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Title: A bad penny

Author: John T. Wheelwright

Illustrator: Francis Gilbert Attwood

Release date: May 28, 2025 [eBook #76172]

Language: English

Original publication: Boston: L. C. Page & Company, 1896

Credits: Susan E., David E. Brown, Mary Fahnestock-Thomas, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A BAD PENNY ***





A Bad Penny




[Illustration: “‘IS THIS YOUR BOY?’”
                                          _See page 16_]




  A BAD PENNY

  BY
  JOHN T. WHEELWRIGHT

  AUTHOR OF
  “A CHILD OF THE CENTURY,” “ROLLO’S JOURNEY
  TO CAMBRIDGE,” ETC.

  Illustrated by
  F. G. ATTWOOD

  [Illustration]

  BOSTON
  L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
  1901




  Copyright, 1896,
  By Lamson, Wolffe, and Company.

  _All rights reserved_




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.


                                                                  PAGE

  “‘IS THIS YOUR BOY?’”                                 _Frontispiece_

  “MISS ELIZABETH SAT IN HIGH STATE AT HER TEA-TABLE”               12

  “A PUFFY AND CONSEQUENTIAL-LOOKING MAN WAS DEACON FAIRBANKS”      46

  ALICE                                                             56

  “THE BOAT WAS FLYING DOWN THE HARBOR”                             64

  “CHEEVER LOOKED THE MAN STRAIGHT IN THE EYE”                      82

  “SOME BOYS WHO NEVER WERE BOYS”                                  102

  “JAMES TURNED AS HE HEARD THE NOISE”                             119

  “‘WE CANNOT BE TOO CAREFUL AT OUR AGE, MISS WOODBURY’”           137

  “ANOTHER CUTLASS PIERCED THE AMERICAN’S BREAST”                  154




A Bad Penny




I


With our modern habit of huddling together in cities, fair urban
gardens, together with many other pleasant things of an age which loved
elbow room, are now rare: yet in some of our New England seaboard
towns, which commerce has deserted and the hands of modern improvers
left unmarred, such gardens still exist, to rest the spirits of men,
tired of living at lightning express rate.

In one of these unprosperous Massachusetts towns, Oldbury, on the
broad High Street, there stands a great square brick house, with a
broad comfortable lawn stretching down to a high fence. A pathway
leads from the street, between two rows of giant elm-trees, to the
front door of the house; an entrance dignified by a portico of wooden
Corinthian columns painted white. The house itself is severely simple,
as befits a mansion, built by a Yankee ship-owner, but there is about
it a comfortable air of solidity, which makes it more attractive than
the gimcrack villas, which our successful men build nowadays. It was
evidently built to last, and to be lived in by the builder and the
children who should come after him.

On a day in June, more than eighty years ago, this house was new,
and its owner, Captain John Woodbury, was standing, his hand on the
shoulder of his son, in the garden at the back surveying with pride his
mansion. He was a short, square-built man, his legs were encased in
knee-breeches and stockings, although long trousers had already begun
to shroud the symmetry or cover the defects of most male legs. But the
Captain’s legs were stout and well developed, and were stretched apart,
as their owner stood gazing at his new house, as if he had been used
to standing on the quarter-deck and to giving orders to his crew. His
red, weather-beaten face, with its strong aquiline nose, firm mouth,
and keen black eyes, indicated that he was a seafaring man; though
his service in the land forces of the Provincial Congress in the war
against the British entitled him to the title of Captain, as well as
did his command of a ship.

There was no rollicking air of the sea-dog about the Captain; life had
been a serious business to him, although he had been used to value
it little in times of danger. New England, at the first part of this
century, was a peculiar community; the old Puritan stock, unmixed with
foreign blood, yet strengthened by founding a nation, was beginning to
break through its narrow shell, but the old faith was strong in the
land. The Captain, as he stood on his demesne, believed that he owned
it deep down to an actual Hell where the wicked and unbelieving were in
eternal torture, and that he read his title clear to his estate far up
to Heaven, where a talent for leading hymns could not be hidden during
the eternity of paradise.

A shrewd and skilful trader, as well as a navigator, was the Captain,
and during the great wars with which Napoleon fretted the world, he
had seized the opportunities offered to Americans to make money in the
carrying trade, and the new house, at which he was gazing with pride,
was the monument of his success in life; a success which had come too
late to be shared in by his wife, who had died some dozen years before.

The light-hearted boy standing by his side did not notice the tears
which filled his father’s eyes at the thought of the dear face whose
image time had not dimmed in the sturdy Captain’s remembrance. Indeed,
the boy’s laughing blue eyes, joyful mouth, and fair curly hair
recalled the mother to the old man; and the love which he bore him was
made the deeper and tenderer by the resemblance.

It had been her darling wish that her son should be educated for the
ministry; for her father had been a distinguished divine in the last
century. His name was handed down to posterity in a volume of sermons
wherein unbaptized infants and unpredestined fared but badly. Young
James had been intended from infancy for the church, by his father,
and since his mother’s death the boy had been left by the Captain,
during his voyages, in the charge of his unmarried sister, Elizabeth,
who lived in a small house on a street in Oldbury leading from the
aristocratic High Street.

The life of Aunt Elizabeth had not been made happy by her charge,
nor had he been happy with her. The good lady was an uncompromising
Puritan, rigid in bearing and severe in visage, whose life was spent
in a constant struggle with the powers of dirt and ungodliness. She
was such a noteworthy housewife that it was a saying in Oldbury that
the ministers whom she entertained at tea might have eaten off the
dining-room floor as well as off her polished mahogany. Of course
James’ muddy boots sadly disturbed his aunt’s peace of mind. Indeed,
the boy, after that brief period of infancy when he was declared by
his female relatives to look like an angel from heaven, had little
excepting his good looks to recommend him to his aunt. He did not,
like a good boy, love his books, and he was continually in mischief,
so that he gained with surprising facility the distinction of being
the bad boy of the neighborhood. The ill-natured remarks which reached
Miss Woodbury’s ears as to “old-maid’s children” made the affliction
hard for the old lady to bear. The boy was continually wandering off to
the wharves, where the ships were laying, so that he might chat with
the old salts over the wonders of the world. There he climbed up the
shrouds of the vessels and skylarked over the decks and into the holds,
returning home late to tea, covered with an unpleasant mixture of tar
and molasses, which never could be removed from his clothes, and which
would only wear off from his hands by slow attrition. Or, he would be
missing till late at night, and return declaring that his boat had run
aground on some one of the shifting sandbars of the harbor and that he
had been compelled to wait for the tide to float it off; but I doubt
whether he was really the unskilful navigator that he claimed to be.
The mantle of the Rev. James Cheever did not seem to have fallen upon
his grandson. The world seemed to the boy to be a beautiful place, full
of color and adventure, as indeed it was, at the time when the great
Napoleon was pulling down the old kings and setting up his unroyal
brothers upon ancient pedestals.

At church, the boy used to sit through the long dreary sermons,
wriggling in his seat, greatly to the annoyance of his aunt, and
a quiet smile would play over his mouth as he thought that he was
destined by his family to occupy such a pulpit and to be as dreary and
as long-winded as good old Dr. Canterbury. His mind was always full of
schemes to avoid this painful predestined fate; of plans for stowing
his little body away in the hold of a ship, to appear upon deck in
a few days after the vessel had left port and take up the important
duties of a cabin-boy. In that happy estate of life, there would be
no more Latin lessons for him, and, best of all, no Aunt Elizabeth to
scour his face, and no long sermons on the Sabbath, to say nothing of
the escape from the lesser evils of prayer-meetings and Sabbath-school
catechism.

More than once he had stolen towards the wharves with a bag of biscuits
and a brown jug of water to sustain life while a stowaway, only to go
back home when he remembered what his father’s sorrow would be upon
returning from a long voyage to find his son gone. His father’s short
stays at home in the intervals of his voyages were the pleasantest
days of the boy’s life, for there were friendly though somewhat formal
relations between the two Woodburys; and now the old gentleman had
retired from seafaring and for the last year had been rearing the fine
mansion at which he was gazing with such sorrowful pride. His son had
been growing during this last year almost as rapidly as the new house,
and now at fifteen was as tall and as good-looking a youngster as
Oldbury could boast.

He stood by his father’s side that morning, a little ill at ease. He
was nearly ready for college and would be sent up to Cambridge for
examination in a few weeks, unless he could obtain his father’s consent
that he should go to sea. All day long he had had the words upon his
tongue’s end, which should frame the arguments by which his father
would be persuaded to relieve him from the dreadful life of a scholar
and let him take to his natural element,--the water.

But as he looked at the Captain’s stern face, it became every moment
more difficult to broach the subject, and his arguments became more and
more unconvincing to himself. Finally he mustered up courage to speak:

“Father,” he said in a faltering voice, “I wish to have a talk with
you. You know that I am almost prepared for college?”

“Mr. Dillaway tells me that he _hopes_ you can pass your examinations,
but that you have been very idle. It was not by idleness and skylarking
that your good grandfather became such an ornament to his profession,
James,” said his father, patting the boy’s shoulder as he reproved him,
to show him that the words were meant in kindness.

“I know that, sir,” said James; “I am anything but a good scholar, and
indeed, sir, I do not think that it is worth while for you to waste so
much money upon my education.”

The Captain looked for a moment into his son’s face, and then said with
a gesture of command: “Come into my room, my son, we must talk this
matter over.”

The interior of the house was like that of other good houses of the
period; a long broad hall stretched through it from the front door
to the back; from this hall rose a staircase with carved and twisted
balustrade; on either side of this hall were two large square rooms,
the two sunny back rooms being for a dining-room and living room, while
the two front parlors were kept sacred to dark respectability, samplers
and furniture covered with hair-cloth, and were rarely used except for
weddings, funerals, or other entertainments. They went through the
back door into the sitting-room, in the corner of the house overlooking
the garden. Over the high, white mantelpiece hung the picture of the
Captain’s last ship, the _Arethusa_, a gem of nautical art, depicting
the staunch craft, ploughing her way under full sail, through waves of
gray-green paint as regular as the teeth of a saw. The carved teak-wood
furniture gave the room a romantic charm, and the great lips of two
blue china vases told to the receptive ears of the boy, sweet tales of
the remote earth, just as the large pink shells sang of the Spanish
Main. In a sandal-wood chest in one corner were rich stuffs and laces
which the Captain had brought with him from the voyage to France for
the wife whom he found dead on his return. The boy’s wife should wear
them some day, the good old man thought as he packed them away. They
were too sacred for any one else, though Aunt Elizabeth knew of their
existence and coveted them; for even a Yankee old maid is a daughter of
Eve.

In another corner of the room was a great iron box studded with
heavy nails and fastened by a padlock, in which the Captain kept his
valuables. James always looked at this with awe. He supposed it to be
full of gold and silver and precious stones, and that his father was
rich beyond the dreams of avarice. I could not in many pages describe
all the contents of this wonderful room; it would be as hard as to
enumerate the contents of a boy’s pocket; but I must not pass by the
musket which the Captain carried through the war of the Revolution,
nor the cutlasses which were in a rack in the corner, with the pistols
and a great brass blunderbuss used for repelling pirates from the
_Arethusa_, nor the curious old decanters filled with New England rum
or port wine, which were in a little locker in a corner of the room.

On stormy nights, James, as he sat with his father in this room poring
over his Latin grammar, would fancy that they were sailing through
the Caribbean Sea, and that a pirate would soon heave in sight and a
desperate conflict ensue. Pretty thoughts these, for a budding parson;
and dreadful to relate, the boy quite as often dreamed that they were
pirates under the “Jolly Roger,” and he would look earnestly at his
father’s wrinkled, stern face and close-shut mouth, and wonder how he
had acquired the gold supposed to be in the strong box. It would be but
a passing thought, however, of which he was ashamed the next minute as
he saw his father turning over the leaves of the little Bible which he
knew to have been his mother’s.

“The truth is, father, I do not want to go to college, I want to go to
sea; I am not fit to be a minister, and oh,--I cannot be one,” blurted
out James as soon as they were seated in the Captain’s room.

There was silence for a moment, then the Captain, clearing his
throat and wiping his gold-bowed spectacles with a great red bandana
handkerchief, spoke: “James, you know my wishes and those of your dear
mother, whom you do not remember.”

Here the old man removed his spectacles and rubbed them again quite
violently with the bandana, while James considerately turned his face
away that he might not observe the emotion which he had learned to
expect whenever his father mentioned his mother’s name. “She dedicated
you, James, as an infant to the service of the Lord, and it is with
this end in view that I have had you educated. And now, just as I am on
the point of sending you to the college at Cambridge, you tell me that
you wish to go to sea.”

The boy looked down at the ground under his father’s stern, sad gaze
and tried to speak. “I do not believe that I can ever stand up in a
pulpit and preach long sermons, and I am very sure that I should not
enjoy it,” he finally stammered.

“Enjoy it!” interrupted his father, sternly. “Do you think that you
were put into this world for the purpose of enjoying yourself? To
think of your speaking of a holy calling as if it were a game with the
devil’s books. Why, boy,” he continued, “I have labored all these years
that you might have a higher place in the world than mine has been.
I had no advantages of education, my parents were poor and could not
give them to me, I have led a hard rough life from boyhood up, and have
lived often with wicked men. I might have been wicked myself had it
not been for your mother, who led me to the faith and for her unseen
presence which has blessed me since her death. Through my long voyages
in the solitude in which a master of a vessel lives, I have always
thought that I would save you from the wretchedness of a sailor’s life.
It is a dog’s life, lad.”

“Sailors are not hypocrites,” said the boy, petulantly. “They like
their work better than they would any other, and they do it well
because they like it. If I am made a minister, I shall be a hypocrite.”

“My son,” interrupted the Captain, bringing his hand down sharply upon
the table, “you are talking very foolishly and wrongly. In a few weeks,
your teacher informs me, you will be ready for college, and so far
I may compel you to go in the career I have marked out for you. I do
not choose that you shall go before the mast. Of course, it is in your
power to disregard my opinion and disobey me. I trust, however, that
your love for me and for the memory of your mother will prevent your
taking a wilful course. I wish that I knew enough to help you in your
work, my boy.”

“You don’t know how stupid the Latin grammar is, father. I believe
that I can learn a great deal more by seeing the world than by
committing such stuff as this to memory.” As he spoke, James opened
his dog’s-eared Latin grammar which lay upon the table and showed his
father a formidable table of irregular verbs. The Captain started to
put on his spectacles to look at the book, but stopping as if an idea
occurred to him, he laid them upon the table. He saw that he was being
craftily led from the region of the known to the unknown. As an honest,
truth-telling man, he would have had to confess that the process of
acquiring a knowledge of the Latin tongue did not seem to him an
inspiring pursuit.

“James,” he said, after shutting the Latin grammar, “I shall not
discuss with you about the details of a matter of which I know nothing.
The education which produced your good grandfather, James Cheever,
after whom you were named, is not to be criticised by an ignorant old
sea-captain like me.”

“What is one man’s meat, is another man’s poison, father,” replied the
boy, whose delicate features took something of the old man’s severe
expression, as the two contended in argument. “I’m afraid that I have
only my grandfather’s name, not his disposition. It makes me sick
to stay in doors moping over books: I take no pleasure in them. I do
not think that I could skate very well if every motion I took was
disagreeable to me. Now, Tom Gaston, who went to Cambridge last year,
is a good boy and loves his books, but he always ties granny knots when
he reefs a sail; and his chest is as flat as a flounder’s. He would
make a good parson. Do you wish me to try to be like him?”

“Go to your room, James,” interrupted his father, sternly; for Tom
Gaston was his pet abomination and his parental authority had been too
long questioned. “You have had my decision, and I will have no more
talk about it.”

James bowed respectfully to his father (if he had been born sixty years
later, I fear that he would have slammed the door), and went slowly to
his room.

The June day had lost its beauty for him. What was the loveliness of
nature to a poor chap whose future life must be passed in libraries, at
the odious task of writing sermons in sixteen parts, or, worst of all,
in delivering these sermons after he had written them, to a nodding
congregation twice a Sunday for fifty-two weeks every year, to say
nothing of the Friday prayer-meetings? Could a man, who in spirit was
navigating the Spanish Main, in the body discourse for an hour upon a
Scriptural text? He had gone into the conflict with his father with
little hope and much fear. He had long pondered over what he should
say to him and rehearsed the arguments to be used on that momentous
occasion; but when he came to face the dreaded authority, the arguments
disintegrated, and he felt that his father had got the better of him.
Even the irregular verbs had failed--well, to college he must go--worse
luck!




II


That evening, Miss Elizabeth sat in high state at her tea-table, behind
the silver service, which was at once her pride and her greatest
responsibility. The possession of a silver service was, of course,
a badge of the greatest respectability, and Miss Elizabeth did not
allow one jot of the dignity consequent thereon to be abated. She was
a likeness of her brother done in vinegar. She had his bright eyes,
prominent nose, and firmly closed mouth, but her skin was very white
and fair. Her hair, on her depressed, blue-veined temples, was done
into rigid curls, as formalized as the waves on an English lawyer’s
wig. What a wonderful crystallization a formal curl is! Compare the
Sun-god’s careless, waving locks with Aunt Elizabeth’s gray corkscrew
curls! Her figure was very slight, and her dress gray and formal. She
was exquisitely neat in appearance, and her hands and feet were small
and pretty, and she was very proud of them. Poor Aunt Elizabeth! She
was proud of many things, but there had been little joy in her solitary
life.

The elderly ladies in Oldbury declared that Elizabeth Woodbury had
never had a love affair, but how did they know the secrets of the
withered virgin’s heart? Among certain kindly women, there is a saying
prevalent that every woman of thirty, be she fair or ill-favored, has
received at least one offer of marriage. Let us hope that this may be
so, however improbable it seems to those who dwell in our Eastern
States, where the fair sex so greatly preponderates; for it is pleasant
to think that every heart has been at least once warmed by the sunshine
of love.

[Illustration: “MISS ELIZABETH SAT IN HIGH STATE AT HER TEA-TABLE.”]

For aught any one knew, Aunt Elizabeth may have been ill-treated by a
faithless lover, or she may have requested any number of disconsolate
suitors to endeavor to forget her. Certainly there was in her chaste
apartment, in an upper bureau drawer, carefully covered with an Indian
silk handkerchief, a miniature of a young man in a British uniform:
James had found this one day, when rummaging the drawers for pennies.
On discovering her nephew at this outrageous piece of intrusion, Aunt
Elizabeth had boxed his ears soundly, and her eyes were red when next
he saw her.

But as she sat at the supper-table this evening over her shining silver
service, she seemed far removed from the darts of Cupid.

The table was spread with a good New England supper; an excellent
informal meal, too seldom enjoyed in these days of late dinners and
borrowed English manners. Against the rich gloss of the Spanish
mahogany table, the silver gleamed, as no silver service can shine
unless rubbed by the hands of a gentlewoman.

The blue china plates were heaped with pleasant burdens of cold
chicken, strawberries, preserves, cakes, and hot rolls. A great glass
pitcher of milk and a plate of butter from the Captain’s farm stood in
the middle of the table. The room was hung with family portraits and
conspicuous among them Copley’s portrait of Rev. James Cheever, in a
black gown and white bands, surprisingly good in texture; his waxen
but well-shaped hands holding the election sermon preached once by
him before the Massachusetts legislature, a discourse which had not
been filled with loyalty to King George. Two female Woodbury ancestors
simpered in faded pastel on either side of the reverend gentleman, and
the Captain himself, in continental uniform, stood amid the rage and
turmoil of battle, defying the scarlet-coated British. The good old
gentleman, as he sat at his supper-table, looked almost as stern as his
warlike picture; for the obstinacy of his son in struggling against the
plans which had been made for him, sadly troubled the old man.

“Elizabeth,” he said, breaking for the first time the silence which had
followed the grace before meat, “I have just told the boy that he must
go to college next month.”

Miss Elizabeth gave a severe sniff, and looked at the portrait of the
Puritan divine, as if to show her idea of the gulf which lay between
him and his degenerate descendant.

“I hope that it will be all for the best, Brother John; that is all I
have to say about it,” she replied, after her withering glance at the
picture. “There is little of the saint about _that_ boy!”

“He is a fine, high-spirited fellow, without a mean streak in him,”
replied her brother, rather hotly. “A boy must be a boy, after all.”

Miss Elizabeth shook her head sadly, as if to express a doubt as
to whether boys ought to be boys after all, when the culprit under
discussion slouched into the room with red eyes, and hair which a hasty
application of brush and comb had made smooth only on the surface, the
locks below still being in delightful confusion.

He took his seat at the table, after having inclined his head slightly
towards his father and aunt, and proceeded to attack his supper with an
appetite undiminished by the thought that he was not in the good books
of the rest of the family.

Finally, not liking the gloomy silence which hung over the table, he
looked up from his plate and said:

“A schooner came in to-day from Havana. I saw her lying at anchor in
the harbor when I came in from sailing. She doesn’t belong here.”

“How did you find out she sailed from Havana?” asked the Captain.

“I hailed her as I sailed by,” replied James. “There was a tall man
leaning over the starboard rail, and he told me that she was the
_Tempest_ from Havana, laden with sugar. There was a monkey running
up the rigging, a funny fellow with no tail, and a yellow parrot in a
cage swinging from the main-boom. What do you suppose the man asked
me? Whether Captain John Woodbury was alive, and if he still lived in
Oldbury.”

“What kind of a looking man was he?” exclaimed the Captain.

“Oh, he was about six feet tall, I should say. He was smooth shaven and
had a hooked nose. He stuttered a good deal, and waved his arm in the
air when he stuck at a word as if he was trying to pull it out.”

The Captain and his sister looked at each other for a moment. “Did he
say anything more?”

“No, sir; but the parrot cried out something in Spanish, and he covered
up the cage with a sail cover and swore at the bird. I sailed up to the
wharf, and he came to the port side of the schooner and watched me as
I picked up the moorings. Do you know who he is from my description,
father?”

“I knew a man once who had the trick of stuttering and raising his
arm as you describe,” answered the Captain, in a sad voice, as if an
unpleasant remembrance had been recalled to his mind. “But he has been
dead these many years.”

Miss Elizabeth seemed much interested in the conversation of the last
few minutes, and kept turning her eyes towards the portrait of the Rev.
James Cheever.

At this moment there was a sharp triple knock at the front door, a
knock which echoed through the big hall and made the three people at
the supper-table start in their chairs. The maid-servant ran to open
the door, the Captain and James involuntarily following her. As they
stood in the hall room James heard the stuttering voice which had
spoken to him from the schooner and saw the arm waving against the
glowing sunset light which slanted in through the front door.

The Captain walked forward mechanically, and the stranger, brushing
past the girl, who shrank back, approached him and held out his hand.

“John, you don’t k-now m-me?” he stammered, as the Captain looked at
him with dazed face.

“By George! Thomas Cheever! I heard of your death at La Guayra ten
years ago.”

“And you were g-glad to hear it, I suppose,” answered the stranger,
rather grimly; then, pointing to James, he asked, “Is this your
boy? Why, he is the very chap I saw out sailing in the harbor this
afternoon.”

“It’s your uncle, Thomas Cheever,” said the Captain in a low voice.

“Why, Uncle Tom is dead,” said James, sidling away from the stranger,
not knowing what to make of the apparition.

The strange man deposited a valise on the floor, and the Captain
motioned him towards the dining-room, the three maintaining a strange
constrained silence.

The Captain did not seem to fully grasp the whole bearings of this
resurrection. Thomas Cheever had disappeared from Oldbury at the
end of the last century, leaving behind him a name stained with low
dissipation and with suspicions of worse things. He had written to his
father but once from the West India Islands, where the vessel upon
which he had embarked had touched. This letter had been a demand for
money, without a word of affection for the broken-down old parson.
There was a long interval during which nothing had been heard of him,
and finally the news came from a merchant at La Guayra that Cheever
had been one of the crew of a vessel, more than suspected of piracy,
and that he had met his death from a knife-stab in a street fight. His
father had never mentioned his name after his disgraceful actions, and
his tender-hearted sister, while she shed a few tears for the brother,
who had been a pretty boy once, could not but feel relieved that the
scapegrace should trouble the family no more.

In the dining-room Miss Elizabeth sat pale and trembling. She had, with
a woman’s instinctive perception, felt that Tom Cheever had come back
to life and mischief again, as soon as James had described the stutter
and the waving arm. As the three came into the dining-room, lighted
with candles dimly twinkling in the twilight, she looked sharply and
sternly at the returned prodigal. He seemed a little backward in
coming forward, and he shuffled his feet uneasily; for in all these
years he had not forgotten the tang of Miss Woodbury’s tongue.

“Indeed, Thomas Cheever!” said that organ in a clear, shrill treble,
“having died, much to every one’s satisfaction, it is a great pity that
you could not stay dead.”

Cheever smiled, a half-humorous, half-cunning smile, though his eyes
turned a deeper green, and shot a gleam of hatred at the old lady.

“Well, Miss Woodbury, in waking to a new life, it is agreeable to be
welcomed by an angel!”

“I do not wish any impertinence, Thomas Cheever,” replied the frank
spinster, returning his malevolent gleam with a scornful look, the
value of which her spectacles enhanced. “For twelve years you let
your family believe you dead. What have you been doing all this time?
Nothing good, I’ll warrant.”

The Captain waved his hand as if to enjoin silence upon his sister, and
motioned Cheever to draw up a chair to the table. The latter did as he
was bid, and helping himself in sailor-fashion from the dishes before
him, proceeded to eat his supper. The others watched him intently, with
somewhat of the feeling that one would have in entertaining a burglar,
who had ill-concealed designs upon the spoons.

His rough black hair was short-cropped and tinged with gray; his skin
bronzed and weather-beaten; the lines on his face were deeply drawn;
his green eyes flitted from side to side and did not meet the gaze of
his inspectors; his thin and long frame was clad in a rough blue suit
of nautical cut. “Vagabond” was written on every feature of the man.
James watched him with open eyes, as he cut off junks of bread with
his knife and covered them with butter before eating them. The Captain,
at the head of the table, twisted the fob of his watch around, and
glanced uneasily at his brother-in-law, while Miss Woodbury, in her
stony glare, seemed to protest against the very existence of any person
so shameless and wicked.

The hungry man’s first keen appetite was soon appeased by his rapid
method of shovelling his food into his mouth, and dropping his knife
and fork for a moment, he looked uneasily at the others.

“I wasn’t killed in that fight, you see--I was attacked in the dark,
along by the wharves as I was going to my ship, and stabbed in the
back. I grappled with the fellow, a cursed ‘Yellow-belly’--I beg your
pardon, Miss Woodbury, that’s what they call them.”

The Captain still seemed dazed at the events of the evening, and
sat listening to his relation’s stammering speech without changing
expression. James was fascinated with the curious gestures of the
waving hand, which seemed to pull out the obstinate words over which
the speaker stuck, as if they were corks in a bottle. At this juncture
the muscles of Cheever’s neck stood out in the physical strain of the
attempts to master the obstinate consonants. His mouth gaped open, the
corners curving to form the word, which finally came out with a pop as
if it had been a material thing sticking in his throat.

“I took his knife away and cut his throat with it, and we were found in
the morning lying in a pool of blood. Mine was an awful wound; my ship
sailed away, leaving me for dying in the prison hospital. I recovered,
though God knows how I did so in that fearful place. The man who
attacked me had influential relations in Venezuela, and they swore that
I had tried to rob him, and that he had stabbed me in self-defence. I
was kept in the prison there for five years, without a trial. You’ve
seen a Spanish-American prison, Captain Woodbury, haven’t you?” The
vagabond’s face was contorted with disgust as he spoke, and the Captain
nodded assent to his question.

“Five years in that hell, with the vilest of mankind, with no covering
but an old blanket, fed with stuff poked through the bars at me as if I
were a wild beast. It was an awful time.” He shuddered as he spoke, and
looked around the group for sympathy.

“Think of it,” he kept on, “five years in such a place as that; I
think it was punishment enough for all the evil I have ever done. I
was finally set free, through the aid of an American sea-captain, with
whom I managed to communicate. He gave me a berth on his ship, and I
went to Liverpool with him. I didn’t write home. I knew they thought me
dead, and, as Miss Woodbury has kindly suggested, I thought I’d better
stay dead. Since then I have knocked about the world on ships; the Lord
knows where I haven’t been, and am now mate on the Baltimore schooner,
_Tempest_, at anchor in this harbor. When I found myself at Oldbury, I
came to life again. It is simple enough. When did he die?” he suddenly
asked, nodding his head at his father’s portrait.

“In January, 1806,” answered the Captain, solemnly.

“And my sister, your wife?”

“She died seven years before her father.”

“Did he take it hard, when I ran away?”

“He never mentioned your name from that day to the day of his death,”
answered Miss Woodbury in sharp metallic tones.

“Well, I wasn’t exactly a model son,” replied Cheever, after a moment’s
silence, during which he stuck his knife rather savagely into a piece
of bread. “And Sally Fairbanks, is she alive?” Something of a blush
came over the man’s face as he asked the question.

“She married Joshua Pickering, who died and left her a widow,” answered
Miss Woodbury--as if Joshua could have died and left her in any other
status.

“So Sally married, did she?” Cheever inquired, “and she didn’t care
when she heard of my death either, I suppose; she would be about as
glad to see me as you folks are, if I should go to see her. Have they
stopped talking about me in town?”

“Years ago; your tombstone is in the burying-ground on the hill, set
there by your father,” answered the spinster. “I guess, if you don’t
want to find yourself in a fix, you’d better not--”

“James,” said the Captain, suddenly remembering that the boy was
listening with all his ears, “leave the room.”

Reluctantly, from the presence of this great mystery, the boy withdrew,
gazing with open eyes at his uncanny uncle as he left. When the door
had been closed by his reluctant and slow-moving hands, Miss Woodbury
continued her interrupted speech.

“You’d better not let it be known that you’ve come back to life. The
Law does not forget, though other people do.”

Cheever winced for a moment under this home-thrust, but soon rallied to
ask with a droll stutter:

“Do they say anything flattering about me on my tombstone?”

“Only this, ‘Thomas Cheever, son of James Cheever, D.D. Born in
Oldbury, April 1778; died in La Guayra, Venezuela, Feb. 23, 1799.’”

“I thought that a tombstone, like Hope, always told some ‘flattering
tale,’” murmured Cheever, his lips twisting into a humorous curve. “I
think the old gentleman might at least have put something flattering
on the stone, if only to wish me to rest in peace. I must look up
my burial-place before I leave town. If it’s still such a gossiping
old place as it used to be, I suppose they have by this time got
hold of the fact that a stranger carrying a gripsack has called upon
Captain Woodbury. Who shall I be? A man from Cuba on business? As you
say, Miss Woodbury, I guess I’d better not come back to life again,
publicly--though I think it hard that they can’t forgive a fellow after
all these years.”

“The way of the transgressor _is_ hard, Tom Cheever,” said the old
lady, “and I don’t believe that you’ve done a straight thing since you
were born. What’s brought you back to Oldbury?”

“The schooner _Tempest_.”

“What motive brought you here?”

“Love of my native land and my kinsfolk, of course,” answered Cheever,
with his peculiar smile. “To be sure, I have not had a very hearty
welcome, you’ve treated me as if I was a cross between a ghost and a
burglar, but I didn’t expect anything better.”

“How long will your ship be in port?” asked the Captain, feeling that
the female head of the house should not do all the questioning.

“Blessed if I know,” replied Cheever, pushing his chair back from the
table and putting one leg over the other. “I worked my passage in the
schooner to get back here. I tell you, when a man has been banged
round from pillar to post, the way I’ve been, it knocks the stuffing
out of him. I’ve brought everything I have in the world with me in
that bag out in the hall. Everything, that is, but my parrot, which I
left aboard ship. Did you build this house, Woodbury? It’s a pretty
comfortable one. You must have coined money while I’ve been a-rolling
around the world, gathering no moss, except what’s in the bag.”

“What do you propose doing?” asked the Captain, his forehead
contracting into an anxious frown.

“Perhaps I’d better go up to that empty grave yonder and put myself
into it, Woodbury,” remarked Cheever, tipping his chair back and
looking about the room. “The best of us before long will use only six
foot of ground, but it’s hard work killing time until that blessed
period of equality between prince and pauper comes round.”

“Do you wish any assistance from me?” asked Woodbury.

“I don’t wish any assistance; I only wish what is due me. I wish half
my father’s estate; it’s my right. How much did he leave?”

“Not enough to quarrel about, Thomas, if we were disposed to do so,”
answered the Captain. “A few thousand dollars.”

“A few thousand dollars! Hear the man talk. Why, that’s a fortune to a
man of brains.”

“Do not trouble your mind about that, Thomas,” said the Captain, “you
shall have your fair share of that.”

“How long do you suppose it will last you?” queried Miss Woodbury, not
pleased at having been shut out from the conversation.

“I haven’t entered into any calculations as to that,” answered Cheever,
“and I don’t know as it would be any business of yours if I had. What’s
mine’s mine, even if I have got a tombstone over me.”

“Your father left a will,” continued the Captain, “leaving all his
property to my boy, but as he supposed you dead when he did so, I think
that you should have your share by fair rights.”

“Of course I should. I ask only what’s right. And when you give me the
cash, I won’t trouble you here much in this town. It’s a stupid old
place at best, and I’m afraid that somebody will recognize me. I can
disguise my face, but this cursed stutter of mine would show who I am,
I’m afraid. I guess they’d have mighty hard work though in proving
I was Tom Cheever, even if they could prove that Tom Cheever ever
did anything he hadn’t ought to. This stutter would be a strong fact
against me, but that tombstone up there is a poser on t’other, ain’t
it? Guess I’ll keep rather shady! Is the Deacon alive?”

“The Deacon is very much alive,” answered Miss Woodbury, who wished to
make Oldbury as uncomfortable a residence as possible for the man; “and
it’s my opinion that he would know you the minute he saw you, and have
you taken up the next. I wonder you dared to come back here.”

Cheever looked at her with his flitting, hunted eyes, and thinking that
the conversation was growing unpleasant, changed the subject.

“You will not mind my smoking a cigar?” he asked, drawing from his
pocket a black Regalia.

“I certainly do object to your smoking in the house,” said Miss
Woodbury. “You may go out doors and poison the air if you choose.”

“All right,” answered Tom, drawing up his tall body from the chair;
“the Captain and I will talk over our business matters.”

The poor Captain had been very quiet during all this time, but he had
been doing a deal of thinking. He saw that the disgrace which had been
brought upon his wife’s family by the man, now forgotten, would again
settle upon his household, should the fact of Cheever’s reappearance be
known to the neighbors. He felt that he would make any sacrifice to get
the man away from Oldbury. He could not help wishing that the record of
his death upon the tombstone were true. While he felt sure that any sum
he might give the man, as his share of his father’s estate, would be
soon spent by him, and that he would be demanding more, he made up his
mind that he would settle accounts with him and get him away as quickly
as he could.

Cheever’s return, besides its natural depressing effect, also awakened
the fear, which had more than once arisen in the Captain’s mind, that
some of his wicked blood might be in his son’s veins. He could not bear
to think that his boy should be exposed, even for a moment, to the
man’s contaminating influence. If he could get Cheever out of the house
at once, he would be satisfied, but how was it to be done? It would
take some time to get the ready money necessary to pay him the half of
his father’s estate to which he was entitled, since the building of
the new house had reduced the Captain’s cash on hand, and the Cheever
estate, which he held for his son, was invested in real property. He
might have to sell some part of one of his ships to get the money
necessary to pay Cheever, and this would take time.

The two men were standing upon the back veranda of the house, Cheever
calmly lighting his cigar with a flint and steel. The last glow of the
sun in the west had died away, and the stars were beginning to twinkle
in their soft summer radiance.

“I tell you what, it seems good to smell the garden again,” remarked
Cheever, “after having tossed around in the Atlantic for the last
month. What was the exact sum the old gentleman left?” he inquired,
turning sharply on his heel after this slight tribute to the beauties
of nature.

“His house and furniture and library. The whole was appraised at
about four thousand dollars. I still hold it for the boy; he is to be
educated for the ministry.”

“The hell you say,” ejaculated Cheever. “He looks much as I did when I
was a boy, and the old gentleman was going to make _me_ a parson.” He
laughed a loud, discordant laugh, and the point of his cigar described
wild curves in the darkness as his hand vibrated in the air.

The Captain’s heart gave a convulsive throb. Did this man read his
fears? He clenched his fist, and raised his arm as if to strike him;
he looked upon him as a serpent, whom he would like to grind under his
heel.

“We will not discuss the boy, Cheever,” said the Captain, sternly, when
he had regained that mastery over self which is so much more difficult
to gain than taking a city. “Five thousand dollars is more than the
whole estate is worth. I think you can trust my word.”

“You’re right, Captain,” answered Cheever, good-humoredly. “You’ve
always been so devilish honest that I didn’t expect much to see you
worth a penny when I returned to Oldbury. I never knew you to tell a
lie.”

The Captain did not think it necessary to explain to Cheever that
honest endeavor only brings lasting wealth, an opportunity, which under
other circumstances he would never have let escape, for he was fond of
hearing himself talk, and of dropping little conversational tracts, as
he met his fellow-men; but he looked at Cheever as a mere reptile upon
whom all moral truths would be wasted.

“I will give you three thousand dollars as soon as I can get the
money,” continued Woodbury, “and I shall expect you on receiving this
to give me, as executor of your father’s estate, a receipt in full and
to leave town immediately; and you will pardon me if I say that I hope
we shall never lay eyes upon you again.”

“You’re not polite, brother-in-law,” said Cheever after a pause, when
it may be presumed that even his scarred and withered heart ached,
for a man must get very low before he loses desire to be liked by his
fellow-man. “I will agree to your proposition--but, my God, Woodbury,
can’t you say a kind word to me--I’ve been pretty bad, I grant, but
I’ve not had a decent word from a decent person since I left this town
thirteen years ago.”

If the thought of his boy had not filled the Captain’s mind, he might
have relented and have spoken some words of comfort to the wretched
fellow; but the bare idea that the sins which had poisoned this man’s
life might be in his lad’s blood, made him as hard as flint.

“I am not your judge, Tom Cheever; it is well I am not, for it would
fare hard with you. Such men as you should be blotted from the earth.
Even to the third and fourth generation you cause evil to be in the
world instead of good.”

“I ought to be up there on the hill, I know,” said Cheever,
pathetically. “What was it in me that made me bad from boyhood? God
knows I was trained carefully enough, I was watched and prayed for as
you watch and pray for your son.”

The Captain started back, and his hand sought his heart and pulled
convulsively at the ruffle of his shirt. “I had brains enough,”
continued Cheever, bitterly; “I could stand at the head of my class
at school when I was a mind to,--Mr. Dillaway said I was the best and
worst scholar he ever had,--but I had to run away to keep out of State
Prison before I was twenty-one years old. It has seemed to me that I
couldn’t help it; that the wickedness was born in me. It’s no excuse,
I know, but, Woodbury, I have had an awful life. You remember Crœsus
couldn’t touch anything without its turning to gold.”

The Captain had never heard of Crœsus, and was listening to Cheever
with dull ears.

“I can’t touch gold without its turning to dross. My life never met
another’s without bringing misfortune. I’ll get out of the way,
Woodbury. I’ll go back to the schooner to-night. You can send any part
of the money you wish to Mr. Marks--that’s me. I’ll never trouble you
again.”

Saying this, Cheever held out his hand to the Captain, who did not
refuse to take it.

“Good-by, Woodbury, your sister won’t have her lavendered sheets
disturbed by me; say good-by to the boy for me, and have an eye on him.
Remember, send the money to Mr. Marks, Schooner _Tempest_. I’ll not
trouble you again.”

He shook the Captain’s hand, threw his cigar into the grass, where the
Captain still saw it shining, as he heard the front door slam.

Miss Woodbury put her head out of the dining-room window and asked in a
hoarse whisper, “Who went out then?”

“He did,” answered the Captain, “and he says he will not trouble us
again.”

“Pray God he may not, but bad pennies always return,” replied the
sceptical spinster.

The Captain walked slowly up to his den, and opening one of the
lockers, took from a faded velvet case a miniature. He saw the face of
a handsome boy, it might have been the portrait of his son. The curling
hair, the eyes, the pleasant but irresolute mouth, were all his, and
on the brown paper back, in the Rev. Mr. Cheever’s quaintly formed
handwriting, were the words, “Thomas Cheever, 1789, ætatis suæ XIV.”

The old man groaned as he looked at the “counterfeit presentment” of
the boy, who would better never been born.




III


James, after having been told to leave the dining-room by his father,
waited anxiously around the front doorsteps of the house, plucking the
long tassels of grass, and biting off the sweet green ends. He had
heard during his boyhood but little of his mother’s only brother, and
when he had asked about him, had been told that he had died many years
before, and that he had been very unfortunate. He was perhaps the only
boy in the town who had not heard the whole story of Parson Cheever’s
scapegrace son: of his idle youth and his suspected complicity in a
robbery, of his escape, his adventures in the Caribbean Sea, and his
murder in La Guayra.

Of such a picturesque character, especially when the son of the
minister of the church, many a story was handed down, but his nephew
knew only that his dead uncle was wicked, and that the least said about
him the better it would be. His return to life was as exciting to James
as would be the apparition of William Tell to a Swiss peasant.

As James sat wondering what his elders were saying in the dining-room,
his uncle, bolting from the front hall with his gripsack, stumbled
over him and fell down the granite steps, alighting in a heap upon
the smooth gravel path below. James looked at the front door rather
apprehensively, as if he expected to see his father’s stalwart leg
reaching over the threshold as the motive power which had driven the
man from the door; but he saw only blackness, and heard his father
answering his aunt at the other side of the house.

Cheever picked himself up from the gravel path and tried to pull
himself together after his fall.

“What in the name of all that is unholy did I fall over?” he asked,
rubbing his shin, which the sharp edge of the granite step had barked.

“Over me,” replied James, he too rubbing his shoulder, where his uncle
had hit him. “Where were you going so fast?”

“Down to the schooner. I’m off.”

“Your schooner isn’t to sail right away, is she?”

“No, but I’m going back on board. I am mate and have to look after her.”

“Shan’t you stay here with us?” asked the boy, who felt it to be most
inhospitable that a long-lost uncle should thus be almost driven from
his father’s gates.

“No, James, no. I’m not coming back here again. I don’t like to be
where I am not wanted, you know.”

He smiled, as he thought that he was rather more urgently wanted
at Oldbury than he could desire. Looking down the road, he saw the
well-remembered elm-trees in front of Deacon Fairbank’s house,
beneath which he used to meet Sally Fairbanks years ago. So Sally was
a widow,--Joshua Pickering’s widow. He wondered how she could have
married stupid Josh Pickering, who was the butt of all the brighter
boys and girls at school.

“Do you ever see the Widow Pickering, James?” he asked, as he stood
looking at the dark masses of the elm-trees.

James blushed. Was not the Widow Pickering’s daughter, Alice, the girl
of his heart? The widow too, had she not always marked him out from all
the other boys as her favorite? He did not think it necessary to tell
his uncle of his consuming passion for Alice, and simply answered that
he often saw the widow.

“Well--tell her--” stuttered Cheever. “Well, no, never mind--Don’t you
tell her I’ve come back. It wouldn’t do--there mustn’t anybody know it,
do you understand, or I shall get into trouble. Promise you won’t tell
any one.”

“I shall not tell, sir,” promised James.

Cheever hesitated for a minute, and then, taking a small packet from
an inner pocket of his waistcoat, said, “When you see the widow, boy,
you might give her this box and tell her that a sailor, a rough sort
of a fellow you saw on a ship in the harbor when you was knocking wind
in your boat, asked you to give it to her. You can say that he said
that Tom Cheever gave it to him down in La Guayra years ago when he was
dying, to be given to Miss Sarah Fairbanks of Oldbury, Massachusetts,
if he ever should get there. Tell her, too, that the ship has sailed
and that you don’t know anything more about it than this. You’ll do
this, will you, James?”

“I will if you wish me to, but it won’t be true; you’re not dead.”

“Yes, I am dead; Tom Cheever is dead. My name’s Marks,--Tom Marks.
It would be hard to say which was the most worthless of the two. The
thing in the box rightly belongs to the widow. And you might say to
her, James, that the sailor said that Cheever wished him to ask her to
forgive him and to pray for him. I guess that’s all, James. Good-by,
boy. Now, I’ve got a word to say to you. You do what your father tells
you to; don’t think you know it all. Be a credit to your family. You
don’t want to grow up and have folks thank God when you die, and wish
you dead when you are alive--and feel yourself that they are right.”

James reached out for the packet which Cheever handed to him and placed
his hand upon his shoulder for a minute.

“Good-by, James, good-by,” he said, and plunged off into the darkness,
and the boy saw him no more.

James stood holding the packet in his hand, confused by the remarkable
events of the evening. He felt strangely drawn to the man who had
just left, and at the same time an undefined instinct told him that
he should shun him. What bond of any kind could there be between the
Widow Pickering, with her calm face and dignified bearing, and his
uncle? Could he have loved her years ago as his nephew now loved Alice?
Not that it was really possible, he thought, that any one could love
another as he loved Alice. To be sure, he was only fifteen years old,
and of course could not marry for some years, but he felt that the
world would be a cheerless place if his Alice were not in it.

We all laugh at calf-love, and smile when we see a youngster a willing
slave at the beck and call of a maiden in her teens; but do you suppose
that your battered old heart, under your expanding waistcoat, can leap
with the fervor of a boy’s? It is pure gold, with no alloy of passion
or worldliness, which a youth offers to his mistress; no depreciated
currency tattered and frayed by handling.

An artist, painting Love’s Young Dream, does not show as his model
a worldly pair, with thoughts of domestic economy and of marriage
portions clouding their brows; nor would the poets sing the love of a
middle-aged Corydon with a Phyllis who had gathered scalps in countless
ballrooms and watering-places.

A young philosopher of my acquaintance of the age of nine, on being
reproved by his mother for his excessive devotion to a little girl, hit
upon the weak point in youthful love-affairs, when he replied, “Dear
mamma, do not be at all alarmed about this; I cannot be married until
I am twenty-four, and no man ever loved the same woman for fifteen
years.” But when this distressful and unromantic century was in its
infancy, children were not cynical philosophers, and marriages were
made early. Young men boldly took the risks of life and gave hostages
to fortune, and happy homes were conducted on incomes which would at
the present day barely suffice for the wife’s dressmaker’s or the
husband’s cigar bills. But even in that primitive state of society, I
suppose that few married their first loves. James, not being versed
in the fickleness of the human heart and the many obstacles which
proverbially roughen the course of true love, never doubted that his
love was genuine and would be lasting. Had he not for years walked home
from school with Alice, carrying her books; had he not always buckled
on her skates and steered her down the icy hills on his red sled, “The
Flying Dutchman”? And with great pains had he not cut in two a silver
six-pence, half of which each wore, tied upon a blue ribbon around the
neck as near the heart as might be. It had been a great grief to him
when they had been separated from each other at school; the boy, who
was intended for college, going to the Latin School, while Alice had
to be content with the small amount of learning which was thought
necessary for our grandmothers. It is doubtful whether our modern girls
really learn more from books than their ancestresses used to, and it
is certain that of many other things they learn less. Yet it was clear
that the girl could have done the boy’s tasks better than he. His mind
was filled with thoughts of sailing down the reaches of the bay, or of
playing ball with the boys on the Common, while his eyes received but
a blurred impression of the page of the Latin Grammar before him; but
her quick mind and retentive memory would have rapidly learned what was
put before her. Indeed, she followed on in the study of Latin, unknown
to him; for she did not like to think that a book which he could
read should be sealed to her, and she had one day surprised James by
suggesting a translation for a word in the Latin Primer, over which he
had stuck for some time.

“How did you know that, Alice?” he had asked. “Pooh! you don’t know;
you are making believe.”

“I _do_ know,” said Alice. “We girls could learn ever so much quicker
than you stupid boys if they would only let us.”

“Nonsense! Alice,” replied James, looking at her with all the pride of
the superior sex. “Girls can’t learn Latin, and they ought to thank
their stars they cannot. It’s very tiresome.”

But this superior being found in due time that one girl could learn
Latin a great deal better than he could, and his wandering mind was
often kept to its task by the feeling that it would be very stupid in
him to be outstripped by a girl who had no masters to help her in her
study of the dead tongue.

As James stood looking down the street towards the dark foliage of
the Deacon’s elm-trees on the other side of the street, he felt that
it would have been well to tell his sweetheart of the wonderful event
of the evening, before facing her step-mother with the packet which
had just been given him. Alice’s superior intelligence, he thought,
would help him in the difficult task of telling a straight story. He
knew, however, that she would not be satisfied with the perversion of
the truth involved in saying that Tom Cheever was dead; to him it did
not seem so bad. Tom Cheever really was dead, so far as Oldbury was
concerned, and it certainly was right that Mrs. Pickering should get
her property back. But his uncle had made him promise not to tell any
one that he had come back; of course, he could not even tell Alice. His
unaided intelligence must steer him through the dangerous channels by
which he should convey the message and the packet to the good lady; and
he must suppress the truth in the doing it.

Stopping under the trees outside the Deacon’s house, he could see into
the sitting-room lighted by lamp and candles. Alice and her mother were
seated near the table in the middle of the room, the elder sewing at
some white garment, while Alice was reading a heavy, leather-covered
book which rested on the table, being too large to be held in her
hands. Her light brown hair was drawn smoothly over her well-shaped
head into a little roll behind, but a stray ringlet or two told that
this Puritan simplicity was not natural. Her eyes were cast down over
her book, and thus the great charm of her face was for the moment lost
behind the modest, long-fringed eyelids, the bright blue, laughing
eyes, which changed into serious deep ones as the gay thought was
succeeded by the sad one in her mind. Her cheeks were rosy with the
sweet bloom of a Northern girlhood, which, alas, too soon fades away.
Her mouth, though large, had full, beautiful curves, which bespoke an
even temperament. Her girlish form was clad in a plain brown dress. As
she read the big book on the table, her face changed with the emotions
which swept through her mind; her mouth dimpled into a smile or drew
down as if she were grieved; her forehead contracted with lines and
grew smooth again; her color came and went. One could see that she was
of an emotional, imaginative nature, one to whom the characters in
romance or history seemed actually living. Her mother had once been
a beautiful woman, and even at forty she was comely. A common-place
face hers would have been in expression, had it not been for a settled
melancholy, which gave it a character of its own.

James walked to the front door and knocked; at the first metallic ring
of the brass, Alice shut her book and ran to the door to greet him.
Even in little things, the quick ear of a girl can distinguish the
person she cares for.

“Oh, James!” she cried, “I’m so glad you have come over. Let’s sit on
the steps here, it is so much cooler than in the sitting-room. What
have you been doing all day?”

James sat beside her upon the jamb of the door, and looked at her for
a moment with great satisfaction. “I am glad to see you again, Alice,”
he answered; “I wanted to get here before, but I have been trying to
induce my father to let me go to sea.”

“Oh, James!” exclaimed Alice.

“Of course he wouldn’t hear of it! He says that I must go to college
and then be a minister. I will make a queer kind of a minister, I am
thinking.”

“Yes, you would _now_, Jamie,” laughed Alice. “But you will not be
fifteen all your life.”

“But I do not believe that a halo will begin to be apparent around my
head as I get older. In fact, if a vote of the neighborhood were taken,
I do not think that it would be voted that I had improved since I was
a little boy. I was a very good baby, and have been getting worse ever
since. Ask your grandfather, the Deacon, what he thinks of me.”

“It is too early in your life to think seriously of what you are going
to do,” answered the girl, in her sweet, low voice. “If you get a good
education, it will not do you any harm, no matter what you do in after
life.”

“Will it help me to manage a ship, to be able to read Virgil and Homer,
Alice? I tried to get the old gentleman to look at the irregular verbs
in the Latin Grammar when we were arguing about it, but he was much too
knowing for that and pointed at the reverend grandpa as an unanswerable
argument. I tell you what, Alice, the Captain has a will of his own.
I’d rather be like him than like a parson. Tom Devereux is the kind of
a fellow to work into a parson. I’m not and I never shall be.”

There was a moment’s pause. Alice looked sadly at the boy’s eager,
passionate face. Just then the little packet which his uncle had given
him fell from his hand upon the stone step.

“But, by George, Alice,” exclaimed the boy, reminded by this of the
errand upon which he had come, “something happened to-night which I
cannot tell you about.”

“Cannot tell me about!”

“No, I want to, but I promised not to--but I have a message to give
your mother and this little box. I wish I knew what was in it.”

“So do I,” said Alice, taking the packet in her hand and shaking it. “I
think it too bad that you have a secret which you will not tell me.”

“_May_ not tell you, Alice. It is too bad, for I should like your
advice about something which I must tell your mother--but I cannot. I
think that I will go in to her now so to get it off my mind. Is she
alone in there?”

“Grandfather is asleep in the next room.”

“Are you sure he is asleep, Alice?”

“He was when I came out. He had his red bandana over his face, and was
snoring peacefully.”

James walked into the room where Mrs. Pickering was still sewing.
She put her work upon the table when she saw him, and smiled at him
pleasantly.

“Good evening, James,” she said, as the boy bowed to her, and shuffled
his feet awkwardly. “You have something you wish to say to me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” answered James, rolling the packet around in the palm of
his hand. “The fact is, it is something very odd and something I cannot
understand. I was out sailing this afternoon in my boat and after I
came up to the mooring and was walking up the wharf I met a sailor who
spoke to me. After a little talk, he asked me if I knew a Miss Sally
Fairbanks--”

“What did he look like?” asked Mrs. Pickering, turning pale.

“Just a sailor, that’s all. He had a long black beard, and he was
brown, and had tar on his hands,” answered James, drawing on his
imagination unsuccessfully for a vivid picture of a seaman. He felt
that he was getting into deep water, and was impatient of questions.

“I said there was a widow lady living in town who had been a Miss Sally
Fairbanks, but who now was Mrs. Pickering, and with that he took out
this little box from his trousers’ p-p-pocket.”

The building of this picturesque circumstance was a little too much for
the boy’s invention, and his stuttering was painful.

Mrs. Pickering took the box from the boy, who kept silence while she
opened it. He was trying to form into an intelligent sentence the
message Tom Cheever, dying in La Guayra, had sent to her; but he was
so much interested to see what the box contained, that the words did
not come easily to his tongue. Mrs. Pickering cut with her scissors
the tarred string which bound the box, and slowly removed the cover. A
small wad of cotton-wool was then removed and James saw a gold ring of
an old filagree pattern. Mrs. Pickering turned pale when she saw it,
and, quickly looking at the inner part, inquired in a tremulous voice
of James:

“What did the man say when he gave this to you? Tell me all about it,
James.”

James turned red under these questions and stammered out:

“He said that a man named Tom Cheever gave it to him years ago when he
lay a-dying in a hospital in La Guayra, and told him to give it to Miss
Sally Fairbanks of Oldbury, Massachusetts, if he ever should get there
and see her--and the sailor said that the dying man said that he wished
that she would forgive him.”

The woman sat for a moment gazing fixedly at the little ring, turning
it over and over with her fingers; what remembrances it brought back
to her of shame and tears. Had she entirely lost her old love for the
reprobate? Who can say?

“He wished that I should forgive him,” she murmured to herself. “Poor
Tom!”

A tear rolled down her cheek, and James watched it intently as it
strayed down the deep line between nose and cheek, then turned away his
head.

“It is odd that the sailor should have happened to ask _you_ to bring
me this,” she said, “this relic of your uncle.”

James gave a start at the word “uncle” and was at a loss for words.

“Yes, it was queer that it should happen so,” he said; “but then you
know I am often round the wharves in the afternoon.”

“When you should be minding your books, naughty boy,” exclaimed
Mrs. Pickering, smiling through her tears; for perhaps all love
for ne’er-do-wells had not been rooted from her breast. Indeed, it
is hard to shake the shiftless and reckless from their thrones in
women’s hearts; the careless, amiable qualities which go to make them
unsuccessful in active life, endear them the more to the gentle spirits
of women.

“Yes,” answered the boy, looking down abashed upon the floor; “when
I should be minding my books, I know. Do you wish to ask me anything
more?”

“No, James,” she murmured; “I have nothing more to ask or to say. This
ring calls back a time in my life of which I care to say little to any
one, least of all to you. Good night, my boy.”

She leaned over and kissed him tenderly, as if to call blessings down
upon him, and as he left the room he saw her still turning the ring
over with her slim, white fingers, and murmuring to herself.

Of which of the two dead men who had been near to her, the scamp
Cheever or the good Joshua Pickering, was she thinking?




IV


At eleven o’clock in the forenoon the Oldbury post-office was always
crowded. The easy-going postmaster and his assistant knew that those
waiting in the antechamber were not in a hurry for their mail, and
accordingly took their good time in assorting it; while on the sanded
floor without, the dignitaries of the town talked business and
politics, the clerks skylarked, the old women gossiped, and the young
ones talked of the latest fashions, keeping a demure eye the while upon
the younger men.

At such times bargains were concluded between merchants, underwriters
insured vessels, and young men arranged parties of pleasure with each
other. The advantages of a club, an exchange, and a reception were
all had by the good people who waited for the postmaster to sort the
letters.

In the days of which I write, the talk in the post-office o’ mornings
was stirring enough. A town whose capital was almost exclusively
centred in ship-owning and commerce could not but be excited over the
constant disputes between Great Britain and the United States on the
subject of the impressing of seamen.

The town was just beginning to recover from the paralyzing effects
of the Embargo Act, which had sought to protect our commerce by the
singular method of stopping it altogether.

It had been a hard trial for the inhabitants of the seaport towns to
see their ships rotting at the wharves and their trade destroyed at one
blow, although their ships were saved from the unjust seizures of the
British and French.

The merchants were, as a class, notwithstanding the insolence and
outrages of the British, the most Anglican of Federalists in their
political sympathies; yet they found themselves enduring the loss of
their ships and property through the injustice and wrong-doing of the
British whose cause they had espoused.

The great national parties of that day were not divided upon American
questions, but were swayed by their sympathies with one or the other
of the two great nations, England and France, which had been locked in
deadly conflict for so many years. The Republican party espoused the
cause of France as warmly as the Federalists did that of Great Britain,
and the great nations, the objects of this admiration, vied with each
other to see which could do the most injury to the United States, until
it was impossible for a ship to sail the seas flying the Stars and
Stripes without running imminent danger of being confiscated by either
England or France. And all these years the impressment of American
seamen by British ships was insisted upon as a right by the aggressive
monarchy, and was conducted on an enormous scale, and thousands of
American citizens had been taken from our ships. Some American vessels
were stripped of their seamen to such an extent that they were lost at
sea for want of hands to man them. The impressment of American seamen
was even a surer road to promotion in the British Navy than gallantry
in a sea-fight. And this year the long dispute was coming to a head,
and at the daily assemblage at the Oldbury post-office words were
apt to be warm. A Federal looked upon his Republican neighbor, with
French sympathies, as a red-handed incendiary, and was quite as likely
to tell him so as not; while the abused supporter of Madison regarded
his reviler as a sycophant to the insolent British, a craven, who
cheerfully licked the boots which kicked him. Party spirit ran very
high among our great grandfathers, and never higher than in the spring
of 1812.

Although Captain Woodbury had been a severe loser by the long embargo,
and had been a staunch Federalist, he was at this time so outraged by
the insults of the British to the American flag, that he had a lively
feeling of hatred towards the mother country, which led him to many hot
disputes with the other merchants of the town.

On the morning after the return of the prodigal Cheever to his
native town, the worthy old Captain was walking down the High Street
slowly and deliberately. He was revolving in his mind the unpleasant
experience of the night before, and the necessity which had arisen
for the speedy raising of three thousand dollars troubled him not a
little. His ships had not brought him in an income for some time, and
his new house had made a great hole in his cash. In the troubled state
of public affairs, when men said that war might involve the country at
any moment, purchasers for vessels and real estate in a seaboard town
were rare. The Captain had a horror of debt; yet he could see no way in
which he could speedily raise this sum of money, save by borrowing it
at the bank or of some friend. He soon dismissed the idea of borrowing
from a friend, as he felt sure that no individual whom he could ask
would be able in so short a time to raise for him so large an amount.
The bank was his only resource, that was clear; and unfortunately
he had had high words with Deacon Fairbanks, the president, at the
post-office only the day before, in which neither of the fierce old
gentlemen spared his adversary. It was hard to be compelled to ask the
Deacon a favor after having called him a British parasite, in full
hearing of the assemblage at the post-office, and yet there seemed to
be no alternative. It was necessary that Cheever should be got out of
the town as soon as possible, and the Captain felt an eager desire to
pay him the money and get rid of him at once.

His steps had brought him to the post-office at the same moment that
his thoughts had led him to this conclusion, and the first person he
laid eyes upon, as he came back into the world from his brown study,
was the Deacon.

A puffy and consequential-looking man was Deacon Fairbanks. The mean
lines of his face were not improved by the fat which bulged his cheeks
and jaw. He was smooth shaven, as was the fashion of the day, and his
mouth had the tight, short look, which indicates economy of speech and
closeness in money matters. His eyes were a light green in color, deep
set in his head, and his colorless eyebrows were long and bushy. The
Deacon inclined his head slightly when he saw Captain Woodbury, and
looked at him sharply from beneath the shaggy eyebrows.

I have my doubts whether the Deacon had really been as sound asleep
as his daughter supposed when James was telling the story of the
mysterious sailor who had sent the ring to her from the wicked uncle.
Captain Woodbury felt uneasy under the Deacon’s keen gaze, and he
thought of the unfortunate quarrel with him of the day before.

[Illustration: “A PUFFY AND CONSEQUENTIAL-LOOKING MAN WAS DEACON
FAIRBANKS.”]

The Deacon, however, either from Christian charity or from policy,
seemed to bear no ill-will towards his neighbor on account of the
abusive language which the latter had heaped upon him, and he advanced
to greet the newcomer with more than ordinary politeness.

“Good morning, Captain Woodbury,” said he in his soft, disagreeable
voice. “It’s a fine June morning.”

“It is,” replied the Captain, curtly. He did not like to have a man
whom he had insulted the day before speak to him so civilly. To be
sure, he had intended to be polite to the Deacon, but then he had an
axe to grind. It was his unpleasant necessity to borrow three thousand
dollars that morning of Fairbanks’ bank, and the old fellow did not
imagine for a moment that the other might have an object in being
polite to him.

“Bad news from across the ocean,” observed the Deacon, pointing to his
Boston Atlas, where the news from the European wars were displayed in
modest type. “It looks as if they never would be at peace again.”

“I don’t care how much they fight with each other, if they only leave
our ships and seamen alone,” growled the Captain, who would have
plunged at once into a grand quarrel with the Federalist Deacon, if it
had not been for the loan he expected to make.

“The recall of our minister looks like war with Great Britain,”
observed the Deacon, shaking his head sadly.

“We must fight them, or confess ourselves a nation of slaves,” replied
Woodbury, growing red in the face with his suppressed emotions.

“I fear, friend, that if we pursue the subject farther, we shall renew
our heated discussion of yesterday,” remarked the Deacon, noticing the
gathering wrath on his neighbor’s face. “How is your good sister,
Captain? I hear from my daughter that she has been ill.”

“Elizabeth had a faint turn last night. She is subject to them, you
know,” replied the other. The Captain cleared his throat, hesitated,
and finally said, in a low, constrained tone:

“By the way, Deacon Fairbanks, I have a little business matter which I
wish to talk over with you. Would you mind walking up to your bank with
me?”

The Deacon’s green eyes flashed for a moment, and the lids, with their
colorless lashes, were drawn close together, and an oily smile spread
over his face.

“So, the Captain wishes to talk over some business at the bank,” he
thought; “probably he wants to borrow some money. The old fool has
spent a good deal on that fine house of his, but still he paid as he
went. I wonder what he needs the money for?”

But the Deacon’s face gave no evidence to his companion of what he was
thinking; on the contrary, his smile grew the blander, and he cheerily
accepted the suggestion to go to the bank, and slipped his hand under
the Captain’s arm.

The two men walked slowly down the sidewalk of the Main Street, the
Captain seemingly absorbed in contemplation of the small red bricks
which made up the pavement, while the Deacon talked glibly of the
depressed condition of commerce.

The old book-keeper and the smart young teller of the Liberty Bank,
who were hard at work on their great leather-bound ledgers behind the
iron grating, looked up for a moment and bowed to the two magnates as
they entered the bank, and walked into the directors’ room. The Deacon
politely ushered his customer into that dark apartment and closed the
door softly when he entered himself. The windows of the room looked out
into a narrow alley, on the other side of which was a carpenter’s shop,
built of rough, unpainted wood. There was a large mahogany table in the
centre of the room, and a dozen heavily built leather-cushioned chairs
of the same handsome wood. The room was carpeted with a dark Turkey
carpet. The Deacon stood, from the force of an old habit, in front of
the fireplace, though of course, at that season of the year, no fire
was burning.

There was a silence for a minute or two, when Fairbanks coughed in an
interrogative manner, and said:

“Well?”

The Captain was also standing up, with one hand behind his back, and
the other tugging at the seal which hung from his watch fob. He was
loath to broach the subject he had in hand, and he felt that if he
had not already been brought into the spider’s parlor, he would have
tried to have raised the money elsewhere. He had never before asked the
Liberty Bank for accommodation, and he did not like the way in which
the Deacon looked at him with his small green eyes.

“Well?” questioned the mild voice of the president, again.

“I wished to speak to you on a matter of business,” said Woodbury,
thus aroused from his thoughts of escaping. “I desire to raise a sum
of money to-day for immediate use, and I thought that the Liberty Bank
might accommodate me.”

Fairbanks pursed up the corners of his mouth, and wrinkled his brow as
if to personify cautious capital. After an appearance of thought and a
mental calculation, he asked:

“How much do you wish to borrow, Captain Woodbury?”

“Three thousand dollars.”

“You say you wish it to-day?”

“Yes, I have immediate need of it.”

“For how long a time?”

“Six months, I should say,” replied Woodbury.

“What rate do you expect to pay?” asked the Deacon, again wrinkling his
forehead and lifting his coat-tails with his left hand.

“Not over eight per cent.”

“That is far too low a rate,” objected Fairbanks; “in these troubled
times, I expect to get at least ten per cent for the bank’s money. Why,
we may have war with England any day, and then hard cash will be scarce
enough, I warrant. You had better say ten per cent, Captain.”

“Can you let me have the money this morning?” asked Woodbury.

“H’m, let me see; that’s a different matter,” said Fairbanks. “Our
available funds are low to-day. It will be a little difficult to let
you have such an amount. Are you particular to have quite so much?
Perhaps twenty-five hundred would do?”

“I need three thousand dollars to-day, Fairbanks,” said the Captain,
taking up his hat and cane from the table, “and if you cannot let me
have it, I must go elsewhere.” He started to open the door leading into
the main room of the bank, when Fairbanks stopped him by saying:

“Well, Captain, I guess that after all I can manage it for you as
quickly as anybody, that is, if you satisfy me on the matter of
security. ’Tis only a matter of form, you know, with such a name as
yours.” The Deacon’s voice was as silky as ever, and he stretched out
his hand deprecatingly as he spoke.

“I think that there should be no trouble in my borrowing this sum upon
my own bill,” said Woodbury.

“Oh, but it would not be business, my dear Captain, not business at
all. Your note is as good as wheat, but times are bad, and the greatest
caution must be exercised. You will pardon the suggestion, I feel sure.”

“There’s my half interest in the brig _Flying Scud_,” suggested
Woodbury.

“The bank has decided not to loan upon shipping property,” said the
Deacon, who hoped by judicious objection to get a complete inventory of
his neighbor’s possessions.

“I can give you a mortgage on my new house,” said the Captain, after a
few minutes’ consideration. “It cost ten times what I wish to borrow on
it.”

“Oh, but you cannot expect to get back what you have put in there,”
said the bank-president. “Pardon me for referring to the adage as to
the class of men who build houses. But, nevertheless, your house will
be a satisfactory security for the amount you wish to borrow. But it is
pretty short notice you have given me if you wish to borrow the money
on real estate. There’s the title to be looked into. I suppose that it
will make no difference to you if you wait a few days for the money.”

“Certainly, it will make a difference!” exclaimed the Captain. “I wish
the money to-day, and I have told you so. If you cannot arrange the
matter for me, pray let me know at once.”

The Deacon raised his hand as if to deprecate the violence of the
other’s temper. “Oh, really, Captain Woodbury, do not misunderstand me.
I wish to do all in my power to assist you.”

“Assist me! I do not ask for assistance. I came here on a matter of
business which will be as advantageous to your bank as it will be to
me, and judging from the rate of interest which you demand, much more
so.”

“Oh, really, Neighbor Woodbury, how hasty you are!” said the Deacon, in
his exasperatingly sweet voice. “You pick the words out of my mouth. I
did not mean to imply by the word ‘assist’ that I felt that I was doing
an act of charity; far otherwise. It would be much quicker work for
you if you could get an endorser on your note. I would be delighted to
endorse it were it not that it would be improper for me to do so since
I am president of the bank. But it will be very easy for you to get an
endorser.”

“I have never asked a man to endorse a bill for my accommodation and I
never mean to do so.”

“Oh, how much better it would have been here for some men I know if
they had adopted that rule,” said the Deacon; “poor Isaac Wills, for
instance. Oh, that was a sad case!”

“The man was a fool,” said the Captain. “I have laid down this rule
that I _never_ will endorse for another, or ask another to endorse for
me. If you cannot afford to lend the money, you cannot afford to lend
your name.”

The Deacon bowed his head in approbation of this proposition, and
insinuatingly said, “Then we shall say a loan of three thousand dollars
for two years on your house on North Main Street, interest at the rate
of ten per cent per annum.”

“I will pay eight per cent,” said the Captain, obstinately.

“Oh, very well, nine it shall be.”

“I said eight, and I shall pay no more.”

“Ah, I misunderstood you then. We will call it eight per cent, though
there is no one else in town to whom I would lend on such terms. I
suppose that Judge Cushing looked up your title. You might instruct
him to draw the mortgage deed and to send it to young Mr. Baldwin for
approval. I send the bank’s business to Baldwin, as he is a clever
young fellow, and I like to encourage youthful talent.”

The Deacon rubbed his hands together as he spoke, as if to excite the
glow of benevolence by friction.

“And you can let me have the money to-day?” said Woodbury, smiling
at the Deacon’s show of benevolence; for he knew well that the bank
employed the services of young Baldwin because he did his work well and
cheaply.

“I do not see how it can be arranged till to-morrow,” replied
Fairbanks. “Baldwin will have to look up the title since you have been
the owner, and the lawyers will have the management of the affairs now
we have made our bargain, and you cannot hurry lawyers, you know.”

“No, that you cannot! Old Judge Cushing is as slow as a Dutch lugger
beating to windward. But if you will send Baldwin around to his office,
we will see how quickly we can arrange the matter. Good morning, Mr.
Fairbanks.”

“Good morning, Neighbor Woodbury,” said Fairbanks suavely, as he opened
the door for the other, “good morning. Do you desire Boston funds or
cash?”

“Cash.”

“Very well; I am glad to oblige you, very glad. To-morrow at noon at
Judge Cushing’s office. Very well.”

When Woodbury was well out of the bank, Fairbanks shut the door of the
directors’ room again. “Ah, so you need this money as soon as you can
get it, do you?” he said to himself, as he stood at one of the back
windows gazing out over the alley into the carpenter’s shop, where
the carpenter’s apprentice was whistling over his wood-butchery. “You
want three thousand dollars, do you, Captain Woodbury? And you never
borrowed a ninepence before in this town. Yes, and you come to me to
borrow it, even after quarrelling with me yesterday. You evidently want
it quick and for a purpose. You didn’t need the money then.”

The carpenter’s apprentice looked up just then from the board he was
planing and caught sight of the Deacon’s fat face in the window, and
the boy, with the frank criticism of youth, stuck his tongue out at
the old gentleman; for children and animals instinctively disliked the
Deacon, though his manners always appeared to be gentle and his smile
was perpetual.

“Darn the old hypocrite!” exclaimed the apprentice, who wasted on the
wharves too much of the time which he owed his master. “I wonder what
mischief he is up to now. Going to foreclose Widow Hapgood’s mortgage,
I guess. The old spider.”

The Deacon, all unconscious of the hostile presence across the alley,
continued his train of reasoning.

“Let me see, last night when I was dozing after supper, that young
Woodbury came in to see my daughter. I was nearly asleep, but the sound
of their voices woke me up, and he told her that cock and bull story
about the sailor down at the wharves who gave the lad the ring which
Tom Cheever, on his death-bed, had entrusted to the sailor. The boy was
not telling the truth, I could see that. It was strange that the name
should have turned up again. Let me see; it was fifteen years ago last
March that Cheever broke into my house, the villain. I always suspected
John Woodbury of helping the rascal escape. Then they got up that story
of his dying in South America. _I_ never believed it, though the old
Parson did put up that headstone in the burying-ground. The chances are
that the thief has come to town again, and that he sent the boy with
the message to my daughter. I have got it; that’s it; and now he is
bleeding the Captain for money, and, like as not, claiming his share of
the Parson’s estate; and Woodbury wants the money so quickly in order
to get rid of him. That’s it.”

The Deacon’s green eyes blazed so brightly that the apprentice felt
certain that the widow’s mortgage was to be foreclosed and her
furniture moved into the street that very day. Fairbanks opened the
door into the bank again, and said:

“Mr. Sharp, has any vessel entered the harbor within a day or two?” Mr.
Sharp, the smart young teller, answered, that a schooner from Havana
had entered on the day before and that she was lying in the stream off
Titcomb’s wharf.

The Deacon rubbed his smooth, oily chin with his fat hand for a moment:
“Mr. Sharp, go and tell Constable Hallett that I should like to see him
at my house at noon. I am going out, Mr. Sharp. I shall be at lawyer
Baldwin’s office for an hour.”




V


The low stone-wall of the burying-ground on the hill back of Captain
Woodbury’s house had for many years been a favorite meeting-place for
young lovers. Many of the silent majority sleeping in the enclosure had
plighted their troths, seated on that low stone-wall, and to this day,
happy young people watch from this trysting-place the magical changes
of light, as the darkness steals silently over the earth, and gaze with
a romantic awe at the distant low hills, dark and impressive against
the gorgeous colorings of the sky, or down upon the slumberous old town
wrapped in its coverlid of leafy trees. Beyond, flows the tidal river,
and far off to the east is the sea, flashing back like a mirror the
last rays of the sun.

As James sauntered up the hill to meet Alice on the evening of his
father’s interview with the Deacon in the bank, the western sky was
aglow with orange fire, the fleecy clouds dyed with delicate pink and
gray by the wonderful alchemy of the sunlight. The boy’s old hound,
Major, trotted along at his master’s heels, tired with the long tramp
the two had taken in the afternoon, through the woods and meadows,
between Oldbury and Dummer in search of woodchucks. Alice had been
seated on the wall for fully half an hour before James appeared, and as
soon as she saw him she jumped down and ran to meet him.

[Illustration: ALICE.]

“I thought that you would never come, James; where have you been all
the afternoon?”

“Oh, Major and I have been over at March’s woods after woodchucks. He
starts them up, and we bring them to bay in a stone-wall. How they do
fight, when they are put to it.”

“What cruel sport! I do not see how you can enjoy it!”

“Well,” he answered a little shame-faced, “we didn’t find any
woodchucks to-day.”

“I have been looking everywhere for you,” said Alice, in a low voice.
“I am afraid that something dreadful will happen unless we can prevent
it.”

“What can it be?” asked James.

“I will tell you all I know about it, but you must first answer a
question. Did a strange man come to your house last night?”

The boy’s heart began to beat the quicker as he remembered his promise
to his uncle; he hesitated for a moment, and then answered, “Well, yes,
there did.”

“Now, I will tell you what troubles me. I was dusting china in the
china-closet this noon when grandfather and Constable Hallett came into
the dining-room. Grandfather closed the door leading into the front
entry and parlor, but he did not shut the china-closet door. I kept on
dusting and did not pay any attention to their conversation until I
heard your name.”

“My name! Have they any charge to bring against me?”

“No, not against you; grandfather said that you came to our house
last night to see mother, and that you gave her a small package. He
said that he was just dropping off to sleep in the parlor, when he
was awakened by hearing your voice; and he heard you tell her that
the package had been given to you by a sailor to give to her, and
that the sailor had told you to say that it had been entrusted to
him by Tom Cheever, when he was dying in the hospital at La Guayra.
Grandfather then went on to say that your father had just been to his
bank to borrow a large sum of money in a great hurry, and that he had
heard that a stranger had called at your house last night, and that a
schooner, the _Tempest_, had just arrived in port, and that the mate
was reported to stutter in a peculiar way, just as your uncle Tom
Cheever used to. And--”

“Why do you stop?” asked James, thrilling with excitement.

“You have heard the stories about your uncle, haven’t you?”

“I know that he left the country suddenly, but I never heard what he
did that was wrong. They never speak of him at home, I never heard his
name mentioned till--”

He stopped short, fearing to betray his secret, and Alice continued:
“Grandfather then said that he meant to find out whether the stranger
was Tom Cheever; and if he was, he would have him locked up before
to-morrow noon.”

“Locked up! What can he lock him up for?” asked James. “I wonder what
he did so many years ago, which was so wicked? I must tell you, Alice,
what I know, though I promised not to tell any one; for I think that I
ought to. My uncle Tom Cheever did come back to life last night, and
he is on board of the schooner _Tempest_ at this moment. What could he
have done to your grandfather to make him so vindictive?”

“Then I am afraid that he is in danger, James; for I heard the
constable say that he would serve the warrant of arrest as soon as the
man was identified. Now, we must not let him be arrested; I cannot bear
to have disgrace fall upon your family.”

“What shall I do?” asked James. “I can sail out to the schooner in the
_Scud_, but I suppose that it would not be safe for him to return to
town, and, as he does not command the _Tempest_, he cannot order her to
sail.”

“Run to the wharf as quickly as you can and warn him!” said Alice,
almost pushing him in her eagerness. He jumped down from the stone-wall
and stood in silence for a minute.

“Had I better tell my father?” he asked.

“No, I should waste no time; you may be too late as it is.”

Down the hill he hurried, over across High Street to the bay. He was
strangely excited as he ran along under the arching elms so quickly
that two old ladies, against whom he jostled, turned around, wondering
what mischief the lad was up to. Never before in all his scrapes had
he alighted upon a real adventure, but now there was sombre earnest in
this afternoon’s work; since he should thwart the redoubtable Hallett,
brown-wigged terror to the evil-doer. He made his way to the wharf, off
which lay his boat, by short cuts known only to adventurous youths;
climbing picket fences, stealing through gardens, and clambering over
sheds.

When he reached the end of the wharf and stood by the ladder, covered
with green slime, down which he was to slide into his dory, he was
delighted to see that the north-west wind was growing stronger every
minute, so that there was a chance of a good breeze which would sweep
the cobwebs from the sky. He slipped and crept down the ladder,
holding tight to the sides; for the rungs were treacherous, and
wanting when most expected. He stepped cautiously into his dory and
unhitched its painter. The dory, like all boats owned by boys, was
leaky, so that he had to bail her some few minutes before he could put
his feet in the bottom with any comfort, and during this operation he
expected every minute to see Constable Hallett’s red face, peering over
the edge of the wharf. Finally he bailed out enough water to satisfy
himself, though there was still a good half inch swashing around in
the bottom, and he sculled out to the _Scud_ and began putting a reef
in the mainsail. The _Scud_ was a weatherly keel-boat, about eighteen
feet long, broad in beam, and stoutly built, and she was the pride of
her owner and the envy of every other Oldbury boy; for pleasure craft
were rare in those days, and parents indulgent enough to supply them
to their sons still rarer. Much of James’ time, which should have been
devoted to the study of the dead languages, was expended in painting
the _Scud_, scraping the spars, and setting up her rigging. A few
stout pulls on the throat and peak halliards hauled up the reefed
sail, and a moment after the _Scud_ slipped away from her mooring
towards the _Tempest_ with started sheet, piling up the waves under
her bluff bow and making a good deal of noise, as she ploughed through
the water, even if she was not going very fast. Slow as she would be
considered nowadays, if she was brought back to life to compete with
a modern racer, there was no boat then in Oldbury harbor which would
hold its own with her; and it did not take long to run alongside of
the _Tempest_, on board of which James saw his uncle, in a rough blue
coat and broad-brimmed straw hat, leaning over the rail and puffing
a cheroot. The green and yellow parrot, which James had noticed the
day before, was still hanging in its gilt wire cage from the main-boom
just behind Cheever, and the bird gave a long whistle as if to pipe all
hands to the sides, and hoarsely cried “Boat ahoy!” as the _Scud_ shot
alongside and James threw the painter to his uncle and scrambled on
deck.

“So it is you, young ’un,” remarked Cheever, as James landed on deck.
“What brings you out here? Has the old gentleman sent me a pressing
invitation to partake of fatted calf?”

Without waiting for an answer, he proceeded to make fast the _Scud’s_
painter to a cleat in the overhang of the schooner’s stern.

“_Carramba!_” shrieked the parrot, cocking his head around to look
wickedly with its round eyes, which seemed filled with malicious light.
“Boat ahoy! _Sacré nom!_”

James stood watching the noisy bird and his uncle, equally fascinated
by each of the strange beings.

“Did the Captain send you with the money?” asked Cheever, arising from
his task and laying his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“No.”

Cheever looked disappointed.

“Why did you come out here then?”

James told him in a low voice what Alice had overheard in the morning,
and his uncle listened attentively.

“So the old hypocrite means mischief, does he? Well, I guess that I can
outmanœuvre him and Hallett and the whole lot of them. I am sorry that
you haven’t the money with you, though. Just step down below with me,
will you? The captain’s ashore and I guess that he will not mind our
going into the cabin, though it’s no kind of a place. We shall begin to
unload to-morrow, and he is at the Custom House, I guess.”

James followed his uncle down the dark and narrow companionway into an
ill-smelling box of a cabin, on each side of which was a bunk, filled
with tumbled and dirty blankets. On a small table was a bottle, a
couple of glasses, a greasy pack of cards, and a handful of cigars, and
the odor of bilge-water pervaded the whole place.

“If you have ever felt inclined to go to sea, as I suppose you have,
you may like to see the way the officers live,” said Cheever, as he
sat down on the port bunk. “It’s growing dark; do you think that old
Fairbanks will come out to-night, with his _posse_--If he’s going to, I
guess I’d better be making myself scarce. There’s one comfort about not
being blessed with this world’s goods, that when I want to move in a
hurry, I can do it. When you are campaigning, you must carry as little
baggage as possible. I packed my whole fortune into my satchel last
night, and I am ready to start for China at a minute’s notice.”

“Is there any reason why you should be afraid of these men?” asked
James, burning with curiosity to hear the story of his mysterious
relative.

Cheever looked at him quizzically for a moment.

“Well, the truth is, James, the Deacon and I never were over-partial to
each other; and while I know a thousand cussed mean things he has done,
none of ’em would get him into trouble with the law, while he knows, or
thinks that he knows, one thing, which I did years ago, upon which the
law doesn’t smile; I will not say what it was-- It’s so long ago now,
that I can hardly remember myself what I did, that night-- I had been
drinking down at the Merrimac tavern, to be sure--but never mind what
happened; I shouldn’t be talking to you about it.”

The sun had set by this time, and the cabin was almost dark, save
near the companionway, which was dimly lighted by the after-glow. The
gathering shadows made the cabin more mysterious and gloomy than ever,
and Cheever was obscured in the darkness.

There was a silence for a moment or so, broken only by the hurtling of
the rudder, as the vessel swayed with the tide, a silence which was
finally ended by the shrill voice of the parrot calling: “Boat ahoy,
_carramba_, _sacré nom_, boat ahoy!”

Cheever grabbed up his leather bag, jumped hastily from the bunk, and
ran up the companionway. James closely followed him and, as he did
so, thought that he saw something gleaming in his uncle’s hand. When
he got on deck, he saw Cheever lying flat on his back by the bulwark,
unfastening the painter of his boat from the cleat; while some fifty
feet from the schooner a large boat was being rowed by two men towards
them. In the stern of the dory sat Constable Hallett and Deacon
Fairbanks. The after-glow of the sun was full in the faces of the men
in the dory, and James stood silhouetted against it.

“It’s the old snake in the grass, James,” hoarsely whispered Cheever.
“Hold them for a minute.”

He was slowly pulling the _Scud_ alongside as he spoke and the dory was
getting nearer.

“Schooner ahoy!” shouted the constable.

James was silent, and the dory came nearer, as the oarsmen were pulling
in good earnest.

“Boat ahoy!” cried out Cheever from the deck, as the row-boat came
alongside and the hands of the crew clutched the side of the schooner.

“Now’s my chance,” he whispered to James; “the schooner is between us.
Don’t let them up yet. I’ll take your boat; tell your father to get you
a new one out of the money and to send the rest of it to Mr. Marks,
Bell-in-Hand Tavern, Boston. Good-by, boy.”

Like a cat he slipped over the rail into the _Scud_ and in a second had
the tiller and sheet in hand and the boat was flying down the harbor.
The men in the dory had by this time scrambled aboard the schooner and
the big hat and red-brown wig of the constable soon followed over the
rail.

“Hi, there!” cried the constable, as he saw the sail-boat running away
before the breeze. “Who are you? Come back here! Come back, I say, you
are wanted.”

“Polly wants a cracker!” observed the parrot, in a hoarse chuckle.

“Guess you’ll have to do without me!” called back Cheever, with a broad
grin. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

By this time Deacon Fairbanks had been hoisted on deck by the two
oarsmen, while one of the crew of the _Tempest_, who had been asleep
under a boat on deck, aroused by the noise, had come aft.

“I say there, stop!” called out the Deacon, as he saw the sail-boat
slipping away. “Mr. Hallett, shoot the man if he doesn’t come back!”

“I don’t think I care about shooting, until you identify him!” said
Hallett, dryly. “After fifteen years, I couldn’t swear that was Tom
Cheever, and if I could, I wouldn’t shoot him.”

[Illustration: “THE BOAT WAS FLYING DOWN THE HARBOR.”]

“What’s all this row about?” asked the _Tempest’s_ seaman. “That man
there is Mr. Marks, our first mate, and I don’t see what call you have
to be talking of shooting him, old man. If you come to that, there are
three or four of the boys asleep down in the forecastle, who will join
in the sport.”

“The man is a burglar under indictment!” cried out Fairbanks, pale with
rage. “He broke into and entered my house and stole my silverware, in
’96.”

“Sixteen years ago!” observed the sailor, rolling his quid around in
his mouth. “I should think you might have forgotten it by this time.”

James stood trembling with excitement, as he watched his boat and
his uncle disappearing down the bay. His emotions were mixed; he was
astounded at hearing the accusation which the Deacon made against his
uncle, pleased at the latter’s escape, mournful over the loss of his
boat, and terrified by the fact that he was mixed up in the escape.
There was the _Scud_, verifying her name by the rate she was travelling
down the bay, and it would doubtless appear to the officer that he was
an accomplice in the escape.

“Whose boat is that?” asked the Deacon, and as he spoke he noticed
James for the first time. “Is it yours, boy?”

James turned crimson and looked down at the deck. The constable,
provoked at being thwarted by the escape of such an important criminal,
interrupted the Deacon.

“Say, men, there’s a spritsail in our boat; can’t you catch that
fellow?”

“A hundred dollars reward to the man who arrests him!” exclaimed the
Deacon, frowning angrily.

“We couldn’t no more catch the _Scud_ in our boat than we could catch a
streak of greased lightning,” replied one of the men. “There ain’t no
faster boat in the bay than her.”

She was out of range of the voice now, and Cheever was sitting quietly
in the stern sheets, heading her for the island, threading the channel
with the skill of a man who knew every mud-flat, sand-bank, and rock in
the harbor.

“I don’t know whether yon is Tom Cheever,” said one of Hallett’s
men, “but I’ll bet that he is an Oldbury boy from the way that he is
handling the boat.”

“But the harbor has changed since ’96,” said Hallett, who was anxious
to retrieve his official reputation by capturing the fugitive. “The
sand-bar by Mark Island has almost filled up the old channel; he may
run ashore there. I guess that we had better follow him on the chance.
Here, tumble into the boat, men! Hurry up! Deacon. Come along with us,
young Woodbury; I don’t like the looks of your performance to-day. I
guess that I must take you in charge.”

The two oarsmen tumbled over the side into the row-boat and the Deacon
followed them more cautiously; then came Hallett, with a grip on James’
shoulder. The men bungled over setting the spritsail, but finally
succeeded in getting it up, and pushed off and set to rowing with all
their might, splashing the water and nearly catching crabs at every
stroke; for the waves were now running high.

James noticed that the _Scud_ was drawing away from them every minute,
despite their violent exertions, and the satisfaction which this gave
him was added to by his noticing that the tail of the Deacon’s coat,
unknown to its eager owner, was soaking in the water, over the stern of
the boat.

“He’s coming near Mark Island bar!” called out the bow-oar, who was
turning his head as he rowed to keep his eye on the chase, “and he’s
headed straight for the shallowest spot.”

“Gosh! I guess that we have got him now!” observed the stroke.

James saw the _Scud_ about half a mile ahead flying before the wind,
headed for the bar. It was a moonless night; the twilight had died
away, and the waves, which had been rosy with the sunset when he had
left the wharf, were now leaden and angry as they swept, crested with
foam, after the overloaded boat; the wind was too strong to carry the
spritsail, so that James thought that it was far more likely to come
to grief than the _Scud_, especially as he remembered that the tide
was only half-ebb, and that there would be enough water in bar for the
_Scud_ to bump over it.

“He’s over the bar,” called out the bow-oar. “’Tain’t no use following
him any more, and I guess that we are in more danger than he is;
it’s blowing harder every minute, the tide’s running out, and we are
overloaded.”

The Deacon saw the white sail of the _Scud_ as she crossed the bar and
came about to make for the mouth of the bay, and he slapped his knee
with anger.

“Well, I guess that we had better put about,” said Hallett. “We have
done all we can, and there’s no need of imperilling our lives.”

There was nothing for the Deacon to say, and as the boat was being put
about and the spritsail taken in he perceived, for the first time, that
his coat-tail had been soaking in the water. For a moment it seemed as
if this partial wetting would soon be made unimportant by the total
immersion of the whole party; for it was no easy task to get the boat
around against the rising waves. As it was, a wave broke over the side,
and when the boat was headed towards the town there were several inches
of water in the bottom, and every wave which she butted into cast a
spray over the whole party. Wet and discomfited and cheated of his
prey, the Deacon’s mind turned towards James, who was seated opposite
to him.

“James Woodbury!” said the Deacon, sternly, “you have behaved in a most
shameful manner! What do you mean by assisting a criminal to escape.
Don’t you know that it makes you an accomplice, an accessory after the
fact? There’s been disgrace enough on your family in the past, without
you adding to it.”

“I never heard of any disgrace to my family in the past, till you made
the charge put now,” stoutly insisted James.

“It looks pretty black for you, that your uncle should escape in your
boat, and that you should be found on board the schooner,” said the
constable. “I am sorry for you, James, but it does look pretty black.”

“There’s bad blood in that Cheever family,” said the Deacon, “and this
boy is the living image of his uncle twenty-five years ago.”

“It seems to me I can see Tom Cheever now,” said the constable,
“squirming around in the minister’s pew during one of his father’s long
sermons. I never thought that he would come to good, remembering the
proverb about ministers’ sons, but he turned out a good deal worse than
I supposed he would. Let’s see, Deacon, you had a pretty clear case
against him, the time he left the town for good, didn’t you?”

“Enough to swear out this warrant on,” answered the Deacon. “That was
the last I ever saw of the silver; I never knew what he did with it. I
couldn’t trace it anywhere. He was seen around town early the morning
after. It wasn’t till late that day I suspected him.”

The two men were then silent for some minutes and nothing was heard but
the rhythmic working of the oars in thwarts, and sousing of the bow
into the waves. The wind was increasing and was blowing the clouds into
long black shreds, which scurried over the sky seawards.

“I wonder where that fellow will fetch up to-night,” said the bow-oar.
“He will not strike a harbor till Rockport, and it’s a long stretch
over there. I shouldn’t care to be in his shoes.”

“You’ll never see the _Scud_ again, James,” said the stroke, “or your
uncle either, if that was him.”

“He will wish that he had never come back to Oldbury, I guess. When a
man who is wanted for burglary is so fortunate as to have a gravestone
over him, he is a fool to come to life again. Yes?”

It was quite late in the evening when the boat, carrying the Deacon and
his fortunes, bumped against the slimy ladder, down which James had
slid in his haste to warn his uncle, when the strong hand of one of the
oarsmen assisted the boy rather roughly up from the boat. The Deacon
and the constable had climbed up before him and were talking together
in whispers, when he had landed on the wharf. He was anxious to know
what they were saying, feeling sure that his fate was under discussion.
Was he to be sent to the lock-up that night, or would gentler counsels
prevail?

He felt sure that the constable was on his side. His reddish-brown wig
with its respectable curls, twining over his neck, had a benevolent
aspect, and it was impossible to associate truculence with the curving
lines of his rotund figure, while the Deacon’s bowed shoulders and
angular frame armed suspicion in the boy’s breast. As the two men
became more interested in their talk, the whispers grew into loud
conversation.

“I tell you what, Deacon, the boy is a good boy, and there isn’t a
finer man in town than Captain Woodbury, and I’ll be jiggered if I
see what charge you have to bring against him. He couldn’t help the
man’s going off with his boat, and it’s no crime to be found aboard a
schooner, doing nothing.”

“It’s perfectly clear to me that he was aiding in the escape,” insisted
Deacon Fairbanks. “I insist that it is your duty to arrest him.”

“Now, look here; Deacon Fairbanks, I do not propose to have you or any
other man tell me what my duty is. As you cannot prove that the man
who just sailed away from us is Tom Cheever, the evidence that the boy
helped him to escape, is of no account. If you can get the judge to
issue a warrant for James’ arrest, I shall serve it, but I shall not do
anything now. Run off to your home, James.”

The boy did not wait for a second invitation, but walked off, slowly
at first that he might not seem over-glad to be out of their clutches,
but, once around the corner, he took to his heels and made very good
time up High Street. He did not think it safe to stop at the Deacon’s
to see Alice, and he was very anxious to tell his father what had
occurred in the afternoon. As he walked up from the street to the
house, he saw a dark figure standing on the front steps.

His father’s voice called:

“Is that you, James?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where have you been?”

“I will tell you as soon as I get to you, sir.”

Then the two walked together in silence to the Captain’s study and
James told all that happened. The Captain listened with his chin
resting upon his hand; and when James had finished, he said slowly:

“You did right, James, quite right. You have never heard, I believe,
the story of your uncle’s life, but, richly as he deserved punishment,
it was right for a nephew to warn him of his danger. I shall protect
you from the Deacon’s anger. And so he sailed away on your boat, boy; I
do not suppose that you will ever see it again. Well, never mind, you
will not need it in Cambridge. Run down-stairs; your aunt will give you
some supper. She has been saying that probably you were drowned, until
I grew foolishly nervous about you.”

“Shall I tell her about it?” asked James.

“No; ask her to be kind enough to come up here.”

Aunt Elizabeth was seated at the head of her table when her nephew
entered the dining-room. Her thin white hands were laid solemnly on her
lap, and her eyes followed the boy with a silent protest as he walked
to his seat.

“Where have you been all the afternoon?”

“Father will tell you, Aunt Elizabeth; he wishes to see you in his
room.”

“If I had not felt sure that you were not destined to be _drowned_, I
should have felt very anxious about you. I shall go to your father. Do
not scratch the table legs with your boots, and do not spill anything
upon the floor. If you had been my boy, I should not have saved you any
supper, but your father seemed bent upon spoiling you.”

Thus she spoke and walked primly from the room, though, if it had not
been for her Puritan conscience, she would have fallen upon the boy’s
shoulders and wept with joy at his reappearance; she had felt sure that
he had been drowned, and, indeed, she was in the habit of giving him up
for lost whenever he was late to supper.

Safe in his father’s home, with the bulwark of his father’s love to
protect him from the world, the boy felt secure and happy, and he
laughed as he thought of his uncle, disappearing beyond Mark Island,
leaving the Deacon to impotent wrath.

Many a time in life the man looks back, with a fond regret, upon the
days spent in his father’s home, and longs for a caress of the strong
hand which sheltered and protected him, and to gaze in the kind eyes
which used to dwell so lovingly upon him, and when that hand is stilled
and those eyes closed forever, the son for the first time feels the
difficulties of the world pressing in upon him; for a good father is a
shield to a son, even when the son is a father himself.

The old minister, who owed his immortality to the brush of Copley,
looked gravely down at his grandson, seated at the shining mahogany
table, and seemed to thank him for saving, from a new shame, the son
he had loved and mourned over. The boy happened to look up at the
portrait and was struck by the resemblance to his uncle, and he fell to
thinking of the lives of the Parson and his son: the one the honored
minister and leading gentleman of his town and the other flying before
the constables,--an outcast from his family; and he wondered where the
wonderful journey, through the world, would lead his heedless feet.

Behind the thickets would lurk the tempters: the greenest, most
seductive meadows would conceal the most dangerous pitfalls; and the
towers of Capua, gleaming in the distance, would invite him to repose,
when he should be hewing his way through the ranks of the enemy to new
victories.




VI


Cheever’s pursuers had forgotten that the fugitive had brought the
_Tempest_ up the harbor, a few days before; so that the latest changes
of the bar were known to him. He chuckled, as he perceived that the
voices of the men in the boat behind him were growing fainter, as the
_Scud_ swept past the light on Mark Island, so close that he could hear
the breakers comb over on the beach.

With the wind from the north-west, the waves were swept along in easy
curves, and the small boat behaved well under her reefed sail, with
her bow pointed for the twin lights of Thatcher’s Island, glimmering
faintly in the south-east, about fifteen miles away.

“I guess that I have outwitted the Deacon this time,” he said to
himself, as he cut off a quid of tobacco and put it in his mouth.
“They can’t reach me now, and in the morning, if I have luck, I shall
be off Marblehead, where I shall be safe enough. I wonder what makes
the old man keep his revenge so warm for all these years. Perhaps it’s
because he has had to use pewter, instead of the silver which I buried
that night under the lilac-bush in his back yard. I don’t see how I
ever mustered up courage to break in. I remember I had been sitting
with his daughter one evening on the front porch, when I heard the
old man putting the silver away in the closet in the dining-room.
The tavern-keeper was pressing me for my score. I owed Jim Noyes for
a horse, and the thought entered my head that those spoons, the
tea-service, and tankard would pay up my debts.

“Once in my head, the thought would not depart, and every day it took
new shape.

“It must have been the ‘original Adam’ my father used to preach about.
I certainly was not one of the ‘elect.’ I always felt sure of that.
They used to make me pray that ‘I should be born again and have a
change of heart.’ A change of luck might have been worth praying for.
Fate brought that thought into my head; it was fore-ordained that I
should break into that house and throw up all my chances of being a
decent man. The Deacon believes that he was predestined to go to heaven
and to lie in Abraham’s bosom, no matter how sneaking and mean he may
be; and I suppose that I was cut out for the other place.

“Well, I don’t care; needs must, when the devil drives. It was easy for
me, who knew the place since a boy, to get into the house and get the
silver, but as soon as I got outside with the stuff, I didn’t know what
to do with it.

“When the idea came into my head of stealing it, I meant to melt it
down and sell it somewhere, but once it was on my hands, I saw that I
could not dispose of it without being detected. It was a rainy night,
I remember, and it didn’t take me long to bury the plunder under the
lilac-bush and sneak home to bed. Father was awakened by my step on the
stairs, and he called out my name.

“When I heard his voice, I was reminded of that verse in the Scriptures
about ‘bringing thy father’s gray hairs in sorrow to the grave,’ and I
did not answer him. I kicked off my muddy boots and crept into bed--and
next morning I got the ring from Sally, and that was the end of Tom
Cheever in Oldbury.”

As he pondered, the boat tore ahead, with gunwales under. Over to the
west was the dim coast-line, with here and there a light shining from
some lonely farmhouse; looking seaward, black wave followed black wave,
crested with foam, dimly reflecting on their upward curves the stars in
the wind-swept heavens. The water was full of phosphorescent gleams and
now and then schools of fish, startled by the boat, shot in squib-like
spirals of fire through the water under and away from the keel.
Cheever shivered in the cold wind and buttoned his pea-jacket tightly
around him. He was hungry too; for the Deacon had come on board of the
_Tempest_ before he had eaten his supper, but he was used to cold and
hunger and the quid of tobacco was a comfort to him.

“I will have to put in another reef if it breezes any more,” he
thought. “Why couldn’t the old man have left me alone? It’s hard luck
to be in this cockle-shell of a boat running down the coast in a stiff
breeze, cold and hungry, when I ought to be comfortably rolled up in
my bunk on board the schooner. I’ve lost my pay too for deserting the
ship; and if the revengeful old fellow had left me alone, I should have
left Oldbury in the stage for Boston, with three thousand dollars in my
pocket, enough to start me respectably in business. And it’s all owing
to that silverware under the lilac-bush, which has done nobody any good
since ’96. If I had steered clear of the tavern, I might have married
Sally Fairbanks and have been a decent man,--almost as good, perhaps,
as Captain Woodbury, who wouldn’t let me spoil the air in his house
any longer than he could help. I wonder if Sally suspected that I was
alive and in town, when the boy gave her that ring? It didn’t take the
Deacon, her father, long to find it out. I wonder what she would have
said to me, if I had gone to see her myself--she used to have enough
to say to me. And so--she married Josh, the gawkiest lout in town; I
remember that his fingers were all thumbs, and that he was generally
as clumsy as a cow with a musket. How Sally used to laugh at him, when
she set him fetching and carrying for her at the parties down the
river--and he grinning all the time, happy over having the chance to
serve her in any way. And yet he got her finally; though, seeing that
his father was a ship-chandler in a small way of business, it was a bad
match for a girl who might have had Parson Cheever’s son, if he hadn’t
been rotten before he was ripe, like a summer apple. I used to think
that Josh Pickering was fair game to be plucked, and many’s the time I
have slipped my arm in ahead of him and squired Sally Fairbanks home,
while he was edging around as red as a lobster, with ‘one foot afraid
and t’other darsent.’ And he married her; and while I was rotting in
that damned prison, her child used to climb over his knee and thrust
her fingers into his red hair.”

The wind was lighter; a north-wester on the north Atlantic coast is a
blustering wind, which cannot be depended upon in the summer, unless it
has the sweep of the continent to give it vigor. Cheever kept his mind
upon the boat all the time. He might have been in the middle of the
Atlantic and not have seemed lonelier. The circle of waters in which
he sailed seemed contracted, yet, looking seaward, his mental vision
extended beyond the ever-changing curve of the dark horizon, over the
ocean rolling without a break for thousands of miles.

Ahead were the Thatcher’s Island lights, off Cape Ann, the strong
buttress of the Massachusetts coast; before long he heard the breakers
thundering against the Dry Salvages, and he ran in between Londoner
rock and the island. It was nearly ten o’clock he saw by his copper
repeater. He changed his course, and all through the night the boat
sailed along the coast and the outcast held the tiller with a firm
grasp, keeping his eyes upon the stars and watching the coast-line. At
sunrise, he was off the shores of Beverly and Manchester, the wooded
hills sloping to the sea-washed rocks. Beyond, at the other side of
the bay, was Marblehead, its gray houses growing out of the cliff like
barnacles. He decided to run into this harbor for food and water; and
the breeze, starting up from the sea at sunrise, soon brought him
alongside of a wharf, and he began to furl his sail.

He climbed the street which winds up the hill from the wharf, past the
weather-beaten houses of the fishermen,--quaint houses with gambrel
roofs, huddled together like a flock of sheep, as if for protection
against the keen Atlantic breezes. At that time, the whole village
was astir; the women busy at household tasks in kitchen and yards,
and the men and boys lounging beside fences, or on doorsteps. The
fishing-vessels at anchor in the harbor explained this idleness on the
part of the male population.

The Embargo Act and the disputes with England had put a stop to the
fishing, at one time the main-stay of the town. During the embargo, the
Marbleheaders had on hand two years’ catchings of fish, and no vent for
them; and the fishermen ate out their hearts in enforced idleness, but
retained through it all their loyalty to the government and applauded
the law, which shut them out from the chances of getting bread, with
a patriotism which should have put to the blush the citizens of the
richer towns of Boston and Newburyport. The Marbleheaders have always
been fervid in their patriotism. The first cruiser which bore the Stars
and Stripes, the schooner _Hancock_, was commanded by a Marblehead
man, Captain Manly, whose deeds of bravery even a Drake would not have
disdained to claim as his own. A strange people are the Marbleheaders;
to this day keeping their corners, their individualities, prejudices,
and dislikes intact. In every war, the hardy fishermen, to whom the
ocean was the field, which they tilled as other men tilled the earth,
have been the first to respond to the call of their country.

That bright June morning, a messenger was riding post-haste along the
coach road to Boston bearing the news of the declaration of war between
the “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the dependencies
thereof, and the United States of America,”--a message which was to
bring consternation to the merchants of State Street and the Federalist
politicians, but which was to start out the idle fishing-schooners of
Marblehead into privateers, to prey upon the commerce of the ruler of
the seas.

Cheever was looked at with some suspicion, as he walked by the groups
of men, who were eagerly talking politics. Marbleheaders are and were
ever hostile to strangers,--an unpleasant trait, which they doubtless
inherit from their ancestors, who came from the Guernsey and Jersey
islands, where they had long been exposed to the frequent incursions
of the French. But the suspicious natives soon recognized him to be a
seafaring man and let him pass unmolested by questions; perhaps they
were too much engrossed in discussing “Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights,”
to be as vigilant as usual in the inspection of strangers.

At the corner of one of the narrow elm-shaded streets, Cheever saw the
welcome sign of a tavern.

A stout man, with the air of proprietor, was seated on the front
piazza of the hotel in a wooden chair. He seemed to be unconscious
of the stranger’s approach, and to care little whether trade came to
the hostelry or not. The indifference to custom of the genuine Yankee
tavern-keeper is striking. He will not stir an inch to greet the people
whom he calls his guests. Ease and an inn are not concurrent terms in
New England, even at the present day.

Cheever put his valise down upon the floor of the piazza, and received
the placid stare which the landlord transferred from a hound, who was
licking his paws in the sun by the stone step.

“Good morning, Squire,” said Cheever, after waiting a moment for the
landlord to make the first advance.

“Mornin’,” was the calm reply.

“Can you give me some breakfast?”

“Well, I guess so. I’ve eaten mine, but there may be some left. Just
in, Captain?”

“I came in a small boat just now.”

“Where did you come from?”

“From Ipswich.”

“Any news?”

“No; I haven’t heard any.”

“The times are pretty hard here. ’Tisn’t really any use keepin’
tavern. I am about the only guest I have to entertain. It’s not good
business to be eating and drinking your own stock in trade.”

The landlord, after placing his pipe carefully on a window-sill, got up
slowly from his chair, and Cheever followed him into the bar,--a dingy
room, with a sanded floor and rough plastered walls, painted gray. A
large Franklin stove was at one end of the room, and around it were
several wooden chairs, browned as to their arms, by much contact with
the damp hands of the tavern frequenters. A colored print of George
Washington and a copy of the Declaration of Independence broke the dull
gray of the walls.

“I think that you had better break up your custom of drinking alone
and have a horn with me, Landlord,” said Cheever, nodding his head
significantly towards the bar. “I think that a little good old Medford
would do neither of us any harm.”

“I will tell them dish you up some breakfast and be right back,” said
the landlord, warming up towards the stranger.

Cheever, left alone, began to ponder over his plan of campaign.
Marblehead was a good place to wait in until the storm blew over,
and if he could get the boat out of the way, no one would trace him.
Meanwhile, he would write to his brother-in-law, asking to have the
money sent to him. With the money in his pocket, the world would be
his oyster. With three thousand dollars cash in hand, a man may do
anything; he may even live like a nabob, provided he is content to
measure his life in days rather than in years. The landlord interrupted
his golden dreams by opening the door through which he had disappeared
to order breakfast, and in the twinkling of an eye he had produced a
jug and two thick glasses from behind the bar. As he poured out the
rum, he eyed Cheever.

“Step up, Captain,” he called out, when the glasses were half full of
the Yankee toper’s nectar. “Back up your cart.”

“Here’s your good health, Landlord,” said Cheever, taking up the glass
and looking placidly at the liquor. “By the way, Landlord, what’s your
name?”

“You might have seen it on the sign-post, if you’d been as sharp as you
look, Captain; but to save you the trouble of going out in the yard to
read it, my name’s Noyes, James M. Noyes, and I’ve known you since you
was knee-high to a grasshopper, Tom Cheever, and you haven’t paid me
for that colt you bought of me in ’96! Tom Cheever!”

Cheever turned pale and started, but he was too cool a hand to betray
emotion at being recognized. He drank his rum coolly, put the empty
glass upon the bar, and stretched out his hand to the landlord.

“Why, bless my soul, so it is you, Jim Noyes. I’m glad to see you, Jim;
I never should have known you. You’ve gained fifty pounds since I saw
you last. You used to be as spry as a monkey, but I guess that it would
be pretty hard for you to shin around the way you used to.”

“You look as if you could climb as actively as you did sixteen years
ago,” said Noyes, with a meaning inflection in his voice. “Into
dining-room windows at night, for instance.”

Cheever looked the man straight in the eye without changing color.

[Illustration: “CHEEVER LOOKED THE MAN STRAIGHT IN THE EYE.”]

“Yes; I am as active as ever, Noyes; I haven’t spent my life seated
upon a chair doing nothing harder than smoking a pipe and drinking
rum. I have been at sea almost all these years. I refused to die,
though I am buried at the cemetery up at Oldbury. Indeed, I’ve had
knocks hard enough to kill a dozen such soft-muscled fellows as you;
but this talking adds to my appetite, Jim, and I was as hungry as a
chained wolf when you did me the honor to recognize me. Is breakfast
ready, do you suppose?”

“I set Hannah pounding the beefsteak when I went to the kitchen, and
I guess that it must be fried by this time. You may as well come into
the dining-room.” He opened the door into that room as he spoke. It
turned out to be more dismal than the bar-room, but more attractive
to the flies, which swarmed over a long table, at one end of which a
place was set. A tall, angular woman, with a sallow face, entered the
room, bearing the viands from the kitchen,--doughnuts, pie, saleratus
biscuit, fried beefsteak and coffee; the food upon which our imperial
nation has fed and grown so great. Cheever did not need any urging to
attack these comestibles.

“How long is it since you have been to Oldbury?” asked Noyes, as
Cheever dropped his knife and fork to gain strength for a fresh attack
upon the beefsteak. The landlord was consumed with an ardent curiosity
to hear the tale of the adventures of his long-lost townsman, and he
was especially anxious to know whether he had brought back money from
his wild adventures.

His own sluggish spirit had impelled his body but a few miles from its
birthplace during these sixteen years, so that in his whole experience
of life there was no memory more exciting than that of stuttering Tom
Cheever, the wild son of the Parson, who had left town charged with
burglary and owing him one hundred dollars for a chestnut mare. Now
here was the scapegrace returned to life, eating Noyes’ meat. This lost
hundred dollars had been sincerely mourned over by the unfortunate
vender of the chestnut mare, which had been lamed by the reckless
purchaser soon after it came into his possession. Would the meat and
drink be as cheaply purchased as the horseflesh? A puzzling question to
the landlord.

“How long are you going to stay in our town?” was the question born of
Noyes’ thoughts.

“A few days, if you’ll give me house-room. Don’t be alarmed, Jim. I’ll
pay you in advance, if you wish; and if I am not disappointed I’ll
settle with you for that chestnut mare. Damn it, she’s cost me dear
enough.”

Noyes’ fat face lighted up. A hundred dollars, a shower of gold
from the last century, a debt long since given up by him as utterly
worthless! The sea had given up its dead and its treasures.

“You don’t mean it! Tom Cheever!” he cried out.

“Yes, I do. I always meant to pay you that, but I think you got the
best of me in that trade, Jim; the nag wasn’t worth the money.”

“She had as pretty a gait as any animal I ever saw on the road,
Tom Cheever,” said Noyes, indignantly; “I refused one hundred and
twenty-five dollars for her the year before I sold her to you.”

“It seems to me that we had a talk pretty much like this just before I
left Oldbury,” replied Cheever, with a queer laugh. “Tell me about your
life since then, Jim.”

“I married old Isaac Dizmore’s daughter in ’97. He owned this tavern,
and he died in ’02. I came here then with my wife to keep tavern, and
she died five years ago.”

“Any children?”

“No; I have not been blessed with offspring.”

“Have you made money?”

Noyes’ eyes suddenly grew suspicious; it would never do to admit that
he had any money to this dare-devil.

“No; I’ve grown poorer every year.”

“I don’t believe you, Jim; you’d make money if you were on a desert
island. I believe that you are as rich as a Jew. You needn’t be afraid
to tell me; I shan’t rob you. I have plenty of honest money of my own.”

Noyes still looked suspiciously at his guest.

“I have no money,” he insisted. “I own this house, my wife left it to
me in her will, but the longer I own it the poorer I am.”

“I shall need some writing materials. Have you any?”

“I guess that I can find some in my desk. You’re welcome to them.”

“All right; I’ll write a letter when I get through breakfast.”

The fat landlord walked out of the room to get the paper, leaving
Cheever to a further inroad against the breakfast.




VII


The morning after Cheever’s arrival at the tavern he was awakened at
sunrise by the bells, jangling exultantly, as if the men at the ropes
were imparting their own wild feelings to the metal.

He looked out into the street and at another window saw the landlord’s
imperturbable face, surmounted by a red cotton night-cap, and below in
Glover Street several excited men were standing in a group around a man
on horseback by the tavern door.

Wilder grew the bells, so that it seemed to Cheever that the whole town
was afire, but he looked in vain for the conflagration. He could only
see the sun was rising to brighten the world during another fair June
day.

“What is the matter, Noyes?” asked Cheever.

“Congress has declared war against the Britishers,” answered the
landlord. “The news was just brought in from Boston by the courier, the
man on the black horse. It’s about time, I should think. There’ll be
some lively days for the boys in privateering. There’s Captain Vickery
of the _Lion_ out there now; he’ll know what to do with his schooner, I
guess.”

With this the red night-cap disappeared within the room, and Cheever
began to put on his clothes as quickly as he could.

“War!” that was his chance; a privateersman with the rich commerce of
England to prey upon had a rich preserve to poach, and could lead the
reckless life of a pirate without the yard-arm or gibbet in the vista
of the future.

His three thousand dollars would come in handy now; he could buy an
interest in a privateer and be one of its officers, and with a smart
boat and a Yankee crew a few lucky strokes would make his fortune. He
soon joined the group of men in the street; a short, thick-set man,
with a long blond beard, frank light blue eyes, wearing a blue coat
and buff small-clothes, he took to be Captain Vickery; the other men
were common fishermen--great, strapping fellows, who showed from their
lounging, uncomfortable attitudes on land that their natural element
was the sea.

The stirring news made it seem quite natural for a stranger to join in
their conversation, and it was evident that the war-bells had roused
the same thoughts in their breasts that they had in Cheever’s.

“It’s high time the President declared war!” Captain Vickery was
saying, as Cheever joined the men. “High time; we have stood their
British insolence long enough. It’s five years since the _Leopard_
fired into the _Chesapeake_, and we have been submitting to their
outrages ever since.”

“We can make up some of our losses during the Embargo,” spoke up one of
the men.

“Yes; we can, and we will, Hiram Wooldredge,” returned Vickery,
slapping Hiram upon the shoulder as he spoke. “This old town will be as
full of life as a bee-hive before the sun’s an hour higher. We must get
to work on the old _Lion_, and sharpen up her claws. It will be hard
luck if we don’t sail into harbor with a prize before many days.”

“You are Captain Vickery, of the _Lion_?” asked Cheever.

“I am; and what’s your name, sir?”

“Thomas Marks, at your service. This is great news, Captain Vickery,
and hits me just right. I have seen a good deal of service at sea, and
should like to ship with you on the _Lion_.”

“But I know nothing about you,” remarked Vickery, sharply, for he did
not like the man’s face.

“Well, Noyes in the tavern there knows me,” replied Cheever, trusting
in his ability to make the landlord say a good word for him. “You may
be in need of funds for your armament; and dollars do not need any
letter of introduction; I am in funds, and can help out in that way,
if, you give me an interest in the vessel.”

“Now you are talking, Mr. Marks,” replied Vickery, looking sharply at
the stranger. “If you will walk along with me to my house, we will
discuss the matter.”

“I think we would better go first, and have a look at the _Lion_,” said
Cheever.

“Come to my house after breakfast; we will look the vessel over. Where
do you live, Mr. Marks?”

“I have been at sea for the last sixteen years. I was brought up down
East. I cannot say that I live anywhere; I have never been married.”

“That is, you have a wife in every port, eh?” asked Captain Vickery
with a chuckle, as he walked away. The other men followed him, and
Cheever went into the tavern, where he found Noyes seated in the
bar-room, lethargic, even now that the dogs of war were let loose.

Cheever drew a chair up to the friend of his youth, intent upon
influencing him to keep his mouth closed about that turbulent period of
his life. Noyes gazed mournfully at the stove; for the reaction after
the excitement was setting in.

“What kind of a man is Captain Vickery?” asked Cheever.

“Well, some folks say he is a pretty good kind of a man, and others say
he isn’t. He’s a human sort of a fellow, I guess, and people like him
according as how he treats them. If he treats them fust-rate, they like
him fust-rate. I haven’t a word to say against him myself.”

“He’s a man of some property, I suppose?”

“Well, I guess he’s comfortably well off, considerin’ the hard times.
He owns his house and the _Lion_, and he’s a smart, drivin’ sort of a
man. Is he talkin’ of fittin’ up his vessel as a privateer?”

“Yes; he said something about it. He seemed to want to have me ship
with him. Is he as likely a man to ship with as the other captains of
the town?”

Noyes was silent for a few minutes. The one thought which had weighed
on his mind since he had found his long-lost acquaintance, was the
expected recovery of the price of a horse, long since given up by him
as a bad debt. He preferred to roll this delightful anticipation over
in his brain, rather than to talk upon any other subject.

“I don’t see that I have much to say against Captain Vickery as a
master of a vessel. He’s been sailing a ship now for twenty year, and
he ain’t drowned. It seems to me that is a pretty good recommendation.
You expect to hear from Oldbury pretty soon about that money of yourn,
don’t you, Cheever?”

“You are anxious to see the color of your money, Jim; I should think
that as you had waited for it sixteen years, you might hold on a day or
two longer without frettin’. You shall have it all, and fifty dollars
more for interest if you keep your mouth shut about me. I only want a
chance, that’s all; I have been steering straight now for some time,
and I see plain sailing ahead, and I don’t want you to block up the
passage for me, that’s all. I’ll keep the fifty dollars in reserve, and
I shall not pay you a cent of it until I find that you know how to keep
your mouth shut. Do you agree?”

Noyes wagged his head slowly in assent, and his eye lighted up for a
moment, in anticipation of the extra fifty dollars, which he was to
receive for his silence. As it was a great effort for him to speak at
all, it seemed to him that his silence was cheaply purchased for fifty
dollars.

“I will keep silent,” he answered.

“It will be money in your pocket if you do. Now, after breakfast, you
must come with me to the Captain’s and I will try to see what I can do
with him.”

Cheever calculated that he would receive the money from Newburyport
within a few days, in time enough to buy a share in the _Lion_, and a
leather belt which he carried around his waist contained enough gold
and silver coin to make a show with until the three thousand dollars
came to him. Meanwhile, he judged it to be prudent to get still further
into Noyes’ good graces by offering him some money.

“I can give you something on account, Jim; to settle up that old horse
trade. Here’s twenty-five dollars.” He handed the landlord the money in
“pillar” dollars, and they were soon pouched in the pockets of Jim’s
capacious trousers.

“There’s nothing like hard money,” remarked Jim, as he clinked the
coins in his pockets. “A man feels as if he were fortified against the
world, when he rubs it in his pocket.”

When Cheever reached the wharf with Captain Vickery an hour later, he
found that the news of war had awakened the town as the kiss of the
Prince awakened the sleeping Beauty and her court; the rusty sides of
the vessels were being painted; the spars and wood-works were being
scraped; the long disused vessels were being got ready for service
under letters of marque and reprisal.

“Which one is the _Lion_?” asked Cheever, as they reached the wharf.

“She is lying out in the harbor,” said Vickery. “I haven’t begun work
on her yet, to speak of. There will not be a great deal to do to her.
She has been kept up well; her rigging is sound, and she has a new
set of sails. The great work will be for the armament, and when I get
a crew shipped, I shall sail for Boston and get it aboard. We shall
need a Long Tom, some carronades, and ammunition, as well as muskets,
sabres, and boarding-pikes. It will be no holiday cruise.”

“No; the men who expect to get ahead of John Bull on the sea must get
up early in the morning.”

“I should like to row out with you and inspect the schooner!”

“I guess that we can take this dory.”

Cheever was pleased with the _Lion_. She was about two hundred tons in
burden, strongly built of oak, and in good condition, and her lines
were so good that he thought that she must be a fast sailer.

“When was she built, Captain Vickery?” he asked, as they went on deck
from the cabin.

“She’s only four years old, Mr. Marks, and she’s as good a schooner as
ever sailed from Marblehead, and we flatter ourselves that we know
what a ship is in this old town. What was your last voyage, Mr. Marks?”

“I sailed from Havana to Boston. I am familiar with all the West India
Islands and with the Caribbean Sea. I am sure that I shall be a useful
man on a privateer, and I wish some stirring occupation. You know how
it is, when a man has a pinch of salt in his blood, he cannot grow fat
in a chair and be happy over it, like our friend Noyes at the tavern.”

“The lazy fellow,” said Vickery. “He’d rather ride in a hearse than
walk, and he is scared to death when he trusts his unwieldy carcass
upon the water. I suppose that he can vouch for you, Mr. Marks?”

“I rather think that he’ll be willing to tell you that I am all right.
But after all, ready cash will be my best voucher. I will put in one
thousand dollars toward fitting up the vessel and buying the armament,
if you will make me your first mate and give me one-half the share
which you have in the schooner’s earnings.”

“Have you the money on hand?” asked Vickery.

“No; I shall not get it for three or four days, but I am sure to then.
I am expecting that a legacy from my father will be paid to me. You
know I have been away from home many years, and when I came home the
old gentleman was dead, and I was not with him to close his eyes. He
was a good old man, Captain, and I brought him little but sorrow. He
had thought me dead for years, but the family are to send me my share
of the money. How many shall we carry in the crew, Captain?”

Vickery was gazing intently on the dark-haired stranger, wondering what
manner of man he might be. He felt a natural distrust of this fellow,
dropped from nobody knows where into the middle of the quiet fishing
village, and he was loath to enter into a venture with a man who was
only faintly recommended by Jim Noyes, the tavern-keeper; but, on the
other hand, men with ready cash to invest in privateering enterprises
were likely to be rare birds, and it was all-important that the _Lion_
should be ammunitioned and furnished with her armament in time to
capture the British merchantmen before the war had made them shy and
scarce.

“Well, Mr. Marks,” he finally said, “I want some man with ready cash
to come with me, but I don’t wish to buy a pig in a poke or to waste
my time with a man who hasn’t the money he pretends to have. Still, it
will be some days before this vessel will be ready to sail for Boston
with her armament, and I shall not make any arrangement with another
fellow-adventurer until I get to Boston.”

“My money will be in Boston in a few days,” interrupted Cheever. “I
don’t expect you to close with me until I have the cash on hand. I’ll
stay here and help get the schooner in shape, and perhaps I can show
you a thing or two about fitting her for a war cruise, if you have only
been on fishing-craft. I’ve sailed on many a queerish sort of vessel
in my day, Captain, and while I am no saint, I am not the worst sinner
in the world; and, whatever happens, if I don’t get the money, I am
content to ship as one of your crew, and if we do not capture a rich
prize before many weeks are past, my name’s not Tom Marks.”

“Quite likely that it is not,” remarked Vickery, with a grim smile.
“You are a queer customer, Marks; and, to be quite frank, I do not
altogether like your looks. You speak like a man who was brought up
among decent people; you seem to have had an experience which may have
made you a good privateersman, but I don’t know that you will turn
out a desirable ship-mate; still, if you can do me a good turn, I am
willing to take some risk and take a good deal for granted about you,
into the bargain.”




VIII


The rooms in the top story of Hollis Hall are not considered very
desirable by the young Harvard men of the present day. But there is a
charm, a delightful Harvard flavor, about these low-studded collegiate
chambers, which the rooms in the modern dormitories sadly lack. It
is pleasant to sink deep into an arm-chair and to think that in that
room generations of students have sat like yourself in a reverie over
the fire. You find yourself conjuring up the images of these former
occupants of the room, and as dreamers have as wide a license as poets,
you may place all the distinguished students of the last one hundred
and fifty years in your arm-chair and feel the most intimate personal
connection with them. The room has never been vacant in term-time since
those red bricks were laid. The solemn young men in small-clothes moved
out for Washington’s army, to be sure; but the human continuity remains
unbroken.

It is in such reveries that the Harvard man has learned to love his
college and to feel an intimate kinship to her and to her sons.
The step worn by our ancestors’ nimble feet is a memorial more
stirring than many a tablet; the elms are our friends and did not our
grandfathers love them too? Who was the bold youth who, surprised
at some mischief with the college-bell, leaped from Harvard Hall to
Hollis, over the yawning chasm? I wonder whether he ever sprang thus
from one treacherous gutter to another, as was related to us; but
whether he did or not, he is a figure in the past, whom we cannot lose.

Years ago, one autumn day, a Freshman looked out of the small-paned
window of one of these lofty chambers; out at the branches of the
elms, denuded of their leaves. The chamber was bare enough, with its
whitewashed ceiling of knobby plaster, its white paint and striped
wall-paper. A wood fire played in the open fireplace; and there were
two beds, two wash-stands, a table, a rack for books, and four mahogany
chairs to furnish the room.

The Freshman was James Woodbury, who had been led, all unwilling,
by his father to drink of the Puritan fount of learning a few weeks
beforehand. He had been provided with the academic costume of sober
black, then prescribed by the makers of the college regulations; and
his father had returned to Oldbury after giving him a blessing, secure
in the belief that four years of academic life would transmute the
careless boy into a man, ready to become a fit descendant of a Puritan
divine.

One other boy had entered college from Oldbury that year,--Thomas
Devereux, a paragon of decorum and scholarship. It seemed natural that
the two boys should become room-mates, as they came from the same
town, yet it is certain that geographical origin was all that the
two boys had in common. They certainly did not like each other, that
was apparent, and though they slept side by side in the bare college
chamber and daily studied the same tasks, they were each day growing
more and more apart. Thomas shone in the class-room, James among the
contestants in the football field. Thomas was as regular and precise
as James was procrastinating and careless. The social boy, who loved
sailors and longshore-men, knew already almost all the seventy Freshmen
whom the college had gathered under her wing that year, while the
scholar knew only a chosen few, who met together for prayer on every
Friday evening, and those of his chum’s friends who had disturbed
his studies in their quest for his more jovial room-mate. Still the
ill-assorted pair did not quarrel; each took his path in life and saw
but little of his mate.

This afternoon Thomas was out taking his “constitutional” walk,--to
Fresh Pond and back in the company of an improving companion; and James
was trying to prepare his Horace for the morrow’s recitation. He had
just received a letter from his father full of improving advice, and
inspired by the words of the kindly old man, he had betaken himself to
his books. The Horatian ode was half translated and he had arisen to
look out of the window in the vague hope that something would happen in
the yard which would justify his leaving the genial poet, who seemed
to him so dull, though his verses were crisp with the condensed wit
of the great Roman world. But there was nothing stirring outside save
a few brown leaves which the wind whirled along the brown sward. The
Dictionary and the Horace were upon the window-seat, inviting him to
work; there was no reason why he should not set about it. But it seemed
so distasteful to him. He began to think about Oldbury, of Alice, whom
the old Deacon, her grandfather, had forbidden to speak to him since
the night of his uncle’s escape from tardy justice; of his father,
solitary in his grand new house; of his aunt, with her shrewd tongue
and set ways; and of the wicked uncle, speeding down the bay in the
_Scud_. What had become of the boat and its freight? His father had
never spoken to him of them again; but he was sure that he had heard
from him; for, three days after the exciting day of the foiled arrest,
the Captain had received a letter and had taken the stage to Boston the
next morning. On his return to Oldbury he had said nothing to any one
about his journey.

What had become of Uncle Tom?

Was he on one of the privateersmen of which there was so much talk, now
that there was war? What joy it must be to tread the deck of one of
those adventurous craft, to sight a rich merchantman flying the Union
Jack, and to haul up on her weather-gauge, and fire a gun across her
bow!

That was life! but this round of distasteful studies; these hours
spent in chapel and the recitation-room while his country was beset by
enemies; was this an existence which a proud-spirited lad would lead?

These reveries were interrupted by a knock at the door. James hastily
picked up his Horace and called to the visitor to enter. And in came
the lost uncle, with a queer smile on his grim face.

“Uncle Tom,” cried out James, dropping again his task-book. “Uncle Tom!
I was just wondering where you were.”

“The _Scud_’s lying in Marblehead harbor,” remarked Cheever, as he
slung himself into a chair. “Studying, James?”

“Trying to,” replied James, who was burning with curiosity to find out
about this uncle’s doings.

“Do you like your school?” asked the other, looking around at the
apartment. “It seems a quiet spot, to me; a good shelter--I suppose
that you are straining at your cable, though? That’s the way--boys
will be boys, and that means, bad boys. They never know what’s good
for them. My father meant me to come here. But, Lord love you, James,
I couldn’t any more have stuck to my books when I was your age than a
sailor can stick to a ship where he is well treated.”

“What have you been doing? What happened to you that night?” questioned
James.

“I told you that the _Scud_ was at Marblehead. I made that port in the
morning after our parting. ’Twas the day that war was declared, and
before night fell I had shipped as first mate on the privateer _Lion_,
of Marblehead.”

“What, uncle, are you on a privateer?” asked James.

“I am not only first mate but part owner of the schooner _Lion_, my
boy, and we were one of the first to get afloat. Why, they had begun
to caulk the old tub for service before the messenger who announced
the declaration of war to the Marblehead people had time to wet his
whistle. I knew that I could count on your father’s word, and I engaged
with Captain Vickery to supply the armament. We put into Boston after
our first cruise a day or two ago, and I pushed my way out here to
Cambridge to see you. It’s the first time I have ever been in the
old town, though my father was a Harvard graduate and meant me to go
through the college. It’s many a start parents would get if they could
look up from the red-cheeked baby in the cradle, spewing up curdled
milk, and see its future; but I am moralizing again. You can’t get this
old Puritan taint out of the blood. I take to sermons as naturally as I
do to mischief.”

The privateersman, after this unusually long speech, swung himself into
a chair by the fire, and was silent. After a few minutes he looked up
and asked: “Was the old Deacon mad when I gave him the slip? It was a
close shave, and if he had caught me it would have gone hard with me. I
owe you a debt of gratitude, my boy, and it’s a debt of honor, the only
kind of debt I like to pay.”

Just then the college-bell rang out, and James looked regretfully at
his Horace.

“It’s recitation time, Uncle Tom,” he said.

“And you ain’t learned your lesson? What will the master do to you? You
can tell him that an extinguished divine turned up to call on you.”

“I do not suppose that I shall suffer very severely, though I cannot
say that it is my first offence. I shall be back in an hour. Will you
be here when I return?”

“Yes; I will sit here by your fire and see how it feels to be at
college. My early opportunities I neglected, and it would not have been
possible to keep me four years in the same place. There’s quicksilver
in my blood and in my pocket, too, for that matter. Quick to burn a
hole there, anyway. But run along to your recitation. I shall enjoy
myself here if I am allowed to smoke. Is it against the rules?”

“You will enjoy smoking the more, if it is,” answered James, as he ran
away to his recitation.

Cheever heaped some logs on the fire, filled his pipe with tobacco,
and lighted it from an ember. Like most men who have knocked about
the world and have seen “all sorts and conditions of men,” he was a
solitary; happy enough to be left alone with a good pipe of tobacco,
and yet ready for a carousal or a fight at a moment’s notice.

There was a charm to the world-weary man in the stillness of this
college chamber. It seemed to him, as he had said to his nephew, a good
shelter, grateful to a storm-tossed waif.

He picked up a Latin dictionary and turned the leaves at random. It had
been years since he had looked into so serious a volume, and yet it was
not a sealed book to him; for he had been well grounded in the classics
during the futile attempt to make a parson out of a ne’er-do-well.

He smiled when he saw the irregular verbs, and the nouns, puzzling as
to gender, which had been his tormentors when a boy, and he mumbled to
himself over a list of prepositions and a rule from a grammar.

These useful bits of knowledge cannot be dislodged from the mind which
received them when it was young and plastic. They remain forever
embedded like the pebbles in a conglomerate stone. The beautiful lines
of Shakespeare, learned with enthusiasm, are forgotten; the music of
the exquisite lyrics of Shelley dies away, but the rules of the Latin
Grammar are too firmly rooted to be lost.

Cheever was repeating to himself rapidly “Hic, hæc, hoc, hujus--” when
the door opened and another young man entered,--Thomas Devereux, James’
ill-matched “chum,” a lank, pale lad, with a high forehead and small
features. He paused at the threshold when he saw the stranger taking
his ease before the fire.

“Come in,” said Cheever. “James has gone to recite, and has left me on
watch.”

Devereux entered, eying the stranger with suspicion. The tobacco smoke
which filled the room from Cheever’s pipe was not a pleasing perfume
to the nostrils of the prim young scholar. He stood at the threshold a
moment.

“I am an old friend of James’ father,” explained Cheever.

“I am Woodbury’s chum, Thomas Devereux.”

“Devereux? That’s an Oldbury name.”

“Yes; and I am an Oldbury boy,” replied Devereux, as he took off his
overcoat, keeping a watchful eye all the time on the suspicious-looking
stranger.

“So you are an Oldbury boy, and James’ chum! I am glad to make your
acquaintance. My name is Marks, and I am first mate of the _Lion_,
privateer, of Marblehead; and as I take an interest in James through
long knowledge of his father, Captain Woodbury, I have come out here to
Cambridge to see him. I chartered a chaise, and worked my course out. I
suppose that you boys have a devil of a time here, don’t you?”

Devereux’s pale, girlish face flushed, and he shifted uneasily in his
chair; but Cheever did not notice the effect of his remark upon the
young Puritan. The college presented itself to his lawless mind as a
conglomeration of young men, and therefore as a place for roystering
and deviltry. He could not for a moment imagine that a boy in whose
veins ran young blood could think and act as did young Thomas Devereux,
who could be guilty of a meanness, perhaps, but could never let slip an
oath. “Of course you do,” he continued. “Boys will be boys! With such a
lot of you together, away from home, things must be lively here.”

“I regret to say that there are many who are heedless enough to neglect
their opportunities and indulge in wickedness,” said Devereux, with a
solemnity beyond his years.

Cheever looked at him sharply, and smiled. A glance at the bloodless
cheek, beardless as a woman’s, the thin-lipped, solemn mouth, made him
remember that there were some boys who never were boys.

[Illustration: “SOME BOYS WHO NEVER WERE BOYS.”]

“You never neglect _your_ opportunities, I hope,” said Cheever, in
a graver tone. “There is no one so much to be blamed as a young man
who is careless of his advantages. I hope that James is studious and
well-behaved.” There was a twinkle in the old reprobate’s eye as he
spoke.

“I fear that James is neglectful of his studies, and truly too ready
to seek wild company,” replied Devereux. “I have tried by precept and
example to lead him to better ways, but it has been of no avail. But
if you will excuse me, sir, I must be settling to my task. I have a
recitation the next hour, and I have not fully prepared myself for it.”

“If that’s the case,” said Cheever, “I shall not stay here to disturb
you; but I shall take a turn over the grounds until James is through
his recitation.”

As soon as the elder man had shut the door, Devereux opened the windows
to rid the atmosphere of the room from the dreadful odor of his
pipe-smoke and of iniquity.

James, coming out from Harvard Hall, saw his uncle sitting on the fence
by the Massachusetts Hall.

“Young Squaretoes was too much for me, James, and I came out here by
preference. It’s a little cold, though; but it’s nothing to the young
ice-berg you bunk with. We had better go to the tavern, James.”

Over across the square they went.

“We must go into the back room, uncle,” said James. “The rules of the
College are very strict against the frequenting of taverns.”

“Rules, my boy, were made to be broken,” observed Cheever.

They soon found themselves in a bare room, where a wood fire smouldered
in a Franklin stove. Cheever ordered his glass of “flip,” a blend of
hot iron and alcohol, and then lighted his pipe with due deliberation.

“I was looking over your Latin Grammar while you were away, James,” he
said, while the landlord was absent to get the “flip.” “It’s many a day
since I have seen one, though Mr. Livermore’s switch beat some of the
rules into me so that I have never forgotten them. I was to have been a
parson, you know.”

“I’m to be one, too,” said James, smiling.

“Yes? Well, if they hadn’t tried to make a saint out of _me_, perhaps
I’d have been less of a sinner. ’Twas only last month, when we sighted
a British brig, that I was thinking about the old gentleman--whose life
I shortened, James, my boy--and I said to myself: ‘Now, Tom Cheever,
you have a good deal on your soul, but the old man used to say:

  “While the lamp holds out to burn,
  The vilest sinner may return.”

You’ve got to capture that brig, Tom, and your share of the
prize-money, added to the sum you’ve tucked away in the bank, will make
you independent. You’ve acted on the square for two years, and you may
be a decent man yet. You can leave all your old self buried in that
empty grave at Oldbury and start with a clean bill of health, just as
if you had received absolution from the Pope of Rome.’ That’s a handy
belief, James, that Roman Catholic. We haven’t any method of casting
off old sins. Why, they stick around our necks all our lives like a
dead hen tied around the setter dog who killed it--”

“How many vessels has the _Lion_ taken?” asked James, who did not fancy
his uncle’s moralizing so much as the imperfectly repentant sinner
liked the sound of his own voice.

“The brig _Dreadnaught_ I was speaking of, was the biggest one, three
hundred tons, but besides her we carried into port three other brigs
and four schooners, in the last year. We found the _Dreadnaught_ a hard
nut to crack, and if it hadn’t turned out that we could out-weather
her and were better gunners, she would have taken us. As it was, we
lost three of our crew before we boarded her, and we had the toughest
kind of a hand-to-hand fight before we got them under hatches. Those
Marblehead men can fight, James! They’re true grit. The Englishmen were
as good, but we outnumbered them, and they had to give in; that is, all
that were left of them.”

“When was this fight?”

“Last month, in the Old Bahama channel, off Cuba. We left the prize at
Baltimore on our way to Boston.”

“Oh, I wish I had gone on the _Scud_ with you, Uncle Tom,” cried James,
“and I should have been one of the crew of the _Lion_.”

“I would rather cut off my right hand, my boy, than take you away
from the course of life which your father has laid out for you. I’ve
finished my seafaring, James, and I’ll settle down in Boston and lead
a decent life, if that old rascal in Oldbury will let me alone. The
silver’s under the lilac-bush, James, in his back yard. That’s what I
have come out here to tell you about.”

“What silver?”

“What! don’t you know?” groaned Cheever. “Haven’t they told you? The
silver I took from Deacon Fairbanks the night before I left Oldbury.
You know now why I had to run from the office. I’ve got a map here of
the place where I buried it, and that’s why I’ve come out to see you.
I want you to dig it up when you go to Oldbury and put it back into the
old man’s sideboard without his knowing it.”

He took out a worn leather pocket-book and extracted from its
heterogeneous contents a piece of paper, dirty from much handling and
broken in the creases. James watched him intently, much shocked at
this avowal of crime; he had never imagined that his uncle had added
house-breaking to his other youthful follies.

“There, James,” explained Cheever, as he smoothed out the ragged plan,
“that represents the Deacon’s house, the side next your father’s
new house, you know, and the X is the dining-room window. Ten paces
straight out from the window stands the lilac-bush. It’s there still.
I looked for it when I came to the house that night, and two feet to
the south of it, if you dig down a foot, you’ll come to the silver.
It was in a basket when I buried it, but I guess that there’s little
left of the wickerwork by this time. You go there some night and dig
the stuff up, then polish it up, and see that it’s conveyed into
the Deacon’s sideboard--but don’t you let him know that you did it.
It will be a weight off my mind if you do it, James. Let’s see, you
should find, if I remember right, two dozen spoons, big and little, a
silver tea-service, and two tankards. It wasn’t much to lose your life
for, James, but you’ll find that men swap off their honor and their
reputation for very little, very little, my boy. You’ll do this for me?
That’s right. Now, here comes the ‘flip,’ and we’ll drink to the old
Captain’s health. He wouldn’t drink mine, I will bet; but then he’s no
kin of mine and you are, my boy. Your mother was my only sister, James,
and even a blackguard loves his sister.”




IX


James was called home to Oldbury by the news that his father was ill.
The fickle New England spring had succeeded the rigorous winter, and
the Captain had been wooed out of doors without his great-coat on a
fine May morning. A sudden change of the wind to the eastward had
chilled him through before he could get back to his house. As a result
of this exposure, he was taken down with a severe attack of congestion
of the lungs, and Miss Woodbury, being much alarmed at his condition,
sent at once for his son. It was a journey of fear and sickening
anticipation for the poor lad, but before he reached Oldbury his
father’s condition had changed for the better, and when James came to
the old man’s bedside the disease was spent. The boy was allowed to see
his father for a moment, and then hurried from the room by the doctor.
He was not to see that kind old face for many a day.

Aunt Elizabeth accepted her brother’s illness as a special mark
of Divine displeasure at the manifold shortcomings of the family,
the State, and the Nation, but she bore up wonderfully under the
affliction. Now that the danger was over, she was secretly delighted in
the chance given her to wear herself out in nursing and watching.

Our New England women are always at their best when Fate has pulled the
man of the house down by the heels and he lies propped up in bed, a
meek receptacle for gruels and doses.

“Your father was very ill indeed, James,” she said to her nephew when
he came out of the sick-room; “I thought that he was going off in the
same way his great-uncle Abraham did. He was very feverish, and he
complained of a weight upon his chest. Before the doctor came I gave
him some whiskey and water and put him to bed. I saved his life, I
think.”

“I’ve no doubt you did, Aunt Elizabeth. You are a wonderful nurse!”

“The nurses save more lives than the doctors destroy, James,” rejoined
his aunt, in a triumphant tone. “Now come to tea; I have some Sally
Lund cake. But now that you are a man at college I suppose that you
despise such things.”

James’ anxiety about his father had driven from his mind the promise
which he had made to his uncle to restore the buried silver; but
now that he was relieved from the weight of apprehension, the
responsibility of his foolish promise began to weigh upon him.

All through tea he was laying out his plan of campaign. Under cover
of the night he could dig up the silver, and then take it to his room
and polish it up. The next night he could return it to the Deacon’s
sideboard.

After the evening meal was over he went into the sitting-room which
commanded a view of the Deacon’s lilac-bush and dining-room window. He
took out the dirty plan which his uncle had given him and looked up on
it the probable burial-place of the silver.

There was a dash of romance in the adventure which stirred his blood
mightily. The digging up of buried treasure suggested tales of Captain
Kidd and Blackbeard, and a dirty map, indicating the burial-place, was
always bequeathed by dying pirates to their favorites.

It was not at all unlikely that his uncle had seen as stirring things
as had ever Captain Kidd. Was he not a licensed corsair? At that moment
he might be capturing some rich argosy on the high seas.

But after the treasure was dug up, the romance seemed to evaporate from
the prospective adventure.

It was no easy matter to restore the tankards and spoons to their old
places on the sideboard--and they must be cleaned too.

After sixteen years’ burial, much elbow-grease and white powder would
be needed.

Oldbury people went to bed early--modern life has taken all the
witchery out of midnight, and the ghosts of to-day have no unmolested
hours for exercise; but our grandfathers believed in Poor Richard’s
maxims, and were all snugly in bed by nine o’clock.

James, at that hour, was stealing from the woodshed back of his house,
with a pickaxe and spade. There was no light in the Deacon’s house, and
the night was dark enough for any evil deed.

He began digging at a short distance from the lilac-bush, keeping a
shrewd watch all the time. The soft loam yielded readily to the spade,
and it soon struck against a hard substance. It proved to be a solid
tankard encrusted with soil. He dug rapidly, unearthing at nearly every
spadeful some piece of the stolen plate, until he had completed his
uncle’s list given him with the map. And sorry enough looking was the
treasure after its long hiding.

The boy whipped off his coat and tied the silver up in it. Then he
shovelled back the dirt, placing the turf over the gash in the lawn.

His uncle’s secret had descended to him, and he had the weight of this
old sin upon him.

He sped over to the woodshed with it, put away his tools, then up to
his room with the silver. He threw this bundle upon the bed and lit his
candle. It was quick work to scrape the dirt from the silver and wash
it. The tankards were heavy and fine, one with a cipher and the other
with some coat-of-arms, and the silver service and spoons bore the
crest of the same heraldic device. The silver was tarnished, of course,
but the white powder, abstracted from his aunt’s pantry, soon made it
look respectable enough. Then he wrapped each article up in a piece of
paper and stored the whole away in a carpet-bag, which he put upon a
shelf in his closet.

“The old family skeleton is in its right place,” he thought, as he
locked the door. Then he went to his chamber window and looked out
into the night. All was still save for the wind sighing through the
pine-trees back of the house. He must enter the Deacon’s home on the
next night and restore the skeleton. How was it to be done?

The door into the Deacon’s back kitchen was fastened with a bolt.
Hannah, the maid of all work, went to prayer-meeting in the afternoon
and the kitchen was easy of access. Could he not in her absence unscrew
the washer and file off the screws, so that it would be easy to open
the door by lifting the latch and shoving hard?

In a few minutes he could creep into the dining-room, place the silver
upon the buffet, and retire, as innocent a house-breaker as ever lived.
It was an adventure not without risk, but it was a duty he owed his
family, he thought, to make this restitution, and then too, he had
promised his uncle that he would do it.

Now that he had the silver actually in hand, the risk seemed to him to
be great. How could he account for having possession of it should it
be found upon him? And, oh, awful thought! what if he should be caught
with it after he had broken into the house!

He undressed slowly as he pondered this problem, and he went to bed to
dream that the tankards were upon his heart, slowly growing in weight
until they bade fair to crush out his life. He awoke with a start from
this nightmare to greet a new dawn of a day which he wished would be
forty-eight hours long. How quickly the sun seemed to him to speed over
the heavens, to bring all too soon the darkness under which he and
other thieves must work!

In the afternoon he saw Hannah Lang, the maid of all work, leave the
Deacon’s kitchen, decorously attired for the Thursday prayer-meeting.
She would be absent an hour. As she passed from his vision, he took out
a file and screw-driver from his pocket. The kitchen door was shut, but
not locked, and the coast was clear. It did not take long to remove the
screws, take out their fangs, if I may be allowed the expression, and
replace them, so that the washer hung by a thread or two.

A breach was ready in the enemy’s wall when he chose to enter by it.
There was nothing for him to do, except to wait until dark. So far,
all had gone well, and well begun was half done. His reflections were
interrupted by his aunt’s voice.

“Your father is sleeping,” she said in the whisper adopted by women
in houses where some one is ill. “Sleeping like a child. Dear me! what
an anxious time I have had. Poor John, he never could take any care of
himself. At his age too,--why he is ten years older than my father was
when he died and every one called him ‘Old Squire Woodbury.’ Perhaps
they call me an old woman too.”

“I never heard any one say anything so impolite,” said James.

“I am old, my dear boy, and that is a fault that time does not cure.
Life slips away. Yes, I am an old woman, James. You know that I was
in Boston making a visit, a young girl of seventeen, when the city
was seized by General Washington’s army. I was staying with old Aunt
Barrett. She went with the other Tories to Halifax when the British
evacuated the town. I was caught by the siege and stayed with her till
she went on board the king’s ship, and then Brother John, who was in
one of the regiments outside, took care of me when the Americans took
the town.”

“Then you remember the battle of Bunker Hill, Aunt Elizabeth?”

“Remember it, James; it is a day I never shall forget in this world.”

The days of the siege in Boston had been the happiest of her life. A
patriot maid she was, in the midst of the enemies of her country, but
love laughs at political opinions as well as at locksmiths. In the
merry-makings and theatricals with which the British garrison whiled
away the long winter, Aunt Elizabeth’s love-story began, and it ended
on the 17th of June. Lieutenant Pennington was leading his men up
Breed’s Hill as carelessly as if he were walking down Bond Street,
twirling the tassel of his sword as he marched. The raw American
Militia were despised by the trained soldiers. He fell at the first
volley, and love was done for Elizabeth Woodbury. The poor old maid’s
withered face lighted up at the memory of those halcyon days. The
tragic ending made the romance the dearer and more sacred to her. She
quietly left the room; and if her secret were told, who knows but that
the miniature was taken from its resting-place, amid the faded finery
of her girlhood?




X


James had been forbidden the Fairbanks’ house by the Deacon ever since
the night of his uncle’s escape. Captain Woodbury saw the Deacon only
when he went to pay the interest upon the mortgage on his house. The
money was passed and a receipt given in return for it. Neither spoke to
the other.

The Deacon had published far and wide through the town the news of
Cheever’s return, and he had not forgotten to mention the crowning
misdeed of the reprobate’s Oldbury career,--the theft of the plate. He
was loud in his abuse of James for aiding in the escape, and it was his
wont to declare that the boy was a chip off the old block.

The towns-people had pretty well forgotten the black sheep; but now his
tombstone became the Mecca of mischievous pilgrims; and its blue slate
was often marred by derisive scrawls.

The Captain refused to remove the stone, and had it carefully restored
whenever the mischief-makers marred it.

He hoped by this passive resistance to combat the reports that Cheever
was not dead--but the towns-people believed in the return of the
escaped burglar, and tongues wagged hourly over the stories of the
minister’s son. The many good deeds of the father, his forty years
of Christian ministry, had been forgotten long ago, except by a few
survivors of his congregation, but the evil-doings of the son were now
green in the memories of all.

He had as completely verified the New England prophecies that a
minister’s son will turn out badly as did the second Increase Mather,
who nearly broke his excellent father’s heart.

James’ part in the escape had connected him in the public mind with the
robber uncle, and when he went away to Cambridge, heads were wagged
at church and prayer-meeting over the danger which the Captain ran in
letting his son go out of his control. Young Devereux’s accounts of his
room-mate’s idle life had not benefited the boy’s reputation; and now
he was considered by all in town to be a very bad young man. His nine
months at college had been spent harmlessly, if idly, but the Oldbury
people looked upon him as a kind of a Sardanapalus. It was known
that his father intended him for the ministry, and it seemed to the
straight-laced almost a blasphemy to connect James Cheever with the
Congregational Church.

James was unaware of his bad reputation, and of the malicious tongues
which were every day adding to it; for he had not been in Oldbury
since he had first left the town to go to college and he had not seen
Alice and her mother during this period. He felt little like meeting
them, while their ancestral silver was concealed in his chamber; for
the innocent possession of the plate made him feel guilty. From the
repository of the stolen goods, he watched the Deacon’s home through
the afternoon, and he was finally rewarded by seeing Alice trip down
the front path to High Street. A year had made her a young woman. There
is a great difference between sixteen and seventeen. James fancied
that she shot a demure glance at his window, for she certainly knew he
had come back from college.

James had written to her after his departure to college, and she had
answered telling him of her grandfather’s order that she should have
nothing to do with him, and had expressed her regrets. Then came the
stories of his wild life at the college, stories which she did not
believe; but which every one in the town seemed to credit.

The Deacon, who was intimate with Dr. Devereux, the good boy’s father,
had the stories fresh and fresh every week; and duly, in his morning
prayers, he requested that the youth of Oldbury should be kept clear
from the contamination involved in association with this black sheep.
He was not so urgent in his prayers that the wicked should be brought
back to repentance; for that would interfere with his idea of the
fitness of things, and after all, terrible examples were as necessary
for the young strugglers over the straight path as were sign-posts to
travellers.

Each one of James’ sins was incorporated into the family devotions,
catalogued like obstructions to navigation, and marked to be avoided.
Slothfulness, drunkenness, gambling, were the least of these.

But still the young sinner was right when he imagined that the girl
looked up at his window as she walked down the path, and she was
rewarded by a glimpse of his face. His heart gave a great bound and he
started to run down the stairs to join her. But he stopped himself. It
would be better to wait until the silver had been returned. Then for
the first time it occurred to him that its return might be associated
in the Deacon’s mind with his coming back to the town. That would be
awkward, but what if it was? He had promised his uncle, and he might
as well carry out the promise now. He could not leave the silver in his
room and return to Cambridge. He was in for the adventure and must see
it through.

And so he seated himself by the window and watched until Alice returned
from her walk. She did not look up at the window this time. Was she
provoked because he had not joined her? How could she be, when she had
written him that she could not see him? Still, he would have followed
her, if it had not been for the silver in the closet. But Alice, of
course, knew nothing of that; and like any true woman, she had not
expected her sweetheart to be so little adventurous. She was forbidden
to meet him, but he was not forbidden to meet her, and if he sought her
company, how could she run away from him as if he were a pestilence?
His conduct, she thought, was worse than any of the gossips had made it
out. He was inconstant and cowardly, and he ought to have known that it
was her pen only that wrote the letter to him--not her heart. “Boys are
so stupid,” she thought, as she opened the front door. “If I were a man
and a girl had a thousand grandfathers, and each one of them forbade my
seeing her, I should not mind.”

Ah, Uncle Tom, your fatal booty did not finish its evil work when it
forced you from your father’s home and from the only woman who ever
loved you.

The sun coursed over the heavens; the shadows began to fall. James ate
his supper with his aunt in silence, and again sought his chamber.
Indeed, he dreaded lest, during his absence from it, some one should
find the silver.

He watched the light in the Deacon’s sitting-room, and it seemed an age
before it went out and the bedroom lights were lighted and darkened in
their turn. The church bells tolled the hours, at the infinite spaces
of time apart at which they reverberate to a man tossing in a sleepless
bed.

He had chosen midnight as the best hour for house-breaking, and
finally the cracked bell of the meeting-house, where his grandfather
had preached all his life, reluctantly struck out the hour. At the
last stroke, he put on a broad-brimmed hat, wound a tippet several
times around the lower part of his face, so that he could not be
recognized,--and took up his heavy carpet-bag.

The house was still, but his father might be awake in his sick-room.
He crawled down-stairs stealthily. It seemed to him that he did not
make a sound, and that he was a clever apprentice at the black art of
burglary. The back door of the Deacon’s house opened readily as he
leaned against it, but he was startled at the noise which the washer
made as it fell upon the floor. He waited for some minutes to discover
whether the noise of this accident had started any of the sleepers
in the house, but there was not a sound to be heard--except the loud
ticking of the kitchen clock. It was not a dark night, although it was
moonless, and he could see well enough to pick his way through the
kitchen through the entry to the dining-room. Over this same path had
his uncle gone when he went to steal the silver.

The dining-room was soon gained. It was a solemn place at that hour
of the night. The Deacon’s great arm-chair at the head of the table
seemed a personification of the stern old man who occupied it three
times every day. High-backed and grim it stood at the head of the dark
dining-table, like a cheerless host presiding at funeral baked meats.

[Illustration: “JAMES TURNED AS HE HEARD THE NOISE.”]

After his first tremor at this whimsical resemblance, James
proceeded to his work. He opened the carpet-bag, and was hurriedly
placing the silver piece by piece upon the sideboard, when the door
opened, and there stood the Deacon, a candle in one hand, a pistol in
the other--a more grim-looking figure than the old man, in his long
white night-gown and high night-cap, cannot be imagined. James turned
as he heard the noise, and stood still for a moment in terror at the
dreadful apparition.

The Deacon said never a word, but, raising his pistol, fired--and
James, not knowing whether he was hit or not, hurled the heavy tankard
which he held in his hand straight at the old man’s head.

The boy’s aim was truer than the man’s; for the bullet crashed
harmlessly into the sideboard, while the tankard struck the Deacon
upon the forehead and he fell heavily upon the floor, the pistol and
candlestick dropping from his grasp as he fell.

There was the sound of hurrying feet in the chambers overhead, and
James, not stopping to see what had happened, fled like a deer to the
kitchen, out the door into the yard, and over the hill towards the
Boston road.

As James rushed from the dining-room, Alice and her mother ran down the
stair-way. By the time they reached the bottom, all was quiet in the
dark room beyond.

They heard the rush of hurrying feet in the passageway leading to the
kitchen. The two women stood clutching each other, not daring to enter
the room. Then they heard an uneasy stir and a heavy groan from the
dining-room. Mrs. Pickering, forgetting the darkness and the danger,
ran into the room and her feet stumbled over her father’s prostrate
form.

“Father! father! They have killed him--You have killed him, whoever you
are!” she cried to the thief, whom she imagined to be hiding in the
corner.

Alice hastened to her mother. “Where is he, mother?”

“Strike at light, child. They will not murder two women, the cowards.”

Alice ran back to the hall table where the bedroom candles were kept,
and lighted one. The old man stirred again and tried to raise himself
from the floor.

“He’s not dead, mother!” said Alice. “Was he shot?”

“I cannot tell; he has a cut on his forehead.” Alice caught sight of
the pistol and picked it up. “We heard only one shot and grandfather’s
pistol was fired. He must have been struck by the burglar--”

Her eye caught sight of the tankard, which had rolled under the table.

“By this tankard,” she exclaimed.

“Where did it come from? We have none like it, and see, the sideboard
is covered with silver that doesn’t belong to us.”

Mrs. Pickering glanced quickly at the tankard and recognized it at
once. She had her father’s head on her knee and was wiping the blood
from his forehead.

“Get some water, Alice,” she said. “He’s not dead. He will come to in a
minute.”

“But the burglars?” inquired Alice.

“They will not harm us. They are far away by this time.”

Alice brought the water and a napkin, and her mother bathed the
contusion. The old man presently opened his eyes and called out: “Stop
there, you thief--Is he dead? Did I kill him? What’s the matter,
Mary? Why am I here? Oh, I remember the burglar. He stood there by the
sideboard robbing the silver. I never expected to get a shot at him.
It was he. I recognized him, your old lover, Mary, that wretched Tom
Cheever. You start, eh! ’Twas he, girl, I swear; I shall follow him
till he is in jail, in spite of his father, the minister. I don’t care
for him, not I.”

He was quiet after this outbreak and seemed to grow unconscious again.

“Can we two women get him to his bed? Call to the maid, Alice.”

“She will never come, mother; she’s such a coward, and her head must be
deep under the bedclothes.”

“Perhaps I can arouse him--put his great-coat around him, dear, and I
will bathe his head--poor father! it was a cruel blow. Go up-stairs,
Alice, and send the maid down.”

“I shall go and arouse James Woodbury, mamma. He’s at home.”

“Yes, I know that he’s at home,” said Mrs. Pickering, shortly. “Call to
him.”

“It will disturb his father,” said Alice, remembering for the first
time her scanty costume. “I shall go and wake up Hannah.” Lighting
another candle, she sped up to the maid’s room and tried the knob. The
door was locked; there was not a sound heard from within.

“Hannah!” she called.

Still there was no sound.

“Hannah!” she called again, “there have been thieves in the house!”

“Lord a-massy me!” came in a feeble treble from within. The voice was
muffled as if from under many blankets.

“They have half killed poor grandfather.”

“Land sakes alive!”

“But they have gone now, and you must come down and help us to get him
back to bed, and go with me for the doctor.”

“I never could do such a thing and thieves in the house.”

“They are not in the house, Hannah, I tell you! You must come--I do not
see how you can be such a coward.”

Alice went to her bedroom and put on her wrapper, and brought her
mother’s down-stairs to her.

And soon Hannah came down the stairs, jumping at every shadow, and
almost sick with terror. When she saw the Deacon lying upon the floor,
with a bleeding wound upon his forehead, she gave a loud scream, and
sank upon the stair-way in a swoon.

The Deacon happened at that minute to come to, and he immediately
jumped to his feet; for, after all, his wounds, like Jack’s, gained
in his tumble with Gill, were of the kind which could be mended with
“vinegar and brown paper.” The concussion had deprived him of his
senses for a few minutes, and he had now only a bruise and a headache.
He looked for a while at the two women, then over to the sideboard.

“The silver! all the stolen silver returned! what does it mean?”

“You had better come up to bed; you will catch cold, father,” urged his
daughter, pulling at his sleeve.

He broke away from her, and he saw the tankard which had broken his
head.

“Uncle Dudley’s tankard! Why, Tom Cheever stole it--I fired at the
burglar to-night--Yes, there is the bullet-hole in the sideboard,
and all of the silver returned, every bit of it; the two tankards,
the bowl, the forks and spoons. This is a great mystery, a special
providence.”

“Come to bed, father,” urged Mrs. Pickering.

“I feel a draught from the passage,” he replied; “the thief must have
entered and escaped by that way.” Taking up a candle, he went upon the
trail through the open doors. “He made his entrance through the kitchen
door,” he announced. “Hannah must have left it unlocked. No; he forced
his entrance--I do not see how he could have done it without making a
noise which would wake the dead.”

The Deacon pulled a dresser against the disabled door and returned to
the dining-room. Hannah by this time had recovered from her swoon, and
partially recovered from her terror. The difference between having a
live protector in the house and the body of a murdered man, restored
her to her senses.

“Now, all you women, go up to bed,” said the Deacon, when he had
barricaded his castle. “There’s some way of explaining this night’s
work, and I think that if anybody can see through a millstone when
there’s a hole in it, I can.”

The women did as they were bid, and the Deacon packed the newly
recovered treasures into a basket and brought it to his room and put it
in the closet.

But the Deacon’s wounded head was aching so shrewdly that he was not in
a benign frame of mind. The silver had come back, but the man who had
brought it had done its owner evil.

“It must be some of that Cheever brood,” ejaculated the old man, as he
blew out the candle and laid his aching head upon the pillow. “Nephew
or uncle, I don’t know which--Satan’s brood, in either event. The boy
is in town to see his sick father, so he had the opportunity.” And he
lay through the watches of the night puzzling over the mystery and
making plans for the righteous punishment of poor James.




XI


The Bell-in-Hand Tavern in Boston was never a cheerful place. It was
on a dark, narrow alley and the sunlight never peeped into its dingy
tap-room. But when the lamps were lighted at night, its customers, used
to its twilight atmosphere, blinked in the unusual glare, and called
for some liquids to brighten themselves up so that they might be in
more harmony with the new state of things. There were very few of these
melancholy loungers seated about the dingy bar on the evening of May
27, 1813; for the town was agog with the preparations for the fitting
out of the frigate _Chesapeake_ to fight H. M. S. _Shannon_.

The British ship had been standing on and off outside the harbor mouth
for some days, and it was known that Captain James Lawrence of the
_Chesapeake_ meant to give him battle. The usual customers of the
Bell-in-Hand were down at the wharves, grave with the responsibility
so willingly adopted by self-constituted sidewalk committees of
inspection; and only one applied for a mug of ale when the landlord had
finished the illumination of his dingy hostelry.

“In a moment, Mr. Marks,” said the landlord. “The usual, I suppose?”

“No, I shall have some Medford to-night; I wish to drink good luck to
the _Chesapeake_ in right Yankee liquor.”

“Surely, Mr. Marks, and I will join you in that. In fact, I don’t mind
standing the drinks myself, considering the subject of the toast.”

“Don’t ruin yourself, Tenney,” said Marks, with a smile; for the
landlord was celebrated for his close-fistedness.

“Help yourself, Captain Marks,” was the reply; “drink hearty. Here’s to
brave Lawrence and his crew.”

“And a precious mixed lot they are, Isaac; forty British sailors
and a gang of Portuguese, though, to be sure, there are some of
the _Constitution’s_ old crew, and some of the men who were on the
_Chesapeake_ on her last voyage. Four of the officers are sick ashore,
and young Ludlow is first lieutenant.”

“But they’ll give a good account of themselves, don’t you fear,”
answered Isaac, draining his glass of rum.

“Lawrence is as brave a man as ever trod a deck,” said Marks. “My
bargain’s off with Vickery and I settled up accounts with him to-day.
I’ve a mind to ship on the _Chesapeake_ and have a crack against John
Bull on a man-of-war.”

“Settled up with Vickery, have you?” inquired the landlord. “You must
have made a good thing out of your year’s work.”

“’Tisn’t as good a trade as selling rum, Isaac, I’ll bet a dollar! The
ocean is not as easy to navigate as Pie Alley, and your customers come
in and beg to be robbed, and at times mine make a hard fight before
they give up their cash. I cleaned up a good sum for the year and sold
out my interest in the privateer, and the whole sum is deposited to
my name in the Suffolk Bank. Now, you keep the bank-book for me, will
you?” He produced the pass-book from his inner pocket, and at the same
time took out a sealed envelope.

“There’s the book and there’s an envelope in which I sealed up my own
will. I went to a lawyer Mason to-day and had it drawn. It’s short, but
I guess it’s good, like your rum, Isaac.”

The publican took the book and envelope.

“Why, this says Thomas Cheever?” he said, as he examined them.

“I’m Tom Marks on the privateer, and Tom Cheever on shore. It suits me.
When you go to your home up at the North End, you read prayers and go
to church o’ Sundays, though you are destroying human beings with rum
all the week. Take good care of these papers, Isaac, and if anything
happens to me, you must write to my sole heir, Mr. James Woodbury,
Hollis Hall, Harvard College, Cambridge, and tell him that if he comes
to the Bell-in-Hand he will hear of something to his advantage. I’ve
made you executor, and if anything happens to me on shore, where folks
leave their bodies to be an expense to all hands, don’t you forget that
I have a lot and a ready-carved gravestone in the burying-ground at
Oldbury. Don’t stare, old fellow, I was killed in Venezuela years ago.
That is, Tom Cheever was, and Tom Marks arose from his ashes like the
fabled Phœnix. But when it comes to making wills or putting money in
the bank, it saves a lot of trouble to do it in your right name. D’ye
see?”

Marks, after this long address, settled in a chair and looked vacantly
in the corner. The landlord put the book and envelope in his strong box
and came back to the bar.

“What on earth, Mr. Cheever, do you want to go to risk your life
fighting with that madcap Lawrence, when you are so well off?”

“The world is divided, my dear Isaac, into two classes; the first, a
very large part of the human race, those who would rather eat than
fight; the saving minority, of which I am one, would rather fight
than eat. You see how sparely built I am? I never have had an ounce
of superfluous flesh. Then, too, it’s like the days of chivalry. The
_Shannon_ hovers outside the port. Broke is spoiling for a fight.
Lawrence is not half ready, worse luck, but he is not the man to baulk
a gentleman of an affair of honor because he is not prepared to the
last cartridge. It’s grand, my good Isaac; it stirs one’s blood, and
it would be better to fall on the bloody deck than to keep out of such
a noble contest when you have a chance. What does it matter whether
I have the opportunity of coming in to drink rum in your dirty old
tap-room for twenty years more, or whether I pass in my prize checks
to-morrow or the day after? Take the chances of war, Isaac, that’s my
motto.”

Isaac gave no enthusiastic assent to this view of life. The Falstaffian
theory of honor is one much approved by most citizens who have never
ventured from their shops. The greasy publican was quite willing to
await his appointed time, in a daily round of drawing ale and measuring
out spirits, as was the court jester, who, when allowed to choose his
form of execution, chose a natural death.

“Well, Captain,” drawled Isaac, “I’ll give up all my share of the
fighting to you. I have no fancy for a cutlass-slash on the head, or
the gripe of a boarding-pike in my insides. This quarrelsome world
doesn’t seem to get tired of fighting. Boney keeps them all at it
in Europe, and even we Yankees can’t keep out of the squabble, and
precious little good it will do us, that I can see. Of course, if a
man isn’t happy unless he leaves a comfortable house ashore to go out
to plunge about in a sea-fight, there’s no holding him.”

“You are right, Isaac,” said Cheever. “There’s as much difference
between you and me as there is between the moon and green cheese, and
each of us must go his own way. Maybe there’s a cutlass in some English
boatswain’s scabbard which will cleave my cocoanut before the week’s
out. But, on the other hand, it may be fated that my cutlass shall do
the cleaving. In either event, friend Isaac, I drink your health and
prosperity to you; may your pew in church not lack your bodily presence
for many a year, and may the trade in rum be good. By the way, have you
done anything in the black ivory business of late?”

Isaac’s solemn face grew graver still. “I have long since given up that
business,” he replied.

“You made a good thing out of the triangular trade while it lasted, old
weasel,” said Cheever. “Niggers from Africa, bought with molasses and
rum, sold for sugar in Cuba, the return cargo distilled into raw liquid
salvation for the Africans. ’Twas a good trade while it lasted--Lord,
the money we made! but the ‘middle passage’ was hard for any man to run
who had any milk of human kindness in his blood.”

“But the Africans are brought out of savagery to civilization and
religion,” said Isaac.

“You are right, Isaac,” replied Cheever. “We all went into the business
for its civilizing effects upon the niggers! But it’s a heavy load on
my soul, Friend Isaac, and not all your long prayers will wipe out your
black score up above, I reckon.”

With this Parthian shot at the publican, Cheever sallied out of the
dingy tap-room into Pie Alley, a narrow, ill-smelling way leading into
Washington Street; and down that street to the Exchange Coffee House in
State Street, where Captain James Lawrence of the United States Navy
had his headquarters.

He had been ordered in from New York, where he had expected to be put
into command of the frigate _Constitution_, and had much against his
will been given the command of the _Chesapeake_.

That frigate, ever since the insult which she had received from the
British frigate _Leopard_, had been regarded by sailors as an unlucky
ship--a cruise which she had just completed had been barren of prizes
and thus added to her unpopularity, so that it was very hard to recruit
a crew for her.

Lawrence was a gallant officer, who had felt that he had been somewhat
badly treated by the Navy department; for he had claimed the command
of the _Constitution_ almost as a right and had been refused. When he
reached Boston to take his new command, he found everything at sixes
and sevens.

It was very hard to get sailors; most of the seafaring men preferring
to ship in some of the numerous privateers, where the discipline
was less strict and the chance of prize-money much greater. It was
necessary to ship many foreigners in the _Chesapeake_, and forty
British sailors were on the ship’s books, engaged to fight their own
flag; besides these, a number of Portuguese seamen had been shipped.
These last were very troublesome. But a few of the _Constitution’s_
old crew came aboard, and these, together with some of the men who had
been on the _Chesapeake_ during her former voyage, made an excellent
nucleus.

Captain Lawrence and his first officer, Mr. Ludlow, were in
consultation in the Captain’s quarters at the Exchange Coffee House.
The Captain was thirty-two years old, a remarkably tall and handsome
man, distinguished for his charming manners and great gallantry. He was
by no means serene in mind as he talked with his subordinate, and he
brought his hand down rather sharply on the table as he said:

“Commodore Bainbridge doesn’t wish me to engage the _Shannon_. He says
that is a rash and unnecessary risk. But hang it, man, I can’t avoid
a fight, after having challenged the _Bonne Citoyenne_ last year and
having waited for her as Broke is waiting for me now in the _Shannon_
off Boston harbor. How can I decline the fight? It would be to show
that I was a vain braggart before.”

“If we only had had time to train our crew,” replied Ludlow, “I should
not fear but that we should give a good account of ourselves. But the
new hands are green at their work, and it is hard to make a crew work
together, when most of them have just put their hammocks aboard.”

“Oh, well, Ludlow,” said Lawrence, “we might have a better crew, but
we’ve a lot of good men aboard. The officers are mostly new to the
ship, a gallant lot of youngsters; I’m as new to the ship as any of
them, and I have no doubt that every green hand means to do his best,
just as I do. I have been here a fortnight trying to get the old
sailors to re-enlist. It’s a shame there should be all this row about
the prize-money.”

“It’s most unfortunate that their two years’ term was up before we
reached Boston last April,” said Ludlow. “Then Uncle Sam made such a
mess of our past allowance of prize-money that we couldn’t induce the
men to ship in the unlucky old frigate.”

“Unlucky frigate! Never say that, Mr. Ludlow. It’s ill to give a dog a
bad name; the animal never has a pleasant ending. We shall do Broke up
as easily as the _Constitution_ did the _Guerrière_, I have no doubt.
The _Chesapeake_ is a good ship and a good name.”

“Yes, as good as any. But we had such bad luck with prizes on our last
cruise, and sailors are the most superstitious of men.” Lawrence rose
from his chair and walked up and down the room; his thoughts were with
his young wife in New York, whom he was never to see again. There was a
knock at the door and a servant announced that a man waited outside to
see Captain Lawrence.

“Show him in,” said Ludlow, noticing that his chief was lost in his
reverie. In a few minutes Cheever entered the room, bowing to the
gentleman rather obsequiously.

“What is your business, sir?” asked Ludlow.

“I have come to volunteer as one of the crew of the _Chesapeake_,”
replied Cheever. “I have lately served as mate and part owner of the
privateer _Lion_ of Marblehead.”

“You are welcome, sir,” said Mr. Ludlow. “Have you served on a
man-of-war before?”

“Once, on board of His Majesty’s Ship _Tenedos_. I was taken off a
Yankee ship as a British subject. So I have a few private scores to pay
off.”

“We should have little trouble in filling our ship’s company if every
man with such a grudge should come with us.”

“So you wish to ship on the _Chesapeake_,” said Captain Lawrence,
coming out of his reverie.

“As an A. B., if you please, sir,” replied Cheever. “I’m qualified for
that. Where shall I report for duty?”

“At Battery Wharf,” replied Mr. Ludlow. “What’s your name?”

“Thomas Marks.”

“Report to-morrow morning, and if you can get any of your old
ship-mates on the _Lion_ to join with you, why, so much the better.
Good night, Marks.”

Cheever left the two officers, and went below to the large coffee room,
which he found full of loungers, and all, whatever their condition in
life, were eagerly discussing the approaching sea-fight.

The eager crowds in a New York hotel on the eve of a yacht race for the
“America’s” cup would be more excited still if the morrow’s contest
were to be a duel between a British and a Yankee ship.

The dogs of war had not troubled the good old town of Boston since
Washington’s guns on Dorchester Heights had forced the evacuation of
the town. The sons of Massachusetts had fought on many a field, but no
enemy had menaced the Bay State. It may be in that group of steady old
merchants there were some of the famous tea-party; or others who had
held their fire at Bunker Hill until they saw the whites of the enemy’s
eye. Certainly there were seafaring men enough, and some of these
clinked about their money and stood treat, like the genuine article of
buccaneer. One of a group of these gentry hailed Marks.

“Come over here, ‘Stuttering Tom,’” he cried; “I was telling these
fellows that Captain Broke’s men on the _Shannon_ have been taking a
leaf out of our Yankee men-of-war’s books; and that they have been
practising gunnery during all this year. It will be a pretty fight
between the two frigates. I should like to see it.”

“Why don’t you come along in the _Chesapeake_? Her deck will be the
best point of view. You are not afraid of British guns, are you? Unless
you are up aloft, their shot would never reach you.”

“I like British gold better than British iron and lead, Tom. There are
more kicks than half-pence in the government service.”

“But, man, think of the sport of a square stand-up fight!”

“And the surgeon waiting for you below the cock-pit, with his
knife. No, Friend Marks, have a drink with us to the success of the
_Chesapeake_, but you and I get in our best work under a ‘letter of
marque.’”

“It’s a service that pays,” replied Cheever, “but has something of the
smack of robbing sleek merchants in an alleyway. Now, under the ‘Jolly
Roger’ there are agreeable diversions between man and man, when they
make the division of the spoils that kept one’s muscle firm and one’s
nerves in condition.”

“You are speaking out of a larger experience than most of us have had,
Marks,” said another of the privateersmen.

“Yes, and it will be larger before the week is out, my friend.”

“What are you going to do, Marks, turn parson?”

“I came very near being a sky-pilot once, but I was not built that way.
Now I have run down hill until I find myself consorting with roystering
sailors in a tavern.”




XII


When James did not appear at seven o’clock breakfast the next morning,
his aunt, after waiting some ten minutes for him, went to his chamber.
Her repeated knocks at the door brought no response; and after some
delay caused by the reserve of an old maid, she opened the door of the
room. There was the bed undisturbed by any sleeper, and in the corner a
portmanteau, and on the bureau toilet articles. James had not occupied
the room and he was not in the house, although his baggage was.
Surely, with his father lying ill in bed, he would be up to no evil
prank,--even he, the wicked young collegian.

What could it all mean? The poor old lady returned to her breakfast,
and sipped her tea, and munched a tiny bit of toast. The boy would be
back soon, she said to herself, though all the time she felt within her
that he would not.

All through his life she had worried over him so much; he had died a
thousand deaths in her mind’s eye; but this time it was no cry of wolf;
something was not well with the lad; and she loved him so much, and
yet she had shown him little love. Her nature was not expansive, and
she could not make others appreciate her real kindliness. This boy she
had cared for since his mother’s death; he was her only brother’s only
child, and his father lay ill up-stairs.

The evidence of the unused bed was strong that he had been out all the
night before, and it was most strange that he should go away at a time
when there was illness in the house, so that his presence might be
required at any moment. He might have gone down the river, of course,
but he could hardly think of doing that at such a time.

The poor old lady was almost choked by her dry toast, and her tea
was no comfort to her; and when that cheering beverage failed Miss
Woodbury, matters were becoming serious. How could she explain matters
to her brother? He was fretful in his convalescence and he expected his
son to be with him. All through his illness, his mind had dwelt upon
the boy; and she had heard him praying for him in the still watches of
the night, that his feet might be kept from straying and that he be
delivered from temptation; and she had heard the sick man call out in
his troubled sleep, “The miniature! How like! How like!”

And now the boy had disappeared. He had seemed preoccupied, she
remembered, during the last few days; something was in his mind. What
could he have done? It was not possible that he should do anything
wrong--and yet something must have happened to him.

Her painful conjectures were interrupted by three sharp knocks at the
front door; and the poor old lady sprang from her chair and faltered to
the drawing-room. “News from James,” she whispered to herself, “news
from James.” She sat bolt upright in her chair awaiting the maid’s
entrance.

In a moment the Deacon came into the drawing-room. Miss Woodbury rose
and curtsied primly, and as she did so noticed a black plaster cross
on his forehead and a great welt on his nose. These unexpected marks
of conflict were instantly connected in her mind, by some instinctive
process of the brain, with James’ disappearance. She was to hear
something; and it was important that she should have all her wits about
her.

[Illustration: “‘WE CANNOT BE TOO CAREFUL AT OUR AGE, MISS WOODBURY.’”]

The Deacon had driven the uncle from town; could it be that the nephew
was caught in his toils?

“Miss Woodbury,” said the Deacon, bowing, “how is your brother this
morning?”

“Very weak, but out of danger for the present,” she replied. “Will you
not be seated, sir?”

“I thank you, madam. I am pleased to hear that he is improving in
health. Sixty-five, is he not? Just five years younger than I. We
cannot be too careful at our age, Miss Woodbury.”

She was on pins and needles as to what she should say about the
extraordinary plasters and swellings which disfigured his ordinarily
smooth face. It was, of course, etiquette that she should inquire into
the cause of such a blow as the Deacon had received, and yet she felt
that in asking any question she would be treading upon delicate ground.

“You do not seem to have been as careful of yourself as usual, Deacon
Fairbanks?” she finally said, her eyes twinkling a little; for we are
all delighted by plasters on the faces of others, and even acquire a
certain pride in those on our own visages.

He hurriedly put his hand to his forehead and frowned, but the last
instinctive movement was painful.

“I have had a blow,” he remarked with a hard voice.--“Is your nephew
James in the house?”

The question came like an arrow from the bow.

“No; he is not,” answered Miss Woodbury, without a moment’s hesitation.

“Where is he?”

“He has gone down the river in his boat, shooting,” replied the old
lady, with calm deliberation. “He went yesterday afternoon.”

“How do you know that he went then?” asked the Deacon, still rubbing
his forehead.

“Because I saw him sailing down the bay when I was down at the
fish-monger’s on Lunt’s Wharf,” she replied.

“He must have returned before you knew it, then,” said Fairbanks,
harshly; “for he broke into my house like a common burglar last night
and I owe this blow to him.”

The old lady rose solemnly from her chair, and said slowly, “Deacon
Fairbanks, you have no right to come into a gentleman’s house and make
such an accusation against his son!”

“I know whereof I speak, woman,” insisted the Deacon. “I was waked by
the noise of some one moving in the dining-room. I went down-stairs
with a pistol, and when I entered the dining-room I saw James standing
by my sideboard removing my silver. I fired--”

“Fired at my boy!” exclaimed the wretched old lady.

“Ah, you admit that it was he,” exclaimed the Deacon, triumphantly.

“Nothing of the kind, sir--nothing of the kind; did you hit the
burglar?”

“I do not know, for the next moment I was struck a terrific blow, and
fell senseless.”

“And what evidence have you that the boy was entering your house to
steal your silver, I should like to know, Deacon Fairbanks? I know,
he knows, and all Oldbury knows that you have had nothing better than
Sheffield ware in your house since you were robbed in ’96.”

“Yes, robbed by the boy’s uncle; of the same old breed,” he interrupted.

“Why should the boy enter your house when he knows that there’s nothing
there to steal?”

“He might have supposed there was money.”

“He never went there at all,” said Miss Woodbury, quietly. “You have
always hated my brother, Elisha Fairbanks, because everybody respected
and loved him, and it is needless to say in what esteem you are held
in a community where you have devoured widows’ houses for forty years.
I tell you that, bad and worthless as Tom Cheever was, whose foolish
vices drew him to ruin, he is as an angel from heaven in comparison
with you; and when you tell me that James Woodbury, my boy James, is a
thief, you lie wickedly, you wretched old man.”

No living soul had ever seen the slender old lady aroused to such a
frenzy. She was fighting out the battle for the two human beings who
made up her world, for the sick man up-stairs and for her boy, and gain
it she would.

“You have fallen and hurt yourself and have invented this to ruin my
boy and to bring your neighbor’s gray hairs in sorrow to the grave.”

“I am very sorry to see you so angry,” he replied in his softest tones,
“very sorry, indeed; and I pardon you for your violent language. I
shall now bid you a very good morning, madam. When your nephew returns
from his delightful excursion down the river, I hope that I shall have
the pleasure of seeing him.”

Miss Woodbury did not reply. She looked at the man with absolute
contempt, and his retreat from the room was far from dignified. She
stood rigid until she heard the front door slam, and then slipped upon
her poor old knees and buried her head in a sofa pillow and wept; she
who could have faced an army but a minute before.

The Deacon stalked down the long passage between the great elms,
revolving black thoughts in his heart. The bruises on his forehead and
nose were very painful and the incident had thrown together all his old
enmities against these his neighbors into a crystallized hate.




XIII


The _Chesapeake_ lay in the upper harbor in the still June twilight,
her lofty spars and rigging traced against the sky. The unlucky frigate
was all bustle and confusion.

Even at this late hour, with her antagonist cruising in the lower
harbor, fresh levies were being put aboard of her, and the old
_Constitution’s_ men shook their heads as they saw the dark-browed,
scowling Portuguese and the raw youths picked up at random to piece out
the crew.

But Lawrence had sent a taunting challenge to the _Bonne Citoyenne_,
and he could not afford to baulk a British ship of a fight at the
very gates of the Puritan mother-town. Down this harbor, in 1776, the
British fleet had sailed, bearing the last evidence of King George’s
power over the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It should never be said that a
Yankee ship had faltered when the meteor flag of Britain waved defiance
at the very mouth of the famous “tea-pot.”

“Then all cavaliers who love honor and me,” was the burden of the
gallant Lawrence’s song. Honor it was indeed to win; honor even to lose
in this duel on the sea.

Everywhere the officers were busy assigning men to the guns and
appointing temporary warrant officers. Cheever, an old hand, if
somewhat of a free lance, had been assigned to the mizzen-top under
Midshipman Berry, a handsome young fellow who would in less stirring
times have been playing “rounders” in the school-yard; but was now set
to command grown men in a desperate contest.

Before the fair-haired youngster were standing the foretop men, going
through a hurried setting-up drill and instruction in the use of the
musket. A lieutenant came up, followed by a young sailor.

“Mr. Berry,” said the officer, “here is a greenhorn to complete your
squad.”

The sailor saluted and took his place in the squad. As Berry handed him
a musket, Cheever looked at the newcomer from the corner of his eye,
and recognized his nephew. The boy looked up and caught his eye and
started as he saw who was looking at him.

“What has brought him here?” Cheever asked himself as he mechanically
obeyed the orders of the midshipman.

Presently the squad was dismissed and Cheever drew his nephew aside out
of the hurly-burly of warlike preparation.

“How now, lad!” he asked, “what does this mean? How come you here?”

The words came out with difficulty from his convulsed throat.

“I have been walking from Oldbury for the last two days. I--”

“You’re in trouble on my account. The silver,--tell me.”

“I returned it as I promised you.”

“You found it then under the lilac-bush?” asked Cheever.

James nodded assent.

“While I was putting it back upon the sideboard, the old man came down
from his chamber and fired at me with a pistol.”

“Did he recognize you?”

“I don’t know. As he fired, I heaved the heavy tankard at him, and it
hit him and he fell like a log.”

“Ay, that’s the ticket, lad,” said Cheever. “I have always said that.
I wouldn’t give a red cent for pistol in a fight. There’s not one
chance in five of hitting your man. Your hand will shake when you
are excited unless a cooler head than mine is on your shoulders. The
slightest tremor will make you lose your aim. But for accidental
killing, recommend me to the pistol. ’Twill always fail to meet your
expectation. If you think it is not loaded, it will be, and while it
will not protect you from your enemy, it will be sure to hit your
friend.”

“I ran out of the house as fast as I could and made right over the
hill, back of his house to the Boston turnpike.”

“You don’t know whether you really hurt him, then?”

“I think now that I could only have knocked him senseless. At the time,
though, I was chased by fears and walked all the rest of the night as
fast as I could. I had no idea except to escape from Oldbury--and my
father is lying there ill,” exclaimed the boy, with a sudden twinge of
conscience. “I have been on the road ever since, sleeping in haymows;
and I have eaten what the farmers’ wives would give me; but the weather
was fine, and if I could have shut out recollection, I should have
enjoyed it.”

“However did the whim to have the silver returned come into my head?”
said Cheever. “I would not have had this happen for the world, boy.
I seem to bring misfortune on all I touch--and your father ill. He
will have a big tally to put on my old score. But it may not be as
black as it looks. Perhaps the old Deacon’s crown is not cracked
and he will rejoice more over the return of his silver than he will
grieve over his bruises. But you shouldn’t have run away. That will
arouse their suspicions. They know that you have been at home, that
you are not there now, and that you have taken no place on any coach
leaving Oldbury. Hence, they will conclude that you have taken French
leave, and that, too, on the night of the breaking and entering of the
Deacon’s house.”

“I know all that,” replied James. “I have thought it over a thousand
times as I walked along the turnpike and keeping my eyes well out
for the Oldbury coach. But it is too late to turn back now. I am an
apprentice on a Yankee frigate and it’s the day before an action.”

“How came you to ship?”

“I had hardly been in Boston five minutes before my eye fell upon one
of the posters calling for sailors for the _Chesapeake_. I found the
officer willing enough to take me. Indeed, I was put on board within an
hour of my going into the shipping office.”

“And a bad lookout it is for us both. A half of the crew are good
hands, but there are mutinous Dagoes aboard, who care no more for the
Stars and Stripes than they do for an old sail, and the rest are a
pack of youngsters like you, full of pluck and anxious to fight, but
too green for much use. But the old man has his dander up, and by
to-morrow night there may be such happenings that I may as well arrange
my affairs decently and in good order to-night. We may both get out of
this alive or one of us may be killed. If it’s I, I wish to tell you
what to do. I have made a will which will give you all I have left.
Isaac Tenney, who keeps the Bell-in-Hand tavern in Boston, has all the
papers.

“I had rare luck in the privateering, James. Dame Fortune seems to have
wearied of turning the cold shoulder upon me, and during the last year
the sum which your father sent me has waxed as fast as a sailor’s wages
wane when he first strikes a port. It’s all deposited in the bank, and
that’s all for you if I don’t come out of the fight. If I do, you’ll
never be the better for it. Good luck won’t stick to me long, I fear.
I don’t know whether it would be good or ill fortune to be knocked on
the head to-morrow. The money might give me a chance again. Nearly ten
thousand dollars! What do you think of that for a man who had only a
slim leather bag a year ago when he came up from the brig _Tempest_ to
your father’s house?”

James was not listening to his uncle’s monologue. He was by his
father’s bedside and he was saying to himself, “I have brought his gray
hairs in sorrow to the grave.”

“The Deacon has started the hue and cry before this,” said James.

“When it is known that you were returning the silver, the charge will
drop to the ground,” replied Cheever.

“And the blow with the tankard!”

“That would never kill him, and, by the same token, he shot at you
first. You have, after all, done well in shipping on this frigate.
If we take the _Shannon_, we shall be the heroes of the day, and any
little faults will be forgiven.”

“And if they take us?” said James.

“Then most of us will be summoned before a Higher Court, my boy, and
will at least die fighting for our country. You’ve not forgotten where
to go if you come out alive? The tavern Bell-in-Hand.”

“For your money, uncle? I don’t want it.”

“It’s yours, my boy, whether I live or die. You have earned all you
wish to take of it. I have brought you into these toils and perhaps
ruined your life, and have exposed you to awful danger, and you a
minister to be. I was once to be a parson, too, and your grandfather
was proud of me. I was quick at my books, too. He kept a tight hand on
me, did your grandfather. On the surface I was pious; and I learned
my catechism and went to Sabbath-school and to prayer-meetings and to
church. They did everything for me that they could to make the holiest
of ministers, and I--”

He laughed a little bitter laugh.

“I was not all bad, though, my boy; nobody is. There are oases in every
desert, fresh, cool places where seeds grow to be plants and the birds
sing. I have a natural taste for making sermons, you see. I have heard
enough in my day. But the discipline was too rigid, and no allowance
was made for the devil in me.”

For human nature did not change when it crossed the Atlantic with our
Puritan forefathers, and it crops out even in ministers’ sons. “They
brought me up piously,” continued Cheever, “but they did not cast the
devil out. I went to church with due regularity, but the chances were
that I had been cock-fighting on the Saturday night before, and I went
to the tavern far oftener than I went to prayer-meetings. I was daft
when I took that silver. I was not naturally a thief, but I was weak
and owing money, and gave way to the temptation. I might as well have
stolen an old Revolutionary cannon. I could not dispose of the stuff
after I had possession of it. And I fled and lost everything.”

“As I have,” said James.

“No, you only run the risk of the fight. If you come out unhurt, you
will go back crowned with glory, and tell the town just what happened.
It’s not a serious crime to return a man’s property. You did it in an
odd way, and at a late hour, but you had no evil intent, and if you did
keel the old man over with the tankard, he had fired upon you first.
Oh, you will get into no trouble on that account. We will show the
British what a Yankee ship and a Yankee crew can do to-morrow, and you
will go home with your pockets full of prize-money.”

“Or not at all,” said James.

Cheever looked grave.

“We have opened the wine, James,” he replied; “it must be drunk. Write
your aunt now, tell her the whole story. Don’t mention that I am on
board here. Tell the truth; for that will hold together against the
world, and a lie is like a rat dead in a wall, sure to be found out
before long.”




XIV


The two ships of war were manœuvring that June afternoon in awful
silence, on the blue waters of Massachusetts Bay. Each crew stood at
quarters ready to send the deadly broadsides at the rival frigate
when the word was given. No land was in sight, Boston Light being six
leagues away, and the two ships in the centre of the circle of rippling
water were watched only by the sea-gulls and the broad eye of the sun.
The _Chesapeake_ was coming down very fast on the _Shannon_, under
top-sails and jib, and the British ship was lying to under top-sail,
top-gallant sails, jib, and spanker. Cheever and James, high perched
in the mizzen-top, clutched their muskets tightly as they watched the
great white ensign of the ship float on the breeze, bearing the legend
“Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights.”

The ill-assorted crew of the _Chesapeake_ had taken their stations and
every man was ready for the fight, which must be sharp and murderous,
whether the meteor flag of England or the starry banner was to be
struck. It was late in the afternoon now, and the hours which had
passed since the _Chesapeake_ weighed anchor at noon, seemed like ages
to the boy in the mizzen-top.

Midshipman Randolph, in command, was cheery enough, and had told James,
as they sailed down Boston Bay, of his service on the _Constitution_,
of her victory over the _Guerrière_, and her marvellous escape from the
British fleet in the Sound.

“The _Shannon_ is keeping a close luff,” cried Randolph. “See her
maintop-sail shiver. We can get the weather-gauge on her easy enough.
Look, now we are getting up our foresail and going straight for her
starboard quarter; Lawrence will go under her stern, rake her, and
engage her in the quarter. In a quarter of an hour you’ll see the
splinters fly, my boys.”

On the Yankee ship tore before the fresh breeze, with the great ensign
flying, while the _Shannon_ waited doggedly the attack. Even the
midshipman stopped his chatter as the moment of the first broadside
approached.

The _Chesapeake_, when within fifty yards of her opponent’s starboard
quarter, luffed up and squared her main-yard, and now the two rivals
were almost alongside. A few minutes more of awful silence, while the
two ships forged ahead together, and then James saw a flame shoot out
from the starboard side of the _Shannon_, and at once the broadsides of
both ships roared at each other. The boy felt every nerve in his body
tingle, as the storm broke the awful calm.

Below him was a cloud of smoke and splinters, and as the smoke cleared
away he saw the men working their guns, and dark forms lying by the
wheel in ghastly pools of blood. And so the cannons thundered at each
other gloriously for five minutes, “hot gun-lip kissing gun,” when the
damage to the _Chesapeake’s_ rigging caused her to come up into the
wind somewhat, so as to expose her quarter to a terrible broadside,
which beat in her stern posts and swept the men away like flies from
the after guns. Then came a loud explosion on the American ship’s
quarter-deck, and the flames swept along the deck from the foremast to
the mizzen-mast. The dense smoke blinded and choked the men in the
tops.

Meanwhile the crippled ship had stern-way on and began to pay off, and
the two frigates fell aboard of each other, the _Chesapeake’s_ quarter
pressing on the _Shannon’s_ side just forward the starboard main
chains, and the ships were kept in this position by the _Shannon’s_
anchor catching in the _Chesapeake’s_ quarter-post.

“We are going to board them,” cried Randolph.

“Most likely they will us,” said a surly seaman; “we have had the worst
of it so far.”

“Silence!” shouted Randolph.

The seaman was right; Captain Broke, when the _Shannon_ exposed
her quarter, ran forward, and seeing his foes flinching from the
quarter-deck guns, ordered the ships to be linked together, the firing
to cease, and the boarders to be called.

His boatswain set about fastening the vessels together, though his
right arm was hacked off by a blow from a Yankee cutlass.

Just then Lieutenant Ludlow fell mortally wounded on the _Chesapeake_,
and Lawrence himself on the quarter-deck, fatally conspicuous in his
full-dress uniform and commanding stature, was shot down. He fell down
and was carried below, exclaiming, “Don’t give up the ship!”

Now from the tops of both vessels the fire became hot, and as the
smoke blew away from the two linked ships, James saw the British
Captain Broke at the head of his men, stepping from the _Shannon’s_
gangway rail on to the muzzle of the _Chesapeake’s_ after carronade.
The boy aimed at the British captain and fired; but missed. In a
second Captain Broke, followed by about twenty men, jumped on the
_Chesapeake’s_ quarter-deck, and some of the crew of the American
vessel, the foreign mercenaries and some of the raw natives, deserted
their quarters. The Portuguese boatswain’s mate removed the gratings of
the berth-deck and ran below, followed by many of the crew.

The loss of Lawrence and Ludlow deprived the deck of leaders at the
critical moment of the fight, and the mixed elements in the crew could
not stand up without a leader, against the _élan_ of the enemy’s
boarders.

At this despairing juncture, the church militant came to the front.
The chaplain, Mr. Livermore, stood alone on the quarter-deck, in front
of the boarders, and advancing, the parson fired his pistol into
the boarding crew and in return nearly had his arm hewed off by a
sword-stroke.

“My God, look at Livermore!” cried Berry. “Lawrence and Ludlow must be
dead. Where’s the bugler, the coward? Is there no one to rally the men?”

The boarders, after the chaplain’s noble resistance, stopped for a
moment until they were joined by the rest of the _Shannon’s_ boarders.
“Now, let them have it,” cried Berry, “a volley!--are you ready,--fire!”

The volley told on the huddled mass of boarders and two officers fell.
“That’s right,” cried the midshipman, “but it will be our turn next.
Load your guns, my men, and give it to them before we are blown to
bits. They are pointing a Long Tom at us from the _Shannon_. Pick off
all you can before they fire it.”

As he spoke, the gallant officer, pierced by a bullet from the
_Shannon’s_ maintop, plunged from the top and fell heavily over on the
deck below. James instinctively assumed the command of the top. “Now,
boys,” he cried, “the marines are making a stand in the upper deck.”

The next instant a shot from the _Shannon’s_ Long Tom crashed through
the mizzen-top, and James and the survivors made for the shrouds, to
descend to the upper deck. As they descended, several muskets were
discharged at them, but without effect.

Below, Lieutenant Budd now for the first time learned that the English
had boarded; from the upper deck men came crowding down.

“_Chesapeake’s_ men, follow me!” cried the gallant officer.

But, shame to say, the foreigners and the green hands held back, though
a dozen brave fellows jumped to follow him. Up they rushed after the
Lieutenant to the spar-deck, and fell, with the fury of brave men who
break away from coward associates, upon the British as they came along
the gangway.

This brave handful, reinforced by Cheever, James, and other mizzen-top
men, held in check the victorious _Shannons_, killing two of them; and
Cheever saw the Lieutenant pierced by a boarding-pike and thrown down
the main hatchway. As the _Chesapeake’s_ survivors stood battling for
their lives with the desperation of animals at bay, Lieutenant Ludlow,
stricken to death, struggled upon deck, followed by three seamen.

“We shall not give up the ship,” cried the dying man.

A sabre descended upon his head and he spoke no more.

Hardly fifteen minutes had elapsed since the two gallant frigates
had begun action, and the _Chesapeake_ was almost in the complete
possession of the enemy. In the forecastle, a few seamen and marines
stood fighting on the upper deck; the few survivors stood together,
firm in their determination not to give up the ship before their lives.

In this desperate struggle, Tom Cheever, brandishing a pike, stood
shoulder to shoulder with James. Next him, a marine with a clubbed
musket in air, and on the other side James, with his midshipman’s
cutlass, while behind stood eight seamen armed with pikes and
cutlasses. After their slight repulse of the _Shannon’s_ boarding crew
they fell back, and for a moment the fighting ceased as the determined
little body of Americans stood closer together. Men there were among
them who had helped to doff the _Guerrière’s_ royal ensign, and they
were desperate at this awful disaster to their flag.

“Better to die with the ‘old man,’” they thought.

“It’s good-by, James, my boy,” hoarsely whispered Cheever. “I’ve
dragged you down with me.”

Through the boy’s head the hot blood jumped bearing the joy of the
fight. He grasped his dirk the firmer. “We shall die for our country’s
honor,” he cried.

Then the overpowering force of the boarding crew, led by Broke, closed
in about the devoted remnant of the Americans. With brilliant personal
courage the Captain led his men; and James rushed to meet him. Behind
Cheever followed close, thrusting himself in front of the boy to shield
him as best he might.

“Surrender!” cried Broke.

“Never!” cried Cheever, thrusting at him with his pike.

Captain Broke parried the blow with his sword and cut at his opponent,
laying open his head. James, seeing that his uncle was blinded by the
blood, rushed in to save him, but Cheever thrust the boy back of him
and stood in front of him as a lioness might do to save her whelp.

The little group of Americans were resisting stubbornly the attack;
a tall marine crashed his musket’s butt upon a burly seaman who had
rushed to Broke’s side, and at the same moment Cheever cut down the
British captain, and would have killed him had not another cutlass
pierced the American’s breast. He fell heavily backwards, and as he did
so a heavy stroke of a British cutlass felled James to the deck.

The assailing party fell back for an instant before the wild courage of
the Americans, and then closed in upon them. The twelve men lay in each
other’s blood on the spot where they had rallied. A couple of shots
were fired up from below, and the British fired a volley or two down
the hatchway. All resistance was then at an end and the colors of the
_Chesapeake_ were struck.

When James came to his senses, he found himself crowded with a dozen
prisoners in a small dark hole between decks. They were lying on an old
sail, and outside the door a sentry was pacing. The boy’s head ached
wofully from the cutlass wound, but fortunately the blow had been a
glancing one. The great flow of blood had saved the boy’s life; for in
the mad rush of the British, he would have certainly been despatched
had not his wound been so severe that he passed for dead. He was,
though he did not then know it, the only survivor of the gallant little
band who, driven to bay, had held the _Shannon’s_ boarding party.

His companions in this dismal captivity were perfectly quiet, depressed
by defeat, and some of them seemed to be asleep.

[Illustration: “ANOTHER CUTLASS PIERCED THE AMERICAN’S BREAST.”]

“The ship is taken?” asked James, to whom the brief quarter of an hour
of carnage seemed like a nightmare.

“Ay, it is,” replied the midshipman next him, “and we are bound on her
to Halifax, prisoners of war.”

“Is Lawrence dead?”

“No; but fatally wounded; and so is Lieutenant Ludlow, and poor Bullard
and White. The decks are like shambles.”

“And my uncle?”

“I don’t know your uncle, my lad.”

“He was in the mizzen-top’s crew. We made the last stand.”

“Then he has passed in the number of his mess. You are the only one
left of those brave men. I saw them pull you out from under the bodies,
and they chucked you in here when we were put in. I did not know that
you were alive till you spoke just then. I thought that you might be so
lucky as to be dead. Oh, if our fore-rigging had not been shot away, we
should have given a better account of ourselves. Poor Lawrence!”

Then there was silence again in the strait, dark hole; but the creaking
of the ship and the hurrying feet on deck told that the proud frigate
was on her way to the enemy’s strong-hold at Halifax.

And James lay, with confused thoughts of the strange man, his uncle,
dying like a hero for his country’s honor,--the weak, perverse man who
had so ill guarded his own.




XV


The summer had run along into August. Captain Woodbury’s illness had
been so severe that his sister had allowed him to believe that his son
was still at Cambridge. But now Commencement Day had come, and his son
was due at home for his brief summer vacation, and Miss Elizabeth could
not longer put off telling her brother the story.

The Boston coach was due at noon, and before that hour she must
break the news which would crush his heart; for he had in his slow
convalescence been counting the hours which would bring his boy back to
him.

The Captain was sitting in his bedroom in his big chair, while
down-stairs his sister was mustering up her courage to tell her story.
As there was nobody watching him, what was to prevent him from slipping
down to State Street? It was a fine warm day; and Captain Woodbury,
looking out at the blue sky and the great leafy elms, felt a longing to
walk down to meet at the post-office the Boston coach upon which his
son was expected. Certainly it was absurd that he should be kept in the
house any longer. He had not spoken to any one save the doctor and his
sister for weeks, and all the war news had been kept from him. There
must have been more glorious victories over the proud ruler of the
ocean. And James,--he had really heard nothing from the boy, and he was
coming home to-day.

“Once you have fallen ill,” he said to himself, “these women will
never admit that you are strong enough to escape from their clutches.
She will never let me go if I tell her. I must steal away without her
knowing it.”

And while Miss Woodbury sat trying to shape into words the story to her
brother, he was tottering with the weak knees of a convalescent down
the path to the street. His wits were for the nonce almost as weak as
his knees, yet he was filled with delight at escaping from the stifled
atmosphere of his sick chamber into the fresh open air.

“And James is coming in the coach,” he said to himself, “and maybe
there has been a victory. I shall see all the neighbors. I must keep
out of Dr. Parsons’ sight,” he thought; “a terrible martinet is
Parsons. He wished me not to go out for a week, but these doctors do
not know everything. Bless my heart, no!”

It took the feeble man a long while to get to the post-office, where
the accustomed group of merchants, clerks, and other busy men were
awaiting the arrival of the mail, and exchanging news and making trades
while they waited.

Captain Woodbury slowly approached them, the unwonted exertion making
him lean heavily on his cane. He was soon recognized by a group of the
older merchants, his old associates. Among them were Deacon Fairbanks
and Mr. Devereux, the shipbuilder. As the erring young Woodbury had
been the subject of their conversation, the approach of his father
caused a painful silence, and to relieve it, Mr. Devereux politely said:

“Ah, Neighbor Woodbury, I am glad to see you out again; though, to tell
you the truth, you look very pale and weak, and little fit for such
exertion.”

“She doesn’t know of it,--Elizabeth, I mean--” slyly replied Captain
Woodbury; “I have slipped off all unbeknown to her. I expect James on
the coach, you see, and couldn’t wait. I have been confined in the
house so long that I grew impatient.”

Deacon Fairbanks had been the most silent of the group; for he had just
been narrating, for the hundredth time, the story of the burglarious
entry of his house, and had been declaring that he had no doubt
whatever but that the thief had been James; but when the Captain had
finished, he inquired:

“From where do you expect your son, Captain Woodbury?”

“From Cambridge, sir; ’tis the end of the year. You are waiting for
your son, Mr. Devereux, are you not?”

“Yes, Captain Woodbury, but--why, sir, have you not heard?”

“Heard what, Mr. Devereux? I have heard nothing from James for some
weeks, excepting the messages which he has sent to me in his letters to
my sister.”

He grasped heavily at Mr. Devereux’s shoulder. He would have fallen to
the ground had he not done so. “My boy is ill; my boy is dead, and they
have not told me. My son, my son!”

Mr. Devereux passed his arm about his friend.

“Your son is not dead, Captain Woodbury; bear up.”

“Where is he, then? Has any ill befallen him?”

“Captain Woodbury,” replied Mr. Devereux, “you are too weak now; later.”

“Heaven! man, speak out;” said the Captain; “tell me your worst. I
am weak, but I am over my illness. I can bear anything better than
suspense.”

“Well, Captain Woodbury,” interrupted the Deacon, feeling that the
moment had come to deal the shrewd blow to the man whom he had so long
secretly hated. “If you must know the truth, your son James disappeared
some weeks ago. He has not been at Cambridge and he has not been seen
in Oldbury since the night my house was robbed.”

Captain Woodbury drew himself up.

“Fairbanks, what do you, mean? My boy not been seen since the night
your house was robbed? Your house has not been robbed for years.”

“Oh,” interrupted the Deacon, “that was the first robbery by the
uncle,--the nephew--”

“You lie, you miserable scoundrel!” cried Captain Woodbury, lifting his
cane as if to strike the accuser of his son.

“I know whereof I speak, John Woodbury. On the night of May 28th I
was waked up by a noise in my dining-room. I went down with a candle,
and kneeling before my sideboard, a midnight robber, was your son. I
recognized him clearly and had reason to remember him.”

He pointed as he spoke at the scar on his forehead left by the heavy
tankard.

“He threw the old Pepperell tankard at me and nearly brained me.”

“The old Pepperell tankard!” exclaimed Mr. Devereux. “Tom Cheever stole
that from you years ago. I have heard you tell the story hundreds of
times. How could the boy throw that at you? How do you explain that?”

“Ay, sir, how do you explain that?” sneered Captain Woodbury. “You
called my boy a robber just now. How could he have thrown that old
tankard at you, which hasn’t been in your possession since the last
century?”

The Deacon hesitated and looked confused, and the men about him, who
had believed thoroughly in James’ guilt, began to doubt the word of his
accuser.

At this juncture the Boston coach came rattling down over the
cobble-stones of State Street and drew up at the post-office door.
From the seat beside the driver a young man jumped to the sidewalk and
rushed to embrace Captain Woodbury. It was James, thin and pale.

“Father! father!” he cried, as the old man hugged him.

“My son James, gentlemen, just returned from college,” said the old
man. “Deacon Fairbanks, what have you to say now? Did that young man
enter your house?”

The Deacon was silent.

“Father,” said James, “I am not returned from college, but from
Halifax. I have just been exchanged as a prisoner of war. I was one of
the crew of the _Chesapeake_.”

There was a crowd around the boy by this time.

“Yes; I shipped the day before the fight. I did enter the Deacon’s
house, but to return property--not to rob.”

“Yes, and I owe this to you,” shouted the Deacon, pointing at his
forehead.

“I threw the tankard to save my life,” replied James. “You were
shooting at me. I don’t blame you for that. It’s no wonder that you
took me for a burglar, but I was returning, as you know, your lost
silver.”

“What did you mean, Fairbanks,” asked Mr. Devereux, “by telling us all
these weeks that the boy was a thief?”

“I call him a midnight marauder and assassin,” sneered the Deacon,
angry and confused. “Like uncle, like nephew,” and he turned to go.

“My uncle died on the _Chesapeake_ on the 1st of June, fighting for
his country’s honor. His injury to you has been repaired. If you have
any complaint to make against me to the authorities, I shall be found,
if wanted, at my father’s house.”

And James, passing his arm around his father’s waist, walked up the
street with him. What reception Aunt Elizabeth gave the two on their
return, you may imagine.

       *       *       *       *       *

That evening at sunset James and Alice were seated side by side on the
low stone-wall of the burying-yard.

“The life of a prisoner is a wearisome thing, Alice; and one day
is so like another that I shall not tire you with a long story. We
reached Halifax five days after the fight, and a dreary voyage it was
to us youngsters crowded in that black pen, and my wound, though not
dangerous, was painful.”

“Ah, you poor lad,” said Alice, touching his bandages lightly with one
of her fingers.

“Yet the wound made my imprisonment the easier to bear; for I was
light-headed or drowsy most of the time. At Halifax I was sent to
the hospital, and sent back to Boston to be exchanged with the first
cartel of prisoners. There are nearly fifteen hundred poor fellows left
at Halifax now. I am very fortunate to get back so soon; and no one
knew where I was, for I did not write my father. I went on board the
_Chesapeake_ almost as soon as I reached Boston, and went into action
the next day. I was wretched enough through it all, and felt that I
had disgraced myself forever, and had lost father, and you, and all
happiness, my dearest girl.”

“I should have been true to you had you really come to steal,” she
replied. “Grandfather never said to me that he thought that you were
the one who came that night; but when I knew that the old silver had
been returned and that you were not in town, I guessed the whole story.
I did not know that any one else suspected you, and I kept silent. I
heard that you had come back; and I knew that you would be here this
evening. Grandfather will never let you come to our house.”

“My dearest girl, you and your mother shall leave him alone in his
glory. I can get along without the old man’s forgiveness or his
countenance. My poor uncle gave up his life to shield me when it came
to that last rally on the _Chesapeake_, and he left me his heir. We
shall not let our happiness be spoiled by any old man’s spite. I shall
not go back to college. I am no scholar; the broad world is the only
book from which I can learn. I have made up my mind to ask Mr. Devereux
to take me into his ship-yard.”

“And your clippers shall carry the Stars and Stripes to every ocean,
James,” she said.

“And the first shall be named after my own true love.”




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

  Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.

  On page 115, the sentence "It was known that his father intended
    him for the ministry, and it seemed to the straight-laced almost a
    blasphemy to connect James Cheever with the Congregational Church."
    The transcriber believes that the name should be James Woodbury, but
    has retained the text as printed.





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