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 HOPE LESLIE:
 OR,
 EARLY TIMES
 IN
 THE MASSACHUSETTS.

 BY
 CATHARINE MARIA SEDGWICK
 AUTHOR OF
 “THE LINWOODS,” “POOR RICH MAN,” “LIVE AND LET
 LIVE,” “REDWOOD,” &c.

 IN TWO VOLUMES.
 VOL. I.




 NEW-YORK:
 HARPER & BROTHERS, 82 CLIFF-ST.
 1842.




 [COPYRIGHT.]

 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1842, by
 Harper & Brothers,
 In the Clerk’s Office of the Southern District of New-York.




 [EPIGRAPH.]

 Here stood the Indian chieftain, rejoicing in his glory!
 How deep the shade of sadness that rests upon his story:
 For the white man came with power--like brethren they met--
 But the Indian fires went out, and the Indian sun has set!

 And the chieftain has departed--gone is his hunting-ground,
 And the twanging of the bowstring is a forgotten sound:
 Where dwelleth yesterday? and where is Echo’s cell?
 Where has the rainbow vanished?--there does the Indian dwell.--E.




 CONTENTS.

 CHAPTER I
 CHAPTER II
 CHAPTER III
 CHAPTER IV
 CHAPTER V
 CHAPTER VI
 CHAPTER VII
 CHAPTER VIII
 CHAPTER IX
 CHAPTER X
 CHAPTER XI
 CHAPTER XII
 CHAPTER XIII

 NOTES
 ENDNOTES




 HOPE LESLIE,
 VOLUME I.

{3}

CHAPTER I.


 “Virtue may be assail’d, but never hurt,
 Surprised by unjust force, but not enthrall’d;
 Yea, even that which mischief meant most harm,
 Shall in the happy trial prove most glory.”
                            Comus.


William Fletcher was the son of a respectable country gentleman of
Suffolk, in England, and the destined heir of his uncle, Sir William
Fletcher, an eminent lawyer, who had employed his talents with such
effective zeal and pliant principle, that he had won his way to
courtly favour and secured a courtly fortune.

Sir William had only one child--a daughter; and possessing the common
ambition of transmitting his name with his wealth, he selected his
nephew as the future husband of his daughter Alice.

 “Take good heed,” Sir William thus expressed himself in a letter to
 his brother, “take good heed that the boy be taught unquestioning and
 unqualified loyalty to his sovereign--the Alpha and Omega of political
 duty. These are times when every true subject has his price. Divers of
 the leaders of the Commons are secret friends of the seditious,
 mischief-brewing Puritans; and Buckingham himself is {4} suspected of
 favouring their cabals; but this _sub rosa_--I burn not my fingers
 with these matters. ‘He who meddleth with another man’s strifes,
 taketh a dog by the ear,’ said the wisest man that ever lived; and he,
 thank God, was a king. Caution Will against all vain speculation and
 idle inquiries: there are those that are forever inquiring and
 inquiring, and never coming to the truth. One inquiry should suffice
 for a loyal subject: ‘What is established?’ and that being well
 ascertained, the line of duty is so plain, that he who runs may read.

 “I would that all our youths had inscribed on their hearts that golden
 rule of political religion, framed and well maintained by our good
 Queen Elizabeth, ‘No man should be suffered to decline, either on the
 left or on the right hand, from the drawn line limited by authority,
 and by the sovereign’s laws and injunctions.’

 “Instead of such healthy maxims, our lads’ heads are crammed with the
 philosophy, and rhetoric, and history of those liberty-loving Greeks
 and Romans. This is the pernicious lore that has poisoned our
 academical fountains. Liberty! what is it? Daughter of Disloyalty, and
 mother of all misrule, who, from the hour that she tempted our first
 parents to forfeit Paradise, hath ever worked mischief to our race.

 “But, above all, brother, as you value the temporal salvation of your
 boy, restrain him from all confederacy, association, or even
 acquaintance with the Puritans. If my master took counsel of me, he
 would ship these mad canting fools to our New-England {5} colonies,
 where their tender consciences would be no more offended, because,
 forsooth, a prelate saith his prayers in white vestments, and where
 they might enjoy with the savages that primitive equality about which
 they make such a pother. God forefend that our good lad William should
 company with these misdoers! He must be narrowly watched; for, as I
 hear, there is a neighbour of yours, one Winthrop (a notable
 gentleman, too, as they say, but he doth grievously scandalize his
 birth and breeding), who hath embraced these scurvy principles, and
 doth magnify them with the authority of his birth and condition, and
 hath much weight with the country. There is in Suffolk, too, as I am
 told, one Eliot, a young zealot, a fanatical incendiary, who doth find
 ample combustibles in the gossiping matrons, idle maidens, and lawless
 youth who flock about him.

 “These are dangerous neighbours; rouse yourself, brother; give over
 your idle sporting with hawk and hound, and watch over this goodly
 scion of ours--ours, I say; but I forewarn you, no daughter or guinea
 of mine shall ever go to one who is infected with this spreading
 plague.”

This letter was too explicit to be misunderstood; but, so far from
having the intended effect of awakening the caution of the expectant
of fortune, it rather stimulated the pride of the independent country
gentleman. He permitted his son to follow the bent of accident, or the
natural course of a serious, reflecting, and enthusiastic temper.
Winthrop, the {6} future governor of Massachusetts, was the counsellor
of young Fletcher, and Eliot, the “apostle of New-England,” his most
intimate friend. These were men selected of Heaven to achieve a great
work. In the quaint language of the time, “the Lord sifted three
nations for precious seed to sow the wilderness.”

There were interested persons who were not slow in conveying to Sir
William unfavourable reports of his nephew, and the young man received
a summons from his uncle, who hoped, by removing him from the infected
region, to rescue him from danger.

Sir William’s pride was gratified by the elegant appearance and
graceful deportment of his nephew, whom he had expected to see with
the “slovenly and lawyer-like carriage” that marked the scholars of
the times. The pliant courtier was struck with the lofty independence
of the youth, who from the first showed that neither frowns nor favour
would induce him to bow the knee to the idols Sir William had served.
There was something in this independence that awed the inferior mind
of the uncle. To him it was an unknown, mysterious power, which he
knew not how to approach, and almost despaired of subduing. However,
he was experienced in life, and had observed enough of human infirmity
to convince him that there was no human virtue that had not some weak,
some assailable point. Time and circumstances were not long in
developing the vulnerability of the nephew. Alice Fletcher had been
the companion of his childhood. They now met without any of the
reserve that often prevents an intimate intercourse {7} between young
persons, and proceeds from the consciousness of a susceptibility which
it would seem to deny.

The intercourse of the cousins was renewed with all the frankness and
artlessness of the sunny season of childish love and confidence. Alice
had been educated in retirement by her mother, whom she had recently
attended through a long and fatal illness. She had been almost the
exclusive object of her love, for there was little congeniality
between the father and daughter. The ties of nature may command all
dutiful observances, but they cannot control the affections. Alice was
deeply afflicted by her bereavement. Her cousin’s serious temper
harmonized with her sorrow, and nature and opportunity soon
indissolubly linked their hearts together.

Sir William perceived their growing attachment, and exulted in it;
for, as he fancied, it reduced his nephew to dependance on his will
and whims. He had never himself experienced the full strength of any
generous sentiment, but he had learned from observation that love was
a controlling passion, and he now most anxiously watched and promoted
the kindling of the flame, in the expectation that the fire would
subdue the principles of civil and religious liberty with which he had
but too well ascertained the mind of his nephew to be imbued.

He silently favoured the constant and exclusive intercourse of the
young people: he secretly contrived various modes of increasing their
mutual dependance; and, when he was certain their happiness {8} was
staked, he cast the die. He told his nephew that he perceived and
rejoiced in the mutual affection that had so naturally sprung up
between him and his daughter, and he confessed their union had been
the favourite object of his life; and said that he now heartily
accorded his consent to it, prescribing one condition only--but that
condition was unalterable. “You must abjure, William, in the presence
of witnesses,” he said, “the fanatical notions of liberty and religion
with which you have been infected; you must pledge yourself, by a
solemn oath, to unqualified obedience to the king, and adherence to
the Established Church: you shall have time enough for the
effervescence of your young blood. God send this fermentation may work
off all impurities. Nay, answer me not now. Take a day--a week--a
month for consideration; for on your decision depends fortune and
love, or the alternative, beggary and exile.”

If a pit had yawned beneath his feet and swallowed Alice from his
view, William Fletcher could not have been more shocked. He was
soul-stricken, as one who listens to a sentence of death. To his eye
the earth was shrouded in darkness; not an object of hope or pursuit
remained.

He had believed his uncle was aware of what he must deem his political
and religious delinquency; but he had never spoken to him on the
subject: he had treated him with marked favour, and he had so
evidently encouraged his attachment to his cousin that he had already
plighted his love to her, and received {9} her vows without fearing
that he had passed even the limit of strict prudence.

There was no accommodating flexibility in his principles; his fidelity
to what he deemed his duty could not have been subdued by the fires of
martyrdom, and he did not hesitate to sacrifice what was dearer than
life to it. He took the resolution at once to fly from the temptation
that, present, he dared not trust himself to resist.

“I shall not again see my Alice,” he said. “I have not courage to meet
her smiles; I have not strength to endure her tears.”

In aid of his resolution there came, most opportunely, a messenger
from his father, requiring his immediate presence. This afforded him a
pretext for his sudden departure from London. He left a few brief
lines for Alice, that expressed without explaining the sadness of his
heart.

His father died a few hours before he arrived at the paternal mansion.
He was thus released from his strongest natural tie. His mother had
been long dead; and he had neither brother nor sister. He inherited a
decent patrimony, sufficient at least to secure the independence of a
gentleman. He immediately repaired to Groton, to his friend Winthrop;
not that he should dictate his duty to him, but as one leans on the
arm of a friend when he finds his own strength scarcely sufficient to
support him.

Mr. Winthrop is well known to have been a man of the most tender
domestic affections and sympathies; {10} but he had then been long
married--and thrice married--and probably a little dimness had come
over his recollection of the enthusiasm of a first passion. When
Fletcher spoke of Alice’s unequalled loveliness, and of his own
unconquerable love, his friend listened as one listens to a tale he
has heard a hundred times, and seemed to regard the cruel
circumstances in which the ardent lover was placed only in the light
of a providential opportunity of making a sacrifice to the great and
good cause to which this future statesman had even then begun to
devote himself, as the sole object of his life. He treated his
friend’s sufferings as in their nature transient, and concluded by
saying, “the Lord hath prepared this fire, my friend, to temper your
faith, and you will come out of it the better prepared for your
spiritual warfare.”

Fletcher listened to him with stern resolution, like him who permits a
surgeon to probe a wound which he is himself certain is incurable.

Mr. Winthrop knew that a ship was appointed to sail from Southampton
in a few days for New-England. With that characteristic zeal which
then made all the intentions of Providence so obvious to the eye of
faith, and the interpretation of all the events of life so easy, Mr.
Winthrop assured his friend that the designs of Heaven in relation to
him were plain. He said, “There was a great call for such services as
he could render in the expedition just about to sail, and which was
like to fail for the want of them; and that now, like a faithful
servant {11} to the cause he had confessed, he must not look behind,
but press on to the things that were before.”

Fletcher obeyed the voice of Heaven.

This is no romantic fiction. Hundreds in that day resisted all that
solicits earthly passions, and sacrificed all that gratifies them to
the cause of God and of man--the cause of liberty and religion. This
cause was not to their eyes invested with any romantic attractions. It
was not assisted by the illusions of chivalry, nor magnified by the
spiritual power and renown of crusades. Our fathers neither had, nor
expected their reward on earth.

One severe duty remained to be performed. Fletcher must announce their
fate to Alice. He honoured her too much to believe she would have
permitted the sacrifice of his integrity, if he would have made it.
He, therefore, had nothing to excuse; nothing but to tell the terrible
truth; to try to reconcile her to her father; to express, for the last
time, his love, and to pray that he might receive, at Southampton, one
farewell line from her. Accompanying his letter to Alice was one to
Sir William, announcing the decision to resign his favour and exile
himself forever from England.

He arranged his affairs, and in a few days received notice that the
vessel was ready to sail. He repaired to Southampton; and as he was
quitting the inn to embark in the small boat that was to convey him to
the vessel, already in the offing, a voice from an inner apartment
pronounced his name, and at the next moment Alice was in his arms. She
gently {12} reproved him for having estimated her affection at so low
a rate as not to have anticipated that she should follow him and share
his destiny. It was more than could have been expected from man that
Fletcher should have opposed such a resolution. He had but a moment
for deliberation. Most of the passengers had already embarked; some
still lingered on the strand, protracting their last farewell to their
country and their friends. In the language of one of the most honoured
of these pilgrims, “Truly doleful was the sight of that sad and
mournful parting, to hear what sighs, and sobs, and prayers did sound
among them; what tears did gush from every eye, and pithy speeches
pierced each other’s hearts.”

With the weeping group Fletcher left Alice and her attendants, while
he went to the vessel to prepare for her suitable reception. He there
found a clergyman, and bespoke his holy offices to unite him to his
cousin immediately after their embarcation.

All the necessary arrangements were made, and he was returning to the
shore, his eye fixed on the lovely being whom he believed Heaven had
interposed to give to him, when he descried Sir William’s carriage,
guarded by a cavalcade of armed men, in the uniform of the king’s
guards, approaching the spot where she stood.

He comprehended at once their cruel purpose. He exhorted the boatmen
to put forth all their strength; he seized the oars himself--despair
gave him supernatural power--the boat shot forward with the velocity
of light; but all in vain! he only approached {13} near enough to the
shore to hear Alice’s last impotent cries to him; to see her beautiful
face convulsed with agony, and her arms outstretched towards him, when
she was forced to the carriage by her father, and driven from his
sight.

He leaped on the strand; he followed the troop with cries and
entreaties; but he was only answered by the coarse jeering and profane
jests of the soldiery.

Notice was soon given that the boat was ready to return to the ship
for the last time, and Fletcher, in a state of agitation and despair,
almost amounting to insanity, permitted it to return without him.

He went to London, and requested an interview with his uncle. The
request was granted, and a long and secret conference ensued. It was
known by the servants of the household that their mistress, Alice, had
been summoned by her father to this meeting, but what was said or done
did not transpire. Immediately after, Fletcher returned to Mr.
Winthrop’s, in Suffolk. The fixedness of despair was on his
countenance; but he said nothing, even to this confidential friend, of
the interview with his uncle. The particulars of the affair at
Southampton, which had already reached Suffolk, seemed sufficiently to
explain his misery.

In less than a fortnight he there received despatches from his uncle,
informing him that he had taken effectual measures to save himself
from a second conspiracy against the honour of his family; that his
daughter Alice had that day been led to {14} the altar by Charles
Leslie; and concluding with a polite hope that, though his voyage had
been interrupted, it might not be long deferred.

Alice had, indeed, in the imbecility of utter despair, submitted to
her father’s commands. It was intimated at the time, and reported for
many years after, that she had suffered a total alienation of mind. To
the world this was never contradicted, for she lived in absolute
retirement; but those who best knew could have attested that, if her
mind had departed from its beautiful temple, an angelic spirit had
entered in and possessed it.

William Fletcher was in a few months persuaded to unite himself with
an orphan girl, a ward of Mr. Winthrop, who had, in the eyes of the
elders, all the meek graces that befitted a godly maiden and dutiful
helpmate. Fletcher remained constant to his purpose of emigrating to
New-England, but he did not effect it till the year 1630, when he
embarked with his family and effects in the ship Arbella, with
Governor Winthrop, who then, for the first time, went to that land
where his name will ever be held in affectionate and honourable
remembrance.




 CHAPTER II.

{15}


 “For the temper of the brain in quick apprehensions and acute
 judgments, to say no more, the most High and Sovereign God hath not
 made the Indian inferior to the European.”--Roger Williams.


The magnitude of the enterprise in which the first settlers of
New-England were engaged, the terrific obstacles they encountered, and
the hardships they endured, gave to their characters a seriousness and
solemnity, heightened, it may be, by the severity of their religious
faith.

Where all were serious, the melancholy of an individual was not
conspicuous; and Mr. Fletcher’s sadness would probably have passed
unnoticed but for the reserve of his manners, which piqued the pride
of his equals, and provoked the curiosity of his inferiors.

The first probably thought that the apostolic principle of community
of goods at least extended to opinions and feelings; and the second
always fancy, when a man shuts the door of his lips, that there must
be some secret worth knowing within.

Like many other men of an ardent temperament and disinterested love of
his species, Mr. Fletcher was disappointed at the slow operation of
principles which, however efficient and excellent in the abstract,
were to be applied to various and discordant subjects. Such men,
inexperienced in the business of life, are {16} like children, who,
setting out on a journey, are impatient after the few first paces to
be at the end of it. They cannot endure the rebuffs and delays that
retard them in their course. These are the men of genius--the men of
feeling--the men that the world calls visionaries; and it is because
they are visionaries--because they have a beau-ideal in their own
minds, to which they can see but a faint resemblance in the actual
state of things, that they become impatient of detail, and cannot
brook the slow progress to perfection. They are too rapid in their
anticipations. The character of man and the institutions of society
are yet very far from their possible and destined perfection. Still,
how far is the present age in advance of that which drove reformers to
a dreary wilderness! which hanged Quakers! which condemned to death,
as witches, innocent, unoffending old women! But it is unnecessary to
heighten the glory of day by comparing it with the preceding twilight.

To return to Mr. Fletcher. He was mortified at seeing power, which had
been earned at so dear a rate, and which he had fondly hoped was to be
applied to the advancement of man’s happiness, sometimes perverted to
purposes of oppression and personal aggrandizement. He was shocked
when a religious republic, which he fancied to be founded on the basis
of established truth, was disturbed by the outbreak of heresies; and
his heart sickened when he saw those who had sacrificed whatever man
holds dearest to religious freedom, imposing those shackles {17} on
others from which they had just released themselves at such a price.
Partly influenced by these disgusts, and partly by that love of
contemplation and retirement that belongs to a character of his cast,
especially when depressed by some early disappointment, he refused the
offices of honour and trust that were from time to time offered to
him; and finally, in 1636, when Pynchon, Holioke, and Chapin formed
their settlement at Springfield, on Connecticut River, he determined
to retire from the growing community of Boston to this frontier
settlement.

Mrs. Fletcher received his decision as all wives of that age of
undisputed masculine supremacy (or most of those of our less passive
age) would do, with meek submission. The inconveniences and dangers of
that outpost were not unknown to her, nor did she underrate them; but
Abraham would as soon have remonstrated against the command that bade
him go forth from his father’s house into the land of the Chaldees, as
she would have failed in passive obedience to the resolve of her
husband.

The removal was effected early in the summer of 1636. Springfield
assumed at once, under the auspices of its wealthy and enterprising
proprietors, the aspect of a village. The first settlers followed the
course of the Indians, and planted themselves on the borders of
rivers--the natural gardens of the earth, where the soil is mellowed
and enriched by the annual overflowing of the streams, and prepared by
the unassisted processes of nature to yield to the indolent Indian his
scanty supply of maize and other esculents. {18} The wigwams which
constituted the village, or, to use the graphic aboriginal
description, the “smoke” of the natives, gave place to the clumsy, but
more convenient dwellings of the Pilgrims.

Where there are now contiguous rows of shops, filled with the
merchandise of the East, the manufactures of Europe, the rival fabrics
of our own country, and the fruits of the tropics; where now stand the
stately hall of justice, the academy, the bank, churches orthodox and
heretic, and all the symbols of a rich and populous community, were,
at the early period of our history, a few log houses, planted around a
fort defended by a slight embankment and palisade.

The mansions of the proprietors were rather more spacious and
artificial than those of their more humble associates, and were built
on the well-known model of the modest dwelling illustrated by the
birth of Milton: a form still abounding in the eastern parts of
Massachusetts, and presenting to the eye of a New-Englander the
familiar aspect of an awkward friendly country cousin.

The first clearing was limited to the plain. The beautiful hill that
is now the residence of the gentry (for there yet lives such a class
in the heart of our democratic community), and is embellished with
stately edifices and expensive pleasure-grounds, was then the border
of a dense forest, and so richly fringed with the original growth of
trees that scarce a sunbeam had penetrated to the parent earth.

Mr. Fletcher was at first welcomed as an important {19} acquisition to
the infant establishment; but he soon proved that he purposed to take
no part in its concerns, and, in spite of the remonstrances of the
proprietors, he fixed his residence a mile from the village, deeming
exposure to the incursions of the savages very slight, and the
surveillance of an inquiring neighbourhood a certain evil. His domain
extended from a gentle eminence, that commanded an extensive view of
the bountiful Connecticut, to the shore, where the river indented the
meadow by one of those sweeping graceful curves by which it seems to
delight to beautify the land it nourishes.

The border of the river was fringed with all the water-loving trees;
but the broad meadows were quite cleared, excepting that a few elms
and sycamores had been spared by the Indians, and consecrated by
tradition as the scene of revels or councils. The house of our pilgrim
was a low-roofed modest structure, containing ample accommodation for
a patriarchal family; where children, dependants, and servants were
all to be sheltered under one roof-tree. On one side, as we have
described, lay an open and extensive plain; within view was the
curling smoke from the little cluster of houses about the fort--the
habitation of civilized man; but all else was a savage howling
wilderness.

Never was a name more befitting the condition of a people than
“Pilgrim” that of our forefathers. It should be redeemed from the
puritanical and ludicrous associations which have degraded it in most
men’s minds, and be hallowed by the sacrifices made {20} by these
voluntary exiles. They were pilgrims, for they had resigned forever
what the good hold most dear--their homes. Home can never be
transferred; never repeated in the experience of an individual. The
place consecrated by parental love, by the innocence and sports of
childhood, by the first acquaintance with nature, by the linking of
the heart to the visible creation, is the only home. There, there is a
living and breathing spirit infused into nature: every familiar object
has a history; the trees have tongues, and the very air is vocal.
There the vesture of decay doth not close in and control the noble
functions of the soul. It sees, and hears, and enjoys without the
ministry of gross material substance.

Mr. Fletcher had resided a few months in Springfield, when he one day
entered, with an open letter in his hand, that apartment of his humble
dwelling styled, by courtesy, the parlour. His wife was sitting there
with her eldest son, a stripling of fourteen, busily assisting him in
twisting a cord for his crossbow. She perceived that her husband
looked disturbed; but he said nothing, and her habitual deference
prevented her inquiring into the cause of his discomposure.

After taking two or three turns about the room, he said to his son,
“Everell, my boy, go to the door, and await there the arrival of an
Indian girl; she is, as you may see, yonder by the river side, and
will be here shortly. I would not that Jennet should, at the very
first, shock the child with her discourteous ways.”

{21}

“Child! coming here!” exclaimed the boy, dropping his bow and gazing
through the window. “Who is she? that tall girl, father: she is no
more a child than I am!”

His mother smiled at an exclamation that betrayed a common juvenile
jealousy of the honour of dawning manhood, and bade the boy obey his
father’s directions. When Everell had left the apartment, Mr. Fletcher
said, “I have just received letters from Boston--from Governor
Winthrop--” He paused.

“Our friends are all well, I hope,” said Mrs. Fletcher.

“Yes, Martha, our friends are all well; but these letters contain
something of more importance than aught that concerns the health of
the perishing body.”

Mr. Fletcher again hesitated, and his wife, perplexed by his
embarrassment, inquired, “Has poor deluded Mrs. Hutchinson again
presumed to disturb the peace of God’s people?”

“Martha, you aim wide of the mark. My present emotions are not those
of a mourner for Zion. A ship has arrived from England, and in it
came--”

“My brother Stretton!” exclaimed Mrs. Fletcher.

“No, no, Martha. It will be long ere Stretton quits his paradise to
join a suffering people in the wilderness.”

He paused for a moment, and when he again spoke, the softened tone of
his voice evinced that he was touched by the expression of
disappointment, slightly tinged by displeasure, that shaded his wife’s
{22} gentle countenance. “Forgive me, my dear wife,” he said. “I
should not have spoken aught that implied censure of your brother, for
I know he hath ever been most precious in your eyes; albeit, not the
less so that he is yet without the fold. That which I have to tell
you--and it were best that it were quickly told--is, that my cousin
Alice was a passenger in this newly-arrived ship. Martha, your blushes
wrong you. The mean jealousies that degrade some women have, I am
sure, never been harboured in your heart.”

“If I deserve your praise, it is because the Lord has been pleased to
purify my heart and make it his sanctuary. But, if I have not the
jealousies, I have the feelings of a woman, and I cannot forget that
you was once affianced to your cousin Alice; and--”

“And that I once told you, Martha, frankly, that the affection I gave
to her could not be transferred to another. That love grew with my
growth, strengthened with my strength. Of its beginning I had no more
consciousness than of the commencement of my existence. It was
sunshine and flowers in all the paths of my childhood. It inspired
every hope, modified every project; such was the love I bore to
Alice--love immortal as the soul!

“You know how cruelly we were severed at Southampton; how she was torn
from the strand by the king’s guards, within my view, almost within my
grasp. How Sir William tempted me with the offer of pardon, my
cousin’s hand, and--poor temptation indeed after that--honours,
fortune. You know that {23} even Alice, my precious, beautiful Alice,
knelt to me. That, smitten of God and man, and for the moment bereft
of the right use of reason, she would have persuaded me to yield my
integrity. You know that her cruel father reproached me with virtually
breaking my plighted troth. That many of my friends urged my present
conformity; and you know, Martha, that there was a principle in my
bosom that triumphed over all these temptations. And think you not
that principle has preserved me faithful in my friendship to you?
Think you not that your obedience, your careful conformity to my
wishes, your steady love, which hath kept far more than even measure
with my deserts, is undervalued--can be lightly estimated?”

“Oh, I know,” said the humble wife, “that your goodness to me does far
surpass my merit; but, bethink you, it is the nature of a woman to
crave the first place.”

“It is the right of a wife, Martha; and there is none now to contest
it with you. This is but the second time I have spoken to you on a
subject that has been much in our thoughts; that has made me wayward,
and would have made my sojourning on earth miserable, but that you
have been my support and comforter. These letters contain tidings that
have opened a long-sealed fountain. My uncle, Sir William, died last
January. Leslie perished in a foreign service. Alice, thus released
from all bonds, and sole mistress of her fortunes, determined to cast
her lot in the heritage of God’s people. She embarked {24} with her
two girls, her only children; a tempestuous voyage proved too much for
a constitution already broken by repeated shocks. She was fully aware
of her approaching death, and died as befits a child of faith, in
sweet peace. Would to God I could have seen her once more; but,” he
added, raising his eyes devoutly, “not my will, but thine be done! The
sister of Leslie, a Mistress Grafton, attended Alice, and with her she
left a will, committing her children to my guardianship. It will be
necessary for me to go to Boston to assume this trust. I shall leave
home to-morrow, after making suitable provision for your safety and
comfort during my absence. These children will bring additional labour
to your household; and in good time hath our thoughtful friend,
Governor Winthrop, procured for us two Indian servants. The girl has
arrived. The boy is retained about the little Leslies, the youngest of
whom, it seems, is a petted child, and is particularly pleased by his
activity in ministering to her amusement.”

“I am glad if any use can be made of an Indian servant,” said Mrs.
Fletcher, who, oppressed with conflicting emotions, expressed the
lightest of them--a concern at a sudden increase of domestic cares
where there were no facilities to lighten them.

“How any use! You surely do not doubt, Martha, that these Indians
possess the same faculties that we do? The girl just arrived, our
friend writes me, hath rare gifts of mind, such as few of God’s
creatures are endowed with. She is just fifteen; she understands {25}
and speaks English perfectly well, having been taught it by an English
captive, who for a long time dwelt with her tribe. On that account she
was much noticed by the English who traded with the Pequods, and,
young as she was, she acted as their interpreter.

“She is the daughter of one of their chiefs; and when this wolfish
tribe were killed, or dislodged from their dens, she, her brother, and
their mother, were brought, with a few other captives, to Boston. They
were given for a spoil to the soldiers. Some, by a Christian use of
money, were redeemed; and others, I blush to say it, for ‘it is God’s
gift that every man should enjoy the good of his own labour,’ were
sent into slavery in the West Indies. Monoca, the mother of these
children, was noted for the singular dignity and modesty of her
demeanour. Many notable instances of her kindness to the white traders
are recorded; and when she was taken to Boston, our worthy governor,
ever mindful of his duties, assured her that her good deeds were held
in remembrance, and that he would testify the gratitude of his people
in any way she should direct. ‘I have nothing to ask,’ she said, ‘but
that I and my children may receive no personal dishonour.’

“The governor redeemed her children, and assured her they should be
cared for. For herself, misery and sorrow had so wrought on her that
she was fast sinking into the grave. Many Christian men and women
laboured for her conversion, but she would not even consent that the
Holy Word should {26} be interpreted to her; insisting, in the pride
of her soul, that all the children of the Great Spirit were equal
objects of His favour, and that He had not deemed the book he had
withheld needful to them.”

“And did she,” inquired Mrs. Fletcher, “thus perish in her sins?”

“She died,” replied her husband, “immovably fixed in those sentiments.
But, Martha, we should not suit God’s mercy to the narrow frame of our
thoughts. This poor savage’s life, as far as it has come to our
knowledge, was marked with innocence and good deeds; and I would
gladly believe that we may hope for her, on that broad foundation laid
by the apostle Peter: ‘In every nation, he that feareth God and
worketh righteousness is accepted of Him.’”

“That text,” answered Mrs. Fletcher, her heart easily kindling with
the flame of charity, “is a light behind many a dark scripture, like
the sun shining all around the edges of a cloud that cannot hide all
its beams.”

“Such thoughts, my dear wife, naturally spring from thy kind heart,
and are sweet morsels for private meditation; but it were well to keep
them in thine own bosom, lest, taking breath, they should lighten the
fears of unstable souls. But here comes the girl Magawisca, clothed in
her Indian garb, which the governor has permitted her to retain, not
caring, as he wisely says, to interfere with their innocent
peculiarities; and she, in particular, having shown a loathing of the
English dress.”

{27}

Everell Fletcher now threw wide open the parlour door, inviting the
Indian girl, by a motion of his hand and a kind smile, to follow. She
did so, and remained standing beside him, with her eyes riveted to the
floor, while every other eye was turned towards her. She and her
conductor were no unfit representatives of the people from whom they
sprung. Everell Fletcher was a fair, ruddy boy of fourteen; his smooth
brow and bright curling hair bore the stamp of the morning of life;
hope, and confidence, and gladness beamed in the falcon glance of his
keen blue eye, and love and frolic played about his lips. The active,
hardy habits of life in a new country had already knit his frame and
given him the muscle of manhood, while his quick elastic step truly
expressed the untamed spirit of childhood--the only spirit without
fear and without reproach. His dress was of blue cloth, closely
fitting his person; the sleeves reached midway between the elbow and
wrist, and the naked and, as it would seem to a modern eye, awkward
space, was garnished with deep-pointed lace ruffles of a coarse
texture; a ruff or collar of the same material was worn about the
neck.

The Indian stranger was tall for her years, which did not exceed
fifteen. Her form was slender, flexible, and graceful; and there was a
freedom and loftiness in her movement which, though tempered with
modesty, expressed a consciousness of high birth. Her face, although
marked by the peculiarities of her race, was beautiful even to a
European eye. Her features were regular, and her teeth white {28} as
pearls; but there must be something beyond symmetry of feature to fix
the attention, and it was an expression of dignity, thoughtfulness,
and deep dejection that made the eye linger on Magawisca’s face, as if
it were perusing there the legible record of her birth and wrongs. Her
hair, contrary to the fashion of the Massachusetts Indians, was parted
on her forehead, braided, and confined to her head by a band of small
feathers, jet black, and interwoven, and attached at equal distances
by rings of polished bone. She wore a waistcoat of deerskin, fastened
at the throat by a richly-wrought collar. Her arms, a model for
sculpture, were bare. A mantle of purple cloth hung gracefully from
her shoulders, and was confined at the waist by a broad band,
ornamented with rude hieroglyphics. The mantle, and her strait short
petticoat, or kilt, of the same rare and costly material, had been
obtained, probably, from the English traders. Stockings were an
unknown luxury; but leggins, similar to those worn by the ladies of
Queen Elizabeth’s court, were no bad substitute. The moccasin, neatly
fitted to a delicate foot and ankle, and tastefully ornamented with
bead-work, completed the apparel of this daughter of a chieftain,
which altogether had an air of wild and fantastic grace, that
harmonized well with the noble demeanour and peculiar beauty of the
young savage.

Mr. Fletcher surveyed her for a moment with a mingled feeling of
compassion and curiosity, and then turning away and leaning his head
on the mantelpiece, {29} his thoughts reverted to the subject that had
affected him far more deeply than he had ventured to confess, even to
the wife of his bosom.

Mrs. Fletcher’s first feeling was rather that of a housewife than a
tender woman. “My husband,” she thought, “might as well have brought a
wild doe from the forest to plough his fields, as to give me this
Indian girl for household labour; but the wisest men have no sense in
these matters.” This natural domestic reflection was soon succeeded by
a sentiment of compassion, which scarcely needed to be stimulated by
Everell’s whisper of “Do, mother, speak to her.”

“Magawisca,” she said, in a friendly tone, “you are welcome among us,
girl.” Magawisca bowed her head. Mrs. Fletcher continued: “You should
receive it as a signal mercy, child, that you have been taken from the
midst of a savage people, and set in a Christian family.” Mrs.
Fletcher paused for her auditor’s assent; but the proposition was
either unintelligible or unacceptable to Magawisca.

“Mistress Fletcher means,” said a middle-aged serving-woman who had
just entered the room, “that you should be mighty thankful, Tawney,
that you are snatched as a brand from the burning.”

“Hush, Jennet!” said Everell Fletcher, touching the speaker with the
point of an arrow which he held in his hand.

Magawisca’s eyes had turned on Jennet, flashing like a sunbeam through
an opening cloud. Everell’s interposition touched a tender chord, and
when {30} she again cast them down, a tear trembled on their lids.

“You will have no hard service to do,” said Mrs. Fletcher, resuming
her address. “I cannot explain all to you now; but you will soon
perceive that our civilized life is far easier, far better and happier
than your wild wandering ways, which are, indeed, as you will
presently see, but little superior to those of the wolves and foxes.”

Magawisca suppressed a reply that her heart sent to her quivering
lips, and Everell said, “Hunted, as the Indians are, to their own
dens, I am sure, mother, they need the fierceness of the wolf and the
cunning of the fox.”

“True, true, my son,” replied Mrs. Fletcher, who really meant no
unkindness in expressing what she deemed a self-evident truth; and
then, turning again to Magawisca, she said, in a gentle tone, “You
have had a long and fatiguing journey--was it not, girl?”

“My foot,” replied Magawisca, “is used to the wild-wood path. The deer
tires not of his way on the mountain, nor the bird of its flight in
the air.”

She uttered her natural feeling in so plaintive a tone that it touched
the heart like a strain of sad music; and when Jennet again
officiously interposed in the conversation, by saying that “Truly
these savages have their house in the wilderness, and their way no man
knows,” her mistress cut short her outpouring by directing her to go
to the outer door, and learn who it was that Digby was conducting to
the house.

{31}

A moment after, Digby, Mr. Fletcher’s confidential domestic, entered
with the air of one who has important intelligence to communicate. He
was followed by a tall, gaunt Indian, who held in his hand a deerskin
pouch. “Ha! Digby,” said Mr. Fletcher, “have you returned? What say
the Commissioners? Can they furnish me a guide and attendants for my
journey?”

“Yes, an please you, sir. I was in the nick of time, for they were
just despatching a messenger to the governor.”

“On what account?”

“Why, it’s rather an odd errand,” replied Digby, scratching his head
with an awkward hesitation. “I would not wish to shock my gentle
mistress, who will never bring her feelings to the queer fashions of
the New World; but Lord’s mercy, sir, you know we think no more of
taking off a scalp here than we did of shaving our beards at home.”

“Scalp!” exclaimed Mr. Fletcher. “Explain yourself, Digby.”

The Indian, as if to assist Digby’s communication, untied his pouch,
and drew from it a piece of dried and shrivelled skin, to which hair,
matted together with blood, still adhered. There was an expression of
fierce triumph on the countenance of the savage as he surveyed the
trophy with a grim smile. A murmur of indignation burst from all
present.

“Why did you bring that wretch here?” demanded Mr. Fletcher of his
servant, in an angry tone.

“I did but obey Mr. Pynchon, sir. The thing is {32} an abomination to
the soul and eye of a Christian, but it has to be taken to Boston for
the reward.”

“What reward, Digby?”

“The reward, sir, that is in reason expected for the scalp of the
Pequod chief.”

As Digby uttered these last words, Magawisca shrieked as if a dagger
had pierced her heart. She darted forward and grasped the arm that
upheld the trophy. “My father! Mononotto!” she screamed, in a voice of
agony.

“Give it to her--by Heaven, you shall give it to her,” cried Everell,
springing on the Indian, and losing all other thought in his
instinctive sympathy for Magawisca.

“Softly, softly, Mr. Everell,” said Digby; “that is the scalp of
Sassacus, not Mononotto. The Pequods had two chiefs, you know.”

Magawisca now released her hold; and, as soon as she could again
command her voice, she said, in her own native language, to the
Indian, “My father--my father--does he live?”

“He does,” answered the Indian, in the same dialect; “he lives in the
wigwam of the chief of the Mohawks.”

Magawisca was silent for a moment, and knit her brows as if agitated
with an important deliberation. She then undid a bracelet from her arm
and gave it to the Indian. “I charge ye,” she said, “as ye hope for
game in your hunting-grounds, for the sun on your wigwam, and the
presence of the Great Spirit in your death-hour--I charge ye to convey
this token {33} to my father. Tell him his children are servants in
the house of his enemies; but,” she added, after a moment’s pause, “to
whom am I trusting? to the murderer of Sassacus, my father’s friend!”

“Fear not,” replied the Indian; “your errand shall be done. Sassacus
was a strange tree in our forests; but he struck his root deep, and
lifted his tall head above our loftiest branches, and cast his shadow
over us, and I cut him down. I may not return to my people, for they
called Sassacus brother, and they would fain avenge him. But fear not,
maiden, your errand shall be done.”

Mr. Fletcher observed this conference, which he could not understand,
with some anxiety and displeasure, and he broke it off by directing
Jennet to conduct Magawisca to another apartment.

Jennet obeyed, muttering as she went, “A notable providence, this,
concerning the Pequod caitiff. Even like Adonibezek, as he has done to
others the Lord hath requited him.”

Mr. Fletcher then most reluctantly took into his possession the savage
trophy, and dismissed the Indian, deeply lamenting that motives of
mistaken policy should tempt his brethren to depart from the plainest
principles of their religion.




 CHAPTER III.

{34}


 “But ah! who can deceive his destiny,
 Or ween by warning to avoid his fate?”
                       Fairy Queen.


On the following morning Mr. Fletcher set out for Boston, and,
escaping all perils by flood and field, arrived there at the
expiration of nine days, having accomplished the journey, now the
affair of a single day, with unusual expedition.

His wards were accompanied by two individuals, who were now, with
them, to become permanent members of his family: Mrs. Grafton, the
sister of their father, and one Master Cradock, a scholar “skilled in
the tongues,” who attended them as their tutor. Mrs. Grafton was a
widow, far on the shady side of fifty; though, as that was a subject
to which she never alluded, she probably regarded age with the
feelings ascribed to her sex, that being the last quality for which
womankind would wish to be honoured, as is said by one whose satire is
so good-humoured that even its truth may be endured. She was,
unhappily for herself, as her lot was cast, a zealous adherent to the
Church of England. Good people, who take upon themselves the
supervisorship of their neighbours’ consciences, abounded in that age,
and from them Mrs. Grafton received frequent {35} exhortations and
remonstrances. To these she uniformly replied, “That a faith and mode
of religion that had saved so many, was good enough to save her;”
“that she had received her belief, just as it was, from her father,
and that he, not she, was responsible for it.” Offensive such opinions
must needs be in a community of professed reformers, but the good lady
did not make them more so by the obtrusiveness of over-wrought zeal.
To confess the truth, her mind was far more intent on the forms of
headpieces than modes of faith, and she was far more ambitious of
being the leader of fashion than the leader of a sect. She would have
contended more earnestly for a favourite recipe than a favourite
dogma; and though she undoubtedly believed “a saint in crape” to be
“twice a saint in lawn,” and fearlessly maintained that “no man could
suitably administer the offices of religion without ‘gown, surplice,
and wig,’” yet she chiefly directed her hostilities against the
puritanical attire of the ladies of the colony, who, she insisted,
“did most unnaturally belie their nature as women, and their birth and
bringing-up as gentlewomen, by their ill-fashioned, ill-sorted, and
unbecoming apparel.” To this heresy she was fast gaining proselytes;
for, if we may believe the “simple cobbler of Agawam,” there were,
even in those early and pure days, “nugiperous gentle dames who
inquired what dress the Queen is in this week.” The contagion spread
rapidly; and when some of the most vigilant and zealous sentinels
proposed that the preachers should {36} make it the subject of public
and personal reproof, it was whispered that the scandal was not
limited to idle maidens, but that certain of the deacons’ wives were
in it, and it was deemed more prudent to adopt gentle and private
measures to eradicate the evil; an evil so deeply felt as to be
bewailed by the merciless “cobbler” above quoted in the following
affecting terms: “Methinks it would break the hearts of Englishmen to
see so many goodly English women imprisoned in French cages, peeping
out of their hood-holes for some men of mercy to help them with a
little wit, and nobody relieves them. We have about five or six of
them in our colony. If I see any of them accidentally, I cannot
cleanse my phansie of them for a month after.”

It would seem marvellous that a woman like Mrs. Grafton, apparently
engrossed with the world, living on the foam and froth of life, should
become a voluntary exile to the colonies; but, to do her justice, she
was kind-hearted and affectionate, susceptible of strong and
controlling attachment, and the infant children of a brother on whom
she had doted outweighed her love of frivolous pleasures and personal
indulgence.

She certainly believed that the resolution of her sister to go to the
wilderness had no parallel in the history of human folly and madness;
but, the resolution once taken, and, as she perceived, unconquerable,
she made her own destiny conformable, not without some restiffness,
but without serious repining. It was an unexpected shock to her to be
compelled {37} to leave Boston for a condition of life not only more
rude and inconvenient, but really dangerous. Necessity, however, is
more potent than philosophy, and Mrs. Grafton, like most people,
submitted with patience to an inevitable evil.

As “good Master Cradock” was a man rather acted upon than acting, we
shall leave him to be discovered by our readers as the light of others
falls on him.

Mr. Fletcher received the children--the relicts and gifts of a woman
whom he had loved as few men can love--with an intense interest. The
youngest, Mary, was a pretty, petted child, wayward and bashful. She
repelled Mr. Fletcher’s caresses, and ran away from him to shelter
herself in her aunt’s arms; but Alice, the eldest, seemed
instinctively to return the love that beamed in the first glance that
Mr. Fletcher cast on her; in that brief, eager glance he saw the
living and beautiful image of her mother. So much was he impressed
with the resemblance, that he said, in a letter to his wife, that it
reminded him of the heathen doctrine of metempsychosis, and he could
almost believe the spirit of the mother was transferred to the bosom
of the child. The arrangement Mr. Fletcher made for the transportation
of his charge to Springfield might probably be traced to the
preference inspired by this resemblance.

He despatched the little Mary with her aunt and the brother of
Magawisca, the Indian boy Oneco, and such attendants as were necessary
for their safe conduct, and he retained Alice and the tutor to be {38}
the companions of his journey. Before the children were separated they
were baptized by the Reverend Mr. Cotton, and, in commemoration of the
Christian graces of their mother, their names were changed to the
puritanical appellations of Hope and Faith.

Mr. Fletcher was detained, at first by business and afterward by ill
health, much longer than he had expected, and the fall, winter, and
earliest months of spring wore away before he was able to set his face
homeward. In the mean time, his little community at Bethel proceeded
more harmoniously than could have been hoped from the discordant
materials of which it was composed. This was owing, in great part, to
the wise and gentle Mrs. Fletcher, the sun of her little system; all
were obedient to the silent influence that controlled without being
perceived. The following letter which she wrote to Mr. Fletcher just
before his return, contains some important domestic details.


                                                “Springfield, 1638.

 “To my good and Honoured Husband:

 “Thy kind letter was duly received fourteen days after date, and was
 most welcome to me, containing, as it does, a portion of that stream
 of kindness that is ever flowing out from thy bountiful nature towards
 me. Sweet and refreshing was it, as these gentle days of spring after
 our sullen winter. Winter! ever disconsolate in these parts, but made
 tenfold more dreary by the absence of that precious light by which I
 have ever been cheered and guided.

{39}

 “I thank thee heartily, my dear life, that thou dost so warmly commend
 my poor endeavours to do well in thy absence. I have truly tried to be
 faithful to my little nestlings, and to cheer them with notes of
 gladness when I have drooped inwardly for the voice of my mate. Yet my
 anxious thoughts have been more with thee than with myself; nor have I
 been unmindful of any of thy perplexities by sickness or otherwise,
 but in all thy troubles I have been troubled, and have ever prayed
 that, whatever might betide me, thou mightst return in safety to thy
 desiring family.

 “I have had many difficulties to contend with in thy absence, of which
 I have forborne to inform thee, deeming it the duty of a wife never to
 disquiet her husband with her household cares; but now that, with the
 Lord’s permission, thou art so soon to be with us, I would fain render
 unto thee an account of my stewardship, knowing that thou art not a
 hard master, and wilt consider the will, and not the weakness, of thy
 loving wife.

 “This Dame Grafton is strangely out of place here--fitter for a
 parlour bird than a flight into the wilderness; and but that she
 cometh commended to us as a widow--a name that is a draught from the
 Lord upon every Christian heart--we might find it hard to brook her
 light and worldly ways. She raileth, and yet, I think, not with an
 evil mind, but rather ignorantly, at our most precious faith, and hath
 even ventured to read aloud from her book of Common Prayer: an offence
 that she hath been prevented from repeating {40} by the somewhat
 profane jest of our son Everell, whose love of mischief, proceeding
 from the gay temper of youth, I trust you will overlook. It was a few
 nights ago, when a storm was raging, that the poor lady’s fears were
 greatly excited. My womanish apprehensions had a hard struggle with my
 duty, so terrific was the hideous howling of the wolves, mingling with
 the blasts that swept through the forest; but I stilled my beating
 heart with the thought that my children leaned on me, and I must not
 betray my weakness. But Dame Grafton was beside herself. At one moment
 she fancied we should be the prey of the wild beast, and at the next,
 that she heard the alarm yell of the savages. Everell brought her her
 prayer-book, and, affecting a well-beseeming gravity, begged her to
 look out the prayer for distressed women in imminent danger of being
 scalped by North American Indians. The poor lady, distracted with
 terror, seized the book, and turned over leaf after leaf, Everell,
 meanwhile, affecting to aid her search. In vain I shook my head
 reprovingly at the boy; in vain I assured Mistress Grafton that I
 trusted we were in no danger; she was beyond the influence of reason;
 nothing allayed her fears, till, chancing to catch a glance of
 Everell’s eye, she detected the lurking laughter, and rapping him
 soundly over the ears with her book, she left the room greatly
 enraged. I grieve to add, that Everell evinced small sorrow for his
 levity, though I admonished him thereupon. At the same time I thought
 it a fit occasion to commend the sagacity whereby {41} he had detected
 the shortcomings of written prayers, and to express my hope that,
 unpromising as his beginnings are, he may prove a son of Jacob that
 shall wrestle and prevail.

 “I have something farther to say of Everell, who is, in the main, a
 most devoted son, and, as I believe, an apt scholar; as his master
 telleth me that he readeth Latin like his mother tongue, and is well
 grounded in the Greek. The boy doth greatly affect the company of the
 Pequod girl Magawisca. If, in his studies, he meets with any trait of
 heroism (and with such, truly, her mind doth seem naturally to
 assimilate), he straightway calleth for her, and rendereth it into
 English, in which she hath made such marvellous progress that I am
 sometimes startled with the beautiful forms in which she clothes her
 simple thoughts. She, in her turn, doth take much delight in
 describing to him the customs of her people, and relating their
 traditionary tales, which are, like pictures, captivating to a
 youthful imagination. He hath taught her to read, and reads to her
 Spenser’s rhymes, and many other books of the like kind, of which, I
 am sorry to say, Dame Grafton hath brought hither stores. I have not
 forbidden him to read them, well knowing that the appetite of youth is
 often whetted by denial, and fearing that the boy might be tempted
 secretly to evade my authority; and I would rather expose him to all
 the mischief of this unprofitable lore, than to tempt him to a deceit
 that might corrupt the sweet fountain of truth--the well-spring of all
 that is good and noble.

{42}

 “I have gone far from my subject. When my boy comes before my mind’s
 eye, I can see no other object. But to return. I have not been
 unmindful of my duty to the Indian girl, but have endeavoured to
 instil into her mind the first principles of our religion, as
 contained in Mr. Cotton’s Catechism and elsewhere. But, alas! to these
 her eye is shut and her ear is closed, not only with that blindness
 and deafness common to the natural man, but she entertaineth an
 aversion, which has the fixedness of principle, and doth continually
 remind me of Hannibal’s hatred to Rome, and is, like that, inwrought
 with her filial piety. I have in vain attempted to subdue her to the
 drudgery of domestic service, and make her take part with Jennet; but
 as hopefully might you yoke a deer with an ox. It is not that she
 lacks obedience to me: so far as it seems she can command her duty,
 she is ever complying; but it appeareth impossible to her to clip the
 wings of her soaring thoughts, and keep them down to household
 matters.

 “I have sometimes marvelled at the providence of God, in bestowing on
 this child of the forest such rare gifts of mind, and other and
 outward beauties. Her voice hath a natural, deep, and most sweet
 melody in it, far beyond any stringed instrument. She hath, too (think
 not that I, like Everell, am, as Jennet saith, a charmed bird to
 her)--she hath, though yet a child in years, that in her mien that
 doth bring to mind the lofty Judith and the gracious Esther. When I
 once said this to Everell, he replied, {43} ‘Oh, mother! is she not
 more like the gentle and tender Ruth?’ To him she may be, and
 therefore it is that, innocent and safe as the intercourse of these
 children now is, it is for thee to decide whether it be not most wise
 to remove the maiden from our dwelling. Two young plants that have
 sprung up in close neighbourhood may be separated while young, but if
 disjoined after their fibres are all intertwined, one, or perchance
 both, may perish.

 “Think not that this anxiety springs from the mistaken fancy of a
 woman, that love is the natural channel for all the purposes,
 thoughts, hopes, and feelings of humanity. Neither think, I beseech
 thee, that, doting with a foolish fondness upon my noble boy, I
 magnify into importance whatsoever concerneth him. No: my heart
 yearneth towards this poor heathen orphan-girl; and when I see her, in
 his absence, starting at every sound, and her restless eye turning an
 asking glance at every opening of the door, every movement betokening
 a disquieted spirit, and then the sweet contentment that stealeth over
 her face when he appeareth--oh, my honoured husband! all my woman’s
 nature feeleth for her; not for any present evil, but for what may
 betide.

 “Having commended this subject to thy better wisdom, I will leave
 caring for it to speak to thee of others of thy household. Your three
 little girls are thriving mightily; and as to the baby, you will not
 be ashamed to own him, though you will not recognise, in the bouncing
 boy that plays bo-peep and creeps quite over the room, the little
 creature who {44} had scarcely opened his eyes on the world when you
 went away. He is by far the largest child I ever had, and the most
 knowing; he has cut his front upper teeth, and showeth signs of two
 more. He is surprisingly fond of Oneco, and clappeth his hands with
 joy whenever he sees him. Indeed, the boy is a favourite with all the
 young ones, and greatly aideth me by continually pleasuring them. He
 is far different from his sister--gay and volatile, giving scarcely
 one thought to the past, and not one care to the future. His sister
 often taketh him apart to discourse with him, and sometimes doth
 produce a cast of seriousness over his countenance; but at the next
 presented object, it vanisheth as speedily as a shadow before a
 sunbeam. He hath commended himself greatly to the favour of Dame
 Grafton by his devotion to her little favourite: a spoiled child is
 she, and it seemeth a pity that the name of Faith was given to her,
 since her shrinking, timid character doth not promise, in any manner,
 to resemble that most potent of the Christian graces. Oneco hath
 always some charm to lure her waywardness. He bringeth home the
 treasures of the woods to please her--berries, and wild flowers, and
 the beautiful plumage of birds that are brought down by his unerring
 aim. Everell hath much advantage from the wood-craft of Oneco: the two
 boys daily enrich our table, which, in truth, hath need of such helps,
 with the spoils of the air and water.

 “I am grieved to tell thee that some misrule hath crept in among thy
 servants in thy absence. Alas, {45} what are sheep without their
 shepherd! Digby is, as ever, faithful--not serving with eye-service;
 but Hutton hath consorted much with some evil-doers, who have been
 violating the law of God and the law of our land, by meeting together
 in merry companies, playing cards, dancing, and the like. For these
 offences they were brought before Mr. Pynchon, and sentenced to
 receive, each, ‘twenty stripes well laid on.’ Hutton furthermore,
 having been overtaken with drink, was condemned to wear, suspended
 around his neck, for one month, a bit of wood on which Toper is
 legibly written; and Darby, who is ever a dawdler, having gone, last
 Saturday, with the cart to the village, dilly-dallied about there, and
 did not set out on his return till the sun was quite down, both to the
 eye and by the calendar. Accordingly, early on the following Monday he
 was summoned before Mr. Pynchon, and ordered to receive ten stripes;
 but by reason of his youth and my intercession, which, being by a
 private letter, doubtless had some effect, the punishment was
 remitted; whereupon he heartily promised amendment and a better
 carriage.

 “There hath been some alarm here within the last few days, on account
 of certain Indians who have been seen lurking in the woods around us.
 They are reported not to have a friendly appearance. We have been
 advised to remove, for the present, to the Fort; but, as I feel no
 apprehension, I shall not disarrange my family by taking a step that
 would savour more of fear than prudence. I say I feel no {46}
 apprehension; yet I must confess it, I have a cowardly, womanish
 spirit, and fear is set in motion by the very mention of danger. There
 are vague forebodings hanging about me, and I cannot drive them away
 even by the thought that your presence, my honoured husband, will soon
 relieve me from all agitating apprehensions, and repair all the faults
 of my poor judgment. Fearful thoughts press on me; untoward accidents
 have prolonged thy absence; our reunion may yet be far distant; and if
 it should never chance in this world, oh remember, that if I have
 fallen far short in duty, the measure of my love hath been full. I
 have ever known that mine was Leah’s portion; that I was not the
 chosen and the loved one; and this has sometimes made me fearful,
 often joyless; but remember, it is only the perfect love of the
 husband that casteth out the fear of the wife.

 “I have one request to prefer to thee, which I have lacked courage to
 make by word of mouth, and therefore now commend it by letter to thy
 kindness. Be gracious unto me, my dear husband, and deem not that I
 overstep the modest bound of a woman’s right in meddling with that
 which is thy prerogative--the ordering of our eldest son’s education.
 Everell here hath few except spiritual privileges. God, who seeth my
 heart, knoweth I do not undervalue these--the manna of the wilderness.
 Yet to them might be added worldly helps, to aid the growth of the
 boy’s noble gifts, a kind Providence having opened a wide door
 therefore in the generous offer of my {47} brother Stretton. True, he
 hath not attained to our light, whereby manifold errors of Church and
 State are made visible, yet he hath ever borne himself uprightly, and
 to us most lovingly; and as I remember there was a good Samaritan and
 a faithful centurion, I think we are permitted to enlarge the bounds
 of our charity to those who work righteousness, albeit not of our
 communion.

 “Thou hast already sown the good seed in our boy’s heart, and it hath
 been (I say it not presumingly) nurtured with a mother’s tears and
 prayers. Trust, then, to the promised blessing, and fear not to permit
 him to pass a few years in England, whence he will return to be a
 crown of glory to thee, my husband, and a blessing and honour to our
 chosen country. Importunity, I know, is not beseeming in a wife; it is
 the instrument of weakness, whereby, like the mouse in the fable, she
 would gnaw away what she cannot break. I will not, therefore, urge
 thee farther, but leave the decision to thy wisdom and thy love. And
 now, my dear husband, I kiss and embrace thee; and may God company
 with thee, and restore thee, if it be his good pleasure, to thy ever
 faithful, and loving, and obedient wife,

                                              “Martha Fletcher.

 “To her honoured husband these be delivered.”


The above letter may indicate, but it feebly expresses, the character
and state of mind of the writer. She never magnified her love by
words, but expressed it by that self-devoting, self-sacrificing
conduct {48} to her husband and children, which characterizes, in all
ages and circumstances, faithful and devoted woman. She was too
generous to communicate all her fears (about which a woman is
generally least reserved) to her husband.

Some occurrences of the preceding day had given her just cause of
alarm. At a short distance from Bethel (the name that Mr. Fletcher had
given his residence) there lived an old Indian woman, one of the few
survivers of a tribe who had been faithful allies of the Pequods.
After the destruction of her people, she had strayed up the banks of
the Connecticut, and remained in Springfield. She was in the habit of
supplying Mrs. Fletcher with wild berries and herbs, and receiving
favours in return, and on that day went thither, as it appeared, on
her customary errand. She had made her usual barter, and had drawn her
blanket around her as if to depart, but still she lingered, standing
before Mrs. Fletcher, and looking fixedly at her. Mrs. Fletcher did
not at first observe her; her head was bent over her infant sleeping
on her lap, in the attitude of listening to its soft breathing. As she
perused its innocent face, a mother’s beautiful visions floated before
her; but as she raised her eye, and met the piercing glance of the old
woman, a dark cloud came over the clear heaven of her thoughts.
Nelema’s brow was contracted, her lips drawn in, and her little sunken
eye gleamed like a diamond from its dark recess.

“Why do you look at my baby thus?” asked Mrs. Fletcher.

{49}

The old woman replied in her own dialect, in a hurried, inarticulate
manner. “What says she, Magawisca?” asked Mrs. Fletcher of the Indian
girl, who stood beside her, and seemed to listen with unwonted
interest.

“She says, madam, the baby is like a flower just opened to the sun,
with no stain upon it; that he better pass now to the Great Spirit.
She says this world is all a rough place--all sharp stones, and deep
waters, and black clouds!”

“Oh, she is old, Magawisca, and the days have come to her that have no
pleasure in them. Look there,” she said, “Nelema, at my son
Everell!”--the boy was at the moment passing the window, flushed with
exercise, and triumphantly displaying a string of game that he had
just brought from the forest--“is there not sunshine in my boy’s face?
To him every day is bright, and every path is smooth.”

“Ah!” replied the old woman, with a heavy groan, “I had sons too, and
grandsons; but where are they? They trod the earth as lightly as that
boy; but they have fallen, like our forest trees, before the stroke of
the English axe. Of all my race, there is not one now in whose veins
my blood runs. Sometimes, when the spirits of the storm are howling
about my wigwam, I hear the voices of my children crying for
vengeance, and then I could myself deal the death-blow.” Nelema spoke
with vehemence and wild gestures; and her language, though interpreted
by Magawisca’s soft voice, had little tendency to allay the feeling
her manner inspired. Mrs. {50} Fletcher recoiled from her, and
instinctively drew her baby closer to her breast.

“Nay,” said the old woman, “fear me not; I have had kindness from
thee; thy blankets have warmed me, I have been fed from thy table, and
drank of thy cup; and what is this arm,” and she threw back her
blanket, and stretched out her naked, shrivelled, trembling arm, “what
is this to do the work of vengeance?”

She paused for an instant, glanced her eye wildly around the room, and
then again fixed it on Mrs. Fletcher and her infant. “They spared not
our homes,” she said; “there, where our old men spoke, where was heard
the song of the maiden and the laugh of our children, there now all is
silence, dust, and ashes. I can neither harm thee nor help thee. When
the stream of vengeance rolls over the land, the tender shoot must be
broken, and the goodly tree uprooted that gave its pleasant shade and
fruits to all.”

“It is a shame and a sin,” said Jennet, who entered the room just as
Magawisca was conveying Nelema’s speech to Mrs. Fletcher, “a crying
shame, for this heathen hag to be pouring forth here as if she were
gifted like the prophets of old--she that can only see into the future
by reading the devil’s book; and, if that be the case, as more than
one has mistrusted, it were best forthwith to deliver her to the
judges, and cast her into prison.”

“Peace, Jennet,” said Mrs. Fletcher, alarmed less Nelema should hear
her, and her feelings, which {51} were then at an exalted pitch,
should be wrought to phrensy; but her apprehensions were groundless;
the old woman saw nothing but the visions of her imagination; heard
nothing but the fancied voices of the spirits of her race. She
continued for a few moments to utter her thoughts in low, articulate
murmurs, and then, without again addressing Mrs. Fletcher, or raising
her eyes, she left the house.

A few moments after her departure, Mrs. Fletcher perceived that she
had dropped at her feet a little roll, which she found, on
examination, to be an arrow, and the rattle of a rattlesnake,
enveloped in a skin of the same reptile. She knew it was the custom of
the savages to express much meaning by these symbols, and she turned
to demand an explanation of Magawisca, who was deeply skilled in all
the ways of her people.

Magawisca had disappeared; and Jennet, who had ever looked on the poor
girl with a jealous and an evil eye, took this occasion to give vent
to her feelings. “It is a pity,” she said, “the child is out of the
way the first time she was like to do a service; she may be skilled in
snake’s rattles and bloody arrows, for I make no doubt she is as used
to them as I am to my broom and scrubbing-cloth.”

“Will you call Magawisca to me?” said Mrs. Fletcher, in a voice that
from her would have been a silencing reproof to a more sensitive ear
than Jennet’s; but she, no ways daunted, replied, “Ah! that will I,
madam, if I can find her; but where to look {52} for her no mere
mortal can tell; for she does not stay longer on a perch than a
butterfly, unless, indeed, it be when she is working on Mr. Everell’s
moccasins, or filling his ears with wild fables about those rampaging
Indians. Ah, there she is!” she exclaimed, looking through the window,
“talking with Nelema, just a little way into the wood; there, I see
their heads above those scrub-oaks; see their wild motions; see,
Magawisca starts homeward--now the old woman pulls her back--now she
seems entreating Nelema; the old hag shakes her head--Magawisca covers
her eyes: what can all this mean? no good, I am sure. The girl is ever
going to Nelema’s hut, and of moonlight nights too, when they say
witches work their will: birds of a feather flock together. Well, I
know one thing, that if Master Everell was mine, I would sooner, in
faith, cast him into the lion’s den or the fiery furnace, than leave
him to this crafty offspring of a race that are the children and heirs
of the Evil One.”

“Jennet,” said Mrs. Fletcher, “thy tongue far outruns thy discretion.
Restrain thy foolish thoughts, and bid Magawisca come to me.”

Jennet sullenly obeyed, and soon after Magawisca entered. Mrs.
Fletcher was struck with her changed aspect. She turned away, as one
conscious of possessing a secret, and fearful that the eye will speak
unbidden. Her air was troubled and anxious, and instead of her usual
light and lofty step, she moved timidly and dejectedly.

“Come to me, Magawisca,” said Mrs. Fletcher, {53} “and deal truly by
me, as I have ever dealt by thee.”

She obeyed, and as she stood by Mrs. Fletcher, the poor girl’s tears
dropped on her benefactor’s lap. “Thou hast been more than true,” she
said; “thou hast been kind to me as the mother-bird that shelters the
wanderer in her nest.”

“Then, Magawisca, if it concerneth me to know it, thou wilt explain
the meaning of this roll which Nelema dropped at my feet.”

The girl started and became very pale: to an observing eye, the
changes of the olive skin are as apparent as those of a fairer
complexion. She took the roll from Mrs. Fletcher, and shut her eyes
fast. Her bosom heaved convulsively; but, after a short struggle with
conflicting feelings, she said deliberately, in a low voice, “That
which I may speak without bringing down on me the curse of my father’s
race, I will speak. This,” she added, unfolding the snake’s skin,
“this betokeneth the unseen and silent approach of an enemy. This, you
know,” and she held up the rattle, “is the warning voice that speaketh
of danger near. And this,” she concluded, taking the arrow in her
trembling hand, “this is the symbol of death.”

“And why, Magawisca, are these fearful tokens given to me? Dost thou
know, girl, aught of a threatening enemy--of an ambushed foe?”

“I have said all that I may say,” she replied.

Mrs. Fletcher questioned farther, but could obtain no satisfaction.
Magawisca’s lips were sealed; and {54} it was certain that, if her
resolution did not yield to the entreaties of her own heart, it would
resist every other influence.

Mrs. Fletcher summoned Everell, and bade him urge Magawisca to
disclose whatever Nelema had communicated. He did so, but sportively,
for he said “the old woman was cracked, and Magawisca’s head was
turned. If there were indeed danger,” he continued, “and Magawisca was
apprized of it, think you, mother, she would permit us to remain in
ignorance?” He turned an appealing glance to Magawisca, but her face
was averted. Without suspecting this was intentional, he continued,
“You ought to do penance, Magawisca, for the alarm you have given
mother. You and I will act as her patrol to-night.”

Magawisca assented, and appeared relieved by the proposition, though
her gloom was not lightened by Everell’s gayety. Mrs. Fletcher did
not, of course, acquiesce in this arrangement, but she deemed it
prudent to communicate her apprehensions to her trusty Digby. After a
short consultation, it was agreed that Digby should remain on guard
during the night, and that the two other men-servants should have
their muskets in order, and be ready at a moment’s warning. Such
precautions were not unfrequent, and caused no unusual excitement in
the household. Mrs. Fletcher had it, as she expressed herself, “borne
in upon her mind, after the evening exercise, to make some remarks
upon the uncertainty of life.” She then dismissed the family to their
several {55} apartments, and herself retired to endite the epistle
given above.

Everell observed Magawisca closely through the evening, and he was
convinced, from the abstraction of her manner, and from the efforts
she made (which were now apparent to him) to maintain a calm
demeanour, that there was more ground for his mother’s apprehensions
than he at first supposed. He determined to be the companion of
Digby’s watch; and, standing high in that good fellow’s confidence, he
made a private arrangement with him, which he easily effected without
his mother’s knowledge; for his youthful zeal did not render him
regardless of the impropriety of heightening her fears.




 CHAPTER IV.

{56}


 “It would have been happy if they had converted some before they had
 killed any.”--Robinson.


The house at Bethel had, both in front and in rear, a portico, or,
as it was more humbly, and therefore more appropriately named, a shed;
that in the rear was a sort of adjunct to the kitchen, and one end of
it was enclosed for the purpose of a bedroom, and occupied by
Magawisca. Everell found Digby sitting at the other extremity of this
portico; his position was prudently chosen. The moon was high and the
heavens clear, and there, concealed and sheltered by the shadow of the
roof, he could, without being seen, command the whole extent of
cleared ground that bordered on the forest, whence the foe would come,
if he came at all.

Everell, like a good knight, had carefully inspected his arms, and
just taken his position beside Digby, when they heard Magawisca’s
window cautiously opened, and saw her spring through it. Everell would
have spoken to her, but Digby made a signal of silence; and she,
without observing them, hastened with a quick and light step towards
the wood, and entered it, taking the path that led to Nelema’s hut.

“Confound her!” exclaimed Digby, “she is in a plot with the old
woman.”

{57}

“No, no. On my life she is not, Digby.”

“Some mischief--some mischief,” said Digby, shaking his head. “They
are a treacherous race. Let’s follow her. No, we had best keep clear
of the wood. Do you call after her; she will hearken to you.”

Everell hesitated. “Speak quickly, Mr. Everell,” urged Digby; “she
will be beyond the reach of your voice. It is no light matter that
could take her to Nelema’s hut at this time of the night.”

“She has good reason for going, Digby. I am sure of it; and I will not
call her back.”

“Reason,” muttered Digby; “reason is but a jack-o’-lantern light in
most people’s minds. You trust her too far, Mr. Everell; but there,
she is returning! See how she looks all around her, like a frightened
bird that hears an enemy in every rustling leaf. Stand close; observe
her; see, she lays her ear to the earth--it is their crafty way of
listening; there, she is gone again!” he exclaimed, as Magawisca
darted away into the wood. “It is past doubt she holds communication
with some one. God send us a safe deliverance. I had rather meet a
legion of Frenchmen than a company of these savages. They are a kind
of beast we don’t comprehend--out of the range of God’s
creatures--neither angel, man, nor yet quite devil. I would have sent
to the fort for a guard to-night, but I liked not being driven hither
and yon by that old hag’s tokens, nor yet quite to take counsel from
your good mother’s fears, she being but a woman.”

“I think you have caught the fear, Digby, without {58} taking its
counsel,” said Everell, “which does little credit to your wisdom; the
only use of fear being to provide against danger.”

“That is true, Mr. Everell; but don’t think I am afraid. It is one
thing to know what danger is, and wish to shun it, and another thing
to feel like you fear-naught lads, that have never felt a twinge of
pain, and have scarce a sense of your own mortality. You would be the
boldest at an attack, Mr. Everell, and I should stand a siege best. A
boy’s courage is a keen weapon that wants temper.”

“Apt to break at the first stroke from the enemy, you mean, Digby?”
Digby nodded assent. “Well, I should like, at any rate, to prove it,”
added Everell.

“Time enough this half dozen years yet, my young master. I should be
loath to see that fair skin of thine stained with blood; and, besides,
you have yet to get a little more worldly prudence than to trust a
young Indian girl just because she takes your fancy.”

“And why does she take my fancy, Digby? because she is true and
noble-minded. I am certain, that if she knows of any danger
approaching us, she is seeking to avert it.”

“I don’t know that, Mr. Everell; she’ll be first true to her own
people. The old proverb holds fast with these savages, as well as with
the rest of the world: ‘hawks won’t pick out hawks’ eyes.’ Like to
like, throughout all nature. I grant you, she hath truly a fair
seeming.”

{59}

“And all that’s foul is our own suspicion, is it not, Digby?”

“Not exactly; there’s plainly some mystery between Magawisca and the
old woman: and we know these Pequods were famed above all the Indian
tribes for their cunning.”

“And what is superior cunning among savages but superior sense?”

“You may out-talk me, Mr. Everell,” replied Digby, with the impatience
that a man feels when he is sure he is right, without being able to
make it appear. “You may out-talk me, but you will never convince me.
Was not I in the Pequod war? I ought to know, I think.”

“Yes, and I think you have told me they showed more resolution than
cunning there; in particular, that the brother of Magawisca, whom she
so piteously bemoans to this day, fought like a young lion.”

“Yes, he did, poor dog! and he was afterward cruelly cut off; and it
is this that makes me think they will take some terrible revenge for
his death. I often hear Magawisca talking to Oneco of her brother, and
I think it is to stir his spirit; but this boy is no more like to him
than a spaniel to a bloodhound.”

Nothing Digby said had any tendency to weaken Everell’s confidence in
Magawisca.

The subject of the Pequod war once started, Digby and Everell were in
no danger of sleeping at their post. Digby loved, as well as another
man, and particularly those who have had brief military experience,
{60} to fight his battles o’er again; and Everell was at an age to
listen with delight to tales of adventure and danger. They thus wore
away the time till the imaginations of both relater and listener were
at that pitch when every shadow is imbodied, and every passing sound
bears a voice to the quickened sense.

“Hark!” said Digby; “did you not hear footsteps?”

“I hear them now,” replied Everell; “they seem not very near. Is it
not Magawisca returning?”

“No, there is more than one; and it is the heavy, though cautious,
tread of men. Ha! Argus scents them.” The old house-dog now sprang
from his rest on a mat at the door-stone, and gave one of those loud,
inquiring barks, by which this animal first hails the approach of a
strange footstep. “Hush, Argus, hush!” cried Everell; and the dog,
having obeyed his instinct, seemed satisfied to submit to his master’s
voice, and crept lazily back to his place of repose.

“You have hushed Argus, and the footsteps too,” said Digby; “but it is
well, perhaps, if there really is an enemy near, that he should know
we are on guard.”

“If there really is, Digby!” said Everell, who, terrific as the
apprehended danger was, felt the irrepressible thirst of youth of
adventure; “do you think we could both have been deceived?”

“Nothing easier, Mr. Everell, than to deceive senses on the watch for
alarm. We heard something, {61} but it might have been the wolves that
even now prowl about the very clearing here at night. Ha!” he
exclaimed, “there they are;” and, starting forward, he levelled his
musket towards the wood.

“You are mad,” said Everell, striking down Digby’s musket with the
butt end of his own. “It is Magawisca.” Magawisca at that moment
emerged from the wood.

Digby appeared confounded. “Could I have been so deceived?” he said;
“could it have been her shadow? I thought I saw an Indian beyond that
birch-tree; you see the white bark? well, just beyond in the shade. It
could not have been Magawisca, nor her shadow, for you see there are
trees between the footpath and that place; and yet how should he have
vanished without motion or sound?”

“Our senses deceive us, Digby,” said Everell, reciprocating Digby’s
own argument.

“In this tormenting moonlight they do; but my senses have been well
schooled in their time, and should have learned to know a man from a
woman, and a shadow from a substance.”

Digby had not a very strong conviction of the actual presence of an
enemy, as was evident from his giving no alarm to his auxiliaries in
the house; and he believed that if there were hostile Indians prowling
about them, they were few in number; still he deemed it prudent to
persevere in their precautionary measures. “I will remain here,” he
said, “Mr. Everell, and do you follow Magawisca; sift what you can
from her. Depend on’t, there’s something {62} wrong. Why should she
have turned away on seeing us? and did you not observe her hide
something beneath her mantle?”

Everell acceded to Digby’s proposition, not with the expectation of
confirming his suspicions, but in the hope that Magawisca would show
they were groundless. He followed her to the front of the house, to
which she seemed involuntarily to have bent her steps on perceiving
him.

“You have taken the most difficult part of our duty on yourself,
Magawisca,” he said, on coming up to her. “You have acted as vidette,
while I have been quiet at my post.”

Perhaps Magawisca did not understand him; at any rate, she made no
reply.

“Have you met an enemy in your reconnoitring? Digby and I fancied that
we both heard and saw the foe.”

“When and where?” exclaimed Magawisca, in a hurried, alarmed tone.

“Not many minutes since, and just at the very edge of the wood.”

“What! when Digby raised his gun? I thought that had been in sport, to
startle me.”

“No, Magawisca; sporting does not suit our present case. My mother and
her little ones are in peril, and Digby is a faithful servant.”

“Faithful!” echoed Magawisca, as if there were more in Everell’s
expression than met the ear; “he surely may walk straight who hath
nothing to draw him aside. Digby hath but one path, and that is {63}
plain before him; but one voice from his heart, and why should he not
obey it?” The girl’s voice faltered as she spoke, and as she concluded
she burst into tears. Everell had never before witnessed this
expression of feeling from her. She had an habitual self-command, that
hid the emotions of her heart from common observers, and veiled them
even from those who most narrowly watched her. Everell’s confidence in
Magawisca had not been in the least degree weakened by all the
appearances against her. He did not mean to imply suspicion by his
commendation of Digby, but merely to throw out a leading observation,
which she might follow if she would.

He felt reproached and touched by her distress; but, struck by the
clew which, as he thought, her language afforded to the mystery of her
conduct, and confident that she would in no way aid or abet any
mischief that her own people might be contriving against them, he
followed the natural bent of his generous temper, and assured her,
again and again, of his entire trust in her. This seemed rather to
aggravate than abate her distress. She threw herself on the ground,
drew her mantle over her face, and wept convulsively. He found he
could not allay the storm he had raised, and he seated himself beside
her. After a little while, either exhausted by the violence of her
emotion, or comforted by Everell’s silent sympathy, she became
composed, and raised her face from her mantle, and as she did so,
something fell from beneath its folds. She hastily recovered and
replaced it, but not till Everell had perceived {64} it was an eagle’s
feather. He knew this was the badge of her tribe, and he had heard her
say that “a tuft from the wing of the monarch bird was her father’s
crest.” A suspicion flashed through his mind, and was conveyed to
Magawisca’s by one bright glance of inquiry. She said nothing, but her
responding look was rather sorrowful than confused; and Everell,
anxious to believe what he wished to be true, came, after a little
consideration, to the conclusion that the feather had been dropped in
her path by a passing bird. He did not scrutinize her motive in
concealing it; he could not think her capable of evil; and, anxious to
efface from her mind the distrust his countenance might have
expressed, “This beautiful moon and her train of stars,” he said,
“look as if they were keeping their watch over our dwelling. There are
those, Magawisca, who believe the stars have a mysterious influence on
human destiny. I know nothing of the grounds of their faith, and my
imagination is none of the brightest; but I can almost fancy they are
stationed there as guardian angels, and I feel quite sure that nothing
evil can walk abroad in their light.”

“They do look peaceful,” she replied, mournfully; “but ah! Everell,
man is ever breaking the peace of nature. It was such a night as this,
so bright and still, when your English came upon our quiet homes.”

“You have never spoken to me of that night, Magawisca.”

“No, Everell, for our hands have taken hold of {65} the chain of
friendship, and I feared to break it by speaking of the wrongs your
people did to mine.”

“You need not fear it; I can honour noble deeds, though done by our
enemies, and see that cruelty is cruelty, though inflicted by our
friends.”

“Then listen to me; and when the hour of vengeance comes, if it should
come, remember it was provoked.”

She paused for a few moments, sighed deeply, and then began the
recital of the last acts in the tragedy of her people, the principal
circumstances of which are detailed in the chronicles of the times by
the witnesses of the bloody scenes. “You know,” she said, “our
fortress-homes were on the level summit of a hill: thence we could
see, as far as the eye could stretch, our hunting-grounds and our
gardens, which lay beneath us on the borders of a stream that glided
around our hill, and so near to it that in the still nights we could
hear its gentle voice. Our fort and wigwams were encompassed with a
palisade, formed of young trees, and branches interwoven and sharply
pointed. No enemy’s foot had ever approached this nest, which the
eagles of the tribe had built for their mates and their young.
Sassacus and my father were both away on that dreadful night. They had
called a council of our chiefs and old men; our young men had been out
in their canoes, and when they returned they had danced and feasted,
and were now in deep sleep. My mother was in her hut with her
children--not sleeping, for my brother Samoset had lingered behind his
companions, {66} and had not yet returned from the water-sport. The
warning spirit, that ever keeps its station at a mother’s pillow,
whispered that some evil was near; and my mother, bidding me lie still
with the little ones, went forth in quest of my brother. All the
servants of the Great Spirit spoke to my mother’s ear and eye of
danger and death. The moon, as she sunk behind the hills, appeared a
ball of fire; strange lights darted through the air; to my mother’s
eye they seemed fiery arrows; to her ear the air was filled with
death-sighs.

“She had passed the palisade, and was descending the hill, when she
met old Cushmakin. ‘Do you know aught of my boy?’ she asked.

“‘Your boy is safe, and sleeps with his companions; he returned by the
Sassafras knoll; that way can only be trodden by the strong-limbed and
light-footed.’

“‘My boy is safe,’ said my mother; ‘then tell me, for thou art wise,
and canst see quite through the dark future, tell me, what evil is
coming to our tribe?’ She then described the omens she had seen. ‘I
know not,’ said Cushmakin: ‘of late darkness hath spread over my soul,
and all is black there, as before these eyes, that the arrows of death
have pierced; but tell me, Monoco, what see you now in the fields of
heaven?’

“‘Oh, now,’ said my mother, ‘I see nothing but the blue depths and the
watching stars. The spirits of the air have ceased their moaning, and
steal over my cheek like an infant’s breath. The water-spirits {67}
are rising, and will soon spread their soft wings around the nest of
our tribe.’

“‘The boy sleeps safely,’ muttered the old man, ‘and I have listened
to the idle fear of a doting mother.’

“‘I come not of a fearful race,’ said my mother.

“‘Nay, that I did not mean,’ replied Cushmakin; ‘but the panther
watching her young is fearful as a doe.’ The night was far spent, and
my mother bade him go home with her, for our powwows[1] have ever a
mat in the wigwam of their chief. ‘Nay,’ he said, ‘the day is near,
and I am always abroad at the rising of the sun.’ It seemed that the
first warm touch of the sun opened the eye of the old man’s soul, and
he saw again the flushed hills and the shaded valleys, the sparkling
waters, the green maize, and the gray old rocks of our home. They were
just passing the little gate of the palisade, when the old man’s dog
sprang from him with a fearful bark. A rushing sound was heard.
‘Owanox! Owanox!’ (the English! the English!) cried Cushmakin. My
mother joined her voice to his, and in an instant the cry of alarm
spread through the wigwams. The enemy were indeed upon us. They had
surrounded the palisade, and opened their fire.”

“Was it so sudden? Did they so rush on sleeping women and children?”
asked Everell, who was unconsciously lending all his interest to the
party of the narrator.

“Even so; they were guided to us by the traitor {68} Wequash; he from
whose bloody hand my mother had shielded the captive English maidens;
he who had eaten from my father’s dish, and slept on his mat. They
were flanked by the cowardly Narragansetts, who shrunk from the sight
of our tribe; who were pale as white men at the thought of Sassacus;
and so feared him, that when his name was spoken they were like an
unstrung bow, and they said, ‘He is all one God: no man can kill him.’
These cowardly allies waited for the prey they dared not attack.”

“Then,” said Everell, “as I have heard, our people had all the honour
of the fight.”

“Honour! was it, Everell? ye shall hear. Our warriors rushed forth to
meet the foe; they surrounded the huts of their mothers, wives,
sisters, children; they fought as if each man had a hundred lives, and
would give each and all to redeem their homes. Oh! the dreadful fray
even now rings in my ears! Those fearful guns that we had never heard
before--the shouts of your people--our own battle yell--the piteous
cries of the little children--the groans of our mothers; and oh!
worse, worse than all, the silence of those that could not speak. The
English fell back; they were driven to the palisade, some beyond it,
when their leader gave the cry to fire our huts, and led the way to my
mother’s. Samoset, the noble boy, defended the entrance like a stag at
bay till they struck him down; prostrate and bleeding, he again bent
his bow, and had taken deadly aim at the English leader, when a
sabre-blow severed his {69} bowstring. Then was taken from our
hearth-stone, where the English had been so often warmed and
cherished, the brand to consume our dwellings. They were covered with
mats, and burned like dried straw. The enemy retreated without the
palisade. In vain did our warriors fight for a path in which we might
escape from the consuming fire; they were beaten back; the fire gained
on us; the Narragansetts pressed on the English, howling like wolves
for their prey. Some of our people threw themselves into the midst of
the crackling flames, and their courageous souls parted with one shout
of triumph; others mounted the palisade, but they were shot, and
dropped like a flock of birds smitten by the hunter’s arrows. Thus did
the strangers destroy, in our own homes, hundreds of our tribe.”

“And how did you escape in that dreadful hour, Magawisca? you were
not, then, taken prisoners?”

“No; there was a rock at one extremity of our hut, and beneath it a
cavity into which my mother crept, with Oneco, myself, and the two
little ones that afterward perished. Our simple habitations were soon
consumed; we heard the foe retiring, and when the last sound had died
away, we came forth to a sight that made us lament to be among the
living. The sun was scarce an hour from his rising, and yet in this
brief space our homes had vanished. The bodies of our people were
strewn about the smouldering ruin, and all around the palisade lay the
strong and valiant warriors, cold, silent, powerless as the unformed
clay.”

{70}

Magawisca paused; she was overcome with the recollection of this scene
of desolation. She looked upward with an intent gaze, as if she held
communion with an invisible being. “Spirit of my mother!” burst from
her lips; “oh! that I could follow thee to that blessed land, where I
should no more dread the war-cry nor the death-knife.” Everell dashed
the gathering tears from his eyes, and Magawisca proceeded in her
narrative.

“While we all stood silent and motionless, we heard footsteps and
cheerful voices. They came from my father and Sassacus, and their
band, returning from the friendly council. They approached on the side
of the hill that was covered with a thicket of oaks, and their ruined
homes at once burst upon their view. Oh! what horrid sounds then
pealed on the air! shouts of wailing, and cries for vengeance. Every
eye was turned with suspicion and hatred on my father. _He_ had been
the friend of the English; _he_ had counselled peace and alliance with
them; _he_ had protected their traders; delivered the captives taken
from them, and restored them to their people: now _his_ wife and
children alone were living, and they called him traitor. I heard an
angry murmur, and many hands were lifted to strike the death-blow. He
moved not: ‘Nay, nay,’ cried Sassacus, beating them off, ‘touch him
not; his soul is bright as the sun; sooner shall you darken that than
find treason in his breast. If he hath shown the dove’s heart to the
English when he believed them friends, he will show himself the fierce
eagle now he knows {71} them enemies. Touch him not, warriors;
remember my blood runneth in his veins.’

“From that moment my father was a changed man. He neither spoke nor
looked at his wife or children; but, placing himself at the head of
one band of the young men, he shouted his war-cry, and then silently
pursued the enemy. Sassacus went forth to assemble the tribe, and we
followed my mother to one of our villages.”

“You did not tell me, Magawisca,” said Everell, “how Samoset perished:
was he consumed in the flames, or shot from the palisade?”

“Neither--neither. He was reserved to whet my father’s revenge to a
still keener edge. He had forced a passage through the English, and,
hastily collecting a few warriors, they pursued the enemy, sprung upon
them from a covert, and did so annoy them that the English turned and
gave them battle. All fled save my brother, and him they took
prisoner. They told him they would spare his life if he would guide
them to our strongholds; he refused. He had, Everell, lived but
sixteen summers; he loved the light of the sun even as we love it; his
manly spirit was tamed by wounds and weariness; his limbs were like a
bending reed, and his heart beat like a woman’s; but the fire of his
soul burned clear. Again they pressed him with offers of life and
reward; he faithfully refused, and with one sabre-stroke they severed
his head from his body.”

Magawisca paused: she looked at Everell, and said with a bitter smile,
“You English tell us, Everell, {72} that the book of your law is
better than that written on our hearts; for ye say it teaches mercy,
compassion, forgiveness: if ye had such a law, and believed it, would
ye thus have treated a captive boy?”

Magawisca’s reflecting mind suggested the most serious obstacle to the
progress of the Christian religion, in all ages and under all
circumstances--the contrariety between its divine principles and the
conduct of its professors; which, instead of always being a medium for
the light that emanates from our Holy Law, is too often the darkest
cloud that obstructs the passage of its rays to the hearts of heathen
men. Everell had been carefully instructed in the principles of his
religion, and he felt Magawisca’s relation to be an awkward comment on
them, and her inquiry natural; but, though he knew not what answer to
make, he was sure there must be a good one, and mentally resolving to
refer the case to his mother, he begged Magawisca to proceed with her
narrative.

“The fragments of our broken tribe,” she said, “were collected, and
some other small dependant tribes persuaded to join us. We were
obliged to flee from the open grounds, and shelter ourselves in a
dismal swamp. The English surrounded us; they sent in to us a
messenger, and offered life and pardon to all who had not shed the
blood of Englishmen. Our allies listened, and fled from us as
frightened birds fly from a falling tree. My father looked upon his
warriors; they answered that look with {73} their battle-shout. ‘Tell
your people,’ said my father to the messenger, ‘that we have shed and
drank English blood, and that we will take nothing from them but
death.’

“The messenger departed, and again returned with offers of pardon if
we would come forth, and lay our arrows and our tomahawks at the feet
of the English. ‘What say you, warriors?’ cried my father: ‘shall we
take _pardon_ from those who have burned your wives and children, and
given your homes to the beasts of prey; who have robbed you of your
hunting-grounds, and driven your canoes from their waters?’ A hundred
arrows were pointed to the messenger. ‘Enough: you have your answer,’
said my father; and the messenger returned to announce the fate we had
chosen.”

“Where was Sassacus? Had he abandoned his people?” asked Everell.

“Abandoned them! No: his life was in theirs; but, accustomed to attack
and victory, he could not bear to be thus driven, like a fox, to his
hole. His soul was sick within him, and he was silent, and left all to
my father. All day we heard the strokes of the English axes felling
the trees that defended us, and when night came they had approached so
near that we could see the glimmering of their watch-lights through
the branches of the trees. All night they were pouring in their
bullets, alike on warriors, women, and children. Old Cushmakin was
lying at my mother’s feet when he received a death-wound. Gasping for
breath, he called on Sassacus and my {74} father: ‘Stay not here,’ he
said; ‘look not on your wives and children, but burst your prison
bound; sound through the nations the cry of revenge! Linked together,
ye shall drive the English into the sea. I speak the word of the Great
Spirit: obey it!’ While he was yet speaking he stiffened in death,
‘Obey him, warriors,’ cried my mother; ‘see,’ she said, pointing to
the mist that was now wrapping itself around the wood like a thick
curtain, ‘see, our friends have come from the spirit-land to shelter
you. Nay, look not on us; our hearts have been tender in the wigwam,
but we can die before our enemies without a groan. Go forth and avenge
us.’

“‘Have we come to the counsel of old men and old women?’ said
Sassacus, in the bitterness of his spirit.

“‘When women put down their womanish thoughts and counsel like men,
they should be obeyed,’ said my father. ‘Follow me, warriors!’

“They burst through the enclosure. We saw nothing more, but we heard
the shout from the foe as they issued from the wood--the momentary
fierce encounter--and the cry, ‘They have escaped!’ Then it was that
my mother, who had listened with breathless silence, threw herself
down on the mossy stones, and, laying her hot cheek to mine, ‘Oh, my
children, my children!’ she said, ‘would that I could die for you! But
fear not death; the blood of a hundred chieftains, that never knew
fear, runneth in your veins. Hark! the enemy comes nearer and {75}
nearer. Now lift up your heads, my children, and show them that even
the weak ones of our tribe are strong in soul.’

“We rose from the ground: all about sat women and children in family
clusters, awaiting unmoved their fate. The English had penetrated the
forest-screen, and were already on the little rising ground where we
had been intrenched. Death was dealt freely. None resisted--not a
movement was made--not a voice lifted--not a sound escaped, save the
wailings of the dying children.

“One of your soldiers knew my mother, and a command was given that her
life and that of her children should be spared. A guard was stationed
round us.

“You know that, after our tribe was thus cut off, we were taken, with
a few other captives, to Boston. Some were sent to the Islands of the
Sun, to bend their free limbs to bondage like your beasts of burden.
There are among your people those who have not put out the light of
the Great Spirit; they can remember a kindness, albeit done by an
Indian; and when it was known to your sachems that the wife of
Mononotto, once the protector and friend of your people, was a
prisoner, they treated her with honour and gentleness. But her people
were extinguished; her husband driven to distant forests--forced on
earth to the misery of wicked souls--to wander without a home; her
children were captives, and her heart was broken. You know the rest.”

{76}

This war, so fatal to the Pequods, had transpired the preceding year.
It was an important event to the infant colonies, and its magnitude
probably somewhat heightened to the imaginations of the English by the
terror this resolute tribe had inspired. All the circumstances
attending it were still fresh in men’s minds, and Everell had heard
them detailed with the interest and particularity that belongs to
recent adventures; but he had heard them in the language of the
enemies and conquerors of the Pequods, and from Magawisca’s lips they
took a new form and hue; she seemed to him to imbody nature’s best
gifts, and her feelings to be the inspiration of heaven. This new
version of an old story reminded him of the man and the lion in the
fable. But here it was not merely changing sculptors to give the
advantage to one or the other of the artist’s subjects, but it was
putting the chisel into the hands of truth, and giving it to whom it
belonged.

He had heard this destruction of the original possessors of the soil
described, as we find it in the history of the times, where we are
told “the number destroyed was about four hundred;” and “it was a
fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire, and the streams of
blood quenching the same, and the horrible scent thereof; but the
victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the praise thereof to
God.”

In the relations of their enemies, the courage of the Pequods was
distorted into ferocity, and their fortitude in their last extremity
thus set forth: “many were killed in the swamp, like sullen dogs, that
{77} would rather, in their self-willedness and madness, sit still to
be shot or cut in pieces, than receive their lives for asking at the
hands of those into whose power they had now fallen.”

Everell’s imagination, touched by the wand of feeling, presented a
very different picture of those defenceless families of savages, pent
in the recesses of their native forests, and there exterminated, not
by superior natural force, but by the adventitious circumstances of
arms, skill, and knowledge, from that offered by those who, “then
living and worthy of credit, did affirm, that in the morning, entering
into the swamp, they saw several heaps of them (the Pequods) sitting
close together, upon whom they discharged their pieces, laden with ten
or twelve pistol-bullets at a time, putting the muzzles of their
pieces under the boughs within a few yards of them.”

Everell did not fail to express to Magawisca, with all the eloquence
of a heated imagination, his sympathy and admiration of her heroic and
suffering people. She listened with a mournful pleasure, as one
listens to the praise of a departed friend. Both seemed to have
forgotten the purpose of their vigil, which they had marvellously kept
without apprehension or heaviness, when they were roused from their
romantic abstraction by Digby’s voice: “Now to your beds, children,”
he said; “the family is stirring, and the day is at hand. See the
morning star hanging just over those trees, like a single watchlight
in all the wide canopy. As you have not to look in a prayer-book for
it, Master Everell, don’t forget to {78} thank the Lord for keeping us
safe, as your mother, God bless her, would say, through the night
watches. Stop one moment,” added Digby, lowering his voice, to
Everell, as he rose to follow Magawisca; “did she tell you?”

“Tell me! what?”

“What! Heaven’s mercy! what ails the boy? Why, did she tell you what
brought her out to-night? Did she explain all the mysterious actions
we have seen? Are you crazy? Did not you ask her?”

Everell hesitated; fortunately for him, the light was too dim to
expose to Digby’s eye the blushes that betrayed his consciousness that
he had forgotten his duty. “Magawisca did not tell me,” he said; “but
I am sure, Digby, that--”

“That she can do no wrong--hey, Master Everell; well, that may be very
satisfactory to you, but it does not content me. I like not her secret
ways: ‘it’s bad ware that needs a dark store.’”

Everell had tried the force of his own convictions on Digby, and knew
it to be unavailing; therefore, having no reply to make, he very
discreetly retreated without attempting any.

Magawisca crept to her bed, but not to repose; neither watching nor
weariness procured sleep for her. Her mind was racked with
apprehensions and conflicting duties, the cruellest rack to an
honourable mind.

Nelema had communicated to her, the preceding day, the fact which she
had darkly intimated to Mrs. Fletcher, that Mononotto, with one or two
associates, {79} was lurking in the forest, and watching an
opportunity to make an attack on Bethel. How far his purpose extended,
whether simply to the recovery of his children or to the destruction
of the family, she knew not. The latter was most probable, for hostile
Indians always left blood on their trail. In reply to Magawisca’s
eager inquiries, Nelema said she had, again and again, assured her
father of the kind treatment his children had received at the hands of
Mrs. Fletcher; but he seemed scarcely to hear what she said, and
precipitately left her, telling her that she would not again see him
till his work was done.

Magawisca’s first impulse had been to reveal all to Mrs. Fletcher; but
by doing this she would jeopard her father’s life. Her natural
sympathies, her strong affections, her pride, were all enlisted on the
side of her people; but she shrunk, as if her own life were menaced,
from the blow that was about to fall on her friends. She would have
done or suffered anything to avert it--anything but betray her father.
The hope of meeting him explains all that seemed mysterious to Digby.
She did go to Nelema’s hut, but all was quiet there. In returning she
found an eagle’s feather in the path: she believed it must have just
been dropped there by her father, and this circumstance determined her
to remain watching through the night, that, if her father should
appear, she might avert his vengeance.

She did not doubt that Digby had really seen and heard him; and
believing that her father would not {80} shrink from a single armed
man, she hoped against hope, that his sole object was to recover his
children; hoped against hope, we say, for her reason told her that, if
that were his only purpose, it might easily have been accomplished by
the intervention of Nelema.

Magawisca had said truly to Everell, that her father’s nature had been
changed by the wrongs he had received. When the Pequods were proud and
prosperous, he was more noted for his humane virtues than his warlike
spirit. The supremacy of his tribe was acknowledged, and it seemed to
be his noble nature, as it is sometimes the instinct of the most
powerful animals, to protect and defend rather than attack and
oppress. The ambitious spirit of his brother chieftain, Sassacus, had
ever aspired to dominion over the allied tribes; and, immediately
after the appearance of the English, the same temper was manifest in a
jealousy of their encroachments. He employed all his art, and
influence, and authority, to unite the tribes for the extirpation of
the dangerous invaders. Mononotto, on the contrary, averse to all
hostility, and foreseeing no danger from them, was the advocate of an
hospitable reception and pacific conduct.

This difference of feeling between the two chiefs may account for the
apparent treachery of the Pequods, who, as the influence of one or the
other prevailed, received the English traders with favour and
hospitality, or, violating their treaties of friendship, inflicted on
them cruelties and death.

{81}

The stories of the murders of Stone, Norton, and Oldham are familiar
to every reader of our early annals; and the anecdote of the two
English girls who were captured at Wethersfield, and protected and
restored to their friends by the wife of Mononotto, has already been
illustrated by a sister labourer, and is precious to all those who
would accumulate proofs that the image of God is never quite effaced
from the souls of his creatures, and that, in their darkest ignorance
and deepest degradation, there are still to be found traits of mercy
and benevolence. These will be gathered and treasured in the memory
with that fond feeling with which Mungo Park describes himself to have
culled and cherished in his bosom the single flower that bloomed in
his melancholy track over the African desert.

The chieftain of a savage race is the depository of the honour of his
tribe; and their defeat is a disgrace to him, that can only be effaced
by the blood of his conquerors. It is a common case with the
unfortunate, to be compelled to endure the reproach of inevitable
evils; and Mononotto was often reminded by the remnant of his tribe,
in the bitterness of their spirit, of his former kindness to the
English. This reproach sharpened too keenly the edge of his adversity.

He had seen his people slaughtered, or driven from their homes and
hunting-grounds into shameful exile; his wife had died in captivity,
and his children lived in servile dependance in the house of his
enemies.

{82}

Sassacus perished by treachery, and Mononotto alone remained to endure
this accumulated misery. In this extremity, he determined on the
rescue of his children, and the infliction of some signal deed of
vengeance, by which he hoped to revive the spirit of the natives, and
reinstate himself as the head of his broken and dispersed people: in
his most sanguine moments, he meditated a combination and unity that
should eventually expel the invaders.




 CHAPTER V.

{83}


 “There have been sweet singing voices
  In your walks that now are still;
 There are seats left void in your earthly homes,
  Which none again may fill.”
                               Mrs. Hemans.


Magawisca rose from her sleepless pillow to join the family at
prayers, her mind distracted with opposing fears, which her face, the
mirror of her soul, too truly reflected.

Mrs. Fletcher observed her narrowly; and, confirmed in her forebodings
by the girl’s apprehensive countenance, and still farther by Digby’s
report of her behaviour during the night, she resolved to despatch him
to Mr. Pynchon for his advice and assistance touching her removal to
the fort, or the appointment of a guard for Bethel. Her servant (who
prudently kept his alarm to himself, knowing, as he said, that a
woman’s fears were always ahead of danger) applauded her decision, and
was on the point of proceeding to act upon it, when a messenger
arrived with the joyful tidings that Mr. Fletcher was within a few
hours’ ride of Bethel; and the intelligence, no less joyful to Dame
Grafton, that with his luggage, already arrived at the village, was a
small box of millinery which she had ordered from London.

{84}

Mrs. Fletcher, feeling, as good wives do, a sense of safety from the
proximity of her husband, bade Digby defer any new arrangement till he
had the benefit of his master’s counsel. The whole house was thrown
into the commotion so common in a retired family when an arrival is
about to interrupt the equable current of life. Whatever unexpressed
and superior happiness some others might have felt, no individual made
such bustling demonstrations as Mrs. Grafton. It was difficult to say
which excited her most, the anticipation of seeing her niece, Hope
Leslie, or of inspecting the box of millinery.

Immediately after dinner, two of the men-servants were despatched to
the village to transport their master’s luggage. They had hardly gone,
when Mrs. Grafton recollected that her box contained a present for
Madam Holioke, which it would be a thousand pities to have brought to
Bethel, and lie there perhaps a week before it would be sent to her,
and “she would like of all things, if Mrs. Fletcher saw no objection,
to have the pony saddled and ride to the village herself, where the
present could be made forthwith.”

Mrs. Fletcher was too happy to throw a shadow across any one’s path,
and wearied too, perhaps, with Mrs. Grafton’s fidgeting (for the good
dame had all day been wondering whether her confidential agent had
matched her orange satin; how she had trimmed her cap, &c., &c., &c.),
she ordered a horse to be saddled and brought to the door. The animal
proved a little restiff; and Mrs. Grafton, not excelling {85} in
horsemanship, became alarmed, and begged that Digby might be allowed
to attend her.

Digby’s cleverness was felt by all the household, and his talents were
always in requisition for the miscellaneous wants of the family; but
Digby, like good servants in every age, was aware of his importance,
and was not more willing than a domestic of the present day to be
worked like a machine. He muttered something of “old women making
fools of themselves with new top-knots;” and saying aloud that
“Mistress Grafton knew it was his master’s order that all the
men-servants should not be away from the place at the same time,” he
was turning off, when Mrs. Fletcher, who was standing at the door
observing him, requested him, with more authority than was usual in
her manner, to comply with Mrs. Grafton’s request.

“I would not wish,” said Digby, still hesitating, “to disoblige Mrs.
Grafton--if it were a matter of life and death,” he added, lowering
his voice; “but to get more furbelows for the old lady, when, with
what she has already, she makes such a fool of herself, that our young
witlings, Master Everell and Oneco, garnish out our old Yorkshire hen
with peacock’s feathers and dandelions, and then call her ‘Dame
Grafton in a flurry--’”

“Hush, Digby!” said Mrs. Fletcher; “it ill befits you to laugh at such
fooleries in the boys: they shall be corrected; and do you learn to
treat your master’s friend with respect.”

“Come, come, Digby!” screamed Mrs. Grafton.

{86}

“Shall I go and break my master’s orders?” asked Digby, still bent on
having his own way.

“For this once you shall, Digby,” answered Mrs. Fletcher; “and if you
need any apology to your master, I shall not fail to make it.”

“But if anything should happen to you, Mistress Fletcher--”

“Nothing will happen, my good Digby. Is not your master at hand? and
an hour or two will be the extent of your absence. So get thee along,
without more ado.”

Digby could not resist any farther the authority of his gentle
mistress, and he walked by the side of Mrs. Grafton’s pony with slow,
unwilling steps.

All was joy in Mrs. Fletcher’s dwelling. “My dear mother,” said
Everell, “it is now quite time to look out for father and Hope Leslie.
I have turned the hour-glass three times since dinner, and counted all
the sands, I think. Let us all go on the front portico, where we can
catch the first glimpse of them as they come past the elm-trees. Here,
Oneco,” he continued, as he saw assent in his mother’s smile, “help me
out with mother’s rocking-chair: rather rough rocking,” he added, as
he adjusted the rockers lengthwise with the logs that served for the
flooring; “but mother won’t mind trifles just now. Ah! blessed baby
brother,” he continued, taking in his arms the beautiful infant, “you
shall come too, even though you cheat me out of my birthright, and get
the first kiss from father.” Thus saying, he placed the laughing
infant in his go-cart beside his mother. He then {87} aided his little
sisters in their arrangement of the playthings they had brought forth
to welcome and astonish Hope; and, finally, he made an elevated
position for Faith Leslie, where she might, he said, as she ought,
catch the very first glimpse of her sister.

“Thank, thank you, Everell,” said the little girl, as she mounted her
pinnacle; “if you knew Hope, you would want to see her first too:
everybody loves Hope. We shall always have pleasant times when Hope
gets here.”

It was one of the most beautiful afternoons at the close of the month
of May. The lagging spring had at last come forth in all her power;
her “work of gladness” was finished, and forests, fields, and meadows
were bright with renovated life. The full Connecticut swept
triumphantly on, as if still exulting in its release from the fetters
of winter. Every gushing rill had the spring-note of joy. The meadows
were for the first time enriched with patches of English grain, which
the new settlers had sown scantily by way of experiment, prudently
occupying the greatest portion of their rich mould with the native
Indian corn. This product of our soil is beautiful in all its
progress, from the moment when, as now, it studded the meadow with
hillocks, shooting its bright-pointed spear from its mother earth, to
its maturity, when the long golden ear bursts from the rustling leaf.

The grounds about Mrs. Fletcher’s house had been prepared with the
neatness of English taste, and a rich bed of clover, that overspread
the lawn immediately {88} before the portico, already rewarded the
industry of the cultivators. Over this delicate carpet, the domestic
fowls, the first civilized inhabitants of the country of their tribe,
were now treading, picking their food here and there like dainty
little epicures.

The scene had also its minstrels; the birds, those ministers and
worshippers of nature, were on the wing, filling the air with melody;
while, like diligent little housewives, they ransacked forest and
field for materials for their housekeeping.

A mother encircled by healthful sporting children is always a
beautiful spectacle: a spectacle that appeals to nature in every human
breast. Mrs. Fletcher, in obedience to matrimonial duty, or, it may
be, from some lingering of female vanity, had on this occasion dressed
herself with extraordinary care. What woman does not wish to look
handsome--in the eyes of her husband?

“Mother,” said Everell, putting aside the exquisitely fine lace that
shaded her cheek, “I do not believe you looked more beautiful than you
do to-day when, as I have heard, they called you ‘the rose of the
wilderness:’ our little Mary’s cheek is as round and as bright as a
peach, but it is not so handsome as yours, mother. Your heart has sent
this colour here,” he continued, kissing her tenderly; “it seems to
have come forth to tell us that our father is near.”

“It would shame me, Everell,” replied his mother, embracing him with a
feeling that the proudest drawing-room belle might have envied, “to
take such flattery from any lips but thine.”

{89}

“Oh, do not call it flattery, mother: look, Magawisca--for Heaven’s
sake, cheer up--look, would you know mother’s eye? Just turn it,
mother, one minute from that road--and her pale cheek too, with this
rich colour.”

“Alas! alas!” replied Magawisca, glancing her eye at Mrs. Fletcher,
and then, as if heart-struck, withdrawing them, “how soon the flush of
the setting sun fades away.”

“Oh, Magawisca,” said Everell, impatiently, “why are you so dismal?
Your voice is too sweet for a bird of ill omen. I shall begin to
think, as Jennet says--though Jennet is no text-book for me--I shall
begin to think old Nelema has really bewitched you.”

“You call me a bird of ill omen,” replied Magawisca, half proud, half
sorrowful, “and you call the owl a bird of ill omen, but we hold him
sacred; he is our sentinel, and when danger is near he cries awake!
awake!”

“Magawisca, you are positively unkind: Jeremiah’s lamentations on a
holyday would not be more out of time than your croaking is now: the
very skies, earth, and air seem to partake our joy at my father’s
return, and you only make a discord. Do you think, if your father was
near, I would not share your joy?”

Tears fell fast from Magawisca’s eye, but she made no reply; and Mrs.
Fletcher, observing and compassionating her emotion, and thinking it
probably arose from comparing her orphan state to that of the merry
{90} children about her, called her and said, “Magawisca, you are
neither a stranger nor a servant, will you not share our joy? Do you
not love us?”

“Love you!” she exclaimed, clasping her hands; “love you! I would give
my life for you.”

“We do not ask your life, my good girl,” replied Mrs. Fletcher, kindly
smiling on her, “but a light heart and a cheerful look. A sad
countenance doth not become this joyful hour. Go and help Oneco; he is
quite out of breath blowing those soap-bubbles for the children.”

Oneco smiled and shook his head, and continued to send off one after
another of the prismatic globes; and as they rose and floated on the
air, and brightened with the many-coloured ray, the little girls
clapped their hands, and the baby stretched his to grasp the brilliant
vapour.

“Oh!” said Magawisca, impetuously covering her eyes, “I do not like to
see anything so beautiful pass so quickly away.”

Scarcely had she uttered these words, when suddenly, as if the earth
had opened on them, three Indian warriors darted from the forest, and
pealed on the air their horrible yells.

“My father! my father!” burst from the lips of Magawisca and Oneco.

Faith Leslie sprang towards the Indian boy, and clung fast to him, and
the children clustered about their mother; she instinctively caught
her infant, and held it close within her arms, as if their ineffectual
shelter were a rampart.

{91}

Magawisca uttered a cry of agony, and springing forward with her arms
uplifted, as if deprecating his approach, she sunk down at her
father’s feet, and clasping her hands, “Save them! save them!” she
cried, “the mother--the children; oh, they are all good; take
vengeance on your enemies, but spare, spare our friends, our
benefactors; I bleed when they are struck: oh, command them to stop!”
she screamed, looking to the companions of her father, who, unchecked
by her cries, were pressing on to their deadly work.

Mononotto was silent and motionless; his eye glanced wildly from
Magawisca to Oneco. Magawisca replied to the glance of fire, “Yes,
they have sheltered us, they have spread the wing of love over us;
save them! save them! oh, it will be too late,” she cried, springing
from her father, whose silence and fixedness showed that, if his
better nature rebelled against the work of revenge, there was no
relenting of purpose. Magawisca darted before the Indian who was
advancing towards Mrs. Fletcher with an uplifted hatchet. “You shall
hew me to pieces ere you touch her,” she said, and planted herself as
a shield before her benefactress.

The warrior’s obdurate heart, untouched by the sight of the helpless
mother and her little ones, was thrilled by the courage of the heroic
girl; he paused and grimly smiled on her, when his companion, crying
“Hasten, the dogs will be on us!” levelled a deadly blow at Mrs.
Fletcher; but his uplifted arm was penetrated by a musket shot, and
the hatchet fell harmless to the floor.

{92}

“Courage, mother!” cried Everell, reloading the piece; but neither
courage nor celerity could avail: the second Indian sprang upon him,
threw him on the floor, wrested his musket from him, and brandishing
his tomahawk over his head, he would have aimed the fatal stroke, when
a cry from Mononotto arrested his arm.

Everell extricated himself from his grasp, and one hope flashing into
his mind, he seized a bugle-horn which hung beside the door, and
winded it. This was the conventional signal of alarm, and he sent
forth a blast long and loud--a death-cry.

Mrs. Grafton and her attendants were just mounting their horses to
return home. Digby listened for a moment; then exclaiming, “It comes
from our master’s dwelling! Ride for your life, Hutton!” he tossed
away a bandbox that encumbered him, and spurred his horse to its
utmost speed.

The alarm was spread through the village, and in a brief space Mr.
Pynchon, with six armed men, were pressing towards the fatal scene.

In the mean time the tragedy was proceeding at Bethel. Mrs. Fletcher’s
senses had been stunned with terror. She had neither spoken nor moved
after she grasped her infant. Everell’s gallant interposition restored
a momentary consciousness: she screamed to him, “Fly, Everell, my son,
fly; for your father’s sake, fly.”

“Never,” he replied, springing to his mother’s side.

The savages, always rapid in their movements, {93} were now aware that
their safety depended on despatch. “Finish your work, warriors,” cried
Mononotto. Obedient to the command, and infuriated by his bleeding
wound, the Indian, who, on receiving the shot, had staggered back and
leaned against the wall, now sprang forward and tore the infant from
its mother’s breast. She shrieked, and in that shriek passed the agony
of death. She was unconscious that her son, putting forth a strength
beyond nature, for a moment kept the Indian at bay; she neither saw
nor felt the knife struck at her own heart. She felt not the arms of
her defenders, Everell and Magawisca, as they met around her neck. She
fainted and fell to the floor, dragging her impotent protectors with
her.

The savage, in his struggle with Everell, had tossed the infant boy to
the ground; he fell quite unharmed on the turf at Mononotto’s feet.
There, raising his head, and looking up into the chieftain’s face, he
probably perceived a gleam of mercy, for, with the quick instinct of
infancy, that with unerring sagacity directs its appeal, he clasped
the naked leg of the savage with one arm, and stretched the other
towards him with a piteous supplication that no words could have
expressed. Mononotto’s heart melted within him; he stooped to raise
the sweet suppliant, when one of the Mohawks fiercely seized him,
tossed him wildly around his head, and dashed him on the door-stone.
But the silent prayer--perhaps the celestial inspiration--of the
innocent creature was not lost. “We have had blood enough,” {94} cried
Mononotto; “you have well avenged me, brothers.”

Then looking at Oneco, who had remained in one corner of the portico,
clasping Faith Leslie in his arms, he commanded him to follow him with
the child. Everell was torn from the lifeless bodies of his mother and
sisters, and dragged into the forest. Magawisca uttered one cry of
agony and despair as she looked for the last time on the bloody scene,
and then followed her father.

As they passed the boundary of the cleared ground, Mononotto tore from
Oneco his English dress, and casting it from him, “Thus perish,” he
said, “every mark of the captivity of my children. Thou shalt return
to our forests,” he continued, wrapping a skin around him, “with the
badge of thy people.”




 CHAPTER VI.

{95}


 “It is but a shadow vanished--a bubble broke--a dreame finish’t:
 Eternitie will pay for all.”--Roger Williams.


Scarcely had the invaders disappeared and the sound of their
footsteps died away, when Digby and Hutton came in view of the
dwelling. “Ah!” said Hutton, reining in his horse, “I thought all this
fluster was for nothing--the blast a boy’s prank. A pretty piece of
work we’ve made of it; you’ll have Mistress Grafton about your ears
for tossing away her Lon’on gimcracks. All is as quiet here as a
Saturday night; nothing to be seen but the smoke from the kitchen
chimney, and that’s a pleasant sight to me, for I went off without my
dinner, and methinks it will now taste as savoury as Jacob’s pottage.”

Digby lent no attention to his companion’s chattering, but pressed on;
his fears were allayed, but not removed. As he approached the house,
he felt that the silence which pervaded it boded no good; but the
horrors of the reality far surpassed the worst suggestions of his
vague apprehensions. “Oh, my mistress! my mistress!” he screamed, when
the havoc of death burst upon his sight. “My good mistress--and her
girls! and the baby too! Oh, God, have mercy on my master!” and he
bent over the {96} bodies and wrung his hands: “not one--not one
spared!”

“Yes, one,” spoke a trembling, whining voice, which proved to be
Jennet’s, who had just emerged from her hiding-place covered with
soot; “by the blessing of a kind Providence, I have been preserved for
some wise end; but,” she continued, panting, “the fright has taken my
breath away, besides being squeezed as flat as a pancake in the
bedroom chimney.”

“Stop--for Heaven’s sake, stop, Jennet, and tell me, if you can, if
Mr. Everell was here.”

Jennet did not know; she remembered having seen the family in general
assembled, just before she heard the yell of the savages.

“How long,” Digby inquired, “have they been gone? how long since you
heard the last sound?”

“That’s more than mortal man, or woman either, in my case, could tell,
Mr. Digby. Do you think, when a body seems to feel a scalping-knife in
their heads, they can reckon time? No; hours are minutes, and minutes
hours, in such a case.”

“Oh, fool! fool!” cried Digby; and, turning disgusted away, his eye
fell on his musket. “Thank the Lord!” he exclaimed, “Mr. Everell has
poured one shot into the fiends; he alone knew where the gun was:
bless the boy--bless him; he has a strong arm and a stout soul--bless
him. They have taken him off; we’ll after him, Hutton. Jennet, bring
my hunting pouch. Look to your firelock, Hutton. Magawisca! Oneco!
Faith Leslie, all gone!” he continued, {97} his first amazement
dissipating, and thought after thought flashing the truth on his mind.
“I remember last night--oh, Mr. Everell, how the girl deceived you!
she knew it all.”

“Ah, Magawisca! so I thought,” said Jennet. “She knows everything evil
that happens in earth, sea, or air--she and that mother-witch Nelema.
I always told Mrs. Fletcher she was warming a viper in her bosom, poor
dear lady; but I suppose it was for wise ends she was left to her
blindness.”

“Are you ready, Hutton?” asked Digby, impatiently.

“Ready! yes, I am ready; but what is the use, Digby? what are we two
against a host? and, besides, you know not how long they have been
gone.”

“Not very long,” said Digby, shuddering, and pointing to blood that
was trickling, drop by drop, from the edge of the flooring to the
step. How long the faithful fellow might have urged, we know not, for
cowardice hath ever ready and abundant arguments, and Hutton was not a
man to be persuaded into danger; but the arrival of Mr. Pynchon and
his men put an end to the debate.

Mr. Pynchon was the faithful, paternal guardian of his little colony.
He saw in this scene of violent death not only the present
overwhelming misery of the family at Bethel, but the fearful fate to
which all were exposed who had perilled their lives in the wilderness;
but he could give but brief space to bitter reflections and the
lamentings of nature. Instant care and service were necessary for the
dead {98} and the living. The bodies of the mother and children were
removed to one of the apartments, and decently disposed, and then,
after a fervent prayer--a duty never omitted in any emergency by the
Pilgrims, whose faith in the minute superintendence of Providence was
practical--he directed the necessary arrangements for the pursuit of
the enemy.

Little could be gathered from Jennet. She was mainly occupied with her
own remarkable preservation, not doubting that Providence had
specially interposed to save the only life utterly insignificant in
any eyes but her own. She recollected to have heard Magawisca exclaim
“My father!” at the first onset of the savages. The necessary
conclusion was, that the party had been led by the Pequod chief. It
was obviously probable that he would return, with his children and
captives, to the Mohawks, where, it was well known, he had found
refuge; of course, the pursuers were to take a westerly direction.
Jennet was of opinion that the party was not numerous; and, encumbered
as they must be with their prisoners, the one a child, whom it would
be necessary, in a rapid flight, to carry, Mr. Pynchon had sanguine
expectations that they might be overtaken.

The fugitives, obliged to avoid the cleared meadows, had, as Mr.
Pynchon believed, taken an indirect path through the forest to the
Connecticut; which, in pursuance of their probable route, they would
of course cross as soon as they could with safety. He selected five of
his men, whom he deemed fittest for the expedition, and recommending
it to them to be {99} guided by the counsel of Digby, whose impatient
zeal was apparent, he directed them to take a direct course to the
river. He was to return to the village, and despatch a boat to them,
with which they were to ply up the river, in the hope of intercepting
the passage of the Indians.

The men departed, led by Digby, to whose agitated spirit every
moment’s delay had appeared unnecessary and fatal; and Mr. Pynchon was
mounting his horse, when he saw Mr. Fletcher, who had avoided the
circuitous road through the village, emerge from the forest, and come
in full view of his dwelling. Mr. Pynchon called to Jennet, “Yonder is
your master; he must not come hither while this precious blood is on
the threshold; I shall take him to my house, and assistance shall be
sent to you. In the mean time, watch those bodies faithfully.”

“Oh! I can’t stay here alone,” whimpered Jennet, running after Mr.
Pynchon; “I would not stay for all the Promised Land.”

“Back, woman!” cried Mr. Pynchon, in a voice of thunder; and Jennet
retreated, the danger of advancing appearing for the moment the
greater of the two.

Mr. Fletcher was attended by two Indians, who followed him, bearing on
a litter his favourite, Hope Leslie. When they came within sight of
Bethel, they shouted the chorus of a native song. Hope inquired its
meaning. They told her, and raising herself, and tossing back the
bright curls that shaded her eyes, she clapped her hands, and
accompanied {100} them with the English words, “The home! the home!
the chieftain’s home!” “And my home too, is it not?” she said.

Mr. Fletcher was touched with the joy with which this bright little
creature, who had left a palace in England, hailed his rustic dwelling
in the wilderness. He turned on her a smile of delight--he could not
speak; the sight of his home had opened the floodgates of his heart.
“Oh, now,” she continued, with growing animation, “I shall meet my
sister. But why does she not come to meet us? Where is your Everell?
and the girls? There is no one looking out for us.”

The stillness of the place, and the absence of all living objects,
struck Mr. Fletcher with fearful apprehensions, heightened by the
sight of his friend, who was coming at full gallop towards him. To an
accurate observer, the effects of joy and sorrow on the human figure
are easily discriminated; misery depresses, contracts, and paralyzes
the body as it does the spirit.

“Remain here for a few moments,” said Mr. Fletcher to his attendants,
and he put spurs to his horse and galloped forward.

“Put down the litter,” said Hope Leslie to her bearers. “I cannot
stand stock-still here, in sight of the house where my sister is.” The
Indians knew their duty, and determining to abide by the letter of
their employer’s orders, did not depress the litter.

“There, take that for your sulkiness,” she said, giving each a tap on
his ear; and half impatient, {101} half sportive, she leaped from the
litter and bounded forward.

The friends met. Mr. Pynchon covered his face and groaned aloud. “What
has happened to my family?” demanded Mr. Fletcher. “My wife--my
son--my little ones? Oh, speak! God give me grace to hear thee!”

In vain Mr. Pynchon essayed to speak; he could find no words to soften
the frightful truth. Mr. Fletcher turned his horse’s head towards
Bethel, and was proceeding to end, himself, the insupportable
suspense, when his friend, seizing his arm, cried, “Stop! stop! go not
thither! thy house is desolate!” and then, half choked with groans and
sobs, he unfolded the dismal story.

Not a sound nor a sigh escaped the blasted man. He seemed to be turned
into stone till he was roused by the wild shrieks of the little girl,
who, unobserved, had listened to the communication of Mr. Pynchon.

“Take the child with you,” he said; “I shall go to my house. If--if my
boy returns, send a messenger instantly; otherwise, suffer me to
remain alone till to-morrow.”

He passed on without appearing to hear the cries and entreaties of
Hope Leslie, who, forcibly detained by Mr. Pynchon, screamed, “Oh!
take me, take me with you; there are but us two left; I will not go
away from you!” but at last, finding resistance useless, she yielded,
and was conveyed to the village, where she was received by her aunt
Grafton, whose {102} grief was as noisy and communicative as Mr.
Fletcher’s had been silent and unexpressed by any of the ordinary
forms of sorrow.

Early on the following morning, Mr. Pynchon, attended by several
others, men and women, went to Bethel to offer their sympathy and
service. They met Jennet at the door, who, greatly relieved by the
sight of human faces, and ears willing to listen, informed them that,
immediately after her master’s arrival, he had retired to the
apartment that contained the bodies of the deceased, charging her not
to intrude on him.

A murmur of apprehension ran around the circle. “It was misjudged to
leave him here alone,” whispered one. “It is not every man, though his
faith stand as a mountain in his prosperity, that can bear to have the
Lord put forth his hand, and touch his bone and his flesh.”

“Ah!” said another, “my heart misgave me when Mr. Pynchon told us how
calm he took it; such a calm as that is like the still dead waters
that cover the lost cities; quiet is not the nature of the creature,
and you may be sure that unseen havoc and ruin are underneath.”

“The poor dear gentleman should have taken something to eat or drink,”
said a little, plump, full-fed lady; “there is nothing so feeding to
grief as an empty stomach. Madam Holioke, do not you think it would be
prudent for us to guard with a little cordial and a bit of spiced
cake--if this good girl can give it to us?” looking at Jennet. “The
dear lady {103} that’s gone was ever thrifty in her housewifery, and
I doubt not she left such witnesses behind.”

Mrs. Holioke shook her head, and a man of a most solemn and owl-like
aspect, who sat between the ladies, turned to the last speaker and
said, in a deep guttural tone, “Judy, thou shouldst not bring thy
carnal propensities to this house of mourning--and perchance of sin.
Where the Lord works, Satan worketh also, tempting the wounded. I
doubt our brother Fletcher hath done violence to himself. He was ever
of a proud--that is to say, a peculiar and silent make, and what won’t
bend will break.”

The suggestion in this speech communicated alarm to all present.
Several persons gathered about Mr. Pynchon. Some advised him to knock
at the door of the adjoining apartment; others counselled forcing it,
if necessary. While each one was proffering his opinion, the door
opened from within, and Mr. Fletcher came among them.

“Do you bring me any news of my son?” he asked Mr. Pynchon.

Till this question was put and answered, there was a tremulousness of
voice, a knitting of the brow, and a variation of colour, that
indicated the agitation of the sufferer’s soul; but then a sublime
composure overspread his countenance and figure. He noticed every one
present with more than his usual attention; and to a superficial
observer, one who knew not how to interpret his mortal paleness, the
fixed melancholy of his glazed eye, and his rigid muscles, which had
the inflexibility of marble, he {104} might have appeared to be
suffering less than any person present. Some cried outright; some
stared with undisguised and irrepressible curiosity; some were voluble
in the expression of their sympathy; while a few were pale, silent,
and awe-struck. All these many-coloured feelings fell on Mr. Fletcher
like light on a black surface, producing no change, meeting no return.
He stood leaning on the mantelpiece till the first burst of feeling
was over; till all, insensibly yielding to his example, became quiet,
and the apartment was as still as that in which death held his silent
dominion.

Mr. Pynchon then whispered to him: “My friend, bear your testimony
now; edify us with a seasonable word, showing that you are not amazed
at your calamity; that you counted the cost before you undertook to
build the Lord’s building in the wilderness. It is suitable that you
should turn your affliction to the profit of the Lord’s people.”

Mr. Fletcher felt himself stretched on a rack that he must endure with
a martyr’s patience; he lifted up his head, and with much effort spoke
one brief sentence--a sentence which contains all that a Christian
could feel, or the stores of language could express: “God’s will be
done!” he said, and then hurried away to hide his struggles in
solitude.

Relieved from the restraint of his presence, the company poured forth
such moral, consoling, and pious reflections as usually flow
spontaneously from the lips of the spectators of suffering, and which
would seem to indicate that each individual has a spare {105} stock of
wisdom and patience for his neighbour’s occasions, though, through
some strange fatality, they are never applied to his own use.

We hope our readers will not think we have wantonly sported with their
feelings, by drawing a picture of calamity that only exists in the
fictitious tale. No; such events as we have feebly related were common
in our early annals, and attended by horrors that it would be
impossible for the imagination to exaggerate. Not only families, but
villages, were cut off by the most dreaded of all foes--the ruthless,
vengeful savage.

In the quiet possession of the blessings transmitted, we are, perhaps,
in danger of forgetting or undervaluing the sufferings by which they
were obtained. We forget that the noble Pilgrims lived and endured for
us; that when they came to the wilderness, they said truly, though it
may be somewhat quaintly, that they turned their backs on Egypt; they
did virtually renounce all dependance on earthly supports; they left
the land of their birth, of their homes, of their father’s sepulchres;
they sacrificed ease and preferment, and all the delights of
sense--and for what? To open for themselves an earthly paradise? to
dress their bowers of pleasure, and rejoice with their wives and
children? No: they came not for themselves, they lived not to
themselves. An exiled and suffering people, they came forth in the
dignity of the chosen servants of the Lord, to open the forests to the
sunbeam, and to the light of the Son of Righteousness; to restore
man--man, oppressed and {106} trampled on by his fellow--to religious
and civil liberty, and equal rights; to replace the creatures of God
on their natural level; to bring down the hills, and make smooth the
rough places, which the pride and cruelty of man had wrought on the
fair creation of the Father of all.

What was their reward? Fortune? distinctions? the sweet charities of
home? No: but their feet were planted on the Mount of Vision, and they
saw, with sublime joy, a multitude of people where the solitary savage
roamed the forest; the forest vanished, and pleasant villages and busy
cities appeared; the tangled footpath expanded to the thronged
highway; the consecrated church planted on the rock of heathen
sacrifice.

And that we might realize this vision, enter into this promised land
of faith, they endured hardship and braved death, deeming, as said one
of their company, that “he is not worthy to live at all, who, for fear
of danger or death, shunneth his country’s service or his own honour,
since death is inevitable, and the fame of virtue immortal.”

If these were the fervours of enthusiasm, it was an enthusiasm kindled
and fed by the holy flame that glows on the altar of God; an
enthusiasm that never abates, but gathers life and strength as the
immortal soul expands in the image of its Creator.

We shall now leave the little community assembled at Bethel to perform
the last offices for one who had been among them an example of all the
most attractive virtues of woman. The funeral ceremony {107} was then,
as it still is among the descendants of the Pilgrims, a simple,
affectionate service; a gathering of the people, men, women, and
children, as one family, to the house of mourning.

 ======

Mononotto and his party in their flight had less than an hour’s
advantage of their pursuers, and, retarded by their captives, they
would have been compelled to despatch them or have been overtaken, but
for their sagacity in traversing the forest; they knew how to wind
around morasses, to shape their course to the margin of the rivulets,
and to penetrate defiles, while their pursuers, unpractised in that
accurate observation of nature by which the savage was guided, were
clambering over mountains, arrested by precipices, or half buried in
swamps.

After an hour’s silent and rapid flight, the Indians halted to make
such arrangements as would best accelerate their retreat. They placed
the little Leslie on the back of one of the Mohawks, and attached her
there by a _happis_, or strong wide band, passed several times over
her, and around the body of her bearer. She screamed at her separation
from Oneco; but, being permitted to stretch out her hand and place it
in his, she became quiet and satisfied.

The Mohawk auxiliaries, who so lately had seemed two insatiate
bloodhounds, now appeared to regard the reciprocal devotion of the
children with complacency; but their amity was not extended to
Everell; and Saco in particular, the Indian whom he had wounded, and
whose arm was irritated and {108} smarting, eyed him with glances of
brooding malignity. Magawisca perceived this, and dreading lest the
savage should give way to a sudden impulse of revenge, she placed
herself between him and Everell. This movement awakened Mononotto from
a sullen revery, and striking his hands together angrily, he bade
Magawisca remove from the English boy.

She obeyed, and mournfully resumed her place beside her father, saying
as she did so, in a low, thrilling tone, “My father! my father! where
are my father’s look and voice? Mononotto has found his daughter, but
I have not found my father.”

Mononotto felt her reproach; his features relaxed, and he laid his
hand on her head.

“My father’s soul awakes!” she cried, exultingly. “Oh, listen to me,
listen to me!” She waved her hand to the Mohawks to stop, and they
obeyed. “Why,” she continued, in an impassioned voice, “why hath my
father’s soul stooped from its ever upward flight? Till this day his
knife was never stained with innocent blood. Yonder roof,” and she
pointed towards Bethel, “has sheltered thy children; the wing of the
mother-bird was spread over us; we ate of the children’s bread; then
why hast thou shed their blood? Why art thou leading the son into
captivity? Oh, spare him! send him back; leave one light in the
darkened habitation!”

“One,” echoed Mononotto; “did they leave me one? No; my people, my
children, were swept away like withered leaves before the wind; and
there, where our pleasant homes were clustered, are {109} silence and
darkness; thistles have sprung up around our hearth-stones, and grass
has overgrown our pathways. Magawisca, has thy brother vanished from
thy memory? I tell thee, that as Samoset died, that boy shall die. My
soul rejoiced when he fought at his mother’s side, to see him thus
make himself a worthy victim to offer to thy lion-hearted brother:
even so fought Samoset.”

Magawisca felt that her father’s purpose was not to be shaken. She
looked at Everell, and already felt the horrors of the captive’s
fate--the scorching fires and the torturing knives; and when her
father commanded the party to move onward, she uttered a piercing
shriek.

“Be silent, girl,” said Mononotto, sternly; “cries and screams are for
children and cowards.”

“And I am a coward,” replied Magawisca, reverting to her habitually
calm tone, “if to fear my father should do a wrong, even to an enemy,
is cowardice.” Again her father’s brow softened; and she ventured to
add, “Send back the boy, and our path will be all smooth before us,
and light will be upon it, for my mother often said, ‘the sun never
sets on the soul of the man that doeth good.’”

Magawisca had unwittingly touched the spring of her father’s
vindictive passions. “Dost thou use thy mother’s words,” he said, “to
plead for one of the race of her murderers? Is not her grave among my
enemies? Say no more, I command you, and speak not to the boy; thy
kindness but sharpens my revenge.”

{110}

There was no alternative. Magawisca must feel or feign submission; and
she laid her hand on her heart, and bowed her head in token of
obedience. Everell had observed and understood her intercession; for,
though her words were uttered in her own tongue, there was no
mistaking her significant manner; but he was indifferent to the
success of her appeal. He still felt the dying grasp of his mother;
still heard his slaughtered sisters cry to him for help; and, in the
agony of his mind, he was incapable of an emotion of hope or fear.

The party resumed their march, and, suddenly changing their direction,
they came to the shore of the Connecticut. They had chosen a point for
their passage where the windings of the river prevented their being
exposed to view for any distance; but still they cautiously lingered
till the twilight had faded into night. While they were taking their
bark canoe from the thicket of underwood in which they had hidden it,
Magawisca said, unobserved, to Everell, “Keep an eagle-eye on our
pathway; our journey is always towards the setting sun; every turn we
make is marked by a dead tree, a lopped branch, or an arrow’s head
carved in the bark of a tree; be watchful--the hour of escape may
come.” She spoke in the lowest audible tone, and without changing her
posture or raising her eyes; and though her last accent caught her
father’s ear, when he turned to chide her he suppressed his rebuke,
for she sat motionless, and silent as a statue.

The party were swiftly conveyed to the opposite {111} shore. The canoe
was then again taken from the river and plunged into the wood; and
believing they had eluded pursuit, they prepared to encamp for the
night. They selected for this purpose a smooth grassy area, where they
were screened and defended on the river side by a natural rampart,
formed of intersecting branches of willows, sycamores, and elms.

Oneco collected dead leaves from the little hollows, into which they
had been swept by eddies of wind, and, with the addition of some soft
ferns, he made a bed and pillow for his little favourite fit for the
repose of a wood-nymph. The Mohawks regarded this labour of love with
favour, and one of them took from his hollow girdle some pounded corn,
and mixing grains of maple-sugar with it, gave it to Oneco, and the
little girl received it from him as passively as the young bird takes
food from its mother. He then made a sylvan cup of broad leaves,
threaded together with delicate twigs, and brought her a draught of
water from a fountain that swelled over the green turf, and trickled
into the river, drop by drop, as clear and bright as crystal. When she
had finished her primitive repast, he laid her on her leafy bed,
covered her with skins, and sung her to sleep.

The Indians refreshed themselves with pounded maize and dried fish. A
boyish appetite is not fastidious, and, with a mind at ease, Everell
might have relished this coarse fare; but now, though repeatedly
solicited, he would not even rise from the ground where he had thrown
himself in listless despair. No {112} excess of misery can enable a
boy of fifteen for any length of time to resist the cravings of nature
for sleep. Everell, it may be remembered, had watched the previous
night, and he soon sunk into oblivion of his griefs. One after
another, the whole party fell asleep, with the exception of Magawisca,
who sat apart from the rest, her mantle wrapped closely around her,
her head leaning against a tree, and apparently lost in deep
meditation. The Mohawks, by way of precaution, had taken a position on
each side of Everell, so as to render it next to impossible for their
prisoner to move without awakening them. But love, mercy, and hope
count nothing impossible, and all were at work in the breast of
Magawisca. She warily waited till the depth of the night, when sleep
is most profound, and then, with a step as noiseless as the falling
dew, she moved round to Everell’s head, stooped down, and putting her
lips close to his ear, pronounced his name distinctly. Most persons
have experienced the power of a name thus pronounced. Everell awakened
instantly and perfectly, and at once understood from Magawisca’s
gestures, for speak again she dared not, that she urged his departure.

The love of life and safety is too strong to be paralyzed for any
length of time. Hope was kindled; extrication and escape seemed
possible; quickening thoughts rushed through his mind. He might be
restored to his father; Springfield could not be far distant; his
captors would not dare to remain in that vicinity after the dawn of
day; one half hour, and {113} he was beyond their pursuit. He rose
slowly and cautiously to his feet. All was yet profoundly still. He
glanced his eye on Faith Leslie, whom he would gladly have rescued;
but Magawisca shook her head, and he felt that to attempt it would be
to ensure his own failure.

The moon shone through the branches of the trees, and shed a faint and
quivering light on the wild group. Everell looked cautiously about him
to see where he should plant his first footsteps. “If I should tread
on those skins,” he thought, “that are about them, or on those
rustling leaves, it were a gone case with me.” During this instant of
deliberation, one of the Indians murmured something of his dreaming
thoughts, turned himself over, and grasped Everell’s ankle. The boy
bit his quivering lip, and suppressed an instinctive cry, for he
perceived it was but the movement of sleep, and he felt the hold
gradually relaxing. He exchanged a glance of joy with Magawisca, when
a new source of alarm startled them: they heard the dashing of oars.
Breathless--immovable--they listened. The strokes were quickly
repeated, and the sounds rapidly approached, and a voice spoke, “Not
there, boys, not there; a little higher up.”

Joy and hope shot through Everell’s heart as he sprang like a startled
deer; but the Mohawk, awakened too by the noise, grasped his leg with
one hand, and with the other drawing his knife from his girdle, he
pointed it at Everell’s heart, in the act to strike if he should make
the least movement or sound.

{114}

Caution is the instinct of the weaker animals; the Indian cannot be
surprised out of his wariness. Mononotto and his companions, thus
suddenly awakened, remained as fixed and silent as the trees about
them.

The men in the canoes suspended their oars for a moment, and seemed at
a loss how to proceed, or whether to proceed at all. “It is a risky
business, I can tell you, Digby,” said one of them, “to plunge into
those woods; ‘it is ill fighting with wild beasts in their own den;’
they may start out upon us from their holes when we are least looking
for them.”

“And if they should,” replied Digby, in the voice of one who would
fain enforce reason with persuasion, “if they should, Lawrence, are we
not six stout Christian men, with bold hearts, and the Lord on our
side to boot?”

“I grant ye, that’s fighting at odds; but I mistrust we have no
command from the Lord to come out on this wild-goose chase.”

“I take a known duty,” replied Digby, “always to be a command from the
Lord, and you, Lawrence, I am sure, will be as ready as another man to
serve under such an order.”

Lawrence was silenced for a moment, and another voice spoke: “Yes, so
should we all, Master Digby, if you could make out the order; but I
can’t see the sense of risking all our lives, and getting but a ‘thank
ye for nothing’ when we get back, if, indeed, we ever get out of the
bowels of the forest again into a clearing. To be sure, we’ve tracked
{115} them thus far, but now, on the river, we lose scent. You know
they thread the forest as handily as my good woman threads her needle;
and for us to pursue them is as vain a thing as for my old
chimney-corner cat to chase a catamount through the woods. Come, come,
let’s head about, and give it up for a bad job.”

“Stop, stop, my friends,” cried Digby, as they were about to put the
boat around; “ye surely have not all faint hearts. Feare-naught, you
will not so belie your Christian name as to turn your back on danger.
And you, John Wilkin, who cut down the Pequods as you were wont to mow
the swarth in Suffolk, will you have it thrown up to you that you
wanted courage to pursue the caitiffs? Go home, Lawrence, and take
your curly-pated boy on your knee, and thank God, with what heart you
may, for his spared life; and all, all of you, go to that childless
man at Bethel, and say, ‘We could not brave the terrors of the forest
to save your child, for we have pleasant homes, and wives, and
children.’ For myself, the Lord helping, while I’ve life I’ll not turn
back without the boy; and if there’s one among you that hopes for
God’s pity, let him go with me.”

“Why, I’m sure it was not I that proposed going back,” said Lawrence.

“And I’m sure,” said the second speaker, “that I’m willing, if the
rest are, to try our luck farther.”

“Now God above reward ye, my good fellows!” cried Digby, with renewed
life; “I knew it was but trying your metal to find it true. It is not
reasonable {116} that you should feel as I do, who have seen my
master’s home looking like a slaughter-house. My mistress--the
gentlest and the best!--oh! it’s too much to think of. And then that
boy, that’s worth a legion of such men as we are--of such as I, I
mean. But come, let’s pull away, a little farther up the stream;
there’s no landing here, where the bank is so steep.”

“Stay! row a little closer,” cried one of the men; “I see something
like a track on the very edge of the bank; its being seemingly
impossible is the very reason why the savages would have chosen it.”

They now approached so near the shore that Everell knew they might
hear a whisper, and yet to move his lips was certain death. Those who
have experienced the agony of a nightmare, when life seemed to depend
on a single word, and that word could not be pronounced, may conceive
his emotions at this trying moment. Friends and rescue so near, and so
unavailing.

“Ye are mistaken,” said another of the pursuing party, after a
moment’s investigation, “it’s but a heron’s track,” which it truly
was; for the savages had been careful not to leave the slightest trace
of their footsteps where they landed. “There’s a cove a little higher
up,” continued the speaker; “we’ll put in there, and then, if we don’t
get on their trail, Master Digby must tell us what to do.”

“It’s plain what we must do then,” said Digby, “go straight on
westerly. I have a compass, you know; there is not, as the hunters
tell us, a single {117} smoke between this and the valleys of the
Housatonic. There the tribes are friendly, and if we reach them
without falling in with our enemy, we will not pursue them farther.”

“Agreed! agreed!” cried all the men; and they again dashed in their
oars and made for the cove. Everell’s heart sunk within him as the
sounds receded; but hope once admitted will not be again excluded, and
with the sanguine temperament of youth, he was already mentally
calculating the chances of escape. Not so Magawisca; she knew the
dangers that beset him; she was aware of her father’s determined
purpose. Her heart had again been rent by a divided duty; one word
from her would have rescued Everell, but that word would have been
death to her father; and when the boat retired, she sunk to the
ground, quite spent with the conflict of her feelings.

It may seem strange that the Indians did not avail themselves of the
advantage of their ambush to attack their pursuers; but it will be
remembered, the latter were double their number; and, besides,
Mononotto’s object now was to make good his retreat with his children;
and to effect this, it was essential he should avoid any encounter
with his pursuers. After a short consultation with his associates,
they determined to remain in their present position till the morning.
They were confident they should be able to detect and avoid the track
of the enemy, and soon to get in advance of them.




 CHAPTER VII.

{118}


                      “But the scene
 Is lovely round; a beautiful river there
 Wanders amid the fresh and fertile meads,
 The paradise he made unto himself,
 Mining the soil for ages. On each side
 The fields swell upward to the hills; beyond,
 Above the hills, in the blue distance, rise
 The mighty columns with which earth props heaven.
   There is a tale about these gray old rocks,
 A sad tradition.”
                                Bryant.


It is not our purpose to describe, step by step, the progress of the
Indian fugitives. Their sagacity in traversing their native forests,
their skill in following and eluding an enemy, and all their politic
devices, have been so well described in a recent popular work, that
their usages have become familiar as household words, and nothing
remains but to shelter defects of skill and knowledge under the veil
of silence, since we hold it to be an immutable maxim, that a thing
had better not be done than be ill done.

Suffice it to say, then, that the savages, after crossing the track of
their pursuers, threaded the forest with as little apparent
uncertainty as to their path as is now felt by travellers who pass
through the same still romantic country in a stagecoach and on a broad
turnpike. As they receded from the Connecticut the pine levels
disappeared, the country was broken into hills, and rose into high
mountains.

{119}

They traversed the precipitous sides of a river that, swollen by the
vernal rains, wound its way among the hills, foaming and raging like
an angry monarch. The river, as they traced its course, dwindled to a
mountain rill, but still retaining its impetuous character, leaping
and tumbling for miles through a descending defile, between high
mountains, whose stillness, grandeur, and immobility contrasted with
the noisy, reckless little stream as stern manhood with infancy. In
one place, which the Indians called the throat of the mountain, they
were obliged to betake themselves to the channel of the brook, there
not being room on its margin for a footpath. The branches of the trees
that grew from the rocky and precipitous declivities on each side met
and interlaced, forming a sylvan canopy over the imprisoned stream. To
Magawisca, whose imagination breathed a living spirit into all the
objects of Nature, it seemed as if the spirits of the wood had stooped
to listen to its sweet music.

After tracing this little sociable rill to its source, they again
plunged into the silent forest, waded through marshy ravines, and
mounted to the summits of steril hills, till at length, at the close
of the third day, after having gradually descended for several miles,
the hills on one side receded, and left a little interval of meadow,
through which they wound into the lower valley of the Housatonic.

This continued and difficult march had been sustained by Everell with
a spirit and fortitude that evidently won the favour of the savages,
who always {120} render homage to superiority over physical evil.
There was something more than this common feeling in the joy with
which Mononotto noted the boy’s silent endurance, and even contempt of
pain. One noble victim seemed to him better than a “human hecatomb.”
In proportion to his exultation in possessing an object worthy to
avenge his son, was his fear that his victim would escape from him.
During the march, Everell had twice, aided by Magawisca, nearly
achieved his liberty. These detected conspiracies, though defeated,
rendered the chief impatient to execute his vengeance, and he secretly
resolved that it should not be delayed longer than the morrow.

As the fugitives emerged from the narrow defile, a new scene opened
upon them; a scene of valley and hill, river and meadow, surrounded by
mountains, whose encircling embrace expressed protection and love to
the gentle spirits of the valley. A light summer shower had just
fallen, and the clouds, “in thousand liveries dight,” had risen from
the western horizon, and hung their rich draperies about the clear
sun. The horizontal rays passed over the valley, and flushed the upper
branches of the trees, the summits of the hills, and the mountains
with a flood of light, while the low grounds, reposing in deep shadow,
presented one of those striking and accidental contrasts in nature
that a painter would have selected to give effect to his art.

The gentle Housatonic wound through the depths of the valley, in some
parts contracted to a narrow {121} channel, and murmuring over the
rocks that rippled its surface, and in others spreading wide its clear
mirror, and lingering like a lover amid the vines, trees, and flowers
that fringed its banks. Thus it flows now; but not, as then, in the
sylvan freedom of Nature, when no clattering mills and bustling
factories threw their prosaic shadows over the silver waters; when not
even a bridge spanned their bosom; when not a trace of man’s art was
seen, save the little bark canoe that glided over them, or lay idly
moored along the shore. The savage was rather the vassal than the
master of nature, obeying her laws, but never usurping her dominion.
He only used the land she prepared, and cast in his corn but where she
seemed to invite him by mellowing and upheaving the rich mould. He did
not presume to hew down her trees, the proud crest of her uplands, and
convert them into “russet lawns and fallows gray.” The axeman’s
stroke, that music to the _settler’s_ ear, never then violated the
peace of Nature, or made discord in her music.

Imagination may be indulged in lingering for a moment in those dusky
regions of the past, but it is not permitted to reasonable, instructed
man to admire or regret tribes of human beings who lived and died,
leaving scarcely a more enduring memorial than the forsaken nest that
vanishes before one winter’s storms.

But to return to our wanderers. They had entered the expanded vale by
following the windings of the Housatonic around a hill, conical and
easy of ascent, excepting on that side which overlooked the river,
{122} where, half way from the base to the summit, rose a
perpendicular rock, bearing on its beetling front the age of
centuries. On every other side the hill was garlanded with laurels,
now in full and profuse bloom, here and there surmounted by an
intervening pine, spruce, or hemlock, whose seared winter foliage was
fringed with the bright, tender sprouts of spring. We believe there is
a chord even in the heart of savage man that responds to the voice of
Nature. Certain it is, the party paused, as it appeared, from a common
instinct, at a little grassy nook, formed by the curve of the hill, to
gaze on this singularly beautiful spot. Everell looked on the smoke
that curled from the huts of the village, imbosomed in pine-trees on
the adjacent plain. The scene to him breathed peace and happiness, and
gushing thoughts of home filled his eyes with tears. Oneco plucked
clusters of laurels, and decked his little favourite, and the old
chief fixed his melancholy eye on a solitary pine, scathed and blasted
by tempests, that, rooted in the ground where he stood, lifted its
topmost branches to the bare rock, where they seemed, in their wild
desolation, to brave the elemental fury that had stripped them of
beauty and life.

The leafless tree was truly, as it appeared to the eye of Mononotto, a
fit emblem of the chieftain of a ruined tribe. “See you, child,” he
said, addressing Magawisca, “those unearthed roots? the tree must
fall: hear you the death-song that wails through those blasted
branches?”

“Nay, father, listen not to the sad strain; it is {123} but the spirit
of the tree mourning over its decay; rather turn thine ear to the glad
song of this bright stream, image of the good. She nourishes the aged
trees, and cherishes the tender flowerets, and her song is ever of
happiness till she reaches the great sea, image of our eternity.”

“Speak not to me of happiness, Magawisca; it has vanished with the
smoke of our homes. I tell ye, the spirits of our race are gathered
about this blasted tree. Samoset points to that rock--that
sacrifice-rock.” His keen glance turned from the rock to Everell.

Magawisca understood its portentous meaning, and she clasped her hands
in mute and agonizing supplication. He answered to the silent
entreaty. “It is in vain; my purpose is fixed, and here it shall be
accomplished. Why hast thou linked thy heart, foolish girl, to this
English boy? I have sworn, kneeling on the ashes of our hut, that I
would never spare a son of our enemy’s race. The lights of heaven
witnessed my vow, and think you that, now this boy is given into my
hands to avenge thy brother, I will spare him? no, not to _thy_
prayer, Magawisca. No; though thou lookest on me with thy mother’s
eye, and speakest with her voice, I will not break my vow.”

Mononotto had indeed taken a final and fatal resolution; and prompted,
as he fancied, by supernatural intimations, and perhaps dreading the
relentings of his own heart, he determined on its immediate execution.
He announced his decision to the {124} Mohawks. A brief and animated
consultation followed, during which they brandished their tomahawks,
and cast wild and threatening glances at Everell, who at once
comprehended the meaning of these menacing looks and gestures. He
turned an appealing glance to Magawisca. She did not speak. “Am I to
die now?” he asked; she turned, shuddering, from him.

Everell had expected death from his savage captors, but while it was
comparatively distant he thought he was indifferent to it, or, rather,
he believed he should welcome it as a release from the horrible
recollection of the massacre at Bethel, which haunted him day and
night. But, now that his fate seemed inevitable, nature was appalled,
and shrunk from it, and the impassive spirit for a moment endured a
pang that there cannot be in any “corp’ral sufferance.” The avenues of
sense were closed, and past and future were present to the mind, as if
it were already invested with the attributes of its eternity. From
this agonizing excitement Everell was roused by a command from the
savages to move onward. “It is then deferred,” thought Magawisca; and
heaving a deep sigh, as if for a moment relieved from a pressure on
her overburdened heart, she looked to her father for an explanation;
he said nothing, but proceeded in silence towards the village.

The lower valley of the Housatonic, at the period to which our history
refers, was inhabited by a peaceful, and, as far as that epithet could
ever be applied to our savages, an agricultural tribe, whose
territory, {125} situate midway between the Hudson and the
Connecticut, was bounded and defended on each side by mountains then
deemed impracticable to a foe. These inland people had heard from the
hunters of distant tribes, who occasionally visited them, of the
aggressions and hostility of the English strangers; but, regarding it
as no concern of theirs, they listened much as we listen to news of
the Burmese war--Captain Symmes’ theory--or lectures on phrenology.
One of their hunters, it is true, had penetrated to Springfield, and
another had passed over the hills to the Dutch fort at Albany, and
returned with the report that the strangers’ skin was the colour of
cowardice; that they served their women, and spoke an unintelligible
language. There was little in this account to interest those who were
so ignorant as to be scarcely susceptible of curiosity, and they
hardly thought of the dangerous strangers at all, or only thought of
them as a people from whom they had nothing to hope or fear, when the
appearance of the ruined Pequod chief with his English captives roused
them from their apathy.

The village was on a level, sandy plain, extending for about half a
mile, and raised by a natural and almost perpendicular bank fifty feet
above the level of the meadows. At one extremity of the plain was the
hill we have described; the other was terminated by a broad green,
appropriated to sports and councils.

The huts of the savages were irregularly scattered over the plain:
some on cleared ground, and others {126} just peeping out of copses of
pine trees; some on the very verge of the plain, overlooking the
meadows, and others under the shelter of a high hill that formed the
northern boundary of the valley, and seemed stationed there to defend
the inhabitants from their natural enemies, cold and wind.

The huts were the simplest structures of human art; but, as in no
natural condition of society a perfect equality obtains, some were
more spacious and commodious than others. All were made with flexible
poles, firmly set in the ground, and drawn and attached together at
the top. Those of the more indolent or least skilful were filled in
with branches of trees and hung over with coarse mats, while those of
the better order were neatly covered with bark, prepared with art and
considerable labour for the purpose. Little garden patches adjoined a
few of the dwellings, and were planted with beans, pumpkins, and
squashes; the seeds of these vegetables, according to an Indian
tradition (in which we may perceive the usual admixture of fable and
truth), having been sent to them in the bill of a bird from the
southwest by the Great Spirit.

The Pequod chief and his retinue passed just at twilight over the
plain, by one of the many footpaths that indented it. Many of the
women were still at work with their stone-pointed hoes in their
gardens. Some of the men and children were at their sports on the
green. Here a straggler was coming from the river with a string of
fine trout; another fortunate sportsman appeared from the hillside
{127} with wild turkeys and partridges; while two emerged from the
forest with still more noble game, a fat antlered buck.

This village, as we have described it, and perhaps from the affection
its natural beauty inspired, remained the residence of the savages
long after they had vanished from the surrounding country. Within the
memory of the present generation the remnant of the tribe migrated to
the West; and even now some of their families make a summer pilgrimage
to this their Jerusalem, and are regarded with a melancholy interest
by the present occupants of the soil.

Mononotto directed his steps to the wigwam of the Housatonic chief,
which stood on one side of the green. The chief advanced from his hut
to receive him, and by the most animated gestures expressed to
Mononotto his pleasure in the success of his incursion, from which it
seemed that Mononotto had communicated with him on his way to the
Connecticut.

A brief and secret consultation succeeded, which appeared to consist
of propositions from the Pequod, and assent on the part of the
Housatonic chief, and was immediately followed by a motion to separate
the travellers. Mononotto and Everell were to remain with the chief,
and the rest of the party to be conducted to the hut of his sister.

Magawisca’s prophetic spirit too truly interpreted this arrangement;
and thinking or hoping there might be some saving power in her
presence, since her father tacitly acknowledged it by the pains he
{128} took to remove her, she refused to leave him. He insisted
vehemently; but, finding her unyielding, he commanded the Mohawks to
force her away.

Resistance was vain, but resistance she would still have made but for
the interposition of Everell. “Go with them, Magawisca,” he said, “and
leave me to my fate. We shall meet again.”

“Never!” she shrieked; “your fate is death.”

“And after death we shall meet again,” replied Everell, with a
calmness that evinced his mind was already in a great degree resigned
to the event that now appeared inevitable. “Do not fear for me,
Magawisca. Better thoughts have put down my fears. When it is over,
think of me.”

“And what am I to do with this scorching fire till then?” she asked,
pressing both her hands on her head. “Oh, my father, has your heart
become stone?”

Her father turned from her appeal, and motioned to Everell to enter
the hut. Everell obeyed; and when the mat dropped over the entrance
and separated him from the generous creature whose heart had kept true
time with his through all his griefs, who he knew would have redeemed
his life with her own, he yielded to a burst of natural and not
unmanly tears.

If this could be deemed a weakness, it was his last. Alone with his
God, he realized the sufficiency of His presence and favour. He
appealed to that mercy which is never refused, nor given in stinted
measure to the humble suppliant. Every expression of pious {129}
confidence and resignation which he had heard with the heedless ear of
childhood, now flashed like an illumination upon his mind.

His mother’s counsels and instructions, to which he had often lent a
wearied attention; the passages from the Sacred Book he had been
compelled to commit to memory when his truant thoughts were ranging
forest and field, now returned upon him as if a celestial spirit
breathed them into his soul. Stillness and peace stole over him. He
was amazed at his own tranquillity. “It may be,” he thought, “that my
mother is permitted to minister to me.”

He might have been agitated by the admission of the least ray of hope;
but hope was utterly excluded, and it was only when he thought of his
bereft father that his courage failed him.

But we must leave him to his solitude and silence, only interrupted by
the distant hootings of the owl and the heavy tread of the Pequod
chief, who spent the night in slowly pacing before the door of the
hut.

Magawisca and her companions were conducted to a wigwam standing on
that part of the plain on which they had first entered. It was
completely enclosed on three sides by dwarf oaks. In front there was a
little plantation of the edible luxuries of the savages. On entering
the hut they perceived it had but one occupant, a sick, emaciated old
woman, who was stretched on her mat, covered with skins. She raised
her head as the strangers entered, and at the sight of Faith Leslie
uttered a faint exclamation, deeming the fair creature a messenger
from the spirit-land; {130} but, being informed who they were and
whence they came, she made every sign and expression of courtesy to
them that her feeble strength permitted.

Her hut contained all that was essential to savage hospitality. A few
brands were burning on a hearth-stone in the middle of the apartment.
The smoke that found egress passed out by a hole in the centre of the
roof, over which a mat was skilfully adjusted, and turned to the
windward side by a cord that hung within. The old woman, in her long
pilgrimage, had accumulated stores of Indian riches: piles of
sleeping-mats lay in one corner; nicely-dressed skins garnished the
walls; baskets of all shapes and sizes, gayly decorated with rude
images of birds and flowers, contained dried fruits, medicinal herbs,
Indian corn, nuts, and game. A covered pail, made of folds of birch
bark, was filled with a kind of beer--a decoction of various roots and
aromatic shrubs. Neatly-turned wooden spoons and bowls, and culinary
utensils of clay, supplied all the demands of the inartificial
housewifery of savage life.

The travellers, directed by their old hostess, prepared their evening
repast--a short and simple process to an Indian; and, having satisfied
the cravings of hunger, they were all, with the exception of Magawisca
and one of the Mohawks, in a very short time stretched on their mats
and fast asleep.

Magawisca seated herself at the feet of the old woman, and had neither
spoken nor moved since she entered the hut. She watched anxiously and
impatiently {131} the movements of the Indian, whose appointed duty it
appeared to be to guard her. He placed a wooden bench against the mat
which served for a door, and stuffing his pipe with tobacco from a
pouch slung over his shoulder, and then filling a gourd with the
liquor in the pail, and placing it beside him, he quietly sat himself
down to his night-watch.

The old woman became restless, and her loud and repeated groans at
last withdrew Magawisca from her own miserable thoughts. She inquired
if she could do aught to allay her pain; the sufferer pointed to a jar
that stood on the embers, in which a medicinal preparation was
simmering. She motioned to Magawisca to give her a spoonful of the
liquor; she did so; and as she took it, “It is made,” she said, “of
all the plants on which the spirit of sleep has breathed;” and so it
seemed to be, for she had scarcely swallowed it when she fell asleep.

Once or twice she waked and murmured something, and once Magawisca
heard her say, “Hark to the wekolis![2] he is perched on the old oak
by the sacrifice-rock, and his cry is neither musical nor merry: a bad
sign in a bird.”

But all signs and portents were alike to Magawisca; every sound rung a
death-peal to her ear, and the hissing silence had in it the mystery
and fearfulness of death. The night wore slowly and painfully away, as
if, as in the fairy tale, the moments were counted by drops of heart’s
blood. But the most wearisome nights will end; the morning approached;
{132} the familiar notes of the birds of earliest dawn were heard, and
the twilight peeped through the crevices of the hut, when a new sound
fell on Magawisca’s startled ear. It was the slow, measured tread of
many feet. The poor girl now broke silence, and vehemently entreated
the Mohawk to let her pass the door, or at least to raise the mat.

He shook his head with a look of unconcern, as if it were the petulant
demand of a child, when the old woman, awakened by the noise, cried
out that she was dying; that she must have light and air; and the
Mohawk started up, impulsively, to raise the mat. It was held between
two poles that formed the door-posts; and, while he was disengaging
it, Magawisca, as if inspired, and quick as thought, poured the liquor
from the jar on the fire into the hollow of her hand, and dashed it
into the gourd which the Mohawk had just replenished. The narcotic was
boiling hot, but she did not cringe; she did not even feel it; and she
could scarcely repress a cry of joy when the savage turned round and
swallowed, at one draught, the contents of the cup.

Magawisca looked eagerly through the aperture, but, though the sound
of the footsteps had approached nearer, she saw no one. She saw
nothing but a gentle declivity that sloped to the plain, a few yards
from the hut, and was covered with a grove of trees; beyond and
peering above them were the hill and the sacrifice-rock; the morning
star, its rays not yet dimmed in the light of day, shed a soft
trembling beam on its summit. This beautiful star, alone in {133} the
heavens when all other lights were quenched, spoke to the
superstitious, or, rather, the imaginative spirit of Magawisca. “Star
of promise,” she thought, “thou dost still linger with us when day is
vanished, and now thou art there alone to proclaim the coming sun;
thou dost send in upon my soul a ray of hope; and though it be but as
the spider’s slender pathway, it shall sustain my courage.” She had
scarcely formed this resolution when she needed all its efficacy, for
the train whose footsteps she had heard appeared in full view.

First came her father, with the Housatonic chief; next, alone, and
walking with a firm, undaunted step, was Everell, his arms folded over
his breast, and his head a little inclined upward, so that Magawisca
fancied she saw his full eye turned heavenward; after him walked all
the men of the tribe, ranged according to their age, and the rank
assigned to each by his own exploits.

They were neither painted nor ornamented according to the common usage
at festivals and sacrifices, but everything had the air of hasty
preparation. Magawisca gazed in speechless despair. The procession
entered the wood, and for a few moments disappeared from her sight;
again they were visible, mounting the acclivity of the hill by a
winding, narrow footpath, shaded on either side by laurels. They now
walked singly and slowly, but to Magawisca their progress seemed rapid
as a falling avalanche. She felt that, if she were to remain pent in
that prison-house, her heart would burst, and she {134} sprang towards
the doorway in the hope of clearing her passage; but the Mohawk caught
her arm in his iron grasp, and putting her back, calmly retained his
station. She threw herself on her knees to him; she entreated, she
wept, but in vain: he looked on her with unmoved apathy. Already she
saw the foremost of the party had reached the rock, and were forming a
semicircle around it: again she appealed to her determined keeper, and
again he denied her petition, but with a faltering tongue and a
drooping eye.

Magawisca, in the urgency of a necessity that could brook no delay,
had forgotten, or regarded as useless, the sleeping potion she had
infused into the Mohawk’s draught; she now saw the powerful agent was
at work for her, and with that quickness of apprehension that made the
operations of her mind as rapid as the impulses of instinct, she
perceived that every emotion she excited but hindered the effect of
the potion. Suddenly seeming to relinquish all purpose and hope of
escape, she threw herself on a mat, and hid her face, burning with
agonizing impatience, in her mantle. There we must leave her, and join
that fearful company who were gathered together to witness what they
believed to be the execution of exact and necessary justice.

Seated around their sacrifice-rock--their holy of holies--they
listened to the sad story of the Pequod chief with dejected
countenances and downcast eyes, save when an involuntary glance turned
on Everell, who stood awaiting his fate, cruelly aggravated by {135}
every moment’s delay, with a quiet dignity and calm resignation that
would have become a hero or a saint. Surrounded by this dark cloud of
savages, his fair countenance kindled by holy inspiration, he looked
scarcely like a creature of earth.

There might have been among the spectators some who felt the silent
appeal of the helpless, courageous boy; some whose hearts moved them
to interpose to save the selected victim; but they were restrained by
their interpretation of natural justice, as controlling to them as our
artificial codes of laws to us.

Others, of a more cruel or more irritable disposition, when the Pequod
described his wrongs and depicted his sufferings, brandished their
tomahawks, and would have hurled them at the boy; but the chief said,
“Nay, brothers, the work is mine; he dies by my hand--for my
first-born--life for life; he dies by a single stroke, for thus was my
boy cut off. The blood of sachems is in his veins. He has the skin,
but not the soul of that mixed race, whose gratitude is like that
vanishing mist,” and he pointed to the vapour that was melting from
the mountain tops into the transparent ether; “and their promises like
this,” and he snapped a dead branch from the pine beside which he
stood, and broke it in fragments. “Boy as he is, he fought for his
mother as the eagle fights for its young. I watched him in the
mountain-path, when the blood gushed from his torn feet; not a word
from his smooth lip betrayed his pain.”

{136}

Mononotto embellished his victim with praises, as the ancients
wreathed theirs with flowers. He brandished his hatchet over Everell’s
head, and cried exultingly, “See, he flinches not. Thus stood my boy
when they flashed their sabres before his eyes and bade him betray his
father. Brothers: My people have told me I bore a woman’s heart
towards the enemy. Ye shall see. I will pour out this English boy’s
blood to the last drop, and give his flesh and bones to the dogs and
wolves.”

He then motioned to Everell to prostrate himself on the rock, his face
downward. In this position the boy would not see the descending
stroke. Even at this moment of dire vengeance the instincts of a
merciful nature asserted their rights.

Everell sunk calmly on his knees, not to supplicate life, but to
commend his soul to God. He clasped his hands together. He did not--he
could not speak; his soul was

 “Rapt in still communion, that transcends
 The imperfect offices of prayer.”

At this moment a sunbeam penetrated the trees that enclosed the area,
and fell athwart his brow and hair, kindling it with an almost
supernatural brightness. To the savages, this was a token that the
victim was accepted, and they sent forth a shout that rent the air.
Everell bent forward and pressed his forehead to the rock. The chief
raised the deadly weapon, when Magawisca, springing from the
precipitous side of the rock, screamed “Forbear!” and interposed her
arm. It was too late. The blow {137} was levelled--force and direction
given; the stroke, aimed at Everell’s neck, severed his defender’s
arm, and left him unharmed. The lopped, quivering member dropped over
the precipice. Mononotto staggered and fell senseless, and all the
savages, uttering horrible yells, rushed towards the fatal spot.

“Stand back!” cried Magawisca. “I have bought his life with my own.
Fly, Everell--nay, speak not, but fly--thither--to the east!” she
cried, more vehemently.

Everell’s faculties were paralyzed by a rapid succession of violent
emotions. He was conscious only of a feeling of mingled gratitude and
admiration for his preserver. He stood motionless, gazing on her. “I
die in vain, then,” she cried, in an accent of such despair that he
was roused. He threw his arms around her, and pressed her to his heart
as he would a sister that had redeemed his life with her own, and
then, tearing himself from her, he disappeared. No one offered to
follow him. The voice of nature rose from every heart, and, responding
to the justice of Magawisca’s claim, bade him “God speed!” To all it
seemed that his deliverance had been achieved by miraculous aid.
All--the dullest and coldest--paid involuntary homage to the heroic
girl, as if she were a superior being, guided and upheld by
supernatural power.

Everything short of miracle she had achieved. The moment the opiate
dulled the senses of her keeper, she escaped from the hut; and aware
that, if she attempted to penetrate to her father through the {138}
semicircular line of spectators that enclosed him, she should be
repulsed, and probably borne off the ground, she had taken the
desperate resolution of mounting the rock where only her approach
would be unperceived. She did not stop to ask herself if it were
possible; but, impelled by a determined spirit, or rather, we would
believe, by that inspiration that teaches the bird its unknown path,
and leads the goat, with its young, safely over the mountain crags,
she ascended the rock. There were crevices in it, but they seemed
scarcely sufficient to support the eagle with his grappling talon; and
twigs issuing from the fissures, but so slender that they waved like a
blade of grass under the weight of the young birds that made a rest on
them; and yet, such is the power of love, stronger than death, that
with these inadequate helps Magawisca scaled the rock and achieved her
generous purpose.




 CHAPTER VIII.

{139}


 “Powwow--a priest. These do begin and order their service and
 invocation of their gods, and all the people follow, and join
 interchangeably in a laborious bodily service unto sweating,
 especially of the priest, who spends himself in strange antic gestures
 and actions even unto fainting. Being once in their houses and
 beholding what their worship was, I never durst be an eyewitness,
 spectator, or looker-on, lest I should have been a partaker of Satan’s
 inventions and worships.”--Roger Williams.


The following letter, written by Hope Leslie, and addressed to
Everell Fletcher, then residing in England, will show, briefly, the
state of affairs at Bethel seven years subsequent to the date of the
events already detailed. Little had occurred, save the changes of the
seasons in nature and human life, to mark the progress of time.


 “Dear Everell:

 “This is the fifth anniversary of the day you left us--your birthday
 too, you know; so we celebrate it, but with a blended joy and grief,
 which, as my dear guardian says, is suitable to the mixed condition of
 human life.

 “I surprised him this morning with a painting on which I had expended
 much time and laid out all my poor skill. The scene is a forest glade;
 a boy is sleeping under a birch tree, near a thicket of hazel {140}
 bushes, and from their deepest shadow peeps a gaunt wolf, in the act
 of springing on him; while, just emerging from the depths of the wood,
 in the background, appears a man with a musket levelled at the animal.
 I had placed the painting on the mantelpiece, and it caught your
 father’s eye as he entered to attend our morning exercise. He said
 nothing, for you know the order of our devotions is as strictly
 observed as were the services of the ancient Temple. So we all took
 our accustomed places: I mine, on the cushion beside your father;
 yours still stands on the other side of him, like the vacant seat of
 Banquo. Love can paint as well as fear; and though no form, palpable
 to common eyes, is seated there, yet, to our second sight, imagination
 produces from her shadowy regions the form of our dear Everell.

 “I believe the picture had touched the hidden springs of memory, for
 your father, though he was reading the chapter of Exodus that speaks
 of the wise-hearted men who wrought for the sanctuary (a portion of
 scripture not particularly moving), repeatedly wiped the gathering
 tears from his eyes. Jennet is never lagging in the demonstration of
 religious emotion, and I inferred from her responsive hems! and hahs!
 that, as there was no obvious cause for tears, she fancied affecting
 types were lurking in the ‘loops and selvages, and tenons and sockets,
 and fine twined linen’ about which your father was reading. But when
 he came, in his prayer, to his customary mention of his absent child;
 when he touched {141} upon the time when his habitation was made
 desolate, and then upon the deliverance of his son, his only son, from
 the savage foe and the ravening beast, his voice faltered; every heart
 responded; Digby sobbed aloud; and even my aunt Grafton, whose
 aversion to standing at her devotions has not diminished with her
 increasing years, stood a monument of patience till the clock twice
 told the hour; though it was but the other day, when she thought your
 father was drawing to a close, and he started a new topic, that she
 broke out, after her way of thinking aloud, ‘Well, if he is going on
 t’other tack, I’ll sit down.’

 “When the exercise was finished, Digby gave vent to his pleasure.
 ‘There, Jennet,’ he said, rubbing his hands exultingly, ‘you are
 always on the lookout for witchcraft. I wonder what you call that? It
 is a perfect picture of the place where I found Mr. Everell, as that
 fellow there, in the frieze jacket, is of me; and anybody would know
 that, though they would not expect to see John Digby painted in a
 picture. To be sure, Mr. Everell does not look quite so pale and
 famished as he did when I first saw him sleeping under that birch
 tree: as I live, she has put his name there, just as he had carved it.
 Well, it will be a kind of a history for Mr. Everell’s children, when
 we, and the forest too, are laid low.’

 “Your father permitted the honest fellow’s volubility to flow
 unrepressed; he himself only said, as he drew me to him and kissed me,
 ‘You have kept a faithful copy of our dear Everell in your memory.’

{142}

 “My honest tutor, Cradock, and my aunt Grafton contended for the
 honour of my excellence in the art--poor Cradock, my Apollo! He
 maintained that he had taught me the theory, while aunt Grafton
 boasted her knowledge of the practice; but, alas! the little honour my
 success reflected on them was not worth their contest; and I did them
 no injustice in secretly ascribing all my skill to the source whence
 the Corinthian maid derived her power to trace, by the secret lamp,
 the shade of her lover. Affection for my dear Everell and for his
 father is my inspiration; but, I confess, it might never have appeared
 in the mimicry of even this rude painting, if my aunt Grafton had not
 taken lessons at the Convent of the Chartreux at Paris, and had daily
 access, as you know she has a thousand times repeated to us, to the
 paintings of Rossi and Albati in the palace of Fontainebleau.

 “But into what egotism does this epistolary journalizing betray me?
 The day is yours, Everell, and I will not speak again of myself.

 “My aunt, meaning to do it what honour she could, had our dinner-table
 set out with massive silver dishes, engraved with her family’s
 armorial bearings. They have never before seen the light in America.
 Your father smiled at their contrast with our bare walls, pine tables,
 chairs, &c., and said we looked like Attila in his rude hut,
 surrounded with the spoils of Rome; and aunt Grafton, who has a
 decided taste for all the testimonials of her family grandeur, entered
 into a warm discussion with Master Cradock as to how far the new man
 might lawfully {143} indulge in a vain show. By-the-way, their
 skirmishing on the debatable grounds of Church and State have of late
 almost ceased. When I remarked this to your father, he said he
 believed I had brought about the present amicable state of affairs, by
 affording them a kind of neutral ground, where their common affections
 and interests met. Whatever has produced this result, it is too happy
 not to be carefully cherished; so I have taken care that my poor
 tutor, who never would intentionally provoke a human being, should
 avoid, as far as possible, all those peculiarities which, as some
 colours offend certain animals, were sure every day, and thrice a day,
 to call forth my aunt’s animadversions. I have, too, entered into a
 secret confederacy with Digby, the effect of which is, that Master
 Cradock’s little brown wig is brushed every morning, and is, at least
 once each day, straight on his head. The brush has invaded, too, the
 hitherto unexplored regions of his broadcloth, and his black stock
 gives place, on every Lord’s day at least, to a white collar. Aunt
 Grafton herself has more than once remarked, that, ‘for one of these
 scholar-folks, he goes quite decent.’ As to aunt Grafton, I am afraid
 that, if you were here, though we may both have gained with our years
 a little discretion, yet I am afraid we should laugh, as we were wont
 to do, at her innocent peculiarities. She spends many a weary hour in
 devising new head-gear, and doth daily, as Jennet says, break the law
 against costly apparel. Jennet is the same untired and tiresome
 railer. If there are anodynes for the tongue in England, pray send
 some for her.

{144}

 “We are going to-morrow on an excursion to a new settlement on the
 river, called Northampton. Your father feared the toils and perils of
 the way for me, and has consented, reluctantly, to my being of the
 party. Aunt Grafton remonstrated, and expressed her natural and kind
 apprehensions, by alleging that it was ‘very unladylike, and a thing
 quite unheard of in England,’ for a young person like me to go out
 exploring a new country. I urged that our new country develops
 faculties that young ladies in England were unconscious of possessing.
 She maintained, as usual, that whatever was not practised and known in
 England, was not worth possessing; but finally she concluded her
 opposition with her old customary phrase, ‘Well, it’s peculiar of you,
 Miss Hope,’ which, you know, she always uses to characterize whatever
 opposes her opinions or inclinations.

 “My good tutor, who would fain be my ægis-bearer, insists on
 attending me. You may laugh at him, Everell, and call him my
 knight-errant, or squire, or what you will; but I assure you, he is a
 right godly and suitable appendage to a Pilgrim damsel. I will finish
 my letter when I return; a journey of twenty miles has put my thoughts
 (which, you know, are ever ready to take wing) to flight.

 ======

 “25th October, Thursday--or, as the injunction has come from Boston
 that we be more particular in avoiding these heathen designations,
 8th month 25th, 5th day.

{145}

 “Dear Everell: We followed the Indian footpath that winds along the
 margin of the river, and reached Northampton without any accident.
 There is but a narrow opening there, scooped out of the forest, and
 Mr. Holioke, wishing to have an extensive view of the country, engaged
 an Indian guide to conduct your father and himself to the summit of a
 mountain, which rises precipitously from the meadows, and overlooks an
 ocean of forest.

 “I had gazed on the beautiful summits of this mountain, that, in this
 transparent October atmosphere, were as blue and bright as the heavens
 themselves, till I had an irrepressible desire to go to them; and,
 like the child who cried for the horns of the silver moon, should I
 have cried too if my wishes had been unattainable.

 “Your father acquiesced (as my conscience tells me, Everell, he does
 too easily) in my wishes, and nobody objected but my tutor, who
 evidently thought it would be unmanly for him to shrink from the toils
 that I braved, and who looked forward with dread and dismay to the
 painful ascent. However, we all reached the summit without scath to
 life or limb, and then we looked down upon a scene that made me clap
 my hands, and my pious companions raise their eyes in silent devotion.
 I hope you have not forgotten the autumnal brilliancy of our woods.
 They say the foliage in England has a paler, sickly hue; but for our
 Western world--Nature’s youngest child--she has reserved her
 many-coloured robe, the brightest and most beautiful of her garments.
 Last {146} week the woods were as green as an emerald, and now they
 look as if all the summer-spirits had been wreathing them with flowers
 of the richest and most brilliant dyes.

 “Philosophers may inquire into the process of Nature, and find out, if
 they can, how such sudden changes are produced; though, after all, I
 fancy their inquiries will turn out like the experiment of the
 inquisitive boy, who cut open the drum to find the sound; but I love
 to lend my imagination to poets’ dreams, and to fancy Nature has her
 myriads of little spirits who

         “Do wander everywhere
 Swifter than the moone’s sphere.”

 He must have a torpid imagination and a cold heart, I think, who does
 not fancy these vast forests filled with invisible intelligences. Have
 these beautiful valleys of our Connecticut, which we saw from the
 mountain looking like a smile on Nature’s rugged face, and stretching
 as far as our vision extended, till the broad river diminished in the
 shadowy distance to a silver thread--have they been seen and enjoyed
 only by those savages who have their summer home in them? While I was
 pondering on this thought, Mr. Holioke, who seldom indulges in a
 fanciful suggestion, said to your father, ‘The Romans, you know,
 Brother Fletcher, had their Cenotapha, empty sepulchres, in honour of
 those who died in their country’s cause, and mouldered on a distant
 soil. Why may we not have ours, and surmise that the spirits of those
 who have died for liberty and {147} religion have come before us to
 this wilderness, and taken possession in the name of the Lord?’

 “We lingered for an hour or two on the mountain. Mr. Holioke and your
 father were noting the sites for future villages, already marked out
 for them by clusters of Indian huts. The instinct of the children of
 the forest guides them to these rich intervals, which the sun and the
 river prepare and almost till for them. While the gentlemen were thus
 engaged, I observed that the highest rock of the mountain was crowned
 with a pyramidal pile of stones, and about them were strewn relics of
 Indian sacrifices. It has, I believe, been the custom of people, in
 all ages, who were instructed only by Nature, to worship on high
 places.[3] I pointed to the rude altar, and ventured to ask Mr.
 Holioke if an acceptable service might not have been offered there.

 “He shook his head at me as if I were but little better than a
 heathen, and said, ‘It was all worship to an unknown God.’

 “‘But,’ said your father, ‘the time is approaching when, through the
 valleys beneath and on this mount, incense shall rise from Christian
 hearts.’

 “‘It were well,’ replied Mr. Holioke, ‘if we now, in the spirit,
 consecrated it to the Lord.’

{148}

 “‘And let me stand sponsor for it,’ said I, ‘while you christen it
 Holioke.’

 “I was gently rebuked for my levity, but my hint was not unkindly
 taken; for the good man has never since spoken of his namesake without
 calling it ‘_Mount Holioke_.’

 “My senses were enchanted on that high place. I listened to the mighty
 sound that rose from the forest depths of the abyss like the roar of
 the distant ocean, and to the gentler voices of nature, borne on the
 invisible waves of air; the farewell notes of the few birds that still
 linger with us; the rustling of the leaves beneath the squirrel’s
 joyous leap; the whirring of the partridge startled from his perch;
 the tinkling of the cow-bell, and the barking of the Indian’s dog. I
 was lying with my ear over the rock when your father reminded me that
 it was time to return, and bade Digby, who had attended us, ‘look well
 to Miss Leslie’s descent, and lend a helping hand to Master Cradock.’

 “My poor tutor’s saffron skin changed to brick colour; and that he
 might not think I heard the imputation cast upon his serviceable
 power, I stepped between him and Digby, and said, ‘that with such
 wings on each side of me, I might fly down the mountain.’

 “‘Ah, Miss Hope Leslie,’ said Cradock, restored to his
 self-complacency, ‘you are a merry thought atween us.’ He would fain
 have appeared young and agile; not from vanity, Everell, but to
 persuade me to accept his proffered assistance. Poor old man! {149} he
 put me in mind, as he went after Digby, panting and leaping (or rather
 settling) from crag to crag, of an old horse, that almost cracks his
 bones to keep pace with a colt. His involuntary groans betrayed the
 pain of his stiffened muscles, and I lingered on every projecting
 cliff on the pretence of taking a farewell look of the valleys, but
 really to allow him time to recover breath.

 “In the mean time the gentlemen had got far in advance of us. We came
 to the last rock of difficult passage; Digby gave me his hand to
 assist me in springing from it, and asked Cradock to ascertain if the
 foothold below was sure: a necessary precaution, as the matted leaves
 had sometimes proved treacherous. Cradock, in performing this office,
 startled a rattlesnake that lay concealed under a mass of leaves and
 moss; the reptile coiled himself up and darted his fangs into his
 hand. I heard the rattle, and saw the poor man’s deathly paleness as
 he sunk to the ground, exclaiming ‘I am but a dead sinner!’

 “Digby turned to pursue the snake, and I sprang from the rock. I
 begged Cradock to show me the wound: it was on the back of his hand. I
 assured him I could easily extract the venom, and would have applied
 my lips to the wound, but he withdrew his hand. Digby at that moment
 returned. ‘She would suck the poison from my hand, Digby,’ said
 Cradock; ‘verily, she is but little lower than the angels.’

 “‘What! Miss Hope!’ exclaimed Digby, ‘would you be guilty of
 self-murder even if you could save {150} the old gentleman from dying,
 and dying, as it were, by the will of the Lord?’ I assured Digby that
 there was no danger whatever to me; that I had read of many cases of
 poison being extracted in that way without the slightest injury to the
 person extracting it. He asked me where I had read such stories. I was
 obliged to refer to a book of my aunt Grafton’s, called ‘The Wonders
 of the Crusades.’ This seemed to Digby but apocryphal authority; he
 shook his head, and said ‘he would believe such fables nowhere out of
 the Bible.’ I entreated vehemently, for I well knew it could not harm
 me, and I believed it to be life or death to my poor tutor. He seemed
 half disposed to yield to me. ‘Thou hast a marvellous persuasion,
 child,’ he said; ‘and now I remember me of a proverb they have in
 Italy: the lips extract venom from the heart, and poison from the
 wound.’

 “Digby again shook his head. ‘Nothing but one of those flourishes they
 put into verses,’ he said. ‘Come, come, Master Cradock, stir up a
 manly spirit, and let’s on to the fort, where we may get help it’s
 lawful for you to use; and don’t ransack your memory for any more such
 scholar-rubbish to uphold you in consenting to our young lady’s
 exposing her life to save the fag end of yours.’

 “‘Expose her life!’ retorted Cradock, rising with a feeling of honest
 indignation that for a moment overcame the terror of death. ‘Digby,
 you know that if I had a hundred lives, I would rather lose them all
 than expose her precious life.’

{151}

 “‘I believe you, Master Cradock, I believe you; and whether you live
 or die, I will always uphold you for a true-hearted man; and you must
 excuse me for my boldness in speaking, when I thought our young
 mistress was putting herself in the jaws of death.’

 “We now made all speed to reach the fort; but when we arrived there no
 aid could be obtained, and poor Cradock’s death was regarded as
 inevitable. I remembered to have heard Nelema say that she knew a
 certain antidote to the poison of a rattlesnake; and when I told this
 to your father, he ordered our horses to be saddled, and we set out
 immediately for home, where we arrived in six hours. Even in that
 brief space the disease had made fearful progress. The wound was
 horribly inflamed, and the whole arm swollen and empurpled. I saw
 despair in every face that looked on Cradock. I went myself, attended
 by Jennet and Digby, to Nelema’s hut; for I knew, if the old woman was
 in one of her moody fits, she would not come for any bidding but mine.

 “Jennet, as you know was always her wont, took up her testimony
 against ‘the old heathen witch.’ ‘It were better,’ she said, ‘to die
 than to live by the devil’s help.’ I assured her that, if the case was
 her own, I would not oppose her pious preference, but that now I must
 have my own way, and I believed the Giver of Life would direct the
 means of its preservation.

 “Though it was near midnight, we found Nelema sitting at the entrance
 of her hut. I told her my errand. ‘Peace be with you, child,’ she
 said. ‘I {152} knew you were coming, and have been waiting for you.’
 She is superstitious, or loves to affect supernatural knowledge, and I
 should have thought nothing of her harmless boast had I not seen, by
 the significant shake of Jennet’s head, that she set it down against
 her. The old woman filled a deerskin pouch from a repository of herbs
 in one corner of her hut, and then returned to Bethel with us. We
 found Cradock in a state of partial delirium and nervous restlessness
 which, your father said, was the immediate precursor of death. Aunt
 Grafton was kneeling at his bedside, reading the prayers for the
 dying.

 Nelema ordered every one, with the exception of myself, to leave the
 room, for she said her cures would not take effect unless there was
 perfect silence. Your father retired to his own apartment, and gave
 orders that he should in no case be diverted from his prayers. Aunt
 Grafton withdrew with evident reluctance, and Jennet lingered till
 Nelema’s patience was exhausted, when she pushed her out of the room
 and barred the door against her.

 “I confess, Everell, I would gladly have been excluded too, for I
 recoiled from witnessing Cradock’s mortal agony; but I dared in no
 wise cross Nelema; so I quietly took the lamp, as she bade me, and
 stood at the head of the bed. She first threw aside her blanket, and
 discovered a kind of wand, which she had concealed beneath it,
 wreathed with a snake’s skin. She then pointed to the figure of a
 snake delineated on her naked shoulder. ‘It is the symbol of our
 tribe,’ she said. ‘Foolish child!’ she continued, {153} for she saw me
 shudder, ‘it is a sign of honour, won for our race by him who first
 drew from the veins the poison of the king of all creeping things. The
 tale was told by our fathers, and sung at our feasts; and now am I,
 the last of my race, bidden to heal a servant in the house of our
 enemies.’ She remained for a moment silent, motionless, and perfectly
 abstracted. A loud groan from Cradock roused her. She bent over him,
 and muttered an incantation in her own tongue. She then, after many
 efforts, succeeded in making him swallow a strong decoction, and
 bathed the wound and arm with the same liquor. These applications were
 repeated at short intervals, during which she brandished her wand,
 making quick and mysterious motions, as if she were writing
 hieroglyphics on the invisible air. She writhed her body into the most
 horrible contortions, and tossed her withered arms wildly about her;
 and, Everell, shall I confess to you, that I trembled lest she should
 assume the living form of the reptile whose image she bore? So violent
 was her exercise, that the sweat poured from her face like rain, and
 ever and anon she sank down in momentary exhaustion and stupor, and
 then would spring to her feet as a racehorse starts on the course,
 fling back her long black locks that had fallen over her bony face,
 and repeat the strange process.

 “After a while--how long I know not, for anxiety and terror prevented
 my taking any note of time--Cradock showed plain symptoms of
 amendment; his respiration became free; the colour in his face {154}
 subsided; his brow, which had been drawn to a knot, relaxed, and his
 whole appearance became natural and tranquil. ‘Now,’ whispered Nelema
 to me, ‘fear no more for him; he has turned his back on the grave. I
 will stay here and watch him, but go thou to thy bed; thy cheek is
 pale with weariness and fear.’

 “I was too happy at that moment to feel weariness, and would have
 remained, but Nelema’s gestures for me to withdraw were vehement, and
 I left her, mentally blessing her for her effectual aid. As I opened
 the door I stumbled against Jennet. It was evident, from her posture,
 that she had been peeping through the keyhole. Do not think me a
 vixen, Everell, if I confess that my first impulse was to box her
 ears; however, I suppressed my rage, and for the first time in my life
 was prudent and temporizing, and I stooped to beg her to go with me to
 my room; I am sure it was with the timid voice of one who asks a
 favour, for, the moment we were in the light, I saw by her mien that
 she felt the power was all in her own hands.

 “‘It is enough,’ she said, ‘to make the hair of a saint stand on end
 to have such carryings-on in my master’s house; and you, Miss Hope
 Leslie, that have been, as it were, exalted to heaven in point of
 privileges, that you should be nothing better than an aid and abetment
 of this emissary of Satan.’

 “‘Hush,’ said I, ‘Jennet, and keep your breath to give thanks for good
 Mr. Cradock’s recovery. Nelema has cured him: Satan does not send
 forth his emissaries with healing gifts.’

{155}

 “‘Now, Miss Leslie,’ retorted the provoking creature, ‘you are in the
 very gall of bitterness and blindness of the flesh. Did not the
 magicians with their enchantments even as did Moses and Aaron? The
 sons of darkness always put on the form of the sons of light. I always
 said so. I knew what it would come to. I said she was a witch in
 Mistress Fletcher’s time.’

 “‘And you spoke falsely then, as you do now, Jennet, for Nelema is no
 witch.’

 “‘No witch!’ rejoined Jennet, screaming with her screech-owl voice so
 loud that I was afraid your father would hear her; ‘try her, then; see
 if she can read in the Bible, or Mr. Cotton’s catechism; no, no; but
 give her your aunt Grafton’s prayer-book, and she will read as glib as
 a minister.’

 “‘Jennet,’ said I, ‘you are mad outright; you seem to forget that
 Nelema cannot read anything.’

 “‘It is all the same as if she could,’ persisted Jennet; ‘her master
 makes short teaching: there are none so deaf as those that won’t hear.
 I tell you again, Miss Hope Leslie, remember Mrs. Fletcher; remember
 what she got for shutting her ears to me.’

 “You will forgive me, Everell, for losing my patience utterly at these
 profane allusions to your mother, and commanding Jennet to leave my
 room.

 “She made me bitterly repent my want of self-command; for, self-willed
 as the fools of Solomon’s time, she determined to have her own way,
 and went to your father’s room, where she gained admittance, and gave
 such a description of Nelema’s healing process, {156} that, late as it
 was, I was summoned to his presence.

 “As I followed Jennet along the passage, she whispered to me, ‘Now,
 for the love of your own soul, don’t use his blind partiality to
 pervert his judgment.’

 “I made no reply, but mentally resolved that I would task my power and
 ingenuity to the utmost to justify Nelema. When we came into the
 study, Jennet, to my great joy, was dismissed. It is much easier for
 me to contend with my superiors than my inferiors. Your father bade me
 sit down by him. I seated myself on the footstool at his feet, so that
 I could look straight into his eyes; for many a time, when my heart
 has quailed at his solemn address, the tender spirit stationed in that
 soft hazel eye of his--so like yours, Everell--has quieted all my
 apprehensions. I spoke first, and said, ‘I was sure Jennet had spoiled
 the good news of my tutor’s amendment, or he would not look so grave.’

 “He replied, ‘that it was time to look grave when a powwow dared to
 use her diabolical spells, mutterings, and exorcisms beneath a
 Christian roof, and in the presence of a Christian maiden, and on a
 Christian man; but,’ he added, ‘perhaps Jennet hath not told the
 matter rightly; her zeal is not always according to knowledge. I would
 gladly believe that my house has not been profaned. Tell me, Hope, all
 you witnessed; tell me truly.’

 “I obeyed. Your father heard me through without any comment, but now
 and then a deep-drawn {157} sigh; and when I had finished, he asked,
 ‘what I understood by the strange proceedings I had described.’

 “‘May I not answer,’ I said, ‘in the language of Scripture, “that this
 only I know, that whereas thy servant was sick, he is now whole.”’

 “‘Do not, my dear child,’ said your father, ‘rashly misapply
 Scripture, and thus add to your sin in (as I trust ignorantly) dealing
 with this witch and her familiars.’

 “I replied, ‘I did not believe Nelema had used any witchcraft.’

 “He asked me ‘if I had not been told that some of our catechized
 Indians had confessed that when they were pagans they were powwows,
 devoted in their infancy to demons; that these powwows were factors
 for the devil; that they held actual conversation, and were in open
 and avowed confederacy with him?’

 “I said, ‘I had heard all this,’ but asked, ‘if it were right to take
 the confession of these poor children of ignorance and superstition
 against themselves.’ I repeated what I had often heard you, Everell,
 say, that Magawisca believed the mountain and the valley, the air, the
 trees, every little rivulet, had their present invisible spirit, and
 that the good might hold discourse with them. ‘Why not believe the
 one,’ I asked, ‘as well as the other?’

 “Your father looked at me sternly. ‘Dost thou not believe in
 witchcraft, child?’ he said. While I hesitated how to reply, lest I
 should in some way {158} implicate Nelema, your father hastily turned
 the leaves of the Bible that lay on his table, and opened to every
 text where familiar spirits, necromancers, sorcerers, wizards,
 witches, and witchcraft are spoken of.

 “I felt as if the windows of heaven were opened on my devoted head. As
 soon as I could collect my wits, I said something, confusedly, about
 not having thought much on the subject, but that I had supposed, as
 indeed I always did, that bad spirits were only permitted to appear on
 earth when there were also good spirits and holy prophets to oppose
 them.

 “Your father looked steadily at me for a few moments, then closing the
 Bible, he said, ‘I will not blame thee, my child, but myself, that I
 have left thee to the guidance of thy natural erring reason; I should
 have better instructed thee.’ He then kissed me, bade me good-night,
 and opened the door for me to depart. I ventured to ask ‘if I might
 not say to Jennet that it was his orders she should be silent in
 regard to Nelema.’

 “‘No, no,’ he said; ‘meddle no farther with that matter, but go to
 your own apartment, and remain there till the bell rings for morning
 prayers.’

 “My heart rebelled, but I dared not disobey. I came to my room, and
 have been sitting by my open window, in the hope of hearing Nelema’s
 parting footsteps; but I have listened in vain, and, unable to sleep,
 I have tried to tranquillize my mind by writing to you. Poor old
 Nelema! if she is given up to the magistrates, it will go hard with
 her, Jennet is {159} such an obstinate, self-willed fool! I believe
 she will be willing to see Nelema hung for a witch, that she may have
 the pleasure of saying ‘I told you so.’

 “Poor Nelema! such a harmless, helpless, lonely being! my tears fall
 so fast on my paper that I can scarcely write. I blame myself for
 bringing her into this hapless case; but it may be better than I fear.
 I will leave my letter, and try to sleep.

 ======

 “It is as I expected: Nelema was sent, early this morning, to the
 magistrates. She was tried before our triumvirate, Mr. Pynchon,
 Holioke, and Chapin. It was not enough to lay on her the crime of
 curing Cradock, but Jennet and some of her gossips imputed to her all
 the mischances that have happened for the last seven years. My
 testimony was extorted from me, for I could not disguise my reluctance
 to communicate anything that could be made unfavourable to her. Our
 magistrates looked sternly on me, and Mr. Holioke said, ‘Take care,
 Hope Leslie, that thou art not found in the folly of Balaam, who would
 have blessed when the Lord commanded him to curse.’

 “I said ‘it was better to mistake in blessing than in cursing, and
 that I was sure Nelema was as innocent as myself.’ I know not whence I
 had my courage, but I think truth companies not with cowardice;
 however, what I would fain call courage, Mr. Pynchon thought necessary
 to rebuke as presumption: ‘Thou art somewhat forward, maiden,’ he
 said, ‘in giving thy opinion, but thou must know that we regard {160}
 it but as the whistle of a bird; withdraw, and leave judgment to thy
 elders.’

 “In leaving the room I passed close to Nelema. I gave her my hand in
 token of kindness; and though I heard a murmur of ‘shame! shame!’ I
 did not withdraw it till the poor old creature had bowed her wrinkled
 brow upon it, and dropped a tear which no suffering could have
 extorted.

 “The trial went on, and she was pronounced worthy of death; but, as
 the authority of our magistracy does not extend to life, limb, or
 banishment, her fate is referred to the court at Boston. In the mean
 time, she awaits her sentence in a cell in Mr. Pynchon’s cellar. We
 have, as yet, no jail.

 ======

 “Digby has been summoned before the magistrates, and publicly reproved
 for expressing himself against their proceedings. Mr. Pynchon charged
 him to speak no more against godly governors and righteous government,
 for ‘to such scoffers Heaven had sent divers plagues: some had been
 spirited away by Satan, some blown up in our harbours, and some, like
 poor Austin of Quinnepaig, taken into Turkish captivity!’ Digby’s
 feelings are suppressed, but not subdued.

 ======

 “How I wish you were here, dear Everell. Sometimes I wish your
 mother’s letter had not been so persuasive. Nothing but that last
 request of hers would have induced your father to send you to your
 uncle Stretton. If you were here, I am sure you would {161} devise
 some way to save Nelema. When she is gone you will never again hear of
 Magawisca. I shall never hear more of my sweet sister. They both, if
 we may believe Nelema, still dwell safely in the wigwam of Mononotto,
 among the Mohawks. These Mohawks are said to be a fierce race; and all
 those tribes who dwell near the coast, and have, in some measure, come
 under a Christian jurisdiction, and are called ‘praying and catechized
 Indians,’ say that the Mohawks are to them as wolves to sheep. I
 cannot bear to think of my gentle, timid sister--a very dove in her
 nature--among these fierce tribes. I wonder that I am ever happy, and
 yet it is so natural to me to be happy! The commander of the fort at
 Albany, at Governor Winthrop’s request, has made great efforts to
 obtain some information about my sister, but without any satisfactory
 result. Still Nelema insists to me that her knowledge is certain; and
 when I have endeavoured to ascertain the source whence she obtained
 it, she pointed upward, indicating that she held mysterious
 intelligence with the spirits of the air; but I believe she employed
 this artifice to hide some intercourse she holds with distant and
 hostile tribes.

 ======

 “What a tragi-comedy is life, Everell! I am sure Shakspeare has copied
 Nature in dividing his scenes between mirth and sadness. I have
 laughed to-day heartily, and for a few moments I quite forgot poor
 Nelema, and all my heart-rending anxieties about her. My tutor, for
 the first time since his {162} most unlucky mishap, left his room, and
 made his appearance in the parlour. I was sitting there with aunt
 Grafton, and I rose to shake his hand, and express my unfeigned joy on
 his recovery. His little gray eyes were for a moment blinded with
 tears at what he was pleased to call the ‘condescendency of my regard
 for him.’ He then stood for a moment as if he were lost, as you know
 is always his wont, when a blur comes over his mind, which is none of
 the clearest at best. I thought he looked pale and weak, and I offered
 him a chair and begged him to sit down; but he declined it with a
 wave, or, rather, a poke of his hand, for he never in his life made a
 motion so graceful as a wave; and, drawing a paper from his pocket, he
 said, ‘I have here an address to thee, sweet Miss Hope Leslie, wherein
 I have put in a body of words the spirit of my late meditations; and I
 have endeavoured to express, in the best Latinity with which many
 years of daily and nightly study have possessed me, my humble sense of
 that marvellous wit and kindness of thine, which made thee, as it
 were, a ministering angel unto me, when I was brought nigh unto the
 grave by the bite of that most cunning beast of the field, with whom I
 verily believe the devil left a portion of his spirit, in payment of
 the body he borrowed to beguile our first parents.’

 “This long preamble finished, Master Cradock began the reading of his
 address, of which, being in the language of the learned, I could not,
 as you know, understand one word; however, he did not perceive that my
 smiles were not those of intelligence, {163} nor hear aunt Grafton’s
 remark, that ‘much learning and little wit had made him as crazy as a
 loon.’ He had not proceeded far when his knees began to shake under
 him, and disdaining to sit (an attitude, I suppose, proscribed in the
 ceremonies of the schools, the only ceremonies he observes), he
 contrived, with the aid of the chair I had placed for him, to kneel.
 When he had finished his address, which, according to the rules of
 art, had a beginning, a middle, and, thank Heaven! an end, he essayed
 to rise; but, alas! though, like Falstaff, he had an ‘alacrity in
 sinking,’ to rise was impossible; for, besides the usual impediments
 of his bulk and clumsiness, he was weakened and stiffened by his late
 sickness; so I was fain to call Digby to his assistance, and run away
 to my own apartment to write you, dear Everell, who are ever patient
 with my Bethel chronicles, an account of what aunt Grafton calls ‘this
 _scholar_ foolery.’

 ======

 “Yesterday was our lecture day, and I went to the village to attend
 the meeting. A sudden storm of hail and wind came on during the
 exercises, and continued after, and I was obliged to accept Mrs.
 Pynchon’s invitation to go home with her. After we had taken our
 supper, I observed Mr. Pynchon fill a plate bountifully with
 provisions from the table, and give it, with a large key which he took
 from a little cupboard over the fireplace, to a serving-woman. She
 returned in a short time with the key, and, as I observed, restored it
 to its place. Digby came {164} shortly after to attend me home. The
 family hospitably urged me to remain, and, ascertaining from Digby
 that there was no especial reason for my return, I dismissed him.

 “The next morning I was awakened from a deep sleep by one of Mr.
 Pynchon’s daughters, who told me, with a look of terror, that a
 despatch had arrived early that morning from Boston, notifying the
 acquiescence of the court there in the opinion of our magistrates, and
 Nelema’s sentence of condemnation to death; that her father had
 himself gone to the cell to announce her fate to her, when lo! she had
 vanished: the prison door was fast, the key in its usual place, but
 the witch was spirited away. I hurried on my clothes, and trembling
 with surprise, pleasure, or whatever emotion you may please to ascribe
 to me, I descended to the parlour, where the family and neighbours had
 assembled to talk over the strange event. I only added exclamations to
 the various conjectures that were made. No one had any doubt as to who
 had been Nelema’s deliverer, unless a suspicion was implied in the
 inquiring glances which Mr. Pynchon cast on me, but which, I believe,
 no one but myself observed. Some could smell sulphur from the outer
 kitchen door to the door of the cell; and there were others who
 fancied that, at a few yards’ distance from the house, there were on
 the ground marks of a slight scorching: a plain indication of a
 visitation from the enemy of mankind. One of the most sagacious of our
 neighbours remarked that he had often heard of Satan getting his
 servants {165} into trouble, but he never before heard of his getting
 them out. However, the singularity of the case only served to magnify
 their wonder, without in the least weakening their faith in the
 actual, and, as it appeared, friendly alliance between Nelema and the
 Evil One. Indeed, I was the only person present whose belief in her
 witchcraft was not, as it were, converted into sight.

 “Everell, I had been visited by a strange dream that night, which I
 will venture to relate to you, for you, at least, will not think me
 confederate with Nelema’s deliverer.

 “Methought I stood, with the old woman, beneath the elm-tree at the
 end of Mr. Pynchon’s garden; the moon, through an opening of the
 branches, shone brightly on her face: it was wet with tears.

 “‘I shall not forget,’ she said, ‘who saved me from dying by the hand
 of an enemy. As surely as the sun will appear there again,’ she added,
 pointing to the east, ‘so surely, Hope Leslie, you shall see your
 sister.’

 “‘But, Nelema,’ said I, ‘my poor little sister is in the far western
 forests; you can never reach there.’

 “‘I will reach there,’ she replied; ‘if I crawl on my hands and knees,
 I will reach there.’

 “Think you, dear Everell, my sister will ever expound this dream to
 me?

 “I was the first to carry the news to Bethel. Your father was in one
 of his meditative humours, and heeded it no more than if I had told
 him a bird had {166} flown from its cage. Jennet joined in the general
 opinion, that Satan, or at least one of his emissaries, had opened the
 prison door; and our good Digby, with his usual fearlessness,
 maintained, in the teeth of her exhortation and invective, that an
 angel had wrought for the innocent old woman.

 ======

 “A week has elapsed. It is whispered that on the night Nelema
 vanished, Digby was missed by his bedfellow! strange depredations were
 committed on Jennet’s larder! and muffled oars were heard on the
 river!

 “Our magistrates have made long and frequent visits to Bethel, and
 have held secret conferences with your father. The purport of them I
 leave you to conjecture from the result. Yesterday he sent for me to
 the study. He appeared deeply affected. It was some time before he
 could command his voice; at length he said that he had determined to
 accept for me Madam Winthrop’s invitation to Boston. I told him, and
 told him truly, that I did not wish to go to Boston; that I was
 perfectly contented--perfectly happy. ‘And what,’ I asked, ‘will you
 and poor aunt Grafton do without me?’

 “‘Your aunt goes with you,’ he said; ‘and as for me, my dear child, I
 have too long permitted myself the indulgence of having you with me. I
 have a pilgrimage to accomplish through this wilderness, and I am
 sinful if I linger to watch the unfolding of even the single flower
 that has sprung up in my path.’

{167}

 “‘But,’ said I, ‘does not He who appoints the path through the
 wilderness, set the flowers by the wayside? I will not--I will not be
 plucked up and cast away.’ He kissed me, and said, ‘I believe, my
 beloved child, thou wert sent in mercy to me; but it were indeed
 sinful to convert the staff vouchsafed to my pilgrimage into fetters.
 I should ever bear in mind that life is a race and a warfare, and
 nothing else: you have this yet to learn, Hope. I have proved myself
 not fit to teach or to guide thee--nor is your aunt. Madam Winthrop
 will give you pious instruction and counsel; and her godly niece,
 Esther Downing, will, I trust, win you to the narrow path, which, as
 the elders say, she doth so steadily pursue.’

 “The idea of this Puritanical guardianship did not strike me
 agreeably, and, besides, I love Bethel; I love your father--with my
 whole soul I love him; and, as you already know, Everell, therefore it
 is no confession, I love to have my own way, and I said I would not
 go.

 “‘You must go, my child,’ said your father; ‘I cannot find it in my
 heart to chide you for your reluctance, but you must go. Neither you
 nor I have any choice.’

 “‘But why must I go?’ I asked.

 “‘Ask no questions,’ he replied; ‘it is fixed that you must go. Tell
 your aunt Grafton that she must be ready to leave Springfield next
 week. Mr. Pynchon and his servants attend you. Now leave me, my child;
 for when you are with me, you touch at will every chord in my heart,
 and I would fain keep it still now.’

{168}

 “I left him, Everell, while I could command my tears; and after I had
 given them free course, I informed aunt Grafton of our destiny. She
 was so delighted with the prospect of a visit to Boston, that I too
 began to think it must be very pleasant; and my dread of this
 straight-laced Mrs. Winthrop and her perpendicular niece gave place to
 indefinite anticipations of pleasure. I shall, at any rate, see you
 sooner than if I remained here. Thank Heaven, the time of your return
 approaches; and now that it is so near, I rejoice that your father has
 not been persuaded, by those who seem to me to take a very superfluous
 care of his private affairs, to recall you sooner. On this subject he
 has stood firm; satisfied, as he has always said, that he could not
 err in complying with the last request of your sainted mother.

 “Aunt Grafton charges me with divers messages to you, but I will not
 add a feather to this leaden letter, which you will now have to read,
 as I have written it, by instalments.

 “Farewell, dear Everell: forget not thy loving friend and sister,

                                                  “Hope Leslie.”


As Hope had declined her aunt’s messages, the good lady affixed them
herself; and here they follow.


                         “_To Everell Fletcher._

 “Valued Sir,

 “Being much hurried in point of time, I would fain have been myself
 excused from writing, but Miss {169} Hope declines adding to her
 letter what I have indited.

 “In your last, you mention being visited with the great cold, which I
 take, from your account of it, to be the same as that with which we
 were all shaken soon after the coronation of his present majesty (God
 bless him!). I had then a recipe given me for an infallible remedy by
 the Lady Penyvere, great aunt, by the mother’s side, to la belle
 Rosette, maid of honour to the queen.

 “I enclose it for you, believing it will greatly advantage you: though
 Hope insists that, if the cold has not yet left you, it will be a
 chronic disease before this reaches you; in which case I would advise
 you to apply to old Lady Lincoln, who hath, in her family
 receipt-book, many renowned cures for chronics. I remember one in
 particular, somewhere about the middle of the book, which follows
 immediately after a rare recipe for an every-day plum-pudding.

 “I doubt not that years have mended thee, and that thou wouldst now
 condemn the folly and ignorance of thy childhood, which made thee then
 deride the most sovereign remedies. Hope, I am sorry to say, is as
 obstinate as ever; and it was but yesterday, when I wished her to take
 some diluents for a latent fever, that she reminded me of the time
 when she and you, in one of your mischievous pranks, threw the
 pennyroyal tea out of the window, and suffered me to believe that it
 had cured an incipient pleurisy. Thus presumptuous is youth! Hope is,
 to be sure, notwithstanding her living entirely without medicine,
 {170} in indifferent good health; her form is rather more slender than
 when you left us, as is becoming at seventeen; but her cheek is as
 round and as ruddy as a peach. I should not care so much about her
 self-will on the score of medicine, but that her stomach, being in
 such perfect order now, would bear every kind of preventive, and
 medicines of this class are so simple that they can do no harm. I
 believe it is true, as old Doctor Panton used to say, ‘your healthy
 people are always prejudiced against medicine.’ I wish you would drop
 a hint on this subject in your next letter to her, for the slightest
 hint from you goes farther than a lecture from me.

 “It was very thoughtful in you, Mr. Everell, and what I once should
 not have expected, to inquire so particularly after my health. I am
 happy to say, that at this present I am better than I have been for
 years, which is unaccountable to me, as, since the hurry of our
 preparations for Boston, I have forgotten my pills at night and my
 tonics in the morning.

 “I wish you to present many thanks to Lady Amy for assisting you in my
 commissions. The articles in general suited, though the pinking of the
 flounces was too deep. My gown was a trifle too dark; but do not
 mention that to Lady Amy, for I make no doubt she took due pains, and
 only wanted a right understanding of the real hue, called _feuille
 morte_, which, between you and I--_sub rosa_, mind--my gown would not
 be called by any person skilled in the colours of silk. Hope thought
 to convince me I was wrong by matching it with a dead leaf from the
 forest. Was not that peculiar of Hope?

{171}

 “Now, Mr. Everell, I would not be an old woman before my time,
 therefore I will have another silk of a brighter cast. Brown it must
 be, but lively--lively. I will enclose a lock of Hope’s hair, which is
 precisely the hue I mean. You will observe it has a golden tinge, that
 makes it appear in all lights as if there were sunshine on it, and yet
 it is a decided brown; a difficult colour to hit, but by due
 inquiry--and I am sure, from the pains you were at to procure the
 articles I requested for Hope, you will spare no trouble--I think it
 may be obtained.

 “I am greatly beholden to you for the pocket-glass you sent me; it is
 a mighty convenient article, and an uncommon pretty little attention,
 Mr. Everell.

 “Your present to Hope was a real beauty. The only blue fillet, and the
 prettiest of any colour I ever saw; and such a marvellous match for
 her eyes--that is, when the light is full on them; but you know they
 always had a changeable trick with them. I remember Lady Amy’s once
 saying to me before we left England, that my niece would yet do
 mischief with those laughing _black_ eyes of hers. I liked her
 sister’s (poor dear Mary--God help her the while!) better then; they
 were the true Leslie blue. But one word more of the fillet. Your taste
 in it cannot be too much commended; but then, as I tell Hope, one does
 not want always to see the same thing; and she doth continually wear
 it: granted, it keeps the curls out of her eyes, and they do look
 lovely falling about it; but she wears it week-days and Sundays, {172}
 feast-days and fast-days, and she never yet has put on the
 Henriette--do remember a thousand thanks to Lady Amy for the
 pattern--the Henriette I made her, like that worn by the queen the
 first night she appeared in the royal box.

 “I should like to have a little more chitchat with you, Mr. Everell,
 now my pen has got, so to speak, warm in the harness; but business
 before pleasure. I beg you will remember me to all inquiring friends.
 Alas! few in number now, as most of my surviving contemporaries have
 died since I left England.

 “Farewell, Mr. Everell; these few lines are from your friend and
 well-wisher,

                                               “Bertha Grafton.

 “N.B.--It is a great pleasure to me to think you are living in a
 churchman’s family, where you can’t but steer clear of--you know
 what--peculiarities.

 “N.B.--Hope will have given you the particulars of poor Master
 Cradock’s miscarriage; his mind was set a little _agee_ by it, but he
 appears to be mending.

 “N.B.--The enclosed recipe hath marvellous virtues in fevers as well
 as in colds.”




 CHAPTER IX.

{173}


 “A country lad is my degree,
  An’ few there be that ken me, O;
 But what care I how few they be,
  I’m welcome aye to Nannie, O.”
                      Burns.


There are hints in Miss Leslie’s letter to Everell Fletcher that
require some amplification to be quite intelligible. She looked upon
herself as the unhappy, though innocent cause, of the old Indian
woman’s misfortune; and, rash as generous, she had resolved, if
possible, to extricate her. With the inconsiderate warmth of youthful
feeling, she had, before the grave and reverend magistrates, declared
her belief in Nelema’s innocence, and thereby implied a censure of
their wisdom. This was certainly an almost unparalleled presumption in
those times, when youth was accounted inferiority; but the very
circumstance that in one light aggravated her fault, in another
mitigated it; and her youth being admitted in extenuation of her
offence, she was allowed to escape with a reproof and admonition of
moderate length, while her poor guardian was condemned to a long and
private conference on the urgency of reclaiming the spoiled child.
Various modes of effecting so desirable an object were suggested; for,
as the Scotchman said in an analogous case, “Ilka man can manage a
wife but him that has her.”

{174}

This matter had passed over, and justice was proceeding in her stern
course, when fortune, accident, or, more truly, Providence, favoured
the benevolent wishes of our heroine. She had, as has been seen, been
carried by an unforeseen circumstance to the house of one of the
magistrates. There, mindful of the poor old prisoner, whose sentence
she knew was daily expected from Boston, she had been watchful of
every circumstance relating to her, and when she observed the key of
her prison deposited in an accessible place (no one dreaming of any
interference in behalf of the condemned), she was inspired with a
sudden resolution to set her free. This was a bold, dangerous, and
unlawful interposition; but Hope Leslie took counsel only from her own
heart, and that told her that the rights of innocence were paramount
to all other rights: and as to danger to herself, she did not weigh
it--she did not think of it.

Digby came to the village to attend her home, and this afforded her an
opportunity of concert with him; in the depths of the night, when all
the household were in profound sleep, she stole from her bed, found
her way to the door of the dungeon, and leading out the prisoner, gave
her into Digby’s charge, who had a canoe in waiting, in which he
ferried her to the opposite shore, where he left her, after having
supplied her with provisions to sustain her to the valleys of the
Housatonic, if, indeed, her wasted strength should enable her to reach
there. The gratitude of the poor old creature for her unexpected
deliverance from shameful death is faintly touched on in Hope’s {175}
letter. She could scarcely, without magnifying her own merit, have
described the vehement emotion with which Nelema promised that she
would devote the remnant of her miserable days to seeking and
restoring her lost sister. Again and again, while Hope urged her
departure, she reiterated this promise; and finally, when she parted
from Digby, she repeated, as if it were a prophecy, “She shall see her
sister.”

Young persons are not apt to make a very exact adjustment of means and
ends, and our heroine certainly placed an undue confidence in the
power of the helpless old woman to accomplish her promise; but she
needed not this to increase her present joy at her success. She crept
to her bed, and was awakened in the morning, as she has herself
related, with the information of Nelema’s escape. She had now a part
to play to which she was unused: to mask her feelings, affect
ignorance, and take part in the consternation of the assembled
village. As may be imagined, her assumed character was awkwardly
enough performed; but all were occupied with their own surmises, and
no one thought of her--no one excepting Mr. Pynchon, who had scarcely
fixed his eye on her when a suspicion that had before flashed on his
mind was confirmed. He knew, from the simplicity of her nature, and
from her habitual frankness, that she would not have hesitated to avow
her pleasure in Nelema’s escape if she had not herself been accessory
to it. He watched her averted eye, he observed her unbroken silence,
and her lips, that, in {176} spite of all her efforts, played into an
inevitable smile at the superstitious surmises of some of the wise
people, whose philosophy had never dreamed of that every-day axiom of
modern times, that supernatural aid should not be called in to
interpret events which may be explained by natural causes.

However satisfactory Mr. Pynchon’s conclusions were to himself, he
confined them, for the present, to his own bosom. He was a merciful
man, and probably felt an emotion of joy at the old woman’s escape,
that could not be suppressed by the stern justice that had pronounced
her worthy of death. But while he easily reconciled himself to the
loss of the prisoner, he felt the necessity of taking instant and
efficient measures to subdue to becoming deference and obedience the
rash and lawless girl who had dared to interpose between justice and
its victim. His heart recoiled from punishing her openly, and he
contented himself with insisting, in a private interview with Mr.
Fletcher, on the necessity of her removal to a stricter control than
his; and recommended, for a time, a temporary transfer of his
neglected authority to less indulgent hands.

Mr. Fletcher complied so far as to consent that his favourite should
be sent for a few months to Boston, to the care of Madam Winthrop,
whose character being brought out by the light of her husband’s
official station, was held up as a sort of pattern throughout
New-England. But we must, for the present, pass by state
characters--gallery portraits--for the miniature picture that lies
next our heart, and {177} which it is full time should be formally
presented to our readers, whose curiosity, we trust, has not been
sated by occasional glimpses.

Nothing could be more unlike the authentic, “thoroughly educated,” and
thoroughly disciplined young ladies of the present day than Hope
Leslie--as unlike as a mountain rill to a canal--the one leaping over
rocks and precipices, sportive, free, and beautiful, or stealing
softly on, in unseen, unpraised loveliness; the other, formed by art,
restrained within prescribed and formal limits, and devoted to
utility. Neither could anything in outward show be more unlike a
modern belle arrayed in the last Paris fashion, than Hope Leslie in
her dress of silk or muslin, shaped with some deference to the fashion
of the day, but more according to the dictates of her own skill and
classic taste, which she followed somewhat pertinaciously, in spite of
the suggestions of her experienced aunt.

Fashion had no shrines among the Pilgrims: but where she is most
abjectly worshipped, it would be treason against the paramount rights
of Nature to subject such a figure as Hope Leslie’s to her tyranny. As
well might the exquisite classic statue be arrayed in corsets,
_manches en gigot, garnitures en tulle, &c._ Her height was not above
the medium standard of her sex; she was delicately formed; the high
health and the uniform habits of a country life had endowed her with
the beauty with which Poetry has invested Hebe; while her love for
exploring hill and dale, ravine and precipice, had given her that
elastic step {178} and ductile grace which belong to all agile
animals, and which made every accidental attitude such as a painter
would have selected to express the nymph-like beauty of Camilla.

It is in vain to attempt to describe a face whose material beauty,
though that beauty may be faultless, is but a medium for the
irradiations of the soul. For the curious, we would, if we could, set
down the colour of our heroine’s eyes; but, alas! it was undefinable;
and appeared gray, blue, hazel, or black, as the outward light touched
them, or as they kindled by the light of her feelings.

Her rich brown hair turned in light waves from her sunny brow, as if
it would not hide the beauty it sheltered. Her mouth, at this early
period of life, had nothing of the seriousness and contemplation that
events might afterward have traced there. It rather seemed the station
of all-sportive, joyous, and kindly feeling; and, at the slightest
motion of her thoughts, curled into smiles, as if all the breathings
of her young heart were happiness and innocence.

It may appear improbable that a girl of seventeen, educated among the
strictest sect of the Puritans, should have had the open, fearless,
and gay character of Hope Leslie; but it must be remembered that she
lived in an atmosphere of favour and indulgence, which permits the
natural qualities to shoot forth in unrepressed luxuriance: an
atmosphere of love, that, like a tropical climate, brings forth the
richest flowers and most flavorous fruits. She was transferred from
the care of the gentlest and tenderest of mothers {179} to Mr.
Fletcher, who, though stern in his principles, was indulgent in his
practice; whose denying virtues were all self-denying; and who infused
into the parental affection he felt for the daughter, something of the
romantic tenderness of the lover of her mother. Her aunt Grafton doted
on her; she was the depository of her vanity as well as of her
affection. To her simple tutor she seemed to imbody all that
philosophers and poets had set down in their books of virtue and
beauty; and those of the old and rigid, who were above or below the
influence of less substantial charms, regarded the young heiress with
deference. In short, she was the petted lamb of the fold.

It has been seen that Hope Leslie was superior to some of the
prejudices of the age. This may be explained without attributing too
much to her natural sagacity. Those persons she most loved, and with
whom she had lived from her infancy, were of variant religious
sentiments. Her father had belonged to the Established Church, and,
though he had much of the gay spirit that characterized the cavaliers
of the day, he was serious and exact in his observance of the rites of
the Church. She had often been her mother’s companion at the
proscribed “meeting,” and witnessed the fervour with which she joined
in the worship of a persecuted and suffering people. Early impressions
sometimes form moulds for subsequent opinions; and when, at a more
reflecting age, Hope heard her aunt Grafton rail with natural good
sense, and with the freedom, if not the {180} point, of mother-wit, at
some of the peculiarities of the Puritans, she was led to doubt their
infallibility; and, like the bird that spreads his wings, and soars
above the limits by which each man fences in his own narrow domain,
she enjoyed the capacities of her nature, and permitted her mind to
expand beyond the contracted boundaries of sectarian faith. Her
religion was pure and disinterested; no one, therefore, should doubt
its intrinsic value, though it had not been coined into a particular
form, or received the current impress.

Though the history of our heroine, like a treasured flower, has only
left its sweetness on the manuscript page, from which we have
amplified it, yet we have been compelled to infer, from some
transactions which we shall faithfully record, that she had faults;
but we leave our readers to discover them. Who has the resolution to
point out a favourite’s defects?

As our fair readers are not apt to be observant of dates, it may be
useful to remind them that Miss Leslie’s letter was written in
October. In the following May, two ships from the mother country
anchored at the same time in Boston Bay. Some passengers from each
ship availed themselves of the facility of the pilot-boat to go up to
the town. Among others were two gentlemen, who met now for the first
time: the one a youth, in manhood’s earliest prime, with a frank,
intelligent, and benevolent countenance, over which, as he strained
his eyes to the shore, joy and anxiety flitted with rapid vicissitude;
the other had advanced farther into life: he might not be more than
five-and-thirty, {181} possibly not so much; but his face was deeply
marked by the ravages of the passions, or, perhaps, the stirring
scenes of life. His eyes were black and piercing, set near together,
and overhung by thick black brows, whose incessant motion indicated a
restless mind. The concentration of thought, or the designing purpose
expressed by the upper part of his face, was contradicted by his
loose, open, flexible lips. His complexion had the same puzzling
contrariety; it was dark and saturnine, but enlivened with the ruddy
hue of a _bon vivant_. His nose neither turned up nor down, was
neither Grecian nor Roman. In short, the countenance of the stranger
was a worthless dial-plate--a practical refutation of the _science_ of
Physiognomy; and, as the infallible art of Phrenology was unknown to
our fathers, they were compelled to ascertain the character (as their
unlearned descendants still are) by the slow development of the
conduct. The person of the stranger had a certain erect and gallant
bearing that marks a man of the world, but his dress was strictly
Puritanical; and his hair, so far from being permitted the “freedom of
growing long,” then deemed “a luxurious feminine prolixity,” or being
covered with a wig (one of the abominations that, according to Eliot;
had brought on the country the infliction of the Pequod war), was
cropped with exemplary precision. But, though the stranger’s apparel
was elaborately Puritanical, still there was a certain elegance about
it which indicated that his taste had reluctantly yielded to his
principles. His garments were of {182} the finest materials, and
exactly fitted to a form of striking manly symmetry. His hair, it is
true, was scrupulously clipped, but, being thick and jet black, it
becomingly defined a forehead of uncommon whiteness and beauty. In one
particular he had departed from the letter of the law, and, instead of
exposing his throat by the plain, open linen collar usually worn, he
sheltered its ugly protuberance with a fine cambric ruff, arranged in
box plaits. In short, though, with the last exception, a nice critic
could not detect the most venial error in his apparel, yet among the
Puritans he looked much like a “dandy Quaker” of the present day amid
his sober-suited brethren.

While the boat, impelled by a favouring tide and fair breeze, glided
rapidly towards the metropolis of the now thriving colony, the
gentlemen fell into conversation with the pilot. The elder stranger
inquired if Governor Winthrop had been re-elected.

“Yes, God bless him,” replied the sailor, “the worthy gentleman has
taken the helm once more.”

“Has he,” asked the stranger, eagerly, “declared for King or
Parliament?”

“Ho! I don’t know much about their land-tackle,” replied the seaman;
“but, to my mind, the fastings we have had all along when the king won
the day, and the rejoicings when the Parliament gained it, was what
you might call a declaration. Since you speak of it, I do remember I
heard the boys up in town saying that our magistrates, at election,
did scruple about the oath, and concluded to leave out {183} that part
which promises to bear true faith and allegiance to our sovereign
lord, King Charles.”

“So, we have thrown his majesty overboard, and are to sail under
Parliament colours?” said the young gentleman. “Well,” he continued,
“this might have been predicted some five or six years since, for, I
remember, there were then disputes whether the king’s ensign should be
spread there,” and he pointed to the fortifications on Castle Island,
past which the boat was at that moment gliding. “They scruple now
about the oath. Then their consciences rebelled against the red cross
in the ensign, which, I remember, was called ‘the Pope’s gift,’ ‘a
relic of papacy,’ ‘an idolatrous sign,’ &c.”

“Scruples of conscience are ever honourable,” said the elder stranger;
“and, doubtless, your governor has good reason for not complying with
the Scripture rule: ‘render unto Cæsar the things that are
Cæsar’s.’”

“There is no doubt of it,” replied the seaman. “The governor--God
bless him!--knows the rules of the Good Book as well as I know the
ropes of a ship; and there is no better pilot than he for all
weathers, as he shows by not joining in the hue and cry against the
good creature tobacco. Fair winds through life, and a pleasant harbour
at last, do I wish him for this piece of Christian love!” at the same
time he illustrated his benediction by putting a portion of the
favourite luxury in his mouth.

“I am sorry,” said the young gentleman, “that our magistrates have
volunteered a public expression {184} of their feelings; their
sympathies, of course, are with the Parliament party; they virtually
broke the yoke of royal authority when they left their native land,
and showed what value they set on liberty by sacrificing for it every
temporal good. Now they have a right to enjoy their liberty in peace.”

“Peace!” said the elder gentleman, emphatically; “thus it ever is with
the natural man, crying peace, peace, where there is no peace. Think
you, young man, that if the king were to recover his power, he would
not resume all the privileges he has formerly granted to these people,
who, thanks to Him whose ark abideth with them! show themselves so
ready to cast off their allegiance?”

“The king, no doubt,” replied the young gentleman, “would like to
resume both power and possession; but still I think we might retain
our own, on the principle that he had no right to give, and, in truth,
could not give what was not his, and what we have acquired either by
purchase of the natives or by lawful conquest, which gives us the
right to the _vacuum domicilium_.”

“I am happy to see, sir,” said the elder gentleman, slightly bowing
and smiling, “that your principles, at least, are on the side of the
Puritans.”

“My feelings and principles both, sir; but that does not render me
insensible to the happiness of the adverse party, or the wisdom of all
parties, which is peace; the peace which the generous Falkland so
earnestly invokes, every patriot may ardently desire. Peace, if I may
borrow a figure from our friend the {185} pilot here, is a fair wind
and a flood-tide, and war a storm that must wreck some, and may wreck
both friend and foe.”

The young gentleman seemed tired of the conversation, and turned away,
fixing his eager gaze on the shore, towards which his heart bounded.
His companion, however, was not disposed to indulge him in silence.
“This town, sir,” he said, “appears to be familiar to you. I, alas! am
a stranger and a wanderer.” This was spoken in a tone of unaffected
seriousness.

“Of such this country is the natural home,” replied the young man,
regarding his companion for the first time with some interest, for he
had been repelled by what seemed to him to savour of cant, of which he
had heard too much in the mother country. “I should be happy, sir,” he
said, courteously, “to render my acquaintance with the town of any
service to you.”

The stranger bowed in acknowledgment of the civility. “I would
gladly,” he said, “find entertainment with some godly family here. Is
Mr. Wilson still teacher of the congregation?”

“No, sir: if he were, you might securely count on his hospitality, as
it was so notorious that ‘come in, you are heartily welcome,’ was said
to be the anagram of his name. But, if he is gone, the doors in Boston
are always open to the stranger. Mr. Cotton, I believe, is the present
minister--is he not, pilot?”

“Yes, an please you, sir; but I’m thinking,” he {186} added, with a
leer, “that that butterfly will be an odd fish to harbour with any of
our right godly ones.” The young gentleman followed the direction of
the pilot’s eye, and for the first time observed a lad, who sat on one
side of the boat, leaning over, and amusing himself with lashing the
waves with a fanciful walking-stick. He overheard the pilot’s remark,
and raised his head, as it appeared, involuntarily, for he immediately
averted it again, but not till he had exposed a face of uncommon
beauty. He looked about fifteen. He had the full, melting dark eye and
rich complexion of southern climes; masses of jetty curls parted on
his forehead, shaded his temples and neck, and “smooth as Hebe’s was
his unrazored lip.” It was obvious that it was his dress which had
called forth the sailor’s sarcasm. The breast and sleeves of his
jerkin were embroidered; a deep-pointed rich lace ruff embellished his
neck, if a neck round and smooth as alabaster could be embellished;
and his head was covered with a little fantastic Spanish hat,
decorated with feathers.

“Does that youth appertain to you, sir?” asked the young gentleman of
the elder stranger.

“Yes, he is a sort of dependant--a page of mine,” he replied, with an
embarrassed manner; but in a moment recovering his self-possession, he
added, “I infer, from the gratuitous remarks of our very frank pilot,
and from the survey you have taken of the lad, that you think his
apparel extraordinary.”

“It might possibly,” replied the young man, with a smile, “offend
against certain sumptuary laws of our colony, and thus prove
inconvenient to you.”

{187}

“Roslin, do you hear?” said the master to the page, who nodded his
head without raising it; “thy finery, boy, as I have told thee, must
be retrenched;” then turning to his companion, and lowering his voice
to a confidential tone, he added, “the lad hath lived on the
Continent, and hath there imbibed these vanities, of which I hope in
good time to reform him; perhaps his youth hath overwrought with my
indulgence in suffering them thus long.”

The young gentleman courteously prevented any farther, and, as he
thought, unnecessary exculpation, by saying “that the offence was
certainly a very trifling one, and if observed at all, would be, by
the most scrupulous, considered as venial in so young a lad.” He now
again turned his ardent gaze to the shore. “Ah! there is the spire of
the new meeting-house,” he said; “and when I went away, the good
people assembled under a thatched roof, and within mud walls.”

“And I can remember,” said the pilot, “for I was among the first
comers to the wilderness, when for weeks the congregation met under an
oak tree: and there was heart-worship there, gentlemen, if there ever
was on the ball.”

A church standing where _Joy’s buildings_ are now located was the only
one then in Boston. The greater part of the houses were built in its
vicinity, just about the heart of the peninsula, on whose striking and
singular form its first possessors aver they saw written prophecies of
its future greatness. Some of its most prominent features have been
softened by {188} time, and others changed by the busy art of man.
Wharves, whole streets, and the noble granite market-house (a prouder
memorial to its founder than a triumphal arch) now stand where the
deep “cove” stretched its peaceful harbour, between the two hills that
stood like towers of defence at its extremities. That at the north
rose to the height of fifty feet above the sea, and on its level
summit stood a windmill; towards the sea it presented an abrupt
declivity, and was fortified at its base by a strong battery. The
eastern hill was higher than its sister by some thirty feet; it
descended kindly towards the town, and was on that side planted with
corn. Towards the sea its steep and ragged cliffs announced that
Nature had formed it for defence; and, accordingly, our fathers soon
fortified it with “store of great artillery,” and changed the first
pastoral name of Corn-hill, which they had given it, to the more
appropriate designation of Fort-hill. A third hill flanked the town,
rising to the height of one hundred and thirty-eight feet. “All
three,” says Johnson, “like overtopping towers, keepe a constant watch
to foresee the approach of forrein dangers, being furnished with a
beacon, and loud babbling guns, to give notice, by their redoubled
eccho, to all their sister townes.”

Shawmut, a word expressing living fountains, was the Indian name of
Boston. Tri-mountain, its first English name, and descriptive of
Beacon Hill, which, as we are told, rose in three majestic and lofty
eminences, the most eastern of these summits having on its brow three
little hillocks. Its present, and, as {189} we fondly believe,
immortal name, was given with characteristic reverence, in honour of
one of its first pastors, Mr. Cotton, who came from Boston, in
England.

But we return from this digression to our pilot-boat, which now had
nearly reached its landing-place. A throng had gathered on the
“town-dock” in expectation of friends, or news from friends. In vain
did the young stranger’s eye explore the crowd for some familiar face;
he was obliged to check the greetings that rose to his lips, and
repress the throbbings of his heart. “Time,” he said, “has wrought
strange changes. I fancied that even the stones in Boston would know
me; but now I see not one welcoming look, unless it be in those
barbary and rose bushes, that appear just as they did the last time I
scrambled over Windmill Hill.” They now landed at the foot of this
hill, and the young gentleman told his companion that he should go to
his old home at Governor Winthrop’s, where he was sure of finding
friends to welcome him. “And if you will accompany me thither,” he
said, “I am certain our kind governor will render you all the
courtesies which, as a stranger, you may require.”

This opportune offer was of course accepted; and the gentlemen
proceeded like old acquaintances, arm in arm together, after a short
consultation between the master and page, the amount of which seemed
to be that the boy should attend him, and await without Governor
Winthrop’s door farther orders.

{190}

They had not gone far, when, as they turned a corner, two young ladies
issued from the door of a house a little in advance, and walked on
without observing them. The young gentleman quickened his steps. “It
must be she!” he exclaimed, in a most animated tone. “There is but one
person in the world that has such tresses!” and his eye rested on the
bright golden ringlets that peeped from beneath a chip gipsy hat worn
by one of the ladies.

“That is not a rational conclusion of yours,” said his companion.
“Women have cunning devices by which to change the order of Nature in
the colouring of the hair. I have seen many a court dame arrayed in
the purchased locks of her serving-maid; besides, you know it is the
vain fashion of the day to make much use of coloured powders, fluids,
and unguents.”

“That may all be; but do you not see this nymph’s locks are, as
Rosalind says, of the colour God chooses?”

“It were better, my friend, if you explained your meaning without a
profane quotation from a play, a practice to which our godless
cavaliers are much addicted; but pardon my reproof: age has
privileges.”

“I do not know,” replied the young gentleman, “what degree of
seniority may confer this privilege; if some half dozen years, I
submit to your right; and the more readily, as I am just now too happy
to quarrel about anything; but excuse me, I must quicken my pace to
overtake this girl, who trips it along as if she had Mercury’s wings
on those pretty feet.”

{191}

“Ah, that’s a foot to leave its print in the memory,” said the elder
gentleman, in an animated and natural tone, that, eagerly as his
companion was pressing on, did not escape his observation.

They had now approached the parties they were pursuing near enough to
hear their voices and catch a few words of their conversation. “You
say it’s edifying, and all that,” said the shortest of the two young
ladies, in reply to what seemed, from the tone in which it was
concluded, to have been an expostulation; “and I dare say, dear
Esther, you are quite right, for you are as wise as Solomon, and
always in the right; but for my part, I confess, I had infinitely
rather be at home drying marigolds, and matching embroidery silks for
aunt Grafton.”

“Hope Leslie! by Heaven!” exclaimed the young man, springing forward.
The young lady turned at the sound of her name, uttered a scream of
joy, and, under the impulse of strong affection and sudden delight,
threw her arms around the stranger’s neck, and was folded in the
embrace of Everell Fletcher.

The next instant, the consciousness that the street was an awkward
place for such a demonstration of happiness, or, perhaps, the thought
that the elegant young man before her was no longer the playfellow of
her childhood, suffused her neck and face with the deepest crimson;
and a sort of exculpatory exclamation of “I was so surprised!” burst
from her lips, and extorted a smile even from Everell’s new
acquaintance, whose gravity had all the fixedness of premeditation.

{192}

For a moment Everell’s eyes were riveted to Hope Leslie’s face, which
he seemed to compare with the image in his memory. “Yes,” he said, as
if thinking aloud, “the same face that I saw, for the first time,
peeping through my curtains, the day Digby brought me home to Bethel:
how is Digby? my dear father? Mrs. Grafton? the Winthrops? everybody?”

“All, all well; but I must defer particulars till I have introduced
you to my friend, Miss Downing.”

“Miss Downing! is it possible!” exclaimed Everell; and a recognition
followed which showed that, though he had not before observed the
lady, who had turned aside, and was sheltered under the thick folds of
a veil, the parties were not unknown to each other. Miss Leslie now
drew her friend’s arm within hers, and, as she did so, she perceived
she trembled excessively; but, too considerate to remark an agitation
which it was obvious the lady did not mean to betray, she did not
appear to notice it, and proceeded to give Everell such particulars of
his friends as he must be most impatient to hear. She told him that
his father was in Boston, and that, in compliance with his son’s
wishes, he had determined to fix his residence there. Everell was
rejoiced at this decision, for gloomy recollections were, in his mind,
always associated with Bethel, and he was never happy when he thought
of the dangers to which Miss Leslie was exposed there.

“My last letters from America,” he said, “informed me that you had, as
yet, no tidings from your sister or my friend Magawisca.”

{193}

“Nor have we now; still I cling to my belief that my poor sister will
some day be restored to me: Nelema’s promise is prophecy to me.”

They had by this time reached Governor Winthrop’s. Miss Downing
withdrew her arm from her friend, with the intention of retiring to
her own apartment; but her steps faltered, and she sunk down in the
first chair she could reach, hoping to escape all observation in the
bustle of joy occasioned by the unexpected arrival of Everell; and she
did so, excepting that her aunt called the colour to her cheek by
saying, “My dear Esther, you have sadly fatigued yourself; you are as
pale as death!” and Hope Leslie, noticing that Everell cast stolen
glances of anxious inquiry at her friend, made, with the usual
activity of a romantic imagination, a thousand conjectures as to the
nature of their acquaintance. But there was nothing said or done to
assist her speculations; and while the governor was looking over a
letter of introduction, presented to him by Everell’s chance
acquaintance, who had announced himself by the name of Sir Philip
Gardiner, the young ladies withdrew to their own apartment.




 CHAPTER X.

{194}


 “A pensive nun, devout and pure,
 Sober, steadfast, and demure.”
                 Il Penseroso.


When the two ladies were alone, there were a few moments of
embarrassed and uninterrupted silence, a rare occurrence between two
confidential young friends. Hope Leslie was the first to speak. “Come,
my dear Esther,” she said, “it is in vain for you to think of hiding
your heart from me; if you do not fairly conduct me through its mazes,
I shall make use of the clew you have dropped, and find my own way
through the labyrinth.”

“Hope Leslie! what clew do you mean? You should not trifle thus.”

“Well, then, I will be as serious as you please, and most solemnly
demand why thou hast never hinted to the friend of thy bosom that thou
hadst seen in thine own country this youth, Everell Fletcher, of whom
I have, at divers times and sundry places, most freely spoken to
thee?”

“I never told you I had not seen him.”

“Oh no! but methinks, for a godly, gracious maiden as thou art,
Esther--approved by our elders, the pattern of our deacons’
wives--your actions, as well as your language, should be the Gospel
‘yea, yea, and nay, nay;’ this ‘paltering with a double {195} sense,’
as the poet has it, would better become a profane damsel like myself.”

“If I have lacked sincerity, I merit your reproach; but I meant to
have told you. Mr. Fletcher’s arrival now was unexpected--”

“And you were indisposed? your nerves deranged? your circulations
disordered? I thought so when I saw that burning blush, that looked,
even through the folds of your veil, as if it would set it on fire;
but, now your surprise is over, why look so like the tragic muse?
Raise up your eyes and look at me, dear Esther, and do not let those
long eyelashes droop over your pale cheek like a weeping willow over
monumental marble.”

“Oh, Hope Leslie! if it were not sinful, I could wish that monumental
marble might press the clods on my cold bosom.”

Hope was startled at the unaffected solemnity and deep distress of her
friend: every pulsation of her heart was audible, and her lips, which
before were as pale as death, became absolutely blue. She threw her
arms around her, and kissed her tenderly. “Dear, dear Esther,” she
said, “forgive me for offending thee. I never will ask thee anything
again--never, so long as I live. You may look glad or sorry, blush or
faint--do anything you please, and I never will ask you for a reason.”

“You are very kind, very generous, Hope; but have you not already
guessed the secret I have striven to hide? You hesitate: answer me
truly.”

“Why, then, if I must answer truly, perhaps I {196} have,” replied
Hope, looking, in spite of herself, as archly as the mischievous
little god, when he sees one of his own arrows trembling in the heart;
“‘set a thief to catch a thief,’ dear Esther, is an old maxim; and,
though I have never felt this nervous malady, yet, you know, I am
skilled in the books that describe the symptoms, thanks to aunt
Grafton’s plentiful stock of romances and plays.”

“Oh, most unprofitable skill! But I have no right to reproach thee,
since what hath been but the sport of thy imagination is my
experience--degrading experience. Whatever it may cost me, you shall
know all, Hope Leslie. You have justly reproached me with insincerity:
I will at least lighten my conscience of the burden of that sin.”

Hope’s curiosity was on tiptoe; and, notwithstanding her generous
resolution not voluntarily to penetrate her friend’s mystery, she was
delighted with the dawn of a disclosure which, she believed, would
amount to a simple confession of a tender sentiment. She sincerely
pitied Miss Downing’s sufferings; but it is, perhaps, impossible for a
third person to sympathize fully with feelings of this nature. “Now,
Esther,” she said, sportively, “fancy me to be the priest, and
yourself the penitent. Confess freely, daughter; our holy Church,
through me, her most unworthy servant, doth offer thee full
absolution.”

“Stop, stop, Hope Leslie! do not trifle with holy words and most
unholy rites; but listen seriously, and compassionate a weakness that
can never be forgotten.”

{197}

Miss Downing then proceeded to relate some of the following
particulars; but, as her narrative was confused by her emotions, and
as it is necessary our readers should, for the sake of its
illustration, be possessed of some circumstances which were omitted by
her, we here give it, more distinctly, in our own language.

Esther was the daughter of Emanuel Downing, the husband of Governor
Winthrop’s sister, so often mentioned by that gentleman in his journal
as the faithful and useful friend of the Pilgrims, whom he finally
joined in New-England.

Esther Downing was of a reserved, tender, and timid cast of character,
and, being bred in the strictest school of the Puritans, their
doctrines and principles easily commingled with the natural qualities
of her mind. She could not have disputed the nice points of faith,
sanctification, and justification, with certain celebrated
contemporary female theologians, but no one excelled her in the
practical part of her religion. In the language of the times,
justification was witnessed both by word and work.

That young ladies were then indulged in a moderate degree of personal
embellishment, we learn from one of the severest Pilgrim satirists,
who avers that he was “no cynic to the due _bravery_ of the true
gentry,” and allows that “a good text always deserves a fair margent.”
Miss Downing was certainly a pure and beautiful “text,” but her attire
never varied from the severest Gospel simplicity. It is possible that
she was fortified in this self-denying virtue {198} by that lively
little spirit that ever hovers about a woman’s toilet, whispering in
her ear that all the arts of the tyring-woman could not improve the
becomingness of her Madonna style. She wore her hair, which was of a
sober brown hue, parted on her forehead, and confined behind in a
braid that was so adjusted, it may be accidentally, as to perfectly
define the graceful contour of her head. Her complexion was rather
pale, but so exquisitely fair and transparent that it showed the
faintest tinge of colour, and set off to the greatest advantage
features which, if not striking, had the admitted beauty of perfect
symmetry. She was at least half a head taller than our heroine or the
Venus de Medicis; but, as neither of these were standards with the
Pilgrims, no one who ventured to speak of the personal graces of
Esther Downing ever impeached their perfection. Spiritual graces were
then in far higher estimation than external charms; and Miss Downing,
who would have been a reigning belle in our degenerate times, was
always characterized by a religious epithet; she was the “godly” or
the “gracious maiden.” She attained the age of nineteen without one
truant wish straying beyond the narrow bound of domestic duty and
religious exercises; but the course of youth and beauty “never doth
run smooth,” and the perils that commonly beset it now assailed the
tender Esther.

Everell Fletcher came to her father’s to pass two months. He had then,
for some years, resided in the family of his uncle Stretton, a
moderate churchman, {199} who, though he had not seen fit to eradicate
the religious and political principles that had been planted in the
mind of the boy, had so tempered them that, to confess the truth, the
man fell far below the standard of Puritanism. At first Esther was
rather shocked by the unsubdued gayety, the unconstrained freedom, and
the air of a man of society that distinguished Everell from the few
demure, solemn young men of her acquaintance; but there is an
irresistible charm in ease, simplicity, and frankness, when chastened
by the refinements of education, and there is a natural affinity in
youth, even when there is no resemblance in the character; and Esther
Downing, who at first remained in Everell’s presence but just as long
as the duties of hospitality required, soon found herself lingering in
the parlour, and strolling in the walks that were his favourite
resort. It seemed as if the sun had risen on her after a polar winter,
and cheerfulness and her pleasant train sprung up in a mind that had
been chilled and paralyzed by the absence of whatever cherishes the
gay temper of youth; but it was, after all, but the stinted growth of
a polar summer.

She felt a change stealing over her; new thoughts were in her heart,

 “And love and happiness their theme.”

She did not investigate the cause of this change, but suffered the
current of her feelings to flow unchecked, till she was roused to
reflection by her serving-maid, who said to her mistress one evening,
when she came in from a long moonlight walk with Everell, {200} “Our
worthy minister has been here to-day, and he asked me what kept you
from the lecture-room so oft of late. I minded him it rained last
night. He said that in months past no tempest detained you from the
place of worship. I made no answer to that; besides that, it was not
for me to gainsay the minister. He stood as if meditating a minute,
and then he took up your psalm-book, and as he did so, a paper dropped
with some verses written on it, and he said, with almost a smile, ‘Ah,
Judy, then your young lady tries her hand, sometimes, at versifying
the words of the royal psalmist?’”

“Did he look at the lines, Judy?” asked Esther, blushing deeply with
the consciousness that they were but a profane sentimental effusion.

“Yes, my lady; but he looked solemnized, and said nothing more about
them; but, turning to me, and speaking as if he would ask a question,
he said, ‘Judy, it was your mistress’ wont to keep the wheel of prayer
in perpetual motion. I doubt not her private duty is still faithfully
done?’ I answered to him that your honoured parents had been absent
the last week, and you had had company to entertain, and were not
quite as long at closet-exercise as usual.”

“Judy, you were very ready with your excuses for me,” said her
mistress, after a moment’s thoughtfulness.

“It must be a dumb dog indeed,” replied the girl, “that cannot bark
for such a kind mistress as thou art.”

{201}

How often does an accident, a casual word even, serve as a key to
unlock feelings of which the possessor has been unconscious. The
conscientious girl was suddenly awakened from what appeared to her a
sinful dream. Had she perceived, on investigation, a reciprocal
sentiment in Everell Fletcher, she would probably have permitted her
feelings to flow in their natural channel; but, not mingling with his,
they were like a stream that, being dammed up, flows back, and spreads
desolation where it should have produced life and beauty.

The severest religionists of the times did not require the extinction
of the tenderest human affections. On the contrary, there was,
perhaps, never a period when they were more frequently and perfectly
illustrated. How many delicate women, whom the winds of heaven had
never visited roughly, subscribed with their lives to that beautiful
declaration of affection from a tender and devoted wife:
“Whithersoever your fatall destinie,” she said to her husband, “shall
dryve you, eyther by the furious waves of the great ocean, or by the
manifolde and horrible dangers of the lande, I will surely beare you
company. There can be no peryll chaunce to me so terrible, nor any
kynde of deathe so cruelle, that shall not be much easier for me to
abyde than to live so farre separate from you.”

But, though human affections were permitted, they were to be in
manifest subservience to religious devotion: their encroachments were
watched with a vigilance resembling the jealousy with which the
Israelites {202} defended from every profane footstep the Holy Circle
around the ark of the living God. It was this jealousy that now
alarmed the fearful, superstitious girl; and, after some days of the
most unsparing self-condemnation, imbittered by an indefinite feeling
of disappointment, she fell into a dangerous illness, and in the
paroxysms of her fever she prayed fervently that her Creator would
resume the spirit which had been too weak to maintain its fidelity. It
seemed as if her prayer was soon to be granted; she felt herself, and
was pronounced by her physician, to be on the verge of the grave. She
then was inspired with a strong desire, proceeding, as she believed,
from a divine intimation, but which might possibly have sprung from
natural feeling, to open her heart to Everell. This disclosure,
followed by her dying admonition, would, she hoped, rescue him from
the vanities of youth. She accordingly requested her mother to conduct
him to her bedside, and to leave them alone for a few moments; and
when her request was complied with, she made to the astonished youth,
in the simplicity and sincerity of her heart, a confession that, in
other circumstances, the rack would not have extorted.

At first Fletcher fancied her reason was touched. He soothed her, and
attempted to withdraw to call her attendants. She interpreted his
thoughts, assured him he was mistaken, and begged that he would not
waste one moment of her ebbing life. He then knelt at her bedside,
took her burning hand in his, and bathed it with tears of deep
commiseration and tender {203} regret. He promised to lay up her
exhortations in his heart, and cherish them as the law of his life;
but he did not intimate that he had ever felt a sentiment responding
to hers. There was that in the solemnity of the death-bed, in her
purity and truth, that would have rebuked the slightest insincerity,
however benevolent the feeling that dictated it.

This strange interview lasted but a few moments. Miss Downing, in the
energy of her feeling, raised herself on her elbow; the effort
exhausted her, and she sunk back in a stupor which appeared to be the
immediate precursor of death. Her friends flocked round her, and
Fletcher retired to his own room, filled with sorrowful concern at the
involuntary influence he had exercised on this sensitive being, who
seemed to him far better fitted for heaven than for earth.

But Miss Downing was not destined yet to be translated to a more
congenial sphere. Her unburdened heart reposed after its long
struggles; the original cause of her disease was lightened, if not
removed; and the elasticity of a youthful constitution rose victorious
over her malady. She never mentioned Everell Fletcher; but she heard,
incidentally, that he had remained at her father’s till she was
pronounced out of danger, and had then gone to his uncle Stretton’s in
Suffolk.

The following autumn, her father, in compliance with a request of
Madam Winthrop, and in the hope that a voyage would benefit her
health, which was still delicate, sent her to Boston. There she met
{204} Hope Leslie--a bright, gay spirit--an allegro to her penseroso.
They were unlike in everything that distinguished each; and it was
therefore more probable, judging from experience, that they would
become mutually attached. Whatever the theory of the affections may
be, the fact was that they soon became inseparable and confidential
friends. Hope sometimes ventured to rally Esther on her
over-scrupulousness, and Miss Downing often rebuked the laughing
girl’s gayety; but, however variant their dispositions, they melted
into each other like light into shade, each enhancing the beauty and
effect of the other.

Hope often spoke of Everell, for he was associated with all the most
interesting recollections of her childhood, and probably with her
visions of the future; for what girl of seventeen has not a lord for
her air-built castles?

Miss Downing listened calmly to her description of the hero of her
imagination, but never, by word or sign, gave token that she knew
aught of him other than was told her; and the secret might have died
with her, had not her emotion at Everell’s unexpected appearance half
revealed the state of her heart to her quick-sighted friend. This
revelation she finished by a full confession, interrupted by tears of
bitter mortification.

“Oh!” she concluded, “had I but known how to watch and rule my own
spirit, I should have been saved these pangs of remorse and shame.”

“My dear Esther,” said Hope, brushing away the {205} tears of sympathy
that suffused her eyes, “I assure you I am not crying because I
consider it a crying case; you people that dwell in the clouds have
always a mist before you; now I can see that your path is plain, and
sure the end thereof; just give yourself up to my guidance, who,
though not half so good and wise as you are, am far more sure-footed.
I do not doubt in the least Everell feels all he ought to feel. I defy
anybody to know you and not love you, Esther. And do you not see that,
if he had made any declaration at the time, it might have seemed as if
he were moved by pity or gratitude? He knew you were coming to
New-England, and that he was to follow you; and now he has anticipated
his return by some weeks, and why nobody knows, and it must be because
you are here: don’t you think so? You will not speak, but I know by
your smile what you think as well as if you did.”

Arguments appear very sound that are fortified by our wishes, and Miss
Downing’s face was assuming a more cheerful expression, when Jennet
(our old friend Jennet) came into the room to give the young ladies
notice to prepare for dinner, and to inform them that Sir Philip
Gardiner was to dine with them; “and a godly appearing man he is,”
said Jennet, “as ever I laid my eyes on; and it is a wonder to me that
our Mr. Everell should have fallen into such profitable company; for,
I am sorry to see it and loath to say it, he looks as gay as when he
used to play his mad pranks at Bethel; when it was next to an
impossibility to keep you and him, Miss Hope, {206} from talking and
laughing even on a Sabbath day. I think,” she continued, glancing her
eye at Miss Downing, “sober companions do neither of you any good; and
it is so strange Mr. Everell should come home with his hair looking
like one of those heathen pictures of your aunt’s.”

“Oh! hush, Jennet! It would be a sin to crop those dark locks of Mr.
Everell.”

“A sin indeed, Miss Leslie! That is the way you always turn things
wrong side out; a sin to have his hair cut like his father’s--or the
honourable governor’s--or this Sir Philip Gardiner’s--or any other
Christian man’s.”

“Well, Jennet, I wish it would come into your wise head that Christian
tongues were not made for railing. As to my being serious to-day, that
is entirely out of the question; therefore you may spare yourself hint
and exhortation, and go to my aunt, and ask her for my blue bodice and
necklace. But no--” she said, stopping Jennet, for she recollected
that she had directed the blue bodice because it matched her blue
fillet, Everell’s gift, and a secret voice told her she had best,
under existing circumstances, lay that favourite badge aside. “No,
Jennet, bring me my pink bodice and my ruby locket.” Jennet obeyed,
but not without muttering, as she left the room, a remonstrance
against the vanities of dress.

Jennet was one of those persons, abounding in every class of life,
whose virtues are most conspicuous in “damning sins they are not
inclined to.” We ought, perhaps, to apologize for obtruding so {207}
humble and disagreeable a personage upon our readers. But the truth
is, she figured too much on the family record of the Fletchers to be
suppressed by their faithful historian. Those personages ycleped bores
in the copious vocabulary of modern times, seem to be a necessary
ingredient in life, and, like pinching shoes and smoky rooms,
constitute a portion of its trials. Jennet had first found favour with
Mrs. Fletcher from her religious exterior. To employ none but godly
servants was a rule of the Pilgrims; and there were certain set
phrases and modes of dress which produced no slight impression upon
the minds of the credulous. To do Jennet justice, she had many
temporal virtues; and though her religion was of the ritual order,
and, therefore, particularly disagreeable to her spiritual mistress,
yet her household faculties were invaluable, for then, as now, in the
interior of New-England, a faithful servant was like the genius of a
fairy tale--no family could hope for more than one.

Long possession legalized Jennet’s rights and increased her tyrannical
humours, which were naturally most freely exercised on those members
of the family who had grown from youth to maturity under her eye. In
nothing was the sweetness of Hope Leslie’s temper more conspicuous
than in the perfect good-nature with which she bore the teasing
impertinences of this menial, who, like a cross cur, was ready to bark
at every passer by.

Youth and beauty abridge the labours of the toilet, and our young
friends, though on this occasion unusually {208} solicitous about the
impression they were to make, were not long in attiring themselves;
and when Mrs. Grafton presented herself to attend them to dinner, they
were awaiting her. “Upon my word,” she said, “young ladies, you have
done honour to the occasion; it is not every day we have two gentlemen
fresh from Old England to dine with us; I am glad you have shown
yourselves sensible of the importance of the becomings. It is every
woman’s duty, upon all occasions, to look as well as she can.”

“And a duty so faithfully performed, my dear aunt,” said Hope, “that I
fancy, like other duties, it becomes easy from habit.”

“Easy!” replied Mrs. Grafton, with perfect _naïveté_; “second
nature, my dear, second nature. I was taught, from a child, to
determine, the first thing in the morning, what I should wear that
day; and now it is as natural to me as to open my eyes when I wake.”

“I should think, madam,” said Esther, “that other and higher thoughts
were more fitting a rational creature, preserved through the
night-watches.”

Hope was exquisitely susceptible to her aunt’s frailties, but she
would fain have sheltered them from the observation of others. “Now,
my gentle Esther,” she whispered to Miss Downing, “lecturing is not
your vocation, and this is not lecture-day. On jubilee-days slaves
were set free, you know, and why should not follies be?”

Miss Downing could not have failed to have made some sage reply to her
friend’s casuistry, but the {209} ringing of a bell announced the
dinner, and the young ladies, arm in arm, followed Mrs. Grafton to the
dining-room. Just as they entered, Hope whispered, “Remember, Esther,
the festal day is sacred, and may not be violated by a sad
countenance.” This was a well-timed caution; it called a slight tinge
to Miss Downing’s cheeks, and relieved her too expressive paleness.

Everell Fletcher met them at the door. The light of his happiness
seemed to gild every object. He complimented Mrs. Grafton on her
appearance; told her she had not in the least changed since he saw
her--an implied compliment, always, after a woman has passed a
_certain age_. He congratulated Miss Downing upon the very apparent
effect of the climate on her health; and then, breaking through the
embarrassment that slightly constrained him in addressing her, he
turned to Hope Leslie, and they talked of the past, the present, and
the future with spontaneous animation, their feelings according and
harmonizing as naturally as the music of the stars when they sang
together.




 CHAPTER XI.

{210}


 “Our New-England shall tell and _boast_ of her _Winthrop_, a
 _lawgiver_ as patient as _Lycurgus_, but not admitting any of _his_
 criminal disorders; as devout as Numa, but not liable to any of _his_
 heathenish madnesses; a governor in whom the excellences of
 _Christianity_ made a most improving addition unto the _virtues_,
 wherein, even without _those_, he would have made a _parallel_ for the
 great men of _Greece_ or of _Rome_, which the pen of a _Plutarch_ has
 eternized.”--Cotton Mather.


The governor’s house stood in the main street (Washington-street),
on the ground now occupied by “South Row.” There was a little court in
front of it; on one side a fine garden; on the other a beautiful lawn,
or, as it was called, “green,” extending to the corner on which the
“Old South” (Church) now stands, and an ample yard and offices in the
rear.

The mighty master of fiction has but to wave his wand to present the
past to his readers with all the vividness and distinctness of the
present; but we, who follow him at an immeasurable distance--we, who
have no magician’s enchantments, wherewith we can imitate the miracles
wrought by the rod of the prophet--we must betake ourselves to the
compass and the rule, and set forth our description as minutely and
exactly as if we were making out an inventory for a salesman. In
obedience to this necessity, we offer the following detailed
description {211} of the internal economy of a Pilgrim mansion, not on
any apocryphal authority, but quoted from an authentic record of the
times.

“In the principal houses was a great hall, ornamented with pictures; a
great lantern; velvet cushions in the window-seat to look into the
garden: on either side a great parlour, a little parlour or study,
furnished with great looking-glasses, Turkey carpets, window-curtains
and valance, picture and a map, a brass clock, red leather-back
chairs, a great pair of brass andirons: the chambers well furnished
with feather beds, warming-pans, and every other elegance and comfort:
the pantry well filled with substantial fare and dainties, Madeira
wine, prunes, marmalade, silver tankards and wine-cups not uncommon.”

If any are incredulous as to the correctness of the above extract, we
assure them that its truth is confirmed by the spaciousness of the
Pilgrim habitations still standing in Boston, and occupied by their
descendants. These Pilgrims were not needy adventurers nor ruined
exiles. Mr. Winthrop himself had an estate in England worth seven
hundred pounds per annum. Some of his associates came from lordly
halls, and many of them brought wealth, as well as virtue, to the
colony.

The rigour of the climate, and the embarrassments incident to their
condition, often reduced the Pilgrims, in their earliest period, to
the wants of extreme poverty; but their sufferings had the dignity and
merit of being voluntary, and are now, as the tattered {212} garments
of the saints are to the faithful, sacred in the eyes of their
posterity.

Our humble history has little to do with the public life of Governor
Winthrop, which is so well known to have been illustrated by the rare
virtue of disinterested patriotism, and by such even and paternal
goodness, that a contemporary witty satirist could not find it in his
heart to give him a harsher name than “Sir John Temperwell.” His
figure (if we may trust to the fidelity of his painter) was tall and
spare; his eye dark blue, and mild in its expression: he had the
upraised brow, which is said to be indicative of a religious
disposition; his hair and his beard, which he wore long, were black.
On the whole, we must confess, the external man presents the solemn
and forbidding aspect of the times in which he flourished; though we
know him to have been a model of private virtue, gracious and gentle
in his manners, and exact in the observance of all gentlemanly
courtesy.

His wife was admirably qualified for the station she occupied. She
recognised, and continually taught to matron and maiden, the duty of
unqualified obedience from the wife to the husband, her appointed lord
and master; a duty that it was left to modern heresy to dispute, and
which our pious fathers, or even mothers, were so far from
questioning, that the only divine right to govern which they
acknowledged was that vested in the husband over the wife. Madam
Winthrop’s matrimonial virtue never degenerated into the slavishness
of fear or the {213} obsequiousness of servility. If authorized and
approved by principle, it was prompted by feeling; and, if we may be
allowed a coarse comparison, like a horse easy on the bit, she was
guided by the slightest intimation from him who held the rein; indeed,
to pursue our humble illustration still farther, it sometimes appeared
as if the reins were dropped, and the inferior animal were left to the
guidance of her own sagacity.

Without ever overstepping the limits of feminine propriety, Madam
Winthrop manifestly enjoyed the dignity of her official station, and
felt that if the governor were the greater, she was the lesser light.
There was a slight tinge of official importance in her manner of
conferring her hospitalities and her counsel; but she seemed rather to
intend to heighten the value of the gift than the merit of the giver.

Governor Winthrop possessed the patriarchal blessing of a numerous
offspring; but, as they were in no way associated with the personages
of our story, we have not thought fit to encumber it with any details
concerning them.

We return from our long digression to the party we left in Governor
Winthrop’s parlour.

The tables were arranged for dinner. Tables, we say, for a side-table
was spread, but in a manner so inferior to the principal board, which
was garnished with silver tankards, _wine-cups_, and rich china, as to
indicate that it was destined for inferior guests. This indication was
soon verified; for, on a servant being sent to announce dinner to
Governor Winthrop, {214} who was understood to be occupied with some
of the natives on state business, that gentleman appeared, attended by
four Indians: Miantunnomoh, the young and noble chief of the
Narragansetts, two of his counsellors, and an interpreter. Hope turned
to Everell to remark on the graceful gestures by which they expressed
their salutations to the company: “Good Heavens!” she exclaimed,
“Everell, what ails you?” for she saw that he was as pale as death.

“Nothing, nothing,” said Everell, wishing to avoid observation, and
turning towards the window: he then added, in explanation to Hope, who
followed him, “these are the first Indians I have seen since my
return, and they brought too vividly to mind my dear mother’s death.”

Governor Winthrop motioned to his Indian guests to take their seats at
the side-table, and the rest of the company, including the elder
Fletcher and Cradock, surrounded the dinner-table, and serving-men and
all reverently folded their arms and bowed their heads while the grace
or prefatory prayer was pronouncing.

After all the rest had taken their seats, the Indians remained
standing; and although the governor politely signified to the
interpreter that their delay wronged the smoking viands, they remained
motionless, the chief drawn aside from the rest, his eye cast down,
his brow lowering, and his whole aspect expressive of proud
displeasure.

The governor rose, and demanded of the interpreter the meaning of
their too evident dissatisfaction.

{215}

“My chief bids me say,” replied the savage, “that he expects such
treatment from the English sagamore as the English receive in the
wigwam of the Narragansett chief. He says that when the English
stranger visits him, he sits on his mat and eats from his dish.”

“Tell your chief,” replied the governor, who had urgent state reasons
for conciliating Miantunnomoh, “that I pray him to overlook the wrong
I have done him: he is right; he deserves the place of honour. I have
heard of his hospitable deeds, and that he doth give more than even
ground to his guests; for our friend, Roger Williams, informed us that
he hath known him, with his family, to sleep abroad to make room in
his wigwam for English visiters.”

Governor Winthrop added the last circumstance partly as a full
confession of his fault, and partly as an apology to his helpmate, who
looked a good deal disconcerted by the disarrangement of her dinner.
However, she proceeded to give the necessary orders; the table was
remodelled, a sufficient addition made, and the haughty chief, his
countenance relaxing to an expression of grave satisfaction, took his
seat at the governor’s right hand. His associates being properly
accommodated at the table, the rest of the company resumed their
stations.

Everell cast his eye around on the various viands which covered the
hospitable board. “Times have mended,” he said, to Madam Winthrop, “in
my absence. I remember once sitting down with my father to a good
man’s table, on which was nothing {216} but a sorry dish of clams; but
our host made up for the defect of his entertainment by the excess of
his gratitude, for, as I remember, he gave thanks that ‘we were
permitted to eat of the abundance of the seas, and of treasures hid in
the sand.’”

Hope Leslie understood so well the temper of the company she was in,
that she instantly perceived a slight depression of their mercury at
what appeared to them a tone of levity in Everell. She interposed her
shield. “What may we expect from the future,” she said, “if now it
seems strange to us that, ten years ago, the best in the colony were
reduced to living upon muscles, acorns, and ground-nuts; and that our
bountiful governor, having shared his flour and meat with the poorest
in the land, had his last batch of bread in the oven, when the ship
with succours arrived? the Lion, or the Blessing of the Bay--which was
it, Master Cradock? for it was you who told me the story,” she added,
bending towards Cradock, who sat opposite to her.

Cradock, who always felt, at the least notice from Hope, an emotion
similar to that of a pious Catholic when he fancies the image of the
saint he worships to bend propitiously towards him--Cradock dropped
his knife and fork, and erecting his body with one of those sudden
jerks characteristic of awkward men, he hit the elbow of a servant,
who was just placing a gravy-boat on the table, and brought the gravy
down on his little brown wig, whence it found its way, in many a
bubbling rill, over his face, neck, and shoulders.

{217}

A murmur of sympathy and suppressed laughter ran around the table; and
while a servant, at his mistress’s bidding, was applying napkins to
Cradock, he seemed only intent upon replying to Miss Leslie. “It was
the Lion, Miss Hope; ha, indeed, a wonderful memory! yes, yes, it was
the Lion. The Blessing of the Bay was the governor’s own vessel.”

“That name,” said Sir Philip Gardiner, in a low tone to Hope Leslie,
next whom he sat, “should, I think, have been reserved, where names
are significant, for a more just appropriation.”

He spoke in a tone of confidential gallantry so discordant with his
demeanour, that the fair listener lost the matter in the manner; and,
turning to him with one of those looks so confounding to a man who
means to speak but to one ear in the company, “What did you say, sir?”
she asked.

“He said, my dear,” said Mrs. Grafton, who sat at the knight’s left
hand, and who would have considered it worse to suppress a compliment
than to conceal treason, “he said, my dear, that you should have been
named the Blessing of the Bay.”

Sir Philip recoiled a little at this flat version of his compliment;
but he had other interests to sustain more important than his knightly
courtesy, and he was just contriving something to say which might
secure him a safe passage past Scylla and Charybdis, when Madam
Winthrop, who was exclusively occupied with the duty of presiding,
begged Sir Philip would change his plate, and take a piece of wild
turkey, which she could recommend as savoury {218} and tender; or a
piece of the venison--the venison, she said, was a present from the
son of their good old friend and ally, Chicatabot, and she was sure it
was of the best.

The knight declined the proffered delicacies, alleging he had already
been tempted to excess by the cod’s head and shoulders--a rarity to a
European.

“But,” said Miss Leslie, “you will not dine on fish alone, and on
Friday too? why, we shall suspect you of being a Romanist.”

If there was anything in the unwonted blush that deepened the knight’s
complexion which might lead an observer to suspect that an aimless
dart had touched a vulnerable point, he adroitly averted suspicion, by
saying “that he trusted temperance and self-denial were not confined
to a corrupt and superstitious Church, and that, for himself, he found
much use in voluntary mortifications of appetite.”

“Fastings oft,” said Cradock, who had been playing the part of a
valiant trencherman, taking liberally of all of the various feast,
“fastings oft are an excellent thing for those who have grace for
them; and yours, Sir Philip, if one may judge from the ruddiness of
your complexion, are wonderfully prospered.” The knight received the
simple compliment with a silent bow.

Cradock turned to Miss Downing, who sat on his right: “Now, Miss
Esther, you do wrong yourself; there is that pigeon’s wing, just as I
gave it to you!”

Hope Leslie looked up with a deprecating glance, {219} as if she would
have said, “Heaven help my tutor! he never moves without treading on
somebody’s toes.”

“Is not Miss Downing well?” asked the elder Fletcher, who now, for the
first time, noticed that she looked unusually pale and pensive.

“Perfectly well,” said Esther.

“Indifferently well, my dear, you mean,” said Madam Winthrop.
“Esther,” she added, “always feeds like a Canary bird; but I never
despair of a young lady: they have all the chameleon gift of living
upon air.”

“Will Miss Downing mend her appetite with wine,” asked young Fletcher,
“and allow me the honour of taking it with her?”

“Everell!” exclaimed Hope, touching his elbow, but not in time to
check him.

“My son!” said his father, in a voice of rebuke.

“Mr. Fletcher!” exclaimed Governor Winthrop, in a tone of surprise.

“What have I done now?” asked Everell of Hope Leslie; but Hope was too
much diverted with his mistake and honest consternation to reply.

“You have done nothing inexcusable, my young friend,” said the
governor; “for you probably did not know that the vain custom of
drinking one to another, has been disused at my table for ten years;
and that our general court prohibited this ‘employment of the creature
out of its natural use’ by their order in the year of our Lord 1639,
four years since; so that the custom hath become quite obsolete with
{220} us, though it may be still in practice among our laxer brethren
of England.”

“With due deference I speak,” said Everell, “to my elders and
superiors; but it really appears to me to border on the Quixotism of
fighting windmills to make laws against so innocent a custom.”

“No vanity is innocent, Mr. Everell Fletcher,” replied the governor,
“as you will yourself, after proper consideration, confess. Tell me,
when but now you would have proffered wishes of health to my niece
Esther, was it not an empty compliment, and not meant by you for an
argument of love, which should always be unfeigned?”

The governor’s proposition appeared to himself to be merely an
abstract metaphysical truth; but to the younger part of his audience,
at least, it conveyed much more than met the ear.

Miss Downing blushed deeply, and Everell attempted, in vain, to
stammer a reply. Hope Leslie perceived the pit, and essayed a safe
passage over it. “Esther,” she said, “Everell shall not be our knight
at tilt or tournament, if he cannot use the lance your uncle has
dropped at his feet. Are there not always, Everell, in your heart,
arguments of love unfeigned when you drink to the health of a fair
lady?”

Before Everell had time to reply except by a sparkling glance, the
governor said, “This is somewhat too light a discussion of a serious
topic.”

This rebuke quenched at once the spark of gayety Hope had kindled; and
the dinner, never a prolonged meal in this pattern mansion, was
finished without {221} any other conversation than that exacted by the
ordinary courtesies of the table.

After the repast was ended, the Indian chief took his leave with much
fainter expressions of attachment than he had vouchsafed on a former
visit, as the governor had afterward occasion to remember.

The party dispersed in various directions, and the governor withdrew,
with the elder Fletcher, to his study. When there, Governor Winthrop
lighted his pipe, a luxury in which he sparingly indulged; and then,
looking over a packet of letters, he selected one and handed it to Mr.
Fletcher, saying, “There is an epistle from Brother Downing which your
son has brought to me. Read it yourself; you will perceive that he has
stated his views on a certain subject, interesting to you and to us
all; and stated them directly, without any of the circumlocution and
ambiguity which a worldly-minded man would have employed on a like
occasion.”

Mr. Downing introduced the important topic of his epistle, which Mr.
Fletcher read with the deepest attention, by saying that “Fletcher,
junior, returns to the colony a fit instrument, as I trust, to promote
its welfare and honour. He is gifted with divers and goodly talents,
and graced with sufficient learning.

“I have often been sorely wounded at hearing the censures passed on
our brother Fletcher for having sent his son into the bosom of a
prelatical family, but I confidently believe the youth returns to his
own country with his Puritan principles uncorrupted; although, it is
too true, as our stricter brethren often {222} remark, that he has
little of the outward man of a ‘Pilgrim indeed.’

“He is, Brother Winthrop, a high-metalled youth, and on this account I
feel, as you doubtless will, the urgency of coupling him with a member
of the congregation, and one who may, in all likelihood, accomplish
for him that precious promise of the apostle, ‘the believing wife
shall sanctify the unbelieving husband.’

“I have already taken the first step towards bringing about so
desirable an end, by inviting the young man to my house, where he
spent two months of the summer. I then favoured his intimate
intercourse with my well-beloved daughter Esther, whose outward form I
may say, without boasting, is a fit temple for the spirit within.”

Mr. Downing then proceeded to state some circumstances already known
to the reader, and particularly dwelt on Everell’s remaining at his
house during his daughter’s dangerous illness; touched lightly on
their having had an interview, very affecting to both parties, and in
regard to the particulars of which, both, with the shyness natural to
youth, had been silent; and finally set forth, in strong terms, the
concern evinced by Everell while Esther’s recovery was doubtful.

“Notwithstanding,” the letter proceeded to say, “these circumstances
are so favourable to my wishes, I have some apprehensions; and
therefore, brother, I bespeak your immediate interposition in behalf
of the future spiritual prosperity of this youth. He {223} hath been
assiduously courted by Miss Leslie’s paternal connexions, and I have
reason to believe they have solicited him to marry her and bring her
to England. But, without such solicitation, the marriage is a probable
one. Miss Leslie is reported here to be wanting in grace--a want that
I fear would not impoverish her in young Fletcher’s estimation; and to
be a maiden of rare comeliness--a thing precious in the eyes of youth,
too apt to set a high price on that which is but dust and ashes. The
young lady is of great estate too; but that, I think, will not weigh
with the young man, for I discern a lofty spirit in him that would
spurn the yoke of Mammon. Nor do I think, with some of our brethren,
that ‘gold and grace did never yet agree.’ Yet there are some who
would make this alliance a ground of farther scandal against our
brother Fletcher. It is whispered that his worldly affairs are not so
prosperous as we could wish. Mark me, brother, my confidence in him is
unmoved, and I think, and am sure, that he would not permit his son to
espouse this maiden, with the dowry of a queen, if thereby he
endangered his spiritual welfare. But, brother, you in the New World
are as a city set on a hill. Many lie in wait for your halting, and
all appearance of evil should be avoided. On this account and many
others, Brother Fletcher and all of us should duly prize that medium
and safe condition for which Agur prayed.

“One more reason I would suggest, and then commend the business to thy
guidance, who art justly {224} termed, by friend and foe, the Moses of
God’s people in the wilderness.

“It seemeth to me, the motive of Miss Leslie’s mother, in going with
her offspring to the colony, should be duly weighed and respected.
Could her purpose, in any other way, be so certainly accomplished as
by uniting her daughter speedily with a godly and approved member of
the congregation?”

Every sentence of this letter stung Mr. Fletcher. He repeatedly threw
it down, rose from his seat, and after taking two or three turns
across the study, screwed his courage to the sticking point, and
returned to it again. Governor Winthrop’s attention appeared to be
riveted to a paper he was perusing, till he could no longer, from
motives of delicacy to his friend, affect to abstract his attention
from him. Mr. Fletcher finished the letter, and leaning over the
table, covered his face with his hands. His emotion could not be
hidden. The veins in his temples and forehead swelled almost to
bursting, and his tears fell like rain-drops on the table. Governor
Winthrop laid his hand on his friend’s arm, and by a gentle pressure
expressed a sympathy that it would have been difficult to imbody in
words.

After a few moments’ struggle with his feelings, Mr. Fletcher subdued
his emotion, and turning to Governor Winthrop, he said, with dignity,
“I have betrayed before you a weakness that I have never expressed but
in that gracious Presence where weakness is not degradation. Thus has
it ever pleased Him, who knows the infirmity of my heart, to try me.
{225} From my youth my path hath been hedged up with earthly
affections. Is it that I have myself forged the fetters that bind me
to the earth? Is it that I have given to the creature what I owed to
the Creator, that one after another of my earthly delights is taken
from me? that I am thus stripped bare? Oh! it has been the thought
that came unbidden to my nightly meditations and my daily reveries,
that I might live to see these children of two saints in heaven
united. This sweet child is the image of her blessed mother. She was
her precious legacy to me, and she hath been such a spirit of love and
contentment in my lone dwelling, that she hath inwrought herself with
every fibre of my heart.”

“This was natural,” said Governor Winthrop.

“Ay, my friend, and was it not inevitable? I did think,” he continued,
after a momentary pause, “that in their childhood, their affections,
as if instinct with their parents’ feelings, mingled in natural union;
if their hearts retain this bent, I think it were not right to put a
force upon them.”

“Certainly not,” replied his friend; “but the affections of youth are
flexible, and may be turned from their natural bent by a skilful hand.
It is our known duty to direct them heavenward. In taking care for the
spiritual growth of our young people, who are soon to stand in their
father’s places, we do, as we are bound, most assuredly build up the
interests of our Zion. I should ill deserve the honourable name my
brethren have given me if I were not zealous over our youth. In
fearing any opposition {226} from the parties in question, I think, my
worthy brother, you disquiet yourself in vain. It appeareth from
Downing’s letter that there hath been tender passages between your son
and his daughter Esther; and even if Hope Leslie hath fed her fancies
with thoughts of Everell, yet I think she would be forward to advance
her friend’s happiness; for, notwithstanding she doth so differ from
her in her gay carriage, their hearts appear to be knit together.”

“You do my beloved child but justice; what is difficult duty to others
hath ever seemed impulse in her; and I have sometimes thought that the
covenant of works was to her a hinderance to the covenant of grace;
and that, perhaps, she would hate sin more for its unlawfulness if she
did not hate it so much for its ugliness.”

Governor Winthrop thought his friend went a little too far in
magnifying the virtue of his favourite. “Pardon,” he said, “the wounds
inflicted by a friend; they are faithful. I have thought the child
rests too much on _performances_; and you must allow, brother, that
she hath not--I speak it tenderly--that passiveness that, next to
godliness, is a woman’s best virtue.”

“I should scarcely account,” replied Mr. Fletcher, “a property of
soulless matter a virtue.” This was spoken in a tone of impatience
that indicated truly that the speaker, like an over-fond parent, could
better endure any reproach cast on himself than the slightest
imputation on his favourite. Governor Winthrop was not a man to shrink
from inflicting {227} what he deemed a salutary pain because his
patient recoiled from his touch; he therefore proceeded in his
admonition.

“Partiality is dangerous, as we see in the notable history of David
and Absalom, and elsewhere; and perhaps it was your too great
indulgence that imboldened the child to the daring deed of violating
the law by the secret release of the condemned.”

“That violation rests upon suspicion, not proof,” said Mr. Fletcher,
hastily.

“And why,” replied Governor Winthrop, smiling, “is it permitted to
rest on suspicion? from respect to our much-suffering Brother
Fletcher, and consideration of the youth of the offender, we have
winked at the offence. But we will pass that; I would be the last to
lift the veil that hath fallen over it; I only alluded to it to
enforce the necessity of a stricter watch over this lawless girl.
Would it not be wise and prudent to take my brother’s counsel, and
consign her to some one who should add to affection the authority of a
husband?”

Governor Winthrop paused for a reply, but receiving none, he
proceeded: “One of our most promising youth hath this day discoursed
to me of Hope Leslie, and expressed a matrimonial intent towards her.”

“And who is this?” demanded Mr. Fletcher.

“William Hubbard--the youth who hath come with so much credit from our
prophets’ school at Cambridge. He is a discreet young man, steeped in
learning, and of approved orthodoxy.”

{228}

“These be cardinal points with us,” replied Mr. Fletcher, calmly, “but
they are not like to commend him to a maiden of Hope Leslie’s temper.
She inclineth not to bookish men, and is apt to vent her childish
gayety upon the ungainly ways of scholars.”

Thus our heroine, by her peculiar taste, lost at least the golden
opportunity of illustrating herself by a union with the future
historian of New-England.

After a little consideration the governor resumed the conversation.
“It is difficult,” he said, “to suit a maiden who hath more whim than
reason: what think you of Sir Philip Gardiner?”

“Sir Philip Gardiner! a new-comer of to-day! and old enough to be the
father of Hope Leslie!”

“The fitter guide for her youth. Besides, brother, you magnify his
age: he is still on the best side of forty. He is a man of good
family, who, after having fought on the side where his birth naturally
cast him, hath been plucked, as a brand from the burning, by the
preaching and exhortation of the godly Mr. Wilkins; and feeling, as he
declares, a pious horror at the thought of imbruing his hands any
farther in blood, he hath come to cast his lot among us, instead of
joining our friends in England.”

“Hath he credentials to verify all these particulars?”

Governor Winthrop coloured slightly at an interrogatory that implied a
deficiency of wariness on his part, and replied, “That he thought the
gentleman scarcely needed other than he carried in his language {229}
and deportment, but that he had come furnished with a letter of
introduction satisfactory in all points.”

“From whom?” inquired Mr. Fletcher.

“From one Jeremy Austin, who expresseth himself as, and Sir Philip
says is, a warm friend to us.”

“Is he known to you?”

“No; but I think I have heard him mentioned as a well-willer to our
colony.”

This was not perfectly satisfactory to Mr. Fletcher, but he forbore to
press the point farther, and turned his attack to that part of the
suggestion that appeared most vulnerable. “Methinks,” he said, “you
are over-hasty in proposing to match Hope Leslie with this stranger.”

“Nay, I meant not a formal proposition. I noted that Sir Philip was
struck with Hope’s outward graces. He is an uncommon personable man,
and hath that bearing that finds favour in maidens’ eyes, and the
thought came to me that he may have been sent here, in good time, to
relieve all our perplexities; and, to confess the truth, brother, if I
may use the sporting language of our youth, I am impatient to put
jesses on this wild bird of yours while she is on our perch. But, to
be serious, and surely the subject doth enforce us to it, I am
satisfied that you will not oppose any means that may offer to secure
the lambs of our flock in the true fold.”

“I shall oppose nothing that will promote the spiritual prosperity of
those dear to me as my own soul. I have no reason to doubt my son’s
filial obedience; he hath never been wanting; and, though {230} both
he and I have fallen under censure, I see not that I erred in sending
him from me, since I but complied with the last request of his sainted
mother, and that compliance deprived me of the only child left of my
little flock. I speak not vauntingly; but let not those who have
remained in Egypt condemn him who has drank of the bitterest waters of
the wilderness.” Mr. Fletcher, finding himself again yielding to
irrepressible emotions, rose and hastily left his more equal-tempered
and less interested friend.

Thus did these good men, not content with their magnanimous conflict
with necessary evils, involve themselves in superfluous trials.
Whatever gratified the natural desires of the heart was questionable,
and almost everything that was difficult and painful assumed the form
of duty. As if the benevolent Father of all had stretched over our
heads a canopy of clouds instead of the bright firmament, and its
glorious host, and ever-changing beauty, and had spread under our feet
a wilderness of bitter herbs instead of every tree and plant yielding
its good fruit. But we would fix our eyes on the bright halo that
encircled the Pilgrim’s head, and not mark the dust that sometimes
sullied his garments.




 CHAPTER XII.

{231}


 “Then crush, even in their hour of birth,
  The infant buds of love,
 And tread his glowing fire to earth,
  Ere ’tis dark in clouds above.”
                           Halleck.


The observance of the Sabbath began with the Puritans, as it still
does with a great portion of their descendants, on Saturday night. At
the going down of the sun on Saturday, all temporal affairs were
suspended; and so zealously did our fathers maintain the letter as
well as the spirit of the law, that, according to a vulgar tradition
in Connecticut, no beer was brewed in the latter part of the week,
lest it should presume to _work_ on Sunday.

It must be confessed that the tendency of the age is to laxity; and so
rapidly is the wholesome strictness of primitive times abating, that,
should some antiquary, fifty years hence, in exploring his garret
rubbish, chance to cast his eye on our humble pages, he may be
surprised to learn that even now the Sabbath is observed, in the
interior of New-England, with an almost Judaical strictness.

On Saturday afternoon an uncommon bustle is apparent. The great class
of procrastinators are hurrying to and fro to complete the lagging
business of the week. The good mothers, like Burns’s matron, {232} are
plying their needles, making “auld claes look amaist as weel’s the
new;” while the domestics, or help[4] (we prefer the national
descriptive term), are wielding with might and main their brooms and
_mops_, to make all _tidy_ for the Sabbath.

As the day declines, the hum of labour dies away, and after the sun is
set, perfect stillness reigns in every well-ordered household, and not
a footfall is heard in the village street. It cannot be denied, that
even the most spiritual, missing the excitement of their ordinary
occupations, anticipate their usual bedtime. The obvious inference
from this fact is skilfully avoided by certain ingenious reasoners,
who allege that the constitution was originally so organized as to
require an extra quantity of sleep on every seventh night. We
recommend it to the curious to inquire how this peculiarity was
adjusted when the first day of the week was changed from Saturday to
Sunday.

The Sabbath morning is as peaceful as the first hallowed day. Not a
human sound is heard without the dwellings, and, but for the lowing of
the herds, the crowing of the cocks, and the gossiping of the birds,
animal life would seem to be extinct, till, at the bidding of the
church-going bell, the old and young issue from their habitations, and
with solemn demeanour bend their measured steps to the
_meeting-house_. The family of the minister--the squire--the
doctor--the merchants--the modest gentry of the {233} village, and the
mechanic and labourer, all arrayed in their best, all meeting on even
ground, and all with that consciousness of independence and equality
which breaks down the pride of the rich, and rescues the poor from
servility, envy, and discontent. If a morning salutation is
reciprocated, it is in a suppressed voice; and if, perchance, Nature,
in some reckless urchin, burst forth in laughter, “My dear, you forget
it’s Sunday!” is the ever ready reproof.

Though every face wears a solemn aspect, yet we once chanced to see
even a deacon’s muscles relaxed by the wit of a neighbour, and heard
him allege, in a half deprecating, half laughing voice, “The squire is
so droll that a body must laugh, though it be Sabbath-day.”

The farmer’s ample wagon and the little one-horse vehicle bring in all
who reside at an inconvenient walking distance; that is to say, in our
riding community, half a mile from the church. It is a pleasing sight
to those who love to note the happy peculiarities of their own land,
to see the farmer’s daughters, blooming, intelligent, and well bred,
pouring out of these homely coaches with their nice white gowns,
prunello shoes, Leghorn hats, fans, and parasols, and the spruce young
men with their plaited ruffles, blue coats, and yellow buttons. The
whole community meet as one religious family, to offer their devotions
at the common altar. If there is an outlaw from the society--a
luckless wight, whose vagrant taste has never been subdued, he may be
seen stealing along the margin of some little brook, far away {234}
from the condemning observation and troublesome admonitions of his
fellows.

Towards the close of the day, or (to borrow a phrase descriptive of
his feeling who first used it) “when the Sabbath begins to _abate_,”
the children cluster about the windows. Their eyes wander from their
catechisms to the western sky; and though it seems to them as if the
sun would never disappear, his broad disk does slowly sink behind the
mountain; and while his last ray still lingers on the eastern summit,
merry voices break forth, and the ground resounds with bounding
footsteps. The village belle arrays herself for her twilight walk; the
boys gather on “the green;” the lads and girls throng to the
“singing-school;” while some coy maiden lingers at home, awaiting her
expected suiter; and all enter upon the pleasures of the evening with
as keen a relish as if the day had been a preparatory penance.

We have passed over eight days, which glided away without supplying
any events to the historian of our heroine’s life, though even then
the thread was spinning that was to form the woof of her destiny.

Intent on verifying the prediction she had made to Esther, that
Everell would soon declare himself her lover, she promoted the
intercourse of the parties in every way she could without making her
motive apparent. While she treated Everell with frank sisterly
affection, and was always easy and animated in his society, which she
enjoyed above all other pleasures, she sedulously sought to bring
Esther’s {235} moral and mental graces forth to the light. In their
occasional walks she took good care that Everell should be the
companion of her friend, while she permitted Sir Philip Gardiner to
attend her. He was a man of the world, practised in all the arts of
society; and though he sometimes offended her by the excess of his
flattering gallantries, yet he often deeply interested her with his
lively descriptions of countries and manners unknown to her.

It was just at twilight on Saturday evening when the elder Mr.
Fletcher came into Madam Winthrop’s parlour, found his son sitting
there alone, and interrupted a very delightful meditation on the
eloquence of Hope Leslie, who had just been with him, descanting on
the virtues of her friend Esther. The charms of the fair speaker had,
we believe, a far larger share of his thoughts than the subject of her
harangue.

“We have a lecture extraordinary to-night,” said Mr. Fletcher; “our
rulers, some time since, issued an order, limiting our regular
religious meetings to one during the week. Shall you go, my son?”

“Sir! go to the lecture?” replied Everell, as it just waking from a
dream; and then added, for then he caught a glimpse of Hope through
the door with her hat and mantle, “oh, yes; certainly, sir, I shall go
to the lecture.”

He snatched his hat, and would have joined Miss Leslie; but she saw
his intention, and turning to him as she passed the threshold of the
door, she said, “You need not go with me, Everell; I have to call for
aunt Grafton, at Mrs. Cotton’s.”

{236}

“May I not call with you?”

“No; I had rather you would not,” she said, decidedly, and hurried
away without any explanation of her preference.

“What can have disturbed Hope?” asked Mr. Fletcher, for both he and
his son had observed that her cheek was flushed and her eye tearful.

“I cannot imagine,” replied Everell; “she left me, not half an hour
since, all smiles and gayety.”

“It is but the April-temper of youth,” said the father. “Hope is of a
feeling make: she often reminds me of the Delta lands, where the
fruits spring forth before the waters have retired. Smiles are playing
on her lips before the tear is dry on her cheek. But this
sensitiveness should be checked: the dear child’s feelings have too
long been indulged.”

“And as long as they are all innocent, sir, why should they not be
indulged?”

“Because, my son, she must be hardened for the cross-accidents and
unkind events, or, rather, I should say, the wholesome chastisements
of life. She cannot--we can none of us--expect indulgence from the
events of life.” Mr. Fletcher paused for a moment, looked around, then
shut the door and returned to his son. “Everell,” he said, “you have
ever been dutiful to me.”

“And ever shall be, my dear father,” replied Everell, with frank
confidence, little thinking how soon the virtue might become
difficult.

“Trust not, my son, to thine own strength; it may {237} soon be put to
a test that will make thee feel it to be but weakness. Everell, thou
seest that Hope loves thee even as she loved thee in thy childhood.
Let her affection remain of this temper, I charge thee, as thou
respectest thy father’s and thine own honour. And, Everell, it were
well if you fixed your eye on--”

“Stop, sir! stop, I beseech you, and tell me--not because I have any
thoughts--any intentions, I mean--any formed purpose, I would say--but
tell me, I entreat you, why this prohibition?”

Everell spoke with such earnestness and ingenuousness that his father
could not refuse to answer him; but his reasons seemed, even to
himself, to lose half their force as they emerged from their shroud of
mystery. He acknowledged, in the first place, what his most cherished
wishes had been in relation to Hope and Everell. He then communicated
the intimations that had been thrown out, that his views for his son
were mercenary.

Everell laughed at the idea. “No one,” he said, “can so well afford
such an imputation as you, sir, whose whole life has been a practical
refutation of it; and, for my own part, I am satisfied with the
consciousness that I would not marry any woman with a fortune whom I
would not marry if the case were reversed, or even if we were both
penniless.”

“I believe this is not an empty boast, my son; but we have set
ourselves up as a mark to the world, and, as Brother Winthrop has
said, and repeated to me, we cannot be too solicitous to avoid all
appearance of evil. There are covetous souls, who, on the {238}
slightest ground, would suspect us of pursuing our own worldly
by-ends.”

“And so, sir, to win the approbation, or, rather, the good word of
these covetous souls, we are to degrade ourselves to their level, and
act as if we were capable of their mean passions.”

“Everell, my son, you speak presumptuously; we are capable of all
evil; but we will waive that question at present. Our individual
wishes must be surrendered to the public good. We have laid the
foundation of an edifice, and our children must be so coupled together
as to secure its progress and stability when the present builders are
laid low.”

“And so, my dear father, a precious gem is to be mortared in like a
common brick, wherever may best suit the purposes and views of the
builders. You are displeased, sir. Perhaps I spoke somewhat hastily.
But, once for all, I entreat you not to dispose of us as if we were
mere machines: we owe you our love and reverence.”

“And obedience, Everell.”

“Yes, sir, as far as can be manifested by not doing what you command
us not to do.”

“Have I, then, strained parental authority so far, that you think it
necessary thus to qualify your duty?”

“No, indeed, my dear father; and it is because your authority has ever
been too gentle to be felt, that I wince at the galling of a new yoke.
You will admit that my submission has not been less perfect for being
voluntary. Trust me, then, for the future; and I promise--”

{239}

Everell was, perhaps, saved from rashly committing himself by the
entrance of Madam Winthrop, who inquired if the gentlemen were ready
to attend her to the lecture.

“Come, Mr. Everell,” she said, “here is Esther to show you the way,
than whom there can be no safer guide.”

Miss Downing stood beside her aunt, but she shrunk back at Everell’s
approach, hurt at what seemed to her a solicitation for his attention.
He perceived her instinctive movement, but, without appearing to
notice it, he offered his arm to Madam Winthrop, saying, “As there is
no skill in guiding one quite capable of self-guidance, I will not
inflict myself on Miss Downing, if you will allow me the honour of
attending you.”

Madam Winthrop submitted with the best grace to this cross purpose.
The elder Fletcher offered his arm to Miss Downing, and endeavoured to
draw her into conversation; but she was timid, downcast, and reserved;
and mentally comparing her with Hope Leslie, he felt how improbable it
was that Everell would ever prefer her. The old, even when grave and
rigid, are said to affect the young and gay; on the same principle,
perhaps, that a dim eye delights in bright colours.

“Is that Gorton’s company?” asked Everell, pointing towards several
prisoners, who, in the custody of a file of soldiers, appeared to be
going towards the sanctuary.

“Yes,” replied Madam Winthrop; “the governor {240} and our ruling
elders have determined that, as they are to be tried next week, they
shall have the benefit of all our public teaching in the mean time.”

“I should fear they would deem this punishment before trial,” said
Everell.

“They did reluct mightily at first; but on being promised that, if
they had occasion to speak, after sermon they should be permitted,
provided they only spoke the words of sobriety and truth, they
consented to come forth.”

This Gorton, whom Hubbard calls “a prodigious minister of exorbitant
novelties,” had been brought, with his adherents, from Rhode Island,
by force of arms, to be tried for certain civil and ecclesiastical
offences, for which, according to the most learned antiquary of our
New World (Mr. Savage), they were not amenable to the magistracy of
Massachusetts.

The prisoners were ushered into the church, and placed before the
ruling elders. The governor then entered, unattended by his
halberd-bearers (a ceremony dispensed with except on Sunday), and,
followed by his family, walked slowly to his pew, where Miss Leslie
was already seated between Mrs. Grafton and Sir Philip Gardiner. She
rose, and contrived to exchange her location for one next Miss
Downing. “Look, Esther,” she said, in a whisper, to her friend, “at
that lad who stands in the corner of the gallery, just beside the
lamp.”

“I see him; but what of him?”

“Why, just observe how he gazes at me: his eye {241} is like a
burning-glass--it really scorches me. I wish the service were over. Do
you think it will be long?”

“It may be long, but I trust not tedious,” replied Esther, with a
gravity which was the harshest rebuke she could ever command.

“Oh, it will be both!” said Hope, in a despairing tone; “for there is
Mr. Wheeler in the pulpit, and he always talks of eternity till he
forgets time.”

“My dear Hope!” said Esther, in a voice of mingled surprise and
reproof.

The service presently began, and Hope endeavoured dutifully to assume
a decorous demeanour, and join Esther in singing the psalm; but her
mind was soon abstracted, and her voice died away.

The preacher had not proceeded far in his discourse before all her
patience was exhausted. Even those who are the most strenuous
advocates for the passive duties of the sanctuary might have bestowed
their pity on our heroine, who had really serious cause for her
feverish impatience; obliged to sit, while a young man, accounted a
“universal scholar,” seemed determined, like many unfledged preachers,
to tell all he knew in that one discourse, which was then called a
prophesying--an extempore effusion. He was bent, not only on making
“root and branch work” of poor Gorton’s heresies, but on eradicating
every tare from the spiritual field. To Hope he appeared to maintain
one even pace straight forward, like the mortal in the fairy tale,
sentenced to an eternal walk over a boundless plain.

{242}

“Do, Esther, look at the candles,” she whispered; “don’t you think it
must be nine o’clock?”

“Oh, hush! no, not yet eight.”

Hope sighed audibly, and once more resumed a listening attitude. All
human labours have their end, and therefore had the preacher’s. But,
alas for our heroine! when he had finished, Gorton--whose face for the
last hour had expressed that he felt much like a criminal condemned to
be scourged before he is hung--Gorton rose, and, smarting under a
sense of wrongs, repeated all the points of the discourse, and made
points where there were none; refuted and attacked, and proved (to his
own satisfaction) “that all ordinances, ministers, sacraments, &c.,
were but men’s invention--silver shrines of Diana.”

While this self-styled “professor of mysteries” spoke, Hope was so
much interested in his genuine enthusiasm and mysticism (for he was
the Swedenborg of his day) that she forgot her own secret subject of
anxiety; but when he had finished, and half a dozen of the ruling
elders rose at the same moment to prove the weapons of orthodoxy upon
the arch heretic, she whispered to Esther, “I can never bear this; I
must make an apology to Madam Winthrop, and go home!”

“Stay,” said Esther; “do you not see Mr. Cotton is getting up?”

Mr. Cotton, the regular pastor, rose to remind his brethren of the
decree, “that private members should be very sparing in their
questions and observations {243} after public sermons,” and to say
that he should postpone any farther discussion of the precious points
before them, as it was near nine o’clock, after which it was not
suitable for any Christian family to be unnecessarily abroad.

Hope now, and many others, instinctively rose, in anticipation of the
dismissing benediction; but Mr. Cotton waved his hand for them to sit
down, till he could communicate to the congregation the decision to
which the ruling elders and himself had come on the subject of the
last Sabbath sermon. “He would not repeat what he had before said upon
that lust of costly apparel, which was fast gaining ground, and had
already, as was well known, crept into godly families. He was pleased
that there were among them gracious women, ready to turn at a rebuke,
as was manifested in many veils being left at home, that were floating
over the congregation like so many butterflies’ wings in the morning.
Economy, he justly observed, was, as well as simplicity, a Christian
grace; and, therefore, the rulers had determined, that those persons
who had run into the excess of immoderate veils and sleeves,
embroidered caps, and gold and silver lace, should be permitted to
wear them out, but new ones should be forfeited.”

This sumptuary regulation announced, the meeting was dismissed.

Madam Winthrop whispered to Everell that she was going, with his
father, to look in upon a sick neighbour, and would thank him to see
her niece home. Everell stole a glance at Hope, and dutifully offered
his arm to Miss Downing.

{244}

Hope, intent only on one object, was hurrying out of the pew,
intending, in the jostling of the crowd, to escape alone; but she was
arrested by Madam Winthrop’s saying, “Miss Leslie, Sir Philip offers
you his arm;” and, at the same moment, her aunt stooped forward to beg
her to wait a moment, till she could send a message to Deacon
Knowles’s wife, that she might wear her new gown with the Turkish
sleeves the next day.

“Oh, martyrdom!” thought Hope, with, indeed, little of the spirit of a
martyr. She dared not speak aloud, but she continued to whisper to
Mrs. Grafton, “For pity’s sake, do leave Mrs. Knowles to take care of
herself; I am tired to death with staying here.”

“No wonder,” replied her aunt, in the same low tone; “it is enough to
tire Job himself; but just have a minute’s patience, deary; it is but
doing as a body would be done by, to let Mistress Knowles know she may
come out in her new gown to-morrow.”

“Well, just as you please, ma’am; but I will go along with Sir Philip,
and you can follow with Mr. Cradock. Mr. Cradock, you will wait for
Mrs. Grafton?”

“Surely, surely,” replied the good man, eagerly; “there is nothing you
could ask me, Miss Hope, as you well know--be it ever so
disagreeable--that I would not do.”

“Thank you for nothing, Mr. Cradock,” said the dame, with a toss of
her head; “you are over {245} civil, I think, to-night. It is very
well, Miss Hope, it is very well; you may go: you know Cradock, at
best, is purblind at night; but it is very well; you can go; I can get
home alone. It is very peculiar of you, Mr. Cradock.”

Poor Cradock saw he had offended, but how he knew not; and he looked
imploringly to Hope to extricate him; but she was too anxious about
her own affairs to lend her usual benevolent care to his
embarrassment.

“My dear aunt,” said she, “I will not go without you, if you prefer to
go with me; only do let us go.”

Mrs. Grafton now acquiesced, for in her flurry she had lost sight of
the messenger whom she intended to intrust with the important errand.
Sir Philip arranged her hood and cloak with a grace that she afterward
said “was so like her dear deceased,” and in a few moments the party
was in the street, and really moving homeward.

Mrs. Grafton prided herself on a slow, measured step, which she
fancied was the true gait of dignity. Hope, on the contrary, always
moved as the spirit moved her; and now she felt an irresistible
impulse to hurry forward.

“My dear,” said her aunt, “how can you fly so? I am sure, if they in
England were to see you walk, they would think you had been brought up
here to chase the deer in the woods.”

Hope dared not confess her anxiety to get forward, and she could no
longer check it.

“It is very undignified, and very unladylike, and {246} very
unbecoming, Hope; and I must say it is untoward and unfroward of you
to hurry me along so. Don’t you think it is very peculiar of Hope, Sir
Philip?”

The knight suspected that Miss Leslie’s haste was merely impatience of
his society, and he could scarcely curb his chagrin while he said that
“the young lady undoubtedly moved with uncommon celerity; indeed, he
had before suspected she had invisible wings.”

“Thank you for your hint, Sir Philip,” exclaimed Hope. “It is a
night,” she continued, looking up at the bright moon, “to make one
long to soar; so I will just spread my wings, and leave you to crawl
on the earth.” She withdrew her arm from Sir Philip’s, and, tripping
on before them, she soon turned a corner and was out of sight.

We must leave the knight biting his lips with vexation, and feeling
much like a merchant obliged to pay a heavy duty on a lost article.
However, to do him justice, he did not make an entire loss of it, but
so adroitly improved the opportunity to win the aunt’s favour, that
she afterward said to Hope, that, if she must see her wedded to a
Puritan, she trusted it would be Sir Philip, for he had nothing of the
Puritan but the outside.

Hope had not proceeded far when she heard a quick step behind her,
and, looking back, she saw the young man whose gaze had disturbed her
at the lecture. She had an indefinite womanly feeling of fear; but a
second thought told her she had best {247} conceal it, and she
slackened her pace. Her pursuer approached till he was parallel to
her, and slackened his also. He looked at her without speaking; and,
as Hope glanced her eye at him, she was struck with an expression of
wretchedness and passion that seemed unnatural on a countenance so
young and beautiful. “Anything is better than this strange silence,”
thought Hope; so she stopped, looked the stranger full in the face,
and said, inquiringly, “You have, perhaps, lost your way?”

“Lost my way?” replied the youth, in a half articulate voice: “yes,
lady, I have lost my way.”

The melancholy tone and mysterious look of the stranger led Hope to
suspect that he meant to convey more than the natural import of his
words; but, without seeming to understand more, she said, “I perceive,
by your foreign accent, that you are a stranger here. If you will tell
me where you wish to go, I will direct you.”

“And who will guide _you_, lady?” responded the stranger, in a
thrilling tone. “The lost may warn, but cannot guide.”

“I need no guidance,” said Hope, hastily, still persisting in
understanding him literally: “I am familiar with the way; and, if I
cannot be of service to you, must bid you good-night.”

“Stop one moment!” exclaimed the stranger, laying his hand on Hope’s
arm with an imploring look: “you look so good--so kind--you may be of
service to me;” and then bursting into a passionate flood of tears, he
added, “Oh! no, no, there is no help for me!”

{248}

Hope now lost all thought for herself in concern for the unhappy being
before her. “Who or what are you?” she asked.

“I! what am I?” he replied, in a bitter tone; “Sir Philip Gardiner’s
slave, or servant, or page, or--whatever he is pleased to call me.
Nay, lady, look not so piteously on me! I love my master--at least I
did love him; but I think innocence is the breath of love! Heaven’s
mercy, lady! you will make me weep again if you look at me thus.”

“Nay, do not weep, but tell me,” said Hope, “what I can do for you; I
cannot remain here longer.”

“Oh! you can do nothing for me--no one can do anything for me. But,
lady--take care for thyself.”

“What do you mean?” demanded Hope, in a tone of mingled alarm and
impatience; “do you mean anything?”

The boy looked apprehensively about him, and, approaching his lips
close to Hope’s ear, he said in a whisper, “Promise me you will not
love my master. Do not believe him, though he pledge the word of a
true knight always to love you; though he swear it on the holy
crucifix, do not believe it!”

Hope now began to think that the youth’s senses were impaired; and,
more impatient than ever to escape from him, she said, “Oh, I can
promise all that, and as much more in the same way as you will ask of
me. But leave me now, and come to me again when you want a much more
difficult service.”

{249}

“I never shall want anything else, lady,” he replied, shaking his head
mournfully; “I want nothing else but that you would pity me! You
may--for angels pity, and I am sure you look like one. Pity me! never
speak of me, and forget me.” He dropped on his knee, pressed her hand
to his lips, rose to his feet, and left her so hastily that she was
scarcely conscious of his departure till he was beyond her sight.

Whatever matter for future reflection this interview might have
afforded her, Hope had now no time to dwell on it; and she hastened
forward, and surmounting a fence at the southeastern extremity of the
burial-ground, entered the enclosure now the churchyard of the stone
chapel. The moon was high in the heavens; masses of black clouds were
driven by a spring gale over her bright disk, producing startling
changes, from light to darkness, and from darkness to that gleamy,
indefinite, illusive brightness, which gives to moonlight its dominion
over the imagination.

At another time Hope Leslie would have shrunk from going alone, so
late at night, to this region of silence and sad thoughts, and her
fancy might have imbodied the shadows that flitted over the little
mounds of earth; but she was now so engrossed by one absorbing,
anxious expectation, that she scarcely thought of the place where it
was to be attained, and she pressed on as if she were passing over
common clods. Once, indeed, she paused, as the moon shot forth a
bright ray, stooped down before a little {250} hillock, pressed her
brow to the green turf, and then raising her eyes to Heaven, and
clasping her hands, she exclaimed, “O, my mother! if ever thy presence
is permitted to me, be with me now!” After this solemn adjuration she
again rose to her feet, and looked anxiously before her for some
expected object. “But I cannot know,” she said, “till I have passed
the thicket of evergreens; that was the appointed spot.”

She passed the thicket, and at that moment the intensity of her
feelings spread a mist before her eyes. She faltered, and leaned on
one of the gravestones for support: and there we must leave her for
the present, to the secrecy she sought.




 CHAPTER XIII.

{251}


 “There’s nothing I have done yet o’ my conscience,
 Deserves a corner: would all other women
 Could speak this with as free a soul as I do.”
                                  Henry VIII.


While Hope Leslie was deeply engaged in the object of her secret
expedition, Governor Winthrop’s household was thrown into alarm at her
absence.

Jennet was the only member of the family who did not admit that there
was real cause of uneasiness. “Miss Hope,” she said, “was always like
a crazed body of moonlight nights; there was never any keeping her
within the four walls of a house.”

But a moonlight night it soon ceased to be. The clouds that had been
scudding over the heavens gathered in dark and terrific masses. A
spring storm ensued: a storm to which winter and summer contribute all
their elemental power--rain, lightning, wind, and hail.

Governor Winthrop naturally concluded (for all persons not deeply
interested are apt to be rational) that Miss Leslie had taken refuge
under some safe covert, and he summoned his family to their evening
devotions. Both the Fletchers excused themselves, and braved the storm
in quest of their lost treasure; and even old Cradock, in spite of
Mrs. Grafton’s repeated suggestions that he was a very useless person
{252} for such an enterprise, sallied forth; but all returned in the
space of an hour to bring their various reports of fruitless inquiry
and search. Everell remained but long enough to learn that there were
no tidings of Hope, and was again rushing out of the house, when he
met the object of his apprehensions at the hall door. “Thank Heaven!”
he exclaimed, on seeing her, “you are safe. Where have you been? we
were all in the most distressful alarm about you.”

Hope had, by this time, advanced far enough into the entry for Everell
to perceive, by the light of the lantern, that she was muffled in Sir
Philip Gardiner’s cloak. His face had kindled with joy at her
appearance; all light now vanished from it, and he stood eyeing Hope
with glances that spoke, though his lips refused again to move; while
she, without observing or suspecting his emotion, did not reply to
him, and was only intent on disengaging herself from the cloak. “Do
help me, Everell,” she said, impatiently; and he endeavoured to untie
the string that fastened it; but, in his agitation, instead of
untying, he doubled the knot.

“Oh, worse and worse!” she exclaimed; and, without any farther
ceremony, she broke the string, and running back to the door, gave the
cloak to Sir Philip, who stood awaiting it, till then unperceived by
Everell, in the shadows of the portico.

Everell again looked at Miss Leslie, in the natural expectation of
some explanation; but she appeared only concerned to escape to her
apartment without any inquiries from the family. Her face was {253}
extremely pale; and her voice, still affected by recent agitation,
trembled as she said to Everell, “Be kind enough to tell your father
and all of them that I have come in drenched with the rain, and have
gone to my own room; that I am wearied, and shall throw off my wet
garments, and get to bed as quick as possible;” and then adding a
“good-night, Everell,” and without awaiting any answer, she was
springing up the stairs, when the parlour door was thrown open, and
half a dozen voices exclaimed, in the same breath, “Oh, Hope!” “Hope
Leslie!” “Miss Hope Leslie! is it you?”

“Come back, my child, and tell me where you have been,” said Mr.
Fletcher.

“Yes, Miss Leslie,” said Governor Winthrop, but in a tone of kindness
rather than authority, “render an account of thyself to thy rulers.”

“Yes, come along, Hope,” said Mrs. Grafton, “and make due apologies to
Madam Winthrop. A pretty hubbub you have put her house in, to be sure;
though I make no doubt you can show good reason for it, and also for
leaving Sir Philip and me in that rantipole way, which I must say was
peculiar.”

“For Heaven’s sake,” said Hope to Esther, who had joined her, “do go
in and make an apology for me. Say I am wet and tired--say anything
you please, I care not what--will you? that’s a good girl.”

“No, Hope, come in yourself; aunt Winthrop looked a little displeased;
you had best come; I know she will expect it.”

{254}

Thus beset, Hope dared not any longer hesitate, and with that feeling,
half resolution and half impatience to have a disagreeable thing over,
which often impelled her, she descended the stairs as hastily as she
had ascended them, and was in the parlour confronting all the
inquirers before she had devised any mode of relieving herself from
the disagreeable predicament of not being able to satisfy their
curiosity.

“Verily, verily,” exclaimed Cradock, who was the only one of the
group, not even excepting Everell, whose sympathy mastered his
curiosity, “verily, the maiden hath been in peril; she is as white as
a snow-wreath, and as wet as a drowned kitten.”

“Yes, Master Cradock, quite as wet,” replied Hope, rallying her
spirits, “and with almost as little discretion left, or I should not
have entered the parlour in this dripping condition. Madam Winthrop,
I beg you will have the goodness to pardon me for the trouble I have
occasioned.”

“Certainly, my dear, as I doubt not you will make it plain to us that
you had sufficient reason for what appears so extraordinary as a young
woman wandering off by herself after nine o’clock on Saturday night.”

Our heroine had never had the slightest experience in the nice art
that contrives to give such a convenient indistinctness to the
boundary line between truth and falsehood. After a moment’s
reflection, her course seemed plain to her. To divulge the real motive
of her untimely walk was impossible; to invent a false excuse, to her,
equally impossible. She {255} turned to Governor Winthrop, and said
with a smile that Everell, at least, thought might have softened the
elder Brutus, “I surrender myself to the laws of the land, having no
hope but from the mercy of my kind ruler. I have offended, I know; but
I should commit a worse offence--an offence against my own conscience
and heart, if I explained the cause of my absence.”

Governor Winthrop was not accustomed to have his inquisitorial rights
resisted by those of his own household, and he was certainly more
struck than pleased by Hope’s moral courage.

Mrs. Grafton half muttered, half spoke, what she meant to be an
apology for her favourite. “It was not everybody,” she said, “that
thought as the governor did about Saturday night.”

“True, true,” said Cradock, eagerly, “it is a doubtful point with
divines and gifted men.”

“Master Cradock,” said the governor, “thou art too apt to measure thy
orthodoxy by thy charity. Saturday night is allowed to be, and
manifestly is, holy time; and therefore to be applied, exclusively, to
acts of mercy and devotion.” Then, turning to the impatient culprit,
he added, “I am bound to say to thee, Hope Leslie, that thou dost take
liberties unsuitable to thy youth, and in violation of that deference
due to the rule and observances of my household, and discreditable to
him who hath been intrusted with thy nurture and admonition.”

Hope received the first part of this reproof with her eyes riveted to
the floor, and with a passiveness {256} that had the semblance of
penitence; but at the implied reproach of her guardian, for whom she
had an affection that had the purity of filial and the enthusiasm of
voluntary love, she raised her eyes; their mild lustre, for an
instant, gave place to a flash of indignation direct from her heart.
Her glance met Everell’s; he stood in a recess of the window, leaning
his head against the casement, looking intently on her. “He too
suspects me of evil,” she thought; and she could scarcely command her
voice to say, as she turned and put her hand in the elder Fletcher’s,
“I have done nothing to dishonour you. _You_ believe me--do you not?”

“Yes, yes, my dear child, I must believe you, for you never deceived
me: but be not so impatient of reproof.”

“I am not impatient for myself,” she said; “I care not how sternly,
how harshly I am judged; but I see not why my fault, even if I had
committed one, should cast a shadow upon you.”

Madam Winthrop now interposed her good offices to calm the troubled
waters. “There is no shadow anywhere, Miss Leslie, if there is
sunshine in the conscience; and I can answer for the governor, that he
will overlook the disturbance of this evening, provided you are
discreet in future. But we are wrong to keep you so long in your wet
garments. Robin,” she said, turning to a servant, “light a little fire
in the young ladies’ room, and tell Jennet to warm Miss Leslie’s
bed--let her strew a little sugar in the pan--an excellent thing, Mrs.
Grafton, to take soreness out of the bones.”

{257}

Madam Winthrop was solicitous to remove the impression from her guests
that Miss Leslie was treated with undue strictness. Hope thanked her
for her kindness; and protesting that she had no need of fire or
warming-pan, she hastily bade good-night, and retired to her own
apartment.

Miss Downing lingered a moment after her, and ventured to say, in a
low, timid tone, “that she trusted her uncle Winthrop would harbour no
displeasure against her friend; she was sure that she had been on some
errand of kindness; for, though she might sometimes indulge in a
blamable freedom of speech, she had ever observed her to be strict in
all duties and offices of mercy.”

“You are right--right--marvellously right, Miss Downing,” cried
Cradock, exultingly rubbing his hands; and then added, in a lower
tone, “a discerning young woman, Miss Esther.”

“Humph!” said Mrs. Grafton, “I don’t see anything so _marvellously_
right in what Miss Esther says; it’s what everybody knows who knows
Hope, that she never did a wrong thing.”

Governor Winthrop suppressed a smile, and said to the good lady, “We
should take heed, my worthy friend, not to lay too much stress on
doing or not doing; not to rest unduly on duties and performances, for
they be unsound ground.”

Mrs. Grafton might have thought, if she had enough such ground to
stand on, it were terra firma to her; but, for once, she had the
discretion of silence.

{258}

Neither Everell nor his father spoke, probably because they felt more
than all the rest; and Madam Winthrop, feeling the awkwardness of the
scene, mentioned the hour, and proposed a general dispersion.

Everell followed Miss Downing to the staircase. “One word, Miss
Downing,” he said. Esther turned her face towards him--her pale face,
for that instant illuminated. “Did you,” he asked, “in your apology
for your friend, speak from knowledge or from generous faith?”

“From faith,” she replied, “but not generous faith, for it was founded
on experience.”

Everell turned, disappointed, away. “Faith,” he thought, “there might
be without sight, but faith against sight, never.” “Trifles light as
air” are proverbially momentous matters to lovers. Everell had too
noble a mind to indulge in that fretful jealousy which is far more the
result of an egregious self-love than love of another. But he had
cherished for Hope a consecrating sentiment; he had invested her with
a sacredness which the most refined, the purest, and most elevated
love throws around the object of its devotion.

 “On magic ground that castle stoode,
  And fenced with many a spelle.”

Were these “spelles” to be dissolved by the light of truth? “Why
should one,” thought Everell, “who seemed so pure that she might dwell
in light--so artless, confiding, and fearless--why should she permit
herself to be obscured by mystery? If her {259} meeting with Sir
Philip Gardiner was accidental, why not say so? But what right have I
to scan her conduct--what right to expect an explanation? It is
evident she feels nothing more for me than the familiar affection of
her childhood. How she talked to me this evening of Esther Downing!
‘If she had a brother, she would select her friend from all the world
for his wife’--‘Esther was not precise, she was only discreet’--‘she
was not formal, but timid.’ Perhaps she sees I love her, and thus
delicately tries to give a different bent to my affections; but that
is impossible; every hope, every purpose, has been concentrated in
her. My affections may be blighted, but they cannot be transferred.
Perhaps it is true, as some satirists say, that a woman’s heart is
wayward, fantastic, and capricious. This vagrant knight has scarcely
turned his eyes from Hope since he first saw her, and I know he has
addressed the most presumptuous flattery to her. Perhaps she favours
his pretensions. I shrink even from his gazing upon her, as if there
were something sullying in the glance of his eye; and yet she violates
the customs of the country, she braves severe displeasure, to walk
alone with him; with him she is insensible to a gathering storm. He is
incapable of loving her; he is intoxicated with her beauty; he seeks
her fortune. Her fortune! I had forgotten that my father made that a
bar between us. Fortune! I never thought of anything so mean as wealth
in connexion with her. I would as soon barter my soul as seek any
woman for fortune; and Hope Leslie! oh, I should {260} as soon think
of the dowry of a celestial spirit, as of your being enriched by the
trappings of fortune.”

These disjointed thoughts, and many others that would naturally spring
up in the mind of a young lover, indicated the ardour, the enthusiasm,
the disinterestedness of Everell’s passion, and the restless and
fearful state into which he had been plunged by the events of the
evening.

While he was pursuing this train of fancies, in which some sweetness
mingled with the bitter, Esther had followed Hope to her apartment,
and, having shut the door, turned on her friend a look of speaking
inquiry and expectation, to which Hope did not respond, but continued,
in a hurried manner, to disrobe herself, throwing her drenched shawl
on one side, and her wet dress on the other.

Esther took a silver whistle from the toilet, and was opening the door
to summon Jennet with its shrill call, when Hope, observing her
intention, cried out, “If you love me, Esther, don’t call Jennet
to-night; I wish, at least, to be spared her croaking.”

“As you please,” replied Esther, quietly reclosing the door; “I
thought Jennet had best come and take care of your apparel, as, if
your mind was not otherwise occupied, you would not choose to leave it
in such disorder.” While Esther spoke she stood by the toilet,
smoothing her kerchief and restoring it to the laundress’ folds.

“Yes,” said Hope, “I prefer any disorder to the din of Jennet’s
tongue. I cannot, Esther--I cannot always be precise.”

{261}

“Precision, I know, is not interesting,” said Esther, with a slight
tremulousness of voice; “but if you had a little more of it, Hope, it
would save yourself and your friends a vast deal of trouble.”

“Now do not you reproach me, Esther! that is the drop too much!” said
Hope, turning her face to the pillow to hide the tears that gushed
from her eyes: “I know I am vexed and cross; but I did not mean that
you were too precise--I do not know what I meant. I feel oppressed;
and I want sympathy, and not reproof.”

“Unburden your heart, then, to me,” said Esther, kneeling by the
bedside, and throwing her arm over Hope: “most gladly would I pay back
the debt of sympathy I owe you.”

“And never, dear Esther, did a poor creditor receive a debt more
joyfully than I should this. But others are concerned in my secret: a
sacred promise requires me to preserve it inviolate. The governor, and
your aunt, and all of them might have known--and most of all,
Everell--” she continued, raising herself on her elbow--“they might
have known that I should not have been roaming about such a pitiless
night as this without good reason; and Everell, I am sure, knows that
I despise the silliness of making a secret out of nothing. I don’t
care so much for the rest; but it was very, very unkind of Everell! I
am sure my heart has been always open as the day to him.”

Perhaps Miss Downing was not quite pleased with Hope’s discriminating
between the censure of Everell {262} and the rest of the family; for
she said, with more even than her ordinary gravity, “There is but one
thing, Hope, that ought to make you independent of the opinion of any
of your friends.”

“And what is that?”

“The acquittal of your conscience.”

“My conscience! Oh, my dear Esther, no mother Lois nor grandmother
Eunice ever had a more quiet conscience than I have at this moment;
and I really wish that my tutors, governors--good friends all--would
not think it necessary to keep quite so strict a guard over me.”

“Hope Leslie,” said Esther, “you do allow yourself too much liberty of
thought and word: you certainly know that we owe implicit deference to
our elders and superiors; we ought to be guided by their advice, and
governed by their authority.”

“Esther, you are a born preacher,” exclaimed Hope, with a sort of half
sigh, half groan of impatience. “Nay, my dear friend, don’t look so
horridly solemn: I am sure, if I have wounded your feelings, I deserve
to be preached to all the rest of my life. But, really, I do not
entirely agree with you about advice and authority. As to advice, it
needs to be very carefully administered to do any good, else it’s like
an injudicious patch, which, you know, only makes the rent worse; and
as to authority, I would not be a machine to be moved at the pleasure
of anybody that happened to be a little older than myself. I am
perfectly willing to submit to Mr. Fletcher, for he never--” and she
smiled at her {263} own sophistry--“he never requires submission. Now,
Esther, don’t look at me so, as if I was little better than one of the
wicked. Come, kiss me--good-night; and when you say your prayers,
Esther, remember me, for I need them more than you think.”

This last request was made in a plaintive tone, and with unaffected
seriousness, and Esther turned away to perform the duty, with a deep
feeling of its necessity; for Hope, conscious of her integrity, had
perhaps been too impatient of rebuke; and if, to a less strict judge
than Esther, she seems to have betrayed a little of the spoiled child,
to her she appeared to be very far from that gracious state wherein
every word is weighed before it is uttered, and every action measured
before it is performed.

 END OF VOL. I.




 NOTES.

(1.) “She understands and speaks English perfectly well.”--Page 24,
25.

We would take the liberty to refer those who may think we have here
violated probability, to Winthrop, who speaks of a Pequod maiden who
attended Miantunnomoh as interpreter, and “spoke English perfectly.”

(2.) “Monoca, the mother of these children, was noted for the singular
dignity and modesty of her demeanour.”--Page 25.

For those who disbelieve the existence in savage life of the virtues
which we have ascribed to this Indian woman, we quote our authority:

“Among the Pequod captives were the wife and children of Mononotto.
She was particularly noticed by the English for her great modesty,
humanity, and good sense. She made it as her only request that she
might not be injured either as to her offspring or personal honour. As
a requital for her kindness to the captivated maids, her life and the
lives of her children were not only spared, but they were particularly
recommended to the care of Governor Winthrop. He gave charge for their
protection and kind treatment.”--_Trumbull’s Hist. of Connecticut_.
See also _Hubbard’s Indian Wars_, p. 47.

(3.) “They told him they would spare his life if he would guide them
to our strongholds; he refused.”--Page 71.

“But, finding that the sachems, whom they had spared, would give them
no information, they beheaded them on their march, at a place called
Mekunkatuck, since Guilford.”--_Ibid_.

(4.) “You English tell us, Everell, that the book of your law is
better than that written on our hearts,” &c.--Pages 71, 72.

The language of the Indians, as reported by Heckewelder, verifies so
strongly the sentiment in our text, and is so powerful an admonition
to Christians, that we here quote it for those who may not have met
with the interesting work of this excellent Moravian missionary. “And
yet,” say those injured people, “these white men would always be
telling us of their great Book which God had given to them. They would
persuade us that every man was good who believed in what the book
said, and every man was bad who did not believe in it. They told us a
great many things which they said were written in the good Book, and
wanted us to believe it all. We would probably have done so if we had
seen them practise what they pretended to believe, and act according
to the _good words_ which they told us. But no! while they held their
big book in one hand, in the other they had murderous weapons, guns
and swords, wherewith to kill us poor Indians. Ah! and they did so
too!”

(5.) “The Indians remained standing,” &c.--Page 214.

The characteristic conduct of the Narragansett chief is transferred to
our pages from Winthrop, who thus describes it: “When we should go to
dinner, there was a table provided for the Indians to dine by
themselves, and Miantunnomoh was left to sit with them. This he was
discontented at, and would eat nothing till the governor sent him meat
from his table. So at night, and all the time he stayed, he sat at the
lower end of the magistrate’s table.”

(6.) “She entered the enclosure, now the churchyard of the stone
chapel.”--Page 249.

This was the first burial-place in Boston; and as early as the year
1630, consecrated by the interment of Mr. Johnson, who died of grief
for the loss of his wife, the Lady Arbella, “_the pride of the
colony_.” “He was,” says Winthrop, “a holy man and wise, and died in
sweet peace.” And another contemporary historian says, that he was so
beloved that many persons requested their bodies might be interred
near his.




 ENDNOTES.

[1] See note at the end of this volume.

[2] _wekolis_] Whippoorwill.

[3] _has been the custom… to worship on high places_]

                           “About the cliffs
 Lay garlands, ears of maize, and skins of wolf,
 And shaggy bear, the offerings of the tribe
 Here made to the Great Spirit; for they deemed,
 Like worshippers of the olden time, that God
 Doth walk on the high places, and affect
 The earth--o’erlooking mountains.”--Bryant.

[4] _help_] Mr. Mathews (nice observer as he is), as well as many
other foreigners, mistakes in adding an _s_ to this word for the
plural.




 TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.

The George Routledge & Co. (London, 1850) and White, Gallaher, and
White (New York, 1827) editions were consulted for some of the changes
listed below.

Archaic/obsolete spellings (survivers, visiters, suiter, restiffness,
etc.) have been preserved.

Page numbers are given in {curly brackets}.

Alterations to the text:

Add ToC.

Convert footnotes to endnotes.

Originally located at the end of the second volume, the notes to this
volume have been moved here and placed under _NOTES_.

Punctuation: fix some missing periods and commas, and quotation mark
pairings/nestings.

[Title Page]

Add author’s name and move epigraph to a following page.

[Chapter III]

Change “plants that have sprung up in close _neigbourhood_” to
_neighbourhood_.

“Providence having opened a wide door _therefor_ in the generous” to
_therefore_.

[Chapter IX]

“a _deep ponited_ rich lace ruff embellished his neck” to
_deep-pointed_.

 [End of text]






*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76028 ***