“Choice! Oh, Alida, Alida! this is not the election that we had reason to expect from thy cultivated mind and proud sentiments!” “The cultivation is my work, and the pride is an inheritance from old Etienne de Barbérie;” dryly rejoined Myndert. “But complaints never lowered a market, nor raised the funds. Let us send for the Patroon, and take counsel coolly, as to the easiest manner of finding our way back to the Lust in Rust, before Her Majesty’s ship gets too far from the coast of America.” “Thy pleasantry is unseasonable, sir. Your Patroon is gone with your niece, and a pleasant passage they are likely to enjoy, in such company! We lost him, in the expedition with our boats.” The Alderman stood aghast. “Lost!—Oloff Van Staats lost, in the expedition of the boats! Evil betide the day when that discreet and affluent youth should be lost to the colony! Sir, you know not what you utter when you hazard so rash an opinion. The death of the young Patroon of Kinderhook would render one of the best and most substantial of our families extinct, and leave the third best estate in the Province without a direct heir!” “The calamity is not so overwhelming;” returned the captain, with bitterness. “The gentleman has boarded the smuggler, and gone with la belle Barbérie to examine his silks and laces!” Ludlow then explained the manner in which the Patroon had disappeared. When perfectly assured that no bodily harm had befallen his friend, the satisfaction of the Alderman was quite as vivid, as his consternation had been apparent but the moment before. “Gone with la belle Barbérie, to examine silks and laces!” he repeated, rubbing his hands together, in delight. “Aye, there the blood of my old friend, Stephanus, begins to show itself! Your true Hollander is no mercurial Frenchman, to beat his head and make grimaces at a shift in the wind, or a woman’s frown; nor a blustering Englishman (you are of the colony yourself, young gentleman) to swear a big oath and swagger; but, as you see, a quiet, persevering, and, in the main, an active son of old Batavia, who watches his opportunity, and goes into the very presence of——” “Whom?”—demanded Ludlow, perceiving that the Alderman had paused. “Of his enemy; seeing that all the enemies of the Queen are necessarily the enemies of every loyal subject. Bravo, young Oloff! thou art a lad after my own heart, and no doubt—no doubt—fortune will favor the brave! Had a Hollander a proper footing on this earth, Captain Cornelius Ludlow, we should hear a different tale concerning the right to the Narrow Seas, and indeed to most other questions of commerce.” Ludlow arose with a bitter smile on his face, though with no ill feeling towards the man whose exultation was so natural.