WHEN A WITCH IS YOUNG

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WHEN A WITCH

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❦ IS YOUNG ❦

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A Historical Novel

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B y 4 — 1 9 — 6 9

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R. F. FENNO & COMPANY

9 and 11 East 16th Street, New York

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1901

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1901

By R. F. FENNO & COMPANY

In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington

CONTENTS.

PART I.

PART II.

PART III.

WHEN A WITCH IS YOUNG.

PART I.

CHAPTER I.
LE ROI EST MORT.

The first, the last—the only King the Americans ever had, was dead. It was the 13th day of August, in the year 1676. The human emotions of the Puritan people of Massachusetts tugged at the shackles of a long repression and broke them asunder, in the seemly town of Plymouth. King Philip, the mighty Sachem of the Wampanoag Indians, had been slain. His warriors were scattered and slaughtered. His war was ended.

Through the streets of Plymouth poured a vast throng of people. Men, women and children, they ran and walked, surrounding a buff-colored army that filled the thoroughfares like a turgid flood. This was the regiment which Captain Benjamin Church had led to the final camp of King Philip, in the swamps at Mt. Hope and Pocasset, where the last scene in the sanguinary drama had been enacted.

Here was a troop of sixty horse, with officers. They were well mounted, caparisoned with glittering back, breast and headpiece, and armed with clanking sword, shouldered carbine, and great pistols, that flopped at the waist. Behind them were foot-soldiers, brown Puritans—stern, mirth-denying, lusty at fighting. Some of these bore no weapon other than a pike. Another frequently had upon him sword, pistol and carbine. Above the heads of these men on foot waved a thin forest of pike-staves, on the tips of which bright steel threw back the dazzling rays of the sun. There was clatter of scabbards on the pavement, thud and thud of hoofs and feet in the roadway, and above all, shouts of men and gabble of children.

There were hordes on either side of this human flood, pushing and crowding to gain the front of the column, while a similar aggregation hung back upon the flank of the regiment, hooting, craning necks and racing to keep pace with the steady, long strides of the soldiers. This division of interest was caused by the two counter attractions of the pageant. Thus at the front, a red Indian was leading the march with a wild, half-dancing step, while he contorted his body weirdly for the purpose of displaying to all beholders the ghastly proof of victory—the head of the great King Philip. This Indian ally might have stood for the mockery of a drum-major, heading a march of doom.

The spectators, racing, crowding, following, took a crazed delight in beholding this gory head. Love, anger, joy, the daily emotions of man, were habitually so repressed by these serious people that now it seemed as if they reveled as in an orgie of shuddering and gasping, to give vent to their pent-up natures. They laughed, they skipped on nimble feet, they sang praises. The young men and women snatched the occasion, with its looseness of deportment, to look unbridled feelings into one another’s eyes.

The other attraction, in the rear, was a captive, a mere boy, as white as any in the multitude, and paler than the palest. Tall and lithe as he was, his age was scarcely a whit above fourteen. He was dressed as an Indian; he bore himself like a sullen brave. At his side was old Annawon, the last of King Philip’s councilors, who, having surrendered under a promise of “good quarter” was even now being led to his execution.

The interest centered, however, in the boy. Through the stoicism which he labored to hold as a mask upon his face, the signs of anguish played like an undercurrent. In all the throng he had but a single friend, the Red-man with whom he was marching. He looked about at the pitiless embankment of faces. Near him a score of nimble boys were running, a frantic desire to strike him depicted in their eyes. Further away a tall man was moving, perforce, with the tide. On his shoulder he bore a little Puritan maiden, who might have been crushed had he placed her on her feet. She was looking at the boy-captive with eyes that seemed a deeper brown for their very compassion. She clung to the man who held her, with a tense little fist. Her other tiny hand was pressed upon her cheek till all about each small finger was white, in the bonny apple-blush of her color. It seemed as if she must cry out to the young prisoner, in sympathy.

While the boy was gazing back his answer to the child—a quiver in consequence almost loosening his lip—an urchin near him abruptly cast a stone that struck him smartly in the side. With a panther-like motion the captive launched himself upon his assailant and bore him to earth in a second. The old councillor, Annawon, spoke some soft, quick word at which the lad in buckskin immediately abandoned his overthrown antagonist and regained his place in the march. His eyes blinked swiftly, but in vain, for tears, of anger and pain, forced their way between his lids and so to his cheeks, when he dashed them swiftly away on his sleeve.

The foot-soldiers scurried forward and closed in about their dangerous charge. The bawling youths of Plymouth seemed to multiply by magic. But their opportunities for committing further mischief were presently destroyed. The pageant was passing Plymouth jail. An officer hustled ten of his men about the boy-prisoner and wedged them through the press of people toward this place of gloom. Above the clamor then rose a voice, and in the Indian tongue the boy-captive heard the words:

“Farewell, Little-Standing-Panther.”

It was old Annawon, who had divined that there would be no other parting with the lad, who was the only creature which the war had left on earth for him to love.

The boy cried: “Farewell,” and the passage through the people closed behind him.

Those who looked beheld old Annawon smile faintly and sadly. It was the only expression which had played across his face since his surrender, and there was never another.

Through nearly every street the glad procession wound. At length, the head of the butchered King Philip was thrust upon an iron stake, which was planted deeply in the ground. Governor Winslow then requested that the people disperse to their several homes.

The night at length came down—night the beneficent, that cloaks the tokens of men’s barbarisms. Then the moon arose, casting a pale, cold light, lest remorse lose her way. What a passionless calm settled upon the sleeping village!

At last, with a tread as silent as that of death itself, an active figure crept from shadow to shadow, in the streets which the moon had silver-plated. The lone human being came to the square wherein was planted the stake with the moon-softened head upon it. The visitor was the white boy-captive, dressed in his Indian toggery. He had escaped from the jail.

In the moonlight he came forward slowly. He halted and extended his arms toward the stake with its motionless burden. He approached in reverence, murmuring brokenly in the Indian tongue:

“Metacomet—Metacomet,——my foster-father,——I have come.”

He knelt upon the ground and clasping the cold iron stake in his arms, he sobbed and sobbed, as if his heart would break.

CHAPTER II.
A FRIENDSHIP OF CHANCE.

Through the gray mist of Plymouth’s dawn there came a sound of footsteps, and then a murmur of melodious humming, somewhat controlled and yet too sturdy and joyous to be readily accounted for in the strict Puritan village. Presently, looming out of the uncertain light, appeared the roughly-hewn figure of a young man of five and twenty. He was singing to himself, as he hastened with big strides through the deserted streets.

On the point of passing the place where the gibbeted head of King Philip made a rude exclamation point in the calm of gray Plymouth, the early riser suddenly noted the curled-up form of a human being on the ground, his arm loosely bent about the iron stake, his head resting loosely against it, his eyes fast closed in the sleep of exhaustion. The man started slightly, halted and ceased his singing.

He blinked his eyes for a moment, shifted his feet uneasily and rubbed stoutly at his jaw, as he gazed in perplexity at the picture before him. He then tip-toed as if to go on, quietly, about his own business. He glanced at the head, then back to the boy, from whose lips, in his sleep, a little moan escaped. The visitor noted the traces where tears had channeled down the lad’s pale cheeks. There was something unescapable in the attitude of the bare golden head against the stake. The man stopped and laid his big hand gently on the half-curled locks.

Instantly the boy awoke, leaped to his feet and fell down again, from sheer stiffness, staring at the man with eyes somewhat wild. He arose again at once, more steadily, overcoming the cramps in his muscles doggedly, never ceasing for a second to watch the man who had waked him.

“I give you good morrow,” said the man. “It seems to me you have need of a friend, since you have clearly lost one that you much esteemed.”

There was persuasion and honesty in the stranger’s warm-blue eyes, good nature in his broad, smooth face and a large capacity for affection denoted in his somewhat sensuous mouth. Such a look of friendship and utter sincerity as he bestowed on the startled and defiant boy before him could not have been easily counterfeited. The youthful know sincerity by intuition.

“Who are you?” said the boy, his voice hoarse and weakened. “What would anybody want with me?”

“My name is William Phipps,” said the stranger, simply. “I am a ship-builder of Boston. If you have no better friend, perhaps I would do till you can find one. I am on my way to Boston now. If you need a friend and would like to leave Plymouth, you may come with me, unless you feel you cannot trust any one about this village.” He paused a moment and then added, “I think you must be the boy I heard of, Adam Rust, brought in with the captured Indians.”

“My name is Adam Rust,” the boy admitted. “I have no friends left. If you have been helping to kill the Wampanoags I would rather not try to be your friend. But I know I would like you and I should be glad to go to Boston, or any place away from here.” In the daylight he could not bear to look up at the head above him.

“I have been too busy to fight,” said William Phipps, employing the same excuse he had used for friends with recruiting proclivities. “And I have been too happy,” he added, as if involuntarily. “So, you see, there is no reason why I should not be your friend. Have you had any breakfast?” He put out his hand to shake.

“No,” said Adam. He lost his hand in the big fist which Phipps presented, and restrained himself from crying by making a mighty effort. He had gone without eating for two days, but he said nothing about it.

“Then,” said Phipps heartily, “the sooner we start the better. We can get something hot on the brig.”

He began his long striding again. Adam hesitated a moment. He looked up at the features above him, his heart gushing full of emotion.

Some inarticulate farewell, in the Indian tongue, he breathed through his quivering lips. His eyes grew dimmed. He fancied he saw a smile of farewell and of encouragement play intangibly on those still, saddened lineaments, and so he held forth his arms for a second and then turned away to join his new-found protector.

William Phipps, having thought the boy to be following more closely than he was, stopped to let him catch up. Thus he noted the look of anguish with which the lad was leaving that grim remnant of King Philip behind. Phipps was one of Nature’s “motherly men”—hardly ever more numerous than rocs’ eggs on the earth. He felt his heart go forth to Adam Rust. Therefore it was that he looked down in the boy’s face, time after time, as they walked along together. Thus they came to the water-front and wharves, at the end of one of which the brig “Captain Spencer” was swinging.

“This ship belongs to me and I made her,” said Phipps, with candid pride in his achievement. “You shall see that she sails right merrily.”

They went aboard. A few sailors scrubbing down the deck, barefooted and with sleeves at elbow, now abandoned their task temporarily, at the command of the mate, who had seen his captain coming, to hoist sail and let go the hawsers. The chuckle in the blocks, as the sailors heaved and hauled at the ropes, gave Adam Rust a pleasure he had never before experienced.

Breakfast being not yet prepared for service, Phipps conducted his foundling about the craft for a look at her beauties. When Adam had putted the muzzle of the brig’s gun and felt the weight of a naked sword in his fist, in the armory, the buoyancy of his youth put new color in his cheeks and a sparkle in his eyes. He was a bright-natural, companionable lad, who grew friendly and smiled his way into one’s affections rapidly, but naturally. When he and Phipps had come up again to the deck, after breakfast, they felt as if they had always been friends.

The brig was under way. Shorewards the gray old Atlantic was wrinkled under the fretful annoyance of a brisk, salty breeze. The ship was slipping prettily up the coast, with stately courtesies to the stern rocks that stood like guardians to the land.

“I think we shall find you were born for a sailor, Adam,” said the master of the craft. “I can give you my word it is more joy and life to sail a ship than to make one. And some day——” but he halted. The modest boasts, with which he warmed the heart of his well-beloved wife, were a bit too sacred for repetition, even to a boy so winning. “But,” he concluded, “perhaps you would like to tell me something of yourself.”

Thus encouraged Adam related his story. He was the son of John Rust, a chivalrous gentleman, an affectionate husband and a serious man, with a light heart and a ready wit. John Rust had been the friend of the Indians and the mediator between them and the whites until the sheer perfidy of the Puritans had rendered him hopeless of retaining the confidence of the Red men, when he had abandoned the office. Adam’s mother had been dead for something more than four years. Afflicted by his sense of loss, John Rust had become a strange man, a restless soul hopelessly searching for that other self, as knights of old once sought the holy grail.

He went forth alone into the trackless wilderness that led endlessly into the west. Although the father and son had been knit together in their affections by long talks, long ranges together in the forests and by the lessons which the man had imparted, yet when John Rust had gone on his unearthly quest, he could not bear the thought of taking young Adam with him into the wilds.

He had therefore left the boy with his friends, the lad’s natural guardians, the honorable nation of Wampanoags. “Keep him here, teach him of your wisdom, make him one of your young warriors,” he had said when he went, “so that when I return I may know him for his worth.”

King Philip, the mighty Sachem of the tribe, had thereafter been as a foster-father to the boy. For more than two years the Red-man had believed John Rust to have found his final lodge, and this was the truth. And perhaps he had also found his holy grail. He perished alone in the trackless forest. Adam had learned his wood-lore of his red brothers. He was stout, lithe, wiry and nimble. He rode a horse like the torso of a centaur. He was a bit of a boaster, in a frank and healthy way.

King Philip’s war, ascribed, as to causes, to “the passion of the English for territory; their confidence that God had opened up America for their exclusive occupancy; their contempt for the Indians and their utter disregard for their rights,” had come inexorably upon the Wampanoags. In its vortex of action, movement, success and failure at last for the Indians, Adam Rust had been whirled along with Metacomet. He had never been permitted by King Philip to fight against his “white brothers,” but he had assisted to plan for the safety of the old men, women and children, in procuring game and in constructing shelters. He had learned to love these silently suffering people with all his heart. The fights, the hardships, the doom, coming inevitably upon the hopeless Wampanoags, had made the boy a man, in some of the innermost recesses of a heart’s suffering. He had seen the last sad remnants of the Wampanoags, the Pocassets and the Narragansetts scatter, to perish in the dismal swamps. He had witnessed the death of King Philip, brought upon him by a treacherous fellow Red-man. And then he had marched in that grim procession.

Adam made no attempt to convey an idea of the magnitude of his loss. It would not have been possible. There is something in human nature which can never be convinced that death has utterly stilled a beloved voice and quenched the fire of the soul showing through a pair of eyes endeared by companionship. This in Adam made him feel, even as he told his tale to William Phipps, that he was somehow deserting his faithful friends.

Bareheaded on the sun-lit deck as he told his story, lithe in his gestures, splendidly scornful when he imitated the great chieftains of the tribes, and then like a young Viking as at last he finished his narrative and looked far and wide on the sparkling sea, in joyousness at the newer chapter which seemed to open to the very horizons themselves before him, Adam awakened the lusty youth and daring in William Phipps and the dreams of a world’s career always present in his brain.

The man’s eyes sparkled, as he spun the wheel that guided the brig, bounding beneath their feet. A restlessness seized upon the spirit in his breast.

“Adam,” he said, “do you like this ship?”

“Yes!—oh, it makes me feel like shouting!” the boy exclaimed. “I wish I could straddle it, like a horse, and make it go faster and wilder, ’way off there—and everywhere! Oh, don’t it make you breathe!”

“Then,” said Phipps, repressing his own love of such a madness as Adam had voiced, “let us go for a long sail together. I have long had in mind a voyage for trading to Hispaniola. If you would like to go with me, I will get the brig ready in a week.”

For his answer young Adam leaped as if he would spur the ship in the ribs and ride her to the end of the earth forthwith.

CHAPTER III.
THE GERM OF A PASSION.

A bonnie little Puritan maid, Mistress Garde Merrill, stood in the open doorway at her home, fervently hugging her kitten. The sunlight seemed almost like beaten gold, so tangibly did it lay upon the house, the vines that climbed the wall, and the garden full of old-fashioned flowers.

A few leaves, which had escaped from the trees, in a longing to extend their field of romping, were being whirled about in a brisk zephyr that spun in a corner. A sense of warmth and fragrance made all the world seem wantoning in its own loveliness.

Little Garde, watching the frolic of the leaves, and thinking them pretty elves and fairies, dancing, presently looked up into the solemn visage of a passing citizen, who had paused at the gate.

“Mistress Merrill,” he said, gravely, after a moment’s inspection of the bright, enchanting little face, “your eyes have not the Puritan spirit of meekness.” Thereupon he departed on his way, sadly shaking his head.

Garde’s eyes, in all truth, were dancing right joyously; and dancing was not accounted a Puritan devotion. Such brown, light-ensnaring eyes could not, however, constrain themselves to melancholy. No more could the apple-red of her smooth, round cheeks retreat from the ardor of the sun. As for her hair, like strands on strands of spun mahogany, no power on earth could have disentangled its nets wherein the rays of golden light had meshed and intermeshed themselves. In her brightness of color, with her black and white kitten on her arm, the child was a dainty little human jewel.

She was watching a bee and a butterfly when a shadow fell again into the yard, among the flowers, at the entrance. Garde felt her attention drawn and centered at once. She found herself looking not so much at a bareheaded boy, as fairly into the depths of his very blue and steadfast eyes.

The visitor stood there with his hands clasping two of the pickets of which the gate was fashioned. He had seen everything in the garden at one glance, but he was looking at Garde. His eyes began laughingly, then seriously, but always frankly, to ask a favor.

“I prithee come in,” said Garde, as one a little struck with wonder.

The boy came in. Garde met him in the path and gave him her kitten. He took it, apparently because she gave it, and not because he was inordinately fond of cats. It seemed to Garde that she knew this boy, and yet he had on a suit that suggested a young sailor, and she had never made the acquaintance of any sailors whatsoever. If he would only look elsewhere than at her face, she thought, perhaps she could remember.

“See them,” she said, and she pointed to where the leaves were once more capering in the corner.

The boy looked, but his gaze would swing back to its North, which it found in two brown eyes.

“I saw you that day in Plymouth,” he said. “And I got out of their old jail, and I didn’t see anybody else that looked kind or nice among all those people.”

“Oh!” said Garde, suddenly remembering everything, “oh, you were—that boy marching with the old Indian. I was so sorry. And I am so glad that you got away. I am real glad you came to see me. Grandfather and I were down there for a visit—so I saw you. Oh dear me!” She looked at her young visitor with eyes open wide by amazement. It seemed almost too much to believe that the very boy she had seen and so pitied and liked, in that terrible procession at Plymouth, should actually be standing here before her in her grandfather’s garden! “Oh dear me!” she presently said again.

“I hate Plymouth!” said the boy, “but I like Boston.”

“I am so glad,” said Garde. “Will you tell me your name? Mine is Garde Merrill.”

The boy said: “My name is Adam Rust.”

“I was named for all my aunts,” the maid imparted, as if eager to set a troublesome matter straight at once, “Gertrude, Abigail, Rosella, Dorothy and Elizabeth. The first letters of their names spell G-A-R-D-E, Garde.”

Her visitor was rendered speechless for a moment. “Metacomet and all the Indians used to call me Little-Standing-Panther,” he then said, boyishly, not to be outdone in the matter of names.

“Metacomet—King Philip? Oh, then you are the boy that used to live with the Indians, and that was how they got you!” gasped the little maid. “Grandfather told auntie all about it. Oh, I wish I could live with the Indians! I am very, very sorry they got you! But I am glad you came to see me.”

Adam flushed with innocent and modest pride, thus to impress his small admirer, who was named so formidably. He thought that nothing so pleasant had ever happened in all his life.

“It is too sad to live with Indians,” he answered. A mist seemed to obscure the light in his eyes and to cast a shadow between them and the sweet face at which he was looking with frank admiration. The cloud passed, however, as clouds will in the summer, and his gaze was again one of illuminated smiles. “I am a sailor now,” he said, with a little boast in his voice. “To-morrow morning we are going to start for Hispaniola.”

“Oh dear me!” said Garde, in sheer despair of an adequate expression of her many emotions. Then she added contritely: “I mustn’t say ‘Oh dear me!’ but—oh dear—I wish I might.”

“I shan’t mind,” said Adam.

“I wish I could go to Hispaniola, too,” said Garde, honestly. “I hate to be kept here as quiet as a clock that doesn’t go. I suppose you couldn’t take me? Let’s sit down with the kitten and think it over together.”

“I don’t think we could take any girls,” said Adam, seating himself at her side on the porch, “but I could bring you back something when I come.”

“Oh, let’s talk all about what we would rather have most,” Garde responded.

So their fingers mingled in the fur of the kitten and they talked of fabulous things with which the West Indies were reported to abound. His golden hair, and her hair so darkly red, made the picture in the sunlight a thing complete in its brightness and beauty. The wind floated a few stray filaments, richly red as mahogany, from the masses on Garde’s pretty brow, across to the ringlets on Adam’s temple. To and fro, over these delicate copper wires, stretched for its purpose, the sweet love that comes first to a lad and a maid, danced with electrical activity.

“If you are going to-morrow,” said Garde, “you must see all the flowers and everything now.” She therefore took him by the hand and led him about the garden, first she, then he, and then she once more carrying the kitten.

They were still in the midst of their explorations of the garden, which required that each part should be visited several times, when the gate opened and in walked Garde’s tall, stern-looking grandfather.

David Donner rubbed his eyes in amazement, hardly believing that his senses could actually be recording a picture of his granddaughter, hand in hand with some utter stranger of a boy, in his own precincts. He came quickly toward the pair, making a sound that came within an ell of being a shout.

Garde looked up in sudden affright. Adam regarded the visitor calmly and without emotion. Having first dropped the young sailor’s hand, Garde now resolutely screwed her little warm fingers back into the boy’s fist.

“Grandfather,” she said boldly, “I shall sail to-morrow for Hispaniola.”

David Donner, at this, was so suddenly filled with steam pressure, which he felt constrained to repress, that his eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.

“Go away, boy,” he said to Adam. “Mistress Merrill, your conduct is quite uncalled for.”

Having divined that his sister had deserted her post and gone, as was her wont, to the nearest neighbor’s, for a snack of gossip, he glared at Adam, swooped down upon Garde and caught her up in his arms abruptly, kitten and all.

Her hold on Adam’s hand being rudely wrenched asunder, Garde felt her heart break incontinently. She began to weep without restraint, in fact, furiously. She also kicked, and was also deporting herself when the door was slammed behind the forms of herself, her kitten and her grandfather, a moment later.

Adam looked once where she had gone. His face had assumed a stolidity which he was far from feeling. He walked to the gate and went away, without once turning to look back at the house.

Mistress Garde, confronted by David Donner at close quarters, soon regained her maidenly composure and wept surreptitiously on the stomach of the kitten. At length she looked up in defiance at the silent old man.

“I have changed the name of my kitten,” she said. “His name is Little-Standing-Panther!”

Her grandfather, to whom this outbreak seemed something of an indication of mental disorder, on her part, stared at the child dumbly. Not without some justification for her deductions, Garde thought him quelled. In a spirit of reckless defiance, and likewise to give some vent to her feelings, she suddenly threw her arms about the bedewed kitten, on its pillow, pressed her face against its fur and said to it, fervently:

“Little-Standing-Panther, I love you, and love you and love you!”

Grandfather Donner looked up in alarm. “Tut, tut, my child,” said he, “love is a passion.”

PART II.

CHAPTER I.
A ROVER AND HIS RETINUE.

His only gold was in his hair;

He had no silver hoard;

But steel he had, enow to spare—

In his thews and in his sword!

Toward the close of a glorious day in September, 1683, William Phipps beheld a smart brig nose her way up the harbor of Boston, and drop in her anchor in the field of water wherein his ship-yard thrust its toes. A small boat then presently put forth and made straight for the ship-yard landing, where three men calmly alighted, throwing ashore a small heap of shabby-genteel-looking baggage.

Somewhat annoyed, thus to have his precincts employed by any Tom, Dick and Harry of chance, Phipps stepped from between the ribs of a ship’s skeleton, which was being daily articulated, and strode toward the intruders. Then a rumble, which ought to have been a shout, broke from his lips, about the same second that a roar of joy appeared to leap out of the foremost of the strangers, who had landed and who were coming boldly forward.

William Phipps and the leader of the invading trio then rushed hotly together and collided, giving each other a bear-like hug from which the ship-builder presently extricated himself at a thought of how he might be shocking all or any good Puritans who might chance to be witnessing the scene.

“Well, shatter my hilt! and God bless you! if it isn’t your same old beloved self!” said the stranger, heartily.

“My boy! Bless your eyes, Adam, I never thought to see you again!” said bluff William Phipps. “You big young rascal! You full-rigged ship! Where have you come from? What do you mean by making me swear myself into purgatory at your carelessness in getting yourself killed? You twenty-gun frigate—you—you big——”

He left off for very constraint, for his throat blocked up, despite his most heroic efforts. He and Adam Rust began to roar with laughter, the tears in their eyes needing some excuse. Meantime the two companions who had come with the young rover, stood gazing about them, in patience, and likewise looking in wonder on the two men before them.

There was reason enough to look, for Adam and Phipps were a pair to command attention. It seemed as if a founder had used the big ship-builder as a pattern on which to refine his art in casting the younger man. Adam’s back was a trifle narrower; his chest was a bit wider; he was trimmer at the waist, neater at the thigh, longer-armed. His hands were smaller, just as his movements were quicker and lighter.

Although Adam’s hair crowned him with tawny ringlets of gold, while that of Phipps was browner, and though the young fellow wore a small mustache, in contrast, to the smooth-shaved face of his friend, it might yet be said that the two men looked alike. Both were bronzed by weather, both had steadfast eyes with the same frank expression, the same blue tint and the same integrity about them.

In their dress the two men differed. William Phipps, whatsoever he might indulge himself in doing when away on the sea, conformed to the dark-brown simplicity of the Puritans when in Boston. Adam, on the other hand, wore a brown velvet coat which, though at present somewhat faded and moulting, had once been fine feathers in England. His waistcoat had been of royal purple, before its nap fled before the onslaughts of the clothes-brush, while his breeches were of a time-tanned forest green which disappeared into the maw of his wide-topped leather boots. He wore at his hip a veteran blade of steel, in a scabbard as battered as the outer gate of a stronghold. When not in his fighting fist, the hilt of this weapon contented itself with caresses from his softer hand, the left.

The two men having shaken hands for the third time, and having looked each other over from head to foot, and laughed and asked each other a dozen questions, to which neither had returned any answers, Adam suddenly remembered his comrades, waiting in the background. He turned to them now, not without affection.

“Here, Pike and Halberd,” he said, “you must meet my third father, Captain William Phipps, a noble man to whom you will owe allegiance all your miserable lives. William, these are my beef-eaters. Don’t ask me where I got them. They are neither out of jail nor heaven. But they have let me save their lives and feed them and clothe them, and they are valiant, faithful rascals. To know them is to love them, and not to know them is to be snubbed by Satan. They have been my double shadow for a year, sharing my prosperous condition like two peers of the realm.”

The beef-eaters grinned as they exchanged salutations with Phipps. Pike was a short individual, inclined to be fat, even when on the slimmest of rations. The pupils of his eyes were like two suns that had risen above the horizon of his lower lids, only to obscure themselves under the cloud-like lids above. Their expression, especially when he gazed upward into Adam’s face, was something too appealingly saint-like and beseeching for anything mortal to possess. Halberd was a ladder of a man up which everything, save success, had clambered to paint expressions on his face, which was grave and melancholy to the verge of the ludicrous. He had two little bunches of muscle, each of which stuck out like half a walnut, at the corners of his jaws, where they had grown and developed as a result of his clamping his molars together, in a determination to do or to be something which had, apparently, never as yet transpired.

The two looked about as much like beef-eaters as a mouse looks like a man-eater. They were ragged, where not fantastic, in their apparel; they were obviously fitter for a feast than a fight, for the sea had depleted both of their hoardings of vigor and courage.

“Sire,” said Halberd, theatrically, “we have had nothing but good reports of you for a year.” Whether he placed his hand on his heart or his stomach, as he said this, and what he meant to convey as his meaning, could never be wholly clear.

“We shall be honored to fight for you, if need arise,” said Pike, who panted somewhat, on all occasions, “while there is a breath in our bodies.”

“It is a privilege to know you both,” said Phipps, whose gravity was as dry as tinder.

“Any friend of the Sachem’s is a friend of ours,” responded Halberd. He said this grandly and made a profound bow.

“The ‘Sachem’?” repeated Phipps, and he looked at Adam, inquiringly.

Adam had the grace to blush a trifle, thus to be caught in one of the harmless little boasts in which he had indulged himself, over sea. “Just a foolish habit the two have gotten into,” he murmured.

“Ah,” said William Phipps. “Well, then, Sachem, it will soon be growing dark, you had best come home with me to dinner.”

Involuntarily Adam turned about to look at the beef-eaters. Their eyes had abruptly taken on a preternatural brightness at the word dinner.

“I have much to ask you and much to tell you,” Phipps added. “And the goodwife would exact this honor if she knew you were come.”

The invitation did not include Adam’s retinue. He swallowed, as if the delicious odors of one of Goodwife Phipp’s dinners were about to escape him.

“Well,” he said, “the honors are all the other way about, but—the fact is—a previous engagement—I—I have promised a rousing hot din—I have accepted an invitation to dine with the beef-eaters, at the Crow and Arrow.”

The ship-builder knew all about those “rousing hot dinners” of cold eel-pie, potatoes and mustard, for which the Crow and Arrow tavern was not exactly famous. He looked at Adam, to whom as their sachem the beef-eaters appealed with their eyes, like two faithful animals. Adam was regarding the pair silently, a faint smile of cheer and camaraderie on his face.

“But—but my invitation included our friends,” Phipps hastened to say. “Come, come, the tavern can wait till to-morrow. Gentlemen, you will certainly not disappoint me.”

“’Tis well spoken that the tavern can wait,” said Pike.

“To disappoint the friend of the Sachem would be a grievous thing,” said Halberd. “Let the galled tavern sweat with impatience.”

They would all have started away together at once, had not Phipps noted the heap of baggage, left untidily upon his landing when the travelers arrived.

“Well,” said he, “Adam, you know the way to the house, suppose you and your friends carry your worldly goods to the tavern, engage your apartments, and then follow me on. I, in the meantime, can hasten home to apprise the wife that you are coming, with the beef-eaters, and she can therefore make due preparations in honor of the event.”

“This is good sense,” said Adam. “Go along, or we shall be there before you.”

Phipps, with a half dozen backward looks at his guests and their shabby chattels, made his way out of the ship-yard without further delay. Adam and his retinue gripped three or four parcels apiece and started, with clank of sword, and in some discomfort, for the Crow and Arrow.

CHAPTER II.
AN UNGODLY PERFORMANCE.

Adam Rust knew the Crow and Arrow more by that repute which had traveled back to England, through the medium of young stalwarts and sailors, than he did from personal acquaintance with its charms. He had seen the place frequently enough, when first he came to Boston with William Phipps, but the town had expanded much since then and bore an air of unfamiliarity. The young man and his beef-eaters therefore wandered somewhat from their course.

Being overladen and dressed out of the ordinary fashion, the trio soon found themselves attracting attention, particularly from certain of the youths of the quarter and the rough characters incidental to shipping and the neighborhood thereof. Adam was carrying a long box, somewhat decrepit with age. It swung against his legs and struck an occasional post, or a corner, held insecurely as it was by his little finger only, which was passed through a brass handle. In this manner, and with a growing cluster of curious persons beginning to follow on behind, the party were in sight of the tavern at last, when this long box of Adam’s abruptly opened and spilled out a richly darkened old violin.

With a short exclamation of impatience, Adam halted and dropped his other bundles. Over these tall Halberd fell, with a great clatter of weapons, tin box and shaken bones. Adam fended him off from the violin, snatched it up and scrutinized it with the eager concern which a mother might bestow upon a delicate child. He found it uninjured, but, as it might have been smashed, he clung to it fondly, reluctant to place it again in its treacherous case.

Naturally the downfall of Halberd had delighted the gamin and the sailors following. These formed a cluster about the party, and their numbers drew additional spectators rapidly. A number of seafaring men shoved stoutly forward, their eyes glistening at sight of the musical instrument.

“I say, give us something, then, on that there red boy!” demanded one of the men, as healthy a looking rascal as ever drew breath.

“You look a bonny lad, come on—there’s a good un,” said another.

“Rattle her guts,” said a third. “We ain’t heard the like of a fiddle since we came to this town of preachers.”

Adam looked quietly about him. He knew most of the fellows about in the rude circle for rough English rovers who would love him if he played, or knock him and his belongings playfully into the street if he refused. He was not accustomed to churlishness; moreover, he felt particularly in the mood for playing. The ruddy sunset, the warm breath of the passing day, the very taste of American air, seemed lusty and joyous, despite the rigid Puritanical spirit of the mirth-denying people of the colony. He took up the bow, twanged the strings, tightened two that had become laggard, and jumped into the middle of a rollicking composition that seemed to bubble up out of the body of the violin and tumble off into the crowd in a species of mad delight.

Had the instrument been a spirit of wine, richly dark red as old port, and rendered alive by the frolicking bow, it could not have thrown off more merry snatches of melody’s mirth. It chuckled, it caught its breath, like a fat old monk at his laughing, it broke out in guffaws of hilarity, till not a soul in the audience could keep his feet seemly beneath him.

The sailors danced, boldly, though clumsily. Their faces beamed with innocent drunkenness, for drunk they were, with what seemed like the fumes and taste of this wine of sound. They had been denied it so long that it went to their heads at the first draught.

Across the street, issuing quietly and, he hoped, unobserved, from a door that led into the tavern, a Puritan father now appeared, wiping his mouth as a man has no occasion for doing unless he had recently dipped his upper lip into a mug. He suddenly halted, at the sound of music from over the way. He frowned at the now somewhat dense assemblage of boys and citizens surrounding Adam Rust, and worked up a mask of severity on his face from which it had been temporarily absent. He opened his mouth, as if to speak, and then, realizing that he might not be heard at this distance from them, moved a rod toward his fellow-beings and took a stand in the street.

At this moment an ominous snap resounded above both the playing and its accompaniment of scuffling feet and gruff explosions of enjoyment and hearty appreciation. Instantly Adam ceased playing. He had felt a string writhe beneath his fingers. The man in the roadway grasped at the moment instantly, to raise his voice.

“Begone, disperse, you vagabonds!” he said. “What is the meaning of this ungodly performance? Disperse, I say, you are bedeviled by this shameless disciple of Satan!”

Adam, intent on his violin, which he found had not broken but had merely slipped a string, heard this tirade, naturally, as did all the others. A few boys sneaked immediately about the cluster of men and sped away, as if from some terrible wrath to come.

“Who is yon sufferer for melancholy?” said Adam, looking carelessly at the would-be interrupter. Then suddenly a gleam came into his eye, as he recognized in the man one of the harsh hypocrites who had been among the few zealots who had imprisoned him, years before. “Halberd,” he added, “fetch the gentleman forward. Methinks he fain would dance and make merry among us.”

His opening question had been hailed with snorts of amusement; his proposal ignited all the roguishness in the crowd. Halberd, nothing loth to add his quota to the general fun, strode forward at once, way being made by the admiring throng, and he bowed profoundly before the bridling admonisher in the street. Then without warning, he scampered nimbly to the rear of the man of severity, took him by the collar and the slack of his knickerbockers and hustled him precipitately into the gathering.

Adam began to play at once. The spectators gathered about the astonished and indignant person of severity, thirsty for fun.

“You evidently wanted to dance, therefore by all means commence,” said Adam.

“You are a veritable limb of Satan!” said the man. “You shall be reported for this unseemly——”

“Halberd,” interrupted Adam, “the gentleman is as shy and timid as your veriest girl. Could you not persuade him to dance?”

“I was born for persuasion,” said Halberd. Thereupon he drew from his belt a pistol, most formidable, whether loaded or not, and pushed its metal lips against the neck of the hedged-in Puritan, whom he continued to restrain by the collar. “Make merry for this goodly company by doing a few dainty steps,” he requested.

The crowd pushed in closer and roared with delight. Some one among them knocked the reluctant dancer’s knees forward. He almost fell down.

“He’s beginning!” cried Adam, and he went for his fiddle with the bow as if he were fencing with a dozen pirates.

“Dance!” commanded Halberd, “dance!”

Terpsichore’s victim was not a man of sand. Drops of perspiration oozed out on his forehead. A look of abject fear drove the mask of severity from his face. He jumped up and down ridiculously, his knees knocking together for his castanets.

“Faster!” cried Adam, fiddling like a madman.

“Faster!” echoed Halberd, with his pistol-muzzle nosing in the dancer’s ribs.

The man jumped higher, but not faster; he was too weakened by cowardice. The sailors joined in. They could not keep their feet on the ground. The contagion spread. Pike and Halberd joined the hopping. The offending admonisher looked about at them in a frenzy of despair, afraid of who might be witnessing his exhibition. He was a sorry dancer, for he was so eager to please that he flopped his arms deliriously, as if to convince his beholders of his willingness to make himself as entertaining as possible. When he suddenly collapsed and fell down, Adam ceased playing. The crowd settled on the pavement and applauded.

“For shame, good friend,” said Adam, solemnly, “now that I observe your garb, I am shocked and amazed at your conduct. Friends, let us go to the tavern and report this gentleman’s unseemly behavior. In payment for the fiddling, you may fetch my bales of goods and merchandise.” He waved to his shabby baggage and led the way to the Crow and Arrow, which had long before disgorged nearly all of its company, and its landlord, to add to the audience in the street.

Flinging up his only piece of gold, the young rover ordered refreshment for all who crowded into the tavern, and while they were drinking, he dragged the beef-eaters, with all the “bales of merchandise,” away to the meager apartments provided above stairs in the sorry hostelry.

In the darkness of the hall, he ran heavily against some one who was just on the point of quitting a room. The innocent person was bowled endways.

“Confound your impudence!” said the voice of a man. “Why don’t you look where you are going?”

“I couldn’t see for fools in the way,” retorted Adam. “I am no king, requiring you to fall before me.”

“I can’t see your face, but I can see that you are an arrant knave,” said the other hotly. “You never could have had a proper drubbing, or you would be less reckless of your speech!”

“I have always been pitted to fight with bragging rascals of about your size and ability with a weapon, else I might have been drubbed,” Adam flung back, laying his hand on his sword as he spoke. “It shames my steel to think of engaging a ten-pin!”

“By all tokens, sir, you are blind, as well as idiotic, to walk into death so heedlessly. Be good enough to follow me into the yard.”

“Oh, fie on a death that flees and entreats me to follow,” was Adam’s answer. “I rolled you once in this hall; I can do so again. Halberd—Pike, candles to place at the head and feet of death!”

The beef-eaters, having reached the apartments appointed for their use, had heard the disturbance in the hall, and expecting trouble, had already lighted the candles. With three of these they now came forth. The hall would have been light enough had it been in communication with the outside world and the twilight, but as it was, it was nearly dark.

“I grieve for your mother,” sneered the stranger, whose sword could be heard backing out of its scabbard. “You must be young to be so spendthrift of your life.”

“On the contrary, you will find what a miser I am, even as to the drops of my blood,” said Adam. “No one ever yet accused the Sachem——”

“The Sachem!” interrupted the other voice.

Halberd, who had sheltered the candle he bore with his hand, now threw its light on the face of the man near by him.

“Shatter my hilt!” exclaimed young Rust, “Wainsworth!”

“Odds walruses!” said the man addressed as Wainsworth, “what a pretty pair of fools we are. By gad, Adam, to think I wouldn’t know you by your voice!”

Adam had leaped forward, while his sword was diving back into its sheath. He caught Wainsworth by the hand and all but wrung it off.

“Bless your old soul,” he said, “why didn’t you say who you were?”

“I was kept busy listening to you telling me who and what I was,” Wainsworth assured him, good-naturedly. “I never heard so much truth in all my life.”

“I never thought to be so incontinently found out myself,” Adam confessed contritely. “But as long as I have found you, I feel as good as if I had fought a good fight and wiped my blade. Indeed, Henry, I am tremendously glad to see you. How did you get here? When did you come? What a blundering fool I was!”

“Come in, come in to my castle,” said Wainsworth, turning back to the apartment he had been quitting when knocked over. “Bring in your friends. You shall all share in my dinner. I’m a ship, burdened with news for cargo to be unloaded. Come in here; we’ll talk all night.”

“But I am due at a dinner already, with my beef-eaters,” said Rust. “I have been delayed past all reason now, but——”

“You weren’t delayed by our duel of words, I trust?”

“No, no, but I have kept our host waiting, nevertheless. I shall be back before the night’s worn through, however, and then I am yours till breath fails me.”

“Haste away then, Sachem Rust, for the sooner you are gone the sooner I shall see you returned; and I shall consume myself with impatience till I can tell you of the sweetest plight mortal man ever got himself tangled in. I’ve got to tell you, for no one else on earth would answer. Begone, then. Good-by, and hasten back.”

Adam bade him au revoir, for he felt that already William Phipps must be thinking him sadly remiss and ungracious.

Preparations as to evening dress were soon completed. They consisted in a brisk wash of face and hands for the trio, not one of the party being endowed with a second suit of clothing. Thus they were upon the road, walking soberly, though diligently, toward the Captain’s residence, before the twilight had begun to fade.

CHAPTER III.
’TWIXT CUP AND LIP.

With appetites still further whetted by their various diversions, the comrades were hardly made happier when Adam found that once more the many years’ growth of Boston town confused him. It was something of a walk to the Phipps’ domicile from the Crow and Arrow the best one could do. With devious windings added, it became the next thing to provoking.

“Aha, at last I know where we are,” said Adam, finally. “These streets are as bad as London’s. But ten minutes more and we shall be at the board.”

“If this is not so,” said Halberd, gravely, with a memory of seeing Adam part with the last money which they possessed, “it would be a kindness to let us lie down and perish here.”

“This is a most unlikely-looking street,” added Pike, dolefully.

“What do you know of Boston streets?” inquired Adam, who had a doubt or two of the place himself. “Good beef-eaters, if you weary, wait here for a moment, till I can run a little along this road, to see where it leads. If it is right I will presently whistle; if wrong I can the sooner return.”

The beef-eaters with one accord sat down upon a block of stone, while their leader strode hastily up a passage which was in reality an alley, at the rear of a number of residences. With a hope that he would soon emerge into a street which he thought should be in the neighborhood, Adam almost ran. Thus he disappeared about a turn of the lane.

He had gone less than twenty rods when he found himself approaching a small assemblage of boys, who were yelling, in suppressed voices, and gathering stones which they were throwing with wild aim into a corner, where the coming darkness had already formed a center of shadows. Rust was well among these young scamps before they were aware of his presence. One urchin had by this secured a long stick with which he advanced, the others making room to let him through, to poke and jab at something which the lads had evidently driven to bay where it could not escape. Yet so afraid did the young rogues appear to be that this something would yet fly upon them and do them great harm, that Adam walked at once among them, touching one upon the shoulder.

“The witch!” screamed this lad, as if the devil himself had clutched him. With yells of terror all the boys scudded swiftly away, for a matter of twenty feet, and then turned about to look at Rust. Seeing a man merely, they were reassured. It is a singular and doubtless a fortunate matter that there was never such a thing conceived as a male witch.

“What have you here?” said Adam, pleasantly.

“A witch’s cat!” cried one of the boldest youths, re-approaching. “We drove it in the corner to stone it to death!”

Now Adam had a lingering fondness for cats, from a time not many years past.

“A witch’s cat?” he repeated. “What nonsense! What harm can a poor cat do to big healthy boys like you? There are no witches, you young varlets.” He went into the corner and peered about eagerly, to find the dumb victim of the mad superstition then subtly growing in that Massachusetts colony.

“There was a witch and she ran away, screaming!” scolded back the bold spokesman of the group of boys, now gaining courage to edge nearer. “She ran away through this garden!” He pointed to a rear yard, leading off the alley to a house not far distant.

“She made me cough up pins and needles,” asserted another young liar, glibly. “And a monster black monkey with cock’s feet followed her when she ran.”

“He’s a prince of the powers of air himself,” whispered another lad, in awe-stricken tones.

Adam had found the cat, a middle-aged animal, frightened, hurt, soiled, but intelligent, since it knew it was being protected at last. He lifted it forth from its small retreat, finding it to be a heavy, black-and-white specimen, too inoffensive to scratch and claw, even in its terror.

“You young——” he started to say.

“Here she comes! Here she comes!” yelled one of the lads, interrupting. “Two of them! Run for your lives!”

The self-scared young cowards, screaming like so many demons, darted down the alley as fast as their legs would let them go. Adam looked where one had pointed and beheld, indeed, two female figures coming on a distracted run through the near-by yard, toward him as he was standing with the cat in his arms.

Although the first veil of darkness was already drawn through the air, Rust could see that they were two young women who were coming. The one who led, he then noted, was a plain, but a sweet, wholesome-looking girl, who was evidently much excited. He stepped forward toward her, with the cat, divining it was the animal she had come for, and so for the moment he neglected to glance at the second young woman.

When he did look at her she was not far and he caught his breath quickly. “Shatter my hilt!” was the thought that leaped into his brain, “they do have young witches here after all!”

Advancing to the middle of the alley he made a profound bow, as the foremost girl came pantingly from the garden gate. The girl, seeing him now for the first time, halted abruptly.

“Good evening,” said Adam, “may I have the honor of restoring your pet? He is excellently well behaved and, I trust, not seriously hurt.”

The girl walked timidly toward him. Her face flushed rosy red with pleasure and confusion. Her companion, having been caught on a rosebush, in the garden, was delayed and was stooping to disentangle her skirt from the thorns.

“Oh, sir, you are very kind,” stammered the girl confronting Adam. “I thought they would kill him. He isn’t mine, but I also hold him——”

The second young lady now came hastily out at the gate. Adam had been too polite to look past number one, in search for the one he thought so witching, but now his heart bounded to see her coming. She ran precipitately at him, breaking in upon her companion’s speech.

“Oh, Standing-Panther,” she cried, impetuously, “my own dear, darling love, why did you ever come out to such a place?”

She plucked her pet from Adam’s arm in one swoop. Rust, at the old name, which he had buried with memories that sorely harrowed his soul, dropped his hat, which he had doffed, and raising his hand to his cheek in wonder, stared at the girl before him with widened eyes.

“At—at your service, Miss—Mistress Gar—Mistress Merrill,” he stuttered.

Garde, a vision of beauty distraught, suddenly looked up in his face. Frank amazement was depicted in her glorious eyes.

“I beg—your pardon,” stammered Adam, “I see you were speaking to your cat, and not to me.”

“You!—Adam!—Mr.—Mr. Rust!” she exclaimed. A red-hot blush surged upward, flooding her face, her neck and even her delicate ears. “Not Little-Standing—Oh dear me! Why, Prudence, what did I say? It—it isn’t really——” she stopped in confusion.

“Adam Rust, Kneeling Panther at your service,” supplied the rover. He made a bow that was truly splendid, with a long sweep of his hat and a touch of his knee on the pavement, that for sheer grace could not have been equaled in Boston. “Miss—Mistress Merrill, you have not quite forgotten that you commissioned me to bring you something from Hispaniola?” he added.

“But you—but you have grown so,” said Garde, still as red as a rose. “And to meet like this—that was such a long time ago. I—I thank you for saving my cat. I—we—Prudence, you must thank Mr. Rust.”

Prudence, on whom Adam had scarcely looked, since seeing Garde, had been standing there looking at Rust with a sudden-born love in her eyes that was almost adoration. She had developed, out of the Puritanical spirit of the times, a control of her various emotions that Garde would never possess. Therefore she had herself in hand at a second’s notice.

“I have thanked Mr. Rust,” she answered, quietly.

Garde was stealing a look at Adam the second he turned in politeness to Prudence.

“This was no service at all,” he said. “Pray expend no further words upon it.”

“Oh, Adam, I am so glad——” burst from Garde’s lips impetuously, but she checked her utterance the instant his glance came flashing back to hers, and added. “I mean, Mr. Rust, I am so glad the cat wasn’t hurt, and, Prudence, we must surely return to the house at once.”

This was not at all what Garde had started to say, nor what she wanted to say; but though it was the same Adam, quite to her heart’s satisfaction, yet he was now a man, and a maidenly diffidence shamed her riotous gladness, and—Prudence was present.

“But,” said Adam, fumbling in a pocket over the region of his heart, “the trinket I brought you from Hispaniola?”

“Oh, marry, it has kept so well all these years,” said Garde roguishly, “surely it must still keep till—surely anyway till daylight. Really, sir, we must thank you again and return before it is actually dark.” She gave him one look which, had he been a woman, he would readily have interpreted, but being a man, somewhat of its significance was lost upon him.

“But now I know I have kept it too long already,” he insisted, still tugging at the stubborn pocket. “Surely——”

“It will be the riper for keeping a little longer,” said Garde, almost impatient with him for not seeing that she wanted to receive it only when they two were alone together. “We thank you once more, for saving Little-Standing-Panther, and so—good night,”

“But when—what day?—to-morrow?” cried the eager rover. “When may I give it?”

“Oh stupid!” said Garde to herself, almost vexed at his lack of understanding and tact. Aloud she called back, “Did you say good night? Prudence, say good night again to Mr. Rust.”

Prudence called good night once more, this making her third time, and Adam was left there in the alley alone. He went to the gate and, leaning over it, clutched two of its pickets in his hands, as once before he had done to another gate, and stood there gazing ardently into the gathering darkness.

At length, with a heavy sigh, of joy and impatience blended, he strode a little down the lane. Then he strode back. So, up and down he paraded, for fifteen minutes. At the end of this time he suddenly bethought him of the beef-eaters and the dinner at William Phipp’s. He then hastened, tardily enough, back the way he had originally come.

Eager to find his companions, yet completely scatterbrained by the meeting with Garde, the sight of her radiant beauty, and the chaos of plans for seeing her again at daylight, which were teeming in his head, he fairly fell over the outstretched feet of his faithful followers before he saw them.

They were still sitting upon the block of stone. They had interlocked their arms, for mutual support, and then had fallen fast asleep, worn out with the long day and made weak by a longer fast.

“Good old beef-eaters,” said Adam, affectionately, and gently shaking them by the shoulders, he aroused them, got them on their feet and guided them out of the alley. By great good fortune, he came to a land-mark he remembered from his short sojourn in Boston, years before. With this as a bearing, he made good time to the Captain’s house. They met William Phipps at the gate, going forth to hunt them up.

“We have sauntered along,” said Adam, carelessly, “for such air as this is a tonic to the appetite.”

CHAPTER IV.
THE OPENING OF A VISTA.

For a man who had taken so much tonic, Adam had but indifferent relish for the savory and altogether comforting little dinner which Goodwife Phipps had kept all warm and waiting for the coming of her guests. His head was filled with love and with altercations between hope that Garde had meant this and fears that she might have meant that, and with conjuring up all her speeches and glances, till he could hardly have told whether he was afoot or horseback.

But if their leader neglected his opportunities, the beef-eaters made good the reputation for three, as swordsmen with knife and fork. Fortunately Goodwife Phipps had provided amply. But a fowl became a glistening skeleton; a hot meat-pie was represented at last by a dish that yawned like an empty chasm; a pyramid of Indian maize became a scattered wreckage of cobs, and potatoes, bread and pudding vanished into mere memories of what they once had been.

Adam, although he said nothing, talked like an auctioneer, during the meal, to divert what he could of the attention which his retinue perforce attracted to their appetites. This innocent ruse was not lost on the charming little wife of William Phipps. She was a sweet little woman, plump, black-haired, brown-eyed and gifted by Nature with much vivacity, in her wit and in her engaging manners. She was older than her husband, having been the widow of one merchant Hull, when she and the Captain wedded. They were a happy couple, being indeed un-Puritanly joyous in their partnership. She had taken a great liking to Adam, when Phipps first brought him home. Now that he was a man, she liked him none the less, yet she saw that he would always be a big, straightforward boy. She watched him now with pleasure, listening to his quips and sallies of nonsense, and nodding motherly at his evident concern for his two forlorn beef-eaters, so obviously attached to him by ties of affection.

The dinner being at length come to an end, with great satisfaction to all concerned, Adam counseled the expanded beef-eaters to fare to the Crow and Arrow, lest in their absence anything befall to prevent their occupancy of the selected apartments. As nothing was to be had to drink where they were, the worthy two were glad to act upon his suggestion. Accordingly Adam and his hosts were left to themselves, whereupon they fell upon a banquet of narrative and reminiscence forthwith.

“Now, Adam, tell us all about where you have been, and what you have done, and all about everything,” said Mrs. Phipps, putting her plump elbows on the table, which she had swiftly cleared of the dinner wreckage. “Just begin at the day you left, with William, and tell us all there is. But tell us first, have you fallen in love? Of course you must have, but I do hope you will like one of our own girls best.”

“I fear you would have me begin at the last end first, after all,” said Adam, thinking how recently he had fallen victim to Eros. “My tale is brief and of no interest. William bade me cultivate the society of gentlemen, when he sent me to England. Well, I had fencing and fiddling of an Italian nobleman; I have fought with holy friars and princes; I have sworn strange oaths with prelates and bishops; I have danced with nuns and duchesses; I have ridden to hounds with curs and Kings. If I have not learned drinking, gambling, love-making, dueling, swearing and sundry other pretty accomplishments, then beshrew me for a clod and call the court no place for schooling. I am richer than I was, since I may look up at any moment and see you both at a glance. By the same token I am happier. As to my heart, I’ll take oath I left it in Boston. And there you have me.”

“Oh, this sounds very naughty indeed,” said Mrs. Phipps.

“I never counseled you to apprentice yourself to the devil,” said Phipps. “You were first to learn navigation, of some——”

“Oh, of that I neglected to speak,” interrupted the rover. “William, you will never make an anchor out of sea foam, nor a solid ship’s master out of me, else my first or my last preceptor would have finished me off roundly.”

“Who was your latest chief?” the Captain inquired.

“Captain William Kidd,” said Adam, “a generous friend, a fearless and skilful seaman, and as bold a fighting man as ever clutched a hilt. I met him at Barcelona, shipped with him for Bristol, fell in with my beef-eaters, got rid of my money and pushed my sword through a pup—Lord Something-or-other——and was still in time to catch Captain Kidd at Portsmouth for New York. But I can’t bark enough for a sea-dog, as Kidd was good enough to tell me himself.”

William Phipps nodded and nodded. Outwardly he was calm enough; inwardly he stewed with heat. Adam had but added fuel to the fever of unrest and thirst for adventure with which he had been born. He was not jealous of all that his protégé had accomplished ahead of himself—indeed, he had furthered the lad’s advancement, at the expense of his own sense of bereavement when he and Adam parted,—but he was consumed with impatience to be hewing at the great career for which he had from boyhood felt himself destined. A light of determination burned in his eyes. He saw that the boy before him had utterly outstripped him—the boy to whom he had imparted all his own meager, self-acquired education. Not for a moment did he regret that from Hispaniola he had sent the lad to England, with a fellow-captain, nor would he for any price have stripped his protégé of one single experience, but his mouth grew dry with the lust for adventure that was glowing within him.

His wife saw these indications. She understood what was passing in his mind. Before she had even sighed to herself, as a woman must, who feels herself on the brink of a separation from one she truly loves, she consented mentally to what she knew he would presently suggest. What she was thus prepared for, came sooner than she had expected it might.

“Adam,” said Phipps, somewhat huskily, “I have been waiting for something—I never knew what—to come along and start me off after the fortune I have promised to get for the wife.”

“You are fortune enough for me, dear,” Mrs. Phipps interposed, in spite of herself. “I should be satisfied to live like this forever.”