"We'll have Daniel go and tell them you are here," she solved the problem easily. Then she ran up the broad stairs, crying gaily, "Oh, Uncle, I've had the loveliest time," as a short, stern-faced man appeared in the doorway; a man with a silver-banded wooden leg and leaning on a heavy cane.
"Katrina!" he exclaimed with some sternness, but she pulled his hard face down to hers for a kiss.
"I've had such a lovely time," she cooed, "and this nice boy found me and brought me home. Thank him, Uncle Peter, and have him come in and tell me some more stories."
Samuel drew back; but the governor nodded for him to enter, and, feeling miserably shy and uncertain of himself, he followed the pair into the house. The room they entered was richly furnished, but gloomy. Samuel, boy that he was, felt how much lovelier his mother's simple living room was with its shining brass and the few plants blooming at the window. The governor sat down behind a long table littered with papers and drew Katrina to his knee, at the same time motioning Samuel to be seated. Then he spoke, stroking the child's golden curls, his keen eyes growing gentle as they rested upon her pretty face.
"You have been of service to my little girl and I will do my best to reward you," said Governor Stuyvesant, kindly. "What will it be, my lad, a velvet suit brought over in the last cargo from Holland, or a golden chain?" Suddenly the eyes he turned upon Samuel grew cold and keen again. "You are not one of us, yet I have seen you before. Who is your father and what is his trade?"
"I am Samuel, the son of Jacob Barsimon," answered Samuel, and suddenly all his shyness left him and he gazed fearlessly into the governor's face. "And my father is an honest merchant of New Amsterdam."
"Yes—and of the tribe of Israel," muttered the old man, his brow darkening. "I wish my little one might have been indebted to another this day; but I am as honest a man as your father and what I promise, I keep. So name what reward you will for the favor you have rendered me—and be off."
Samuel rose, his face flushing with anger at the man's insolence, yet glowing with a hope he hardly dared to utter even to himself. For the time had come, he believed, when he might play the hero, as he had done so many times before in his dreams. "I want no reward," he answered quietly, "but if you would render me favor for favor, I would ask you to withdraw the restriction you have placed upon my brethren—those Jews who sought these shores on the 'St. Catarina' and who desire to make their homes here."
The governor smiled grimly. "A true Jew," he muttered, with a sort of grudging admiration for the boy's boldness, "ever ready with his bargain! But I have no longer the power to grant you or refuse you your request." He picked up from the table a long, bulky envelope, from which dangled a red seal. "This came this morning from Holland. Tomorrow I must tell the burghers that the gentlemen of the Board of Directors of the Dutch West India Company have over-ridden my suggestions; they write that I must admit these Jews, provided that the poor among them shall not become a burden to our community, as they at first seemed likely to be, but be supported by their own nation." Again his grim smile. "No fear of that, when even a boy like you thinks of his people before gifts for himself. I wish," he half mused, "I wish that we had at least that virtue of your stiff-necked race."
Little Katrina, grown weary of all this, slipped from her uncle's knees and took Samuel's hand in hers. "Come into the garden," she commanded, "I want you to see my rose bushes and my new kittens and the swing, before supper."