“Now—­exactly on the minute!”

“Why—­why—­didn’t you give us warning?” stammered Rebecca, putting out one shy hand.

At that I laughed outright; but it was as much the fashion for gentlemen of the cloth to affect a mighty solemnity in those days as it was for the laity to let out an oath at every other word, and the young divine only frowned sourly at my levity.

“If—­if—­if you’d only given us warning,” interrupts Rebecca.

“Faith, Rebecca, an you talk of warning, I’ll begin to think you needed it——­”

“To give you welcome,” explains Rebecca.  Then recovering herself, she begs, with a pretty bobbing courtesy, to make me known to the Reverend Adam Kittridge.

The Reverend Kittridge shakes hands with an air as he would sound my doctrine on the spot, and Rebecca hastens to add that I am “a very—­old—­old friend.”

“Not so very old, Rebecca, not so very long ago since you and I read over the same lesson-books.  Do you mind the copy-heads on the writing-books?

“’Heaven to find.  The Bible mind.  In Adam’s fall we sinn’ed all.  Adam lived a lonely life until he got himself a wife.’”

But at that last, which was not to be found among the head-lines of Boston’s old copy-books, little Rebecca looked like to drop, and with a frightened gesture begged us to be seated, which we all accomplished with a perceptible stiffening of the young gentleman’s joints.

“Is M. Radisson back?” she asks.

“He reached England yesterday.  He bade me say that he will be here after he meets the shareholders.  He goes to present furs to the king this morning.”

“That will please Lady Kirke,” says the young gentleman.

“Some one else is back in England,” exclaims Rebecca, with the air of news.  “Ben Gillam is here.”

“O-ho!  Has he seen the Company?”

“He and Governor Brigdar have been among M. Radisson’s enemies.  Young Captain Gillam says there’s a sailor-lad working on the docks here can give evidence against M. Radisson.”

“Can you guess who that sailor-lad is, Rebecca?”

“It is not—­no—­it is not Jack?” she asks.

“Jack it is, Rebecca.  That reminds me, Jack sent a message to you!”

“A message to me?”

“Yes—­you know he’s married—­he married last year when he was in the north.”

“Married?” cries Rebecca, throwing up her hands and like to faint from surprise.  “Married in the north?  Why—­who—­who married him, Ramsay?”

“A woman, of course!”

“But—­” Rebecca was blushing furiously, “but—­I mean—­was there a chaplain?  Had you a preacher?  And—­and was not Mistress Hortense the only woman——?”

“No—­child—­there were thousands of women—­native women——­”

“Squaws!” exclaims the prim little Puritan maid, with a red spot burning on each cheek.  “Do you mean that Jack Battle has married a squaw?” and she rose indignantly.