The ranger took Garret's arm, and expostulating with him as he led him away, dismissed him at the gate with an admonition to bear himself discreetly in the presence of his wife,--a hint which seemed to have a salutary effect, as the landlord was seen shaping his course with an improved carriage towards the town.

"Have you reason to believe, Captain Dauntrees," said the Proprietary, after Weasel had departed; "that the Cripple gives credit to these tales. He lives near this troubled house?"

"Not above a gunshot off, my Lord. He cannot but be witness to these marvels. But he is a man of harsh words, and lives to himself. There is matter in his own life, I should guess, which leaves but little will to censure these doings. To a certainty he has no fear of what may dwell in the Black building.--I have seldom spoken with him."

"Your report and Arnold's," said the Proprietary, "confirm the common rumour. I have heard to-day, that two nights past some such phantoms as you speak of have been seen, and deemed it at first a mere gossip's wonder;--but what you tell gives a graver complexion of truth to these whisperings. Be there demons or jugglers amongst us--and I have reason to suspect both--this matter must be sifted. I would have the inquiry made by men who are not moved by the vulgar love of marvel. This duty shall be yours, friends. Make suitable preparation, Captain, to discharge it at your earliest leisure. I would have you and Arnold, with such discreet friends as you may select, visit this spot at night and observe the doings there. Look that you keep your own counsel:--we have enemies of flesh and blood that may be more dreaded than these phantoms. So, G.o.d speed you friends!"

"The man who purges the Black House of the fiend, so please you, my Lord," said Dauntrees, "should possess more odour of sanct.i.ty than I doubt will be found under our soldier's jerkins. I shall nevertheless execute your Lordship's orders to the letter."

"Hark you, Captain," said the Proprietary, as his visiters were about to take their leave--"if you have a scruple in this matter and are so inclined, I would have you confer with Father Pierre. Whether this adventure require prayer, or weapon of steel, you shall judge for yourself."

"I shall take it, my Lord, as a point of soldiership," said Dauntrees, "to be dealt with, in soldierly fashion--that is, with round blows if occasion serves. I ask no aid from our good priest. He hath a trick--if I may be so bold as to speak it before your Lordship--which doth not so well sort with my age and bodily health,--a trick, my Lord, of putting one to a fasting penance by way of purification. Our purpose of visiting the Black House would be unseasonably delayed by such a purgation."

"As thou wilt--as thou wilt!" said the Proprietary, laughing; "Father Pierre would have but an idle sinecure, if he had no other calling but to bring thee to thy penitentiary.--Good even, friends,--may the kind saints be with you!"

The Captain and his comrade now turned their steps toward the fort, and the Proprietary retired into the mansion. Here he found the secretary and Benedict Leonard waiting his arrival. They had just returned from the town, whither they had gone after doing their errand to the fort.

Albert Verheyden bore a packet secured with silken strings and sealed, which he delivered to the Proprietary.

"d.i.c.k Pagan, the courier," he said, "has just come in from James Town in Virginia, whence he set forth but four days ago--he has had a hard ride of it--and brought this pacquet to the sheriff for my Lord. The courier reports that a ship had just arrived from England, and that Sir Henry Chichely the governor gave him this for your Lordship to be delivered without delay."

The Proprietary took the pacquet: "Albert," he said, as he was about to withdraw, "I have promised the old ranger, Arnold de la Grange, a new cap. Look to it:--get him the best that you may find in the town--or, perhaps, it would better content him to have one made express by Cony the leather dresser. Let it be as it may best please the veteran himself, good Albert." With this considerate remembrance of the ranger, Lord Baltimore withdrew into his study.

CHAPTER V.

---deep on his front engraven, Deliberation sat, and public care.

MILTON.

Lend me thy lantern quoth a? Marry I'll see thee hanged first.

SHAKSPEARE.

A small fire blazed on the hearth of the study and mingled its light with that of a silver cresset, which hung from the ceiling above a table furnished with writing materials and strewed over with papers.

Here the Proprietary sat intent upon the perusal of the pacquet. Its contents disquieted him; and with increasing solicitude he again and again read over the letters.

At length the secretary was summoned into his presence. "Albert," he said, "the council must be called together to-morrow at noon. The messengers should be despatched to-night; they have a dark road and far to ride. Let them be ready with the least delay."

The secretary bowed and went forth to execute his order.

The letters brought the Proprietary a fresh importation of troubles.

That which most disturbed him was from the Board of Trade and Plantations, and spoke authoritatively of the growing displeasure of the ministry at the exclusiveness, as it was termed, of the Proprietary's favours, in the administration of his government, to the Catholic inhabitants of the province; it hinted at the popular and probably well-founded discontent--to use its own phrase--of his Majesty's Protestant subjects against the too liberal indulgence shown to the Papists; repeated stale charges and exploded calumnies against the Proprietary, with an earnestness that showed how sedulously his enemies had taken advantage of the disfavour into which the Church of Rome and its advocates had fallen since the Restoration; and concluded with a peremptory intimation of the royal pleasure that all the offices of the province should be immediately transferred into the hands of the Church of England party.

This was a blow at Lord Baltimore which scarcely took him by surprise.

His late visit to England had convinced him that not all the personal partiality of the monarch for his family--and this was rendered conspicuous in more than one act of favour at a time when the Catholic lords were brought under the ban of popular odium--would be able finally to shelter the province from that religious proscription which already was rife in the mother land. He was not, therefore, altogether unprepared to expect this a.s.sault. The mandate was especially harsh in reference to the Proprietary, first because it was untrue that he had ever recognised the difference of religious opinion in his appointments, but on the contrary had conferred office indiscriminately in strict and faithful accordance with the fundamental principle of toleration upon which his government was founded; and secondly, because it would bear with pointed injustice upon some of his nearest and most devoted friends--his uncle the chancellor, the whole of his council, and, above all others in whose welfare he took an interest, upon the collector of the port of St. Mary's, Anthony Warden, an old inhabitant of the province, endeared to the Proprietary--and indeed to all his fellow-burgesses--by long friendship and tried fidelity. What rendered it the more grating to the feelings of the Proprietary in this instance, was that the collectorship had already been singled out as a prize to be played for by that faction which had created the late disturbances in the province. It was known that Coode had set his eyes upon this lure, and gloated upon it with the gaze of a serpent. The emoluments of the post were something considerable, and its importance was increased by the influence it was supposed to confer on the inc.u.mbent, as a person of weight and consequence in the town.

The first expression of irritation which the perusal of the pacquet brought to the lips of the Proprietary had a reference to the collector. "They would have me," he said, as he rose and strode through the apartment, "discard from my service, the very approved friends with whom in my severest toils, in this wilderness, I have for so many years buffeted side by side, and to whom I am most indebted for support and encouragement amidst the thousand disasters of my enterprise. They would have me turn adrift, without a moment's warning, and even with circ.u.mstances of disgrace, that tried pattern of honesty, old Anthony Warden. Virtue, in her best estate, hath but a step-daughter's portion in the division of this world's goods, and often goes begging, when varnished knavery carries a high head and proud heart, and lords it like a very king. By the blessed light! old Anthony shall not budge on my motion. Am I to be schooled in my duty by rapacious malcontents, and to be driven to put away my trustiest friends, to make room for such thirsty leeches and coa.r.s.e rufflers as John Coode? The argument is, that here, in what my father would have made a peaceful, contented land, planted by him and the brothers of his faith,--with the kindest, best and most endeared supporters of that faith by my side--worthy men, earnest and zealous to do their duty--they and their children true to every christian precept--men who have won a home by valour and patient, wise endurance--they must all be disfranchised, as not trustworthy even for the meanest office, and give their places to brawlers, vapouring bullies and factious stirrers-up of discord--and that too in the name of religion! Oh, this viper of intolerance, how hath it crept in and defiled the garden! One would have thought this world were wide enough to give the baser pa.s.sions elbow room, without rendering our little secluded nook a theatre for the struggle. Come what may, Anthony Warden shall not lack the collectorship whilst a shred of my prerogative remains untorn!"

In this strain of feeling the Proprietary continued to chafe his spirit, until the necessity of preparing the letters which were to urge the attendance of his council, drew him from his fretful reverie into a calmer tone of mind.

In the servants' hall there was an unusual stir occasioned by the preparations which were in train for the outriding of the messengers whom the secretary had put in requisition for the service of the night.

The first of these was Derrick Brown, a man of stout mould though somewhat advanced in years. He held in the establishment what might be termed the double post of master of the mews and keeper of the fox hounds, being princ.i.p.al falconer and huntsman of the household. The second was a short, plump little fellow, bearing the name of John Alward, who was one of the grooms of the stable. These two, now ready booted, belted and spurred, were seated on a bench, discussing a luncheon, with the supplement of a large jack or tankard of brown b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Several of the other domestics loitered in the hall, throwing in occasionally a word of advice to the riders, or giving them unsolicited aid in the carnal occupation of bodily reinforcement to which they were devoting themselves with the l.u.s.ty vigour of practised trenchermen. Leaning against the jamb of the ample fireplace, immediately below a lamp which tipped the prominent points of his grave visage with a sharp light, stood an old Indian, of ma.s.sive figure and swarthy hue, named Pamesack, or, as he was called in the English translation of the Indian word, The Knife. This personage had been, for some years past, at intervals, a privileged inmate of the Proprietary's family, and was now, though consigned to a portion of the duties of the evening, apparently an unconcerned spectator of the scene around him.

He smoked his pipe in silence, or if he spoke, it was seldom more than in the short monosyllable, characteristic of the incommunicative habits of his tribe.

"When I saw d.i.c.k Pagan, the James Town courier, coming into town this evening with his leather pouch slung across his shoulder," said the elder of the riders, "I guessed as much as that there would be matter for the council. News from that quarter now-a-days is apt to bring business for their worships. I warrant you the brother of Master Fendall hath been contriving an outcome in Virginia. I heard John Rye, the miller of St. Clements, say last Sunday afternoon, that Samuel Fendall had forty mounted men ready in the forest to do his bidding with broad-sword and carbine. And he would have done it too, if my Lord had not laid him by the heels at unawares. He hath a savage spite against my Lord and the chancellor both."

"But knew ye ever the like before," said John Alward, "that his lordship should be in such haste to see their worships, he must needs have us tramping over the country at midnight? By the virtue of my belt, there must be a hot flavour in the news! It was a post haste letter."

"Tush, copperface! What have you to do with the flavour of the news?

The virtue of thy belt, indeed! Precious little virtue is there within its compa.s.s, ha, ha! You have little to complain of, John Alward, for a midnight tramp. It is scant twelve miles from this to Mattapany, and thine errand is done. Thou mayst be snoozing on a good truss of hay in Master Sewall's stable before midnight, if you make speed. Think of my ride all the way to Notley Hall,--and round about by the head of the river too--for I doubt if I have any chance to get a cast over the ferry to-night. Simon the boat-keeper is not often sober at this hour: and if he was, a crustier churl--the devil warm his pillow!--doesn't live 'twixt this and the old world. He gets out of his sleep for no man."

"But it is a dark road mine," replied the groom. "A plague upon it! I have no stomach for this bush and brier work, when a man can see the limb of a tree no more than a cobweb."

"A dark road!" exclaimed the master of the kennels, laughing. "A dark road, John! It is a long time, I trow, since there has been a dark road for thy night rides, with that nose shining like a lighted link a half score paces around thee. It was somewhat deadened last September, I allow, when you had the marsh ague, and the doctor fed you for a week on gruel--but it hath waxed lately as bright as ever. I wish I could buckle it to my head-strap until to-morrow morning."

A burst of laughter, at this sally, which rang through the hall, testified the effect of the falconer's wit and brought the groom to his feet.

"'S blood, you grinning fools!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, "haven't you heard Derrick's joke a thousand times before, that you must toss up your scurvy ha-haws at it, as if it was new! He stole it--as the whole hundred knows--from the fat captain, old Dauntrees in the fort there; who would have got it back upon hue and cry, if it had been his own;--but the truth is, the Captain filched it from a play-book, as the surveyor told him in my hearing at Garret Weasel's, where the Captain must needs have it for a laughing matter."

"It is a joke that burns fresh every night," replied Derrick; "a thing to make light of. So, up with the bottom of the pot, boy, and feed it with mother's milk: it will stand thee in stead to-night. Well done, John Alward! I can commend thee for taking a jest as well as another."

"Master Derrick," said the other, "this is not the way to do his Lordship's bidding: if we must go, we should be jogging now. I would I had thy ride to take, instead of my own,--short as you think it."

"Ha, say you that! By the rochet, John, you shall have it, an it please Master Secretary! But upon one condition."

"Upon what condition?"

"That you tell me honestly why you would choose to ride twenty miles to Notley rather than twelve to Mattapany."

"Good Derrick," answered the groom, "it is but as a matter of horsemanship. You have a broader road, and mine is a path much beset with brush-wood. I like not the peril of being unhorsed."

"There is a lie in thy face, John Alward;--the Mattapany road is the broadest and best of the two--is it not so, Pamesack?"

"It is the first that was opened by the white man," replied the Indian; "and more people pa.s.s upon it than the other."

"John," said the falconer, "you are a coward. I will not put you to the inventing another lie, but will wager I can tell you at one guess why you would change with me."

"Out with it, Master Derrick!" exclaimed the bystanders.

"Oh, out with it!" repeated John Alward; "I heed not thy gibes."

"You fear the cross road," said the falconer; "you will not pa.s.s the fisherman's grave."

"In troth, masters--I must needs own," replied the groom, "that I have qualms. I never was ashamed to tell the truth, and confess that I am so much of a sinner as to feel an honest fear of the devil and his doings.

I have known a horse to start and a rider to be flung at the cross road before now:--there are times in the night when both horse and rider may see what it turns one's blood into ice to look at. Nay, I am in earnest, masters:--I jest not."