"Mr. Alderman Myndert Van Beverout!"

"My Lord Viscount Cornbury--"

"Plutus preserve thee, Sir--but have a care! though I scent the morning
air, and must return, it is not forbid to tell the secrets of my
prison-house. There is one, in yonder cage, who whispers that the 'Skimmer
of the Seas' is on the coast! Be wary, worthy burgher, or the second part
of the tragedy of Kidd may yet be enacted in these seas."

"I leave such transactions to my superiors," retorted the Alderman, with
another stiff and ceremonious bow. "Enterprises that are said to have
occupied the Earl of Bellamont, Governor Fletcher, and my Lord Cornbury,
are above the ambition of an humble merchant."

"Adieu, tenacious Sir; quiet thine impatience for the extraordinary Dutch
movements!" said Cornbury, affecting to laugh, though he secretly felt the
sting the other had applied, since common report implicated not only him,
but his two official predecessors, in several of the lawless proceedings
of the American Buccaneers: "Be vigilant, or la demoiselle Barbérie will
give another cross to the purity of the stagnant pool!"

The bows that were exchanged were strictly in character. The Alderman was
unmoved, rigid, and formal, while his companion could not forget his ease
of manner, even at a moment of so much vexation. Foiled in an effort, that
nothing but his desperate condition, and nearly desperate character, could
have induced him to attempt, the degenerate descendant of the virtuous
Clarendon walked towards his place of confinement, with the step of one
who assumed a superiority over his fellows, and yet with a mind so
indurated by habitual depravity, as to have left it scarcely the trace of