CHAPTER IX.

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“A country lad is my degree, An’ few there be that ken me, O; But what care I how few they be, I’m welcome aye to Nannie, O.” Burns.

There are hints in Miss Leslie’s letter to Everell Fletcher that require some amplification to be quite intelligible. She looked upon herself as the unhappy, though innocent cause, of the old Indian woman’s misfortune; and, rash as generous, she had resolved, if possible, to extricate her. With the inconsiderate warmth of youthful feeling, she had, before the grave and reverend magistrates, declared her belief in Nelema’s innocence, and thereby implied a censure of their wisdom. This was certainly an almost unparalleled presumption in those times, when youth was accounted inferiority; but the very circumstance that in one light aggravated her fault, in another mitigated it; and her youth being admitted in extenuation of her offence, she was allowed to escape with a reproof and admonition of moderate length, while her poor guardian was condemned to a long and private conference on the urgency of reclaiming the spoiled child. Various modes of effecting so desirable an object were suggested; for, as the Scotchman said in an analogous case, “Ilka man can manage a wife but him that has her.”

{174}

This matter had passed over, and justice was proceeding in her stern course, when fortune, accident, or, more truly, Providence, favoured the benevolent wishes of our heroine. She had, as has been seen, been carried by an unforeseen circumstance to the house of one of the magistrates. There, mindful of the poor old prisoner, whose sentence she knew was daily expected from Boston, she had been watchful of every circumstance relating to her, and when she observed the key of her prison deposited in an accessible place (no one dreaming of any interference in behalf of the condemned), she was inspired with a sudden resolution to set her free. This was a bold, dangerous, and unlawful interposition; but Hope Leslie took counsel only from her own heart, and that told her that the rights of innocence were paramount to all other rights: and as to danger to herself, she did not weigh it--she did not think of it.

Digby came to the village to attend her home, and this afforded her an opportunity of concert with him; in the depths of the night, when all the household were in profound sleep, she stole from her bed, found her way to the door of the dungeon, and leading out the prisoner, gave her into Digby’s charge, who had a canoe in waiting, in which he ferried her to the opposite shore, where he left her, after having supplied her with provisions to sustain her to the valleys of the Housatonic, if, indeed, her wasted strength should enable her to reach there. The gratitude of the poor old creature for her unexpected deliverance from shameful death is faintly touched on in Hope’s {175} letter. She could scarcely, without magnifying her own merit, have described the vehement emotion with which Nelema promised that she would devote the remnant of her miserable days to seeking and restoring her lost sister. Again and again, while Hope urged her departure, she reiterated this promise; and finally, when she parted from Digby, she repeated, as if it were a prophecy, “She shall see her sister.”

Young persons are not apt to make a very exact adjustment of means and ends, and our heroine certainly placed an undue confidence in the power of the helpless old woman to accomplish her promise; but she needed not this to increase her present joy at her success. She crept to her bed, and was awakened in the morning, as she has herself related, with the information of Nelema’s escape. She had now a part to play to which she was unused: to mask her feelings, affect ignorance, and take part in the consternation of the assembled village. As may be imagined, her assumed character was awkwardly enough performed; but all were occupied with their own surmises, and no one thought of her--no one excepting Mr. Pynchon, who had scarcely fixed his eye on her when a suspicion that had before flashed on his mind was confirmed. He knew, from the simplicity of her nature, and from her habitual frankness, that she would not have hesitated to avow her pleasure in Nelema’s escape if she had not herself been accessory to it. He watched her averted eye, he observed her unbroken silence, and her lips, that, in {176} spite of all her efforts, played into an inevitable smile at the superstitious surmises of some of the wise people, whose philosophy had never dreamed of that every-day axiom of modern times, that supernatural aid should not be called in to interpret events which may be explained by natural causes.

However satisfactory Mr. Pynchon’s conclusions were to himself, he confined them, for the present, to his own bosom. He was a merciful man, and probably felt an emotion of joy at the old woman’s escape, that could not be suppressed by the stern justice that had pronounced her worthy of death. But while he easily reconciled himself to the loss of the prisoner, he felt the necessity of taking instant and efficient measures to subdue to becoming deference and obedience the rash and lawless girl who had dared to interpose between justice and its victim. His heart recoiled from punishing her openly, and he contented himself with insisting, in a private interview with Mr. Fletcher, on the necessity of her removal to a stricter control than his; and recommended, for a time, a temporary transfer of his neglected authority to less indulgent hands.

Mr. Fletcher complied so far as to consent that his favourite should be sent for a few months to Boston, to the care of Madam Winthrop, whose character being brought out by the light of her husband’s official station, was held up as a sort of pattern throughout New-England. But we must, for the present, pass by state characters--gallery portraits--for the miniature picture that lies next our heart, and {177} which it is full time should be formally presented to our readers, whose curiosity, we trust, has not been sated by occasional glimpses.

Nothing could be more unlike the authentic, “thoroughly educated,” and thoroughly disciplined young ladies of the present day than Hope Leslie--as unlike as a mountain rill to a canal--the one leaping over rocks and precipices, sportive, free, and beautiful, or stealing softly on, in unseen, unpraised loveliness; the other, formed by art, restrained within prescribed and formal limits, and devoted to utility. Neither could anything in outward show be more unlike a modern belle arrayed in the last Paris fashion, than Hope Leslie in her dress of silk or muslin, shaped with some deference to the fashion of the day, but more according to the dictates of her own skill and classic taste, which she followed somewhat pertinaciously, in spite of the suggestions of her experienced aunt.

Fashion had no shrines among the Pilgrims: but where she is most abjectly worshipped, it would be treason against the paramount rights of Nature to subject such a figure as Hope Leslie’s to her tyranny. As well might the exquisite classic statue be arrayed in corsets, _manches en gigot, garnitures en tulle, &c._ Her height was not above the medium standard of her sex; she was delicately formed; the high health and the uniform habits of a country life had endowed her with the beauty with which Poetry has invested Hebe; while her love for exploring hill and dale, ravine and precipice, had given her that elastic step {178} and ductile grace which belong to all agile animals, and which made every accidental attitude such as a painter would have selected to express the nymph-like beauty of Camilla.

It is in vain to attempt to describe a face whose material beauty, though that beauty may be faultless, is but a medium for the irradiations of the soul. For the curious, we would, if we could, set down the colour of our heroine’s eyes; but, alas! it was undefinable; and appeared gray, blue, hazel, or black, as the outward light touched them, or as they kindled by the light of her feelings.

Her rich brown hair turned in light waves from her sunny brow, as if it would not hide the beauty it sheltered. Her mouth, at this early period of life, had nothing of the seriousness and contemplation that events might afterward have traced there. It rather seemed the station of all-sportive, joyous, and kindly feeling; and, at the slightest motion of her thoughts, curled into smiles, as if all the breathings of her young heart were happiness and innocence.

It may appear improbable that a girl of seventeen, educated among the strictest sect of the Puritans, should have had the open, fearless, and gay character of Hope Leslie; but it must be remembered that she lived in an atmosphere of favour and indulgence, which permits the natural qualities to shoot forth in unrepressed luxuriance: an atmosphere of love, that, like a tropical climate, brings forth the richest flowers and most flavorous fruits. She was transferred from the care of the gentlest and tenderest of mothers {179} to Mr. Fletcher, who, though stern in his principles, was indulgent in his practice; whose denying virtues were all self-denying; and who infused into the parental affection he felt for the daughter, something of the romantic tenderness of the lover of her mother. Her aunt Grafton doted on her; she was the depository of her vanity as well as of her affection. To her simple tutor she seemed to imbody all that philosophers and poets had set down in their books of virtue and beauty; and those of the old and rigid, who were above or below the influence of less substantial charms, regarded the young heiress with deference. In short, she was the petted lamb of the fold.

It has been seen that Hope Leslie was superior to some of the prejudices of the age. This may be explained without attributing too much to her natural sagacity. Those persons she most loved, and with whom she had lived from her infancy, were of variant religious sentiments. Her father had belonged to the Established Church, and, though he had much of the gay spirit that characterized the cavaliers of the day, he was serious and exact in his observance of the rites of the Church. She had often been her mother’s companion at the proscribed “meeting,” and witnessed the fervour with which she joined in the worship of a persecuted and suffering people. Early impressions sometimes form moulds for subsequent opinions; and when, at a more reflecting age, Hope heard her aunt Grafton rail with natural good sense, and with the freedom, if not the {180} point, of mother-wit, at some of the peculiarities of the Puritans, she was led to doubt their infallibility; and, like the bird that spreads his wings, and soars above the limits by which each man fences in his own narrow domain, she enjoyed the capacities of her nature, and permitted her mind to expand beyond the contracted boundaries of sectarian faith. Her religion was pure and disinterested; no one, therefore, should doubt its intrinsic value, though it had not been coined into a particular form, or received the current impress.

Though the history of our heroine, like a treasured flower, has only left its sweetness on the manuscript page, from which we have amplified it, yet we have been compelled to infer, from some transactions which we shall faithfully record, that she had faults; but we leave our readers to discover them. Who has the resolution to point out a favourite’s defects?

As our fair readers are not apt to be observant of dates, it may be useful to remind them that Miss Leslie’s letter was written in October. In the following May, two ships from the mother country anchored at the same time in Boston Bay. Some passengers from each ship availed themselves of the facility of the pilot-boat to go up to the town. Among others were two gentlemen, who met now for the first time: the one a youth, in manhood’s earliest prime, with a frank, intelligent, and benevolent countenance, over which, as he strained his eyes to the shore, joy and anxiety flitted with rapid vicissitude; the other had advanced farther into life: he might not be more than five-and-thirty, {181} possibly not so much; but his face was deeply marked by the ravages of the passions, or, perhaps, the stirring scenes of life. His eyes were black and piercing, set near together, and overhung by thick black brows, whose incessant motion indicated a restless mind. The concentration of thought, or the designing purpose expressed by the upper part of his face, was contradicted by his loose, open, flexible lips. His complexion had the same puzzling contrariety; it was dark and saturnine, but enlivened with the ruddy hue of a _bon vivant_. His nose neither turned up nor down, was neither Grecian nor Roman. In short, the countenance of the stranger was a worthless dial-plate--a practical refutation of the _science_ of Physiognomy; and, as the infallible art of Phrenology was unknown to our fathers, they were compelled to ascertain the character (as their unlearned descendants still are) by the slow development of the conduct. The person of the stranger had a certain erect and gallant bearing that marks a man of the world, but his dress was strictly Puritanical; and his hair, so far from being permitted the “freedom of growing long,” then deemed “a luxurious feminine prolixity,” or being covered with a wig (one of the abominations that, according to Eliot; had brought on the country the infliction of the Pequod war), was cropped with exemplary precision. But, though the stranger’s apparel was elaborately Puritanical, still there was a certain elegance about it which indicated that his taste had reluctantly yielded to his principles. His garments were of {182} the finest materials, and exactly fitted to a form of striking manly symmetry. His hair, it is true, was scrupulously clipped, but, being thick and jet black, it becomingly defined a forehead of uncommon whiteness and beauty. In one particular he had departed from the letter of the law, and, instead of exposing his throat by the plain, open linen collar usually worn, he sheltered its ugly protuberance with a fine cambric ruff, arranged in box plaits. In short, though, with the last exception, a nice critic could not detect the most venial error in his apparel, yet among the Puritans he looked much like a “dandy Quaker” of the present day amid his sober-suited brethren.

While the boat, impelled by a favouring tide and fair breeze, glided rapidly towards the metropolis of the now thriving colony, the gentlemen fell into conversation with the pilot. The elder stranger inquired if Governor Winthrop had been re-elected.

“Yes, God bless him,” replied the sailor, “the worthy gentleman has taken the helm once more.”

“Has he,” asked the stranger, eagerly, “declared for King or Parliament?”

“Ho! I don’t know much about their land-tackle,” replied the seaman; “but, to my mind, the fastings we have had all along when the king won the day, and the rejoicings when the Parliament gained it, was what you might call a declaration. Since you speak of it, I do remember I heard the boys up in town saying that our magistrates, at election, did scruple about the oath, and concluded to leave out {183} that part which promises to bear true faith and allegiance to our sovereign lord, King Charles.”

“So, we have thrown his majesty overboard, and are to sail under Parliament colours?” said the young gentleman. “Well,” he continued, “this might have been predicted some five or six years since, for, I remember, there were then disputes whether the king’s ensign should be spread there,” and he pointed to the fortifications on Castle Island, past which the boat was at that moment gliding. “They scruple now about the oath. Then their consciences rebelled against the red cross in the ensign, which, I remember, was called ‘the Pope’s gift,’ ‘a relic of papacy,’ ‘an idolatrous sign,’ &c.”

“Scruples of conscience are ever honourable,” said the elder stranger; “and, doubtless, your governor has good reason for not complying with the Scripture rule: ‘render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s.’”

“There is no doubt of it,” replied the seaman. “The governor--God bless him!--knows the rules of the Good Book as well as I know the ropes of a ship; and there is no better pilot than he for all weathers, as he shows by not joining in the hue and cry against the good creature tobacco. Fair winds through life, and a pleasant harbour at last, do I wish him for this piece of Christian love!” at the same time he illustrated his benediction by putting a portion of the favourite luxury in his mouth.

“I am sorry,” said the young gentleman, “that our magistrates have volunteered a public expression {184} of their feelings; their sympathies, of course, are with the Parliament party; they virtually broke the yoke of royal authority when they left their native land, and showed what value they set on liberty by sacrificing for it every temporal good. Now they have a right to enjoy their liberty in peace.”

“Peace!” said the elder gentleman, emphatically; “thus it ever is with the natural man, crying peace, peace, where there is no peace. Think you, young man, that if the king were to recover his power, he would not resume all the privileges he has formerly granted to these people, who, thanks to Him whose ark abideth with them! show themselves so ready to cast off their allegiance?”

“The king, no doubt,” replied the young gentleman, “would like to resume both power and possession; but still I think we might retain our own, on the principle that he had no right to give, and, in truth, could not give what was not his, and what we have acquired either by purchase of the natives or by lawful conquest, which gives us the right to the _vacuum domicilium_.”

“I am happy to see, sir,” said the elder gentleman, slightly bowing and smiling, “that your principles, at least, are on the side of the Puritans.”

“My feelings and principles both, sir; but that does not render me insensible to the happiness of the adverse party, or the wisdom of all parties, which is peace; the peace which the generous Falkland so earnestly invokes, every patriot may ardently desire. Peace, if I may borrow a figure from our friend the {185} pilot here, is a fair wind and a flood-tide, and war a storm that must wreck some, and may wreck both friend and foe.”

The young gentleman seemed tired of the conversation, and turned away, fixing his eager gaze on the shore, towards which his heart bounded. His companion, however, was not disposed to indulge him in silence. “This town, sir,” he said, “appears to be familiar to you. I, alas! am a stranger and a wanderer.” This was spoken in a tone of unaffected seriousness.

“Of such this country is the natural home,” replied the young man, regarding his companion for the first time with some interest, for he had been repelled by what seemed to him to savour of cant, of which he had heard too much in the mother country. “I should be happy, sir,” he said, courteously, “to render my acquaintance with the town of any service to you.”

The stranger bowed in acknowledgment of the civility. “I would gladly,” he said, “find entertainment with some godly family here. Is Mr. Wilson still teacher of the congregation?”

“No, sir: if he were, you might securely count on his hospitality, as it was so notorious that ‘come in, you are heartily welcome,’ was said to be the anagram of his name. But, if he is gone, the doors in Boston are always open to the stranger. Mr. Cotton, I believe, is the present minister--is he not, pilot?”

“Yes, an please you, sir; but I’m thinking,” he {186} added, with a leer, “that that butterfly will be an odd fish to harbour with any of our right godly ones.” The young gentleman followed the direction of the pilot’s eye, and for the first time observed a lad, who sat on one side of the boat, leaning over, and amusing himself with lashing the waves with a fanciful walking-stick. He overheard the pilot’s remark, and raised his head, as it appeared, involuntarily, for he immediately averted it again, but not till he had exposed a face of uncommon beauty. He looked about fifteen. He had the full, melting dark eye and rich complexion of southern climes; masses of jetty curls parted on his forehead, shaded his temples and neck, and “smooth as Hebe’s was his unrazored lip.” It was obvious that it was his dress which had called forth the sailor’s sarcasm. The breast and sleeves of his jerkin were embroidered; a deep-pointed rich lace ruff embellished his neck, if a neck round and smooth as alabaster could be embellished; and his head was covered with a little fantastic Spanish hat, decorated with feathers.

“Does that youth appertain to you, sir?” asked the young gentleman of the elder stranger.

“Yes, he is a sort of dependant--a page of mine,” he replied, with an embarrassed manner; but in a moment recovering his self-possession, he added, “I infer, from the gratuitous remarks of our very frank pilot, and from the survey you have taken of the lad, that you think his apparel extraordinary.”

“It might possibly,” replied the young man, with a smile, “offend against certain sumptuary laws of our colony, and thus prove inconvenient to you.”

{187}

“Roslin, do you hear?” said the master to the page, who nodded his head without raising it; “thy finery, boy, as I have told thee, must be retrenched;” then turning to his companion, and lowering his voice to a confidential tone, he added, “the lad hath lived on the Continent, and hath there imbibed these vanities, of which I hope in good time to reform him; perhaps his youth hath overwrought with my indulgence in suffering them thus long.”

The young gentleman courteously prevented any farther, and, as he thought, unnecessary exculpation, by saying “that the offence was certainly a very trifling one, and if observed at all, would be, by the most scrupulous, considered as venial in so young a lad.” He now again turned his ardent gaze to the shore. “Ah! there is the spire of the new meeting-house,” he said; “and when I went away, the good people assembled under a thatched roof, and within mud walls.”

“And I can remember,” said the pilot, “for I was among the first comers to the wilderness, when for weeks the congregation met under an oak tree: and there was heart-worship there, gentlemen, if there ever was on the ball.”

A church standing where _Joy’s buildings_ are now located was the only one then in Boston. The greater part of the houses were built in its vicinity, just about the heart of the peninsula, on whose striking and singular form its first possessors aver they saw written prophecies of its future greatness. Some of its most prominent features have been softened by {188} time, and others changed by the busy art of man. Wharves, whole streets, and the noble granite market-house (a prouder memorial to its founder than a triumphal arch) now stand where the deep “cove” stretched its peaceful harbour, between the two hills that stood like towers of defence at its extremities. That at the north rose to the height of fifty feet above the sea, and on its level summit stood a windmill; towards the sea it presented an abrupt declivity, and was fortified at its base by a strong battery. The eastern hill was higher than its sister by some thirty feet; it descended kindly towards the town, and was on that side planted with corn. Towards the sea its steep and ragged cliffs announced that Nature had formed it for defence; and, accordingly, our fathers soon fortified it with “store of great artillery,” and changed the first pastoral name of Corn-hill, which they had given it, to the more appropriate designation of Fort-hill. A third hill flanked the town, rising to the height of one hundred and thirty-eight feet. “All three,” says Johnson, “like overtopping towers, keepe a constant watch to foresee the approach of forrein dangers, being furnished with a beacon, and loud babbling guns, to give notice, by their redoubled eccho, to all their sister townes.”

Shawmut, a word expressing living fountains, was the Indian name of Boston. Tri-mountain, its first English name, and descriptive of Beacon Hill, which, as we are told, rose in three majestic and lofty eminences, the most eastern of these summits having on its brow three little hillocks. Its present, and, as {189} we fondly believe, immortal name, was given with characteristic reverence, in honour of one of its first pastors, Mr. Cotton, who came from Boston, in England.

But we return from this digression to our pilot-boat, which now had nearly reached its landing-place. A throng had gathered on the “town-dock” in expectation of friends, or news from friends. In vain did the young stranger’s eye explore the crowd for some familiar face; he was obliged to check the greetings that rose to his lips, and repress the throbbings of his heart. “Time,” he said, “has wrought strange changes. I fancied that even the stones in Boston would know me; but now I see not one welcoming look, unless it be in those barbary and rose bushes, that appear just as they did the last time I scrambled over Windmill Hill.” They now landed at the foot of this hill, and the young gentleman told his companion that he should go to his old home at Governor Winthrop’s, where he was sure of finding friends to welcome him. “And if you will accompany me thither,” he said, “I am certain our kind governor will render you all the courtesies which, as a stranger, you may require.”

This opportune offer was of course accepted; and the gentlemen proceeded like old acquaintances, arm in arm together, after a short consultation between the master and page, the amount of which seemed to be that the boy should attend him, and await without Governor Winthrop’s door farther orders.

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They had not gone far, when, as they turned a corner, two young ladies issued from the door of a house a little in advance, and walked on without observing them. The young gentleman quickened his steps. “It must be she!” he exclaimed, in a most animated tone. “There is but one person in the world that has such tresses!” and his eye rested on the bright golden ringlets that peeped from beneath a chip gipsy hat worn by one of the ladies.

“That is not a rational conclusion of yours,” said his companion. “Women have cunning devices by which to change the order of Nature in the colouring of the hair. I have seen many a court dame arrayed in the purchased locks of her serving-maid; besides, you know it is the vain fashion of the day to make much use of coloured powders, fluids, and unguents.”

“That may all be; but do you not see this nymph’s locks are, as Rosalind says, of the colour God chooses?”

“It were better, my friend, if you explained your meaning without a profane quotation from a play, a practice to which our godless cavaliers are much addicted; but pardon my reproof: age has privileges.”

“I do not know,” replied the young gentleman, “what degree of seniority may confer this privilege; if some half dozen years, I submit to your right; and the more readily, as I am just now too happy to quarrel about anything; but excuse me, I must quicken my pace to overtake this girl, who trips it along as if she had Mercury’s wings on those pretty feet.”

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“Ah, that’s a foot to leave its print in the memory,” said the elder gentleman, in an animated and natural tone, that, eagerly as his companion was pressing on, did not escape his observation.

They had now approached the parties they were pursuing near enough to hear their voices and catch a few words of their conversation. “You say it’s edifying, and all that,” said the shortest of the two young ladies, in reply to what seemed, from the tone in which it was concluded, to have been an expostulation; “and I dare say, dear Esther, you are quite right, for you are as wise as Solomon, and always in the right; but for my part, I confess, I had infinitely rather be at home drying marigolds, and matching embroidery silks for aunt Grafton.”

“Hope Leslie! by Heaven!” exclaimed the young man, springing forward. The young lady turned at the sound of her name, uttered a scream of joy, and, under the impulse of strong affection and sudden delight, threw her arms around the stranger’s neck, and was folded in the embrace of Everell Fletcher.

The next instant, the consciousness that the street was an awkward place for such a demonstration of happiness, or, perhaps, the thought that the elegant young man before her was no longer the playfellow of her childhood, suffused her neck and face with the deepest crimson; and a sort of exculpatory exclamation of “I was so surprised!” burst from her lips, and extorted a smile even from Everell’s new acquaintance, whose gravity had all the fixedness of premeditation.

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For a moment Everell’s eyes were riveted to Hope Leslie’s face, which he seemed to compare with the image in his memory. “Yes,” he said, as if thinking aloud, “the same face that I saw, for the first time, peeping through my curtains, the day Digby brought me home to Bethel: how is Digby? my dear father? Mrs. Grafton? the Winthrops? everybody?”

“All, all well; but I must defer particulars till I have introduced you to my friend, Miss Downing.”

“Miss Downing! is it possible!” exclaimed Everell; and a recognition followed which showed that, though he had not before observed the lady, who had turned aside, and was sheltered under the thick folds of a veil, the parties were not unknown to each other. Miss Leslie now drew her friend’s arm within hers, and, as she did so, she perceived she trembled excessively; but, too considerate to remark an agitation which it was obvious the lady did not mean to betray, she did not appear to notice it, and proceeded to give Everell such particulars of his friends as he must be most impatient to hear. She told him that his father was in Boston, and that, in compliance with his son’s wishes, he had determined to fix his residence there. Everell was rejoiced at this decision, for gloomy recollections were, in his mind, always associated with Bethel, and he was never happy when he thought of the dangers to which Miss Leslie was exposed there.

“My last letters from America,” he said, “informed me that you had, as yet, no tidings from your sister or my friend Magawisca.”

{193}

“Nor have we now; still I cling to my belief that my poor sister will some day be restored to me: Nelema’s promise is prophecy to me.”

They had by this time reached Governor Winthrop’s. Miss Downing withdrew her arm from her friend, with the intention of retiring to her own apartment; but her steps faltered, and she sunk down in the first chair she could reach, hoping to escape all observation in the bustle of joy occasioned by the unexpected arrival of Everell; and she did so, excepting that her aunt called the colour to her cheek by saying, “My dear Esther, you have sadly fatigued yourself; you are as pale as death!” and Hope Leslie, noticing that Everell cast stolen glances of anxious inquiry at her friend, made, with the usual activity of a romantic imagination, a thousand conjectures as to the nature of their acquaintance. But there was nothing said or done to assist her speculations; and while the governor was looking over a letter of introduction, presented to him by Everell’s chance acquaintance, who had announced himself by the name of Sir Philip Gardiner, the young ladies withdrew to their own apartment.