or. For the former, the Knight is pointed at as an agent of Sir
Ferdinando Gorges; for the latter, it becomes me not to heed the idle
chatter of the vulgar."

"Comports it with your sense of propriety to reveal more?" asked
Arundel.

"Were I never so desirous," said the Colonel, courteously, "I should
be unable. In fact, what I have told is the sum of my knowledge. I
could, indeed, indulge in surmises based on rumor, but that were too
much like the gossiping of old women, and both unbecoming in me to
speak and in you to hear, more especially as that rumor attaints in
other respects the fair fame of your friend. It is different with the
base-born scullions around us, who are licensed to utter whatever
their unruly imaginations may conceive; but a gentleman will not allow
epithets upon his tongue to the disparagement of another, which, after
all, may be false."

Having thus spoken, the Colonel raised his steeple-crowned hat in a
formal manner, slightly bending his body, and walked up to the
landlord, to whom he paid his score, and then left the apartment.

"I will endure this no longer," said Arundel to himself, putting on
his own hat. "I will seek the Governor immediately, and demand from
him its explanation."

Upon arriving at the house of Winthrop, he learned, with a feeling of
disappointment, that the Governor was absent on a visit at Plymouth,
and he turned reluctantly away, in order to communicate to the rough
Dudley, instead of the polished chief magistrate, the result of the
mission, and to obtain that information which would enable him to give
shape to the chaotic rumors.

He was received with neither cordiality nor incivility by the Deputy
Governor, to whom the young man communicated the success of the
conciliatory efforts of Sir Christopher with the Taranteens, and at
the same time delivered the Knight's message. His auditor listened in
grim silence, interrupting him by no inquiry, nor did he, when the
communication was finished, vouchsafe a word of thanks for the service
rendered. Dudley had been a soldier in his youth, having received a
captain's commission from Queen Elizabeth, and commanded a company of
volunteers under the chivalrous Henry Fourth of France, at the siege
of Amiens, in 1597; and, if he had not the quality of frankness by
nature, had acquired an appearance of it in the camp, together with a
military decision and roughness of manner. It was not his wont to
disguise his feelings, and on