still shook with suppressed merriment.

“What would they think,” she said as soon as she could get her voice. “What would they think if they could hear me laugh like this with a man of my sworn enemy’s at my elbow? But be sure you do not let him send you here. I should put you in the pot if he did and that would be a great pity. Yes, I should put you in the pot, even you, as sure as your name is Michael Le Bourse.”

It was now my turn to be amazed. The fact that she had penetrated my disguise was disconcerting in the extreme. She soon set me at ease, however, by telling me that her suspicions were not aroused until I smiled at her fierce threats.

“No one in Yorke laughs in my presence when I am angry,” was her explanation. “But then, Michael, I knew you were somewhere about in disguise and I have seen more of you than any one else in the city. I do not think that you need to fear that he will recognize you.”

“I hope not,” was my answer. Another meeting that I had already had helped to dispel my fears. On my way to Marmaduke Hall I had encountered Pierre. I accosted him boldly and inquired my way. Yet Pierre, who had actually seen me since my change—though, to be sure, he had seen me only by dim moonlight—even he failed to show the least sign of recognition.

Now that my mistress knew who I was, I broached a subject that had already been matter of conversation between us. It was whether we should let the Earl know of our present undertaking. Lady Marmaduke had already told me that the time would come when we should have to jog our own way if we jogged at all. She seemed to think that that time had come, though I had serious doubts about it.

“No, Michael, we must not tell him now. In fact, I sounded him this afternoon in a roundabout way without mentioning names. What do you think he said? He took up a book from the table. You know he is a great reader and this was one of those ancient history books where he says the old play writers got their stage stories from. He said that it told about once upon a time when Pompey—he was a Roman general, you know—had Caesar and Antony and Lepidus to dinner with him on one of his ships. One of Pompey’s officers came to him and said that if he would cut the cables that held his ship he could put out to sea and he would have all his enemies in his power. You see Pompey was at war with the other three and they had met to arrange a peace.”

“What did Pompey do?” I inquired of my lady.

“Just what I asked the Earl. Would you believe it? Pompey was too nice for that kind of thing, and because he felt he could not do it honorably himself, he got mad at his officer and cursed him roundly for not having done it himself, instead of telling him about it. Such a service should have been performed before he was consulted. Then it had been a service indeed. It was very amusing to see the Earl’s eyes twinkle as he told this story. I could not resist the temptation to tease him.

“‘What if I have acted on Pompey’s advice,’ said I, ‘and have come to tell you that it is already done?’

“That greatly agitated him. ‘You cannot. For the world, I would not have you take me seriously. I could not descend to such dishonest practices as that.’

“This made me wince, and I was minded to give him a sharp answer. But I did not. I put him off with excuses and he is none the wiser. You do not still think we had better tell him, do you?”

I certainly did not, but, for all that, I was uneasy in my mind. I was not at all sure but that the Earl was right and my lady wrong. However, it was now too late to mend. That was a great comfort. I put a brave face on the matter and resolved to carry my part through to the end.

But I was to have one more disagreeable reminder of my danger before I set out for Van Volkenberg’s. The details of this event do not matter, but the main fact may as well be told. Pierre, unintelligent as his face had appeared when I met him, had recognized me. He was so proud because he had not betrayed his knowledge that he managed a safe way to let me know about it, bragging at length of his discretion. The only effect of this piece of news upon me was to make me feel still more insecure and doubtful of the reception I should meet with at the manor-house. One thought, however, comforted me. Van Volkenberg had seen me only a few times and then for only a few minutes at a time. I really believed that he would not be able to recognize me after the change wrought by the removal of my heavy beard. Yet I set out not wholly sure. I must confess that my heart was beating a little quicker than usual in anticipation of the result.

CHAPTER XV
THE SILVER BUTTONS

I set out for the manor-house shortly before twilight, taking the Boston post road, which led northward by the patroon’s estate. I passed the Kissing Bridge, over which I had seen the patroon and his dwarf ride with a retinue of soldiers behind them; thence along the doubling road for five miles till I came at last to a noble park of elms and beeches. Here the road began to lift, not steeply, but swinging in broad curves among the tree trunks, till at last I came to a pause on the crest of a hill. After breathing my horse for a moment, I continued my way and soon reached a terraced lawn dotted with shrubs, and all of an exquisite softness of color. A fringe of cedars hid the offices and out-buildings, though the side of the manor-house was in plain view. When I reached the front of the rambling stone building, a servant in livery took my horse, and another showed me into a reception room, where I was to wait till he took my name to his master. Soon he returned and desired me to follow him.

I found Van Volkenberg in his study, surrounded by papers and maps; he was evidently deep in the business of his estate.

A dog—it looked like the one I had fought with, though I thought I had killed him—this dog rose at my entrance and stood by his master’s chair, growling sullenly. The patroon looked up with an expression in his face that showed neither irritation at being interrupted nor pleasure at seeing me. He was dressed from head to foot in black except for a dark crimson skull cap that confined his silver gray hair. He was seated by the table when I entered, but rose politely to bid me welcome.

“Monsieur St. Vincent,” he said with a dignified inclination of his head. “C’est bien.”

I made a low bow, pleased to hear my native tongue. Then I stood erect with one hand on the hilt of my sword, the other resting upon my hip. I threw as much bravado into my appearance as I could, for I was playing a bold game and the patroon did not look like a man who would be taken by a cringing manner.

“Patroon Van Volkenberg,” I began, in order to introduce my errand, “I have come to ask a favor of you.”

“Ah,” he returned pleasantly. “Favors are what I like. Pray be seated. Louis, a chair for Monsieur St. Vincent.”

It was the dwarf, Louis Van Ramm, who had escorted me into the presence of the patroon. He now set a chair for me and, at another signal, withdrew. He seemed to obey his orders a little sullenly. I am not sure but that the signal for his withdrawal was repeated before he noticed it. This behavior surprised me, for I had heard much of the discipline of the Red Band and of the despotic rule of Van Volkenberg.

“Now, sir,” continued the patroon as soon as we were alone. “Now, sir, I am at your service.”

“It is to be admitted to yours that I have come to you to-day.”

“To mine; to my service do you mean?”

“Yes, sir.”

“For what reason?” he asked, gazing at me with his keen, penetrating eyes.

“From what I hear of the condition of the city, I am led to believe that you have plenty of work for a soldier who has honorable scars to show.”

“You mean, I suppose, that some one has told you that there is fighting to do in the Red Band.”

“I was informed, indeed, that there was fighting recently on the Slip.”

“No ‘indeed’ about it! A mere brawl. A street fight among drunkards. Is that the kind of fighting you are anxious for?”

“I shall not choose the quarrels if your honor will let me help to settle them.”

“You have a clever way with your tongue, monsieur. But why did you come to me? The Earl of Bellamont is the man of all Yorke whom it is good to fight for at present.”

“True, sir. But I came to you for the simplest of reasons. He will have none of me.”

“Hush, you brute,” he cried to the dog, who had begun to growl again. “So you applied to his Excellency, did you?”

“Assuredly.”

“Assuredly! I like your assuredly and your assurance too! Why him before me?”

“You have just spoken it; because he is the man now.”

“Zounds! This to my face! And asking a favor of me to boot! Back, you brute. Must you fly at everything I point my finger at?”

The patroon had started up angrily, followed by his dog, which leaped upon me, or had nearly done so, when his master caught him by the collar and dragged him back. The suddenness of the attack gave me no time to reflect, much less to get out of the way. Therefore I made a virtue of necessity and stood my ground with firmness. This apparent fortitude on my part seemed to raise me considerably in the opinion of the patroon.

“You are no coward,” he said, at the same time making an effort to pacify the hound. “How am I to know that you are not sent here by my enemies to spy upon me? It is not three days since I found Caesar nearly dead, and the next morning there were footprints under my study window.”

Whether it was by mere chance or by intention that he made this allusion to my former escapade, I do not know. However, I met his look bravely and without flinching. For the moment, he seemed satisfied of my integrity, whatever his inward thoughts may have been.

“Tell your story, St. Vincent. But mark my word, if you play me a trick I shall have you lashed.” He hesitated a moment, then added, with his eyes upon me as before: “Ay, or worse than lashed.”

“When you find me false, it will be time to talk of punishment,” I answered stiffly. “I am no knave, but an honest man.”

“Proceed; it is the only way I can get rid of you.”

“Pardon me,” I retorted, at the same time rising from my chair as if much offended at his rude rejoinder. “I have no desire to serve you. There are some things that become neither a gentleman nor a gentleman’s master. I shall rid you of my presence as soon as I have delivered a message that should not have waited on my own concerns.”

“You have a message for me?”

“Yes. Captain Tew desired me to inform you that his voyage is prospering well, and that ample return will be made.”

“Tew, Tew, who is Captain Tew?”

“Your honor best knows. He bade me tell you that. With your permission I shall seek my horse.”

“Be not so quick to take offense. Sit down again and explain your errand.”

“My only other purpose was to enter your service, and on that point I have changed my mind.”

“Sit down, fool. I take back what I said. Can you not pardon an old man’s temper?”

Plainly my allusion to the buccaneer had touched him home. I knew by the look in his face that by that clew I could wind him round my finger; but I saw too that I must be careful not to run my own head into a noose while I made the attempt to snare him. As yet I had succeeded in arousing only his interest and, perhaps, his suspicion. For a moment I stood with my eyes on the ground as if debating with myself. Then I answered:

“You have spoken like a gentleman. I likewise retract my hasty speech.”

He gave me his hand.

“We begin to understand each other, Monsieur St. Vincent. I was wrong in my first impression. Frankly, I took you for a spy who would not leave till you had wormed some information out of me. But I am satisfied. You have not the manner of a spy. Now tell your tale.”

He fitted the palms of his hands together, idly paddling the tips of his fingers against each other. This was a habit, I afterwards learned, that he often resorted to, especially when he was at a loss to comprehend the situation. I went on to tell the patroon a made-up tale of my adventures with the buccaneer.

“Captain Tew,” I said in the course of my narrative, “was for helping me, and, as I was bound for New York, he put me ashore near Gravesoon, telling me to come to you. He assured me that you and the previous governor, Colonel Fletcher, were well acquainted with him, and that you were always on the lookout for a good blade and a faithful servant.”

I paused as if I had said all that I was going to say. The patroon, I thought, did not relish my story. He sat silent, still drumming his finger tips. From time to time he looked sullenly at me, then he would drop his eyes to his pattering fingers again. For several minutes he continued in this state of agitation.

“I admit that I have seen this fellow Tew,” he said at last. “I had forgotten the name, but now he comes back to me. His dealings with Fletcher and me were before he took to the seas for a livelihood.”

He fell silent. Evidently I had touched him deeply. I could make a fair guess of what was in his mind. Would it be safer for him to let me go free, or to keep me at his side where he could watch me? If I were really a spy, I must possess some dangerous information concerning his dealings with the buccaneers. On the other hand, if I were what I said I was, he could make good use of me in the Red Band. As we sat silent I heard a distant bell toll.

“Our evening service,” said the patroon. “Will you attend?”

Patroon Van Volkenberg was a Catholic. At that moment, when he asked me to attend a Roman service, I had more ado to preserve my self-control than I had had for many a day. So violent was my anger, and so difficult to suppress, that I resolved on the instant to make a desperate move in order to protect myself against similar temptations in the future.

“Mynheer,” I said, “I see by your face that you trust me. I must be plain spoken with you if I expect the same from you. I cannot attend your service because I am a Protestant. I am not only that, but a refugee, and I despise—”

“Softly, softly,” he returned, lifting his hand as if to calm me. “I understand your feelings, but you will not find them shared. I’ll trust a Protestant as well as a Catholic. Curse their religion, but they are honest men. King Louis broke the best bone in his body when he sent you away. But I am not a fool. The devil himself may serve me if he serves me well. I respect you for that.”

I rose from my chair and he rose likewise. For a moment we stood fronting each other. I saw by the look of his eye that he was still in doubt. The moment had come for me to play my last card.

“This button,” said I, handing it to him. “This button was given me by Captain Tew as an introduction.”

While he was examining the button with great interest, I continued to dwell on what I thought were significant details.

“The jolly captain cut it off his coat,” I said. “I remember how he drew his cutlass and cursed it roundly as a clumsy tool for such a service. ‘Take the button,’ he said. 'It’s a high price I pay you, for I value the name that’s scratched on the back. By my soul! If Tommy Tew is ever taken, there’ll be some damning tales in Yorke about the governor when they come to examine the buttons on his coat.'”

“Fletcher was a fool to send him those buttons,” exclaimed Van Volkenberg. “But give me your hand, St. Vincent. You shall be my man. In the morning, if you still desire it, you shall put the red band upon your sleeve.”

With that we shook hands.

“What ails the brute?” cried the patroon, for the dog was growling again and walking about me in sidelong circles.

Small wonder that he showed a strong aversion to me! I supposed that I had left him dead from our struggle in the woods. Doubtless his sides and neck still ached from that encounter.

“Perhaps I can quiet him,” I said, smiling to myself.

But when I put out my hand towards him he bounded back with a yelp of terror. Then he dashed through the door and was gone.

“Humph!” exclaimed the patroon. “Like his mistress half the time.”

“His mistress?” I cried in surprise, for I had thought that the dog belonged to the patroon.

“Yes,” he answered, a frown gathering on his face. “Caesar belongs to a crazy old hag who lives in the hills. Meg of the Hills we call her. Poor Meg!”

I thought little of the dog’s behavior then, but it was to come home to me before the night was over. Meantime, I felt more or less despondent, though, for the life of me, I could not say why. I had played my hand boldly and I had won. I was now, or should be in the morning, a member of the Red Band. I should be able to ferret out the patroon’s secrets. I hoped to be able to trip him up and thus put an end to his evil practices forever. Yet when we clasped hands in final agreement, I felt instinctively that I had met my match. Could it be that there were two play-actors in Van Volkenberg manor that night when I thought that there was but one? Did he see deeper than he pretended to see? Was he, as well as I, playing a part? Time alone could tell. But nothing is ever mended by worry; the thought of this old maxim soon drove away my fears, and my spirits rose in consequence.

CHAPTER XVI
“FIRE AND SLEETE AND CANDLE-LIGHT”

Of all the crises of my life I am accustomed to think of the presentation of my silver button to the patroon as the most important. Nor did I underrate it at the time. On that night, when the manor was settling itself to sleep, I walked restlessly on the wide terrace, taking account of the game as it stood, of the cards in my hand, and reckoning forward on the play of the morrow.

The manor-house was a rambling stone structure of two stories. It abounded in irregular corners, and in long, gloomy corridors which crossed and forked as intricately as the streets of a city. On the north side, the side visible from the window of my room, there was a wide terrace. When I stepped upon it, it was mostly in the deep shadow. Here and there, however, the moonlight broke across it in narrow silver bands.

I was thinking about my new master and about the danger of my situation. Lady Marmaduke and Pierre had both penetrated my disguise. Was the patroon as keen-eyed as they? Had he recognized me also and had he guessed the secret of my presence? I recalled every word he had said, and every expression of his face, even the idle tapping of his finger tips. The more I pondered the more I was at a loss. I could make nothing of the patroon’s action beyond what appeared on the surface. So I gave over thinking of him and thought of pleasanter things.

There are few joys in this world greater than the approach of danger when it courts success. But when the certainty of success is absent one has not far to go to find happier stuff for musing. My mind was soon full of the girl Miriam. Here, in the very bosom of my enemy’s house, where I was a spy in constant peril of my life, I had found one who, if not exactly my friend, had, at least, a strong claim upon my gratitude. I had no doubt now that I had met the patroon’s daughter when I wandered in my trance, and that she had given me the miniature which I wore about my neck. In my dreams I had thought her an angel. To my waking eyes she appeared no less beautiful. Her tall, graceful figure, her calm eyes and dark hair, above all, her pride and her affection for my sister—all these qualities together won my heart. Though she was a Catholic, I could not cease to think of her as I had seen her when I crouched beneath her father’s window, when she stood bravely facing his headlong anger on behalf of the girl whom she must have considered as a common servant. I made up my mind to protect her. I recalled the goblet that I had seen shatter against the wall. The idea of her needing a protector was not an idle dream.

While I was thinking about her she came towards me, walking slowly along the shadowy terrace. I first spied her white dress shimmering in the dark; then she stepped into a band of moonlight and her whole figure became radiant. I took off my hat, but she passed me without a word or even a bow of recognition. She seemed to have come out upon the terrace for no other purpose than to take the air. She continued to traverse it back and forth without paying any attention to me. Only once she seemed to notice me. Then she stopped in front of me, was about to speak, lifted her head proudly, and passed on.

While we were thus, a distant sound broke savagely upon our ears. The night had fallen very still, so still you could count the chirping crickets. A fringe of birches in the moonlight looked like a row of peering ghosts. The sudden sound that broke the stillness seemed at first to be some one calling out. It was coming nearer, though it came and went drearily. At times it was almost like a song. Occasionally it rose to a long mournful wail; after that there would be silence.

Mistress Van Volkenberg stopped to listen. She stood so near me that I could have touched her with my hand. I could hear her breathe in long gasping breaths. “She must not come to-night,” I heard her mutter. “If I could only warn her back!”

“I am at your service, madam.”

“Hush,” she said. She stepped a little closer to me and continued: “It is Meg of the Hills, a poor crazy woman. But I love her. She used to be my mother’s servant.”

“Is it not safe for her?” I asked.

“Her wild ways anger my father,” was her simple answer.

I needed no further explanation to know why she dreaded a meeting between the two. After five minutes, during which we listened in silence, Meg appeared at the edge of the wide stretch of turf that surrounded the house. She was still chanting her wild song, which was unlike any music I had ever fancied. Behind her, nosing her skirts, came the hound, Caesar, who had fled when I offered to touch him. I inquired again whether I should convey a warning message to her.

“No,” answered my companion. “That would distress my father also. Let us wait.”

The woman and the dog came nearer. They were about to pass us when the latter suddenly stopped and began to growl.

“What is it, Meg?” said my companion in a soothing tone. Then she gripped my arm tight. Her fingers trembled with excitement. I looked around for the cause and saw that her father had stepped upon the terrace. Meantime Meg of the Hills had caught sight of us. She stopped singing. The light fell upon her angular face, full of lines and ridges. Her long white hair streamed like silver down her back. Suddenly she stretched a long, skinny finger at me. She threw back her head like a baying dog. And she wailed in a grewsome drone:

“Fire and sleete and candle-light,

And Christ receive your soul.”

“Meg,” cried the patroon sharply, and in a moment was by her side.

Mistress Van Volkenberg put her lips close to my ear. “That is a bad omen and they are superstitious here. Be wary of yourself to-night.”

I gave full heed to what she said, for the scene was already telling upon my nerves. But what did it mean? My companion would not stop to explain her warning. The patroon disappeared round the corner of the house with his witless charge. I remained alone upon the terrace like a man awakened from a dream. Yet this time I knew that it was no dream.

I did not forget her warning. When I shut the door of my room I looked to the priming of my pistols, drew my sword from its scabbard, and then lay down upon the bed without undressing. Some time later I awakened suddenly with the consciousness that I had been struck in the face; not a heavy blow, but a light one as if by some small object. I sat still, listening. Soon there came a sharp click upon the floor, then another as of something striking against the window frame. Someone was surely throwing pebbles into my room from the outside. I rose and went to look out of my window, which was on the second floor. Below me in the moonlight stood Meg of the Hills. Her skinny finger was raised to her lips for silence. For a moment her features showed intense—what was it? Hatred, anger, fear—I know not. Then she threw up her hands, her head fell back, and she sang:

“Fire and sleete and candle-light,

And Christ receive your soul.”

She pointed her hand at me, pronounced the words, “Be wary,” and was gone swiftly like a shadow on the water. What struck me most was her changed manner. Early in the evening, I had heard her singing in a wild, harsh screech. Now she spoke under her breath, cunningly, as if in secret. Was she warning me and was there cause?

A narrow balcony ran along one side of the house at the level of the second floor, passing just in front of my window. At that moment I heard a casement open and some one step on this balcony. I drew back into my room, catching up my sword and pistols. I smelt danger in the air, though as yet none was visible. Suddenly I concealed myself behind the hangings on the wall. I did this because I saw some one come cautiously to my window and peer through it into my room. I looked again; I could not be mistaken; the figure, the white hair; yes, it was Louis Van Ramm, the patroon’s dwarf.

“I THOUGHT HE WOULD SURELY
HEAR MY BREATHING”—p. 187

The room was too dark for him to see my bed. He listened for a short space of time, during which I thought he would surely hear my breathing. Then he crawled cautiously through the casement into my room. He was followed by a strapping fellow, almost a giant, armed with a huge two-handed sword. They had scarcely entered my room when I saw the patroon behind them upon the balcony just outside the window.

“Be quick,” he said in an undertone. “He may wake at any moment.”

The giant who had followed Louis stepped forward at this command from his chief. He stopped three feet from the side of the bed. I could see him outlined against the window though it must have been all dark to him. He poised the great clumsy weapon for a minute, and then swung it about his head. The blade sang through the air and fell across my bed with a deep thud. But for Meg I should have been lying there!

“My God!” shrieked the giant; and I never heard such agony in a human voice.

“What is it?” cried the patroon in alarm, at the same time springing into the room.

“There is no one here,” answered the man who had made this attack upon my bed.

“So much the worse for you,” returned his master. “Quick; we must get out of here. He is probably down stairs upon the terrace. He may come back.”

Then I beheld a scene the meaning of which I could but guess. The fellow who, from his size, could have overmatched both the patroon and the dwarf, cast away his sword, which fell with a loud clash upon the wooden floor. He forgot all caution in his abject terror. He threw himself before the patroon and clung to his knees.

“Mercy, mercy,” he pleaded. “Have mercy.”

“Hush,” answered his master. “I offered you life for life. The man is not here. It cannot be. You are doomed.”

“I cannot die, I cannot die, I cannot die,” he wailed.

Louis sprang to the fellow’s side and clapped his hand over his mouth to smother his cries. Then the three men prepared to leave the room as they had come, by the window. The patroon went first. He walked backward, holding his drawn sword before him. Louis was in the rear, dragging the great weapon that the murderer had cast away. I was soon to behold with horror the sequel to this scene, from which I had so narrowly escaped with my life. As yet, however, I could but guess the meaning of it.

For the benefit of those who are not familiar with the history of those times, I must repeat what I have already hinted in regard to the powers of the patroons. They were much like the barons of the middle ages. They possessed, among other rights, the right to hold court, to try and condemn the persons who lived on their estate. It was not till later that I learned that Patroon Van Volkenberg had burst all bounds in this respect, and had carried this right so far that only his influence upon the island prevented a direct accusation from Bellamont. The patroons throughout the province saw with chagrin the growing power of the governor. It was their hope to end this for all time by some means, as yet not decided upon. Van Volkenberg alone, among them all, had had the courage to come out boldly and arm his household. This was, to his mind, the only way to advance the power of his class. The Red Band was the result. How it failed we shall learn in the following pages. When the time came for it to fall, it fell completely. Not a blot of it was left to cumber the earth. Even in my own day people have forgotten it. Only now and then do I find anyone who remembers the Red Band, and the rising of the people, and the fate of the patroon. But there are things in that old story of a past time that should be told, and therefore it is that I have set down this narrative to preserve a chronicle that has disappeared from the pages of history so completely that there are some who doubt its very existence.

The patroon, then, carried his fancied powers to the limits of life and death. On the afternoon of my arrival at Van Volkenberg manor, the man who had visited my room in company with the patroon and his henchman in the dead of night, had been convicted of a misdemeanor worthy of death. He was not tried by a regular court such as the patroon was by law entitled to hold. His offense was a violation of one of the laws of the Red Band; and by the Red Band he was condemned to die. When I understood these facts at a later date, I had little trouble in understanding what had taken place in my room. The patroon had bribed him to kill me. The fellow’s reward was freedom, escape from the sentence of the Red Band. How the patroon would have made it right with his followers I do not know; but so much must have been true. However, I am getting ahead of my story. When they left me I knew nothing of this. Nor, for a while, could I even guess at the meaning of what began to take place outside my window in front of the great terrace before the house.

Two men came out bearing upon their shoulders bundles of articles which I did not recognize till they were stuck upright in the ground at regular intervals. They were the cressets which I had seen burning on the first night when I came accidentally upon the Red Band at drill. Soon they were all ablaze. Then members of the Red Band began to gather by twos and threes, walking back and forth within the hollow square of light. Some were talking; others were singing; all of them seemed to be under some strain that needed shaking off.

At last, when there were so many of them that I lost all count, they began to range themselves in an orderly fashion, facing the house. The lights flared fitfully, showing me how serious every face was. Still I was ignorant of what was going to happen.

I had in the meantime strolled out upon the terrace. It was not long before the patroon came out also. He saw me, nodded pleasantly, and faced the band. What he said to them partially explained the situation.

“Men of the Red Band: By your own decree, Ronald Guy has been adjudged guilty of violation of our laws, and is therefore worthy of death. The hour of execution has come. Let the chosen ten step forward.”

Ten men stepped forward from the front rank of the company. Then, as they drew near the terrace, I noticed for the first time that ten muskets were lying there side by side. Each man took up one of the muskets.

“Only one of these weapons is loaded to kill,” said the patroon. “The executioner will not know himself. Let each of you aim as if he did.”

There was a short silence after that, broken only by the crackling of the fire in the cressets; next the sound of feet coming. A slow, steady tramp sounded along the hall. It came nearer, funereal in its slowness. It sent the cold streaking down my back and I shuddered at the thought. They were bringing him to his death. He was blindfolded, but I knew him by his size. He had tried to take my life. I do not know what else he had done. Perhaps he merited death. In that dreadful moment I bore him no ill-will for what he had tried to do to me. Death is death, and the cold-blooded savagery of this scene was appalling.

While the condemned man was being brought forward the patroon was stern and silent. There was no token of remorse in his face. He betrayed no embarrassment when our eyes met. His cursed band of troopers was silent and still like so many statues. Now and then I would see an eye blink that was turned just right to reflect the light. I saw no other sign of life, though once I thought the whole band took breath together.

This execution in the dead of night was a cruel scene. The air was still. The wild flames of the sputtering torches was like hell. They sent long shadows leaping into the dark to lose themselves in the forest beyond. Nothing is so mysterious and so ghastly as many human beings crowded close together, and always still, still, still as death. The strain of what I looked upon became almost unendurable. I wanted to cry out. I wanted to say they should not do it. In a moment I should have shrieked. But relief came from an unexpected source.

The prisoner was told to stand still. The patroon made a sign to the chosen ten. They lifted their muskets to fire. I gripped tight hold of the railing in front of me. I shrank back and closed my eyes. The next moment I should hear the quick report of the guns and smell the deadly powder.

Instead, a shrill owl-hoot broke upon the air. It was a common sound in those parts, but it came so unexpectedly, when everyone was so keyed up, that one cry broke from the strained band of troopers. But it was no owl-hoot after all, only an imitation. It was followed immediately by the uncanny voice of crazy Meg:

“Fire and sleete and candle-light,

And Christ receive your soul.”

“Fire,” shouted the patroon.

The rifles crashed on the frosty air. A dull thud followed. When I looked up, Ronald lay huddled in a heap. I put my hand over my eyes to shut out the sight. When I looked again, Meg was at his side singing.

“Is there ony room at your head, Ronald?

Is there ony room at your feet?

Is there ony room at your side, Ronald?

Where fain, fain I wad sleep?”

I was not the only person who had been strained beyond endurance by the excitement of that moment. The patroon had lost his wits. He sprang to the old woman’s side.

“Stop your nonsense, hag.”

Again she threw back her head in that peculiar, dog-like way.

“Haud your tongue, ye auld-faced knight,

Some ill death may ye die!

Father my bairn on whom I will,

I’ll father nane on thee.”

He doubled up his fist and struck her square in the mouth. Like a pack of wolves the troopers fell in with their master’s lead. They began to howl about her. One gripped her by the hair and pulled her down. Two others caught her by the legs to drag her across the terrace. God forgive them, they hardly knew what they did! I was struck with horror, then with surprise. For Louis Van Ramm sprang like a snake upon his master and caught him by the throat.

“Call off your dogs,” he yelled. “Call off your dogs or I’ll strangle you.”

The patroon obeyed him like a child. It was all he could do to control his followers. It was a grand sight to see the old man plow fearlessly among them, and try to undo what he had done. He battled his way inch by inch to Meg’s side. Soon his influence began to tell. The tumult stilled apace. One by one the troopers slunk away. Before long we were all alone.

“Meg,” said the patroon with almost a touch of tenderness in his voice. “Meg, are you hurt?”

The prostrate woman raised herself upon her elbow. “And if ye dare to kiss my lips,” she sang, “sure of your bodie I will be.”

“For God’s sake,” cried the patroon. “Will she never have done with that?”

He threw up his arms and staggered backward towards the house. His daughter was there to meet him in the doorway. She put her arm about him and supported him away. He seemed to have gone suddenly senseless.

My first care was the old woman. She was unhurt, though overcome by the nervous shock. I carried her to a place of safety, the little dwarf following us like a faithful dog. When we had revived the old woman, he and I returned to bury Ronald Guy. All the other members of the band had disappeared as if they were afraid to remain on the scene of their lawless deed. We had closed the grave and were about to part, when Louis put out his hand.

“I shall not tell you what we have been doing to-night,” he said. “But I swear, before God, hereafter to be your good friend.”

With that he went back to old Meg, and I returned to my room.

CHAPTER XVII
THE EVENTS OF NEXT DAY

Considering the events of that night, one may be tempted to suppose that I lay awake for a long time in restless anxiety. But I did no such thing. I had had a hard day of it, and, in addition to that, my personal sorrow and the reaction from what I had passed through, so overcame me that I fell into a kind of stupor, and slept without undressing. When I awoke in the morning it was broad day. The room, however, was not bright, for the shutters, which had been open when I went to bed, had blown together during the night. A sheet of dusty sunlight slanted through the room. I lay half awake, half asleep, watching the shadows fold like tapestry in the sunbeams. I tried to see pictures in them as one does in the clouds of a summer’s night; and soon I found myself dwelling upon the grotesque features of the dwarf, and on the words he had spoken to me when we parted the night before.

“I shall not tell you what we have been doing,” he had said. “But I swear, before God, hereafter to be your true friend.”

I knew that he had spoken the truth. A few moments before he had been engaged in an attempt to take my life; yet, when he said these words, his voice rang with unmistakable sincerity. He looked me in the face, which is not the way of a liar, and the expression in his face was the expression of truth itself. Of this fact I was mortally certain. What had I done to make his feeling change towards me? We had had but a small matter of words. I had helped him to carry poor old Meg to a place of safety. What else had I done? “Ha!” thought I. “It was she who first warned me of my danger.” Could it be that there was some connection between these two, some unexplained relation that would put a new light upon the small kindness I had shown her? I sprang to my feet. Then I discovered—for I had come fully awake at last—that the door of my room was shut tight and barred on the outside.

I fell into a rage. Had they not done enough the night before? Was this some new trap they had laid for me? I beat and banged upon the floor. I kicked viciously against the door. It did not take much of this to bring a response. There was a clattering of feet in the corridor without, the bolt was quickly drawn back and then the door flew open. In the hallway opposite my door stood the patroon. The white-haired dwarf, peering beneath his arm, was making strange faces at me from his half-sheltered position behind his master’s back. Did he mean them for signs of warning? Beyond these two clustered half a dozen surprised domestics.

Van Volkenberg gazed at me for a moment and then burst into a fit of hearty laughter.

“So they locked you in, did they? Ha, ha, ha! I forgot to tell them that there was a new lodger in the house. We forgot it, eh, Louis?”

He spoke with his usual precision, as if reciting a lesson. There was no light in his eyes and the moment he was done talking his face became stolid and set like one who has said his part and was glad to be done with it. The patroon was a good actor, and yet there were times when a child could see through his artifice. As he turned to the dwarf, Louis’ face, which a moment before had been strangely contorted, instantly grew impassive. I conceived the idea that he had been making signs, wishing to convey some secret intelligence to me. Whereupon I resolved to give him a chance to speak to me in private if he chose to do so.

“By my soul, St. Vincent!” exclaimed the patroon. “You have slept late.”

“Have I? Indeed, I do not know what time it is,” I answered, scarce knowing what to say. The patroon was so ill at ease, so manifestly acting a part, that I knew it behooved me to be careful and not to lose my temper.

“It is hard upon the hour of noon,” he continued. “Come, come; you shall break your fast royally despite the hour.”

We set out along the corridor, which was dimly lighted and echoed the sound of our footsteps in a gloomy manner. This was the time to test the dwarf, and to find out what he had to communicate to me.

“I have forgotten my sword,” I cried to him. “Will you fetch it?”

Without a moment’s hesitation the dwarf started back towards my room. I can see him yet, almost running in his quick, mincing steps, his half-bent arms dipping to the same time, and his ill-shaped head and flowing locks of white hair all bobbing together in unison. Yet for all this apparent haste he progressed no faster than an ordinary walk.

I let him proceed but a short distance when I made some excuse to the patroon and followed his henchman to my room. When I got there, Louis was already bending over my bed, where my sword lay. One arm was up and one heel slightly off the ground, as if he had suddenly been arrested in the midst of his capricious way of walking. I touched him on the shoulder and he collapsed with startled fear. Evidently he had not heard me approach.

“Louis,” I said, “that was a strange promise you made to me last night. What did you mean by it?”

Suddenly his whole figure was transformed. I saw this change often in the next few weeks, but then it was new to me and almost took my breath away. When Louis walked he seemed all joints and quivering elastic bands. Now, like a flash, he turned to stone—nay, to steel and iron. Every tremor of his body vanished. Every line in his face, the very droop of his hair made one feel as if the Gorgon’s head had been thrust before him. Then he gripped my hand, and I winced inwardly from the pain of it.

“Hush,” he whispered. “You can trust me. She is my mother. Hark! The patroon is coming back. Let me warn you hastily. There is distrust here. Do not start whatever you may hear down stairs. Beware, you are treading on a powder mine. Believe me. I am your friend. She is my mother. Let that suffice for reason.”

That moment the patroon returned. Louis began helping me to buckle on my sword. In a moment all his rigidity had disappeared and his old manner returned to him. I had no time then to think of the suspicion he had referred to, for the patroon led me down stairs to the dining room at once. As we traversed the corridor for the second time, I could hear Louis’ pattering steps behind us like a faithful dog; and in my mind’s eye I saw his wagging head and bent arms keeping time to his nimble step.

As I say, we went below, but had hardly entered the dining room when Mistress Miriam darted into it. She was bonneted, dressed in riding clothes, and her cheeks were flushed with exercise.

“Oh, father,” she cried passionately, “Monsieur Le Bourse is dead.”

“Dead!” echoed the patroon.

At that moment I felt Louis Van Ramm’s fingers close on my wrist like a vise. In an instant he relaxed his grip, for the patroon turned to look at me.

“You are pale,” he said abruptly. “You should be hungry.”

But of the two, he must have been the paler.

However, he would have nothing more to say to me till I had eaten. I was not sorry, for, in very truth, I was as hungry as a bear, and the silence that followed gave me time to think over what had happened.

Evidently Louis’s warning and the locking of my door were pieces of the same cloth. No doubt of Louis’s honesty came into my mind. I knew by an experience I had had in France that a deformed person like this dwarf was likely, however vicious he might be at heart, to feel a dog-like attachment to any one who had befriended him. The fact that Meg was his mother was enough to justify my belief in his honesty. I felt now that, beyond peradventure, I might trust in him. But the suspicion he had warned me against—what was that? What could it be but that I was discovered? I recalled the fact that both Lady Marmaduke and Pierre had recognized me. Had the patroon? I confess to trembling at the moment, and I looked up to see if I were noticed.

“Your hand trembles,” said the patroon. Trust him for seeing everything that was in sight!

“Trembles,” I answered. “Which?”

“Your right,” he replied, with a vicious smile on his dark features.

I stretched my right hand out before him as steady as his own.

“Mere accident,” I said, careful not to show either too much disregard or too much interest in what he had just said. “What made you think so, or did it really tremble for an instant?”

“I thought it did, Le Bourse, but I may have been mistaken.”

I fell to eating savagely. He had called me by my right name! Ah, yes; Louis was right. That was his master’s suspicion, was it? But now I was fully warned. He should not catch me napping. I paid no attention to his remark and went on eating. This behavior seemed to reassure the patroon. When I next looked up he wore a more satisfied expression. His elbows were on the edge of the table and his eyes fixed on the tips of his fingers, which were tapping each other softly.

“Now you are done eating,” he said at last, “let us hear her story. Miriam, tell us of your visit.”

I then learned that, for some reason unknown to herself, Mistress Van Volkenberg had been sent by her father to Lady Marmaduke’s, in New York. Her errand was to inquire my whereabouts. She was told at the hall that I was dead and that my body lay in the small room upstairs, which had been mine.

“Ay, but was he dead?” interrupted her father. “Did you see him, Miriam?”

“Yes,” she answered. “I saw him. Oh!” She shuddered and turned to leave the room.

Mistress Van Volkenberg, then almost unknown to me, was a woman who could not pass unnoticed in any place. She was tall and slender, with a high forehead and piercing brown eyes like her father’s. What most characterized her, however, was the color in her cheeks. I have seen her since in sickness and in health, and always there was the same color of blooming red, which was the more welcome for the beauty it gave her face. She was flushed, perhaps overflushed, when she left the room, and both the patroon and I noticed it.

“Poor child,” he said softly with a yearning look in his eyes. “She has had too much excitement. I should not have sent her.”

Van Volkenberg had little to say for a while. He was wholly taken up with the news his daughter had brought. Often he would be in a brown study for minutes at a time. I said nothing to rouse him, for I was bound that he should lead our conversation till I should be less in the dark as to what he knew about me. At last he seemed to notice how evident his moody conduct was.

“This man Le Bourse,” he said, at the same time bending his bright eyes upon my face as if he would read me through and through, “this man, Le Bourse, was a man I wished to see. Alas the while! I wish he were yet alive.”

“A friend of yours?” I asked, mustering my voice as well as I could. I knew instinctively that I was under examination.

“No, hardly a friend; and yet I owed him some reparation for an injury. I wish he were here.”

“There is no fetching dead men back to life,” I said. And then I added: “At least in the flesh.”

“He will not haunt me, if that is what you mean.”

The patroon walked thoughtfully across the room, and stood for some time with his back towards me, looking out of the window across the broad terrace where I had seen Ronald Guy and the execution the night before. I could see his figure relax and droop a little.

“Alas, poor Guy,” I heard him mutter. He could afford to pity, now that it was all over.

Then his figure against the lighted window stiffened and he seemed to gather strength again. Two minutes later, when he turned to face us once more, he was quite himself. The night before I had asked myself a question; now I was ready to answer it. Yes, there were two actors in Van Volkenberg manor. I was one. The other was the patroon.

And from that moment I conceived a fair notion of how the ground lay between us. Perhaps he knew me, perhaps not; but, at any rate, he suspected me, and this was like to prove my ruin. I recalled just then one of the war cries of the English revolution that my father used to talk so much about. The King and the parliament were pitted one against the other till the bitter end. It was the great church hero, Cromwell, so my father used to say, who first foresaw what the end was going to be. Then grew up that motto, “Thy head or my head,” which neither Roundhead nor Cavalier forgot for many years.

Thus it was between Van Volkenberg and me. Disclaim superstition as I would, I could not resist the idea that fate had had a hand in our first meeting and had molded subsequent events. Van Volkenberg, as I learned later, regarded me with even greater superstition than I felt towards him. Though I managed to allay his suspicions for a while, he never seemed quite free in my presence, even when he took me into his confidence and made me his right hand man.

As I said, he turned towards us from the window overlooking the terrace, and his manner was quite composed.

“Come to my room,” he said cheerily. “I have something of importance to say to you. You may come, too,” he added to the dwarf.

We went to the room where he had first received me when I came to the manor-house to present my silver buttons. I glanced warily around the room. There were the books and the maps on the walls, the table littered with papers, and the windows on one side flooding the center of the room with light. I was with my face to the window and the patroon stood opposite me.

“Sit.”

As he jerked out the short monosyllable, he waved his hand to Louis and me. The dwarf climbed into a huge chair and collapsed loosely into a heap till you would hardly have recognized in him a human being.

The patroon, however, made a more striking figure. He was dressed all in black, save for the crimson cap he always wore in the house, and the pale lace about his neck and wrists. His long black coat was trimmed in silver buttons artificially darkened till they were of a deep grey. His knee breeches and hose were also black. His shoes, instead of being fastened with huge silver buttons, as was the custom, were tied with narrow black ribbons. His black robes set off his silvery hair—prematurely white through trouble and disease—with superb effect. The only other bit of color about him was the gold head of his ebony cane, which he held between his thumb and forefinger, as if he were about to lift it lightly from the floor.

But all this description of how the patroon looked is the result of a moment’s glance and after recollection. For almost in an instant I forgot everything, and saw only those eagle eyes like jewels gazing at me. Was it the dove and the serpent over again? No, no, Patroon Van Volkenberg. You have a man to deal with this time. “Thy head or my head,” saith the King.

At last he spoke to me.

“If you are to cut a figure in the Red Band, you must know somewhat of my affairs. I spoke a while ago of a man Le Bourse.” He kept his eyes fiercely on me. “I have cause to hate this dog, for I hold him little better than a dog. If I ever have him in arm’s reach—you saw how I dealt with Ronald Guy?”

“Yes, I saw it. What is your grievance against Le Bourse?”

“I have done him wrong.”

“Therefore you would do him more?”

“Is not that logic? I would break him upon the rack. Bah, he is no fool. I must watch him close.”

“I thought he was dead.”

“Ay, dead if not alive. Lately he had the impudence to hang about that very window and spy upon my affairs.”

He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, but he kept his eyes on me. I saw through his plot clearly. He did not know that I was Le Bourse, but he thought so, and wanted me to betray myself. I was more than a match for him, however, as events soon proved. He told me briefly what he knew of my escapade of a few nights before and how it led up to his expulsion from the privy-council. All the while he watched me narrowly, though now and then glancing for a moment at Louis, who seemed more asleep than awake in the great chair. At last the patroon let his cane slip. It came down with a startling rattle upon the floor, and when he picked it up again he leaned back in his chair with a silent, sullen manner. He was evidently at the end of his string for that moment. My first ordeal was over. He had tried me in the balance and found—nothing. Evidently the patroon was not convinced one way or the other.

He did not wait long before he was at me again. This time he took a new tack that was harder to resist ten times over. He began to talk about Ruth. So long as his thrusts were aimed at me alone the game was in my own hands. But he played strong cards when he alluded to my sister. I had much ado to control my feelings. He must have seen me wince more than once. But, besides an angry flush or two, or a sign of sullen humor, I did nothing to increase his suspicions, though, on the other hand, I did nothing to allay them. For my part, I was drawn tight as a harp string. I felt that one more twist of the key would snap me, come what would. Then it all ended suddenly and in a marvelous way. Just as I was at my wit’s end for self-control, I heard the patroon gasp and cry out:

“My God, St. Vincent, do you know whom I took you for? I thought you were Le Bourse.”

They say it is nearly a hundred years since the English play writer wrote his Hamlet; yet it is so good a play that it can still be seen upon the London stage. I well remember a scene in it where Hamlet is laying what he calls a mouse-trap to catch his uncle Claudius. Hamlet has the players play something like the murder of his father before the King. Hamlet thought that if the King were guilty he would betray himself by some sign. Once in dumb show and once in real acting the murder was performed before the King, who remained calm and silent, betraying no sign of guilt. This failure of his plan so exasperated Hamlet that he broke down himself and flew into hysterics singing little nonsense songs. In the confusion, the King called for a light and took his leave. But I could see from the expression of his face that another moment would have broken him.

This was the situation of the patroon. While he had been piercing me with one prong of the fork the other turned and twisted among his own nerves. It was when my calm behavior became too much for him that he broke down pitifully, crying that he took me for Le Bourse. Hardly had he said it than he repented; but it was too late. For very shame he had to disguise his suspicion now. So he carried on his play-acting; but I was well aware that the confidence he now pretended to show in me was acting like the rest.

“Well, well, well. I’ll just tell you all. Henrie—I’ll first name you now because you are in the Red Band—Henrie, do you know how near you were to following Ronald Guy? Ronald was a good man in his way, but there was no obedience in his bones. Louis, whom did we take St. Vincent for?”

The dwarf looked at me for a full minute before he said a word. Then he replied:

“We took you for Michael Le Bourse.”

“Ay, that we did,” continued Van Volkenberg. “Do you remember Caesar? We set him on your track last night. Where do you think he went? Straight for my study window on the outside. Perhaps you don’t know that this Michael Le Bourse stood out there the other night—well, if he were not dead he should feel my hand.” The patroon’s face clouded for an instant; then he continued: “When the dog went there I thought that you were Le Bourse in disguise, for there is a familiar look about your eyes, and I only half believed your story. But Ronald’s business pressed, and after that Louis held out that it was all a mistake.”

“It was,” mumbled the dwarf.

“Yes, yes, stick to it. Louis is a bulldog to his belief. Nothing would suit him but to try the hound again. This time he led us a long chase to a place where Louis had met some friends of his by Webber’s tavern—never mind who they were. Do what we could, the hound would not take another scent. So Louis stuck out that there was no meaning in it at all, and I had to give in to him. But fast on that came a report that you—I mean, Le Bourse—had gone post for Albany. I’m quick at putting two and two together, and I said to Louis: ‘Not at all. He’s gone post to the Hanging Rock.’ It came close to going hard with you then.”

“How did it come to pass otherwise?” I managed to say in a tolerably firm voice.

“Let Louis tell. It was his doing. Speak up my little hawk.”

He lifted his impassive face slowly. “It is my habit to make sure. The master could not go. The young mistress was the only other one who had seen you. I said, 'Send her.'”

“And she found you dead.” The patroon laughed loudly at his joke. “Yes, she found you dead. So that settled my doubts. Here is my hand. Welcome to the Red Band.”

After a few more words he dismissed the dwarf in order to talk to me alone.

“St. Vincent,” he began, “I have a delicate task for you to undertake. Doubtless you know that I and my household are in bad repute in Yorke. You see, this putting arms into the hands of my retainers is a new custom in the province. We patroons are bound to get the power, but I am the only one who has had the courage to begin in the proper way. The gossips tell strange stories about me and mine. I keep them away from the ears of Miriam; but—God bless her!—she loves to see the gay sights of the town. I shall let her ride to Yorke this afternoon and you shall ride with her. Mind you keep her ears stuffed with wax against the common murmur. That is your task.”

Towards three o’clock I stood before the terrace beside our horses awaiting Mistress Miriam’s coming out. Soon she came. The blood mantled in her cheek and she drew back when her eyes fell upon me.

“I thought I should go alone or with Annetje,” she said to her father.

“I think that Monsieur St. Vincent will be better company. Pretty maids like you should not ride alone nowadays.”

Whether she objected to riding with me, or whether she suspected that I was set as a spy upon her, one could not have told from anything she said or did. She thanked me kindly, so kindly for my trouble, that I did not feel the pain of her refusal. She bade me lead her horse back to the stable and then re-entered the house.

I had hardly taken the saddle off when Louis came in all apant with running.

“Put it on again,” he cried. “She has changed her mind.”

I resaddled the horse. Five minutes later Mistress Van Volkenberg stepped upon the terrace. She wore the same riding habit as before, but this time she wore a mask that concealed her features. When I helped her to mount, she bowed her thanks, but did not speak to me. Soon we were riding at a rapid pace through the park towards New York.

I rode behind as fitted a man in my position. When we neared the Kissing Bridge she reined in her horse slowly till we rode side by side. I wondered at her action. Something little Pierre had said about Annetje and the way she always made him go before when they crossed the Kissing Bridge caused a shadow to fill my heart. Was my young mistress—? I did not have time to follow the thought further before she laid her hand upon my bridle. Both horses stopped with their front feet upon the bridge. I could see her eyes twinkling through the holes in her mask.

“Why do we stop?” I asked.

“Why do we stop? Why don’t you—” She laid her hand lightly upon my shoulder. “Why don’t you kiss me?”

I started back suddenly. My companion burst into the happiest, merriest peal of laughter I ever heard.

“What a coward. I shall tell Pierre.”

With that she snatched off her mask. To my astonishment, I saw the dancing black eyes of my mistress’ maid, Annetje Dorn.

CHAPTER XVIII
ANOTHER SECRET BURIAL

My astonishment was so complete that several minutes passed before I could find voice enough to ask what this deception meant. Annetje soon quieted her laughter and was ready to explain.

“My dear mistress,” she began, “is an angel out of heaven. She is always making chances for me to see Pierre. To-day, when she would not go to Yorke with you, I begged her to let me go in her place. She is so sweet. She can never bear to say ‘no’ to anything unless someone does wrong.”

Annetje indicated what would happen then by a disconsolate shrug of her shoulders.

“I don’t know why she should have taken such a liking to you. I dare say now, if you had been here longer—oh, I don’t mean that at all. I think you are very—very—Shall we ride towards Yorke?”