“Indien ik u vergeet, o Vaderland! zoo vergete mijne regter-hand zich zelve!”

Such communion he held with himself until the night came on, and the dew began to fall; and Lysbet said to herself, “I will walk down the garden:  perhaps there is something I can say to him.”  As she rose, Joris entered, and they met in the centre of the room.  He put his large hands upon her shoulders, and, looking solemnly in her face, said, “My Lysbet, I will go with the people; I will give myself willingly to the cause of freedom.  A long battle is it.  Two hundred years ago, a Joris Van Heemskirk was fighting in it.  Not less of man than he was, am I, I hope.”

There was a mist of tears over his eyes—­a mist that was no dishonour; it only showed that the cost had been fully counted, and his allegiance given with a clear estimate of the value and sweetness of all that he might have to give with it.  Lysbet was a little awed by the solemnity of his manner.  She had not before understood the grandeur of such a complete surrender of self as her husband had just consummated.  But never had she been so proud of him.  Everything commonplace had slipped away:  he looked taller, younger, handsomer.

[Illustration:  “We have closed his Majesty’s custom-house forever”]

She dropped her knitting to her feet, she put her arms around his neck, and, laying her head upon his breast, said softly, “My good Joris!  I will love thee forever.”

In a few minutes Elder Semple came in.  He looked exceedingly worried; and, although Joris and he avoided politics by a kind of tacit agreement, he could not keep to kirk and commercial matters, but constantly returned to one subject,—­a vessel lying at Murray’s Wharf, which had sold her cargo of molasses and rum to the “Committee of Safety.”

“And we’ll be haeing the custom-house about the city’s ears, if there’s ‘safety’ in that,—­the born idiots,” he said.

Joris was in that grandly purposeful mood that takes no heed of fretful worries.  He let the elder drift from one grievance to another; and he was just in the middle of a sentence containing his opinion of Sears and Willet, when Bram’s entrance arrested it.  There was something in the young man’s face and attitude which made every one turn to him.  He walked straight to the side of Joris,—­

“Father, we have closed his Majesty’s custom-house forever.”

“We! Who, then, Bram?”

“The Committee of Safety and the Sons of Liberty.”

Semple rose to his feet, trembling with passion.  “Let me tell you, then, Bram, you are a parcel o’ rogues and rebels; and, if I were his Majesty, I’d gibbet the last ane o’ you.”

“Patience, Elder.  Sit down, I’ll speak”—­

“No, Councillor, I’ll no sit down until I ken what kind o’ men I’m sitting wi’.  Oot wi’ your maist secret thoughts.  Wha are you for?”

“For the people and for freedom am I,” said Joris, calmly rising to his feet.  “Too long have we borne injustice.  My fathers would have spoken by the sword before this.  Free kirk, free state, free commerce, are the breath of our nostrils.  Not a king on earth our privileges and rights shall touch; no, not with his finger-tips.  Bram, my son, I am your comrade in this quarrel.”  He spoke with fervent, but not rapid speech, and with a firm, round voice, full of magical sympathies.