Again there was the obvious double meaning in his sullen tone. A swift glance flashed back and forth between Mr. Stewart and the pale-faced young wife, and again Mr. Stewart avoided the subject at which Cross hinted. Instead he turned his chair toward the young man, and said: "Things are moving, you say. What is new?" "Why, this is new," answered Cross, lowering the papers for the moment, and looking down upon his questioner: "blood runs now at last instead of milk in the veins of the king's men. We will know where we stand. We will master and punish disloyalty; we will brook not another syllable of rebellion!" "Yes, it has been let to run overlong," said Mr. Stewart. "Often enough, since Sir William died, have I wished that I were a score of years younger. Perhaps I might have served in unravelling this unhappy tangle of misunderstandings. The new fingers that are picking at the knot are honest enough, but they have small cunning." "That as you will; but there is to be no more fumbling at the knot. We will cut it now at a blow--cut it clean and sharp with the tomahawk!" An almost splendid animation glowed in the young man's eyes as he spoke, and for the nonce lit up the dogged hardness of his face. So might the stolid purple visage of some ancestral Cross have become illumined, over his heavy beef and tubs of ale, at the stray thought of spearing a boar at bay, or roasting ducats out of a Jew. The thick rank blood of centuries of gluttonous, hunting, marauding progenitors, men whose sum of delights lay in working the violent death of some creature--wild beast or human, it mattered little which--warmed in the veins of the young man now, at the prospect of slaughter. The varnish of civilization melted from his surface; one saw in him only the historic fierce, blood-letting islander, true son of the men who for thirty years murdered one another by tens of thousands all over England, nominally for a York or a Lancaster, but truly from the utter wantonness of the butcher's instinct, the while we Dutch were discovering oil-painting and perfecting the noble craft of printing with types. "Yes!" he repeated, with a stormy smile. "We will cut the knot with the tomahawk!" The quicker wit of the young woman first scented his meaning. "You are going to bring down the savages?" she asked, with dilated eyes, and in her emotion forgetting that it was not her recent habit to interrogate her husband. He vouchsafed her no answer, but made a pretence of again being engrossed with his papers. After a moment or two of silence the old gentleman rose to his feet, walked over to Philip, and put his hand on the young man's arm. "I will take my leave now," he said, in a low voice; "Eli is here waiting for me, and the evenings grow cold." "Nay, do not hasten your going, Mr. Stewart," said Philip, with a perfunctory return to the usages of politeness. "You are ever welcome here."