his
counsellors, a design to expose you to probable destruction.
Unutterable baseness were therein."

"I said not so. I pray thee, Master Arundel, to attach no such
construction to my words; you would thereby do foul wrong to my
thoughts. Nay, I thank the Governor for honoring me with the
commission, and doubt not that he acted only in obedience to a higher
prompting than his own. I did but point to a feeling which thine
enlightenment must lament as much as mine, and which contracts
Christian love into very narrow and erroneous boundaries. Dost thou
understand me?"

"I think I do. You refer to the jealous retainer of power in the hands
of their Church."

"Of their Church, so called. Here are we, for example: we may desire,
with that natural longing whereby men are sometimes animated, to enter
into closer relations, and to bind ourselves by more intimate ties
with those around us, (oftentimes, I fear me, for purposes of worldly
advancement, as well as encouragement in holy living); and, lo! a very
slight difference of opinion--a sublety whereon a casuist shall batter
his brains for days in vain--shall build up a wall of exclusion,
especially if there be some within the enchanted circle who are
jealous of our influence and distrust their own."

"I doubt not you are right. My own observation partly confirms these
views, though I have been too short a time in the colony to form an
undistrusted opinion. My youth and inexperience admonish me to express
myself doubtfully; but I think myself safe in agreeing with you, that
this is scarcely the best way to establish that universal Church to
which the ambition of the Puritans aspires."

"Have a care, Master Arundel," said the Knight, laughing, and his
laugh rang out joyously through the forest, as if he were glad to
escape from restraint, and in strong contrast with the caution which
he recommended, "lest thy treason be carried by some bird to the
enthusiastic Endicott, or the stern Dudley, and thou be made to atone
for thy _lese majeste_."

"I bear them no ill will, and they know it. I am but a stranger among
them, seeking at their hands a jewel most unjustly detained, and
which, if given up, will hardly endanger the common weal. But, Sir
Christopher, explain your sentiments more perfectly on the point
whither our conversation converged."

"Master Arundel, I am a soldier, and no casuist, and, therefore,
hardly so well prepared to answer as good Mr. Eliot, or grave Mr.