abor.

"You know of the plot--" I begun, but he broke in upon me
fiercely.

"May the fiends take me, but what know I of a plot?" he cried.

"Can I not bring over gowns and kerchiefs and silken ribbons for a
pretty maid without a plot? How knew you that? There is the woman's
tongue again. But can I not bring over goods even of such sort;
might I not with good reason suppose them to be for the defence of
the cause of his most gracious Majesty King Charles against the
savages, or any malcontents in his colonies? What plot, sirrah?"

"The plot for the cutting down of the young tobacco plants, Captain
Tabor," said I.

His eyes blazed at me, while his face was pale and grim.

"How many know of the goods I discharged from the Golden Horn
yesterday?" he asked.

"Three men, and I know not how many more, and two women," said I.

"Two women!" he groaned out. "Pestilence on these tide-waters which
hold a ship like a trap! Two women!"

"But the concern is lest a third woman know," said I.

"If three women know, then God save us all, for their triple tongues
will carry as far as the last trump!" cried Captain Tabor. Perturbed
as he was, he never lost that air of reckless daring which compelled
me to a sort of liking for him. "Out with the rest of it, sir," he
said.

Then I told my story, to which he listened, scowling, yet with that
ready laugh at his mouth. "'Tis a scurvy trick to serve a woman,
both for her sake and the rest of us, to let her meddle with such
matters," he said, "and so I told that cousin of hers, Master Drake,
who came with her to give the order ere I sailed for England."

"Came any man save Ralph Drake with her then?" I asked.

"The saints forbid," he replied. "A secret is a secret only when in
the keeping of one; with two it findeth legs, but with three it
unfoldeth the swiftest wings of flight in all creation, and is
everywhere with no alighting. Had three come to me with that mad
order to bring powder and shot in the stead of silk stockings and
garters and cambric shifts and kerchiefs, I would have clapped full
sail on the Golden Horn, though--" he hesitated, then spoke in a
whisper--"my mind is against tyranny, to speak you true, though
I care not a farthing whether men pray on their knees or their feet,
or in gowns or the fashion of Eden. And I care not if they pray at
all, nor would I for the sake of that ever have forsaken, had I
stood in my grandfather's shoes, the flesh-pots of old Englan