She dropped her knitting to her feet, she put her arms around his neck, and, laying her head upon his breast, said softly, "My good Joris! I will love thee forever."
In a few minutes Elder Semple came in. He looked exceedingly worried; and, although Joris and he avoided politics by a kind of tacit agreement, he could not keep to kirk and commercial matters, but constantly returned to one subject,—a vessel lying at Murray's Wharf, which had sold her cargo of molasses and rum to the "Committee of Safety."
"And we'll be haeing the custom-house about the city's ears, if there's 'safety' in that,—the born idiots," he said.
Joris was in that grandly purposeful mood that takes no heed of fretful worries. He let the elder drift from one grievance to another; and he was just in the middle of a sentence containing his opinion of Sears and Willet, when Bram's entrance arrested it. There was something in the young man's face and attitude which made every one turn to him. He walked straight to the side of Joris,—
"Father, we have closed his Majesty's custom-house forever."
"We! Who, then, Bram?"
"The Committee of Safety and the Sons of Liberty."
Semple rose to his feet, trembling with passion. "Let me tell you, then, Bram, you are a parcel o' rogues and rebels; and, if I were his Majesty, I'd gibbet the last ane o' you."