The Pilot listened with rooted attention, and his piercing eye seemed to reach the seat of those thoughts which she but half expressed; still he retained the entire command of himself, and answered, more in sorrow than in anger:
"If anything could convert me to your own peaceful and unresisting opinions, Alice, it would be the reflections that offer themselves at this conviction, that even you have been led by the base tongues of my dastardly enemies, to doubt my honor and conduct. What is fame, when a man can be thus traduced to his nearest friends? But no more of these childish reflections! they are unworthy of myself, my office, and the sacred cause in which I have enlisted!"
"Nay, John, shake them not off," said Alice, unconsciously laying her hand on his arm; "they are as the dew to the parched herbage, and may freshen the feelings of your youth, and soften the heart that has grown hard, if hard it be, more by unnatural indulgence than its own base inclinations."
"Alice Dunscombe," said the Pilot, approaching her with solemn earnestness, "I have learnt much this night, though I came not in quest of such knowledge. You have taught me how powerful is the breath of the slanderer, and how frail is the tenure by which we hold our good names. Full twenty times have I met the hirelings of your prince in open battle, fighting ever manfully under that flag which was first raised to the breeze by my own hands, and which, I thank my God, I have never yet seen lowered an inch; but with no one act of cowardice or private wrong in all that service can I reproach myself; and yet, how am I rewarded! The tongue of the vile calumniator is keener than the sword of the warrior, and leaves a more indelible scar!"
"Never have ye uttered a truer sentiment, John, and God send that ye may encourage such thoughts to your own eternal advantage," said Alice, with engaging interest "You say that you have risked your precious life in twenty combats, and observe how little of Heaven's favor is bestowed on the abettors of rebellion! They tell me that the world has never witnessed a more desperate and bloody struggle than this last, for which your name has been made to sound to the furthermost ends of the isle."