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Elizabeth was dazed, but her heart was very sore, and she could not help feeling that Jack’s affection for her had at last been sundered.

Toby did nothing to dispel her confusion, having received instructions from Jack and money as well.

The minute Elizabeth set foot on deck, one certainty pierced her bewilderment. She cried, “But I can’t leave like this. What’ll Jack think of me, after all he’s done for us? Toby, you’ve got pen and ink in the cabin. I must write a note! I want to thank him - even if he doesn’t wish to see me anymore.”

Toby growled. Will tried to stop her, while he cast nervous glances at the creek that led to the Winthrop house.-But she would not be stopped, and she wrote stiffly, and with pride, wishing Jack not to think that she was bitterly hurt by his mysterious arrangements for shunting her off to Providence and then to Virginia.

“Sir,” she began, having stopped herself from writing the usual “Dear Brother”:

My cousin being put back by weather desireth us to go with him now; for if the wind be fair as he cometh back he shall be loath to put in; also I am willing to see that place, being moved thereto by something which I heard from a woman in this town. I entreat you to pardon me that I –

Her hand shook suddenly, she made a blot and an erasure, then went on hurriedly:

have not come to you to manifest my thankfulness and tender my service to yourself and my sister; the speedy going of my cousin prevented me therein; yet I shall ever remain yours in all unfeigned love and service.

ELIZABETH HALLET
From aboard the vessel.

“Hurry!” cried Will, holding out his hand for the note. “It really doesn’t matter, Bess, this isn’t necessary.”

“It
is!
It
is!”
she cried. “How can you not see it? - Oh and all the things we borrowed from them, some in the house, but I put others in the yard - would you have Betty Winthrop think we’re stealing them?”

Hastily she wrote a postscript.

I pray you remember my best respects to Mrs. Lake. We have left your table board and frame, and bellows board upon the cowhouse and the rake in the yard.

At last Will got the note away from her, and gave it with threepence to a lounger on the landing for delivery.

Toby hoisted anchor, the sails slowly filled; on an ebb tide now the
Ben Palmer
moved down the harbour mouth. And just in time. As the landing glided into distance, Will saw a stir on the waterfront, and the gleam of metal that must be Captain Mason’s helmet.

Poor Winthrop, he thought, wondering how Jack would deal with Mason’s anger, and with Governor Haynes. He turned to tell Elizabeth a more connected story of the day’s happenings, but saw that she was lying half asleep on Toby’s bunk, with the baby Willie, and in her face was a bewildered and pathetic resignation.

A week after leaving Pequot, Toby again entered Long Island Sound and skimmed down the coast, passing the familiar settlements at some distance.

Elizabeth, no longer in ignorance of their true goal and feeling much stronger, sat on the forward hatch and watched the little towns slip by. They had passed New Haven and were nearing Stamford when she spoke to Will, who was whittling new tholepins for Toby’s longboat. “I find it curious,” she said, raising her eyebrows, “that at none of these places could we land in safety. And that there seems to be no place in the world where we’d be welcome.”

Will glanced at her, relieved at this ironic tone which he knew showed improved health.

“We might try New France,” he said, jesting, yet half in earnest. “If -” He did not finish and she said nothing.

While they were at Providence, waiting for Toby to exchange cargoes, Will had told her about the Hartford warrant for her arrest, since he did not want her to go ashore. There was no use risking new complications or making themselves known to Roger Williams, whose attitude was unpredictable. Williams gave asylum to religious exiles, but he did not shelter felons, and it was also possible that Captain Mason, guessing their destination, would send a messenger by land with extradition papers.

Even Toby had been sufficiently impressed with their danger to hurry out of port.

And Will, feeling that Elizabeth should now know the whole truth, had shown her Baxter’s letter. It was brief and guarded.

It said that if certain parties now residing with Mr. Winthrop, and who had vital interest in New Netherland, came at once to the Dutch capital, they might there find something to their benefit.

Jack’s fears of raising excessive hopes in Elizabeth were unfounded. She had no hope. “ ‘Tis doubtless a trick,” she said. “Oh, not of Baxter’s probably, though I trust nobody any more, but of Stuyvesant’s. We’ll no sooner land than we’ll be arrested.”

“Not you,” said Will. “They won’t harm you
there
or Baxter wouldn’t have written. It’ll be I that’s gaoled in New Netherland, since my banishment is still in force.” And he laughed.

“Will!” she cried, staring at him. “But we can’t go then! This is desperate folly. Make Toby take us to Virginia, as I thought - or the Indies.”

“No, hinnie,” said Will. “We’re going to New Amsterdam. We should have done it long ago. I no longer wish to live in pretence. You know what my admired Herbert says:

“Dare to be true; nothing can need a lie;
a fault which needs it most grows two thereby.”

It’s time we heeded the old parson.”

“Even if it means imprisonment and torture?” she whispered.

“Even so.”

Beneath her fears she felt a shock of relief, a clean and free sensation which she had not known since the day they had fled to Stamford over a year ago. It did .not last. Her fears continued, but she hid them, and when they spoke of their situation now it was often with a sardonic humour which Toby thought demented.

That afternoon, they passed Monakewaygo - Elizabeth’s Neck. There was haze, and she could see little but the outline of the trees. She turned quickly and went down into the cabin, where she occupied herself with the baby.

They anchored off Long Island shore that night, since Toby would not run Hell Gate in darkness. When, at sunrise, they had shot through the rapids and the eddies, Will gazed long up at the eastern shore, and the round point of land for which he once had owned a grant. The point was pink beneath the huge sun that hung like a scarlet plate over the grey horizon.

“ ‘Twill be a dirty day,” said Toby, also looking at the sun. “Good thing we’re near to port.”

Neither Will nor Elizabeth said anything. They sailed on down the East River. As they passed Corlear’s Hook, some recognition of the anxiety his passengers might be feeling penetrated Toby’s stolidity. “Ye better have a good swig o’ rum,” he said, and he yelled to the Finch lad who acted as cabin boy. “Isaac, fetch the keg!”

Will and Elizabeth each drank some of the fiery “kill devil”. Will a watered mugful, Elizabeth only a swallow, for it seemed rather to increase than quell the sickly feeling in her stomach.

Soon they saw the silhouette of the Fort, the windmill, and the weathervane on the high-peaked church.

“Fewer ships in than when we were last here,” observed Will casually.

“Aye,” said Toby. “Stuyvesant’s ruining foreign trade with his fierce customs duties and confiscations. There’s a mort o’ complaints. Very high-handed he is.”

Elizabeth moistened her dry lips. Will put his hand over hers and gave it a hard clasp.

“He can’t be worse than Kieft,” she said faintly.

“Harsher,” said Toby. “And a shocking temper - lays about him with his stick and screams and stamps that peg-leg when angered. He thought Kieft too easygoing, lax - him and the Pastor Bogardus. They say Stuyvesant believes that’s why they were drowned on the
Princess,
those two. Judgment of the Lord.”

“Aye,” said Will quickly to divert Toby from Stuyvesant’s character. “It was a strange thing that Kieft and his mortal enemy, Bogardus, should both be drowned on the way home for questioning. But life is unpredictable - and not
all
its surprises are bad, hinnie.”

“To be sure,” she said as steadily as she could.

There was a clear berth by the great wooden dock Stuyvesant had recently erected. Toby made fast alongside of it. “Ye can sleep aboard if you like,” he said gruffly, as Elizabeth started down the’ gangplank with the baby in her arms. “Save you money at the Tavern,”

If we don’t sleep in gaol, she thought

It began to rain as Will and Elizabeth walked down the wooden wharf, then past the crane and the gibbet to the customhouse. Under Kieft’s regime they had never been questioned upon arrival in New Amsterdam, but now an armed guard dashed out of the customhouse and stopped them with a flow of Dutch.

Will repeated Baxter’s name several times, and said, “He expects us.”

The guard hesitated. He understood what Will meant, but thought it unlikely that so shabbily dressed a pair really had an appointment with the Governor’s secretary. Also he sensed something queer about these two and his suspicions were aroused. Finally he motioned them on and stalked behind through the little streets, his musket on his shoulder. The people stopped and stared, one little boy cocked a snoot at Will, threw a pebble at Elizabeth, and ran off jeering.

As they approached the Fort it rained harder. Elizabeth covered the baby with a fold of her worn cloak, and he began to whimper.

They were challenged by a sentry at the entrance to the Fort, but their guard said something and they passed through, heading at once for Baxter’s house.

Baxter’s door was opened by a liveried slave, who gaped at the trio - the tall man, the woman in rumpled homespun clothing, and the guard frowning behind them.

“Mr. Baxter,” said Will. “We wish to see him at once.”

The slave shook his head. “Master gone. Not here. Gone to Bruecklin.”

The customs guard made a sharp derisive sound.
“Kom!”
he said laying his hand roughly on “Will’s shoulder.

“Are we already arrested?” said Elizabeth. “ ‘Tis sooner than I thought for.”

“No, by God I” Will cried, shaking off the guard’s hand. “We’re going to Stuyvesant.
‘Directeur Generaal’!”
he shouted into the guard’s startled, resistant face. Will took Elizabeth’s arm and they sloshed through the increasing rain across the Ford towards the Governor’s mansion. The guard followed angrily, his musket ready cocked.

It was while they were crossing the slippery paving stones that Elizabeth plummeted, between one step and the next, into despair. The thunder and pound of effort ceased, she was alone in a silent black cell - a dungeon, where shadow upon shadow wavered around the implacable stones. No one to call to, no one to help. “From the ends of the earth will I cry unto thee when my heart is overwhelmed - for thou hast been a shelter for me. I will trust in the covert of thy wings.” What shelter? What wings? Pious lies to be finally surrendered along with these puny strivings - along with pitiable hope.

They reached the Governor’s house, Will mounted the stoop, and banged the great bronze door knocker, while the guard protested angrily, but after a stare at Will’s expression did not interfere. Elizabeth looked at Will’s back - a stranger - as alien to her as all the people she had once loved, love slain by the God of Wrath who neither solaced nor forgave.

She stood on the paving stones, the rain dripping off her hood, and running down on to the baby, who began to wail with the full strength of his healthy lungs.

A woman appeared at an upstairs window and looked down at the group in the courtyard. She noted the scowling guard, and a big man whose attitude showed strain and fierce determination; puzzled, she looked at Elizabeth, who was mechanically trying to soothe the howling, squirming baby and protect it from the rain, and she had a glimpse of Elizabeth’s face. A face like marble; mute, white; a mask of desolation.

The woman left the window and ran downstairs.

The Governor’s servant had already opened the door a crack, and begun to deny entrance in a blustering voice. Judith Stuyvesant pushed him aside and flung wide her door.
“Kom in!”
she said to the bedraggled couple.

The guard rushed forward and. spoke to her in rapid but respectful Dutch, telling her that these were but disreputable English folk, unworthy of her attention, that they had no credentials, but had asserted Mr. Baxter expected them - which was not true.

Mrs. Stuyvesant, whose warm heart sometimes led her into difficulties, paused, and inspected again the two who now stood on her threshold. Elizabeth’s sombre eyes gazed back, seeing as through fog a pretty woman of her own age, exquisitely gowned in rose taffeta with a huge fluted ruff, and with pearl earrings dangling beneath elaborate puffs of honey-coloured hair. A woman of fashion, she thought vaguely, from the world that I once knew. She turned to leave, anticipating the dismissal which would soon come.

“We would like to explain ourselves, Madam,” said Will harshly, “but we speak no Dutch.”

“I can some English,” said Mrs. Stuyvesant. Abruptly she waved her hand at the guard.
“Ga weg!”
He bowed and went off, muttering.