[Illustration:  “Listen to me!”]

“My friends and neighbours, no poet am I; but always wrongs burn in the heart until plain prose cannot utter them.  Listen to me.  If we wrung the Great Charter and the right of self-taxation from Mary in A.D. 1477; if in A.D. 1572 we taught Alva, by force of arms, how dear to us was our maxim, ’No taxation without representation,’—­

“Shall we give up our long-cherished right? 
Make the blood of our fathers in vain? 
Do we fear any tyrant to fight? 
Shall we hold out our hands for the chain? 
No, no, no, no!”

Even the women had caught fire at this allusion to the injustice of the Stamp Act and Quartering Acts, then hanging over the liberties of the Province; and Mrs. Gordon looked curiously and not unkindly at the latent rebels.  “England will have foemen worthy of her steel if she turns these good friends into enemies,” she reflected; and then, following some irresistible impulse, she rose with the company, at the request of Joris, to sing unitedly the patriotic invocation,—­

“O Vaderland, can we forget thee,—­
Thy courage, thy glory, thy strife? 
O Moeder Kirk, can we forget thee? 
No, never! no, never! through life. 
No, no, no, no!”

The emotion was too intense to be prolonged; and Joris instantly pushed back his chair, and said, “Now, then, friends, for the dance.  Myself I think not too old to take out the bride.”

Neil Semple, who had looked like a man in a dream during the singing, went eagerly to Katherine as soon as Joris spoke of dancing.  “He felt strong enough,” he said, “to tread a measure in the bride dance, and he hoped she would so far honour him.”

“No, I will not, Neil.  I will not take your hands.  Often I have told you that.”

“Just for to-night, forgive me, Katherine.”

“I am sorry that all must end so; I cannot dance any more with you;” and then she affected to hear her mother calling, and left him standing among the jocund crowd, hopeless and distraught with grief.  He was not able to recover himself, and the noise and laughter distracted and made him angry.  He had expected so much from this occasion, from its influence and associations; and it had been altogether a disappointment.  Mrs. Gordon’s presence troubled him, and he was not free from jealousy regarding the young dominie.  He had received a call from a church in Haarlem; and the Consistory had requested him to become a member of the Coetus, and accept it.  Joris had interested himself much in his favour; Katherine listened with evident pleasure to his conversation.  The fire of jealousy burns with very little fuel; and Neil went away from Joanna’s wedding-feast hating very cordially the young and handsome Dominie Lambertus Van Linden.

The elder noticed every thing, and he was angry at this new turn in affairs.  He felt as if Joris had purposely brought the dominie into his house to further embarrass Neil; and he said to his wife after their return home, “Janet, our son Neil has lost the game for Katherine Van Heemskirk.  I dinna care a bodle for it now.  A man that gets the woman he wants vera seldom gets any other gude thing.”