PART II

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MASTER SIMON’S GARDEN

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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS

ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited

LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA

MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.

TORONTO

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[Illustration: Margeret loved them too.]

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MASTER SIMON’S GARDEN

A STORY

BY

CORNELIA MEIGS

Author of “The Kingdom of the Winding Road,”

“The Steadfast Princess,” etc.

ILLUSTRATED

New York

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1916

All rights reserved

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Copyright, 1916,

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped. Published, October, 1916.

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CONTENTS

PART I

MARGERET

I The Edge of the World

II Master Simon’s Pilgrimage

III Roofs of Gold

IV The Gospel of Fear

V By Candlelight

VI The Schoolhouse Lane

VII Goody Parsons on Guard

PART II

STEPHEN

VIII A Tale of Witches

IX King James’ Tree

X “Ships of Adventure”

XI Fair Maids of France

XII The Breaking of the Storm

XIII Lighting the Firebrand

XIV Cousin Betsey Anne

XV A Message from Master Simon

XVI The Hand on the Latch

XVII Prisoner of War

XVIII Quaker Ladies

XIX Goody Parsons’ Rose

XX The Sea-Road to Cathay

Conclusion

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Margeret loved them too

“You shall not cut down our tree”

He drew his Shining sword and held it up

“Why are you not watching, Mother?”

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PART I

MARGERET

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MASTER SIMON’S GARDEN

CHAPTER I

THE EDGE OF THE WORLD

Old Goody Parsons, with her cleanest white kerchief, her most sorrowful

expression of face and her biggest brown basket, had gone down through

the village and across the hill to tell Master Simon what a long, hard

winter it had been and how her cupboard was as bare, indeed, as Mother

Hubbard’s own. Now, as she made her way up the stony path again, her

wrinkled old face was wreathed in smiles and her burden sagged heavily

from her arm, for once more it had been proved that no one who came

hungry to Master Simon’s door ever went away unsatisfied. He had piled

her basket high with good things from his garden, his wife had added

three loaves of freshly baked bread and a jar of honey, and his little

daughter Margeret had walked part of the way up the hill to help the old

woman on her homeward road.

“Good-bye to you, little Mistress,” Goody Parsons called after her when

they parted at last, “and may the blessings on your dear father and

mother be as many as are the good gifts in my basket.”

Margeret, since her father needed her, did not wait to reply, but

scampered away down the path again. The old woman stood on the

hill-crest looking down at the scattered houses of the little Puritan

town, at the spreading, sloping meadows and the wide salt marshes

growing yellow-green under the pleasant April sunshine.

“These hills and meadows will never look as fair to me as those of

England,” she sighed, “but after all it is a goodly land that we have

come to. Even if there be hunger and cold and want in it, are there not

also freedom and kindness and Master Simon?”

The little town of Hopewell had been established long enough to have

passed by those first terrible years when suffering and starvation

filled the New England Colonies. There were, however, many hard lessons

to be learned before those who knew how to live and prosper in the Old

World could master the arts necessary to the keeping of body and soul

together in the New. Men who had tilled the rich smooth fields of

England and had followed the plough down the furrows that their

great-grand-fathers had trod before them, must now break out new farm

lands in those boulder-strewn meadows that sloped steeply down to the

sea. Grievous work they surely found it, and small the returns for the

first hard years. Yet, whenever food or fire or courage failed, the

simplest remedy in the world for every trouble was to go in haste to

Master Simon Radpath. His grassy meadow was always green, his fields

rich every harvest time with bowing grain, his garden always crowded

with herbs and vegetables, and gay the whole summer long with flowers,

scarlet and white and yellow.

The old woman who had been his visitor to-day watched Margeret’s yellow

head disappear down the lane, and then turned to rest her basket on the

rude stone wall, not because the burden was too heavy for her stout old

arm, but because she heard footsteps behind her and she did dearly love

to stop a neighbour on the road for a bit of talk.

“Good morrow, friend,” she cried out, almost before she saw to whom she

was speaking.

Her face fell a little when she discovered that it was only Samuel

Skerry, the little crooked-backed shoemaker who lived with his

apprentice in a tiny cottage, one field away from Master Simon’s garden.

A scowling, morose fellow the shoemaker was, but Goody Parsons’ eager

tongue could never be stopped by that.

“Spring is surely coming at last, neighbour,” she began, quite

undisturbed by Skerry’s sullen greeting. “Here is another winter gone

where it can trouble old bones no longer.”

“Spring indeed,” snarled the shoemaker, in his harsh voice, “why, the

wind is cold as January and every key-hole in my house was shrieking

aloud all last night! Where see you any Spring?”

“I have been, but now, to visit Master and Mistress Radpath,” she

returned, “and their garden is already green, with a whole row of golden

daffodils nodding before the door.”

“Ah,” answered her companion, “trust Master Simon to have some foolish,

useless blossoms in his garden the moment the sun peeps out of the

winter clouds. Does he never remember that so much time spent on what is

only bright and gaudy is not strictly in accord with our Puritan law?”

“It was with herbs from that same garden that he healed you and many of

the rest of us during that dreadful season of sickness,” retorted Goody

Parsons, “and did you not lie ill for two months of that summer and yet

have a better harvest than any year before, because he had tended your

fields along with his own?”

“Ay, and preached to me afterwards about every nettle and bramble that

he found there, as though each had been one of the seven deadly sins.

No, no, I like not his ways and I am weary of all this talk of how great

and good a man is Master Simon. I fear me that all is not well in that

bright-flowering garden of his.” The shoemaker nodded craftily, as

though he knew much that he would not tell.

Goody Parsons edged nearer. She was grateful to that gentle-voiced,

kind-faced Master Simon who had helped her so often in trouble; she

loved him much but, alas, she loved gossip more.

“Tell me what they say, good neighbour,” she coaxed.

Samuel Skerry was provokingly silent for a space.

“They say,” he said at last, “that in that garden—beyond the tulip

bed—behind the hedge—”

“Yes, yes!” she gasped as he paused again.

“There is Something hid,” he concluded—“Something that no one of us ever

sees but that neighbours hear, sometimes, crying aloud.”

“But what is it?” she begged to know, in an agony of curiosity.

“Hush, I will whisper in your ear,” he said. “It were not meet to speak

such a thing aloud.”

Goody Parsons bent her grey head to listen, and started back at the

shoemaker’s low-spoken words.

“Ah, surely that can not be true of so good a Puritan!” she cried in

horror.

“You may believe me or not, according to your will,” returned the

shoemaker testily. “You were there but now; did you hear naught?”

Loyalty to her dear Master Simon and love of giving information

struggled for a moment in the Goody’s withered face, but at last the

words simply burst from her.

“I did hear a strange cry,” she said. “Ah, woe is me to think ill of so

good a man! Come with me toward my house, Neighbour Skerry, and I will

tell you what the sound was like.”

So off the two went together, their heads bent close, their lips moving

busily, as they gossiped with words that were to travel far.

Only Master Simon, his wife and his daughter, Margeret, knew the real

reason why his garden and fields had greater success than any other’s,

knew of the ceaseless labour and genuine love that he expended upon his

plants and flowers. Margeret loved them also, and would often rise early

and go out with him to weed the hills of Indian corn, water the long

beds of sweet-smelling herbs or coax some drooping shrub back to life

and bloom. It was pleasant to be abroad then, when the grey mists lying

over the wide, quiet harbour began to lift and turn to silver, when the

birds were singing in the great forest near by and the dark-leaved

bayberry bushes dropped their dew like rain when she brushed against

them. Then she would see, also, mysterious forms slipping out of the

dark wood, the graceful, silent figures of the friendly Indians, who

also got up before the dawn and came hither for long talks with their

good friend, Master Simon. They brought him flowers, roots and herbs

that grew in this new country, while he, in turn, gave them plants

sprung from English seed, taught them such of the white men’s lore as

might better their way of living and offered much sage counsel as to the

endless quarrels that were always springing up among them between tribe

and tribe.

“It is strange and not quite fitting that those heathen savages should

follow you about like dogs,” the villagers used to tell him, a little

jealous, perhaps, that he should be as kind to his red-skinned friends

as he was to his Puritan comrades. But Master Simon would only smile and

go on his way, undisturbed by what they said.

When the long, warm evenings came and Margeret and her mother brought

their spinning wheels to the doorstep that they might use the last ray

of daylight for their work, Master Simon would labour beside them,

tending now the roses and the yellow evening-primroses before the

cottage. And he would tell, as he worked, of those other primroses that

grew in English lanes, of blossoming hedge-rows and soaring larks and

all the other strange beauties of that dear country across the sea.

Sometimes Margeret’s mother would bend her head low over her spinning to

hide the quiet tears, as he told of the great, splendid garden where he

had learned his skill with plants and herbs, a garden of long terraces

and old grey sundials and banks of blooming flowers. It was there that

he and she had walked together in the moonlight, and had planned, with

hearts all unafraid, for the day when they should be married and should

set sail for that new land that seemed so far away. But there was no

sadness or regret in Master Simon’s heart.

“Some day,” he would say, straightening up from his work and looking

about him with a happy smile; “some day we shall have just such another

garden planted here in the wilderness, at the very edge of the world

that white men know.”

This year, however, as he and Margeret planted the garden in

unsuspecting peace of mind, there was strange talk about them running

through the village. Much as the good Puritans had left behind them in

England, there was one thing that was bound to travel with them beyond

the seas, their love of gossip about a neighbour. The whispered words of

Samuel Skerry had travelled from Goody Parsons to those who dwelt

nearest her, and from them to others, until soon the whole town was

buzzing with wonder concerning Master Simon’s garden and that secret

thing that lay hidden in its midst. There were many people who owed him

friendship and gratitude for past kindness, but there was not one who,

on hearing the news, could refrain from rushing to the nearest house and

bursting in with the words:

“Oh, neighbour, have you heard—?” the rest always following in eager

whispers.

Thus the talk had gone the rounds of the village until it reached the

pastor of the church, where it fell like sparks into tow.

“I was ever mistrustful of Simon Radpath,” cried the minister, Master

Hapgood, when he heard the rumour. “That over-bright garden of his has

long been a blot upon our Puritan soberness. Others have their

door-yards and their garden patches, yes, but these sheets of bloom,

these blazes of colour, I have always said that they argued something

amiss with the man. He had also an easy way of forgiving sinners and

rendering aid to those on whom our community frowned, that I liked none

too well. Now we know, in truth, what he really is.”

And off he set, post-haste to speak to the Governor of the Colony about

this dreadful scandal in Hopewell.

Trouble, therefore, was coming upon Master Simon on that pleasant

morning of late May when Margeret went out to swing on the white gate

and listen to the robins singing in the linden tree. It was trouble in

the form of a stern company of dark-clad men, who came striding down the

lane beneath the young white-blooming apple saplings. There were the

church deacons, the minister, the Assistants and the great Governor

himself, come to inquire into this business of the garden and its

mysteries. Beside the Governor walked a stranger, a famous preacher from

Scotland, whose strictness of belief and fierce denunciations of all

those who broke the law, were known and dreaded throughout New England.

Margeret dropped off the gate and ran full of wonder and alarm to tell

her father.

It seemed, however, that the thoughts of these sober-faced public

officers were not concerned entirely with Master Simon and his

wickedness. The Governor bore a letter in his hand and was discussing

with his friend from Scotland, Master Jeremiah Macrae, the new and great

danger that was threatening the Colony. The friendly Indians, the

peaceable Wampanoags, were becoming restless and holding themselves

aloof from their former free intercourse with the people of the

settlements. Other tribes more fierce and savage than they, were

pressing upon them and crowding them more and more into the territory

occupied by the whites. The Wampanoags, it was said, were being harassed

by the Mohegans, old and often-fought enemies, while they, in turn, were

being driven from their homes by the terrible Nascomi tribes, who dwelt

far away but were so war-like and cruel that their name had ever been

used as a bye-word to frighten naughty Indian babies into good

behaviour. Should such an avalanche of furious red-skinned warriors

descend upon them, what could the little Colony of Puritans, with its

four cannon and only fifty fighting-men, do to defend their lives and

the homes that they had built with such courageous toil?

It was small wonder, then, that all the beauty and freshness of the

full-flowering Spring could not arouse the heavy thoughts of the

Governor and his companions. Then, at the turn of the lane, they came in

sight of a strange group, so sinister and alarming that the whole

company stood still and more than one man laid his hand on his sword.

Full in the way stood three tall, silent Indians, mightier of limb and

fiercer of aspect than any the white men had ever seen before, their

hawk-like faces daubed with gaudy colours and their strange feathered

war-bonnets sweeping to their very heels. A trembling Wampanoag, brought

as interpreter, advanced at the bidding of his imperious masters and

strove vainly to find words with which to repeat his message.

“Come,” said the Governor, “speak out. What can these strangers have to

say to us?”

The interpreter, after more than one effort, managed to explain as he

was ordered. These Indians had come from far away across the mountains

and were of those dreaded Nascomis, a branch of the terrible Five

Nations. They had heard of the new settlers and had come to look at

their lands, intending, if they found them too good for aliens, to

return later with all their warriors and drive the white men forth.

“And true it is that they will do so,” added the Wampanoag, dropping

from halting English into his own tongue when he found that one or two

of those present could understand him. “There is no Indian of our tribe

who does not hear all his life terrifying stories of these Nascomis, and

of how, once in long periods of time, they change their hunting grounds

and have no mercy on those who dwell in the land of their desire.”

The Governor, in spite of the deep misgiving that all knew must be

weighing at his heart, spoke his answer with unmoved calm.

“We will have speech with you later,” he said through the interpreter,

“for the present we have grave business with Master Simon Radpath. If

you wish you may follow and come afterward to my house where we will

treat further of this errand of yours.”

The Indians, with unchanging faces, turned and walked down the lane

beside the Puritan company. They talked together in their strange

guttural language, pointing out this or that peculiarity of the white

men’s dress and seeming to regard them with far less of awe than mere

curiosity. It was a short and bitterly uncomfortable journey that

brought the gathering of elders, in small humour for any kindness of

heart, to Master Simon’s gate.

As Margeret stood beside her father, greeting these unexpected and

disturbing guests, she happened to glance across the sunlit field and

saw Skerry, the shoemaker, and the boy who was his apprentice, standing

before the door of their cottage. The little cobbler was shading his

eyes with his hand and watching the dark procession as eagerly as though

he had some deep concern in their errand. The ragged boy, however,

seemed to have no interest in the matter, or no liking for it, since he

stood with head turned away, staring down at the blue harbour and the

wide-winged, skimming sea-gulls. The little girl observed them for only

one moment, the next, and all her thoughts were drowned in wonder and

alarm at the Governor’s words.

“It has come to our ears, sir,” he was saying sternly, “that you have

here a garden too gay for proper Puritan minds, a place too like the

show gardens of the Popish monasteries, or of the great lords that dwell

amid such sinful luxury in England. In this Colony men and women have

sat in the stocks for wasting precious hours over what shows only beauty

to the eye and brings no benefit to the mind and heart. But what is

that?” he broke off abruptly, sniffing suddenly at a vague sweet perfume

that drifted down the May breeze.

“Please, sir, ’tis hawthorn,” said Margeret, who was losing her terror

of the Governor in curiosity at the sight of the Indians. “There was but

a little sprig that Father brought from England, grown now to a great,

spreading bush.”

A sudden change came over the Governor’s stern face. Had he a stabbing

memory of wide, smooth English meadows, yellow daffodils upon a sunny

slope and hedges sweet with hawthorn blossom in the Spring? None of the

Pilgrims ever spoke of the homesickness that often assailed their

steadfast hearts, but, as the Governor and Master Simon looked into each

other’s eyes, each knew of what the other was thinking. It was of some

much loved and never forgotten home in England, perhaps, some bit of

woods or meadow or narrow lane leading up a windy hill. The offending

garden would have been in a fair way toward being forgiven had not the

Scotch minister come forward and plucked the Governor by the sleeve.

“See, see!” he said, pointing. “Just look yonder.”

Truly that was no sight for sober Puritan eyes! There beside the linden

tree was a great bed of tulips, a blaze of crimson and gold, like a

court lady’s scarf or the cloak of a king’s favourite. Against the green

of the hedge, the deep red and clear yellow were fairly dazzling in the

sunshine. The Governor scowled and drew back.

“Of what use,” cried the minister in his loud harsh voice. “Of what use

on earth can be such a display of gaudy finery?”

There were three members of that company who could answer him. The

Indian ambassadors, laughing aloud like children, dropped upon their

knees before the glowing flower bed, plucked great handfuls of the

brilliant blossoms, filled their quivers, their wampum belts and their

blankets with the shining treasure and turned to gaze with visible awe

at the owner of all these riches.

“Do you not see,” said Master Simon to the minister, an unsubdued

twinkle in his eye, “that there is nothing permitted to grow upon this

good, green earth that has not its use?”

“Such a flaunting of colour,” said the Governor severely, yet perhaps

with the ghost of a smile held sternly in check, “has not our approval.

Now I would see what lies behind that hedge.”

Little Margeret looked up at her father and turned pale; even Master

Simon hesitated and was about to frame an excuse, but it was too late. A

shrill, terrible scream arose from behind the thick bushes.

“There, there, did I not tell you?” cried one of the deacons, and the

whole company pressed forward into the inner garden.

They saw, at first, only a smooth square of grass, rolled and cut close

like the lawns in England. Four cypress trees, dug up in the forest and

trimmed to some semblance of the clipped yews that grace formal gardens,

stood in a square about the hewn stone column that bore a sundial.

Quiet, peaceful and innocent enough the place seemed—but there again was

that terrible scream. Out from behind a shrub came strutting slowly the

chief ornament of the place, Margeret’s pet, Master Simon’s secret, a

full-grown, glittering peacock. Seeing a proper company of spectators

assembled, the stately bird spread its tail and walked up and down,

turning itself this way and that to show off its glories, the very

spirit of shallow and empty vanity. For pure amazement and horror, the

Governor and his companions stood motionless and without speech.

But if the Englishmen were frozen to the spot, it was far otherwise with

the Indians. They flung themselves upon their faces before the

terrifying apparition, they held up their hands in supplication that it

would do them no harm. Then, after a moment of stricken fear and upon

the peacock’s raising its terrible voice again, they sprang to their

feet, fled through the gate and up the lane, and paused not once in

their headlong flight until they had disappeared into the sheltering

forest. The Governor drew a long breath, caught Master Simon’s eye and

burst into a great roar of laughter.

“You have done us a good turn, you and your silly, empty-headed bird,”

he said, “though I was of a mind for a moment to put it to death and to

set you in the pillory for harbouring such a creature of vanity. Yet for

the sake of his help against a dreaded foe, you shall both be spared.

Now see that you order your garden more soberly and that no further

complaints come to my ears.”

He turned to go.

“If you please, may we keep the tulips?” begged Margeret, curtseying

low, her voice shaking with anxiety.

“Yes, little maid,” was the gracious answer, “you may keep your tulips

since you cannot use them for gold as those poor savages thought they

could. And go, pluck me a branch of that hawthorn blossom that smells so

sweet. It grew—ah, how it grew in the fair green lanes of my own dear

Nottinghamshire.”

With the sprig of hawthorn in his grey coat, and with a bow to Margeret

as though she had been some great lady, the Governor passed out into the

lane followed by all his company, deacons, Assistants and Master

Hapgood. Only the minister, Jeremiah Macrae, lingered inside the gate.

Suddenly he lifted both his arms toward heaven and spoke out loudly in

his great, harsh voice. With his dark cloak flying about him and his

deep-set eyes lit by a very flame of wrath, he looked to Margeret like

one of the prophets of old, such as were pictured in her mother’s great

Bible. She trembled and crept nearer to her father.

“Think not, Simon Radpath,” the minister thundered, “that, although you

have won the Governor’s forgiveness by a trick, there the matter ends.

Woe be unto you, O sinful man, unless you destroy the gaudy vanity of

this wicked garden. Change your ways or fire and sword shall waste this

place, blood shall be spilled upon its soil and those who come after you

shall walk, mourning, among its desolate paths.”

Margeret gasped with terror, but Master Simon, though a little pale,

stood his ground undaunted.

“I, too, have made a prophecy concerning my garden,” he answered. “It is

carved yonder about the edge of the sundial, and the climbing roses are

reaching up to cover the words for it will be long before their truth is

proved. It may be that this spot will see flame and sword and the

shedding of blood, for new countries and new ideas must be tried in the

fire before they can live. But my prophecy is for peace and growth,

yours for war and destruction—a hundred years from now men shall know

which of us spoke truly.”

“‘A hundred years from now,’” repeated the minister scornfully. “Think

you that, after the half of that time, there will be any man who

remembers you, or your words, or your garden?”

He strode across the lawn, plucked aside roughly the trailing rose-vines

at the edge of the sundial and read the words carved deep in the grey

stone. Then, with no comment, nor any word of leave-taking, he went out

through the gate and up the lane. Margeret stood long watching him as he

climbed the steep path. His figure looked very black in the clear, white

sunshine, very ill-omened and forbidding even as it grew small in the

distance and finally vanished over the crest of the hill.

CHAPTER II

MASTER SIMON’S PILGRIMAGE

In spite of Master Macrae’s ominous words, all was for a time quiet and

at peace in Master Simon’s pleasant, sunny garden. Peace prevailed also

among the Colonists and their Indian allies, the rumours of warfare

slowly died away and, while Spring grew into summer, and summer glowed

and bloomed and faded into autumn, everywhere in the little Colony were

happiness and contentment. The fields were yellow with abundant grain,

the apple-trees bent with a generous load, the sacks of dried peas and

the great golden pumpkins were piled high upon the floor of the public

granary. There would be no want and famine this winter!

Margeret walked beside her father down through the field where he had

been piling the rustling cornstalks into tall heaps like Indian wigwams.

She stopped often to hearken to the cawing of the crows, who were

gathering their band and making ready to go South, and to watch a busy

chipmunk carrying grain and nuts to his store-house under the wall.

“I would that all the world were as bright and happy as this corner of

it,” said Master Simon, as he paused in his work to look down over the

sloping meadows to the shining waters of the harbour and the rude little

fishing-boats coming to anchor. “But look,” he added, “who is that

yonder in our garden beckoning us to come quickly? It is the pastor,

Master Hapgood, and two Indians with him, while the other—why, it is the

Governor himself! What can be amiss now? Since our peacock has been

banished to England, I can think of naught else for which we may be

brought to justice.”

It was indeed the Governor, anxious-faced and troubled in mien, who came

forward to meet them.

“One of the same Nascomi ambassadors has come hither again,” he said,

“to ask some favour of us. That much I can make out from the

interpreter, but for the rest, his message is so strange and his English

words so few that we have come to you, who understand the Wampanoag

tongue better than does any other, to learn what he would say. Further,

I think that his errand has somewhat to do with you.”

Master Simon turned his quick, bright eyes upon the Indian interpreter.

“Speak on,” he said, and listened with a face growing graver and more

disturbed with every word the Wampanoag and the Nascomi uttered. He

turned at last to the Governor.

“They speak of a terrible pestilence,” he explained, “a scourge that has

visited the Nascomis and has already slain a goodly number. I have heard

often from the Indians hereabout of these plagues, by which many times

whole tribes, even entire nations have been swept away.”

“But what wants the fellow with us?” inquired the Governor.

“He has come to beg that we pray to our god for their deliverance,” said

Master Simon at last.

“What?” cried the pastor. “To our God? Is it possible that these

Nascomis are Christians?”

“No,” returned Master Simon slowly, “he speaks not of the God we know.

He begs us to pray for him to that shining god with the terrible voice

and a hundred glittering eyes, that walked in this garden six months

since and struck such terror to the hearts of himself and his

companions. He says that they have asked in vain for help from their own

gods and he has come all this long and perilous way to make his prayer,

poor savage, to my banished peacock.”

The Governor’s face grew dark with trouble, but the minister’s became

suddenly transformed with a fury of righteous anger. It was not for

nothing that he had listened to the now famous Jeremiah Macrae and his

fierce threatenings of Heaven’s vengeance.

“Simon Radpath,” he cried, striving to thunder forth his words as did

the great minister, but succeeding only a scant half as well; “Simon

Radpath, you have committed the most grievous sin known to the human

race. You have led a man, nay, a whole nation into idolatry, into

worshipping as a god that vain iniquitous creature you so wickedly

harboured here.”

“But please, sir, they were heathen already,” faltered little Margeret,

stirred to fearful boldness by all this wrath against her father.

“That matters not,” was the stern reply. “He has aided and increased

their heathenism, so that their last state is worse than their first.

Heaven alone can tell what punishment he should suffer for so

unspeakable a wrong.”

“Heaven, sir,” said Master Simon, speaking slowly and quietly; “Heaven

has also given me the opportunity to make reparation. Margeret, go tell

your mother to fetch my great cloak and to gather such things as I need

for a journey, and to put into a basket all the herbs that are drying up

among the rafters. Many times have I talked with the Indians about these

pestilences and pondered upon what might have power to check them: now I

will put my knowledge to the test. I will go back with the Nascomi

messenger to see how I can help his afflicted people.”

Hurriedly obedient, but with her whole heart crying out in protest,

Margeret ran to the house to do her errand. Her mother, rising from her

spinning wheel, quickly made the necessary preparations, although

scarcely understanding their purpose. Puritan women in those troubled

times had learned to act promptly and without asking for explanations.

When they came forth from the house, bearing bundles and the big basket,

the same little group still stood, unmoving by the gate, while the

pastor, holding up his hand, was speaking loudly, as though in the

pulpit.

“And if you die far away amid that godless nation,” he was saying, “it

will be only Heaven’s judgment upon you and the vanities of this wicked

garden.”

Then it was that of a sudden, Master Simon’s quiet manner dropped from

him.

“Cease your preaching of death and destruction, Master Hapgood,” he

cried, “and go, rather, up into your meeting-house yonder and pray. Pray

with all your might to that God who once walked in a Garden, that He

will spare me for this people’s need, so that they may learn that when

they come hither to ask for help from Him and us, they do not ask in

vain.”

Thus he spoke and then, in a moment, was gone. A hurried kiss to

Margeret and to her mother, a sign to the Indians, and the little party

set off, up the steep lane, across the boulder-strewn clearing and into

the forest. Margeret ran panting behind them for a little way, then,

blinded with weeping, stumbled over a stone and lay sobbing in the

grass. A strong arm came about her and lifted her up.

“Do not fear, little maid,” said the Governor’s great voice, grown

strangely gentle now. “God will not suffer so brave and good a man as

your father to perish. He will come safe back to you again.”

It was thus that Master Simon went into the wilderness, leaving behind

him, in the little house on the hillside, two very heavy, loving hearts.

“Will he come back? Will he come back?” seemed to Margeret to be the

refrain that sang through every one of the autumn sounds, the creaking

of the grain-carts, the blows of the threshing-flails, the thumping of

the batten in the busy loom.

Many friendly neighbours, remembering past kindnesses, brought in what

was left of Master Simon’s harvest, gathered a store of fire wood,

banked the house with earth and leaves and made all ready against the

cold. More than once the Governor came to offer his respects to Mistress

Radpath and to bid her and her little daughter be of good cheer—events

that made the villagers stare, for a visit from the Governor was an

awesome thing. Master Hapgood, the pastor, came also many times to ask

for news, although he seemed not yet to know whether he should praise

Master Simon’s courage or continue to condemn his wickedness.

The Scottish minister, Master Jeremiah Macrae, was still in the Colony,

preaching vehemently up and down the land, crying to the people to

repent of their grievous sins before it was too late. Many a time, so it

came to the ears of Hopewell, had he denounced Master Simon, his garden

and all that grew therein. From town to town he went, until all of New

England began to stir uneasily under the lash of his bitter tongue.

“He may do good and he may do ill,” said their neighbour, Goodman Allen,

to Mistress Radpath. “We are used to being called to account for our

sins and there is no one among us, Heaven knows, that can be called

perfect. But this man, when I listen to his preaching, tempts me to be

more of a sinner than less of one, so sure is he that we are all

condemned to eternal punishment together. His words are more than even a

good Puritan can bear, he threatens us with Heaven’s wrath until we grow

weary and indifferent, while with his tales of hellfire he frightens the

children so that they are afraid to go to bed alone.”

Margeret shivered as she stood listening to their honest neighbour’s

words. It was quite true that the strange minister had haunted her own

dreams for many a night.

“Some folk,” the man went on, “say that he speaks like one of the

prophets of old, come back to earth again. But I say,” here he dropped

his voice and glanced anxiously about the shadowy kitchen; “I say that

he may not be a prophet, but the Devil himself that we have in our

midst. We will mark well his words concerning Master Simon’s garden, and

if they come true, then will we know what to think.”

It appeared to Margeret, through all that autumn, that the world went

very much awry. It was only a part of the general sadness of all things

that, when she went one day to carry a basket of apples to Goody

Parsons, she found the old woman sitting on the bench before her door in

the pale autumn sunshine, weeping bitterly. The climbing rose that she

had brought with her from England and that had grown to the very top of

her cottage door, had drooped all summer and now trailed forlornly

across the grey logs, dead beyond any doubt.

“Great, fragrant white roses it bore,” said the old woman, choking over

her words, “roses that I carried in my hand the day I was married, and

that my three daughters carried too, on their wedding days, each in her

turn. The dearest memory that I have is of our little cottage in

Hertfordshire, where the beehives stood in a long, sun-warmed row beside

the hedge and the rose vine climbed to the very eaves, covering the

whole wall with leaf and blossom. And now my rose is dead, a punishment,

I can well see, for the harm I did your good father by means of my idle,

gossiping tongue.”

“But listen,” Margeret said, “do you not remember that my father once

told you that this rose was finer than any in our garden and you gave

him some of the shoots to plant among our own? We have one now, climbing

high on our house wall and the others I know are still growing down by

the hedge. So to-morrow you shall have a new plant of the very same

rose, to grow as tall and bloom as gaily as the last.”

“Bless me now,” cried Goody Parsons, a smile breaking through her tears.

“You are your father’s own good daughter, little Mistress, and have

almost made me happy again. But I never can be quite so until I can

forget the harm my chattering has done or until I see Master Simon come

safe home out of that terrible wilderness.”

The new little rose took most kindly to the transplanting that Margeret

so skilfully accomplished, and stood strong and sturdy beside the door,

its twigs still green long after the leaves had fallen from the trees

and the misty Indian summer had taken possession of the land.

“I believe that when Spring comes it will grow as fast as that stocking

you are knitting,” laughed Margeret one day, when she came to inspect

its progress.

The old woman nodded and smiled.

“I hope to see it climb to the top of my door again before I die,” she

answered. “Heaven grant me time for that and to end my evil gossiping

ways. Do you know that neighbour Allen—” she checked herself suddenly

and added, with a sigh, “There I go again! Take heed, my lass, and see

how hard it is to mend a fault when you have grown old.” And she closed

her lips with firmness and fell to knitting furiously.

Margeret could not forbear laughing again and was still smiling to

herself as she took her way across the hill. The leafless woods stood

black and bare against a pale yellow sky, and a little thin new moon

hung low behind the treetops. She was surprised to find herself so happy

to-night, as though in such a fair world there could not be so much of

trouble and sadness as she had thought. Just where her path skirted the

forest’s edge she caught sight of a dark figure moving among the black

shadows of the tree-trunks, and presently she saw it come out of the

wood and go down the lane before her.

“Is it Samuel Skerry?” she wondered, as the form, vague in the twilight,

turned into the path that led to the shoemaker’s cottage. “But no, it is

too tall for the cobbler, it must be that boy who lives with him. What

has he been seeking in the wood? The fruits and berries are all gone and

he had no gun. I wonder!”

Her idle speculations did not, however, last long, for as soon as she

reached home and fell to telling her mother of Goody Parsons and the

rose, her thoughts of the shoemaker’s apprentice were swept away.

She had a visit from him, nevertheless, some weeks later, a visit that

surprised her more than the coming of the Governor himself. Early one

bitter windy morning, as she knelt shivering on the hearth trying to

blow the reluctant fire into flame, there came a knock at the outer

door. Upon the threshold, that was banked deep with the first heavy

snow, stood the ragged boy who dwelt at Samuel Skerry’s. His teeth were

chattering and his fingers trembling with the cold, but his dark blue

eyes were shining with excitement.

“There has been a fox in your hen house these three nights past,” he

said, “and so I arose early this morning and see, here he is.”

The body of the red marauder trailed over his arm, its great brush

dragging limply in the snow. It had been with helpless dismay that

Margeret and her mother had noticed the loss of their fowls, so that

this news brought relief indeed.

“Oh, thank you, thank you!” she cried. “But I fear your watch has been a

bitter cold one. Come in and warm yourself, you must be well-nigh

frozen.”

The boy hesitated.

“My master, the shoemaker—” he began, but Margeret interrupted him,

borrowing the stern manner she had seen her mother use on similar

occasions.

“Come in at once,” she commanded, and when he shyly obeyed she shut the

door behind him lest he escape.

He sat down upon the stool in the chimney corner and, when she once more

attempted to blow the fire, took the bellows gravely from her and in a

moment had the flames leaping high, flooding the kitchen with ruddy

light. Margeret filled her pewter bowl brimful with steaming porridge

and watched with pleasure as her guest ate with unconcealed hunger. She

brought bread and cheese and a cup of milk which she set upon the bench

beside him, and then busied herself about the kitchen lest she should

seem to be staring at her unwonted visitor. Each eyed the other shyly

when occasion offered, but looked away quickly when their glances

happened to meet. He seemed to be watching her golden hair shining in

the firelight, while she, by peeping into the old round mirror that hung

upon the wall, could see how black were his hair and eyelashes and how

dark blue were the eyes with which he stared at her when her back was

turned. She felt friendly enough and anxious to put her companion at his

case, and so, apparently, did he, but neither knew what to say and so

the meal was finished in silence. It was Mistress Radpath’s footstep on

the stair that roused him suddenly to speech.

“Oh, I must go,” he cried, springing up. “Samuel Skerry will be awake

and waiting for me this long time. He will want to strike me for my

delaying.”

And out of the door he sped, in greater terror, it seemed however, of

Margeret’s mother than of his master, the shoemaker. The little girl,

watching him through the window as he crossed the white field, realised

suddenly that she had not even thought to ask his name. Often after that

day she wondered who he could be, and many times looked wistfully across

the waste of snow toward the neighbouring cottage. Although she saw him

now and then, passing in and out of the distant doorway, he did not come

near their house again. Goodman Allen’s wife, who came to sew with

Mistress Radpath, dropped a bit of gossip concerning him.

“We are all wondering who that shoemaker’s apprentice can be,” she said.

“He is no kin of Samuel Skerry’s, of that you may be sure, for he is far

too pleasant-faced and gentle-mannered. The town officer went to ask, as

was his duty, but could get no information from the boy’s master. Skerry

said the lad was named Roger Bardwell, that he would answer for him and

that was all. We all wonder where the boy can have come from; there is

not one of us who does not like him.”

That, it seemed, was the sum of Hopewell’s knowledge of the shy, ragged,

handsome lad.

Early in December there came, suddenly, a furious storm of wind and

snow, that covered the fields, blocked the roads and drifted so deep

about the houses that many of them were buried to the very eaves. It was

the worst that the Colonies had ever known in all of their short

history. For three days the gale shrieked about the staunch little

cottages and roared down the chimneys, while those who dwelt within

toiled unceasingly to build the fires up and keep the bitter cold at

bay. When finally the storm had died away, when paths had been dug and

people were able to go to and fro again, the strangest news suddenly

went racing through the village. The Scotch minister, who had been

upsetting the peace of all New England, had disappeared. He had set

forth, people said, on a journey from Boston to Salem, travelling alone

as was his custom, and, save for one man who had met him at the edge of

the forest, struggling along in the face of the rising gale, no mortal

eye had ever seen him again. That he had lost his way and perished among

the drifts, was easy enough to believe, but the good people of Hopewell

had another thing to say.

“The Devil came to take his own again,” many of them declared openly,

for in those rough times the Devil was a more familiar figure than in

later days and more than one of the Pilgrim Fathers laid claim to having

seen him, horns and hoofs and tail and all. And while some folk were not

quite so free-spoken as to agree with the opinion of their bolder

neighbours, yet they too shook their heads and said:

“Watch Master Simon’s garden, there will his burning words be proven,

whether true or false.”

For the thought that, unspoken, filled to the brim every good heart in

Hopewell was:

“Where was Master Simon through all that bitter storm and will he ever

come back to tend his garden again? We can spare a dozen Scotch

ministers, but never one Simon Radpath.”

December, January and February went by, each one, it seemed to Margeret,

covering the span of a year. March slipped past with roaring winds and

melting snows, then came April and Spring again. Listlessly she watched

the apple trees grow green, saw the warm pink of the Mayflowers showing

under the brown leaves and heard the returning birds calling to one

another in the meadow. Once she had loved all these things, but what did

they matter now if Master Simon was never to see them again?

Then, one night, she was awakened suddenly by—she knew not what. Was it

the moonlight, dropping in shining white squares upon the rough floor of

her room? Was it a far-off dog barking in the village? No, it was

something different, the sound of footsteps, hushed, but so many in

number that even above the slight noises of the night they must still be

heard. She sprang from her bed and ran to the window. Down the lane came

a strange procession, slim dark figures moving almost without a sound,

Indian after Indian, in numbers that seemed to have no end, while, in

the midst, came her own dear father, leaning on the arm of the tall

warrior at his side. At the very last came an Indian boy, carrying a

ragged bundle and the very basket into which she had put the herbs so

many months ago. There was something so absurd in seeing even her basket

come home safe from that far journey that she laughed out loud in the

midst of the moonlit silence.

It was a quiet that, however, did not last long. Dogs barked, doors flew

open, voices cried out, “Welcome home, Master Radpath,” and eager

stumbling feet, hastily shod in heavy boots, came running down the stony

paths. The weary traveller was brought in to be warmed, fed and

embraced; a messenger was sent in haste to the house where the Governor

lodged that night. Through all the village spread the news that Simon

Radpath had come home and that with him had journeyed a great chief of

the Nascomis, to smoke the pipe of everlasting peace with the white

settlers. Early in the morning the town-crier was despatched to spread

the tidings through the whole district.

What a proud moment it was for Margeret when she heard this great

official’s huge, deep voice crying from the crossroads:

“Hear ye, good people all! Master Simon Radpath is come safe and sound

to his home again.”

It was a prouder moment still when she went, on the next Sabbath, up to

the meeting-house and, sitting among the women, could see her father

opposite in his place of honour, with many glances turning sidewise to

gaze at him as the hero of the day. Samuel Skerry, from his bench near

the door, was regarding him from under scowling brows, but the boy

beside him followed Master Simon’s every movement with eager,

worshipping eyes. Proudest of all was Margeret when the pastor ascended

into the pulpit and gave public thanks to God that “their good comrade,

who had made a far journey into the wilderness, who had ministered

successfully to a stricken people and who had brought about a momentous

treaty of peace, had come safe home again to his Puritan companions, to

his wife and daughter and to his little garden on the hill.

“There be some of us,” he ended, “who thought that garden was blessed

and some who thought it was accursed, and I, as Heaven is my witness, am

not yet certain whether it is or no. But of one thing we can be sure,

since it is plain to all eyes to-day, that Simon Radpath is the truest

and bravest Pilgrim of us all.”

CHAPTER III

ROOFS OF GOLD

“Have a care, little Mistress, there are duck eggs in that basket.”

The warning, called forth anxiously by Goodwife Allen, leaning over her

half-door, was quite unheeded by rebellious Margeret, who hurried out of

the gate, swinging her burden quite as recklessly as before.

She felt herself to be in a very rash mood that morning, for was she not

already in disgrace both at home and abroad? She had committed a very

terrible offence on the day before, the Sabbath, after she had been

sitting long on the hard bench in the meeting-house, shuffling her feet,

kicking her heels together and watching the sand of the pulpit hourglass

drop slowly, grain by grain, as though it would never mark the sermon’s

end. When Master Hapgood, as though in absence of mind, had turned the

glass over, a signal that his talk would last for perhaps an hour more,

she had heaved a long, loud sigh that resounded, in a pause of the

speaker’s, to the furthest corner of the meeting-house. Many of the

Puritan maids giggled openly, and more than one man, including Master

Simon, smiled behind his hand, although the pastor’s black frown would

have made any but the most abandoned child bow her head in shame. Yet

even to her mother’s sorrowful chiding on the way home, Margeret had not

replied meekly as a Puritan maid should.

This morning, when she had been sent with a bundle of herbs to Goodwife

Allen’s and had been directed to come quickly home again, she was openly

loitering on the road and planning to stop when she reached the wide,

sunny marsh and gather some of the gorgeous wild flowers that she had

noticed when she passed. She was weary, she told herself, of all these

strict rules, never to run and romp in the lanes, never to wear gay

ribbons or bright dresses, always to sit quiet on the hard benches

through the long, long, Sunday sermons. Presently, as she reflected thus

and swung her basket in time to her rebellious thoughts, one of the duck

eggs rolled over the edge and smashed in the dusty road.

“I don’t care,” cried Margeret, stamping her foot, although there was no

one to hear or see. “I don’t care!”

She might just as well have broken them all for, when she reached home,

an hour later, laden with an armful of bright marsh flowers, her mother

asked her for the eggs and she suddenly recollected that she had set the

basket down upon a tussock as she waded in the swamp and had left it

there.

“There is no time to go back to seek it now,” was all Mistress Radpath

said.

Margeret knew that she ought to declare that she was sorry, but

naughtiness and impatience seemed to have fastened upon her that day and

she kept silent.

“Bring out your spinning-wheel, my child,” said her mother a little

later. “Neighbour Deborah Page is ill and we must spin for her as well

as ourselves to-day.”

The little girl had just seen her father go past the door with his

gardening tools on his shoulder and had been planning to follow and help

him work among the flowers in the warm June sun. It was a pleasant day

of clean-washed air and fresh salt breezes, one that she could scarce

bear to think of spending within doors. She obeyed her mother very

reluctantly, brought her wheel from its corner and sat down to spin. Her

fingers were clumsy and her temper short so that in a moment she had

tangled her thread and jerked the treadle so roughly that it snapped.

Her mother’s look of mute reproach was more than she could bear.

“I care not at all,” she cried loudly and bitterly. “I wanted to break

the hateful wheel. Little girls must play sometimes!”

So saying, she rushed out of the door slamming it to behind her. She saw

Master Simon standing on the path, looking gravely and sorrowfully after

her, but she did not give him time to speak. Taking refuge behind the

great hawthorn bush she buried her face in the grass and burst into hot,

angry tears.

After she had cried for some time and had, in part at least, washed away

her wrath, she sat up to look about her and to wonder how, after all,

she could have been so wicked. Across the meadow, filled with bobolinks,

she could look down to the harbour where the full June tide was running

in. A little boat, sailed she knew by Roger Bardwell, the shoemaker’s

apprentice, in such moments as he could steal from his harsh master, was

flying joyously before the gay, warm wind. She could sniff a bewildering

sweetness that filled the air, for the linden tree had bloomed the day

before, driving Mistress Radpath’s bees nearly mad with joy. She had

heard them humming in the branches nearly the whole night through and

to-day again their song was loud in her ears. Indeed, as she listened,

the buzzing and whirring grew so insistent that she began to realise

something had happened.

“Why,” she exclaimed, “I believe that they are swarming.”

Leaving her refuge behind the hawthorn bush, she peeped over the hedge

of the little enclosed garden where the sundial stood and where the

peacock had once dwelt. Yes, there beyond, under the apple trees stood

her mother, with eager eyes and cheeks pink with excitement, as she held

up the new hive and sought to lure the bewildered bees within. The air

seemed full of their black whirring little bodies, which bye and bye,

however, gathered close and finally settled in a huge dark mass, hanging

from the linden tree like some strange, gigantic fruit. Then must

Mistress Radpath exercise all her wiles, find the queen-bee and persuade

her to enter the hive, to be followed at last by her train of black,

buzzing courtiers.

“Now that was as skilfully managed as ever I saw it!” exclaimed Master

Simon. “Scarce could I have done better myself.”

He chuckled as he spoke for it was a well-known joke in the household

that Master Simon, although equal to any other emergency that might

arise, could not come in too great haste to call Mistress Radpath, once

the bees swarmed. He took the hive from her now and bent to kiss the

successful bee-mistress before he went to put it in place beneath the

apple-trees.

“Goody Parsons says I shall never have true skill until I learn to

whisper charms and spells over the hives, as she does,” returned

Mistress Radpath. “She says—but oh, my spinning, I shall never have it

done!”

She went quickly into the house, leaving Master Simon to set the hive in

its place at the end of the long row that stretched across the back of

the garden. Some of the hives, those that had been brought from England,

were trim and blue-painted, the others were roughly framed out of wood

cut in the forest. It chanced that the one just put into place was the

best and most elaborate of all, for it had a pane of glass in its side

through which one could see the newcomers already turning to the work

that would result in the building up of a golden honeycomb. Margeret,

her anger almost forgotten now, slipped across the grass and stood at

her father’s side, watching too. As she came near he murmured to himself

a line that she had heard him quote before:

“The singing masons, building roofs of gold.”

“Father,” she said, putting her hand into his and speaking hesitatingly,

as she was not quite sure how she would be received, “what do those

words mean and where did you first hear them?”

She was quite astonished when, for answer, Master Simon burst into a

hearty laugh.

“My child,” he said, “that is almost the very question that was asked me

forty years ago by my elderly Aunt Matilda of whom I was that moment

thinking. And with that scowl upon your face, you look not unlike the

severe dame herself as she asked it.”

“Ah, tell me about it,” begged Margeret, the scowl disappearing and the

last of her anger quite swept away. She loved her father’s stories,

especially those that had to do with his boyhood and that fierce and

redoubtable Aunt Matilda.

Master Simon turned to the bench under the linden tree, at the edge of

the little enclosed garden, and took her upon his knee.

“And so,” he queried, “that gust of temper is all gone by and you are

willing to be friends with your father and mother again? What was it

that put you into such a sudden passion? I did not know that you hated

so to spin.”

“It was not just the spinning,” returned Margeret, hanging her head. “It

was because I was weary of working so much and being so dull and sober.

It was because”—here was so terrible a confession that she could scarce

bring it forth—“because I did not like to be a Puritan maid and did not

want to be good.”

Her father only laughed and held her close.

“We all of us have that same thought at times,” he said, “and in every

heart there stirs, now and then, an impatience with the strict and bare

Puritan life. We, who, when children, saw some of the glitter and

gorgeousness of that golden age in England, the reign of Queen

Elizabeth, cannot but feel a longing, sometimes, for that splendid pomp

and show from which we have turned aside. It would be odd did not the

echoes of our hidden desire still sound in the hearts of our sons and

daughters. I can never forget how the great Queen once made a royal

progress through the town near which I dwelt, and how I ran in the dust

beside her procession, staring with all my eyes at the glittering array.

Such shining soldiers, such ladies clad in velvet and cloth of gold,

such heavy banners fluttering in the hot air! No Queen in a fairy tale

could have shown a more splendid picture. And when I went back to the

cottage where I lived with my uncle and aunt, saw him in his dark coat

and Aunt Matilda in her scant grey dress, and looked about at the bare

walls and the rough furniture, then I, like you, felt suddenly that it

was a dreary business this of trying to be a good Puritan. Yet the

following of our faith is not all, thank Heaven, in wearing a sober coat

and going to meeting six hours every Sabbath.”

“Did you ever see the Queen again?” asked Margeret.

“Yes, I saw and spoke with her once, when I was still a little boy and

she was an old woman. How I chanced to see her, and how my staid uncle

broke through our strictest Puritan law, are both parts of the story

that I was to tell you. Well, we will have the story first and then talk

a little further of this grievous business of being a Puritan.

“You must remember,” he began, as Margeret nestled closer against his

arm, “since I have told you so often, that all through my boyhood I

lived with my uncle at the edge of a great, wonderful garden that

belonged, not to any of the people thereabout, but to the English Crown.

It was there that Queen Bess, when she was but the Princess Elizabeth

Tudor, had lived when she was a girl. There, too, my father, Robert

Radpath, who was heir to the neighbouring estates, used to play with her

when they were children and up to the time when she became Queen. He

never saw her after that day when she set off to London to assume the

crown, but he was always loyal in her service and she stood ever his

friend. He sailed on many of those long voyages for which Queen

Elizabeth’s reign is famous; he and others of her brave sailors risked

much that her flag should fly in distant, unknown corners of the world.

When my father became a Puritan and the persecuting laws bore so heavily

upon all of that faith that even the Queen’s interest seemed powerless

to save him, she appointed him upon a mission to China, to bear a

message from her to that far country’s mighty ruler. From that voyage he

never returned.

“I was a very little boy at the time of his going, but I remember him

well and remember, too, the day the royal messenger came with a letter

written in the Queen’s own hand ‘To my good friend and old comrade,

Robin Radpath.’ He brought also a gorgeously be-ribboned and red-sealed

packet that was to be delivered to ‘The Right, High, Mighty and

Invincible Emperor of Cathaye,’ with Elizabeth’s signature upon it,

written very large for the better reading of a monarch who knew only

Chinese. In three days my father had sailed away in one of her great

high-prowed ships, sailed to meet disaster in some unknown sea, for he

never came home again.”

“And that was how you came to dwell with your uncle?” asked Margeret,

for of this portion of her father’s life she never had heard before.

“Yes, my mother being dead, her brother took me to his house where I

lived henceforth with him and his sister, my Aunt Matilda. My father’s

Puritanism had cost him his estates, but my uncle, a humble man, had

escaped the persecution that had, so far, struck only at the great

lords. A rigid follower of the rules of his faith was my uncle, but my

Aunt Matilda—ah, her strictness and severity left his far behind. He

feared no man on earth, yet of his sister he was as afraid as was I.

“After all these years I cannot quite recollect how it befell that my

uncle took me with him on a journey to London, it may have been only

because I begged so hard to go. Even less can I tell you how he came to

do the thing that almost above all else is forbidden to Puritans, to

witness a show of play-actors. We were passing down a narrow crowded

street when I saw a sign beside a gateway, a great placard setting forth

that here within was to be enacted ‘A new play by Master William

Shakespeare, The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fifth, and His

Glorious Victory of Agincourt.’ I pulled my uncle’s arm to call his

attention, he hesitated, passed by the gate, came back again and

finally, muttering ‘Say naught of this to your aunt,’ led me within.

“It was a strange sight for the eyes of a little Puritan boy fresh from

the country, the rough platform of the stage, the open space before it

where stood a motley crowd of the common folk of London, the rows of

boxes, and finally the gaily dressed actors who strode forth upon the

boards. I believe rain fell upon us as we stood there, and that the sun

came out and disappeared again, but to all that I gave little heed, for

my heart and soul and eyes were with the gallant King Henry, speeding

away to France. It was a play full of clashing arms, of ringing

war-cries and hard-fought battles, yet in the midst of it there was one

who came forth to describe the higher blessings of a peaceful kingdom,

likening it to a beehive, with each member doing his appointed task and

having joy in his work. It was thus he spoke of the bees, ‘Singing

masons building roofs of gold.’ When the play was over, my uncle led me

out, blind and deaf to the sights and sounds of London, only those

stirring words ringing in my ears as they do still.”

“And did your Aunt Matilda ever find you out?” inquired Margeret, hot on

the trail of the rest of the story.

“My uncle made me promise again never to tell her,” Master Simon

continued with a chuckle, “but he might have known that a little boy, so

full of one idea as I was of that play, must spill the news abroad

somehow. It was the day after our return that I was playing on the grass

before our cottage while my aunt sat knitting in the doorway. Suddenly

she asked:

“‘Simon, what is it that you are muttering?’

“She spoke so quickly and sharply that I, lost in a maze of dreams that

I scarce understood, had no better wit than to tell her the line that

was running through my head.

“‘Singing masons,’ she snapped. ‘What means that? There are no such

words in the Bible and you have no business to be reading aught else.

Where heard you that, Simon?’

“I had my scattered wits collected now, and I pretended not to hear.

“‘I think it is time I fed the hens,’ I said with sudden dutifulness.

‘See, the sun is almost down.’

“‘Not until you answer me,’ she directed, but again I feigned not to

hear and hurried across the grass. I heard her get up to follow and then

I ran as fast as my short legs would permit.

“‘Simon,’ she called after me, and I trembled lest I be caught and made

to confess. I doubt whether she had the least suspicion of my uncle’s

iniquity, or whether it was more than her curiosity that had become so

roused. But well I knew that once she asked a question she was bound to

have an answer.

“Across the poultry yard I fled, despair in my heart, for I heard her

footsteps coming close behind. I remember thinking that I could hide

almost anywhere, being so little, but that the sun was so low that my

great long shadow would betray me wherever I sought shelter. So I

climbed the palings that bordered my uncle’s ground, crossed the lane

and squeezed through the hedge into the great garden over the way. Far

off I could still hear my aunt’s shrill, high voice calling ‘Simon,

Simon.’

“I have told you much of that garden, little Margeret, but never, never

can I tell you enough; of the spreading trees, the pleached walks that

were cool long tunnels in the summer’s heat, and of the high, dark

hedges, through whose arches I could glimpse such wealth of colour and

sunshine that it seemed I must be peeping into Paradise. I had walked

there with my father when I was a tiny boy, and could still remember his

tales of how he used to play there with the Princess Elizabeth, and how

it was in the little enclosed garden at the centre, still called the

Queen’s Garden, that the news had come that the English throne was hers.

We often went there together to see the clipped yew-trees that the

English gardeners call ‘maids-of-honour’ and to watch the old, old

peacock trail his shabby feathers across the grass. The yews, my father

said, had been named by the Princess after her own maids-of-honour, and

one in particular that would grow thin and straggling in spite of the

gardener’s care was called, after an unfortunately ugly and

sharp-tempered lady of her company, ‘Mistress Abigail Peckham.’ After my

father’s death I used to play there still, although my aunt did not

greatly approve. The gardeners—there were but few of them now, and all

of them old, because the Queen came almost never to this estate of

hers—were kind to me and taught me all I know of flowers and growing

things.

“Had I not been in such haste to escape my aunt I should have noticed a

group of people at the distant gate, men on horseback and women in hoods

and cloaks as though they had come on a journey. I took small heed of

them, however, my only thought being that in the Queen’s little garden I

should be safe from pursuit, since there scarce any person save myself

ever seemed to enter. Yet this time, as I came panting through the

hedge, I started back in amazement for there was some one there. A tall

woman stood beside the bench and, as she turned toward me, I saw that

her hair was red and her skin yellow and wrinkled like old parchment.

She was wrapped in a great, grey riding cloak, although between its

folds I could catch the glitter of jewelled embroideries and velvet

slashed with gold.

“‘Robin!’ she cried out when she saw me and then, in a moment added,

‘No, no, Robin has long been dead.’

“‘My name is Simon,’ I told her, ‘and I dwell with Master Parrish of

this village,’ for so I had been taught to say.

“She scarcely seemed to hear me, but stood looking about, her face

working oddly as though she wished to weep but had well-nigh forgotten

how. Thinking to cheer her, and wishing to show off the garden which I

had begun to think of as my own, I touched her arm and pointed to the

foremost yew-tree, lank and awkward after all the years.

“‘That,’ I said, ‘is the Lady Abigail Peckham.’

“She looked at me in startled wonder.

“‘How came you to know that, boy?’ she asked sharply.

“‘My father told me,’ I answered, and, going from one to another of the

maids-of-honour, I named them all, ‘Cecelia, Eleanor, Gertrude and

Anne.’

“‘There is no one but my old play-fellow who ever heard those names,’

she said, the stiffness of her manner melting suddenly. ‘You must be the

son of Robin Radpath.’

“‘And you,’ I answered boldly, for her smile had put me quite at ease,

‘must be the great Queen Elizabeth of England.’

“‘Ay,’ she returned, ‘a queen who has outworn her time and who has come

back to look once more before she dies upon the place where, of all her

life, she was the happiest.’

“She began to move to and fro across the grass, seeming to greet each

flower and shrub as though it were an old friend. Suddenly, however, she

turned to me again.

“‘Are you of your father’s faith?’ she inquired.

“‘Yes,’ I told her. ‘I am a Puritan.’

“‘You say it boldly, boy,’ she said. ‘Are you not afraid? No, you would

scarce be your father’s son, did you show fear. Ah, when I was young, I

also was not afraid. I made men do as I willed and I forced a measure of

tolerance upon my people. Now I am an old woman, bullied by my Ministers

of State, who will not believe that until you let men worship as they

will there can be no peace.’

“Then she took my hand and spoke so gravely and earnestly that I can

never forget her words.

“‘Hark ye, lad,’ she said, ‘you shall bear a message from the age that

is past to the age that is to come, a truth that an old woman has

learned in tears and that the next generation, mayhap, must learn in

blood. It is that the Gospel of Fear fills no churches, that no terror

of imprisonment, pain or death will ever drive men from the religion

they hold to be the true one. We of the Church of England have made our

mistake and well-nigh learned our sorry lesson, but will you of the

Puritan faith have eyes to see more clearly, or will you, too, sow the

Gospel of Fear for a bitter reaping?’

“I was but a little boy, Margeret, when I listened to those words, but I

shall remember them as long as ever I live. Here in the New England,

where we are planting our fields and gardens with all of what we loved

best in the Old, we are planting too, as I can see, something more than

gardens, the seeds of a new country and a new life. Yet sometimes I fear

that in our laws there is too much of harshness and severity, that our

faith is more a terror of God’s wrath than a love for His kindness, that

we also are planting deep the Gospel of Fear for a sorrowful reaping. It

may be I am wrong and that man of fierce speech who cursed my garden was

right after all. But, mistaken or not, we are doing a work that will

some day prove to be a great one, so that we should all labour happily

together like ‘singing masons building roofs of gold.’ That, to my mind,

is what it is to be a Puritan. So shall we, Margeret, so easily grow

weary of our task merely because the life seems bare and the labour

long?”

“No, no,” she cried, slipping from his knee and flinging her arms about

his neck, “and if you will come in and mend my spinning wheel, I will

set about doing my share this very minute. But do you think that my work

for others might some day be a little greater than mere spinning and

something not—not quite so dull? Must I wait until I am old to do more

than that?”

Her father laughed cheerily.

“No, you need not wait until you are old,” he said, “but it does no harm

to be spinning while the greater adventure is tarrying on the way. Who

knows, it maybe in waiting for you only just around the corner of the

next year.”

The sun stood high overhead as they went up the path together, while

through the drone of the bees and the subdued twitter of the birds in

the drowsy noonday, Margeret could hear the whirr of her mother’s busy

wheel. If all the toilers of hand and heart were like Mistress Radpath

and Master Simon, the roofs of gold would soon be built to the very

clouds.

CHAPTER IV

THE GOSPEL OF FEAR

The higher task and the larger adventure were nearer to Margeret Radpath

than she had thought. Neither she, nor her mother nor Master Simon as

they went about their work through all those busy summer months had even

a vague dream of what the first days of autumn would bring forth.

Hopewell, falling ever into more placid ways with each year of quiet and

prosperity, had begun to forget the excitements of its earlier history

and to cease talking even of the strange vanishing of Jeremiah Macrae.

It seemed, as it always does in peaceful times, as though nothing could

ever again stir the calm order of the passing days.

If there was any one who had an inkling of what disturbing matters were

in store it was the silent, shabby Roger Bardwell who did Samuel

Skerry’s errands, helped to mend Hopewell’s rows of broken shoes and

who, in spite of his shyness and the evil reputation of his master,

seemed to have won the good will of all who knew him. It began to be

that people bringing boots to be mended asked that the apprentice do the

work instead of the cobbler himself for, as Goodwife Allen said:

“That surly Skerry makes me feel that with every stitch he puts into the

leather he has sewed in a poisoned thought of me and mine.”

At first the shoemaker took such requests as ill-naturedly as you would

expect of so sour tempered a man; later he would merely shrug his

shoulders and say:

“If the boy wishes to do twice as much work as his master, what have I

to say? So be it you pay me the money I care not who bears the labour.”

For it was well known that Skerry loved money almost as much as he hated

his fellow men.

Throughout this summer it began to happen more and more often that

villagers, coming to ask for Roger Bardwell, found only the scowling

master-cobbler, and on their inquiring where the boy might be were told

that “he was off in the forest somewhere, wasting the precious minutes

that might otherwise be turned into good silver coin.”

“Ay, coin for you but not for him,” Goody Parsons retorted one day.

“When you pay the boy no wages you have no just cause for complaint if

now and then he steals a moment for himself.”

“A moment!” snarled Skerry. “Why, he is often gone for a whole day and a

night and sometimes more. He used to waste his time sailing a boat down

yonder on the bay, but now he has given up even that pastime for these

endless expeditions into the wood.”

“Tell me, friend, what errand takes him there and for such long spaces

of time,” inquired the Goody eagerly. “Tell me and I vow I will whisper

it to no one.”

The shoemaker rocked back and forth upon his stool in silent,

ill-natured glee.

“And this is the dame who had sworn to give over gossiping,” he

exclaimed. “No, you would not whisper it, you would shout it louder than

could the town crier himself. Therefore I will not tell you.”

“I think you do not know,” returned Goody Parsons with spirit, and she

flounced out of his workshop with as much haughtiness as her still old

joints would permit. She left Skerry muttering and frowning over her

remark, which had evidently come nearer to the truth than he liked. It

was not often that the shoemaker’s crafty curiosity failed to penetrate

the most hidden mysteries, but in this matter of his helper’s absence he

seemed to have met with distinct failure. Whatever it was that took

Roger Bardwell so often to the forest, whatever it was that made his

blue eyes more serious and his face more sober every day, no questioning

or spying on his master’s part served to draw the secret from him.

Margeret Radpath saw him seldom, but even on those rare occasions she

noticed how much graver and more troubled he seemed to be as time went

by. Was Samuel Skerry so cruel to him, she wondered; was life within the

same four walls with the shoemaker’s rasping tongue so hard to bear? She

wished often that she might know the truth of the matter and whether she

or her father could be of any help.

She was sent one day with Master Simon’s great snow boots that must be

mended before the winter, and she tried, all the way across the field,

to summon courage enough to offer Roger some word of sympathy and

friendship. The shoemaker’s cottage, with its wide-spreading eaves and

small deep windows looked somehow of a very lowering and forbidding

aspect, as she made her way with failing spirit up the stone-flagged

pathway to its door. It had been built almost the first of the cottages

of Hopewell, not by Samuel Skerry, but by a stout-hearted weaver, one of

the earliest settlers. He had gone now to dwell in Salem but throughout

the first and most troubled years of the Colony’s history he had lived

here all alone. There was a tale that once an Indian, whom the weaver

had made an enemy, had come there in the night seeking to kill the white

man who was so bold as to dwell by himself. The weaver, a man of mighty

strength, had overpowered the Indian, had cut the web from his loom and

had bound his struggling foe to the great armchair that stood by the

fire. Then he had calmly mounted once more to his high bench, had set up

his weaving and had toiled busily the whole night through, singing as he

worked. Neighbours came in the morning and, at the weaver’s orders,

released the Indian who slunk off into the forest inspired with a

wholesome dread of these mad white men who feared nothing. Margeret

thought, as she came up the path, that the cottage looked like just the

place where stirring things might have happened in the past and might

some day happen again.

On peeping in through the open door she saw that the loom had never been

taken down and that even the weaver’s great armchair still held its

place before the fire. It seemed dark within, after the bright sunshine

outside, but she could make out the figure of Roger Bardwell bending

over the shoemaker’s bench in the further corner of the room. His work

lay unfinished on his knee and his face was buried in his hands. Utter

weariness and despair spoke in his whole attitude. He sprang up quickly,

however, when he heard her footstep and greeted her with his shy smile.

“Why, Mistress Margeret,” he was beginning, when he was interrupted by

the opening of the back door of the cottage and the abrupt entry of

Samuel Skerry.

“So,” said the shoemaker to Margeret, “you have an errand here? Then

state it quickly, for ours are busy days and time means good money.”

Dismayed at his harsh tone, Margeret quickly drew the heavy boots from

under her arm.

“These are worn in the soles and are to be mended,” she said. “My father

says that—”

Skerry broke out in sudden anger as though he could not bear even the

mention of Master Simon.

“A pest on you and your father!” he cried. “Do I not hear enough in the

village of Master Simon this and Master Simon that, without having to

see his own daughter coming to my house to tell me what I should do?

Begone from my door and come not here again with your chattering and

your tempting my boy into idleness.”

Margeret made no delaying but turned at once to flee. Roger, however,

followed her beyond the door and spoke hastily in an undertone.

“You must not mind the shoemaker’s sharp words, little Mistress,” he

reassured her. “He seems indeed to bear ill will toward your father, but

still I sometimes see him at our door, watching Master Simon in his

garden with a look so gentle, almost wistful, that I know not what to

think. The boots shall be mended safely, and when they are done I will

bring them back. I fear that the scant welcome you have received will

make you desire little to come hither again.”

“When he brings the boots,” Margeret reflected, as she walked back

through the field, “my father must question him and perhaps can find a

way to help him.”

It was just then the season for candle making, the task that Margeret

loved above all others of the year. Beyond Master Simon’s garden was a

stretch of waste land reaching down to the water’s edge, where grew in a

thick tangle, the dark bayberry bushes that so many of the Puritans had

thought best to root out of their fields. Master Simon, however, had

kept his and had found that from their abundant fruit could be made the

green, sweet-smelling tapers that were of such service through the long

winter. Tallow was still scarce in the little Colony, and wax candles

brought from England far too costly, so this was a brave discovery

indeed. Every autumn when the first tang of frost was in the air, all

the children of Hopewell gathered to pick Master Simon’s bayberries and

a merry task they made of it. Then, for days after, would come the

sorting of the fruit, the boiling and skimming and the dipping of the

wicks. Slowly the candles would take shape until the moment that was to

Margeret a breathlessly exciting one when the first pair were placed in

the copper candlesticks on the mantel and were lighted to see if all had

been properly done and the tapers burned clear, steady and fragrant as

they should.

“I trust,” said Mistress Radpath, as they began the first evening to

sort and select the berries, “that this season our task may be completed

in peace. Last year, do you remember, I slipped and hurt my arm so that

you had to do the work with no help but my directions. And well indeed

you did it!”

“And the year before,” added Margeret, “neighbour Deborah Page was ill

and you ran in and out between the boilings and skimmings trying to

attend to her.”

“Ay, so it goes,” her mother said. “Some mishap each season all the way

back to the year when your father was away among the Indians and we made

the candles wondering whether he would ever come back to see them burn.

But this year, surely all is peaceful and quiet and our task should be

carried safely to its end.”

Mistress Radpath spoke too soon for, as it proved, never before was a

candle making season so full of disturbing and long-remembered events.

To begin with, the very next day when the first kettleful of berries had

just been swung over the fire, a mounted man stopped at the gate and

came in to tell them that a cousin in the next town was taken with a

fever and begged for help. So, with scarce half-an-hour’s delay,

Mistress Radpath went off, seated on the pillion behind the messenger

and leaving Margeret to face the candle making alone.

She boiled and dipped and cooled with steady patience all of that day

and the next until a great pile of straight smooth candles lay upon the

kitchen table. Master Simon came in just as the first two were lighted

and was loud in his praise of the tall, sweet-smelling flame.

“Will not my mother be pleased?” cried Margeret joyfully. “I can

scarcely wait to show her how well the work has gone. See, here are

little ones for lanterns and big ones to read by and a few great

splendid tapers to burn if perchance the Governor should visit us again.

And to-night you shall sit and read by these first ones while I sit by

you and sew.”

It had been a cool, clear October day, with vivid sunshine lying over

the garden, but as Margeret went to the window to pull the curtains

close she saw that the night promised to be stormy. It had grown dark

early, big black clouds were rolling across such few stars as had sought

to show themselves, and, even as she stood there, a patter of rain came

against the glass.

“We will be so cosy here by the fire,” she was saying, as she went to

the next window, then, with a sudden exclamation, “Oh, look, look,

Father; what can those lights mean?”

Master Simon came quickly to look over her shoulder. At the edge of the

town moving lanterns were passing to and fro, with here and there the

red flare of a pine-knot torch. Even as they watched more and more

lights gathered and were carried back and forth in excited confusion

while on the rising wind came the far-off sound of the town crier’s

bell.

“Oh, what can it be?” faltered Margeret. “Do you—do you think it could

be the Quakers again?”

She could never forget the winter evening, now three years past, when

two women of that forbidden faith had passed through the village and had

sought to spend the night at Hopewell’s little inn. They had been driven

from the town and she, standing at the corner of the lane, had seen them

fleeing with bent heads and upraised arms before the shower of stones

hurled after them by the mob of angry Puritans. Master Simon had tried

to stem the tide of his comrades’ fury, but for once had not prevailed.

She could still remember the look on his face as the crowd went surging

by them and how he had turned upon his heel muttering, “How long, O

Lord, how long?”

“How can they do it?” she had gasped, as she, too, turned from the

terrifying sight. “There are good Neighbour Allen and Dame Page shouting

curses and even the children are flinging stones!”

“They are afraid not to, my child,” Master Simon had answered. “They

dread the wrath of God should they suffer these women to remain here,

and they think by this cruelty to save their own souls. It is so men are

taught by the Gospel of Fear.”

It seemed that it was again the Gospel of Fear that drove forth the men

of Hopewell that night. The lights were moving in wide tossing circles,

they were bobbing about in the fields like will-o’-the-wisps and were

advancing closer and closer as they spread across the meadows.

“Father,” Margeret cried wildly, “they are coming here!”

“It may be,” said Master Simon at last, “that some child is lost or some

one is hurt. We had better go out to make sure that it is no such

mischance as that.”

The wind and rain blew hard in their faces as they went down the garden

path so that Margeret had to cling to her father’s arm to keep from

losing him in the dark. The horn lantern in his hand winked and

flickered but managed somehow to remain feebly alight as they struggled

on against the storm. They had not gone far beyond the boundaries of

their own land before they came upon a little group of searchers led by

Goodman Allen. Their lights had all blown out and they were standing

close together, their backs to the wind, trying, in breathless haste, to

kindle a new flame.

“Here is Master Simon Radpath with his lantern still burning,” exclaimed

one in a tone of relief. “Now we can lose no time but lay hands upon

that evil man at once. I am certain he is somewhere near.”

“I had hoped that we would meet you sooner, Neighbour,” said Goodman

Allen. “It is not your wont to sit safe by the fire when Hopewell needs

your help.”

“That depends somewhat upon your trouble,” answered Master Simon

gravely. “Some matters I find are better managed without my aid. What is

it now? Are some fleeing Quaker women threatening the safety of your

souls again? Or is it a Baptist this time, one man against the whole of

the village?”

“It is far worse than that,” burst out the one who had spoken first,

“worse than anything you can believe!”

“I thought there was naught worse than a Quaker,” began Master Simon

bitterly, but Allen interrupted him.

“The man whom we seek is a thousand times worse,” he cried. “He is a

Catholic priest, a Jesuit, and he has dared to live in the forest near

us for years. He wandered southward from the Canadian settlements and

came to dwell, miles from here it is true, but within the legal bounds

of the Colony of Hopewell. He established a mission among the Indians,

even built a woodland chapel and said his forbidden masses here,

actually here in New England, upon Puritan soil! And the Indians,

close-mouthed rascals, never betrayed him.”

“And how have you found him out now?” inquired Master Simon. He seemed

not so astonished as he should have been upon hearing this terrible

tale. Perhaps his red-skinned friends had told more to him than to the

other white men.

“He tried to slip down past the town and escape from our shores by sea.

Somewhere in this darkness and storm a ship is cruising up and down

waiting to carry him away. It seems that he desired to go back to France

but was too old and broken to undertake the overland journey to Canada.”

“Come, friend,” put in another of the little party, nudging Allen as he

spoke, in a vain attempt to check the story that he was pouring out. “We

are delaying here and time is precious. Let Master Simon give us a light

from his lantern.”

“A moment first,” said Margeret’s father. “I must know who it was that

found out all this.”

“Who but the wisest and craftiest man in Hopewell,” answered Allen. “Who

but that clever shoemaker, Samuel Skerry? The priest became bewildered

in the dark and by some chance wandered to the cobbler’s door. Roger

Bardwell was from home and the shoemaker there alone, but it did not

take him long to make the simple old Frenchman believe that he was a

friend and so to draw the whole story from him. Then Skerry came in

haste to rouse the town, but before we could return with him the priest

had taken alarm and was off and away again. Now we are searching

everywhere for him and when we find him—” He chanced to catch Margeret’s

horrified eyes fixed upon him in the lantern light and so concluded

lamely, “It is no matter to be talked of before little maids.”

“It is no work for honest men,” rejoined Master Simon hotly, “to hunt a

lost, frightened, old man up and down through the storm as though he

were a wild thing. Have you no pity, Neighbour Allen, and no kindness of

heart?”

“I have both,” answered the other, “but I have also a soul, a soul that

will be lost for all eternity should I suffer this priest to go

unpunished.”

Margeret started and was scarcely able to repress a cry. Something had

brushed by her in the dark close to the hedge, something small and quick

and panting.

“It is he, it is he!” cried the man nearest her. “I hear something

rustling by the hedge. Your light, Master Simon, for the love of

Heaven.”

“Yes,” said Master Simon.

The thin, flickering ray from his lantern swung across the wet

wind-swept bushes nearer—and nearer, and then suddenly went out, leaving

them all groping in the blind darkness.

“Scatter quickly and feel your way along the hedge,” cried Allen. “A

plague on this tempest and the treachery of lanterns!”

Margeret felt her father’s hand grasp hers firmly and draw her along the

path that led back to their garden. Under cover of the dark they moved

away from the searchers and walked silently up to the house. Once

inside, Master Simon laid off his wet cloak and hung the offending

lantern on its nail.

“You should have put in one of your new candles, Margeret,” was all he

said; “the old one was so nearly burnt out that it was not to be trusted

in such a wind.”

But he smiled a little as he spoke and she, for relief and joy at the

priest’s escape, laughed out loud. She went to the window to watch the

winking lights again as they danced about in the meadow more confusedly

than before. Finally, some new information seemed to have reached the

searchers, for the bobbing lanterns moved closer together, turned in

another direction, and passed so quickly that in a few moments the whole

chase had gone over the hill to the northward.

“They have gone quite away,” she exclaimed joyfully, but Master Simon

made no reply. He was sitting in his big chair by the fire and gazing

intently into the red flames. She went to stand by his side and stare at

them too.

“Suppose he had found our door instead of Samuel Skerry’s,” she said at

last, “would you have let him in?”

Her father came out of his brown study to answer her.

“The Puritan law inflicts heavy fines and imprisonment or worse,” he

said, “upon any one who harbours a Roman Catholic priest.”

“But would you have let him in?” she persisted.

“I would have asked your consent first,” he replied gravely, “for in the

eyes of the law such a crime would be shared by all who were in the

house that admitted him. And would you have dared to bring him in?”

“Yes, most surely,” she answered. “I would have warmed and fed him,

would have given him all I had to aid and comfort him and to send him

safe upon his way. And so would you, as I well know.”

“I think—” began Master Simon, and then stopped suddenly to listen.

Quick footsteps sounded on the grass behind the house, the back door was

thrown open swiftly and without the ceremony of a knock. Upon the

threshold stood Roger Bardwell, wet, panting and eager, his blue eyes no

longer sad or troubled, but shining with excited purpose.

“Master Simon,” he cried, although hardly above his breath, “and you,

Mistress Margeret, do you dare to give aid to a man who needs your help

so sorely that without it he must perish?”

“Yes,” said Master Simon. “Is it the French priest?”

“Ay, it is the priest,” Roger answered. “He is hiding in your garden.”

CHAPTER V

BY CANDLELIGHT

When, a moment later, Roger and Master Simon half helped, half carried

the stranger through the door, Margeret’s first feeling was a sinking of

the heart and the despairing thought:

“Oh, if only my mother were here!”

But the next minute her courage rose again at the thought that here was

a task to which, after all, she was quite equal and that at last had

come a thrilling adventure in which she could have her own share. She

went about the kitchen, mending the fire, setting the kettle to boil,

bringing blankets to be heated and herbs to be brewed as steadily and

gravely as though she were Mistress Radpath herself. But all the time

her heart was beating loud with excitement rather than terror at the

risk they were running. She caught Roger’s eye once or twice and

observed that under his grave demeanour he was as stirred at heart as

she was. Here at last was the solution to his mystery, this was the

friend that he had visited so often in the forest, it was this very

escape through Hopewell that he had planned and worried over so many

months.

It took much effort and all of Master Simon’s skill to revive the

exhausted guest, to quiet his shivering, to warm his trembling hands and

bring a little colour back into his deathlike face. That he was old,

Margeret had known from the talk in the field, but she had not been

prepared to see any one so feeble, so small and shrunken, so bowed down

with age and long hardship. He lay back unmoving in Master Simon’s big

chair, his thin, almost transparent hands resting limp and seemingly

lifeless against the cushion.

At length, however, he stirred, opened his black eyes to look about him

in wonder for a moment and, finally, he smiled and spoke.

“So it is that I am among friends,” he said in his quaint

French-flavoured English. “I, who have been hunted like a wild animal up

and down your fields these three hours past. They are no respecters of

old age and white hairs, these Puritan brothers of yours, Monsieur

Simon.”

“They know not any better,” answered Master Simon briefly, “and since

they have failed to find you we can forgive them.”

“Yes, they failed, thanks to this brave friend of mine here,” smiled the

little priest, laying his hand upon Roger Bardwell’s. “And I think it is

thanks also to the high hedges of your garden that Puritan zeal and

Puritan justice went by on the other side to-night.”

His spirits seemed to revive quickly as the pleasant glow of the fire

began to warm his chilled bones. Before an hour had passed he was

sitting upright among the cushions and blankets telling, to three most

eager listeners, tales of his life in the forest. Roger Bardwell was

seated on the settle, warming his cold hands at last and drying his

rain-soaked clothes. He seemed a different boy now, with all the old

trouble and misgiving put aside for the moment, since now his perilous

affairs were in Master Simon’s safe keeping.

“Yes,” the little priest was saying, “it is not a life for those who

love luxury and ease, but the Jesuit Fathers have long since learned to

deny themselves both. Such toils and adventures as I knew when I was

young have made it seem a little thing to dwell in the forest so near to

your hostile Colony, yet with only my savage red-skinned children for

company. Their need of me seemed to be so great that I have been led to

remain with them, year after year, until old age and feebleness have

made impossible my return to Canada. The great swamp between me and your

village has stood me in good stead, for in all this time my hiding place

has been undiscovered, and out of all the white settlers upon the coast,

only two have ever wandered so far as my door.”

“And who could those two have been?” inquired Master Simon.

“One was this dear, good lad here, Roger Bardwell, who strayed thither

half dead with hunger and weariness and has been my helper and

benefactor ever since. And the other—ah, what a strange fellow he was!

The Indians brought him to me after that fearful winter storm some years

since; they had found him wandering in the forest nearly crazed from

starvation and exposure. He lay there in my hut for many weeks, always

crying out that I should not come nigh him, that he would take no

favours from an infidel Papist’s hands and that Heaven’s vengeance would

fall upon me did I not change my faith before it was too late.”

Margeret stirred a little and looked up anxiously at her father. What

was there so familiar in those last words?

“I had hopes at one time that he would live,” the priest went on, “and

night and day I tended him with all the skill I knew. I have often

thought of what pain it must have been to him to be nursed by a Jesuit,

whose very presence he believed would bring corruption. How he raved of

the sins of the world and the fearful punishments that were to overtake

the wicked! Ah, could he have lived, as I have, in the peace of the

forest, ministering to the simple-hearted Indians, he might have learned

that, after all, men know not so much of God as to be able to say freely

who is to be condemned and who rewarded. He died, just as Spring was

flooding the forest with new life and beauty, but he died as he had

lived, still deeming the world a dark, wicked, bitter place. My Indians

helped me to bury him under the pines, it was they that brought the

white stone upon which we made shift to carve the name he had told

us—Jeremiah Macrae. Some day, so I had thought, I would lie there by his

side when my own task was laid down forever. I believe that he would not

have minded that we should so sleep together through the ages, for I

think that he knows by now that salvation is not so narrow and lonely a

thing as he had thought, and has learned that a Puritan minister and a

Jesuit priest may labour in God’s work side by side.”

“I would that all the world could see as clearly as you,” said Master

Simon, with a sigh.

“It will some day,” answered the priest cheerfully. “Not in our time,

brother, but at last. Few of my faith and few of yours think as do you

and I, but the seed is sowing and the world will grow wise in Heaven’s

own good time.”

There was silence for a space before the thin, gentle voice of the

priest went on again.

“Shall I tell you, my friends,” he said, “why it is not to be that I

sleep beside Jeremiah Macrae in the forest and why I am at last laying

the burden down and, if it be that I slip through the fingers of your

Puritan brothers, will go back to die in my own dear country across the

sea? It was but a little thing that in the end broke down my firmness,

but when a man is old and weary it takes not much to call him home. I

have never spoken before of what the true reason was, but I think that

boy yonder knows.”

Roger smiled.

“I believe it was the Nascomi Indian,” he observed, “and the gift that

he left you.”

The little father nodded.

“It was in the same year as the coming of Monsieur Macrae that an Indian

from a strange tribe passed that way and lingered with us a little. He

left, when he went forward on his journey again, a faded yellow tulip

whose petals had once been like burnished gold, just such a flower as

used to grow in the garden near my first parish church in France. So

long have I dwelt in the fierce wilderness that it seems only a dream

when I think of that fair bright country of mine. Yet it is a dream that

stands often before my eyes, those close-built villages with their

clustering red roofs and their smoke rising from a hundred neighbourly

chimneys, those sun-bathed streets, narrow and crooked but, oh, so dear,

and the great church towering over all as though to care for its

children and protect them. Long, long I sat in the doorway the night

after the Indian had gone, looking out into the moonlit forest, looking

out toward France with tears in my foolish old eyes. The desires that I

thought I had stilled forever awoke again and grew greater and greater

until now I have but one thought, one longing, that fills my whole

being. The Indians carried word of me back to my friends in Canada,

through Roger Bardwell we arranged that the ship they would send was to

take me on board near Hopewell. It was through my own impatience that

the plan miscarried, for I would not wait for him in the place where he

was to meet me in the forest, but pressed on, missed him in the dark and

in my bewilderment sought his cottage and betrayed all to that crafty

shoemaker who vowed he was my friend. For one thing only I can be

thankful; it is that misgiving checked my foolish tongue in time and I

did not tell of this boy’s share in bringing me here. And oh, it cannot,

it cannot be that after all this danger and effort of those I love, I am

to lose my heart’s desire and perish at the hands of the Puritans before

I have seen France again!”

Master Simon rose and pushed back his chair.

“It cannot and it will not be,” he said; “so be of good comfort and have

no fear.”

Roger also got up from the settle and went over to look from the window.

“The storm has blown itself out,” he observed, “and there is a heavy fog

rolling in from the sea. It is long past midnight and such of the men of

Hopewell who have not given up the search in weariness have gone up over

the hill. The French ship must be lying somewhere off-shore in this

darkness: now is the time to try to signal to her from the shore if it

is to be done in safety. Do you wait here, while I see what I can do.”

“I will come with you,” said Master Simon, taking down his lantern once

more and putting in his pocket a handful of Margeret’s bayberry candles.

“We may have to go to the far end of the headland before the ship sees

us and the time is none too long. And should any one knock at the door

while we are gone, Margeret—well, the big cupboard upstairs is the

safest hiding place. It must be your quick wit and courage that can

avail to save us all in such a case.”

The priest spoke very little after they had gone, and finally dropped

into a doze in the big chair. Margeret looked at him many times as she

tip-toed about the kitchen, looked at his white hair, his gentle

wrinkled face and his thin shoulders bowed with toil and suffering. How

was it possible that people of her own dear Hopewell could be seeking to

take the life of such a man? Would the Gospel of Fear always have such a

hold upon kindly people’s hearts? She became so absorbed in her thoughts

that she failed to hear an almost noiseless movement outside and turned

with a gasp of dismay when, without a sound, the door swung slowly open.

But it was not the Puritans who had found out where the hunted Jesuit

was hiding that night. Margeret gave almost a sob of relief when she saw

that it was a tall, blanketed Indian who had come in and that the faces

filling the door behind him were all dusky ones, heavy, stolid and red

of skin. The priest awoke and greeted the newcomers with a happy smile.

“These are my dear, dark children,” he explained to her, “and they have

followed to bid me a last good-bye.”

Their faces lighted as he spoke to them and they responded in the thick

gutturals of a tongue quite strange to Margeret. More and more came

crowding into the fire-lit kitchen while a greater and greater company

stood silent and patient outside. Their movements were so utterly

without a sound that it was small wonder they had slipped, like unseen

ghosts, past the searching white men.

They seemed to be asking something of the priest, for he shook his head

distressfully again and again as one after another spoke. But the look

that he turned to her now and again grew ever more wistful.

“Mademoiselle,” he said at last, “these children of my faith are begging

me to say the mass for them once more before I go. I have tried to

refuse since it would bring greater danger upon you and your father,

but, oh, it is hard to say no! Could it be that you would permit us to

find some quiet corner of your garden and there worship together before

we part for all time?”

“Yes,” she answered with no hesitation, “and were my father here I know

that he would say the same. Do whatever you desire and—and take whatever

you wish to use,” she added vaguely, not quite knowing what this service

was nor what it required.

“But that is truly brave and kind!” exclaimed the little priest, his

face fairly shining with sudden joy. “It is not much that we will need,

this table, if you will be so kind, and—and these?”

He laid his hands lovingly upon the great heap of candles that still lay

upon the table and drew forth one of the tall thick tapers that was to

have burned in honour of the Governor of the Colony.

“Yes, anything, everything,” answered Margeret quickly, opening the

cupboard where the candlesticks were kept.

The priest hesitated for a moment.

“It were better, Mademoiselle Margeret,” he said, “that you go upstairs

and try to neither see nor hear that which we are about to do, so that,

if the story of this night ever becomes known, those of your faith

cannot accuse you of worshipping with us.”

Most unwillingly, yet realising the wisdom of his advice, Margeret went

slowly up the stairs toward her own room, yet stopped to look out at the

little uncurtained window under the roof. She saw that the storm was

over, as Roger had said, and a heavy mist was spreading over the garden.

Neither moon nor stars were to be seen, but the wind had dropped and the

night was breathlessly still. Down near the water’s edge she could make

out two moving points of light, Master Simon’s lantern and Roger

Bardwell’s, signalling to the ship before the fog should hide them

entirely. Over toward the town all was quiet and dark, since the search

in this direction at least, had come to an end. She heard moving to and

fro below her, the gentle opening and closing of the door; then the

house became so silent that she could hear only the quiet crackling of

the kitchen fire.

What were they doing out there in the garden? What was this Catholic

mass of which she had heard men speak with bated breath as being seven

and seventy times forbidden in the Puritan Colony? So far, she had been

trying to bear her part in this adventure as though she were a grown

woman, now she became all at once a little girl again and one consumed

with curiosity. Forgetful of all consequences, she ran down the stairs,

slipped out of the door and stole across the thick, wet grass. The mist

had grown very heavy now but she could still see some paces in front of

her.

From within the high dark hedges of that square enclosure that she and

her father now called the Queen’s Garden, there fell a gleam of soft,

yellow light. Cautiously she stole nearer and nearer, peeped through the

bushes and caught her breath at what she saw. The grassy space was

crowded with Indians, a dense throng of kneeling worshippers, far too

many ever to have found places within Master Simon’s house. Their backs

were toward her and their faces upturned toward the light that fell upon

their glistening, coppery skins. The priest was standing before them,

his head was bowed and he was reading in an unknown language from a

little book. Against the hedge behind him had been placed the table,

covered with a white cloth and decked with such flowers and berries as

were still to be found in the garden. And upon the table burned what

seemed a myriad of bayberry candles, great ones and small, their broad,

clear flames rising straight upward in the still air and giving forth a

faint sweet perfume like incense. Their soft light fell like a

benediction upon the strange scene, on the priest’s white hair, on the

dark faces of the Indians, on the wet shining leaves of the sheltering

hedge.

She watched entranced and was hardly conscious of a movement at her side

until she turned to see that Roger Bardwell had stolen close to her and

was kneeling to look through the same opening between the branches. So

absorbed was she that she did not in the least notice when he took off

his homespun coat and put it about her shoulders to shield her from the

chill air that foretold the coming dawn. The birds were beginning to

chirp and sing in the forest and the blackness of the night was faintly

changing to grey.

The priest finished his reading and turned to give the final blessing.

Margeret, looking up at his worn white face, saw suddenly, beyond it,

another that made her start back in terror. At a gap in the hedge behind

the priest stood Samuel Skerry watching the forbidden ceremony with

dark, eager little eyes. She gasped, looked again and saw only the empty

place. Could she have imagined that ill-omened vision? She turned to

question Roger but he had been gazing down toward the sea and had seen

nothing.

The Indians rose from their knees and went forward, one by one, to say

farewell. Finally the last one slipped away; there remained behind only

a boy who was putting out the candles and removing the flowers; the

service was over. Master Simon came striding down the path and stopped

at the edge of the Queen’s Garden.

“Dear friend,” said the priest, hurrying to him, “can you forgive that I

have done this forbidden thing and brought such danger on you and your

daughter and your garden? It has meant much, so much to those I must

leave behind!”

“My forgiveness is not needed,” Master Simon replied, “for you have done

no wrong. But now the morning is at hand, a boat is waiting for you just

off our beach and you must begone. Save for a fortunate chance that led

the men of Hopewell to think that you had been seen on the northward

road, you might have been discovered before this. But we must hasten now

before the sun rises and this shielding fog is gone.”

It took but little time to gather up the priest’s few possessions and to

guide him down to the landing place. He and Master Simon walked together

across the garden, through the winding path among the bayberry thickets

and over the rocks and sand to the water’s edge. Margeret and Roger came

behind, she at last finding time to put to him a score of questions

concerning their strange guest. Had Roger really known the priest so

many years and yet told no one? What sort of a house did he dwell in

there in the forest? How had Roger ever chanced to find it, and when?

“It was just before I came to Samuel Skerry’s,” the boy explained

vaguely in answer to this last inquiry. “I was lost and in trouble and

the little father gave me such help and comfort as I can never forget or

repay.”

“And you think he will be safe now?” Margeret pursued.

“Ay, safe enough,” he answered, “if the ship once gets to sea. But it is

of your danger and Master Simon’s that I am thinking; only the most dire

necessity could have led me to bring you into such a hazardous affair.

And if it is really true that you saw the shoemaker watching through the

hedge, there is no knowing what harm may come. I cannot but hope that in

the mist and candlelight your eyes deceived you. I can never forgive

myself if harm comes to you through this night’s adventure.”

“But you,” questioned Margeret, “is not your peril greater than my

father’s or mine?”

Roger laughed shortly and bitterly.

“Until the Pilgrim Fathers learn to be more gentle to one of another

faith than theirs,” he said, “my danger is neither lessened nor

increased by my friendship with this priest who dwelt in the wood.”

They had reached the shore by now and had come up with the Jesuit and

Master Simon who stood talking earnestly together as they waited on the

beach. Through the fog came the sound of creaking rowlocks and the

splash of oars approaching nearer and nearer. It was plain from the

priest’s words that he was overcome at the thought of what might happen

after his departure and was begging Master Simon to flee the danger

completely and to leave Hopewell.

“You think not as these other Puritans do, good sir,” he was saying.

“You are ever in danger on account of their narrow laws and your wider

views. Why not gather up your possessions and your family and seek some

place where persecution is not so fierce and where a man can think and

worship as he desires?”

Master Simon was silent a little before he spoke his answer, but his

hesitation was not through doubt of what that answer should be.

“I have planted a garden here in the wilderness,” he said slowly, at

last, “and I must abide to see what sort of fruit it bears. I and my

children and their children too, I trust, will tend it each in turn. And

when we Englishmen turn our hands to the planting of such gardens we

like not to abandon the task and leave others to destroy our work.”

The priest seemed not to have grasped his meaning.

“But gardens grow in all lands, Monsieur,” he protested. “Flowers bloom

fairer in other soils than this of bleak New England. You can plant

another garden across the sea.”

“The flowers that I and my Puritan comrades have planted are not such as

grow on other shores,” Master Simon answered. “For we have planted

truth, and a new freedom in a new land. There are weeds in our garden, I

grant you, the weeds of jealousy and too-narrow justice and the Gospel

of Fear. But where was there ever a new garden without weeds or a new

country without mistakes and bitter lessons that it must master before

it comes to its glory at last. No, good friend, I have laid my hand to

the plough nor will I look back!”

The prow of a ship’s boat came suddenly out of the mist and grated on

the beach. Two sailors leaped ashore to help the priest embark, cutting

short his words of protest and farewell. A moment later the little craft

had disappeared into the fog again and the muffled sound of the oars had

died away. They could hear, a short space after, the creak of ropes and

the rattle of an anchor-chain, while something big and grey, the ghostly

shadow of a ship, slipped by through the mist that was beginning to be

faintly bright with coming day.

The three conspirators walked homeward through the wet field and paused

at the edge of the garden where Roger Bardwell made a stammering attempt

at thanks for the help they had given to his friend. His broken words

were cut short, however, by Margeret as she laid her hand upon her

father’s arm.

“Look!” she said.

The fog had lifted over the meadows showing them the sleeping town of

Hopewell, every house with its doors closed and its windows blank as

though drowsy with the same slumber that held those who slept within.

But nearer than the village they could see Samuel Skerry’s cottage, its

door open and the casements standing wide while a plume of smoke rose

steadily from the chimney. The glow of the dawn was reflected like fire

from one of the windows that winked at them with its red light like some

wicked, baleful eye. No matter who was asleep, the shoemaker was up and

stirring.

“Now was he or was he not in the garden last night?” said Roger with a

sigh of deep misgiving.

“There is little need to waste time in pondering over that question,”

returned Master Simon cheerily, “for if he was there we and all of

Hopewell will know of it—and that right soon!”

CHAPTER VI

THE SCHOOLHOUSE LANE

For once it seemed that Master Simon was mistaken. It may have been that

Samuel Skerry was really ignorant of what had occurred that early

morning in the garden or it may have been that he had seen, and for some

reason held his peace. Whichever was the truth, the matter remained long

a mystery. Margeret was so certain that she had seen him spying upon

them and so equally certain of his ill-will toward her father that she

felt, for many slow-dragging, anxious weeks, that any day might bring

his betrayal of their law-breaking. She waited a month, six months; then

a year went by and another and another, but still the shoemaker did not

speak. Had he forgotten? Had he never known?

All through the years that she was growing up, the thought was ever in

her mind that he could bring ruin upon them at any moment he so desired.

Once, as she stood at the edge of the village square, the town crier

passed, bell in hand, announcing the trial and banishment of three

Boston men for “giving succor and shelter to members of that dangerous

and dissenting sect, the Baptists.” Samuel Skerry, going by at that

moment, turned upon her a leer of such evil import that she felt sure he

had read her thoughts. If such was the punishment for giving help to

Baptists, had been her reflection, would it not be, to the prejudiced

eyes of Puritans, a hundred times worse to have aided a Roman Catholic?

But time passed and still they dwelt in safety, for the shoemaker, so it

seemed, was biding his time.

“Sometimes,” said Roger Bardwell, who was a frequent visitor at their

house now; “sometimes I think it may be regard for Master Simon that

keeps him silent, sometimes I think that he was lost and bewildered in

the storm that night as were the others, and so never saw the mass in

the garden, sometimes I think that he is so wrapped up in money-getting

that he has not a thought for other things. He is mad for gain these

latter days, and he must have a fortune stored away in his hiding-hole

behind the cupboard.”

On the Sabbath day that Margeret was eighteen, she was still thinking,

as she sat in the meeting-house, of the peril that had hung over them so

long. Master Hapgood, the minister, was bringing to its close a sermon

grown no shorter than of old, although age had bowed his shoulders and

weakened his mighty voice. The pale yellow of a winter sunset showed for

a few minutes behind the windows, gilded the blank white walls and faded

away again. A dank chill crept over the meeting-house, children drew

their feet up under them and men and women wrapped themselves closer in

their grey cloaks.

“And now, brethren,” Master Hapgood was saying, “there is time left for

contribution, wherefore, as God has prospered you, so freely offer.”

One by one the little congregation went forward, each to deposit his

gift; first the Assistants, then the Tything Men, then the humbler

goodmen of the town. Some laid down money, more, such produce as they

could spare, corn or fruit or fresh eggs. Samuel Skerry, shuffling down

the aisle, brought as small a copper coin as the currency afforded and

looked at it regretfully as he laid it down. Roger Bardwell, at the end

of the line because he was the youngest of all the householders, brought

a basket of dried corn of his own growing. He no longer dwelt with the

shoemaker, but had built himself a little cottage and was coming to

prosperity by tending fields of his own.

After the men had gone back to their seats there went forward those

women who had no husbands or fathers or brothers there to carry the

offering for them. Old Goody Parsons, limping and sighing, was still

able to toil up the aisle with her contribution, a pair of stout knitted

hose; behind her came Goodwife Page whose husband was away at sea. Last

of all walked Margeret Radpath, slight, erect and fair, bringing her

offering since there was no one to do it for her. How did she know, she

who kept her eyes upon the ground as she went, that of the many glances

that followed her, Roger Bardwell’s was the most earnest gaze of all,

never leaving her face even after she came back to sit alone upon the

bench beneath the window?

And where were Master Simon and Mistress Radpath? Margeret’s mother had

died the year before, and slept now in the windswept grave-yard on the

hillside, while Master Simon, upon whom old age had seemed to come

overnight after his wife’s death, sat at home, too worn and feeble to

leave his own fireside. His unbroken spirit, however, still shone warm

and bright within him, and to his house still came all who were in need

or trouble, to seek advice and help. Under his directions and by means

of Margeret’s busy hands and Roger Bardwell’s, the garden still bloomed

as fair as ever.

“’Tis the flowers have the best of us,” Master Simon would say when now

and then on summer days he could limp forth to see the rows of blossoms

and the tall-growing shrubs. “The old age of a garden is fairer and

lustier than its youth, and it comes to its greatest glory when tended

by the children’s children of the man who planted it.”

Since Master Simon’s fields must be tilled by other hands now, and their

living therefore had grown less abundant, Margeret had become mistress

at the little school, built beyond the meeting-house at the end of a

winding lane. It was hard often for her to sit so many hours within

doors, listening to the children droning away at their lessons, when she

was so used to being in the fresh air the live-long day. She made a good

school-mistress, nevertheless, as was proved by the lessons so well

learned under her careful eye, although the bundle of birch rods, the

former master’s most familiar tool, lay upon its pegs above the door, so

little used that a delicate spider web, spun between the tips of its

twigs, had hung there the whole year through. The children came laughing

and romping down the schoolhouse lane with many a tribute of flowers and

red apples for the teacher they loved. One day, a pleasant, growing,

Spring day, when she was most impatient to be outside, she had seen the

little daughter of Goodwife Page, playing with a long, dusty sunbeam

that fell from the high window across her spelling-book. When the child

looked up anxiously, fearing reproof, Margeret had only smiled in return

and the little girl had gone happily back to her work.

“After all,” Margeret thought, as she looked about her at the fresh,

bright faces, “this is only another kind of a garden.”

And often, on summer days, when the air was quiet and the children’s

voices filled the room with a busy humming like a hive of bees, she

would think of the lives and characters that they were building up for

themselves and remember Master Simon’s line:

“The singing masons building roofs of gold.”

There was some one else who came daily down the schoolhouse lane, and

waited at the door for lessons to be over. Roger Bardwell, whether it

rained or shone, was always there to walk home with the school-mistress

and to stay for a few minutes, chatting with Master Simon, when they

reached her door. For a year he had been doing so, although the first

day of it and the first look of welcome in his blue eyes when he met her

coming up the lane, told Margeret that he loved her. But of this he had

never spoken, nor ever broken the silence of that mystery as to who he

was or whence he had come. What with this silence, and with her other

anxieties, the girl had begun to carry a heavy heart as she went about

her labours of the day.

Upon this Sabbath afternoon, as the service ended and the grave-faced

congregation came out into the winter twilight, Roger Bardwell walked at

her side again, down the steep path where the snow creaked under their

feet.

“Margeret,” said he, “I have news for you that, I fear, threatens

trouble.”

“What is it?” she asked quickly, then voicing her first thought. “Does

it concern my father?”

“Yes,” he answered, “it concerns him and you and me. I believe that

Samuel Skerry has made up his mind to speak at last.”

“But after five years!” exclaimed Margeret. “Do you think that he could

bring evil to my father now?”

“My thought is that he has given over the hope of harming Master Simon

and wants only to strike at you and me. I have heard that he often says

that the teaching of children is no work for women, that you should not

be mistress of the school and that he could tell strange tales of you if

he wished. He has brought up again the words of that mad Scotch minister

who said that your father was a wicked man and that his garden would be

laid waste for his sins. The shoemaker has much to say of me also, and

with this last accusation seeks to ruin the two of us, at last.”

Margeret wrung her hands in helpless anxiety.

“Are you sure of this, Roger?” she asked.

“This much I know,” he told her. “On next Thursday, the market day, when

all from the outlying houses will be in the village, he has urged the

men to come up to the schoolhouse and see how their children are taught.

Since you are the first woman to teach the school, he knows there are

many who are still uncertain whether a maid can rule their sons and

daughters. But I think that is not the whole of the mischief that he is

planning. I wish I had no need to tell you of this, Margeret.”

The girl drew a long breath and then looked up at Roger with calm, grave

eyes. People said that even more than in face and figure Margeret

Radpath was beginning to resemble her father.

“We did no harm,” she said quietly, “and we will take what comes.”

She said nothing to Master Simon of the brewing trouble, and on Monday,

Tuesday and Wednesday went bravely up to the schoolhouse, trying not to

think of what was to come. Thursday arrived, a day of lowering clouds,

of sharp, bitter winds and flurries of snow. As the day passed, even the

children seemed to feel a restlessness that grew greater and greater as

the closing time came near. Even before the last hour was at an end,

Roger Bardwell entered quietly and seated himself near the fireplace. A

few minutes later there came a loud rap at the door. It opened to reveal

Goodman Allen.

“I thought, Mistress Radpath,” he said, shuffling awkwardly upon the

threshold, “that I would stop here a moment and hear how that lad of

mine is faring with his lessons.”

“Yes, come in,” said Margeret, “warm yourself by the fire and you shall

hear your boy presently.”

Before he could be seated, another man had followed him, naming the same

errand, then another and another, until the room was crowded. Through

the window, Margeret could see, with sinking heart, more and more dark

figures hurrying through the snow and down the schoolhouse lane. A tall,

stolid-faced Indian, wrapped in his blanket, slipped in among the rest,

but was noticed little, since curiosity often brought these warriors

from the forest whenever they saw a crowd gather. Margeret, glancing at

him hastily, had a vague feeling that his face was one she knew, but of

that she could not be certain. Last of all the company, Samuel Skerry

came in and stood, scowling, by the fireplace.

The winter darkness fell so early that the candles had to be lighted

before the lessons were over. The children looked about, bewildered, at

the rows of sober faces, but they stood nobly by their teacher, their

dear Mistress Margeret, and spoke their learning manfully. Finally the

hour struck, the bell rang, and school was over.

“And now,” said Margeret, her spirit, after the long strain, flaring

suddenly high in the face of that silent, waiting assemblage, “have you

aught to say, my Masters?”

There was an embarrassed silence for a moment, broken at last by

Skerry’s harsh voice.

“I say,” he began, “that a woman has no place as mistress of a school.

Look yonder at the birch rods, brothers, how they gather dust and

cobwebs. She never uses them, nor has she strength to do so if she

would.”

“Nay, sir,” Goodman Allen interrupted mildly. “I have seen that when the

birch is wielded too oft at school, it must also be used many times at

home and, for myself, the task is one that I like not.”

There was a murmur of laughter and assent.

“In my belief,” added another, “a woman can lead our lads and lasses

better than a man and there is much other work for men to do.”

“Then know this,” cried Skerry, striding out into the center of the room

while the children watched him in round-eyed wonder; “know that this

woman has broken our laws and betrayed our faith, that she has given

help and comfort to the Papist priest who for years lived hid in the

forest, within the very bounds of our Colony. I myself saw him read his

mass in the garden and saw his altar decked with the candles made by her

hands. Shall our children be taught by one who is a friend of Popery?”

The crowd of men drew together and a buzz of wondering whispers began.

Did the shoemaker really know? Could such a terrible accusation be true?

Roger Bardwell stepped forth from among them and stood beside Margeret.

“Listen not to him, good people,” he said. “Such wrong as Mistress

Margeret may have done in the eyes of the law was accomplished

innocently and when she was but a child. Whatever aid and comfort were

given to the French father, that night he slipped through Hopewell and

escaped to France, came through my fault. Lay the blame upon me.”

“He can bear a good share of it,” clamoured Skerry, his voice rising,

along with his anger, “but the whole of it cannot be his. I saw them

there together, worshipping with the Indians and the Jesuit priest, I

saw them later talking to that outcast Papist in the garden, three of

them, this maid, that boy, Roger Bardwell, and another—that precious

Master Simon whom you all revere so much.”

“What?” “No! Not Master Radpath!” Cries of amazement and horror arose

from the crowd. Surely not their idol, Master Simon!

“Ask them both if it be not true,” cried the shoemaker, pressing his

advantage home, “and ask this fellow further who he is and whence he

came. Ask him if his father was not the most notorious enemy to religion

in New England, who sat in the stocks in Plymouth and was imprisoned to

await more serious punishment in Boston, whence he escaped, no man ever

knew whither. Ask him, good sirs, and see him grow pale and hesitate.”

That Roger grew pale was quite true but that he hesitated was not.

“It is as the shoemaker says,” he declared bravely. “My father held

views other than yours concerning certain matters of the church and he

was bold enough not to hold his tongue. Although it chanced that I

myself followed my dead mother’s faith, which was the same as yours,

good neighbours, I also fell under suspicion and was imprisoned with my

father, but we both escaped. There was a ship just sailing from Boston

whose captain was my father’s friend and a kindly man. His was a little

vessel but we managed to find a place of concealment in her hold, so

that she put to sea with my father on board. When he was found they did

not turn back but carried him safe to Holland.”

“And why did you not go with him?” demanded Goodman Allen, bluntly.

For the first time Roger’s voice faltered.

“There—there proved to be hiding place for but one,” he said.

Although he spoke so low, there was not one of that breathlessly

attentive audience who did not hear. A low mutter of approval went

around the room, for every stout-hearted Puritan there loved courage and

high undaunted spirit.

“Speak on, boy,” said Allen, “tell us how you came hither.”

“I let my father think that I could find another place,” Roger went on,

“so that he did not discover, until too late, that I was left behind. I

wandered from town to town, dwelt in the forest with the priest and the

Indians for a space and at last came here and took service with the

shoemaker. He cared not for differences of faith if he could have a

helper whom he need not pay. I think he found and read a letter from my

father and so learned who I was. That, men of Hopewell, is the whole of

my tale.”

For a fleeting minute it seemed that Roger’s simply-told story had won

forgiveness for both of the accused. But after a moment the tide of

feeling turned. Free thinking, irregularity of doctrine, Popery—there

were no other things that the Pilgrims feared so much. Famine and

pestilence might be checked, but the fire of heresy, once lit among

them, might burn until the peace of the whole Colony was destroyed. The

men consulted, laid their heads together, whispered and then spoke

louder and louder as their terror and excitement grew. Presently a

clamour arose, led by Skerry’s shrill voice:

“Destroy this evil! Drive them forth! Let no such danger lurk within our

midst!”

It was fear, rather than anger that sounded in their voices, the deadly

terror of that unconquerable enemy, free-thinking, so often beaten down

but always raising its head again. Men looked at each other with dread

and suspicion in their eyes. What could be done in such a desperate

pass, with the peril striking at their very midst? Naught, they seemed

to think helplessly, save to raise a louder and more threatening tumult.

Margeret, thinking of the Quaker women, shrank back as the clamouring

throng moved a step forward. Roger threw his arm around her and turned

defiantly to face them all.

Almost unnoticed the door had opened and some one had come pushing

through the crowd. But a dead silence fell when Master Simon strode out

into the room, his tall figure and white head bent, his grey cloak

powdered with snow. Upon the breathless hush that followed the uproar,

his quiet voice fell with a thrilling emphasis:

“Walk not in fear, ye men of God.”

There was no word given in reply. The men stood motionless in their

places as Master Simon went on:

“Why must you be so stricken with blind terror,” he said, “when one

amongst us takes a further step along that path to freedom that we

ourselves have followed, that dares to think other than the rest of us?

Is it reasonable that each one of us should say: ‘I will believe as I

choose and all men must think as I do’? Search your hearts truly and ask

yourselves if there be not some point of doctrine, some order of worship

that you have not questioned either once or many times. If there be one

amongst you who has not so thought, let him stand forth that we may do

him honour.”

He paused, but no one stirred. With furtive sidelong glances, his

listeners looked at each other, but not a man stepped forward. Master

Simon’s glowing eyes searched the faces of one after another.

“If then it be a wrong not to weave all our thoughts to the self-same

pattern, are we not all sinners together? But thoughts are like running

water, they go where they will and only our Father follows them and

knows that they all flow down to the same sea. Trust Him who loves us

much, and let Him guard our faith and us. And let it be that after our

time people will say of us, not merely that we wore grey coats and never

smiled, not that we walked a narrow way and persecuted our brethren, but

let them say, ‘They braved much, those Pilgrim fathers, they laboured

valiantly, they trusted God, they planted a new spirit of freedom in

this good New World, and they did well.’”

He ceased speaking and there was a pause, broken at last by Goodman

Allen’s long sigh of relief. The men moved, relaxed, smiled at each

other and came forward to grasp Master Simon’s hand. The danger was at

an end.

“Margeret, child,” said Master Simon, turning to his daughter, “do not

look so anxious that I am here. Did you think to keep all this from your

poor old father, who should stop at home now that age has bowed him

down? No, I felt that I must speak to my comrades once more, and that

this was a fitting time. I doubt if I have strength ever to step beyond

my own doorstone again.”

Amid the general hum of voices that followed now, Samuel Skerry’s was

lifted once more. The little shoemaker, apparently unmoved by Master

Simon’s words, seemed determined still to attain his end.

“I ask again,” he shouted in tones so loud that all were forced to

listen; “I ask why that youth, Roger Bardwell, did not later follow his

father beyond the seas, as he could well have done these three years

past? Why does he still lurk here if it be not for some evil purpose of

heresy?”

Goodman Allen looked at Roger and Margeret standing there together and

laughed aloud.

“No eye but one so blinded with malice as is yours, Samuel Skerry,” he

said, “could fail to see why the lad has lingered here!”

Margeret blushed vividly, but Roger smiled upon them all. Now that the

cloud over his past had been dispelled and his secret had been

discovered and forgiven, he had no more need to hide his love. But the

shoemaker was not yet silenced.

“Let him not deceive you,” he insisted, “he—”

“Wait,” cried Roger, holding up his hand, “before you denounce me,

Samuel Skerry, think well. Remember that for one who harbours such a

transgressor of the law as I was, there is a fine of forty shillings for

each hour spent by the sinner in that man’s house. Think, my good

master, how long I dwelt with you, how many hours of toil I spent

tending your field, drawing your water, mending your rows of broken

shoes. Count up what your fine would be and whether there is enough to

pay it in that strong-box of yours behind the—”

“Cease,” screamed Skerry in sudden panic. His terror was so plain that

Roger relented and the listeners roared with laughter. The shoemaker

began to look about him uneasily and to sidle toward the door. This

meeting that he had called together for the ruin of his enemies had

become suddenly no happy place for him. One or two of the younger men

began to crowd him into a corner whence he could not escape, the anger

in their eyes boding ill for the mischief-making cobbler. But Master

Simon interfered.

“No, no, lads,” he said. “Wherefore humiliate him further? The matter is

at an end so here let it rest.”

It was an odd look, half gratitude and half baffled fury, that Samuel

Skerry bent upon them as he slipped away. As Master Simon stood looking

after him, some one brushed against his arm. It was the Indian whose

entrance Margeret had noticed earlier in the afternoon. She recognised

him suddenly now as the one who had led the band of his comrades when

they came to say good-bye to the priest. With silent dignity he stepped

forth, wrapped in his blanket, his black eyes shining in the

candlelight.

“There is one more word to be said in this affair of Monsieur Simon,” he

began, “and that word is mine.”

His English was good, but had, beside his own guttural accent, a foreign

flavour as though he had been taught by one whose native tongue was

French.

“Speak on, friend,” said Goodman Allen, as the men drew back to give him

space.

“I, too, was a friend of that French father who dwelt in the wood,” he

pursued. “He led me to the Christian faith and taught me to walk in

upright ways. I and my comrades, we loved him dearly, we loved Monsieur

Simon too for the help that he gave. And we love also that garden of

his, the spot where we worshipped together and said our last farewell.

Our little father is dead now, dead in his own happy France and we know

that he sleeps the quieter for knowing of that last mass we said

together.”

A slight noise of the door’s opening and closing caused no interruption.

Samuel Skerry had stolen out into the dark, but he went unheeded, so

intent were the men upon what the Indian had to say.

“Of late,” the tale continued, “a secret word has come from the

settlements in Canada, a message that has been passed on from tribe to

tribe. The French love not the English and have been stirring up the

Indians to strike at the New England settlers, to destroy their towns

where they can, and to cut off the outlying farms. You have heard of

such deeds all about you: you knew that they were ordered by the French

but do you know why you have been spared? It was because we who loved

Monsieur Simon would not listen to evil counsel, because that garden of

his has become, for us, a sacred spot, because when danger threatened,

we ringed you round and held you safe. The English Puritans are great

and powerful, but it is well for them, nevertheless, to have the

wandering Jesuits and the humble red men for their friends.”

In awed silence the men of Hopewell had heard him to the end. Then arose

suddenly a tumult of voices, not the outcry of fear and anger such as

had been heard half an hour before, but a thunder of joyful admiration

and cries of:

“God bless our Master Simon and his garden!”

A lane opened in the crowd through which Master Simon passed, leaning

upon the Indian’s arm. In little groups, by twos and threes, the village

men and their children followed, talking excitedly as they went.

Margeret lingered to cover the fire and snuff the candles, while Roger

Bardwell, to no one’s surprise, waited also. Goodman Allen, leading his

little boy by the hand, was the last to go. He turned at the door.

“You two have weighty matters of which to talk,” he said with his

honest, kindly smile. “So trouble not, Mistress Margeret, I will see

that your father comes safe to his home. You, and this youth who has so

much to say to you, need not to hasten as you walk through the lane!”

CHAPTER VII

GOODY PARSONS ON GUARD

Everybody in Hopewell was bidden to Margeret Radpath’s wedding, and

everybody was bound to come, of that one could be quite certain. All the

village housewives, as soon as the day was finally set, fell to rubbing

shoe-buckles, polishing silver buttons, getting out their finest white

kerchiefs and looking to their husbands’ best Sabbath clothes. Many of

those stout grey coats had been worn to the marriages of a generation

before, but were only the more respected for that reason. Every kitchen

was fragrant with baking, for there was no person who did not wish to

send an offering to the wedding feast of Master Simon’s daughter. There

were other gifts, too, of every sort and shape, from the great, chased,

silver cup sent by the Governor down to little Jonathan Allen’s

laboriously whittled birch broom. When Margeret or Roger walked up the

street of Hopewell, men and women would lean out through the open half

doors of their cottages and cry, “Good wishes to you, Mistress Radpath,”

or, “Good luck and long happiness, Master Bardwell,” so that the whole

air seemed to be filled with the pleasant sunshine of friendly hopes and

cheery blessings.

More than a year had passed since that winter evening in the schoolhouse

lane, but Margeret and Roger had waited patiently until all could be set

in order for their marriage. With his quick shrewdness, Roger had seized

upon a fact that was, later, clear enough to every one, namely, as he

told Master Simon, “that New England’s prosperity would come more from

her ship-captains than her farmers.” So he had sailed away upon a

trading venture in a ship of which he hoped some day to be the owner,

while Margeret had sat by the fireside at home, spinning flax, weaving

linen, and stitching away at the household gear that must belong to

every properly dowered bride. Master Simon, sitting in his great chair

opposite, would beguile her with stories of the foreign lands to which

Roger had gone, tales brought back by his own father from voyages made

nearly a hundred years ago. Then at last the ship had come to port

again, the final stitch had been taken and the marriage day was at hand.

The time of the wedding was late June and the place, as all agreed to be

most fitting, was Master Simon’s garden. For weeks Margeret’s father had

been directing two busy helpers there, since his own stiff joints were

not equal to their old tasks. With patience and skill that were almost

uncanny he had brought the garden to its fairest flowering. Early

blossoms he had coaxed into lingering, late ones to hasten their bloom,

so that, as the day approached, the whole place was a miracle of

abundant pink and white, banks of roses against cool dark hedges, smooth

lawns fringed with fragrant pinks, sweetbrier, tall trim hollyhocks,

masses of white syringa and early-flowering sweet-william.

“There is one thing that troubles me,” said Master Simon to his daughter

and to the lad he already loved as well as a son, “one plant that mars

the pink and white harmony of the garden. There is a clump of

sweet-william that should have bloomed white, but instead, has opened

its flowers a brilliant crimson. So eagerly has it answered my call to

grow abundantly for your wedding day that I scarcely can bring myself to

root it up, poor faithful thing. I fear that I am too soft-hearted to be

a proper gardener!”

He leaned forward in his chair that had been set near the cottage door,

and tried to point out the flower that had played him false. It could

not be seen, however, from where he sat, so Margeret and Roger went down

into the garden to look for themselves. Neither of them could summon

courage to pull up the too-willing plant, so it was left to bloom

unabashed, among the softer colours of the other flowers. The next day,

just at sundown, the marriage was to take place, in the little square

Queen’s Garden where the last level rays always fell in a farewell

radiance. Later, the wedding supper would be spread indoors, and for

this great preparations had been made, the larder filled with good

things, and rows of bayberry candles set ready to light the scene.

One or two last errands remained to be done, and for these Margeret and

Roger were setting forth together. It was a clear June night with

thick-sprinkled stars, shining serenely as though to say, “Never fear,

to-morrow will be as full of sunshine as the heart of a bride could

wish.”

At the gate the two met a visitor, Goody Parsons, leaning on her cane

and moving slowly, but still not too old and stiff to come with her good

wishes and a wedding gift.

“Let me not keep you,” she said as they stopped and would have turned

back. “I will set that which I have brought within, and abide with

Master Simon until you return. I have heard much of the glory of this

garden made ready for your wedding, Mistress Margeret, and I can take my

time at seeing the flowers while you are gone. Nay, I will not step

inside the gate until you go forth; I have no wish to keep you from your

errand.”

So Margeret and Roger continued on their way up the lane while Goody

Parsons limped across the grass toward the house.

“She has come on another mission, too,” Margeret told Roger, “for she

told me some days since, that my marriage would not be lucky if I

neglected to tell the bees of my wedding day. She was a wonderful

bee-mistress once, so people say, and she has told me many a charm and

spell to bring honey to the hive. When I said that telling the bees was

mere superstition she was greatly troubled, and she has, I think, toiled

hither to do it for me and is glad that we should be away.”

Goody Parsons had indeed come upon just that errand, yet first she

hobbled into the kitchen where she set down her wedding gift. A blue and

white china teapot it was, that had voyaged across the sea from England

and was a rare and precious thing in Hopewell, where nearly every one

must still use wood or metal or rough earthenware for household

utensils. It had long been the old woman’s most valued treasure.

“There is not a great time left for me to use it,” she said in answer to

Master Simon’s remonstrances, “and who should I wish to have it after me

rather than my dear Mistress Margeret?”

She freed it from its wrappings and set it upon the table with a smile

of happy pride.

“Now,” she added, “I am going out-of-doors for a little. No, sit you

here, good friend, what I wish most is to go alone.”

She stepped forth into the garden, a dim fragrant place full of black

shadows, but beginning to be faintly lit by a rising moon. Slowly she

moved up and down the paths, laying her gnarled old fingers lovingly

upon the roses and syringas. She broke off a twig of the hawthorn and

tucked it into the bosom of her threadbare gown.

“Eh, it is many a long year,” she said, “since I walked in the lanes of

Hertfordshire before my marriage day and thought the world was abloom

for me alone. Yet it might have been yesterday save for the memory of

him who has been so long dead.”

She rested at last upon the bench under the linden tree, dreaming of the

never-to-be-forgotten beauty of that still June evening in England,

fifty years ago.

“But who can call it so far gone by,” she said to herself at last, “when

the same rose that I plucked that night from the vine on the cottage

wall, still blooms beside my doorstep here in the New World. It is a

good God that gives us the flowers to hold our youth and old age

together.”

She sat for some little time, her chin upon her hand, looking across the

banks of white flowers and sniffing at the fragrance that filled the

warm air, but finally rose with a determined mien.

“I sit dreaming here like a foolish old crone,” she muttered, “and

forget my errand so that those two young things will be coming back to

laugh at me and my old-fashioned ways. Ah, but I mind how my mother

stood in the bright Spring sunshine and told the bees of my wedding day,

while Jock Parsons and I sat laughing upon the doorstep and said it was

no use. That is the way of youth!”

As she was walking across the grass toward the row of beehives under the

apple trees, her attention was attracted by a little twinkling light

that shone out from Samuel Skerry’s cottage. She stood a moment to watch

it idly and then became aware that it was moving toward her, jerking and

halting, it was true, but passing very slowly down the path toward the

gap in the hedge.

“Now what can the rascal have on foot?” she questioned. “Nothing good,

for that I will answer.”

The light came through the hedge and advanced slowly up through the

garden. She could see Samuel Skerry now, leaning over as he shuffled

along, carrying a candle in one hand and something heavy and awkward in

the other. Presently he paused, set his burden down and turning, hurried

back the way he had come. Consumed with curiosity, Goody Parsons hobbled

forward as fast as she could to see what he had left.

“I would give my best new bonnet,” she told herself, “the one I bought

seven years ago last Michaelmas, to know what the villain is about!”

What he had left proved to be a big iron pot, filled with hot liquid

that still bubbled and steamed. Goody Parsons dipped in an inquisitive

forefinger and tasted it.

“Salt,” she exclaimed, “hot salt water!”

She was still marvelling over this new mystery when she observed that

Skerry was returning, and retreated hastily to the shelter of the apple

tree. He was carrying a second pot, bigger and heavier than the first,

which he set down with a grunt of relief.

“Now,” she heard him mutter, “we will see what we can do for Master

Simon and his precious garden.”

He had blown out the candle so that she could scarcely see what he was

about, but a sudden swish and splash of hastily poured out water gave

her a notion of his evil purpose.

“Samuel Skerry,” she shrieked, hobbling toward him and holding up a

shaking hand; “Samuel Skerry, what are you doing?”

The startled shoemaker jerked himself backward and dropped what he was

holding in his hand. The object rolled to the old woman’s feet and she

bent stiffly to pick it up. It was a big pewter bowl, wrought with

raised figures and flowers, as she could feel in the dark. Evidently he

had brought it as the most convenient receptacle for dipping out the

brine. Utterly bewildered she turned it round and round in her hands and

asked again in a trembling voice:

“What are you doing?”

“I am watering Master Simon’s garden,” the shoemaker answered with a

mocking chuckle. “I am giving to those plants he pets and cherishes a

drink of scalding salt water, so that to-morrow, when the bride comes

forth, she will find a desert for her marriage place and every flower

perished never to grow again. Give back my bowl ere I take it from you.”

“I did not know,” she gasped, “that living man could be so evil!”

“You know it now, then,” he snarled, “and you know how I hate Master

Simon and his goodness and his garden. You can say farewell to the

flowers, for this night will see their ruin.”

“It shall not,” she cried. “No one shall dare lay hand upon leaf or

flower that belongs to him. The good that has been wrought here comes

not so easily to an end.”

In spite of her determined words, however, she was shaking with terror

and retreating before him as he advanced threateningly. In stepping back

she brushed smartly against the edge of the nearest beehive and heard a

faint murmur from the bees within. The shoemaker had come quite close.

“How will you stop me?” he jeered. “Will you call Master Simon, who

cannot leave his chair? Or will you restrain me yourself, you, an old

woman who can only limp and groan as she walks along? No, Master Simon’s

garden has come to the end of its glory. Do you remember what the Scotch

minister said?”

“And you,” cried the old woman scornfully, “you are the instrument of

Providence, I suppose, chosen to carry out the preacher’s words! People

said when he vanished that he had gone back to the Devil, his master;

perhaps you are his servant left behind to continue his work. Hark you,

Samuel Skerry, if you dare to destroy good Master Simon’s garden, you

will have to reckon with the people of Hopewell. I verily believe that

they would burn down your house, should you do such a deed.”

“Cease your old woman’s chatter,” he ordered sharply. “I fear the people

of Hopewell just as little as I do you. There is no power on earth can

stop me now.”

“And is there not?” cried out Goody, shrilly. She struck her hand

against the hive and a loud buzzing arose from the angered bees. “Do you

hear those voices from within, cobbler Skerry? Do you understand that

even a feeble old woman may have helpers near by? Should I raise the lid

of the hive, out they will come, a thousand assistants ready to my hand.

They will not harm a bee-mistress who has worked with them until they

know her, but will they be as kind to you, Samuel Skerry? Can you call

even so small a creature as a bee your friend?”

The shoemaker drew back, somewhat daunted for a moment. Then possessed

by a gust of fury, he sprang to his great kettle and began pouring the

hot brine over the nearest flowers.

“I have warned you,” cried the old woman, and she flung open the top of

the hive.

A dark, whirring mass of bees came swarming out on the instant. Goody

Parsons drew back, but there was no need, the line of their flight was

straight toward the stooping shoemaker. He hesitated, turned, then

clapped one hand to the back of his neck and the other against a

smarting knee. Then, with a howl of rage, he made off through the

garden, the buzzing cloud of enemies pursuing him even to his cottage

door. Goody Parsons chuckled as she saw him go, but it was with shaking

hands that she closed the hive.

“May Heaven grant that Master Simon’s garden be never in such danger

again!” was her quiet prayer.

When Margeret and Roger returned an hour later, the old woman was

sitting quietly by the kitchen fireplace, rubbing the pewter bowl until

it shone in the candle light. Margeret, seeing the blue and white teapot

on the table, was full of joyful but protesting gratitude over receiving

such a gift. But Goody would listen to none of her remonstrances.

“My children are all married and dwell in England,” she said, “and the

old teapot will never cross the seas again, so it is you that must have

it, and with an old woman’s blessing, too, my dearie.”

The girl flung her arms about her old friend’s neck and kissed her with

such energy that the pewter bowl rolled from her lap.

“Why, what is this?” exclaimed Roger, stooping to catch it as it

trundled across the floor.

“Oh, that,” said Goody Parsons, “is a wedding gift that was left here

for you an hour since. Samuel Skerry brought it, but he is a modest man

and would not wait to receive your thanks.”

* * * * *

If ever bright skies and sunny weather combined to make a perfect

wedding day, they did so on the afternoon that Margeret Radpath was

married. And if ever happy hearts and loving good wishes made the day so

bright that sun and flowers were not needed, they did so at the wedding

in Master Simon’s garden. Tall, fair and fragrant the flowers stood in

their unbroken rows, only the crimson sweet-william had perished under

the shoemaker’s hands. Margeret’s father had heard the tale of Samuel

Skerry’s misdoing, but had begged Goody Parsons to say nothing of it as

he feared that the wrath of the people would be great. But the old

woman’s tongue, given by nature to gossiping, could not quite keep

silence now.

The marriage feast was over, the bride had kissed her father good-bye

and had set forth with Roger Bardwell to his little cottage, three

fields away. They were followed by the wedding guests in gay procession,

carrying flowers and wreaths as was the simple, friendly custom in

Hopewell. For a month the two were to live out their honeymoon in the

little house a stone’s throw from Master Simon’s door, and after that

Margeret was to hide with her father or he with her, while Roger went to

sea again. On the threshold they turned to listen to the last good

wishes and blessings of their friends.

“Look well to her happiness, young master,” cried a voice from the

crowd, “for she is our Master Simon’s daughter.”

“I will,” returned Roger, “as well as any man can, save only Master

Simon himself.”

It was not until the people were back in their own houses, taking off

their best cloaks and hanging up their Sabbath coats, that the rumour

began to run up one street and down another that Samuel Skerry had

sought to destroy Master Simon’s garden. Many could not conceive that

Master Radpath had such an enemy in the world, but more were willing to

believe in any iniquity of the little evil-eyed shoemaker’s. Early the

next morning a crowd of men with stern determined faces, came tramping

down the lane and across the field to Skerry’s cottage. What they had in

mind, perhaps even they themselves did not know, but more than one had

reached down his old blunderbuss from above the fireplace where it had

hung undisturbed ever since the Indian peace began, and all the faces

were dark with anger. But their plans, whatever they were, could never

be carried out, for the door of the shoemaker’s cottage stood open, the

rooms lay empty and the ashes, cold on the hearth, and Samuel Skerry was

gone.

There was only one living person who had seen his departure. Margeret

Bardwell—Margeret Radpath she was no longer—had been up and stirring at

dawn of this first day of her married life. Through her kitchen window,

she had seen the little shoemaker’s bent figure go up the path, his

shoulders bowed by the burden upon his back. Something in his quick,

stealthy movements made her realise that it was not a simple errand that

had brought him forth so early, but that this was flight from

Hopewell—perhaps forever. Was he really going, and the shadow of his

ill-will to be taken from her life for all time?

She felt a great lightening of the heart and then, a moment after, a

sudden haunting, disturbing memory. It was only because his bent, black

figure reminded her of another that, so long ago, she had watched go up

the same path and vanish over the hill. For a fleeting second, as she

watched Samuel Skerry go, there came back a clutching remembrance of

Jeremiah Macrae and there rang in her ears that ominous prophecy

concerning Master Simon’s garden:

“Fire and sword shall waste this place, blood shall be spilled upon its

soil, and those who come after you shall walk, mourning, among its

desolate paths.”

But the memory passed as quickly as it came, and, with a long sigh of

relief, she saw the crooked little figure disappear at the turn of the

lane.

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PART II

STEPHEN