"What good do you gain by stopping here?" urged Astbury. "What did the Major gain by all his fighting and praying? Nothing but the gallows! Now, for me! I've been near the gallows a good few times, but I bean't hanged yet, and I've had a merry life of it; and I've got that pot of gold I told you of. Strike hands and join me, sir! What have you got to look for here, if you'd excuse me, but to hang like Major Harrison?" Strange, that this ignorant man should once and again put his finger on the vulnerable spot in Dick's armour. "Yes," he murmured to himself, "the wise man dieth as the fool dieth, and what hath a man for his labours but vexation of spirit. This also is vanity!" Astbury caught the muttered words. "Very well said, sir, and sounds like Scripture! But I tell you gold's solid, that's no vanity; and if I could but get back to where I buried it----" Dick was not listening. Something in his own bosom was arguing Astbury's cause, better than that vagrant could do it himself. Homeless, friendless in England, might there not yet be a career for him in the West? Not in cold, pious Rhode Island, but under brighter skies that offered fiercer pleasures. Good Parson Perrient had painted Providence plantation as a sort of paradise, where the liberty and toleration dreamt of by a few in England were the law for all; but was that refuge open to him? The good parson might be dead; his daughter wedded to some sturdy settler, who would have no fancy for such a compromising guest as one bearing the hated name of Harrison! To fly to New England would be but to begin his old life over again, and as Astbury truly said, What had it brought him? What had he gained? What had England gained by all they had done and dared? "If our cause was, as we thought, of God, why did He not own us? What were General Harrison's dreams of a pure republic, but vanity? Who can say if his dreams of heaven were any truer?" A wild desire flashed across the young man to break once and for all with the puzzles and struggles of the past, and throw in his life with the ruffian who sat opposite to him. He knew his own powers, he could lead, he was cool and prompt; he might be a stupid enough fellow in many ways, but he was a born soldier. Astbury would get together enough of men to follow him; only too many good soldiers were then laying by their useless swords. Why should he not sail in the wake of Drake and Raleigh, and make himself a name? Ay, and found new commonwealths in the land of sunset? "I must think it over, Astbury," he said, rousing himself. "Sleep brings council, they say; and we have sat our fire out."