street, in a naval uniform profusely laced, and with a cutlass swinging
by his side. This is Captain Short, the commander of a frigate in the
service of the English king, now lying in the harbor. Sir William
bristles up at sight of him, and crosses the street with a lowering
front, unmindful of the hints of Dr. Mather, who is aware of an
unsettled dispute between the captain and the governor, relative to the
authority of the latter over a king's ship on the provincial station.
Into this thorny subject, Sir William plunges headlong. The captain
makes answer with less deference than the dignity of the potentate
requires: the affair grows hot; and the clergymen endeavor to interfere
in the blessed capacity of peacemakers. The governor lifts his cane;
and the captain lays his hand upon his sword, but is prevented from
drawing by the zealous exertions of Dr. Mather. There is a furious
stamping of feet, and a mighty uproar from every mouth, in the midst of
which his Excellency inflicts several very sufficient whacks on the head
of the unhappy Short. Having thus avenged himself by manual force, as
befits a woodman and a mariner, he vindicates the insulted majesty of
the governor by committing his antagonist to prison. This done, Sir
William removes his periwig, wipes away the sweat of the encounter, and
gradually composes himself, giving vent, to a few oaths, like the
subsiding ebullitions of a pot that has boiled over.

It being now near twelve o'clock, the three ministers are bidden to
dinner at the governor's table, where the party is completed by a few
Old Charter senators,--men reared at the feet of the Pilgrims, and who
remember the days when Cromwell was a nursing-father to New England.
Sir William presides with commendable decorum till grace is said, and
the cloth removed. Then, as the grape-juice glides warm into the
ventricles of his heart, it produces a change, like that of a running
stream upon enchanted shapes; and the rude man of the sea and wilderness