REPUDIATED SILVER.
SOMETIME, along toward the middle of the night, Adam tripped, on a root
which lay in his path, and in catching himself so that his small partner
should not be injured, he sprained his foot. He proceeded onward without
sparing the member, however, for he had begun to feel a fever of
impatience.
His foot swelled. It finally pained him excessively, so that he limped.
He wore away the night, but when the morning came, he was obliged to
snatch an hour of sleep, so great was the sense of exhaustion come upon
him.
His face had become pale. With his hair unkempt, his eyes expressive of
the fever in his veins and his mouth somewhat drawn, he was not a little
haggard, as he resumed his lame, onward march. The child in his arms was
no burden to his enduring strength, but as a load on his heart the
little chap was heavy indeed. Sleeping, the miniature man appeared to be
sinking in a final rest, so wan had his tiny face become. Waking, he
gazed at Adam with such a dumb inquiry ever present in his great,
wistful eyes, that Rust began to wish he would complain—would cry, would
make some little sound to break his baby silence.
They were obliged to rest frequently, throughout the day. Try as he
might, Adam could not cover the ground rapidly. Whenever he resumed
walking, after sitting for a moment on a log, or a rock, he found his
foot had become so bad that, in the late afternoon, he gave up halting
thus altogether.
The twilight came upon him, then the night-fall. At last, with a
smothered cry of delight on his lips, he saw the gleam of a light. He
had come to the farm-house where he had stopped to return the English
dandy’s horse and to eat his last supper. Thinking thereby to disguise
himself, even if only slightly, he halted, threw off his leather jerkin,
sword and coat, turned the latter inside out and concealed his weapon
and outside garment in the brush. Thus altered in appearance, he dragged
his aching foot across the space between the woods and the house, where
he knocked upon the door and entered.
“Who’s there?” cried the farmer, in a fright which recent events had
instilled in his being. He was a shaking old bachelor, suspected by many
who knew him of being a miser with a great horde of gold on his
premises.
Adam was confronted by the man, as soon as he stepped across the
threshold.
“Food, man,” he said, hoarsely. “Food, or this child will die!”
The man recognized him instantly. He fairly quaked with dread.
“Go out! Go out!” he cried. “I’ve no food here—I’ve nothing here!”
“Peace!” commanded Adam. “Bring me forth something to eat for the child,
you knave, or I shall find it for myself.”
He looked terrible enough to execute a much more dreadful threat. The
farmer retreated before him, cringing and whining.
“I have nothing, or you should have it,” he said, with a whimper. “My
neighbors—ten minutes’ walk up the clearing—go to them. They have
plenty, and I have nothing.”
Adam remembered the scantiness of the fare he had tasted here before.
Nevertheless it had been food, and anything now might save his little
partner’s life.
“Then you go, friend,” he ordered. “Make haste and bring me what you
can, from your neighbors’!”
The man seemed about to refuse. He changed his mind abruptly.
“I’ll go. I’ll go!” he hastened to say, and without his hat, or waiting
for anything further, he hobbled out at the door and was gone.
Rust lost no time in ransacking the cupboard. To his unspeakable
disappointment he found that the man had not spoken wide of the truth.
There was as little here, in the way of a few gnawed crusts of bread and
a rind of cheese, as might well stand between nothing and something to
eat and to feed to a starving child. His heart sank within him. But then
he thought that inasmuch as the farmer had told the truth about his
larder, he would be the more likely to have spoken correctly about the
neighbors. He would soon be back with something fit for the wee
Narragansett.
Adam looked at the baby-boy compassionately. The little fellow was
awake, looking up, winking slowly, asking his dumb, wistful question
with his eyes.
Adam patted him softly while he waited. “I’m a wretched mother, little
partner,” he said. “But we’ll soon have you banqueting, now. Can’t you
speak up a little bit? Don’t you want to give old Adam just one little
smile? No? Well, never mind. Little man is tired.”
He had placed his charge in a chair. Soon growing impatient, he limped
about the room, crunching a crust of bread in his teeth, abstractedly.
Unable to endure the suspense, he went again to the cupboard and threw
everything down, in his search for something fit for the child. There
was nothing more than he had seen before. He went to the water pail and
drank, for his mouth had found the crust a poor substitute for food.
Yet no sooner had he sipped the water than a sense of the deliciousness
of the dry bread pervaded his being. He ran to gather up the other
crusts at once and limped to the child in a frenzy of gladness.
“Here, little man,” he said, kneeling down on the floor. “If you can
only chew that up and then take a sip of water, you will think the
King’s kitchen has opened.”
He gently thrust a small piece of the rock-hard bread between the little
chap’s lips, where, to his intense disappointment, it remained.
“Can’t you chew it?” he said. “Just try, for old Adam.”
The child was too weak to do anything but wink. Its appealing gaze was
more than Adam could stand.
“What can Adam do for the little man?” he said.
He limped painfully back and forth again. The farmer should have
returned before this. What could be keeping the wretch? The rover saw
that the little life was fluttering, uncertainly, not yet sure of its
wings on which to fly away.
“I have it!” he cried, in sudden exultation. “Bread and water!”
He hobbled across the room, snatched up a cup, crunched a fistful of
crusts in his hand, put them in his cup and filled it half to the top
with water. Then he stirred the hard pieces with his finger and crushed
them smaller and padded them up against the side of the vessel, working
the mass softer in feverish haste. Impatient to get results, he put the
cup to the baby’s lips.
“Drink,” he coaxed. “Take a little, like a good partner. Can’t you take
a little weeny bit?”
Groaning, thus to find the small Narragansett so weak, he hobbled about
to find a spoon, with which he came hastily limping back. To his joy
then, he saw a little of the slightly nutritious water disappear between
the silent lips. He crooned with delight, hitched himself closer and
plied his spoon clumsily, but with all the patience of a woman.
The child began to take the nourishment with interest.
Adam was happy in the midst of this new-found expedient, when the door
behind him was suddenly thrown open, violently, and in burst half a
dozen constables, armed to the teeth and panting wildly.
“Give up! I arrest you in the name of the King!” cried the foremost of
the men. He presented a pistol at the head of the kneeling man. “Take
him!” he screamed to his following, and before Rust could so much as
rise, on his wounded foot, he was suddenly struggling in a mass of men
who had fallen upon him.
He got to his feet. He knocked three of the constables endways. But his
strength was gone quickly, so long had he been famished, and so far had
he taxed his endurance. They overpowered him, making a noise of mad
confusion. They threw him toward a chair. He made one cry of anguish and
protest. Three of the scrambling clods fell together upon the little
partner, and when they arose, his little heart had ceased to beat.
The farmer-miser now came worming his way through the door. He was
laughing like a wolf.
“You’ve got him!” he cried. “I told you! I told you! Heh, heh, heh. I’m
not in league with thieves and murderers. Here, here, take your silver!
I’ll none of your silver!”
He took from his pocket the coin which the rover had paid him to take
back the Englishman’s horse and threw it hysterically down at Adam’s
feet.
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