e strength to contempt for
that doctrine, I applied to it one forcible word I had oft heard used
by gentlemen of the cloth. Had I shot a gun across the table, the
effect could not have been worse. The serving maid fell all of a heap
against the pantry door. Old Tibbie yelped out with laughter, and then
nigh choked. Aunt Ruth glanced from me to Eli Kirke with a timid look
in her eye; but Eli Kirke gazed stolidly into my soul as he would read
whether I scoffed or no.

Thereafter he nailed up a little box to receive fines for blasphemy.

"To be plucked as a brand from the burning," I hear him say, fetching a
mighty sigh. But sweet, calm Aunt Ruth, stitching at some spotless
kerchief, intercedes.

"Let us be thankful the lad hath come to us."

"Bound fast in cords of vanity," deplores Uncle Kirke.

"But all things are possible," Aunt Ruth softly interposes.

"All things are possible," concedes Eli Kirke grudgingly, "but thou
knowest, Ruth, all things are not probable!"

And I, knowing my uncle loved an argument as dearly as merry gentlemen
love a glass, slip away leg-bail for the docks, where sits Ben Gillam
among the spars spinning sailor yarns to Jack Battle, of the great
north sea, whither his father goes for the fur trade; or of M.
Radisson, the half-wild Frenchman, who married an English kinswoman of
Eli Kirke's and went where never man went and came back with so many
pelts that the Quebec governor wanted to build a fortress of beaver
fur; [1] or of the English squadron, rocking to the harbour tide, fresh
from winning the Dutch of Manhattan, and ready to subdue malcontents of
Boston Town. Then Jack Battle, the sailor lad from no one knows where,
living no one knows how, digs his bare toes into the sand and asks
under his breath if we have heard about king-killers.

"What are king-killers?" demands young Gillam.

I discreetly hold my tongue; for a gentleman who supped late with my
uncle one night has strangely disappeared, and the rats in the attic
have grown boldly loud.

"What are king-killers?" asks Gillam.

"Them as sent Charles I to his death," explains Jack. "They do say,"
he whispers fearfully, "one o' them is hid hereabouts now! The king's
commission hath ordered to have hounds and Indians run him down."

"Pah!" says Gillam, making little of what he had not known, "hounds are
only for run-aways," this with a sneering look at odd marks round
Jack's wrists.

"I am no slave!" vows Jack in cr