“I do not choose,” replied the man, after a moment. “Not all of us in England like our new King and our new taxes. I be no Papist, but I will betray no gentleman because he is a Papist or even a Popish priest. And though I be not often in late years in Devon, yet, I have heard of Mr. Roger Egremont being turned out for his father’s by-blow, and a shame I think it. So eat and sleep in peace, Mr. Egremont, and when I return to England I’ll swear I never saw or heard of you.”
“I thank you for an honest man, worthy of Devon—the best county in our England, the best people—”
“They have not treated you and your trade over well,” dryly remarked the skipper.
“They are blinded by prejudice and have been evilly taught things about us which are not true; but we English in the Society of Jesus fight for the privilege of coming here, albeit we risk our necks by it; and I tell you, my friend, though I be glad to get out of England now, I propose to return some day, and having escaped with my life once, I shall make that a claim to come again. And now tell me the mournful story of those unhappy gentlemen who died under the hangman’s hands to-day.”
The skipper told the story with that calm brutality with which a common mind, however good, relates horrors. He spared not one detail of the hanging or quartering.
“There was much murmuring on the part of the crowd, and it was openly said that the reason the King is so hot after Sir John Fenwick, who is not yet apprehended, and for whose conviction the whole power of the crown was used, when it was found impossible to convict him under the law, is because Sir John laughed at the King’s being beaten by the old hunchback, as he called Marshal Luxembourg, in the Low Counties. The gentlemen who suffered to-day all died bravely, and called the people to witness that they died for their King.”
Dicky remained silent for some time, and then, rising, said,
“I must have a last glimpse of my country. Though she drives me away from her, like a cruel mother, yet will I love her,—and will take no other for a step-mother.”
He went on deck, and remained as long as he could catch a glimpse of the shadowy shores, past which they glided. Then, kneeling down, he prayed earnestly for his country, and a part of his prayer was that he might soon return.
Within two days they made Antwerp. Dicky was not suffered to land without money, and when the skipper pressed half a dozen gold-pieces upon him, Dicky, with that strange loyalty which an exile always feels for the land from which he has been driven forth, said, with tears in his eyes,—