CHAPTER IV

There was a long silence, broken at last by Mary saying, "Perhaps what

some folk say of Moll is true,--that it is an evil gift she has. And

yet she has a sweet face and gentle manner."

"I wonder if 't is truth, what they say of old Dimond, her father,"

said Dorothy, her chin supported in one soft palm, while her eyes

looked off over the water, motionless almost as the seaweed growing on

the scarred rocks along the shore, left bare by the low tide.

"What is that?" Mary asked.

"Why, that whenever there was a dark, stormy night, with a gale

threatening the ships at sea, he would go up on Burial Hill, and beat

about amongst the grass, to save the crews from shipwreck."

Mary laughed. "What an idea!" she exclaimed. "How could beating the

ground about the dead benefit or protect the living, who are surely in

the keeping of Him who makes the tempests?"

"I don't know," was Dorothy's simple answer. "Only that is what I've

heard, ever since I was a child. And such talk always took my fancy."

"Well, old Dimond doesn't look now as if he could have strength to beat

the ground, or anything else. Poor old man, he is very feeble, and I

should say 't is a happy thing for him that Moll can come down from

Lynn now and then, to attend him."

"Yes," Dorothy assented. Then, with a lively change of tone and

manner, "'T was odd, Mary, for her to say that when you left her door

you were to see your true-love riding to meet you on horseback."

Mary started, and without answering, turned her head away, while the

blood rushed to her lovely face.

"Which was he, sweetheart?" Dorothy persisted teasingly, bending her

head so as to bring her smiling face directly under the down-dropped

blue eyes, and then laughing outright at the confusion she saw there.

"Which one was it?" she repeated. "You know Hugh Knollys rode down the

road directly toward you, and then--"

But Mary's white hand was over the laughing lips and silenced them.

"If your father should hear you talking in such fashion, Dot, I feel

sure he would be displeased with me for having gone with you to see

Moll." Mary made an effort to look and speak naturally, but her eyes

were very bright and her face was still deeply flushed.

Dorothy smiled, and shook her curly head wilfully. "Not he," she said

with decision; "leastway, not for long. He is stern enough, at times,

to others; but he can never be severe with me."

"Ah, Dot, but you are surely a spoiled child," said Mary, with a fond

glance at the winsome face.

Dorothy shrugged her small shoulders. "So Aunt Penine is always

saying; but all the aunts in the world could never come 'twixt my

father and me."

Little 'Bitha, who had been crooning softly to herself, and

improvising, after a fashion of her own,--

"The sea is blue, blue, blue,

The sea is blue, and I love the sea,"

suddenly cried out, "Oh, Dot, look, look! What an ugly fish!"

They all looked, and saw a dead dogfish, its cruel teeth showing in the

gaping jaws, go bobbing by, entangled in a mesh of floating seaweed.

"Him look like dead nigger," said Pashar, as he flung a pebble at it.

Old Leet scowled over his shoulder at his lively descendant.

"Dere'll be anudder, an' real true, dead nigger ter keep him company,

ef ye don't sit still, an' quit grampussin' 'bout de boat," he growled;

and. Pashar became very quiet.

They were now drawing in nearer to the shore, where the strip of

sand-beach lay down below the rocky headland, upon the highest point of

which stood Spray House, the home of Nicholson Broughton and his

daughter Mary.

The house--a low, rambling building, with gabled roof--was perched upon

the highest of a series of greenstone and syenite ledges, whose natural

jaggedness had no need to be strengthened by art to render them a safe

bulwark against the encroaching seas, when the storms flashed blinding

mists and glittering spray about the diamond-paned windows.

These looked off over the open water, and past the point of land

intervening between Great Bay and Marblehead Rock. Upon the latter was

an odd beacon,--being a discarded pulpit from one of the Boston

churches, whence, after hearing much of the noise and commotion of men,

it had been transferred to this barren rock, there to listen to the

ceaseless tumult of the battling sea.

Inland from Spray House stood the many great warehouses; and back of

these stretched the pasture-lands, breaking here and there into rough

hills, showing fields of golden splendor, where the wood-wax, or

"dyer's weed," was growing in luxuriant wildness.

Several small boats were drawn up on the beach; and anchored a little

way out, and directly opposite the front windows of Spray House, were

two goodly-sized schooners, and a brig, their topmasts now touched by

the fiery gold of sunset.

"I wish you were coming home with me, Mary," said Dorothy, as Leet ran

the boat's nose into the shingle, and Pashar leaped out to hold the

stern.

"I wish so, too. But you know it will not be many days before father

goes up to Boston, and he said I should abide with you until he

returned."

"That will be fine," said Dorothy, her face aglow with pleasure, as

Mary, after dropping a light kiss upon her check, arose to leave the

boat. "Only, if I were you, I should coax him to let me go to Boston."

"I did ask him; but he goes on public matters, he said, and was like to

have a quick and a rough trip." Mary was now standing upon the beach.

"Well, be he gone a long or a short time, we shall all be very happy to

have you with us. That you know, surely." And Dorothy kissed her hand

to her friend, as Leet pulled out again into the water and rowed toward

the upper end of the bay, while Mary took her way across the beach to

the thread-like path leading up to the plateau that formed the back

dooryard of Spray House.

In the yard was Joe, the darkey serving-man, busy cutting more wood to

increase the already generous pile stored in the building near by,

while Agnes, his niece, was in the kitchen, preparing the evening meal.

In the long, low, oak-panelled "living-room" of the house, its windows

facing the water, Mary found her father. He was standing--a tall,

finely built man, nearly fifty--gazing through an open window. His

sturdy legs were well apart, as with hands in his trousers' pockets he

was jingling his keys and loose coin in a restless sort of way, while

he hummed to himself.

Mary entered so softly, or else his thoughts were so absorbing, that he

did not notice her until she stood close beside him and slipped a hand

within his arm. Then he started, and the scowl left his brow as he

turned the frank, blue-gray eyes, so like her own, down upon her

upturned, smiling face.

"Ha, Pigsney!" he exclaimed, now smiling himself. "And have you had a

pleasant water-trip?" He looked at her lovingly, while he caressed the

blonde head that just reached to his broad shoulder.

"Yes," she replied hurriedly. "And I met Johnnie Strings, who has but

just come from over Salem way. He says there are quantities of

soldiers there, and that they are like to come this way and spread all

over the town."

"You speak of them, sweetheart, as if they might be another epidemic of

smallpox," he said grimly, "And so they are, so they are, if not indeed

something worse." And the scowl came back to his face as he looked off

over the water at his brig and schooners.

"But what does it all mean, father?" Mary asked anxiously. "Think you

they will meet with opposition should they actually come down here?

Oh, it would be dreadful to have any fighting right here in our streets

and before our very doors." The girl trembled, and her cheeks paled.

"Nay, nay, lass," and he patted her shoulder reassuringly; "cross no

bridges until you come to them." Then he added rather impatiently,

"What does Johnnie Strings mean by telling such tales to affright

women-folk?"

"We--Dorothy Devereux and I--met him, and we made him talk. But he did

not seem to want to tell us all he knew about it."

"And quite right," said her father, smiling again. "Lord pity the man

who is fool enough to tell women--and girls, at that--all he knows of

such matters, in days like these."

Mary looked up at him a little reproachfully, but he only bent and

kissed her, as he said, now quite gravely: "I've much on my mind this

night, my child, and I have to ask if you can be ready soon after

supper to drive with me to the house of neighbor Devereux, and to stop

there a few days with Dorothy. I have certain matters to talk over

with him, and will pass the night there; and before daylight I must be

on my way to Boston."