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Walford and Morton had remained composedly upon the
beach for a few moments, when Jaspar reappeared, leaning affectionately
upon the arm of an individual of striking appearance.

He was tall and thin, and wore a steeple-crowned hat, a short
black cloak, with a white band about his throat, and other
habiliments, of the sad color most cherished by the Puritans.
He threw off his hat, however, as he approached, looking at it
as he did so, with an expression of any thing but respect, and
displaying, upon being uncovered, a head of remarkable beauty.
His physiognomy was one of that rare character with which
time seems powerless. It was impossible from his face, any
more than from his spare but sinewy figure, and the Arab
litheness of his movements, to guess at the number of years
which had flown over him, without leaving a trace of their
passage. Thick, Antinous-like curls hung in raven masses
about a dark and thoughtful brow, — an eye, dark and commanding,
but whose mysterious and changeful expression inevitably
inspired the beholder with a sentiment both of interest
and distrust, a complexion by nature or by exposure more
swarthy than belongs to his race, severely chiselled features,
and teeth glittering like a hound's through his coal black beard,
were the characteristics of his countenance. It was certain that
he had “past through the ambush of young days,” but how far
it was impossible to judge. Such was the individual whom men
called Sir Christopher Gardiner.

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The boy was hanging upon his arm and looking fondly up
into his face, and he was followed closely by an enormous
staghound, evidently wearied with a long tramp through the
forest, but whose graceful and dignified activity seemed like his
master's to triumph over fatigue.

“Good morrow, Master Merry-Mount,” said he, extending his
hand to Morton; “and good morning to you, worthy hermit of
Mishawum, I am sorry that my absence should have lost me
any portion of your visit to my humble abode. And how are
the revellers of Passanogessit, Master Morton? Have a care, the
shaven heads of Plymouth are keeping a sharp watch upon you.
'T is a pity you could not borrow a little of the caution of our
phlegmatic friend here, worthy Tom Walford.”

“To say the truth, Sir Christopher,” answered Morton, “I
have long since exhausted my talent at borrowing, and I doubt
if I could thrive much even upon any advance from our friend
St. Thomas the silentiary. His silence and his sledge-hammer
are both very useful tools to himself, whose only companions are
his wife and the wolves, not to speak irreverently of the virtuous
Goodwife Walford; but we must all work with the implements of
our trade, you know, and I must keep my tongue whetted, or
my brains will rust with it.”

“I repeat my warning,” answered Gardiner, “that all our
pains will be fruitless, if you are not disposed to govern yourself
and your confederates a little more rigidly. I tell you, man,
that there is great uneasiness at Plymouth.”

“But they certainly are not aware that your humble servant,
and their particular nightmare, Thomas Morton, the `pettifogger
of Clifford's Inn,' (as they call the most rising young barrister
who ever turned his back upon the woolsack,) has the honor of
your acquaintance.”

“Certainly not,” answered Gardiner, “you may be sure that
the mention of your name always inspires me with holy horror.

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They have no suspicion that the pious Gardiner, who seeks
comfort in the refreshing bosom of their austere church — ”

“Cold comfort indeed,” cried Morton, interrupting him with
an affected shudder.

“That such a man as they know me to be, stooping under
the burthen of his sins, and anxious only to seat himself by the
outer door-post of the Temple of the Elect, can have sympathy
or even acquaintance with the Godless Lord of Misrule, the
disturber of the peace of Canaan, the din of whose revelry
sounds so hideously upon the ears of the saints.”

“As if this wide and boundless new world was discovered,”
cried Morton, “only that its forests might resound with their
eternal trumpets and their shawms. But let them come to
Merry-Mount themselves, they shall have better fare than
parched corn and ditch water. Let them wet their beards and
vinegar faces in our sparkling claret jugs, let them listen to a
catch led off by the mellifluous tongue of Robert Bootefish
yonder, let them look upon a wild dance of beaver coated
nymphs —.”

“Perhaps they will make you a visit sooner than you think,”
interrupted Gardiner, as Morton, after having relieved his mind
by this ebullition of spleen, lay kicking up his heels upon the
grass — now humming a snatch of a drinking song, now muttering
to himself a quotation from his favorite Horace — “perhaps
your hospitality may be put sooner to the test than you suppose;
I see you prick up your ears; take care that you keep them
where they belong. The psalm singers have got a pillory, you
know, and they are mightily expert at slicing off all superfluous
appendages.”

“Thank ye, Sir Kit,” replied Morton. “But if my tongue
endangers my ears, I have a hand, thank fortune, that shall
protect them all. I know their fingers itch for my ears — nay,
have they not already ornamented their accursed whipping-post

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with one of the capital excrescences of my loyal subject,
Humprey Rednape? Does he not suffer obloquy enough at the
hands of his confederates Bootefish and Cakebread, and all the
other unfeeling varlets? Does not that content them, but would
they extend their sacrilegious shears even to the august cartilage
of the suzerain of Merry-Mount?”

“I tell you, Morton, that they are no respecter of persons.
They consider you a nuisance, and they long to have you in
their power. Your ears are not worth a wolf's bounty, if they
once get you into their clutches.”

“The sacrilegious iconoclasts!” cried the imperturbable
Morton. “Verily they carry their hatred of ornaments too far.
Are not these distracted Puritans satisfied with having abolished
copes and tippets and corner caps, that they rage so carnally
even against such trifling ornaments as your humble servant's
ears? Truly their love of simplicity is unbecoming. Their
hatred of ceremony carries them too far.”

“You will find they will use little ceremony if they once
proceed to extremities with you.”

“But I tell thee, Sir Kit, they shall have nothing to do with
my extremities. I will neither lend mine ears to their counsels,
nor make a present of them to their pillories. Hang them, let
them trim their own heads, the crop-eared Israelites! Let
them purify Canaan, — but, by Plutus and Rhadamanthus, let
them beware of entering the precincts of Merry-Mount! My
Cerberus never sleeps on his post, and a single growl of his
would frighten them back to their dingy kennels, aye, even if
they were led on by the valorous Captain Shrimp himself.”

“If you speak of Captain Standish,” interposed the phlegmatic
Walford, who had hitherto taken but little part in the
conversation, “if you speak of Captain Standish, mayhap you
may find him no baby, small as he is. He carries a two-fisted
rapier, would split your skull as easy as I could crack a

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cocoanut with my sledge-hammer, and he wears an iron pot on his
head — I know it, for I have had the tinkering of the same —
would take a swinging thump as easy as my anvil, and never
the worse.”

“Vulcan, Vulcan,” replied the unabashed Morton, “your
remarks are unsavory — they smell of the shop — what is all
this about anvils and sledge-hammers? Let little Captain
Shrimp not venture to Merry-Mount. He shall find no Wittewamotts
nor Pecksuots, I promise you — he shall be boiled in
his own iron pot, boiled, aye, and eaten too as sauce to my
salmon, the pungent little shrimp.”

“Mayhap you may find him a bit too peppery for your taste,”
answered the honest blacksmith.

“And I have a mind,” interposed Sir Christopher, “that
better things may be done with Captain Standish, or Captain
Shrimp, as you call him, than eating him. I have had no
interview with him yet, but such an ally as he would be invaluable—
at all events, I agree in the warning of our honest
Walford here. Be cautious, keep quiet for the present, do n't
stir up these grim fellows before the time.”

“Trust me for defending my strong hold,” answered Morton,
more seriously. “Trust me for keeping, for the present, out
of the clutches even of the puissant Shrimp.”

“Marry do so,” said the blunt blacksmith; “you'll find the
hug of a bear as soft as a young maid's arms in comparison.
But Sir Christopher has not yet informed us when he left Plymouth,
nor how he travelled thence.”

“I preferred, as you know, to travel by land and on foot,”
said Sir Christopher.

“The post-roads being much out of repair,” interrupted the
facetious Morton.

“I have been sojourning a week among the saints,” continued
Gardiner, “leaving Jaspar and the faithful Sketwarroes

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to keep house in my absence. I am still an humble candidate
for admission to their sanctuary, but I have ventured to broach
but little of our scheme of transplanting their colony to Shawmut.
Besides, I am still waiting for dispatches from Sir
Ferdinando in reply to my last letters.”

“As for the Indians,” continued Gardiner, musingly, “they
are the best friends we have — I mean in any considerable numbers
of course — and very useful instruments I intend to make
them. I have as much reliance on a savage's sagacity and friendship
as on a white man's. They are easily led, if you make
them look up to you as a protector and a God.”

“And I will say,” said Morton, “of my own knowledge, that
they are better fellows, and will make better Christians, than the
Puritans. Have I not converted more of the heathen, every
year, by reading the liturgy to them, than the saints will convert
in a century?”

“Say, rather, perverted,” said Gardiner.

“I say,” continued Morton, warmly, “that my savage subjects
are rapidly becoming as civilized and as respectable a body
of rascals as my Christian ones.”

“And no such difficult matter either,” said the blunt blacksmith,
“if a body may judge from that lobster Bootefish, yonder.”

“Bootefish — Bootefish!” cried Morton, in so loud a tone as
to arouse that worthy individual from the innocent slumber
which he had been enjoying in the sunshine during this protracted
conversation. “I say, Robin,” he continued, with affected
indignation, as the red faced and red coated worthy advanced,
stretching his long arms and his bandy legs to shake off
his lethargy; “this mechanical son of Jupiter has the audacity
to call you a lobster, and moreover denies that you are a Christian;
what do you think of that?”

“Son of Jupiter, your worship — Christian, your worship!”

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exclaimed Bootefish, his brain evidently laboring to take in at one
effort the incongruous images suddenly presented to him, and his
small elephant eyes drowsily rolling from one of his companions
to the other; “I hope I despise Christians — I mean Puritans —
as a Christian Episcopalian should. Down with the Puritans!
down with the lobsters! at any rate, your worship,” grumbled
the veteran, now thoroughly awake. “Tell Master Walford that
if I am a lobster he had better keep out of my claws.”

“Bravo, Bootefish!” cried Morton. “Let me echo his warning,
Master Vulcan, in fair payment for the one you gave me
just now. A lobster is as dangerous as a shrimp, you may find;
aye, and wears as good a coat of mail to his back.”

And so the sovereign of Merry-Mount, who was never so
happy as when he could quibble upon the redoubtable Miles
Standish, the hero of Plymouth, to whom he had an invincible
dislike, rubbed his hands triumphantly, as he looked at the
blacksmith.

That gigantic individual looked down with the most benignant
expression at the ludicrous indignation of Bootefish, without
troubling himself much about the claws to which he alluded
in so threatening a manner.

“This is one of your instruments for turning savages into
Christians, then, I suppose,” said he to Morton.

“Christians, I defy you!” said the indignant Robert; “I am
head clerk and precentor at Merry-Mount, Master Walford, I
would have you to know. Head clerk and chief butler too, and
not a man to be looked down upon by a blacksmith. Who sets
all the psalms at Merry-Mount, I should like to know, but
Robert Bootefish? Who makes the responses, I humbly ask,
but Bootefish again? Who taps all the ale casks but Bootefish?”
And Robert Bootefish, concluding his observations,
smote his breast, and looked daggers at the undisturbed blacksmith.

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“Well, well, lobster!” said he, not heeding the frown which
gathered like a cloud around the shaggy brows of the clerk of
Merry-Mount at the repetition of the offensive epithet. “Well,
well,” said he, innocently continuing his bantering, “I dare to
say, you will redden even the noses of the red men with your
liquor. As for your psalms and responses, I have n't much more
faith in such forms than the Puritans themselves, if your church
and cellar be all one, as it seems. Tell the poor devils of savages
to follow your nose to heaven. 'T is a burning and shining
light, a beacon that is never quenched!”

Bootefish's wrath was thoroughly aroused. His nose, which
might be said to be his only feature, flashed with indignation.
Plucking his knife from his sheath, he rushed, as furiously as his
duck legs would carry him, towards his provoking antagonist.

The phlegmatic blacksmith, even at that moment hardly
aware that his victim was really out of temper, looked for a few
seconds in utter astonishment at his ferocious onset, jumped
back with agility, in time to escape with only a wound on his
gigantic thumb, from a furious blow aimed at him with the
hunting knife; and then, rushing forward with the ponderous
velocity of a bull, seized his squat assailant in his iron grasp,
lifted him bodily from the ground, pitched him heels over head
some half a dozen yards through the air, and then, recovering
his composure, looked tranquilly on, as the unfortunate head
butler, after describing his parabola through the air, alighted in
a most undignified posture, directly between his two Indian proselytes.

These individuals, whom the facetious Morton called his serfs,
it will be remembered were the oarsmen of his boat, and had
been gravely squatting upon their hams and smoking their pipes
on the same spot, and in the same attitude, ever since their
arrival. Upon the sudden descent of the luckless Bootefish between
them, one of them assisted him to his feet, while the

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other, with unperturbed visage, took his pipe from his mouth
and ejaculated, “Ugh, is my brother hurt?” and without pausing
for a reply, he grunted — “The Thunder-cloud of Mishawum
is strong; my brother is fat; he cannot wrestle with the Thunder-cloud
of Mishawum.”

“Thunder-cloud be damned!” muttered the pious precentor
of Merry-Mount, who, finding himself unhurt, although marvellously
discomfitted, thought it necessary, on being picked up
and set on his legs again, to manifest a show of hostility,
although taking care to keep at a convenient distance from the
stalwart smith. “The Thunder-cloud of Mishawum may thank
his stars that my foot slipped upon the grass as it did, else I
would have stuck him like a pig.”

Morton, who had been enjoying the scene amazingly, while
Gardiner, hardly heeding what was going forward, had been conversing
in an under tone with Jaspar, now stepped forward and
addressed the brooding Bootefish.

“Faith, thy hand is out at wrestling, Robin,” said he.
“Where is thy boasted Indian hug, of which we hear so much
when there are no Indians, nor bears, nor blacksmiths, to practise
it upon? Never did I see a man fly through the air so
buoyantly. `Dædaleo ocyor Icaro.' By my soul, the blacksmith
has given thee wings, man.”

“Never you mind, never you mind, your worship,” muttered
his satellite, in a gloomy and threatening manner; “the time
will come. Revenge I will have, as sure as he lives. The man
who injures Bootefish never went unpunished yet.”

“Tush, tush, man,” said the good-humored Morton. “Never
make such a pother about a tumble on the green sward. Never
nourish ill blood, man; 't will only make your nose redder, and
the blacksmith's jibes still saucier. Shake hands, and be friends
with him again.”

“Aye,” said the hearty blacksmith, proffering his mighty

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hand, “shake hands and be friends again, Robin Bootefish.
Give us thy claw, hang me — give us thy fist, man. A body
must defend his bread basket, you know.”

“Does he withdraw the lobster?” asked Bootefish, in a
stately manner.

“He does, he does, every claw of him,” answered Morton.
“And if not, what is a lobster, but a church dignitary — a redrobed
cardinal? So make haste, for I am in a hurry to be off;
and a quarrel between two such trusty friends of mine I could
never endure. So, I say, make haste — kiss, and be friends.”

The worthy Bootefish relented, seizing the proffered hand of
his late antagonist with such cordiality, that it might have been
thought he intended to have literally obeyed the injunction of
his superior. The blacksmith, however, apparently not desirous
of the actual osculation he contemplated, kept him at metaphorical
distance, and shaking his hand with an honest effusion of
friendship, bade him forgive and forget, with a good-humored
expression of countenance, which was reflected back in a sunny
glow from the face of the chief butler.

“You propose visiting Master Blaxton, you say. If you do
so, please convey this packet to him,” said the knight, extending
a carefully sealed paper to the blacksmith.

“Willingly, Sir Christopher. It is about the turn of the tide
now, and I may as well take the parson on my way homeward.
Good day, my masters all — and good day, worthy Bootefish.
No malice now, I suppose?”

“None, Goodman Walford,” said the pacified lobster, waving
both his claws amicably to the departing smith.

Walford's little boat was soon tossing upon the tide, and his
sail had disappeared behind the headlands of the cove, when
Gardiner observed to Morton, —

“A sinewy fellow, that Walford, and as tough and as true as
his own sledge-hammer. With a hundred or two of such giants,

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one might conquer a world. If Standish were but upon our
side, —.”

“I tell you, you might as well expect to turn yonder river
backwards, and make it flow to its fountain again. There is no
turning nor twisting that sturdy little shrimp. I will say that of
him, small as is the love I bear him,” answered Morton.

“It has been a fixed notion with Sir Ferdinando,” said Gardiner,
“that the Plymouth company, who have already been much
indebted to his exertions, might be induced to transplant themselves
to a position which they acknowledge to be vastly more
attractive, and to settle under his jurisdiction. This would be
an immense advantage at starting, and our rivals in England,
who are bent upon outwitting him, and upon sending another
and a powerful colony to these parts, might be foiled. Let but
his charter and his commission pass the seals, with a flourishing
colony already established, in a most admirable position,
as a nucleus, and with the reinforcements that Sir Ferdinando
and his powerful and wealthy kinsmen (to say nothing of Mason
and Lord Arundel) have promised, and leave the rest to me.”

“But Southcote and Rosewell, and the Vassalls, and Saltonstalls,
have an amazing influence; and more potent than all, are
Mr. Humphrey and Isaac Johnson, the brothers-in-law of the
powerful Earl of Lincoln. 'T is said that they actually contemplate
removing hither themselves; and that Lady Arabella and
Lady Susan are fanatical enough to follow their husbands into
the wilderness,” said Morton.

“Aye,” replied Gardiner, “but Lord Lincoln's influence is
not so certain.”

“At all events,” said Morton, “the old Gorges patent is good
as far as it goes. I have studied at Clifford's Inn long enough
to know that.”

“Yes,” replied the other, “and it furnishes moreover, added
to actual possession, a sufficient ground for enlarging it. Trust

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me, we shall yet outwit the Puritans, and if they settle at all,
they shall settle under us. Give me but men, money, and a
little time, and trust me, I will build a colony such as the world
has never seen. A powerful metropolis in the bottom of this
bay, and flourishing commercial towns at Mishawum and Naumkeak,
to say nothing of your Passanogessit, extensive fisheries,
and an exclusive trade with the Indians, a strong proprietary
government, a new order of nobility, a peasantry with a bountiful
soil, and a strong government to protect them — these seem
but dreams, but they are visions which shall be history, before
many years have rolled over our heads. The Lord Palatine
of Massachusetts will soon hold his head high at home. Aye,
they shall find, perhaps,” continued Gardiner, with flashing eyes,
“that the worm which they thought to tread out of existence
shall turn upon them yet — the serpent is not crushed — and
they shall find his fangs have grown.”

Morton, who was apparently accustomed to these occasional
ebullitions of passion from Gardiner, although he was not perhaps
thoroughly aware of all their causes, waited coolly till his companion
was more composed, when he observed, —

“Your future Majesty of Massachusetts will not forget the
claims of your faithful ally and prime minister. Remember the
services of a jurisconsult, and more particularly of one familiar
with the codes of the conquered nations, will be invaluable in
our nascent empire.”

“I never forget friend or foe,” said Gardiner, “and you are
a tried and trusty friend. I would to God you were a little
more cautious one. By the way,” added he, “is Harry Maudsley
still dwelling at Merry-Mount?”

“He is,” said Morton; “but he is an impracticable fellow —
brave, but wayward — moody, sometimes, and passionate — and
at other times gay, and as full of reckless fun as the best, or
worst of us. I sometimes hardly know what to think of the lad.”

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