llow alone. You cannot quarrel with a shopman."

"I thank you, George, for a timely reminder," said my gentleman, and he
turned away his head with a motion of sovereign contempt.

"Come, come, sirs," Colonel Beverley cried, "remember the sacred law of
hospitality. You are all my guests, and you have a lady here, whose
bright eyes should be a balm for controversies."

The Governor had sat with his lips closed and his eyes roving the
table. He dearly loved a quarrel, and was minded to use me to bait
those whom he liked little.

"What is all this talk about gentility?" he said. "A man is as good as
his brains and his right arm, and no better. I am of the creed of the
Levellers, who would have a man stand stark before his Maker."

He could not have spoken words better calculated to set the company
against me. My host looked glum and disapproving, and all the silken
gentlemen murmured. The Virginian cavalier had as pretty a notion of
the worth of descent as any Highland land-louper. Indeed, to be honest,
I would have controverted the Governor myself, for I have ever held
that good blood is a mighty advantage to its possessor.

Suddenly the grave man who sat by Miss Elspeth's side spoke up. By this
time I had remembered that he was Doctor James Blair, the lately come
commissary of the diocese of London, who represented all that Virginia
had in the way of a bishop. He had a shrewd, kind face, like a Scots
dominie, and a mouth that shut as tight as the Governor's.

"Your tongue proclaims you my countryman, sir," he said. "Did I hear
right that your name was Garvald?"

"Of Auchencairn?" he asked, when I had assented.

"Of Auchencairn, or what is left of it," I said.

"Then, gentlemen," he said, addressing the company, "I can settle the
dispute on the facts, without questioning his Excellency's dogma. Mr.
Garvald is of as good blood as any in Scotland. And that," said he
firmly, "means that in the matter of birth he can hold up his head in
any company in any Christian land."

I do not think this speech made any man there look on me with greater
favour, but it enormously increased my own comfort. I have never felt
such a glow of gratitude as then filled my heart to the staid cleric.
That he was of near kin to Miss Elspeth made it tenfold sweeter. I
forgot my old clothes and my uncouth looks; I forgot, too, my
irritation with the brocaded gentleman. If her kin thought me worthy, I
cared not a bodle for the rest of manki