CHAPTER III

"Oh, Mary, there is Johnnie Strings!" exclaimed Dorothy, as they drew

near shore, where lay the rowboat, beached on the sand, with Leet, the

faithful old darkey, sitting close by, awaiting the pleasure of his

adored young mistress.

Near him a little girl of seven was gathering pebbles, her heavy blonde

braids touching the tawny sand whenever she stooped in her search. And

crouched by his grandfather Leet was the boy Pashar, looking like an

animated inkspot upon the brightness all about. His white eyeballs and

teeth showed sharply by contrast with their onyx-like settings, as he

sat with his thick lips agape, literally drinking in the words of the

redoubtable Johnnie Strings, a wiry, sharp-faced little man, whose

garments resembled the dry, faded tints of the autumn woods.

Johnnie, with his pedler's pack, stored with a seemingly unlimited

variety of wares, was a well-known and welcome visitor to every

housewife in town. He lived when at home (which was rarely) in a

hut-like abode up among the rocks of Skinner's Head; and the highway

between Boston and Gloucester was tramped by him many times during the

year.

He owned a raw-boned nag of milk-white hue, and rejoicing in the name

of Lavinia Amelia; and these two, with a yellow cur, constituted the

entire _menage_ of the Strings household.

Johnnie, like Topsy, must have "just growed," for aught anyone ever

knew of a parent Strings. The one item of information possessed by his

acquaintances was that his name was not Johnnie Strings at all, but

"Stand-fast-on-high Stringer,"--an indication that he must have

received his baptism at Puritanical hands.

Either "Stand-fast-on-high" became more unregenerate as his infancy was

left behind, or else his associates had no great taste for Biblical

terms as applied to every-day use; for his real name had long since

become vulgarized to the common earthiness of "Johnnie," and "Stringer"

had been reduced to "Strings."

He now sat upon his pack--a smaller one than he usually carried--and

was saying to Leet, "Now that there be so cantankerous a lot o' them

pesky King's soldiers 'bout us, there's no sayin' what day or night

they won't overrun the hull country, from the Governor's house at

Salem, clean over here to the sea; an' every man will be wise, that

owns cattle, to sleep with one eye an' ear open, an' a gun within

reach."

"What are you saying, Johnnie Strings?" called out Dorothy, as she and

Mary came up. "Are you trying to frighten old Leet into fits?"

The little pedler sprang to his feet and snatched off his battered

wreck of a hat, showing a scant lot of carroty hair, gathered tightly

into a rusty black ribbon at the nape of his weather-beaten neck.

"Only sayin' God's truth, sweet mistress," he answered, bowing and

scraping with elaborate politeness. "I've just come from over Salem

way; an' yesterday evenin' ye could scarcely see the ground for the red

spots that covered it. There were three ship-loads came in yesterday,

to add to the ungodly lot o' soldiers already there."

Mary looked troubled, but Dorothy only laughed. And little 'Bitha,

abandoning her search for shells and pebbles, pressed closely against

her cousin, looking up out of a pair of frightened eyes, blue as

forget-me-nots, as she asked, "Does Johnnie say the soldiers are coming

after us, Dot?"

Dorothy checked herself in what she was about to say, and bent to

reassure the little one, putting an arm about her neck to draw the

golden head still closer to her.

"What are they come down from Boston for, Johnnie?" Mary asked; "do you

know?"

He cocked his head aslant, and resumed his hat, screwing up one eye in

a fashion most impudent in any man but himself, as he looked at her

with a cunning leer. Then he said: "There's no harm to come from 'em

yet. But soldiers be a lawless lot, if they get turned loose to look

after we folk 'bout the coast here, as is like to be the case now. An'

so I was just meanin' to hint to ye that 'twould be as well to stop

nigher home, after this day."

Old Leet, who had listened with a stolid face to all this, was now

pushing the boat into the water, while Pashar stood gaping at the

pedler, until ordered gruffly by his grandsire to stand ready to hold

the craft.

"Have you knowledge that they are coming down here?" inquired Mary,

speaking more insistently than before.

"We-l-l, yes, I have," he admitted with a drawl, and was about to add

something more, when Dorothy, who had deposited 'Bitha in the boat, and

was now getting in to take her own place in the stern, said to him,

"Come with us, Johnnie, and we'll take you home, as we pass quite close

to your"--hesitating a second--"your house."

"No, thank ye, mistress," he replied, grinning proudly at the dignity

she had bestowed upon his humble abode. "I've that will take me up to

Dame Chine, at the Fountain Inn, an' I should be there this very

minute, an' not chatterin' here. But I was tired, an' when I came

along an' saw old Leet, sat down to rest a bit."

"When are you intending to fetch that pink ribbon you promised me weeks

ago, and the lace for Aunt Lettice?" demanded Dorothy, as Mary

Broughton stepped over the intervening seats, past Leet, at the oars,

with small 'Bitha alongside him, and took her place beside her friend.

"I've both in my pack, up at the hut; I'll bring 'em to the house this

week, ye may depend on it," answered Johnnie, as Pashar pushed off the

boat, springing nimbly in as the keel left the sand.

"If you do not, I'll never buy another thing from you so long as I

live," the girl called back, with a wilful toss of her head, as Leet

pulled away with strong, rapid strokes.

"'T is all wrong for two pretty ones like them to be roamin' 'round in

such fashion," said Johnnie to himself, as he stooped to take up his

pack. Then suddenly, as if remembering something, he turned to the

shore and called out, "Shall ye find Master John at home, think ye,

Mistress Dorothy?"

Her voice came back silvery clear over the distance of water lying

between them. "No; he is up at the Fountain Inn."

"Ah, as I thought," the pedler muttered, with a meaning smile. "I'll

just be in the nick o' time."

"What think you it all means, Mary?" Dorothy asked, the two sitting

close together in the boat.

"What _all_ means?" echoed Mary, in an absent-minded way, her head

turned toward the shore they were leaving, where on the higher land the

far-away windows of the Fountain Inn were showing like glimmering stars

in the light of the setting sun.

"Why," Dorothy explained, smiling at Mary's abstraction, "all these

soldiers coming down here? And Johnnie acts and talks as if he could

tell something important, if he chose."

"You know, Dot, we are like to have serious trouble,--perhaps a war

with the mother country."

"And all because of a parcel of old tea!" exclaimed Dorothy, with great

scorn.

Mary now turned her face in the direction the boat was going, and

smiled faintly. "The tea is really what has brought matters to a

head," she said. "But there is more in it than that alone, from what

I've heard my father say. And there is much about it that we girls

cannot rightly understand, or talk about very wisely. Only, I hope

there will be no war. War is such a terrible thing," she added with a

shudder, "and you know what Moll told us. I almost wish we had not

gone to see her to-day."

"I am not a bit sorry we went," said Dorothy, stoutly. "I am glad.

What did she say,--something about a big black cloud full of lightnings

and muttering thunder, coming from across the sea, to spread over the

land and darken it? Was n't that it?"

"Yes, and much more. Do you think she was asleep as she talked to us,

Dot? She looked so strangely, and yet her eyes were wide open all the

time."

"Tyntie does the same thing at times. She says it's 'trance.' But

Aunt Penine always puts me out of the kitchen when Tyntie gets that

way, and so I don't know whether she talks or not. I mean to try and

find out, if I can, the next time Tyntie gets into such a state."

"Nothing seems strange for Indians to do or to be," Mary said musingly;

"but I never heard of such things amongst white people."

"Oh, yes, you did," Dorothy answered quickly. "Whatever are you

thinking of, not to remember about the witches? 'T is said they could

foretell to a certainty of future happenings. I wish I'd lived in

those days, although it could not have been pleasant to see folks

hanged for such knowledge. As for Moll Pitcher,--I guess she might

have been treated as was old Mammie Redd."