on the wharves.  We were to have gone to the Governor’s wharf in the Severn, but my grandfather changed his intention at once.  Many of the crowd greeted him as we drew near them, and, having landed, respectfully made room for him to pass through.  I followed him a-tremble with excitement and delight over such an unwonted experience.  We had barely gone ten paces, however, before Mr. Carvel stopped abreast of Mr. Claude, mine host of the Coffee House, who cried: 

“Hast seen his Majesty’s newest representative, Mr. Carvel?”

“Mr. Hood is on board the bark, sir,” replied my grandfather.  “I take it you mean Mr. Hood.”

“Ay, that I do; Mr. Zachariah Hood, come to lick stamps for his brother-colonists.”

“After licking his Majesty’s boots,” says a wag near by, which brings a laugh from those about us.  I remembered that I had heard some talk as to how Mr. Hood had sought and obtained from King George the office of Stamp Distributor for the province.  Now, my grandfather, God rest him! was as doughty an old gentleman as might well be, and would not listen without protest to remarks which bordered sedition.  He had little fear of things below, and none of a mob.

“My masters,” he shouted, with a flourish of his stick, so stoutly that people fell back from him, “know that ye are met against the law, and endanger the peace of his Lordship’s government.”

“Good enough, Mr. Carvel,” said Claude, who seemed to be the spokesman.  “But how if we are stamped against law and his Lordship’s government?  How then, sir?  Your honour well knows we have naught against either, and are as peaceful a mob as ever assembled.”

This brought on a great laugh, and they shouted from all sides, “How then, Mr. Carvel?” And my grandfather, perceiving that he would lose dignity by argument, and having done his duty by a protest, was wisely content with that.  They opened wider the lane for him to pass through, and he made his way, erect and somewhat defiant, to Mr. Pryse’s, the coachmaker opposite, holding me by the hand.  The second storey of Pryse’s shop had a little balcony standing out in front, and here we established ourselves, that we might watch what was going forward.

The crowd below grew strangely silent as the bark came nearer and nearer, until Mr. Hood showed himself on the poop, when there rose a storm of hisses, mingled with shouts of derision.  “How goes it at St. James, Mr. Hood?” and “Have you tasted his Majesty’s barley?” And some asked him if he was come as their member of Parliament.  Mr. Hood dropped a bow, though what he said was drowned.  The bark came in prettily enough, men in the crowd even catching her lines and making them fast to the piles.  A gang-plank was thrown over.  “Come out, Mr. Hood,” they cried; “we are here to do you honour, and to welcome you home again.”  There were leather breeches with staves a-plenty around that plank, and faces that meant no trifling.