The Knight had never before shown a disposition to be so communicative.  Perhaps the isolation of the two from the world, and the devotion which Arundel had manifested, heightened his feeling of regard, and drew out his confidence.  The young man’s interest in the conversation increased, and he said: 

“Surely, you would not impute to the Governor, or to a majority of his counsellors, a design to expose you to probable destruction.  Unutterable baseness were therein.”

“I said not so.  I pray thee, Master Arundel, to attach no such construction to my words; you would thereby do foul wrong to my thoughts.  Nay, I thank the Governor for honoring me with the commission, and doubt not that he acted only in obedience to a higher prompting than his own.  I did but point to a feeling which thine enlightenment must lament as much as mine, and which contracts Christian love into very narrow and erroneous boundaries.  Dost thou understand me?”

“I think I do.  You refer to the jealous retainer of power in the hands of their Church.”

“Of their Church, so called.  Here are we, for example:  we may desire, with that natural longing whereby men are sometimes animated, to enter into closer relations, and to bind ourselves by more intimate ties with those around us, (oftentimes, I fear me, for purposes of worldly advancement, as well as encouragement in holy living); and, lo! a very slight difference of opinion—­a sublety whereon a casuist shall batter his brains for days in vain—­shall build up a wall of exclusion, especially if there be some within the enchanted circle who are jealous of our influence and distrust their own.”

“I doubt not you are right.  My own observation partly confirms these views, though I have been too short a time in the colony to form an undistrusted opinion.  My youth and inexperience admonish me to express myself doubtfully; but I think myself safe in agreeing with you, that this is scarcely the best way to establish that universal Church to which the ambition of the Puritans aspires.”

“Have a care, Master Arundel,” said the Knight, laughing, and his laugh rang out joyously through the forest, as if he were glad to escape from restraint, and in strong contrast with the caution which he recommended, “lest thy treason be carried by some bird to the enthusiastic Endicott, or the stern Dudley, and thou be made to atone for thy lese majeste.”

“I bear them no ill will, and they know it.  I am but a stranger among them, seeking at their hands a jewel most unjustly detained, and which, if given up, will hardly endanger the common weal.  But, Sir Christopher, explain your sentiments more perfectly on the point whither our conversation converged.”