"Nay, you need not fear that of me, Judith," said he. "Man to man is my way, when there is occasion. But can you marvel if I would have you for your own sake avoid any farther meetings with this stranger? If he be in hiding, let him remain there, in God's name; I for one will set no beagles to hunt him out. But as for you, I would have you meddle with no such dangerous traps."
"Good sir," said she, "I have my conduct in my own keeping, and can answer to those that have the guardianship of me."
He did not reply to this rebuke. He said:
"May I walk back to the town with you, Judith?"
"You forget," she said, coldly, "that if we were seen together the gossips might say I had come out hither to seek you, and alone."
"I care not," said he, with an affectation of indifference, "what the gossips in Stratford have to talk over. Stratford and I are soon to part."
"What say you?" said she, quickly--and they were walking on together now, the Don leisurely following at their heels.
"Nay, 'tis nothing," said he, carelessly; "there are wider lands beyond the seas, where a man can fight for his own and hold it."
"And you?" she said. "You have it in your mind to leave the country?"
"Marry, that have I!" said he, gayly. "My good friend Daniel Hutt hath gotten together a rare regiment, and I doubt not I shall be one of the captains of them ere many years be over."
Her eyes were downcast, and he could not see what impression this piece of news had made upon her--if, indeed, he cared to look. They walked for some time in silence.
"It is no light matter," said she at length, and in rather a low voice, "to leave one's native land."
"As for that," said he, "the land will soon be not worth the living in. Why, in former times, men spoke of the merry world of England. A merry world? I trow the canting rogues of preachers have left but little merriment in it; and now they would seek to have all in their power, and to flood the land with their whining and psalm-singing, till we shall have no England left us, but only a vast conventicle. Think you that your father hath any sympathy with these? I tell you no; I take it he is an Englishman, and not a conventicle-man. 'Tis no longer the England of our forefathers when men may neither hawk nor hunt, and women are doomed to perdition for worshipping the false idol starch, and the very children be called in from their games of a Sunday afternoon. God-a-mercy, I have had enough of Brother Patience-in-suffering, and his dominion of grace!"