This was not very intelligible to anybody but Joel, and he had ceased to laugh at Mike’s voyage, now, some six or seven years; divers other disasters, all having their origin in a similar confusion of ideas, having, in the interval, supplanted that calamity, as it might be, seriatim.  Still it was an indication that Mike might be set down as a belligerent, who was disposed to follow his leader into the battle, without troubling him with many questions concerning the merits of the quarrel.  Nevertheless, the county Leitrim-man acknowledged particular principles, all of which had a certain influence on his conduct, whenever he could get at them, to render them available.  First and foremost, he cordially disliked a Yankee; and he hated an Englishman, both as an oppressor and a heretic; yet he loved his master and all that belonged to him.  These were contradictory feelings, certainly; but Mike was all contradiction, both in theory and in practice.

The Anglo-Saxon tribe now professed a willingness to retire, promising to think of the matter, a course against which Mike loudly protested, declaring he never knew any good come of thinking, when matters had got as far as blows.  Jamie, too, went off scratching his head, and he was seen to make many pauses, that day, between the shovels-full of earth he, from time to time, threw around his plants, as if pondering on what he had heard.  As for the Dutch, their hour had not come.  No one expected them to decide the day they first heard of argument.

The negroes got together, and began to dwell on the marvels of a battle in which so many Christians had been put to death.  Little Smash placed the slain at a few thousands; but Great Smash, as better became her loftier appellation and higher spirit, affirmed that the captain had stated hundreds of thousands; a loss, with less than which, as she contended, no great battle could possibly be fought.

When the captain was housed, Serjeant Joyce demanded an audience; the object of which was simply to ask for orders, without the least reference to principles.

Chapter VII.

        We are all here! 
        Father, mother,
        Sister, brother,
  All who hold each other dear. 
  Each chair is fill’d—­we’re all at home;
  To-night let no cold stranger come: 
  It is not often thus around
  Our old familiar hearth we’re found: 
  Bless, then, the meeting and the spot;
  For once be every care forgot;
  Let gentle Peace assert her power,
  And kind Affection rule the hour;
        We’re all—­all here.

  Sprague.

Although most of the people retired to their dwellings, or their labours, as soon as the captain dismissed them, a few remained to receive his farther orders.  Among these last were Joel, the carpenter, and the blacksmith.  These men now joined the chief of the settlement and his son, who had lingered near the gateway, in conversation concerning the alterations that the present state of things might render necessary, in and about the Hut.