Upon the ship was a man neither young nor old, who had come out to Virginia the year before, sent by the Company upon some investigation. Now, the work done, he was returning. He had a strong, determined face, steady eyes and a close-shutting mouth. On the day of their coming aboard, he with others had approached Giles and Ellice Herne and asked them questions. They had been true questions; he was interested in knowing how they got upon that island, but preferred the detail of how they had managed to live while there. After that, with some frequency he sought them out and fell into talk. The rest upon the ship were preoccupied with the struggles and miseries and triumphs of the Colony. To them it was growing to be home. But the Company’s agent, his errand done, was returning to England like Antæus to Mother Earth. He must talk, and guided by some subtle principle of choice, he talked to these people who also must be homesick for England. The two strove to be guarded, spoke little themselves, passed well enough for a quiet clerk or scrivener or teacher and his wife whom the whimsical fortunes of the time had made colonists, and wind and wave and ill chance castaways on that islet. Wisdom made them not too silent, not to seem morosely so—nor too guarded, not to make it evident that they were watching from behind barricades. It was chiefly to Aderhold that he talked, Joan sitting by, her hands clasped in her lap, her eyes upon the sea, narrowing between them and England. He talked, it seemed to Aderhold, with boldness, but then the castaway gathered that upon the issues that interested this man, men in England, in six years’ time, had grown bolder. News from England! News of England when the agent left England last year was the already two-years-old news that the king meant to rule without Parliaments. Perhaps when they landed in London they might find newer news—perhaps the king, wanting money very badly, had wanted it enough at last to summon a Parliament. If that were so, the agent of the Company hoped that certain men had seats. He mentioned among others John Pym. News! There was the news that the Bishops were in the saddle. Episcopacy had been established in Scotland. Timid and recreant ministers had gone over, the patriotic were in hiding,—proscribed. The people were at the mercy of the wolves—the Crown’s wolves. In England just as bad—though with a difference. The Established Church rode high and kissed the hand of the king. “Passive obedience!” It had got its shibboleth. “No power in the people and disordered multitude.”—God’s own hand having touched the forehead of kings! “Did I not tell ye?” says the king; and with one hand puts down the civil courts and with the other lifts the ecclesiastical.