Charles Town and its tavern and its girls, and the
company passed from view. The lane was again deserted and silent and
Jack offered to escort Dorothy Stuart to her own home. As they loitered
across an open field, he cried in a fierce flare of rebellion:

"My good uncle will drive me too far. Let him sail for old England and
leave me to find my own career. Upon my soul, I may run away to join a
pirate ship."

Dorothy tried to look grave at this dreadful announcement but a dimple
showed in her cheek as she replied:

"My dear Jack, you can never be braver but you will be wiser some day.
Banish such silly thoughts. You must obey your lawful guardian."

"But did you see the lads in the militia company? Two or three of them I
have whipped in fair fight. And Uncle Peter wants to keep me tucked in a
cradle."

"Softly, Jack," said she, with pretty solicitude. "Stede Bonnet has
bewitched you utterly."

The stubborn youth shook his head. This day of humiliation had been the
last straw. He was ripe for desperate adventure. It would have made him
happy and contented to be marching against the Indians with Stede Bonnet
and his cut-throats, in peril of tomahawks and ambuscades.

Small wonder that poor Jack Cockrell's notions of right and wrong were
rather confused, for he lived in an age when might ruled blue water,
when every ship was armed and merchant seamen fought to save their skins
as well as their cargoes. English, French, Spanish, and Dutch, they
plundered each other on the flimsiest pretexts and the pirates harried
them all.

Still sulky, Jack betook himself to the rectory next morning for his
daily bout with his studies. Parson Throckmorton was puttering in the
garden, a shrunken little man who wore black small-clothes, lace at his
wrists, and a powdered wig. Opening the silver snuff-box he almost
sneezed the wig off before he chirruped:

"Ye mind me of Will Shakespeare's whining schoolboy, Master
John,--creeping like snail unwillingly to school. A treat is in store
for us to-day, a signal treat! We begin our Virgil. '_Arma virumque
cano._'"

"Arms and a man? I like that much of it," glowered the mutinous scholar,
"but my uncle makes me sing a different tune."

"He accepted my advice,--that you be educated in England," said the
parson.

"Then I may hold you responsible for this hellish thing?" angrily
declaimed Jack. "Were it not for your white hairs----"

He subsided and had the grace to apologize as they