that the maid's sister will say
naught against it--and you?"

"I will say naught against her safety," said I. "What think you I
care for any little quibbles of the truth when that be in question?"

"Well," said Captain Tabor, "then must you and Mistress Catherine
Cavendish show the goods to the maid, and say naught as to the means
by which you came by them; tell her they are landed from the Golden
Horn, as indeed they will be; let her think aught she chooses, that
they are indeed her own, purchased for her by her sister or her
lovers, if she choose to think so, and bid her display them with no
ado to Madam Cavendish, if she value the safety of the others who
are concerned in this. Betwixt the mystery and the fright and the
sight of the trinkets, if she be aught on the pattern of any other
maid, show them she will, and hold her tongue till she be out of her
grandmother's presence."

"It can be but tried," said I.

Then the captain sprang out on deck, and ordered a boat lowered, and
presently had set me ashore, and was himself, with a half-dozen
sailors, fighting way down-stream.

I found my horse on the bank where I had left him, and by him,
waiting anxiously, Catherine Cavendish. She listened with deepening
eyes while I told her Captain Tabor's scheme, and when I had done
looked at me with her beautiful mouth set and her face as white as a
white flower on a bush beside her. "Mary shall show the goods," said
she. "Such a story will I tell her as will make her innocent of
aught save bewilderment, and as for you and me, we are both of us
ready to burn for a lie for the sake of her."

IX

I know not how Capt. Calvin Tabor managed his part to tranship those
goods without discovery, but he had a shrewd head, and no doubt the
captain of the Earl of Fairfax another, and by eight o'clock that
May day the Golden Horn lay at her wharf discharging her cargo right
lustily with such openness of zeal and shouts of encouragement and
groans of labour 'twas enough to acquaint all the colony. And
straightway to the great house they brought my Lady Culpeper's
fallals, and clamped them in the hall where we were all at supper.
Mistress Mary sprang to her feet, and ran to them and bent over
them. "What are these?" she said, all in a quiver.

"The goods which you ordered, madam," spoke up one of the sailors,
with a grin which he had copied from Captain Tabor, and pulled a
forelock and ducked his head.

"The goods," said sh