“It is as the shoemaker says,” he declared bravely. “My father held views other than yours concerning certain matters of the church and he was bold enough not to hold his tongue. Although it chanced that I myself followed my dead mother’s faith, which was the same as yours, good neighbours, I also fell under suspicion and was imprisoned with my father, but we both escaped. There was a ship just sailing from Boston whose captain was my father’s friend and a kindly man. His was a little vessel but we managed to find a place of concealment in her hold, so that she put to sea with my father on board. When he was found they did not turn back but carried him safe to Holland.”
“And why did you not go with him?” demanded Goodman Allen, bluntly.
For the first time Roger’s voice faltered.
“There—there proved to be hiding place for but one,” he said.
Although he spoke so low, there was not one of that breathlessly attentive audience who did not hear. A low mutter of approval went around the room, for every stout-hearted Puritan there loved courage and high undaunted spirit.
“Speak on, boy,” said Allen, “tell us how you came hither.”
“I let my father think that I could find another place,” Roger went on, “so that he did not discover, until too late, that I was left behind. I wandered from town to town, dwelt in the forest with the priest and the Indians for a space and at last came here and took service with the shoemaker. He cared not for differences of faith if he could have a helper whom he need not pay. I think he found and read a letter from my father and so learned who I was. That, men of Hopewell, is the whole of my tale.”
For a fleeting minute it seemed that Roger’s simply-told story had won forgiveness for both of the accused. But after a moment the tide of feeling turned. Free thinking, irregularity of doctrine, Popery—there were no other things that the Pilgrims feared so much. Famine and pestilence might be checked, but the fire of heresy, once lit among them, might burn until the peace of the whole Colony was destroyed. The men consulted, laid their heads together, whispered and then spoke louder and louder as their terror and excitement grew. Presently a clamour arose, led by Skerry’s shrill voice:
“Destroy this evil! Drive them forth! Let no such danger lurk within our midst!”
It was fear, rather than anger that sounded in their voices, the deadly terror of that unconquerable enemy, free-thinking, so often beaten down but always raising its head again. Men looked at each other with dread and suspicion in their eyes. What could be done in such a desperate pass, with the peril striking at their very midst? Naught, they seemed to think helplessly, save to raise a louder and more threatening tumult. Margeret, thinking of the Quaker women, shrank back as the clamouring throng moved a step forward. Roger threw his arm around her and turned defiantly to face them all.