ketch to learn the particulars of the quarrel.  These particulars are not preserved in the record; and we have nothing better than our conjectures as to what they disclosed.  We know nothing specific of the cause or character of the quarrel.  The visitors found Talbot loaded with irons, and Captain Allen in a brutal state of exasperation, swearing that he would not surrender his prisoner to the authorities of the Province, but would carry him to Virginia and deliver him to the government there, to be dealt with as Lord Effingham should direct.  He was grossly insulting to the two members of the Council who had come on this inquiry; and after they had left his vessel, in the pinnace, to return to the shore, he affected to believe that they had some concealed force lying in wait to seize the pinnace and its crew, and so ordered them back on board, but after a short detention thought better of it, and suffered them again to depart.

The contumacy of the captain, and the declaration of his purpose to carry away Talbot out of the jurisdiction of the Province within which the crime was committed, and to deliver him to the Governor of Virginia, was a grave assault upon the dignity of the government and a gross contempt of the public authorities, which required the notice of the Council.  A meeting of this body was therefore held on the Patuxent, at Rich Neck, on the morning of the 4th of November.  I find that five members were present on that occasion.  Besides Colonel Darnall and Major Sewall, there were Counsellor Tailler and Colonels Digges and Burgess.  Here the matter was debated and ended in a feeble resolve,—­that, if this Captain Allen should persist in his contumacy and take Talbot to Virginia, the Council should immediately demand of Lord Effingham his redelivery into this Province.  Alas, they could only scold!  This resolution was all they could oppose to the bullying captain and the guns of the troublesome little Quaker.

Allen, after hectoring awhile in this fashion, and raising the wrath of the Colonels of the Council until they were red in the cheeks, defiantly took his departure, carrying with him his prisoner, in spite of the vehement indignation of the liegemen of the Province.

We may imagine the valorous anger of our little metropolis at this act or crime of lese-majesty.  I can see the group of angry burghers, collected on the porch of Cordea’s tavern, in a fume as they listen to Master John Llewellin’s account of what had taken place,—­Llewellin himself as peppery as his namesake when he made Ancient Pistol eat his leek; and I fancy I can hear Alderman Van Swearingen’s choleric explosion against Lord Effingham, supposing his Lordship should presume to slight the order of the Council in respect to Talbot’s return.

But these fervors were too violent to last.  Christopher Rousby was duly deposited under the greensward upon the margin of Harper’s Creek, where I found him safe, if not sound, more than a hundred and fifty years afterwards.  The metropolis gradually ceased to boil, and slowly fell to its usual temperature of repose, and no more disturbed itself with thoughts of the terrible captain.  Talbot, upon being transferred to the dominion of Virginia, was confined in the jail of Gloucester County, in the old town of Gloucester, on the northern bank of York River.