“But, sir, this is your business, and your children’s business also.”

“I think, then, that it is King George’s business.”

“It is liberty”—­

“Well, then, I have my liberty.  I have liberty to buy and to sell, to go to my own kirk, to sail the ‘Great Christopher’ when and where I will.  My house, my wife, my little children, nobody has touched.”

“Pray, sir, what of your rights? your honour?”

“Oh, indeed, then, for ideas I quarrel not!  Facts, they are different.  Every man has his own creed, and every man his own liberty, so say I.—­Come here, Alida,” and he waved his hand imperiously to a little woman of four years old, who was sulking at the window, “what’s the matter now?  You have been crying again.  I see that you have a discontented temper.  There is a spot on your petticoat also, and your cap is awry.  I fear that you will never become a neat, respectable girl—­you that ought to set a good pattern to your little sister Femmetia.”

Evidently he wished to turn the current of the conversation; but as soon as the child had been sent to her mother, Joris resumed it.

“If you go not yourself to the fight, Batavius, plenty of young men are there, longing to go, who have no arms and no clothes:  send in your place one of them.”

“It is my fixed principle not to meddle in the affairs of other people, and my principles are sacred to me.”

“Batavius, you said not long ago that the colonists were leaving the old ship, and that the first in the new boat would have the choice of oars.”

“Bram, that is the truth.  I said not that I would choose any of the oars.”

“A fair harbour we shall make, and the rewards will be great, Batavius.”

“It is not good to cry ‘herrings,’ till in the net you have them.  And to talk of rowing, the colonists must row against wind and tide; the English will row with set sail.  That is easy rowing.  Into this question I have looked well, for always I think about everything.”

“Have you read the speeches of Adams and Hancock and Quincy?  Have you heard what Colonel Washington said in the Assembly?”

“Oh, these men are discontented!  Something which they have not got, they want.  They are troublesome and conceited.  They expect the century will be called after them.  Now I, who punctually fulfil my obligations as a father and a citizen, I am contented, I never make complaints, I never want more liberty.  You may read in the Holy Scriptures that no good comes of rebellion.  Did not Absalom sit in the gate, and say to the discontented, ’See thy matters are good and right; but there is no man deputed of the king to hear thee;’ and, moreover, ’Oh, that I were made a judge in the land, that every man which hath any suit or cause might come unto me, and I would do him justice’?  And did not Sheba blow a trumpet, and say, ’We have no part in David, neither have we inheritance in the son of Jesse.  Every man to his tents, O Israel’?  Well, then, what came of such follies?  You may read in the Word of God that they ended in ruin.”