“See here, John! See this little book!” exclaimed Priscilla, shutting the door so promptly as nearly to catch her husband’s last foot in the crack. “’Tis the man’s, and mayhap the governor ought to know he’s a Catholic for one thing. See, see! Isn’t that what this page meaneth?” “Ay, he was reconciled, as they call it, on such a day and”-- But as Alden pored over the scribbled entry, murmuring vaguely such words as more clearly presented themselves, his impetuous wife interrupted him:-- “I gave him fish for his dinner to-day, sith I would not have a dog lack meat to his mind in mine own house, but still I remember how those fiends of Catholics murdered my grandsire in cold blood, and his wife after him, for naught but that they were Huguenots, as we are, and I must hate Catholics forevermore.” “Nay, wife, not hate them,--not hate whom God has made and still spares for repentance,” suggested John; but Priscilla impatiently tossed her head. “God is God, and I’m but poor Priscilla, his creature. I cannot love and hate all in one breath the same thing.” “Nay, wife, but thou didst give the man what meat his conscience called for on a Friday?” “Yes, of course I did.” “And now will deliver him to death, if so it be?” “Oh, I cannot tell; but I hate Catholics; my father bade me do so.” “And yet thou dost feed them, and I’ll be bound thou’lt see that this man’s tender wounds are well covered from the cold before he goes aboard.” “There, now, I’m glad you spoke on’t, John! I’ll lap his arms with a good woolen bandage, and you must lend him your old horseman’s cloak to wrap himself withal. The governor’ll fetch it some day when he goes up to visit the Bay governor again.” “Nay, wife, I don’t see but thou dost humbly follow thy God, and love the sinner while thou dost hate the sin.” And John slowly and fondly smiled down upon the petulant brown face of the wife he still loved as well as when first he wooed her. “Oh, I know not how that may be, my Jeannot,” replied Priscilla, laughing and blushing a little as she saw herself trapped. “But here’s the little book.” “Ay, here’s the little book, and to my mind the best thing is for me to carry it straight to the governor and let him do with it as he lists. ’Tis a matter too weighty for us to handle alone.” “Doubtless you’re right, John, and here it is,” and Priscilla, with a little sigh of vague regret, handed the book to her husband, and watched him as he at once left the house to carry it to the governor. But Betty kept the pudding warm for his supper. That afternoon Sir Christopher Gardiner, formally made over to the custody of Captain John Underhill and Lieutenant Dudley, son of the deputy-governor, sailed out of Plymouth wearing John Alden’s cloak, in which he sullenly muffled the lower part of his face, while a slouched hat nearly covered the upper. “Are you sick?” bluntly demanded Underhill, who had orders to treat his prisoner honorably and kindly.