"You don't?" he asked, without lifting his eyes to look at her. "Well you kin. Wasn't the first thing they did up in New England to rush t' Canada t' capture the country or else t' form an alliance with it? And didn't our own Arnold try t' git revenge on it fur not sidin' in with him by plunderin' th' homes of th' peopul up there and sendin' the goods back to Ticonderoga?" She made no reply, but continued to peer into the distance. "And didn't our Congress send a petition to King George t' have 'm repeal the limits o' Quebec and to the peopul t' tell 'm the English Guver'ment 'is not authorized to establish a religion fraught with sanguary 'r impius tenets'? I know 'cause I read it." "It makes no diff'rence now. It's over." "Well it shows the kind o' peopul here. They're so afreed o' the Pope." She waved her hand in a manner of greeting. "Who's that?" asked Jim. "Marjorie." He turned sideways looking over his shoulder. Then he stood up. II That there was more than a grain of truth in the assertion of Jim Cadwalader that the war for Independence had, like the great rivers of the country, many sources, cannot be gainsaid. There were oppressive tax laws as well as restrictions on popular rights. There were odious navigation acts together with a host of iniquitous, tyrannical measures which were destined to arouse the ire of any people however loyal. But there were religious prejudices which were likewise a moving cause of the revolt, a moving force upon the minds of the people at large. And these were utilized and systematized most effectively by the active malcontents and leaders of the strife. The vast majority of the population of the Colonies were Dissenters, subjects of the crown who disagreed with it in matters of religious belief and who had emigrated thither to secure a haven where they might worship their God according to the dictates of their own conscience rather than at the dictates of a body politic. The Puritans had sought refuge in Massachusetts and Connecticut where the white spires of their meeting houses, projecting above the angles of the New England hills, became indicative of Congregationalism. Roger Williams and the Baptists found a harbor in Rhode Island. William Penn brought the Quaker colony to Pennsylvania. Captain Thomas Webb lent active measures to the establishment of Methodism in New York and in Maryland, while the colony of Virginia afforded protection to the adherents of the Established Church. The country was in the main Protestant, save for the vestiges of Catholicity left by the Franciscan and Jesuit Missionary Fathers, who penetrated the boundless wastes in an heroic endeavor to plant the seeds of their faith in the rich and fertile soil of the new and unexplored continent.