"Master Juggins hath slated you for a prominent part. I respect his judgment, but more than our immediate fortune hinges upon the issue of what we do, and I must know all."
The while he was talking he walked to the fireplace, selected a clay pipe, walked back to his chair, crammed the pipe with tobacco and cracked flint and steel to a slow-match of wadding, with which he lighted it. Colden sat low down in his chair, finger-tips joined, drinking in everything which was said. He was like a vigilant terrier in his watchful eagerness.
I recounted the circumstances of my meeting with Juggins, the hearing before the Lords of Trade and the incidents of the voyage, not forgetting Tom's assault upon me and the strange bargain I had made with Murray.
"Then are you safe from denunciation," broke in the governor. "We think little of Hanoverian or Jacobite in New York. Here, Master Ormerod, you will find only Englishmen laboring to wrest a living from the wilderness and to extend their country's power and richness. What you were matters little. 'Tis what you are we judge you by.
"The bargain was typical of Murray. He is no ordinary villain. Already he hath persuaded the discontented elements in the province that I would take the bread from their mouths by stopping his trade. But he knows well that I would leap upon the excuse to lay him by the heels, and he will see to it that no suspicion of your past escapes."
"He threatened me with the Red Death this morning," I said. "Can you tell me what he meant by it?"
The governor and Colden exchanged significant glances.
"Bolling hath been in the town this week past," remarked the latter.
"I saw him on my way here," I said. "Ah, then, 'tis——"
"'Tis a saying of the frontier," explained the governor. "They call this red-headed Bolling and Murray's negro, Tom, the Red and the Black Deaths, for Murray is charged with having used them to remove from his path those persons he considers dangerous or whom he honors with his dislike."