What could I do, other than bow my head to the righteous storm and let it exhaust itself, if it would? It raged--oh, how scathingly it raged!--for a full quarter of an hour, I believe, during which time I could scarcely get a word in edgewise; but when the hurricane had blown itself out, my cousin sat down and condescended to ask me news of Jack, and of the doings in the camps on the Hudson, remembering herself now and then to flay me afresh for the coat I was wearing. I told her all she asked to know, and was as meek as mush, hoping she would come finally to telling me something of her plans and Beatrix’s, as she did. And it was very comical, too, if I had been in any laughing mood, for, when she had told me that the rescued Leigh tobacco had been put aboard of a certain coasting schooner named the _Nancy Jane_, Captain Elijah Sprigg, and that her passage to the James River, and Beatrix’s, had been taken on board the same vessel, she remembered suddenly that she was telling all this to a king’s officer, and her threatenings of me, and her alarm for the safety of the tobacco, were equally matched. “You’ll never go and tell on us, Dick Page!” she half pleaded, half commanded. “You wouldn’t be such an abandoned and despicable villain as that!” “Why,” said I, teasing her a little, “haven’t you just been telling me that nothing was too hang-dog and mean for me to do, since I am wearing the king’s coat? Isn’t it my duty--my new duty--to go straight down to Sir Henry Clinton’s quarters with the news that you mean to run the blockade with a contraband cargo of tobacco?” “Oh, you’d never, _never_ do that, Dickie Page!” she protested, wringing her hands in distress. “Mr. Vandeventer says we are ‘winked at’; that because Beatrix is a brave girl, and the friend of Margaret Shippen, she will be allowed to take her tobacco and go home. But I don’t trust them--any of them. They’ll stop us; send us to prison! Dick, you’ll never be so cruel?” “I’ll make a bargain with you, Cousin Ju,” I laughed. “Get me speech with Beatrix, and I’ll promise you never to lisp a syllable to a living soul about the tobacco.” “Oh, but Dick! she protests she will never look on your face again--and serve you right, too! She’ll never come down to you for my urging.” “Yes, she will. Tell her it’s the price of her cargo of tobacco.” “You promise?” “Most faithfully, I assure you.” Cousin Julianna went away in haste, and I was still laughing over her absurd fears when the door opened to admit Beatrix. And I do think she was more beautiful and winsome and alluring than I had ever seen her, as she stood in the doorway, trying to make me believe she was angry--as she was not. “So you threaten me, do you, Mr. Page? If I don’t dance when you pipe, you will turn informer. Did Cousin Ju tell me straight?” “If Cousin Ju told you that I was ready to put my soul in pawn for another sight of you, she had the straight of it. I owe you an apology for--”