The Governor, in spite of the deep misgiving that all knew must be weighing at his heart, spoke his answer with unmoved calm. “We will have speech with you later,” he said through the interpreter, “for the present we have grave business with Master Simon Radpath. If you wish you may follow and come afterward to my house where we will treat further of this errand of yours.” The Indians, with unchanging faces, turned and walked down the lane beside the Puritan company. They talked together in their strange guttural language, pointing out this or that peculiarity of the white men’s dress and seeming to regard them with far less of awe than mere curiosity. It was a short and bitterly uncomfortable journey that brought the gathering of elders, in small humour for any kindness of heart, to Master Simon’s gate. As Margeret stood beside her father, greeting these unexpected and disturbing guests, she happened to glance across the sunlit field and saw Skerry, the shoemaker, and the boy who was his apprentice, standing before the door of their cottage. The little cobbler was shading his eyes with his hand and watching the dark procession as eagerly as though he had some deep concern in their errand. The ragged boy, however, seemed to have no interest in the matter, or no liking for it, since he stood with head turned away, staring down at the blue harbour and the wide-winged, skimming sea-gulls. The little girl observed them for only one moment, the next, and all her thoughts were drowned in wonder and alarm at the Governor’s words. “It has come to our ears, sir,” he was saying sternly, “that you have here a garden too gay for proper Puritan minds, a place too like the show gardens of the Popish monasteries, or of the great lords that dwell amid such sinful luxury in England. In this Colony men and women have sat in the stocks for wasting precious hours over what shows only beauty to the eye and brings no benefit to the mind and heart. But what is that?” he broke off abruptly, sniffing suddenly at a vague sweet perfume that drifted down the May breeze. “Please, sir, ’tis hawthorn,” said Margeret, who was losing her terror of the Governor in curiosity at the sight of the Indians. “There was but a little sprig that Father brought from England, grown now to a great, spreading bush.”