ld have you flogged if they heard you."

"The Governor would never allow it. He has the gout, and his lady has
the megrims."

"Do you depend upon that?" She was frankly scornful.

"You have certainly never had the gout; probably not even the megrims,"
said he.

She made a little impatient movement with her hand, and looked away from
him a moment, out to sea. Quite suddenly she looked at him again; and
now her brows were knit.

"But if you are not a rebel, how come you here?"

He saw the thing she apprehended, and he laughed. "Faith, now, it's a
long story," said he.

"And one perhaps that you would prefer not to tell?"

Briefly on that he told it her.

"My God! What an infamy!" she cried, when he had done.

"Oh, it's a sweet country England under King James! There's no need to
commiserate me further. All things considered I prefer Barbados. Here at
least one can believe in God."

He looked first to right, then to left as he spoke, from the distant
shadowy bulk of Mount Hillbay to the limitless ocean ruffled by the
winds of heaven. Then, as if the fair prospect rendered him conscious
of his own littleness and the insignificance of his woes, he fell
thoughtful.

"Is that so difficult elsewhere?" she asked him, and she was very grave.

"Men make it so."

"I see." She laughed a little, on a note of sadness, it seemed to
him. "I have never deemed Barbados the earthly mirror of heaven," she
confessed. "But no doubt you know your world better than I." She touched
her horse with her little silver-hilted whip. "I congratulate you on
this easing of your misfortunes."

He bowed, and she moved on. Her negroes sprang up, and went trotting
after her.

Awhile Peter Blood remained standing there, where she left him, conning
the sunlit waters of Carlisle Bay below, and the shipping in that
spacious haven about which the gulls were fluttering noisily.

It was a fair enough prospect, he reflected, but it was a prison, and in
announcing that he preferred it to England, he had indulged that almost
laudable form of boasting which lies in belittling our misadventures.

He turned, and resuming his way, went off in long, swinging strides
towards the little huddle of huts built of mud and wattles--a miniature
village enclosed in a stockade which the plantation slaves inhabited,
and where he, himself, was lodged with them.

Through his mind sang the line of Lovelace:

"Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bar