News! The news from England was Despotism that barked like Cerberus out of three mouths—King, Bishops, and Favourites! The agent’s face turned red and the veins in his forehead stood out, so in earnest and angry was he. “News of England!” he said, “is that slaves will be slaves and free men will be free men! News of England is that if things better not there will be battles!” He swung round upon Aderhold. “I speak more plainly than I should! But if I can read men, your passion, too, is for freedom!” “Aye,” said Aderhold, “I would be free.” Another time, when for some minutes they had been watching the sea in silence, the determined-faced man spoke with sudden energy. “Do you not hold that the Presbyterian or Calvinist form of religion and the rule of the people—such as are landowners and tend neither to Popery on the one hand nor to any manner of disbelief on the other—through Parliaments duly chosen is the way of God upon earth?” Aderhold kept silence, his eyes upon the moving sea. When he spoke at last it was almost dreamily. “The only way?... Do you?” Something in the fast-flowing field, the field that was but the surface of depth, or in the mist-veiled sky, or in the tone of the castaway, checked the other’s reply. At last he said slowly, “It is right to resist a king who would rule us beyond what the sense of man allows.” “Yes,” said Aderhold, “that is right.” “That is what I care for,” said the agent; “that is the way of God to me. The bishops go with the king and preach tyranny, so the bishops are to be fought too. He who wishes to be free surely will not chain his will to the Pope’s throne. So what is there left but Calvin—if you exclude these mad Independents who spring up like mushrooms! At any rate, in England to-day the men who oppose the king’s tyranny are like to smack of Edinburgh or Geneva!” “In a manner I believe that to be true,” said Aderhold. “Not yet do they wish freedom around and around. But never will I deny that it is much to begin to image freedom!” The ship sailed on through good and bad weather. To the two castaways danger seemed to sleep. No one troubled them on this ship, preoccupied with its own affairs. The fact that they were seen with the agent of the Company procured for them a certain respect. The days slipped by, the weeks slipped by—pearl-grey weeks, quiet, halcyon. There came a summer eve when, hand in hand, Joan and Aderhold watched England rise from out the sea. None was by. They stood long in silence; then, “Do you remember,” said Joan in a low voice, “how we ran through the castle wood with the great moon on high? How we lay in that pit with the branches over us while they that hunted us went by? Do you remember the woman with the three daughters who gave us bread and milk?”