Master Langston was the first to speak, observing that the relic made
it evident that the child must have been baptized.

"A Popish baptism," said Master Heatherthwayte, "with chrism and taper
and words and gestures to destroy the pure simplicity of the sacrament."

Controversy here seemed to be setting in, and the infant cause of it
here setting up a cry, Susan escaped under pretext of putting Humfrey
to bed in the next room, and carried off both the little ones. The
conversation then fell upon the voyage, and the captain described the
impregnable aspect of the castle of Dumbarton, which was held for Queen
Mary by her faithful partisan, Lord Flemyng. On this, Cuthbert
Langston asked whether he had heard any tidings of the imprisoned
Queen, and he answered that it was reported at Leith that she had
well-nigh escaped from Lochleven, in the disguise of a lavender or
washerwoman. She was actually in the boat, and about to cross the
lake, when a rude oarsman attempted to pull aside her muffler, and the
whiteness of the hand she raised in self-protection betrayed her, so
that she was carried back. "If she had reached Dumbarton," he said,
"she might have mocked at the Lords of the Congregation. Nay, she
might have been in that very brig, whose wreck I beheld."

"And well would it have been for Scotland and England had it been the
will of Heaven that so it should fall out," observed the Puritan.

"Or it may be," said the merchant, "that the poor lady's escape was
frustrated by Providence, that she might be saved from the rocks of the
Spurn."

"The poor lady, truly! Say rather the murtheress," quoth
Heatherthwayte.

"Say rather the victim and scapegoat of other men's plots," protested
Langston.

"Come, come, sirs," says Talbot, "we'll have no high words here on what
Heaven only knoweth. Poor lady she is, in all sooth, if sackless;
poorer still if guilty; so I know not what matter there is for falling
out about. In any sort, I will not have it at my table." He spoke with
the authority of the captain of a ship, and the two visitors, scarce
knowing it, submitted to his decision of manner, but the harmony of the
evening seemed ended. Cuthbert Langston soon rose to bid good-night,
first asking his cousin at what hour he proposed to set forth for the
Spurn, to which Richard briefly replied that it depended on what had to
be done as to the repairs of the ship.

The clergyman tarried behind him to say, "Master Talbot