"Why not say it here?" asked Giles, surlily, though he followed slowly after their guest.
"Giles Hopkins, you like me not," said Weston, when they had passed out of earshot. "Why is it? Surely I not only use you well, but you are the one person in this plantation that hath all the qualities I like best in a man: brains, courage, youth, good birth, which makes for spirit, and good looks. Your sister is all this and more, yet is the 'more' because she is a maid, and that excludes her from my preference for my purposes. Giles Hopkins, are you the man I take you for?"
"Faith, sir, that I cannot tell till you have shown me what form that taking bears," said Giles.
"There you show yourself! Prudence added to my list of qualities!" applauded Weston, clapping Giles on the back with real, or pretended enthusiasm. "I take you for a man with resolution, courage to seize an opportunity to make your fortune, to put yourself among those men of consequence who are secure of place, and means to adorn it. Will you march with me upon the way I will open to you?"
"'I dare do all that may become a man; who dares do more is none,'" replied Giles. "I don't know where I learned that, but it sounds like one of my father's beloved phrases, from his favourite poet. It seems well to fit the case."
"Shakespeare is not a Puritan text book," observed Weston, dryly. "No Hopkins is ever fully atune with such a community as this. Therefore, Giles, will you welcome my offer, as a more canting Plymouth pilgrim might not. Not to waste more time: Will you collect, after I have gone, all the skins which you can obtain from these settlers? And will you hold them in a safe place together, assuring your neighbours that you are secured of a market for them at better prices than they have ever received? And will you then, after you have got together all the skins available, ship them to me by means which I will open to you as soon as I am sure of your coöperation? This will leave your Plymouth people stripped to the winds; their commodity of trade gone, and, scant of food as they are, they will come to heel like dogs behind him who will lead them to meat. This will be yourself. I will furnish you with the means to give them what they will require in order to be bound to you. You shall be a prince of the New World, holding your little kingdom under the great English throne; there shall be no end to your possible grandeur. I will send you men, commodities for trade, arms, fine cloth and raiment to fulfil the brightest fairy dreams of youth. And look you, Giles Hopkins, this is no idle boast; it is within my power to do exactly as I promise. Are you mine?"
"Yours!" Giles spoke with difficulty, the blood mounting to his temples and knotting its veins, his hands clenching and unclenching as if it was almost beyond him to hold them from throttling his father's guest. "Am I a man or a cur? Cur? Nay, no cur is so low as you would make me. Betray Plymouth? Turn on these people with whom I've suffered and wrought? I would give my hand to kick you out into yonder harbour and drown you there as you deserve. I have but to turn you over to our governor, and short ways will you get with the good beaver skins which have been given to you by these people you want me to trick, scant though they are of everything, and that owing to you who have never sent them anything but your lying promises. Nay, turn not so white! You may keep your courage, as you keep your worthless life. Neither will I betray you to them. But see to it that this last day of your stay here is indeed the last one! Only till sunset do I give you to get out of Plymouth. If you are within our boundaries at moonrise I will deliver you over, and urge your hanging. And be sure these starved immigrants will be in a mood to hang you higher than Haman, when they hear of what you have laid before me, against them who are in such straits."
Mr. Weston did not delay to test Giles's sincerity. There was no mistaking that he would do precisely as he promised, and Weston took his departure a good two hours before sundown.
Giles stood with his hands in his pockets beside his father as Weston departed.
"Giles, courtesy to a guest is a law that binds us all," suggested Stephen Hopkins.