and Adam was conscious that a stranger had intruded upon him. He looked
up, winked his eyes and looked more intently, as if absolutely
incredulous that he was awake and sane.
His visitor was Edward Randolph.
“Mr. Rust, I am glad to see you again in Boston,” said the man, coming
forward in a tentative manner and smiling by sheer force of effort. “You
didn’t expect me, but I have taken this early opportunity of calling, to
say I know what a great wrong I did you in the past, and to make what
reparation I can.”
“The devil could do no more,” said Adam, looking him over calmly. “And I
doubt if the devil ever had your impertinence.”
“You do me wrong,” Randolph assured him, meekly. “I could do no less
than to come here and tender what apologies I may, and to do you a small
favor. I was grossly misled, concerning your worth and your courage, by
spiteful persons who had, as I now understand, some personal grudge.”
“As I knew but two men in the town, when first I had the honor of
appraising you for a rascal,” said Adam, “your tale pleases me but
indifferently well. As for favors, I have none to ask of you, and none
to grant.”
“Yet, if only in a Christian spirit,” the fellow insisted, “you must
permit me to beg your pardon for my errors of the past. I have long
regretted my grievous mistake of judgment, and for that long I have
desired an opportunity of showing my mortification and doing you the one
kindness in my power.”
“In the spirit of the Christian crusaders,” said Rust, “I feel that I
could deny you little. You would do well, sir, to retire in good order
while my indisposition to throw you through the window is still upon
me.”
“But, my dear Mr. Rust, you don’t know what an injury you are doing to
yourself,” the visitor went on. “If you knew how cruelly we were both
wronged, almost at the same time and by the same person, you would
listen, if only for that one compassion.”
“I have been wronged in Boston,” Adam agreed, ominously, “and shatter my
hilt if I know why I hesitate to redress myself while I may.”
“But I did you no wrong to your heart, sir. Our injuries were both of
the heart,” Randolph reiterated, persistently. “Look, sir, I had a
heart, six years ago, and I felt it cruelly trampled under foot—the same
foot that trampled upon yours, and here——”
“Beware!” Adam growled. “I shall cut out your tongue, for little more.
Begone, sir, and thank your God at every step you take, that you still
live—if you value your life at all; and this I am driven to doubt.”
“Here, here!” replied Randolph, nervously, and with shaking fingers he
drew from his pocket a packet of paper folded in the form of a letter.
“You will never believe me till I show you this. But I lay my heart
open—I expose my wounds, to prove how you wrong me. Read it, read it—the
letter she sent me—and then I shall be willing to bide by your answer.”
Adam could not fail to be impressed by the man’s tenacity of purpose.
Being a just man, he had a faint suspicion dart through his head that,
after all, the man might not have known what he was doing when he
committed all his fiendish acts, years before. There had never been any
sufficient reason for what he had done, that Adam knew. He took the
letter, briefly to see what it was the fellow meant and wanted.
He began to read, and then to feel that the man had obviously undergone
some trial, severe and not readily to be forgotten. It was Garde’s own
letter to himself he was reading.
“She sent me that and then broke my heart after,” said Randolph,
speaking in a low, emotional voice, while Adam looked at the letter. “As
if she had not shattered my life sufficiently before.”
“I’m sorry for you,” said Rust, after a moment. “Here, I don’t care to
pry into your letter. Take it, and go in peace.”
“But read it, read it. You don’t know who wrote it,” said Randolph, who
was white with excitement. “I shouldn’t have come to you here with my
mortifying apologies, if there had not been a bond between us.”
Adam gave him a look, as of one baffled by an inscrutable mystery. He
could not comprehend his visitor’s meaning. Then suddenly a flush leaped
into his face, as he remembered something he had heard in those by-gone
days, when he walked with that youth, whose very name he could not
recall, from Plymouth to Boston.
He read the letter again with a new interest, a terrible interest. He
had gone away from Garde—sent away—with a stab in his heart, from which
he had never been able to recover. He had thought at first she sent him
away as a renegade, a fugitive from pseudo-justice, whom to have loved
openly would be a disgrace. He had thought then that perhaps she loved
Wainsworth, or even this Randolph. He had thought till he nearly went
crazy, for circumstances had compelled him to flee from Boston for his
life, and therefore to flee from all explanations which might have been
made. Garde having released him from jail, he had been driven to think
she believed him innocent. She had said she could do no less. Then he
had been left no belief to stand on but that of her loving some one else
more than she did himself. She had admitted that something had happened.
Cornered thus, he had found the case hopeless, and thoughts of return to
Boston then had seemed to him madness.
This letter, now in his hand, confirmed all those more terrible thoughts
and beliefs. She had done some wrong to Randolph, too, as she here
confessed in her letter. She had believed some infamous story against
him, and now prayed his forgiveness. And what, in God’s name, had she
then added to this first wrong to the man, that Randolph now was so
bitter?
Terribly stirred, he raced his glance over the pages and so to the
little quaintly affectionate ending. Then he read her signature,
“Garde—John Rosella.”
John Rosella!—the name of that youth! She! Garde!
He felt he should suddenly go mad. That boy he had so learned to
love—had been Garde! She had written this letter—she had signed that
name, which meant so much to him and to her, and so little to any one
else!
He made a strange little sound, and then he began to read the letter
over again, from the first, letting every word, every syllable, sink
into his soul with its comfort and its fragrance of love. He forgot that
Randolph stood there before him. He was oblivious of everything. He was
on that highroad again. He was standing with Garde in the garden at
midnight, her kisses still warm on his lips.
“You see there is a bond between us,” said Randolph.
Adam ceased reading, galvanically. But for a second he did not raise his
eyes. He folded the letter and held it in his hand. He arose to his feet
and slowly moved between Randolph and the door.
“There is a bond between us,” he agreed, speaking with nice
deliberation. “It is something more than a bond. It’s a tie of blood and
bone and suffering.”
“I thought you would see it,” said Randolph. “This was all I came to
tell you,—this, and my sense of having done you wrong.”
“Oh yes, I see it,” said Adam, turning the key in the lock and putting
it calmly in his pocket, “I see it all clearly. By the way, sir, who is
John Rosella, if I may ask?”
Randolph had become pale. His eyes were growing wild. He had watched
Rust lock the door with quaking dread.
“John Rosella?” he repeated, with a sickening sense of having overlooked
something important, which he had thought an insignificant trifle; “why,
that is merely the—her middle names. Her full name is Garde John Rosella
Merrill.”
“I trust you are gentleman enough to fight,” said Rust, placing the
letter in his pocket, “for I shall tell you, sir, that you are a liar, a
scoundrel, a murderous blackguard.”
Walking up to the staring wretch, calmly, Adam slapped his face till the
blow resounded in the room and Halberd came hastening to the door to
know what could be the matter.
“I rang the bell,” said Rust, who opened the door with great
deliberation. “Bring a sword for one. The gentleman wishes to fight.”
“What do you mean, sir?” said the trembling coward. “Give me back my
letter. I shall leave this place at once!”
“Will you jump through the window?” Adam inquired, with mock concern.
“Don’t call that letter yours again, or I may not let you off with a
mere killing.”
Halberd came with his sword. Adam drew his own good blade from the
battered scabbard he had always retained, and looked at the edge and the
point, critically.
“I refuse to fight you!” said Randolph, who had once seen that terrible
length of steel at play. “I demand to be released from this place!”
Rust went up and slapped him again. “Get up just manhood enough to raise
that sword,” Adam implored. “Take it and strike any sort of a foul blow
at me—one of your foulest—do! you dog.”
The craven tried to make a run at the door. Adam pushed him back and
kicked him again toward the center of the room.
“This is murder! I refuse to fight with such a villain!” cried the
fellow. “Let me out, or I shall call for help.”
“You wouldn’t dare to let anybody know you are in town,” said Rust,
contemptuously. “Howl, do howl, and let me tell the public what you are.
Halberd, alas, there is no manhood in it. Therefore fetch me the whip I
saw in your apartments, for a sad bit of business.”
To all of Randolph’s protests and wild chatterings of fear and hatred,
Rust was deaf. He took the whip, which Halberd presently brought, and
proceeded to cut Randolph across the face, the legs, the shoulders and
the hands till the craven smarted with a score of purple welts.
“Halberd, you may clean your boots afterward,” Adam said at last. “Be
good enough to kick the dog from the room.”
Halberd placed but two of his aids to departure, and then, Rust opening
the door, the craven flew madly out and away, a maniac in appearance, an
assassin in his state of mind.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER X.
AFTER SIX YEARS.
AT Grandther Donner’s house, Garde had passed the day with her heart so
fluttering between hope and fear that she was all unstrung by the time
the evening arrived. She could bear it no longer, then, and with a shawl
on her head she started out to go to the Soams’ to learn what she might
of the many events of the hour.
In the garden she paused. The stillness, the calm, the redolence of
Spring, burgeoning into maidenly summer, brought back to her mind that
similar time, six long years before, when she and Adam had met here
among the flowers, for that brief time of joy.
The fire of love, kept so sacred by the vestal virgin spirit of her
nature, burned upward in her cheeks, as warm, as ardent as ever, after
these years of her lonely vigil.
But would he ever stand there again, in the garden? Would he ever more
clasp her hands on the pickets of the gate? Or would he now prove
disdainful, proud of his friendship with the new Governor, aloof and
silent, as he had been since she sent him her letter?
No matter what might be, she so hungered to hear some word of his
coming, some meager description of how he looked, some mere hearsay of
how he bore himself, that it seemed as if she must consume herself with
impatience on her way to her uncle’s.
In the dusk which was swiftly descending on the face of the world, she
closed the gate behind her and started along the road, her face so pale
and yet so eager, in her yearning, that it was almost luminous. She was
presently conscious that some one, dimly visible, ahead, was rapidly
approaching. She drew her shawl a little more closely about her face and
quickened her footsteps, the sooner to pass this pedestrian.
A metallic tinkle came to her ears and made her heart give an extra
bound, she knew not why. It had simply sounded like a scabbard, beating
its small accompaniment to sturdy strides. She looked up, timidly, to
see who it was that carried a sword into such a quiet part of Boston.
Then she halted and suddenly placed her hand out, to the near-by fence,
for a moment’s support.
The man was almost passing her by, where she stood. He halted. He made
some odd little sound, and then he remained there, looking upon her, his
hand coming involuntarily up to his heart.
Garde looked up in his face, without fear, but not without sadness,
wistfully—with the inquiry of six long years in her steadfast eyes.
“Garde,” said Adam, in a voice she barely heard, “Garde—I have—come
home. I never got your letter till to-night.”
She could not answer, for a moment.
“I—have been waiting,” she then said, and striving to hold her lips from
trembling, she let two great tears trickle slowly across her face as she
still looked up in his eyes.
There was nothing he could say. He read her whole story of faithfulness
and of suffering, her epic of a love that could not die, in that one
long look. Slowly he went up to her and taking her face in his hands he
kissed away the tears from her cheeks. He put her head gently against
his breast and let her cry.
She still held to the fence, as if she dared not too suddenly lean on
his love, without which she had learned to live so long. But gradually,
as he held her there, saying nothing, but softly kissing her hair and
the one little hand he had taken in his own, her arms crept upward about
his shoulders and her heart beat against his, in a peace surpassing
anything of earth.
“My Garde,” he finally began to whisper, over and over again, “my own
Garde—my darling, precious Garde.”
“Oh, this may all be wrong, Adam,” she answered him, after a time. “I
don’t understand it. We don’t know what has happened, in all these
years. Oh, how did you happen to come?”
“You drew me, sweetheart,” he said, in a voice made tremulous with
emotion. “I have had no peace till now. I have loved you so! I have
dreamed of you so! But I never knew—till to-night, when I got your
letter.”
“You—never got it till to-night? Oh Adam,” she said. “Oh, Adam, I have
been so punished for the wrong I did. Oh, you can never, never forgive
me!”
“There, there, sweetheart,” he said to her soothingly, letting her cry
out the sobs she had stifled so vainly. “Forgive you, dear? You had no
need to ask for forgiveness—you who came to me there in that jail—you,
whose sweet little motherly spirit so provided for my poor old
beef-eaters, when they were hungry and fleeing for their lives. Dearest,
I don’t see how you did it, when I was a hunted renegade, a fugitive,
with doubled infamies piled upon my head. Oh, forgive me, dear, that
ever I doubted my own little mate.”
“No, I should never have believed them—not all the world!” she
protested. “My Adam. My Adam.”
With his strong arm about her, and her head leaned in confidence and
love on his shoulder, he led her back to the garden, at once the scene
of their joys and tragedies.
He enthroned her on the steps of the porch, where as a child she had
been enthroned, when he as her boy-lover had sat, as now, at her feet
and listened to the dainty caresses of her voice. Only now he held her
hand in his and placed it on his cheek and kissed it fondly, as he
listened and told her of how he had come at last to receive the letter.
At this she was frightened. She wanted to cradle his head upon her
bosom, now, and hold forth a hand to shield him from danger. She felt
that the perils for them both were clustered about his fearless head and
that hers was the right to protect.
“Oh, please be careful, Adam, dear,” she implored. “That man is a
terrible man. Oh, I wish you had let him go. You will be careful, dear.
You must be careful, and watchful, every moment.”
His reply was a kiss and a boyish laugh. Now that he had her once more,
he said, and now that nothing should ever part them again, his world was
complete, and there were no dangers, nor evils, nor sorrows.
Then he begged her to tell him of the years that had passed. He petted
her fondly, as she spoke of her long, long wait. She seemed to him
thrice more beautiful, in the calm and dignity of her womanhood, which
had laid not so much as a faded petal on her beauty and her endless
youth.
He exchanged a history of heart-aches, matching with one of his own
every pang she had ever endured. There was something ecstatic, now, in
the light of their new-found rapture, in recounting those long days of
sadness and despair. Every pain thus rehearsed drew them the closer,
till their love took on a sacredness, as if suffering and constancy had
wedded them long before. Like parents who have buried the children they
loved, they were made subdued and yet more truly fervent, more absolute
in the divine passion which held them heart to heart.
And so, at last, when Garde was sure that Adam ought to go, they walked
hand in hand to the gate together.
“Sweetheart, let me go outside, for a moment,” said Adam, quickly
shutting the barrier between them. “Now, with your two dear hands in
mine, it is just as it was six years ago. The night is the same, your
beauty is the same, our hearts and love are the same as before, and
nothing has ever come between us—except this gate.”
He kissed her hands and her sweet face, as he had done on that other
happy night.
“And we can open the gate,” said Garde, in a little croon of delight.
Adam laughed, like the boy he was. He flung open the gate and went
inside and took her in his arms, kissing her upon the lips, rapturously,
time after time.
“Oh Garde, I love you so!” he said. “I love you! I adore you, my own
little mate!”
“I could have waited fifty years,” she answered him, nestling close and
patting his hand as she held it, in excess of joy, to her heart. “Oh
Adam! My Adam!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XI.
A BLOW IN THE DARK.
THE rover, so lost in exalted happiness that he hardly knew where he was
going, when at length he said his final good night to Garde, was not
aware that the faithful old Halberd finally fell into his tracks behind
him and followed him off toward the tavern.
Immensely relieved again to see his master, whom he had not been able to
locate before, the old beef-eater was soon convinced that Adam was in a
mood the like of which had not appeared in the family for many a day. He
therefore glided silently after the dreamer, a rod or so to the rear,
waiting until Adam should turn about, as was his wont, to bid him walk
at his side.
But to-night the Sachem was so thoroughly engrossed with his love and
his forming plans, that he completely forgot to think of his lorn
retinue, and therefore the beef-eater felt more alone and sad than
usual. There was nothing in Boston, save Adam, with which he could
associate any thoughts of jollier days. There was nothing but Adam left
in the world, to which to devote the great fund of affection and
devotion in his simple breast.
But he was making no complaint, not even to himself. Whatever the Sachem
did was right. Nothing that Adam could have done would have driven him
away, nor have altered his love by so much as one jot. All he desired
was the privilege of loving his master, at whose heels he would have
followed, though the path led to Hell itself, and this with never so
much as a question, nor a murmur of hesitation.
The moon had been silvering the roofs of the houses for some time, and
Adam and Halberd wended their way, in their short procession, through
the deserted business streets of the town. Masses of shadow lay upon the
sidewalk, where Adam was striding buoyantly along.
Within fifteen feet of him, and between him and Adam, suddenly Halberd
heard a sound that made him halt where he stood. Three figures, their
faces masked with black cloth, ran out from a deep doorway, where they
had crowded back, for concealment, and darted upon the rover, walking
unconsciously onward.
“Sachem! Sachem!” cried the beef-eater, wildly.
He darted forward, in time to see Adam turn to receive a stab in the
neck and a blow on the head that sent him to earth before he could even
so much as raise a hand to ward off his murderous assailants.
Dragging his sword from his scabbard as he ran, old Halberd leaped
frantically into the midst of the three asassins, ready to battle
against any odds conceivable, in this the climax-moment of his loyalty.
He struck but a single blow, which fell upon one of the bludgeons held
by the masked ruffians. He screamed out his terrible tocsin of anguish
and rage. Then a blow from behind him crushed in his skull and he fell
across the master he had striven to serve, a corpse.
Waiting for nothing further, the three figures sped away, down the
street, dived into the darkness of an alley and were gone, past all
finding, when a few startled citizens opened their windows or doors and
looked out on the street to see what the awful cries of Halberd had
betokened.
“I see something—down on the sidewalk,” said the voice of one of the
men. “The lantern, wife, the lantern!”
“What is it? What is it?” called another, from across the way.
And others answering, that they knew not what it meant, or that it had
sounded like some terrible deed being done, there were presently half a
dozen awed men coming forth, when their neighbor appeared at his door
with his light.
The black, still heap which had been seen from a window smote them all
with horror. A dark stream, from which the light was suggestively
reflected, already trickled to the gutter. They lifted Halberd from the
second prostrate form and found that Adam was swiftly bleeding to death
from a ghastly wound in the neck, from which the life-fluid was leaping
out in gushes.
“Turn him over, turn him over!” commanded the man with the lantern. “Run
to my house and ask the wife for everything to tie up an
artery—bandages, too!”
He knelt down in the red stream. Digging his fingers into the gaping,
red mouth of the wound, he clutched upon the severed artery with a skill
at once brutal and sure. The gushes ceased, almost entirely.
Adam’s face, already deathly white, had been turned upward.
“Saints preserve us!” said one of the citizens. “It’s the bosom friend
of the Governor!”
“Then we know where to take him, if he doesn’t die in spite of me,” said
the skilful surgeon who had pounced upon the wound. “Look to the other
man and see if he too, is bleeding.”
One of the other men had already loosened the collar about old Halberd’s
neck. Another came to assist him.
“He’s bleeding a little, from the back of his head,” said he. “O Lord!
He’s dead!”
The doctor’s wife came running to the place herself, with her husband’s
case in which he had a score of cunning tools and the needs of his
craft.
The good woman pushed the men aside and with an assurance and a courage
almost totally unknown in her sex, at the time, in such a case as this,
bent down above the wounded man and lent to her husband the nimble
fingers and the quick comprehension without which he might easily have
failed to prevent that deadly loss of blood.
As it was, Rust was at the door of death. The turn he had made, when
Halberd called out in alarm, had saved him from inevitable death. The
steel driven so viciously into his neck, would have severed the jugular
vein completely had he turned the fraction of a second less soon than he
did, or an inch less far.
The blow on his temple had glanced, so that half the power, which in the
case of Halberd had crushed in the skull instantly, had been lost,
nevertheless it had served to render him wholly unconscious. Therefore,
two hours later, when brave little Mrs. Phipps got him laid in a clean,
sweet couch, he looked like death, and his heart-beat was feeble and
faintly fluttering between mere life and the Great Stillness.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XII.
ADAM’S NURSE.
WHEN the intelligence of the almost unparalleled crime spread with
terror and awe in its wake through Boston, in the morning, Garde heard
it like a knell—a fatality almost to have been expected, when she and
Adam had been at last so happy. She did not faint. Not even a moan
escaped her lips. She turned white and remained white.
“Grandther,” she said to the old man who owed his restoration to health
and almost complete soundness of mind to her ministrations, “I am
betrothed to this friend of our new Governor’s. I shall go to attend
him.”
She left her grandfather staring at her in wonder, and with only her
shawl on her head, she went to the “fair brick house” which William
Phipps had built for his wife at the corner of Salem and Charter streets
in the town.
“I am betrothed to Adam Rust,” she repeated, simply. “I have come to
attend him.”
As if poor Garde had not already, in six years of waiting and hoping and
vain regrets, sufficiently suffered for a moment’s lack of faith in her
lover, the anguish now came upon her in a flood tide. Adam no sooner
recovered a heart-beat strong enough to give promise of renewed
steadiness, than he lapsed from his unconscious condition into one of
delirium.
Had Garde been wholly in ignorance of his past and his life of many
tragedies, she would have been doomed to learn of all of it now. He
lived it all over, a hundred times, and told of it, brokenly, excitedly,
at times with sallies of witty sentences, but for the most part in the
sighs with which his life had filled his heart to overflowing, but to
which he had never before given utterance.
She knew now what the boy had suffered when King Philip, the Sachem of
the Wampanoags, was slain, with the people of his nation. She felt the
pangs he had felt when, on first returning to Boston, he had believed
himself supplanted in Garde’s affections by his friend Henry Wainsworth.
She heard him croon to the little Narragansett child, as he limped again
through the forest. And then she sounded the depths of a man’s despair
when the whole world and the woman he loves drive him forth, abased.
Yet much as she suffered with him in this long rehearsal of his
heartaches, there was still one little consolation to her soul.
The one name only that he spoke, and spoke again and again, in murmurs
of love and in heart-cries of agony, was—Garde.
Having acquired her skill in the harsh school where her grandfather’s
illness had been the master, Garde could almost have rejoiced in this
reparation she was making to Adam for what she had contributed to his
pangs in the past, had it not been that his hovering so at the edge of
death frightened all other emotions than alarm from her breast.
Nevertheless she believed he would live. He could not die, she insisted
to herself, while she gave him a love so vast and so sustaining.
This feeling was fairly an instinct. And the truth in which it was
grounded came struggling to the fore, one morning, when Adam opened his
eyes, after his first refreshing sleep, and laughed at her gayly, if a
little weakly, to see her there, bending down above him.
“John Rosella,” he said, “I have been dreaming of you—the sweetest boy
that ever lived.”
“Oh, Adam,” said Garde, suddenly crimsoning. “Oh—now you—you mustn’t
talk. You must go back to sleep at once.”
Adam was drowsy, despite himself. “I remember—every word—we said,” he
murmured, “and every—look of your sweet—sweet face.” And then he fell
again into peaceful slumber.
Arrived so far as this toward recovery, he made rapid progress. Healthy
and wholesome as he was, sound, from habits of clean, right living, he
mended almost too fast, according to Garde’s ideas of convalescence, for
she feared he would rise in revolt, over soon, and do himself an injury
by abandoning care and comfort before she could pronounce him quite
himself.
In reality there had been but little more than his loss of blood to
contend with, save that his state of mind had engendered a fever, as a
result of all he had undergone, so that when this latter was allayed and
the wound in his neck was healing with astonishing rapidity, his
strength came back to his muscles and limbs by leaps and bounds.
Therefore, despite her solicitude, Garde was soon happy to see him again
on his feet and making his way about the house, his face a little wan
and white, but the twinkle in his eye as merry as the light in a jewel.
He could furnish no accurate or reliable information as to whom his
murderous assailants had been. He could only conjecture that Randolph
had been at the bottom of the affair, from motives of vengeance. This
was the truth. But the disappearance of Randolph from Boston was
reckoned so variously, as having taken place anywhere from two days to
three years before, that nothing could be reliably determined.
Moreover, it sufficed for Adam and Garde that they were here, in the
land of the living, together, and though it made the rover feel sad to
think of the loss of his last beef-eater, the faithful old Halberd.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XIII.
GOODY IN THE TOILS.
THE worthy Puritan citizens of Boston fêted Governor Phipps in one
breath and asked him to make concessions of his powers to his council in
the next. They worked themselves weary with enthusiasm over his advent
and then they wore him out with exactions, with their epidemic of
persecuting witches and with the faults they found with his methods of
life and government.
Sir William had not been long in his new harness, when he was heard to
wish he again had his broadax in hand and were building a ship of less
dimensions than one of state. A little of his old love for his calling
and the men it had gathered about him was expressed in a dinner which he
gave to ship-carpenters, from whose ranks he was proud to have risen, as
he told them and told the world. He had a hasty temper, as a result of
having been so long a captain on the sea, accustomed to absolute
obedience at the word of command. Yet his squalls of anger were soon
blown over, leaving him merry, honest and lovable as before.
Unfortunately Governor Phipps was largely under the influence of
Increase Mather and his son, the Reverend Cotton Mather, who were both
as mad fanatics on the topic of religion and witchcraft as one could
have found in a day’s walk. The influence over Phipps had been gained by
the elder Mather in England, where he and Sir William were so long
associated in their efforts to right their colony and its charter.
Witchcraft persecutions, having fairly run amuck in England, Increase
Mather had enjoyed exceptional opportunities for observing the various
phenomena developed by this dreadful disease. He arrived in Boston after
Randolph had succeeded far beyond the dreams of his own malice in
starting the madness on its terrible career. The field offered an
attraction not to be withstood, by either of the Mathers. They were soon
fairly gorging themselves on the wonders of the invisible world,
testimonies and barbarous punishments.
Lieutenant-Governor Stoughton was an active figure in all this
lamentable business. Phipps was dragged into the maelstrom bodily. He
pitied the frightened wretches in the prisons and secretly instructed
his jailers to be remiss in their duties of chaining, ironing and
otherwise inflicting needless punishment on these helpless mortals.
The more effectually and quietly to turn the fearful tide, so
appallingly engulfing the minds of the wrought-up populace, Phipps
organized a court of Oyer and Terminer, wherein he sat himself, with
seven magistrates, to try the wretched old women, dragged screaming to
the farcical examinations. At these trials, devilish children swore away
the lives of fellow-creatures, abandoned alike by their kind and by
their God. In this court of his own making, William Phipps was slowly
and surely putting a stop to the mania, for the horrors of some of the
executions sent a thrill of fright and dread through the whole of
Boston.
Exercising his power of pardoning, and then expending his own money to
assist them to flee from the state, William Phipps saved so many
defenseless women that he fairly broke the fabric of the awful mania in
twain. Early after his arrival, however, he was called away to Plymouth.
No sooner was his back turned than the zealots pounced, tooth and nail,
upon a new crop of witches and hailed them before the court, on trial
for their lives, in haste before the Governor should return to work his
leniency upon them.
Thus it came about that Garde, having exhausted the small supply of
simples possessed by herself and Goodwife Phipps, went to Goody Dune’s
and there witnessed the work of a witch-hunting mob.
It was a warm, summery morning, fit jewel for the year’s diadem of
things beautiful. Cries, yells, of pretended fear, and harsh, discordant
prayers, screamed into the air, assailed Garde’s ears before she could
yet see the little flower-surrounded hut where Goody lived. She felt a
sudden misgiving strike through her heart as she hastened onward.
She came upon the scene in a moment. Nearly fifty men and boys, with a
sprinkling of mere girls and one or two women, were storming the small
stronghold of the old wise woman, who had done so much for those
afflicted by ailments and troubles. Indeed in the crowd there were many
citizens who had blessed her name and the wisdom by which she had mended
their bodily woes. But all now were mad with excitement. Some were
purposely frothing at the mouth. A dozen leaped frantically about,
declaring they were being pinched and bitten by the demons that Goody
was actuating to malice. Young boys slily put nails and pins in their
mouths and then spat them forth, to show what evils were then and there
being perpetrated upon them.
The tidy little garden was trampled to pitiable wreckage of flowers and
vines. The house was being boldly entered by a few lusty knaves, with
Psalms Higgler and Isaiah Pinchbecker in their midst. Sounds of wild
beating, upon the pans and kettles inside, made half the assembled
people turn pale with self-induced fear, which they loved to experience.
Suddenly Goody’s old black cat came bounding forth. The men, boys and
women fell down in affright, screaming that the devil was upon them. To
add to their horror and superstitious dismay, the jackdaw, Rex, came
flying out. He perched for a moment on the ridge and then circled once
or twice about the house. He was wounded, for the ruffians in the
cottage had beaten him savagely, with sticks and whips. He was
bedraggled; for they had thrown water upon him. His feathers were all
awry. He was altogether a sorry spectacle.
“B-u-h-h—it’s cold,” called the bird. “Fools, fools, fools!” and
flapping his ragged wings so that they clapped against his sides as he
flew, he started straight for the woods and was soon out of sight.
If the witch-hunters had been smitten with delightful fear before, they
were appalled by this terrible bird. They fell down upon their knees and
wept and prayed and made a thousand and one mysterious signs by which
evil could be averted. Those who knew in their hearts that the whole
thing, up to this, had been humbug and fraud, now quaked with a fear
that was genuine. The devil himself had said some horrible, unthinkable
rigmarole which would doubtless cast a spell upon them such as they
would never be rid of again in their lives. Their children would be born
with fishes’ tails, with asses’ legs, with seven heads. Above the wails
of anguish, which arose on the air, came the shouts of the captors of
Goody Dune. They were now seen dragging her forth with hooks, which were
supposed to insulate the operator from the evils which a witch could
otherwise pronounce upon her enemies with dire and withering effect. And
then it was seen what the shouting of triumph was.
Each of the captors bore a Bible in his hand from which he read,
haphazard, at the top of his voice as he walked, thus disinfecting
himself, or fumigating himself, as it were, to prevent him from catching
the evil which was hovering about the witch, like an aureole of
dangerous microbes of the devil’s own breeding.
No sooner did old Goody’s well-known form appear than the fanatics in
the garden fled in a panic for the gate, howling and wailing their
prayers more loudly than before, but pushing and jostling one another
and falling endways, as they tried to run and to look behind them at the
same time. They must see everything, whatever the cost.
The men were seen to be armed with pitchforks. There is nothing in the
way of a weapon which your devil so abhors as a pitchfork, in the hands
of any one save himself.
This noisy, mad procession moved in great disorder out into the highway,
where Garde had paused, dismayed and concerned for Goody. She saw the
wise old woman walking calmly along with her captors, for Goody, unlike
the witches of lesser wisdom, knew too much to cry out wild protests
against this infamy, and so to convict herself of uttering curses,
spells and blasphemies on the public roads. She looked about her, at men
and women she had relieved of pains, and at children whose early
ailments she had exorcised with her simples.
They were all now possessed of the devil, in good faith, for the mad
capers they cut to show that Goody was all potent to produce the most
fiendish and heinous results upon them could only have been invented out
of the sheer deviltry which is one of the component parts of the human
animal.
Helpless, terrified by these maniacs about her, Garde could only lean
against the fence and hold her place while the running, neck-twisting
people went by.
“Oh, poor dear Goody,” she murmured to herself, involuntarily.
The old wise woman looked across the bank of bobbing heads about her and
half smiled, in a weary, hopeless manner that sent a pang straight to
Garde’s heart. She knew that Goody was saying, “Never mind me, dear,”
and this only made it all the more unendurable.
Goody had been hustled by in a moment. The dust arose from the scurrying
feet. The hobble-de-hoy pageant went rapidly toward the town, its
numbers being momentarily augumented, as fresh persons heard the
disturbance rising and coming near, on the summer air, and joined the
throng.
Unwilling to let her friend be conveyed thus away without her even
knowing where she was now to be taken, Garde followed the last of the
stragglers, and so saw the crowd become a mob, in the more populous
streets of the town, and finally beheld Goody hurried to one of the
prisons and shut out of sight behind the doors.
The jail was the one into which, six years before, Adam Rust had been so
infamously thrown.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XIV.
GARDE’S SUBTERFUGE.
NEARLY as strong and well as ever, Adam Rust heard Garde’s excited and
desperate tale of Goody’s capture with an indignation which far outran
her own. He failed to realize, at first, the full import of Goody’s
position. Then, as Garde made him understand the almost inevitable
execution, staring this old woman-friend in the face, at the end of a
trial from which Truth would fly moaning, with her hands to her ears,
the rover would have buckled on his sword and gone to batter down the
jail to set the old wise woman free, had his sweetheart not restrained
him with all her powers of dissuasion.
“Oh, we have got to be far more clever than that,” she said. “We have
got to get her out of there quietly—so quietly that we can get her
away—a long way off, before the awful crowds shall find it out. Help me
to do this. Help me to get her out cunningly, or we shall fail—and
to-night it will all be too late.”
“Couldn’t the Governor pardon her out?” said Adam. “Why has he gone away
at such a time? Here, couldn’t Mrs. Phipps write a pardon? We could take
it to the jailer, and try him. If he then refused to release our friend,
we could try with a little gold in his hand. Mrs. Phipps—Mrs. Phipps,”
he called to the Captain’s wife.
The plump little woman would have done anything on earth for Adam—her
boy—and for Garde, whom she loved no less, but she shook her head at
this new proposal. The potentialities of the position in which William’s
sudden elevation had placed her still gave her a little fright to
contemplate. She knew nothing of the powers of a Governor, still less of
those of a Governor’s wife.
“I would be glad to do this thing, dear Adam,” she said, “for your sake,
or Garde’s, or even for old Goody herself, but can I? Would I dare? I
fear you hardly know the temper of these people on this question of
witches. They are mad.”
“Try it,” said Adam. “We can do no less than to give it a trial. The
jailer will know of no reason for limiting the Governor’s prerogatives,
nor even those of his good wife. Write what I shall dictate, and let us
make the attempt. A bit of boldness is often as good as an army.”
Never able to resist when Adam begged or even suggested, Goodwife Phipps
wrote, as he directed, one of the most sweeping and imperious pardons
ever reduced to cold language. This being duly sanded, and approved,
Rust folded it up and placed it safely in his pocket.
“Now then, John Rosella,” he said to Garde, who blushed prettily, in
spite of her many conflicting emotions, “even supposing this works its
charm, we have only then made a good beginning. I must have a horse on
which to convey old Goody out of the reach of harm, when they find she
has slipped between their fingers. And the horse must be my own. No more
borrowed horses will do for me. Therefore content your mind, sweetheart,
while I go forth to make my needed purchases.”
He kissed her, while Goodwife Phipps bustled off importantly about her
duties, and reassuring her that all should yet be well for Goody, he
went out into the glorious sunlight, and felt his old-time vigor spring
forward—from the warmth and the joyousness of Nature—to meet him.
But the matter of finding a horse in Boston was not one to be disposed
of lightly. He hunted far and wide, for of those which were offered for
sale, many were old, a few were lame and others were vicious. These
latter he would have liked, for himself, since they challenged him,
their spirit against his, but foregoing the pleasant anticipation of a
battle royal, he rejected offers right and left, until he had used up
the morning completely, and at length felt obliged to be satisfied with
a somewhat undersized bay, who nevertheless seemed strong and otherwise
fit for the business in hand.
Garde in the meantime had grown nervous with impatience, afraid as she
was, of one of those swift, inhuman trials of Goody which so often were
the subterfuges of the fanatics for rushing a person pre-condemned, to
the death from which there was no escape.
“I have thought the matter over calmly,” said Adam, who knew nothing of
real calmness in a moment of daring, “and I feel certain we shall double
our chances of success by waiting till dark, or near it, when the jailer
might be persuaded to think we could get her away unnoticed noticed by
the rabble, and so might consent to the plan, when otherwise he would
think he must refuse.”
There was reason in this, as Garde could see. Making Adam promise to
take a rest, before the time should be ripe for their enterprise, she
went home to David Donner, to set things to rights, and otherwise to
keep abreast of her little housewifely duties. She found the old man
excited, by a call which had come for his services, at noon.
One of the seven magistrates who sat in the court of Oyer and Terminer,
to try the witches, had fallen ill. David had been requested to assume
his place. At this wholly unexpected news, Garde felt her heart leap
with a sudden rejoicing. If the worst came, Goody would have at least
one friend at the trial, to whose words of wisdom the Council had so
frequently listened. She ran to the old man and gave him a kiss.
“Oh, I am so glad, dear Grandther,” she said. “They know how wise you
are and just!”
“Thankee, child, thankee,” said the white-haired old man, smiling with
the pleasure which the whole transaction had excited in his hungering
breast. “They recognize me—a little—at last.”
Yet so eager had the girl become, and so frightened of what the results
were almost certain to be, if Goody ever came to her trial, during the
absence of Governor Phipps, that she and Adam were hastening off to the
jail the moment the twilight began to descend on the town.
“Jailer Weaver owes me some little favor,” she said as they came to the
place, “and he really owes a great deal to Goody.” Her voice was
shaking, her teeth felt inclined to chatter, so excited was all this
business making her feel.
Vivid recollections of those terrible moments in which she had come to
see Mrs. Weaver and then had hovered about the prison, to liberate Adam,
made her cling to his arm in terror of what they were now about to
attempt.
Adam himself, wondering if the jailer would by any chance remember his
face, and the break he and the poor old beef-eaters had made, had the
boldness and the love of adventure come surging up in his heart, till he
petted the hilt of his sword with a clenching fist.
They entered at the door of that portion of the prison building where
the Weavers made their residence, as this would excite no suspicion on
the part of the few pedestrians in the street. The nature of their
business being partially secret, they chose to interview the jailer in
the room which answered for his parlor.
Weaver was a man who constantly raised and lowered his eyebrows—a habit
he had gained through years of alternately scowling at his guests and
then looking puzzled or surprised that, being so innocent as they always
were, they should still be brought to such a place. He listened to
Adam’s flowery and courtly address, in which he announced the advent of
Goody’s pardon, with at least a hundred of these eyebrow contortions.
“But the Governor never pardons before a trial,” he said. “Else, how
should he know but what he was pardoning a very guilty person indeed? If
he had pardoned her, or if he will pardon her, after the trial, I shall
be glad to give her freedom, poor soul. But you see she hasn’t even been
tried, and moreover this pardon comes from the Governor’s good lady.”
Garde’s heart sank. The man was so unanswerably logical.
“But, my good man,” said Adam, “I tell you this would be the Governor’s
pleasure. And the Governor stands in the shoes of the King, in matters
of grave importance. Now call in any one and ask if I am not the
Governor’s friend—his secretary, indeed.”
“I know your face,” said Weaver, who remembered Adam well enough, as a
former guest of the house, but who chose to say nothing on delicate
subjects. “I saw you with Sir William the day he landed. Oh, aye, you
are his friend, I know that well. But——”
“Good!” Adam interrupted. “Then, the Governor—who stands, mind you, in
the King’s shoes, in this matter, is away. I, being his friend, for the
moment take his place. Therefore I stand in the King’s shoes myself, and
I desire this woman’s pardon! Bring forth your ink, and I shall add my
signature to the document, in the King’s name.”
Weaver was bewildered. This reasoning was as clear as a bell, yet he
knew what the angry mobs would soon be demanding from his stronghold.
“But—but there can be no pardon, as I said, till after trial,” he
stammered.
“What!” said Rust striding back and forth, while Garde looked on and
trembled, “do you refuse to obey your King?”
“Oh, sir, alas, no,” said the jailer. “But what can I do?”
“Do? Do? My friend, do you value your daily bread? Do you wish to retain
your office? Or shall the Governor grant your dismissal?”
This was touching the man on a spot where he could endure no pressure.
He quailed, for he found himself between the devil—as represented by the
fanatical spirit of the mob—and the deep sea into which the loss of his
place would plunge him at once.
“Oh, don’t turn me out!” he begged, convinced well enough of Adam’s
power with the Governor. “I would do anything to please you, sir, and I
have done much already to please the Governor. I am an old man, sir, and
we have saved nothing, and we know no other trade, and many people hate
us. There would be no place for me and mine. Do not turn us away for
this.”
“I don’t wish to turn you away,” said Adam. “I merely ask you to release
this woman.”
“She has never done any harm,” put in Garde. “She has been very good to
your wife and you. Surely you could spare her this.”
“I would, Miss, I would,” said the wretched man. “I am sick to death of
this terrible craze of witches, but what can I do? If I do not release
her, I shall lose my place and starve. If I do let her go, I shall have
all the mobs down upon me, when they find there is no witch for trial.
How can I show them a paper, instead of a prisoner? My life might pay
the forfeit.”
“Oh, Adam, this is terrible,” said Garde. “What can we do?”
“After trial, you can surely get her pardoned,” the man insisted. “You
have the power. You can save her then.”
“Oh, they will never wait!” cried the girl. “They may try her to-night,
and find her guilty and hang her the first thing in the morning!”
Weaver turned pale. He knew that what she said might in all probability
be true.
“But I cannot give them a bit of paper instead of a prisoner,” he
repeated. “If you will bring me some one else, who will vouch for the
mob’s respect of your pardon, as you vouch for the Governor——”
“We’ve got to have her,” interrupted Adam. “You can say she escaped, by
her power of witchcraft. Release her, or look your last on these
cheerful walls.”
“Oh, but, Adam,” said Garde, “why should we make such misery and trouble
for one person—for two persons, indeed with Mrs. Weaver—in trying to
save another? I like these good people. They are very kind to their
prisoners. They have spent much of their own money to give them little
comforts. Can we not think of some other way, as good as this, to get
poor Goody out and do no harm to innocent people?”
Weaver was ready to break into tears. He started to repeat, “Bring me
some one to——”
“Oh! Oh, I know! I know what to do!” cried Garde, interrupting. “All you
need is some one else to blame, when they find she is gone! It would
never be your fault if some one took her place. It would be a trick on
you, when they found it out. I’ll take her place. I’ll take her place,
because when they find out they are starting to try only me, they will
have to laugh it off as a joke. And Grandther is one of the
magistrates—appointed to-day—so they will have to let me go—and Goody
will be far away, by then—and no one will get into trouble!”
“So one could blame me—nor they wouldn’t,” said Weaver, slowly, “but as
for you, Miss——”
“Then we can do it!” Garde broke in, a little wildly. “Oh, hurry! we
might he too late. You can put me wherever Goody is, and I can change
clothes with her, and then, Adam——”
“Yes, but——” started Adam.
“Oh, let me, dear. I shan’t mind it a bit. And in the morning it will
all be over, and Goody will be safe, and no one harmed—and there is no
other way. And I want to! Oh, Goody has been like a mother to me! I must
do it. Please don’t say anything more. Mr. Weaver, take me to Goody
now!”
“You brave little woman!” said Adam, his own courage leaping to greet
this intrepid spirit in his sweetheart. “I believe you can do it! We
shall win!”
“Come back as early as you can,” said Garde, on whom a thought of the
lonely part of the business was suddenly impressed. “It won’t seem long.
And when it is over, I shall feel so glad I could do a little thing for
Goody. We must hurry. Every moment may be precious!”
“But, lassie——” the jailer tried to insist once more, “you——”
“Please don’t talk any more,” said Garde. “Take me to her now. And when
somebody looking like me comes back, let her go out by Mrs. Weaver’s
door with Mr. Rust.”
“Yes, I, but——”
“In the King’s name, no more talk,” interrupted Adam. Then he turned to
Garde. “You won’t be timid, little mate?” he said. “I shall not be gone
past midnight at the most.”
“I shall be so glad to think I am leaving Goody in your strong, dear
hands,” said Garde, with a smile of love in her eyes. “Good-by,
dear,—good night, till the morning.”
She kissed him, and smiling at him bravely, followed the jailer, who saw
that his place in the jail depended now on compliance with Adam’s and
Garde’s demand. The tremulous pressure of her little hand in his
remained with Adam when she had gone. He wondered if he were doing well,
thus to let his sweetheart assume poor Goody’s place. Then his own
boldness of spirit rebuked him and he laughed at the imaginary scene of
the magistrates, when they should finally discover their trial to be
nothing but a farce.
Weaver meantime took a candle in his hand and led the way down the
corridor of the prison. Garde hesitated when she saw him descending the
steps.
“Why—where is she?” she asked, timidly.
“In the dungeon, lass,” said the jailer. “I was over sorry, but it could
not be helped. We are full everywhere else. But I shall leave you the
light, and anything you like for comfort. Only, if you hear any one
coming, blow out the candle straightway, or I shall be in a peck of
troubles.”
Quelling her sense of terror, and thinking of Goody, alone in that
darkness, with such dreadful fates awaiting her reappearance among the
people, she promised herself again it would soon be over, and so
followed resolutely down into the hole where Adam had once been locked,
in those long-past days of despair.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XV.
THE MIDNIGHT TRIAL.
GOODY DUNE was a frightened and pitiable spectacle, with her age and the
terrors of the dungeon and coming execution upon her. She struggled in
an effort to maintain a show of composure, at sight of Garde and the
jailer. Nevertheless she would not, at first, listen to a word of the
plan of substitution, to get her away from the prison.
When at last she had fairly overridden Goody’s objections, and had made
her complete the exchange of garments, Garde kissed her with all the
affection of a daughter, and sent her forth to Adam’s protection. She
then heard the lock in the dungeon-door shoot squeakingly into place
with a little thrill of fear, which nothing human and womanly could have
escaped.
She listened to the footfalls receding down the corridor, and then the
utter silence of the place began to make itself ring in her ears. She
looked about her, by the aid of the flickering light which the tallow
dip was furnishing, at the barren walls, the shadows, and the heap of
straw in the corner. At all this she gave a little shiver of dread.
All the excitement which had buoyed her up to make this moment possible
escaped from her rapidly. She began to think how Goody must have felt,
till her moment of deliverance came. Then she thought of what Adam had
endured when, lame, hungry, exhausted and defamed, he had been thrown
with violence into this horrible hole, from which he could have had no
thought of being rescued.
She took the candle in hand and went in search of the tiny window, down
through which she had dropped him the keys. When she saw it, she gave a
little shudder, to note how small it was, and how it permitted no light
to enter the place.
Returning then to a paper, filled with bread and butter, pie, cake and
cold meat, which Weaver had fetched her, while she and Goody had been
exchanging garments, she tried to eat a little, to occupy her time and
her thoughts. But she could only take a sip of the milk, which stood
beside the paper, and a nibble at the bread. To eat, while in her
present state of mind, was out of the question.
The stillness seemed to increase. She felt little creeps of chill
running down her shoulders. What a terrible thing it would be to have no
hope of leaving this fearful cellar! Suppose anything should happen to
Adam, to prevent him from returning! How long would it be till morning?
Surely she must have been there nearly an hour already. She clasped her
hands, that were cold as ice. She almost wished she had not tried this
solution of the difficulty. Then she remembered the wise old woman, who
had made her neighbors’ children her own care—as she had no sons nor
daughters of her own—and who had been sister, mother and friend to
Hester Hodder, and guardian angel, teacher and kindly spirit over
herself. This made her calmer, for a time, and again courageous.
When once more the dread of the place and the ringing silence and the
doubts that seemed to lurk in the shadows, came stealing back, she
thought of Adam, rehearsing every incident in every time they had ever
met. And thus she lingered long over that walk from Plymouth to Boston.
In the midst of sweet reveries which really did much to dissipate her
qualms and chills, she heard someone walking heavily along in the
corridor above her. Swiftly calling to mind what the jailer had said
about the light, she blew it out and stood trembling with nervousness,
waiting for the door to open before her.
But the sounds of heavy boots on the upper floor presently halted. Then
they retreated. She breathed more freely. And then—she suddenly felt the
darkness all about her.
Fear that some one had been about to enter had, for the moment, made her
oblivious of the curtain of gloom which closed in so thickly when she
blew out the candle. Now, when she realized that she could not again
ignite that wick, a horror spread through her, till she closed her eyes
and sank on the floor in despair.
The time that passed was interminable. She had not thought of how
terrible the dungeon would be without the candle. She could almost have
screamed, thus to be so deprived of the kindly light which had made the
place comparatively cheerful. But she pulled up her resolution once
again, thinking how Goody and Adam had endured nothing but darkness, and
with no hope of succor such as she could see illuminating her hours of
dread.
Midnight came at last and found Garde unstrung. When the tramp of many
feet rang above her, at last, she welcomed the thought that some one was
near. She hoped it was morning and that Adam had returned. But then she
heard a jangle of keys, and footfalls on the steps leading down to where
she was, and her heart stood still.
In the natural consternation which the hour, the darkness and the
suspense had brought upon her, she hastily hid her head and face in
Goody’s shawl, and bending over, to represent the older woman, she
tremblingly saw the door swing open and heard the jailer command her to
come forth.
With her heart beating violently and her knees quaking beneath her,
Garde came out, relieved in some ways to flee from that awful hole of
darkness, but frightened, when she saw the array of stern-faced men, who
had come, as she instantly comprehended, to take her away to a trial.
There was not one among the five or six men that she knew. She
remembered the faces of Pinchbecker and Higgler, having seen them in the
morning, when Goody was taken, but the others were witnesses that
Randolph had sent from Salem, experts in swearing away the lives of
witches. They too had been present at the capture of Goody.
Undetected as she was, Garde was surrounded by this sinister group of
men, and was marched away, out of the jail, into the sweet summer’s
night air, and so down a deserted street, to a building she had never
entered before in her life.
Hardly had the prison been left behind when Adam Rust, swiftly
returning, after having readily provided for the safe escape of Goody
Dune, came galloping into Boston, his brain on fire with a scheme of
boldness.
He had made up his mind to ride straight to the prison, demand
admittance, compel the jailer to deliver Garde up at once, carry her
straight to a parson’s, marry his sweetheart forthwith, and then take
her off to New Amsterdam. Weaver could blame the rescue of the witch to
him and be welcome. He could even permit Adam to tie him and gag him, to
make the story more complete, but submit he should, or Rust would know
the reason. His wild ride had begotten the scheme in his
adventure-hungry mind.
He knew the residence of the parson who had married Henry Wainsworth and
Prudence Soam, the week before he and Phipps had returned to
Massachusetts, for Garde had told him all the particulars, time after
time—having marriage in her own sweet thought, as indeed she should. He
therefore went first to this parson’s, knocked hotly on the door, to get
him out of bed, and bade him be prepared to perform the ceremony within
the hour.
The parson had readily agreed, being a man amenable to sense and to the
luster of gold in the palm, wherefore Adam had gone swiftly off to work
the _tour de force_ on which all else depended. He arrived at the jail
when Garde had been gone for fifteen minutes. Here he learned with
amazement of the midnight trial to which she had been so summarily led.
Trembling like a leaf, Garde was conducted into a chamber adjoining the
room wherein the dread magistrates were sitting, with their minds
already convinced that this was a case so flagrant that to permit the
witch to live through the night would be to impair the heavenly heritage
of every soul in Boston.
Here the girl was left, in charge of Gallows and two other ruffianly
brutes, whose immunity from the evil powers of witches had been
thoroughly established in former cases. In the meantime her accusers had
gone before the magistrates, ahead of herself, to relate the unspeakable
things of which Goody Dune had been guilty.
Shaking, not daring to look up, nor to utter a sound, Garde had tried to
summon the courage to throw off the whole disguise, laugh at her captors
and declare who she was, but before she should arrive in the presence of
Grandther Donner, who would protect her and verify her story, at least
as to who she was, she could not possibly make the attempt.
Terribly wrought upon by the suspense of waiting to be summoned before
that stern tribunal of injustice, Garde began to think of the anger
which these unmirthful men might show, when she revealed the joke before
their astounded eyes. She swayed, weakly, almost ready to swoon, so
great became her alarm.
She could hear the high voices of Psalms Higgler and Isaiah Pinchbecker,
penetrating through the door. They were giving their testimony, in which
they had been so well coached by Edward Randolph, who was even now in
there among the witnesses, disguised, and keeping as much as possible in
the background.
The door presently opened and Garde was bidden to enter. Her heart
pounded with tumultuous strokes in her breast. She could barely put one
foot before the other. She caught at the door-frame to prop herself up
as she entered the dimly-lighted, shadow-haunted room.
Then her gaze leaped swiftly up where the magistrates were sitting. She
saw strangers only—men she knew in the town, but not David Donner. She
felt she should faint, when one of the men turned about, and she
recognized her grandfather, looking feverish, wild-eyed and hardly sane.
This was why she had not known him sooner.
“Oh, Grandther!” she suddenly cried. “It’s I! It’s Garde! Oh, save me!
Oh, take me home!”
She flung off Goody’s shawl, and darting forward ran to her
grandfather’s side and threw her arms like a child about his neck, where
she sobbed hysterically and laughed and begged him to take her away.
The court was smitten with astonishment from which no one could, for the
moment, recover.
Randolph had pressed quickly forward. But he now retired again into the
shadow.
“What’s this? What’s this?” demanded the chief of the magistrates,
sternly. “What business is this? What does this mean? Where is——”
“Witchcraft! A young witch! Cheated! We are cheated! The young witch has
cheated us of the old witch!” cried Pinchbecker, shrilly.
“My child! My child!” said David Donner. “This is no witch,
fellow-magistrates and friends.”
“She has cheated us of the old witch!” repeated Pinchbecker wildly. “She
has daily consorted with a notorious witch. She has aided a witch to
escape. She is a witch herself! We know them thus! She is a dangerous
witch! She is a terrible young witch!”
“How comes this?” said the chief again, excitedly. His associates also
demanded to know how this business came to be possible, and what was its
meaning. The room was filled with the shrill cries of the men denouncing
Garde more stridently than before, and with the exclamations of
astonishment and shouts to know what had become of the witch they had
come there to try.
During all this confusion, Garde was clinging to her grandfather and
begging him to take her home.
“Have the girl stand forth,” commanded the chief magistrate. “We must
know how this business has happened.”
Three of the men laid hold of Garde and took her from her wondering
grandfather’s side. She regained her composure by making a mighty
effort.
“Goody Dune was no witch!” she cried. “You all know what a good, kind
woman she has been among you for years—till this madness came upon us!
She is a good woman—and I love her, for all she has done. She is not a
witch—you know she is not a witch!”
The witnesses, who knew all the ways in which witches were to be
detected, raised their voices at once, in protest.
“Order in the Court!” commanded the magistrate. “Young woman, have you
connived to let this Goody Dune escape?”
“She was no witch!” repeated Garde, courageously now. “I knew you would
try to send her to the gallows. I knew she was fore-condemned! I could
do no less—and you men could have done no less, had you been less mad!”
“Blasphemy!” cried Higgler. “She is convicted out of her own mouth!”
“When a witch is young,” cried Pinchbecker, “she can work ten times more
awful evils and arts!”
One of the magistrates spoke: “No woman ever yet was beautiful and
clever both at one time. If she be the one, she cannot be the other.
This young woman, being both, is clearly a witch!”
“She’s a witch—worse than the other!” screamed another of the witnesses.
“Condemn her! Condemn her!”
“Oh, Grandther,” cried Garde, “take me away from these terrible men!”
Randolph now came sneaking forth, out of the shadow.
“This is that same young woman,” he cried, “who lost the colony its
charter!”
“The charter!” screamed David Donner, instantly a maniac. “The charter!
She lost us the charter! Witch! The charter! Condemn her! Kill her! The
charter! She! She! She! Kill her!—Where is she? The charter! The
charter! The charter!”
With his two bony, palsied hands raised high above his head, like
fearful talons, with his white hair awry over his brow, with his eyes
blazing with maniacal fire, the old man had suddenly stood up and now he
came staggering forward, screaming in a blood-chilling voice and making
such an apparition of horror that the men fell backward from his path.
“Oh Grandther! Grandther!” cried Garde, holding forth her arms and going
toward him, to catch him as she saw him come stumbling toward her.
“Witch!” screamed the old man shrilly. “Kill her! Kill her! I never
coerced her! The charter! Witch! Witch! The charter!”
He suddenly choked. He clutched at his heart in a wild, spasmodic
manner, and with froth bursting from his lips, he fell headlong to the
floor and was dead.
“She has killed him!” cried Higgler. “She has killed him with her
hellish power!”
“Witch! A murderous young witch!”
“Condemn her! Condemn her!” came in a terrible chorus.
“To the gallows! Hale her to the gallows!” Randolph added from the rear.
The man called Gallows thought this referred to him. He grinned. He and
the two brutes who had handled many defenseless witches before, came
toward the girl, who stood as if petrified, her hand pressed against her
heart in dumb anguish.
Suddenly the door was thrown open and in there came Governor Phipps,
cane in hand, periwig adjusted, cloak of office on his shoulders. He was
blowing his nose as he entered, so that no one saw his face plainly, yet
all knew the tall, commanding figure and the dress.
“What, a trial, at night, and without me?” he roared, in a towering
rage, which many present had already learned to fear. “Is this your
province, you magistrates, assembled to deal out justice? Do you heckle
a defenseless woman like this? Disperse!—the whole of you, instantly. I
command it! If you have condemned, I pardon. The prisoner will leave the
court with me!”
The men, craven that they were, he could deceive, but Garde knew the
voice, the gait, the bearing of her lover. She sprang to his side with a
little cry of gladness and clung to him wildly, as his strong arm swung
boldly about her waist. She could hardly more than stand, so tremendous
had been the stress of her fearful emotions.
Scorning to expend further scolding or shaming upon them, and
comprehending that delay had no part in his game, Adam turned his back
on the slinking company and strode away, half supporting Garde, who hung
so limply in his hold.
Randolph, baffled, afraid to reveal himself by denouncing the imposture
which he had been only a second behind Garde in detecting, stole close
to his henchmen and whispered the truth in their ears.
Higgler and Pinchbecker, conscious of the blood of Adam on their hands,
felt their knees knock suddenly together. The man must be the very devil
himself.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XVI.
THE GAUNTLET RUN.
WITH his bride up behind him on his horse, the rover spurred swiftly
away from the parson’s, still within the hour, in which he had promised
to return to his wedding. Unafraid of whatsoever the world, before or
behind, might contain, while her lover-husband lived at her side, Garde
felt a sense of exhilaration, at leaving Boston, such as she had never
known in all her life.
With her grandfather dead and Goody no longer at the little cottage on
the skirts of town, she had no ties remaining, save those at the houses
of Soam and Phipps. And what were these, when weighed in the balance
against Adam Rust—her Adam,—her mighty lord?
Trembling and clinging as she was, he had carried her off. Gladly she
had gone to the parson’s. Her heart now rejoiced, as he told her that
Massachusetts was behind them forever. For its people, with their harsh,
mirthless lives of austerity and fanaticism, she had only love enough to
give them her pity. But her life was life indeed, when, ever and anon,
Adam halted the horse, lest she fear a fall, and twisted about to give
her a kiss and a chuckle of love and to tell of the way he had cheated
the mob and the court of their witches.
“Make no doubt of it, you are a witch—one of the sweetest, cleverest,
bravest, most adorable little witches that ever lived,” he said, “and I
love you and love you for it, my darling wife!”
They had left the town early in the morning. By break of day they were
not so far from Boston as Adam could have wished. The horse had been
wearied by carrying double, when he conveyed Goody Dune to a place of
safety,—so that the old woman could subsequently join himself and Garde
in New Amsterdam,—and therefore he had halted the animal humanely, from
time to time, as the load under which the good beast was now working was
not a trifle.
Having avoided the main road, for the greater part of the remaining
hours of darkness, Adam deemed it safe at last to return to the highway,
as he thought it unlikely they had been pursued under any circumstances.
Thus the sun came up as they were quietly jogging along toward a copse
of trees through which the road went winding with many an invitation of
beauty to beckon them on.
Crossing a noisy little brook, the rover permitted the horse to stop for
a drink. Not to be wasting the precious time, Adam turned himself half
way around in the saddle, as he had done so frequently before, and gave
his bride a fair morning salute.
He had then barely ridden the horse a rod from the stream, when, without
the slightest warning, the figure of Gallows, mounted on a great black
steed, suddenly broke from cover among the trees and bore down upon
them.
The great hulk, sword in hand, made a quick dash toward the defenceless
two, and slashed at Garde with all his fearful might.
Jerking his horse nearly out of the road, Adam swung from the line of
the brute’s cowardly stroke, yet before he could do aught to prevent it,
Gallows righted, flung out his leaden fist and dragged the girl fairly
off from her seat, till she struck on the back of her head, among the
rocks of the road, and lay there unconscious, and almost beneath the
tread of the horse’s prancing feet.
Then the monster spurred at his horse and turning him back, rode to
drive him madly over the prostrate form in the dust.
Making a short, sharp cry of anger, Adam whipped out his sword and
dashed upon the murderous butcher before he could get within fifteen
feet of Garde, where she lay in the sunlight.
Gallows had plenty of time to see him coming. The two met in a
tremendous collision of steel on steel that sounded a clangor through
the woods and sent the two swords flying from their owners’ grips.
Disarmed, the pair thudded together in a swift and hot embrace, sawing
their horses close in, the more firmly and straight erect to hold their
seats.
“You be a fool and I be the fool-killer!” roared Gallows, hoarsely. He
tugged with his giant strength, to drag Adam fairly across to his own
big saddle, where he could either break his back or beat him to death
with the butt of a pistol, which he was trying to draw with the hand
that held the reins.
Slipping his wrist under the chin and his hand around to the fellow’s
massive shoulder, Adam tilted back the heavy head with a force so great
that Gallows was glad to release his hold, else he would surely have
toppled from his perch.
The horses leaped a little apart. Back their riders jerked them. Again
the two big human forms shot together, and clung in a fierce embrace,
like two massive chunks of iron, welded together by their impact. Once
more Gallows used his great brute strength, while Rust employed his wit
and got his same terrible leverage on the monster’s neck.
For a moment Gallows fought to try to break the hold, and to drag his
opponent headlong from his horse, by kicking Adam’s animal stoutly in
the flank. But Adam was inflicting such an agony upon him as he could
not endure. They broke away, only to rush for the third time, back to
this giant wrestling.
“The fool will never learn. I shall kill him yet!” cried Rust to
himself, for he went for Gallows’s neck as before and got it again in
his hold.
He threw a tremendous strength into the struggle. Gallows let out a
bellow. Releasing the reins, he threw both his arms about his foe and
deliberately fell from his seat, with the intention of crushing Rust
beneath his weight, on the ground.
Adam’s turn in the air was the work of the expert wrestler. The horses
shied nervously away.
The two were up on their feet and telescoped abruptly in one compact,
struggling mass, as if two malleable statues of heroic size had suddenly
been bent and intertwisted together.
With his ox-like force Gallows began to force Adam backward. Adam let
him expend himself in this manner for a moment. He then discovered the
great hulk’s design. He meant to force the rover to where Garde was
still lying, and so to trample upon her till the life should be stamped
and ground from her helpless form.
Randolph had sent him to commit this final infamy.
The rage that leaped up in Adam’s breast was a terrible thing. He
feinted to drop as if in exhaustion. Gallows loosened his hold to snatch
a better one, at once. In that second Adam dealt him a blow in the
stomach that all but felled him where he stood.
Before he could straighten to recover, Rust was upon him like a tiger.
Getting around the great brute’s side, he threw both hands around the
short, thick neck and twisted himself into position so that he and
Gallows were placed nearly back to back. Then with one movement he
lifted at the man’s whole weight, with the monster’s head as a lever,
hauled fiercely backward. Into the action he threw such a mighty rush of
strength that Gallows was hoisted bodily off the ground, for a second,
and then his neck gave forth a tremendous snap and was broken so
fearfully that one of the jagged ends of a vertebra stabbed outward
through the flesh, and dripped with red.
The whole dead weight of the fellow’s carcass rested for a second on
Rust’s back and shoulder, and then Adam let him fall to the ground,
where, like a slain hog, he rolled heavily over and moved no more.
Panting, fierce-eyed, ready to slay him again, Adam stood above the body
for a moment, his jaws set, his fists clenched hard in the rage still
upon him.
Then he heard a little moan, and turning about saw Garde, attempting to
raise herself upward, in the road. He ran to her instantly and propped
her up on his knee.
“Dearest, dearest,” he said, “are you badly hurt? Garde, let me help
you. Don’t look—don’t look there. It’s all right. Here, let me get you
back to the shade.”
He took her up tenderly in his arms and carried her out of the road to a
near-by bank of moss. Here he sat her down, with her back to a tree, and
ran to fill his hat with water from the stream.
The two horses, having stopped to take a supplementary drink, and a
nibble at the grass, were easily caught. The rover secured them both and
tied them quickly to a bush, with the dragging reins. Then back to Garde
he ran with the water.
“Oh, thank you, dear,” she said, “I don’t think I am hurt. But with the
fright, and the fall, I think I must have fainted.”
“Thank God!” said Adam, as she drank from his hat and smiled in his
face, a little faintly, but with an infinite love in her two brown eyes.
“Thank God, for this delivery. There will be no more trouble. I feel it!
I know it. At last we have run the gauntlet.”
* * * * *
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XVII.
BEWITCHED.
IN his tidy little house in New Amsterdam, Adam sat reading a letter
from Governor William Phipps, written at Boston.
“I forgyve you y^r merrie empersonashun and all ye other things
alsoe, save y^e going away without goode-bye,” he read, “but let
it pass. I w^d write to say God Blesse you bothe. And as I have
never known such a goode blade as y^{rs} in fight, I w^d offer
you to make you my commander of ye forces to goe in war against
ye French, where they do threat to harasse our peeple as of
yore——”
Adam halted here and looked up at the battered old sword on the wall.
His thought went truant, to his helpmate, away for a few minutes’ walk
to Goody Dune’s. He shook his head at the Governor’s generous offer.
“Well, well, William,” he said aloud, “I don’t know. I don’t know what
may be the matter, but—no more fighting for me, old comrade. I think it
must be that I—am bewitched.”
THE END.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that:
was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
○ The use of a caret (^) before a letter, or letters, shows that the
following letter or letters was intended to be a superscript, as
in S^t Bartholomew or 10^{th} Century.