“I leave such transactions to my superiors,” retorted the Alderman, with another stiff and ceremonious bow.  “Enterprises that are said to have occupied the Earl of Bellamont, Governor Fletcher, and my Lord Cornbury, are above the ambition of an humble merchant.”

“Adieu, tenacious Sir; quiet thine impatience for the extraordinary Dutch movements!” said Cornbury, affecting to laugh, though he secretly felt the sting the other had applied, since common report implicated not only him, but his two official predecessors, in several of the lawless proceedings of the American Buccaneers:  “Be vigilant, or la demoiselle Barberie will give another cross to the purity of the stagnant pool!”

The bows that were exchanged were strictly in character.  The Alderman was unmoved, rigid, and formal, while his companion could not forget his ease of manner, even at a moment of so much vexation.  Foiled in an effort, that nothing but his desperate condition, and nearly desperate character, could have induced him to attempt, the degenerate descendant of the virtuous Clarendon walked towards his place of confinement, with the step of one who assumed a superiority over his fellows, and yet with a mind so indurated by habitual depravity, as to have left it scarcely the trace of a dignified or virtuous quality.

Chapter II.

    “His words are bonds, his oaths are oracles;
    His love sincere, his thoughts immaculate;—­”

    Two Gentlemen of Verona.

The philosophy of Alderman Van Beverout was not easily disturbed.  Still there was a play of the nether muscles of the face, which might be construed into self-complacency at his victory, while a certain contraction of those which controlled the expression of the forehead seemed to betray a full consciousness of the imminent risk he had run.  The left hand was thrust into a pocket, where it diligently fingered the provision of Spanish coin without which the merchant never left his abode; while the other struck the cane it held on the pavement, with the force of a resolute and decided man.  In this manner he proceeded in his walk, for several minutes longer, shortly quitting the lower streets, to enter one that ran along the ridge, which crowned the land, in that quarter of the island.  Here he soon stopped before the door of a house which, in that provincial town, had altogether the air of a patrician dwelling.

Two false gables, each of which was surmounted by an iron weathercock, intersected the roof of this building, and the high and narrow stoop was built of the red free-stone of the country.  The material of the edifice itself was, as usual, the small, hard brick of Holland, painted a delicate cream-color.