tigerish smile.

Landless half rose, but Godwyn laid a detaining hand upon his arm. "Be
still," he said in a low voice, "and let me manage this matter."

Landless obeyed, and the mender of nets turned to the assembly, who by
this time were looking very black.

"Friends," he said with quiet impressiveness, "I think you know me,
Robert Godwyn, well enough to know that I make no move in these great
matters without good and sufficient reason. I have good and sufficient
reason for wishing to associate with us this young man,--yea, even to
make him a leader among us. He is one of us--he fought at Worcester. And
that he is an innocent man, falsely accused, falsely imprisoned,
wrongfully sent to the plantations, I well believe,--for I will believe
no wrong of the son of Warham Landless."

There was a loud murmur of surprise through the room, and one of the
Oliverians sprung to his feet, crying out, "Warham Landless was my
colonel! I will follow his son were he ten times a convict!"

Godwyn waited for the buzz of voices to cease and then calmly proceeded,
"As to this man whom Luiz Sebastian hath brought with him, I know
nothing. But it matters little. Sooner or later we must engage his
class,--as well commence with him as with another. He will be faithful
for his own sake."

The dark faces of his audience cleared gradually. Only the youth with
the hectic cheeks cried out, "I have hated the congregation of evil
doers, and I will not sit with the wicked!" and rose as if to make for
the door. Win-Grace Porringer pulled him down with a muttered, "Curse
you for a fool! Shall not the Lord shave with a hired razor? When these
men have done their work, then shall they be cut down and cast into
outer darkness, until when, hold thy peace!"

The company now applied itself to the transaction of business. Trail was
duly sworn in, not without a deal of oily glibness and unnecessary
protestation on his part. The man who held the little, worn Bible now
turned to Landless, but upon Godwyn's saying quietly, "I have already
sworn him," the book was returned to the bosom of its owner.

Each conspirator had his report to make. Landless listened with grave
attention and growing wonder to long lists of plantations and the
servant and slave force thereon; to news from the up-river estates, and
from the outlying settlements upon the Rappahannock and the Pamunkey,
and from across the bay in Accomac; to accounts of secret arsenals
slowly filling