“The Pope of Rome has no power to appoint a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre!” exclaimed Brewster, recalling worldly lore which he had thought forgotten. Gardiner bowed low and mockingly. “Pardon! No doubt, reverend sir, you are better acquainted with His Holiness than I can be, but I go on with mine account of myself. Coming back to England after well-nigh thirty years’ absence, I find my father dead, my brother and his brood in possession, and naught left for the poor exile, should he ever return, but a beggarly thousand crowns and a nook beside the hall-fire so long as he should behave himself! “Well, well, ’t is not good for me to dwell on those days; so to cut the matter short, I took my thousand crowns, and a few more that had hidden among the tatters of my knightly robes, and came hither to the New World, hoping to escape from men and the weariness of their ways. I bought a bit of land from a copper-colored gentleman calling himself Chickatawbut who professed to own it, and who made much complaint that the men of Plymouth had stolen from his mother’s grave the choice bearskins laid over it to keep the good gentlewoman warm through the storms of winter”-- “We bought some bearskins of a native, but knew not where he got them,” said Bradford with an air of annoyance, and Sir Christopher’s great mustache stirred in malicious glee at seeing that the pin-prick had reached the quick. “I bought my land, and I built mine house, and I planted my garden, and I hired some Indian guides to show me the haunts of the game and fish, and I began to live much such an innocent and beneficent life as that of Adam in Paradise”-- “With yon fair lady as your Eve?” demanded Standish. The knight turned his eyes upon him and the spark kindled in their depths, but again Bradford interposed,-- “Leaving aside tropes and metaphors, Sir Christopher, may we ask what relation the gentlewoman we found at your house sustains toward yourself?” “She is my cousin, my housekeeper, my poor little friend. Ah, indeed, gentlemen, you may leave her alone with no fear but she will suffer enough both for her own peccadillos and mine, since those gloomy bigots of the Bay have seized and hold her close prisoner, with low diet, and questionings like those of the Holy Office, day by day.” And the man’s voice took on so genuine a tone of pain and fear as he thought upon his helpless companion that even Brewster forbore to press the subject further, and Bradford not unkindly inquired,-- “And why didst thou flee from this poor paradise of thine?” “I heard by my friendly Indians, the same who afterward told me that Mary was a prisoner, that there was mischief plotting against me in the council chamber at Boston, and one fine morning when I saw a boat filled with tipstaves and bum-bailiffs crossing the river half a mile or so from my house”-- “Neponset the Indians call it,” murmured John Alden; and Gardiner nodded good-humoredly.