“I know not that all which is said of you and your deeds is true. I have often prayed, in bitterness and sorrow, that a tenth part of that which is laid to your charge may not be heaped on your devoted head at the great and final account. But, John, I have known you long and well, and Heaven forbid, that on this solemn occasion, which may be the last, the last of our earthly interviews, I should be found wanting in Christian duty, through a woman's weakness. I have often thought, when I have heard the gall of bitter reproach and envenomed language hurled against your name, that they who spoke so rashly, little understood the man they vituperated. But, though ye are at times, and I may say almost always, as mild and even as the smoothest sea over which ye have ever sailed, yet God has mingled in your nature a fearful mixture of fierce passions, which, roused, are more like the southern waters when troubled with the tornado. It is difficult for me to say how far this evil spirit may lead a man, who has been goaded by fancied wrongs to forget his country and home, and who is suddenly clothed with power to show his resentments.” The Pilot listened with rooted attention, and his piercing eye seemed to reach the seat of those thoughts which she but half expressed; still he retained the entire command of himself, and answered, more in sorrow than in anger: “If anything could convert me to your own peaceful and unresisting opinions, Alice, it would be the reflections that offer themselves at this conviction, that even you have been led by the base tongues of my dastardly enemies, to doubt my honor and conduct. What is fame, when a man can be thus traduced to his nearest friends? But no more of these childish reflections! they are unworthy of myself, my office, and the sacred cause in which I have enlisted!” “Nay, John, shake them not off,” said Alice, unconsciously laying her hand on his arm; “they are as the dew to the parched herbage, and may freshen the feelings of your youth, and soften the heart that has grown hard, if hard it be, more by unnatural indulgence than its own base inclinations.” “Alice Dunscombe,” said the Pilot, approaching her with solemn earnestness, “I have learnt much this night, though I came not in quest of such knowledge. You have taught me how powerful is the breath of the slanderer, and how frail is the tenure by which we hold our good names. Full twenty times have I met the hirelings of your prince in open battle, fighting ever manfully under that flag which was first raised to the breeze by my own hands, and which, I thank my God, I have never yet seen lowered an inch; but with no one act of cowardice or private wrong in all that service can I reproach myself; and yet, how am I rewarded! The tongue of the vile calumniator is keener than the sword of the warrior, and leaves a more indelible scar!”