"Good friends!" he said to the happy dogs. "I am ashamed, my Constance, so to have afflicted thee. Smile, child; thou dost look as though destruction awaited me." "I am so sorry, Father! In good sooth, is there not trouble coming to you from this night's business?" asked Constance, folding up her work. "Nothing serious, child; likely a fine. But indeed it will be worth it to have the chance it will buy me to speak my mind clearly to my fellow colonists on these matters. Ah, my girl, my girl, what sad fools we mortals be, as Shakespeare, whom also these grave and reverend seigniors condemn, hath said! We have come here to sail by the free wind of conscience, but look you, it must be the conscience of the few, greater thraldom than it was in the Old World! Ah, Constance, Constance, we came here to escape the thraldom of men, but to do that it needs that no men came! If authority we are to have, then let it be authoritative, say I; not the mere opinion of men. My child, have you ever noted how much human nature there is in a man?" But the next day, during which Stephen Hopkins was absent from his home, when he returned at night his philosophy had been sadly jostled. He had been called before the governor, reprimanded and fined, and his pride, his sense of justice, were both outraged when he actually had to meet the situation. Dame Eliza was in a state of mind that made matters worse. She had heard from one of those persons through whom ill news filters as naturally as water through a spring, that her husband had been, as she termed it, "disgraced before the world." "They can't disgrace him, Stepmother," protested Constance, though she knew that it was useless to try to stem the tide of Dame Eliza's grievance. "My father is in the right; they have the power to fine, but not to disgrace him who hath done no wrong." "Of course he hath done no wrong," snapped Dame Eliza. "Shovelboard was played in my father's kitchen when I was no age. Are these prating men better than my father? Answer me that! But your father has no right to risk getting into trouble for two ne'er-do-wells, like his two precious Edwards. They eat more than any four men I ever knew, and that will I maintain against all comers, and as to work they cannot so much as see it. Worthless! And for them will he risk our good name. For mark me, Constantia, shovelboard is a game, and gaming an abomination, and not to be mentioned in a virtuous household, yet would your father permit it played----" "But you just said it was harmless, and that your father had a table!" cried Constance.