of the street a bright light attracted him. He ran on, bravely following
it. Of all the windows in the whole village this was the only one that
was unbarred, and where the curtains were parted. As he came nearer the
light, Fleet-as-an-Arrow’s heart almost stopped beating for admiration
and wonder. Never in all his twelve years had the little Indian boy seen
a sight like this. It was an evergreen tree such as he knew and loved in
his own home forest, but it was covered with glimmering, sparkling,
starry lights. There it stood, Hannah’s Christmas tree, the little
tallow candles drawing Fleet-as-an-Arrow with Nathaniel’s message like a
magnet.
[Illustration: “HE BEAT THE HEAVY OAK PANELS WITH HIS HALF-FROZEN, BROWN
LITTLE HANDS”]
He stopped at the door and beat the heavy oak panels with his
half-frozen, brown little hands. When Mistress Wadsworth, followed
closely by Hannah, opened it, frightened and dazed at the strange visit
in the night, Fleet-as-an-Arrow looked at them a minute on the
threshold. In the light of the little Christmas tree he could see
Hannah’s pink cheeks and wide-open, blue eyes and the pale gold braids
of her hair. Why, she looked like the boy that he had left in the
Indian’s camp, Fleet-as-an-Arrow saw. He knew now that he had found the
right place. He went inside and pulled the message, written with a bit
of charcoal in scrawling letters on the square of birch bark, from
beneath his blanket. Then he thrust it into Mistress Wadsworth’s hands.
She read it in the glow of the fire.
“We are safe, but the Indians will not let us go without gifts of
beads and corn. Send some men to fetch us.
Your son,
Nathaniel.”
With a glad cry, Mistress Wadsworth put her arms about the little Indian
boy. Then, while she put on her bonnet and cloak and lighted the big,
brass lantern, Hannah drew Fleet-as-an-Arrow up to the fire and brought
him food. Running with her lantern from one sleeping house to another,
Mistress Wadsworth soon roused the men of the village who organized
themselves into a rescuing party.
When the first pale pink of the morning sun tinged the sky, the party,
with the gifts which the Indians demanded as a ransom for their
captives, was on its way. They carried Little Fleet-as-an-Arrow in front
as their guide.
Such a Christmas Eve as it was. Father and Nathaniel, ragged and hungry,
but safe, were home in time! Two of the large tallow candles in the
polished brass candlesticks shone on the mantelpiece over the fireplace,
and Hannah lighted the little Christmas tree again. She and brother
Nathaniel, hands clasped happily together, sat in its light, so glad to
be together again that they needed neither gifts nor sweets to make
their Christmas joy.
THE JACK-O’-LANTERN WITCH
The grim iron doors of the prison clanged shut and the turnkey fastened
them. Hearing the sound, Desire touched the homespun sleeve of the
little boy with whom she was walking home from market down the narrow
street of the musty old town of Salem.
“Did you hear that sound of the locking of the doors, Jonathan? It means
that they’ve caught and imprisoned another witch.”
The boy, a quaint little figure in his long trousers, short jacket, and
ruffled shirt looked, wide-eyed, at the little girl. Quite as strangely
dressed a child as Jonathan was small Desire, the only daughter of Elder
Baxter who was high in authority in old Salem in those far-away days.
Although not quite twelve summers and winters of the New England of a
stern long-ago had painted Desire’s plump cheeks the pink of a rose and
burned the shining gold of her hair, her gray frock with its short waist
and long skirt nearly trailed the gray cobble stones of the street. Her
soft brown hair was braided close to her head and pulled back tightly in
front from her white brow and tucked out of sight beneath her stiff cap.
A white kerchief was folded closely about her primly held shoulders and
over her frock she wore a long, dark cape for the fall day was chill.
[Illustration: “‘DO YOU KNOW WHO THE WITCH IS, DESIRE?’ HE ASKED”]
Jonathan set down the rush basket of food supplies that he was carrying
for Desire, and he touched the iron paling that shut in the prison.
“Do you know who the witch is, Desire?” he asked, his voice low with
awe.
“Not I,” the little maid answered, “but they do say that she has been
brewing her spells for six months’ time before the elders caught her. I
heard my father and mother talking about it only this morning. They said
that before the day was over the witch that was the cause of all our
recent troubles in Salem would be caught and safely imprisoned.”
“What troubles?” Jonathan asked.
“Have you not heard, Jonathan?” Desire lowered her voice and looked up
and down the street to see that no one was listening to her.
“Abigail Williams was ill of the whooping cough and she had three fits
which, as every one knows, is a sign that a witch had cast a spell over
her. And Mercy Talcott’s teakettle boiled over and nearly scalded
Mercy’s mother. On the way for some ointment at the doctor’s to put on
her mother’s hand, Mercy saw the witch herself flying over the tops of
the trees on Gallows Hill and,” Desire’s voice was a whisper now, “she
was riding on a broomstick.”
“How did Mercy know that it was a witch, and how could she be riding on
a broomstick?” asked the practical Jonathan.
Desire tossed her head. “I can’t explain that to you, Jonathan. It was
toward evening and Mercy says that she saw a long, dark form in the
trees and she heard the dry leaves rustle.”
“Crows!” said Jonathan.
“For shame, Jonathan,” said Desire. “Do you not know that the eyes of
Mercy Talcott are keen for seeing witches. She is to be at the trial
to-morrow, and identify the evil creature.” Desire repeated the words of
her elders in those far-away Colonial days of ignorance and
superstition. “When shall we rid ourselves of this pest of witchcraft in
Salem?” she said.
“Well,” Jonathan said, swinging the basket upon his shoulder and leading
the way along the street again, “There’ll probably be one less witch
to-morrow for she won’t have a chance to escape if that tale-bearing
Mercy Talcott is at the trial. Let us go on by the side street and see
if Jack is safe at Granny Hewitt’s, Desire.”
The two children hastened their steps and passed the scattering little
brown houses of old Salem. Their quaintly gabled roofs made them look
like dolls’ cottages. The windows with their tiny diamond-shaped panes
were neatly curtained with white. At one house, a little larger than the
others and having no garden, they drew their breath.
“The Witches’ House,” said Desire.
It was here that so many of these unfortunate creatures of the dark days
of Salem had been kept in confinement before they met their punishment
in prison, on the ducking stool, or on Gallows Hill. A little farther
along they passed a great white meetinghouse where a gilded weathercock
pointed bravely to the sky and high, white pillars stood at either side
of the doorway.
“The witch will be tried here in the morning,” Jonathan said, and the
two children walked a little faster toward a pleasanter stopping place,
Governor Endicott’s big white house, set in the midst of his fair
English garden.
Even now, when the wind blew cold from the water front and rustled the
cornstalks and rattled the red pods of the rose hips, the Governor’s
garden was a pleasant place for a child to see. Bright little marigolds,
defying the frost, lifted their orange blossoms along the path. Great
beds of scarlet dahlias and purple asters made a mass of color. The late
sun marked for itself a long, golden shaft across the sundial, and at
the back of the house could be seen a patch of winter squashes and
pumpkins mellowing in a sunny spot.
“Was not the Governor kind to give us the pumpkin?” said Jonathan.
“And wasn’t Granny kind to show us how to make it into so strange a
hobgoblin of a creature as is our Jack?” added Desire. “She said that
almost no other granny in old Salem was old enough to remember about
carving a pumpkin into a face as they did long ago in England. She told
me that we must keep it a secret until All Hallow E’en, and then take
the pumpkin with a tallow drip shining inside him, lighting his funny
face, down through the street to show the other children.”
“I lighted it last night,” Jonathan confessed. “I went to Granny’s house
with a cheese ball that was a gift from my mother to Granny.”
“How did the pumpkin look?” asked Desire eagerly.
“Fearsome!” said Jonathan. “We put it in the window and I went outside
in the dark to look at it. It had the appearance of a grinning monster,”
the boy laughed at his memory of the Jack-o’-Lantern.
“Here we are at Granny’s. Let us go in a moment,” Desire said as the two
stopped before a tumble-down cottage at the end of a tiny lane. Granny
Hewitt lived alone there, a little wrinkled crone with a face like a
brown walnut and eyes that shone like two stars. But her mouth, oh, that
was the best part of Granny; all the children said that it made them
think of their own dear mother’s when she smiled. How could a smile be
lovelier than that?
Having no kin of her own, Granny Hewitt loved the boys and girls who
passed her cottage every day on their way to and from school. She made
molasses cookies and vinegar taffy for them. She put balm on their
scratches, and covered their primers and spellers with pieces of bright
calico. No wonder Desire and Jonathan wanted to stop a moment at Granny
Hewitt’s house. They went up the white gravel path with its neat border
of clam shells. Desire lifted the big brass knocker on the door, letting
it drop with a clang.
[Illustration: “GRANNY HEWITT LOVED THE BOYS AND GIRLS”]
There was no sound inside.
“She has gone to market,” Jonathan said.
“Well, good-bye, Jonathan,” Desire said, taking her basket from the
boy’s hands. “I probably shall not see you to-morrow. It may be that my
father will let me sit in our pew in the meeting-house during the
witch’s trial.”
Jonathan’s eyes almost popped out of his head in surprise. “Could I go,
too?” he asked.
“I’ll see if I can get you in,” Desire promised as the two friends
parted.
The morning of the witch’s trial was as bright and peaceful as the fall
sun lighting field and dingy streets and roofs could make it. By
half-after seven, although the trial was not to begin until ten, the
green common that surrounded the Second Meeting-house was a moving black
and gray mass of stern men in their dark capes, buckled shoes, and tall
hats, and gray-gowned women.
Inside the meeting-house every pew was filled. The platform was lined
with the black-gowned elders, and the Governor himself, a dignified
figure in his flowing cloak and powdered wig, occupied the pulpit.
Desire sat, prim and quiet beside her mother, her little round head not
much above the high back of the pew. On the other side sat Jonathan
whose urgent request to come had been granted.
It was rumored that the witch who was about to be tried was of some
repute in the practice of magic, and that she was to be made an example
for any followers whom she might have.
Jonathan nudged Desire’s elbow. “Where is she?” he asked.
“_Ssh_,” the little girl put a warning finger to her lips. “They’ll
bring her out in a minute.” As she finished her whispered warning, her
father, Elder Baxter, rose and began to speak.
“We are met together to pass judgment upon a woman of Salem town who has
wrought her magic arts to the undoing of its citizens. She has cast her
spell over a child and thrown it into dire sickness. She has bewitched
the kitchen of our neighbor, Elder Talcott. A child of twelve years and
well versed in the art of discovering witchcraft saw this same witch
after she had practised her arts. Mercy Talcott will please come to the
platform. Bring in the witch.”
Desire and Jonathan craned their necks to see better as the black row of
the elders parted to let in a bent, trembling little old lady. Two
jailers guarded her, one on each side. She still wore her tidy white
apron with its knitting pocket, and her white cap was tied neatly under
her chin. She was shaking from head to foot with her fright. Her head
was bent low so that no one could see her face. She held her Bible
clasped closely to her heart.
At the same time Mercy Talcott, a little girl dressed like Desire but
with a less winning face, stepped up, also, to the platform. It was the
custom of those strange days to believe that certain children could
identify witches, and Mercy was one of these children.
The elder spoke again, “I have not made one most important charge of all
as I wish to make it in the presence of the prisoner, herself. She has a
creature of some other kind than human with whom she consults on matters
of witchery. It has been seen at night looking out of her window with
glaring eyes and wide-open mouth set in its huge head.
“Look up, witch. Mercy Talcott, is this the witch that you saw leaving
your house the day that your mother was burned?”
Slowly, and in terror the little old lady lifted her head. At the same
time and in the same sobbing breaths Jonathan and Desire said, “It is
Granny Hewitt!”
Mercy saw, too, who it was. She remembered the little rag doll that
Granny had made her when she was a very little girl. It wore a gay pink
calico dress, and its cheeks were stained red with pokeberry juice.
Mercy caught her breath and hesitated. She knew that it was only in
fancy that she had seen the broomstick and its wild rider. As she
waited, Desire pulled Jonathan from his seat. Before her mother could
question or stop them, the two children were at the front of the pulpit,
facing the Governor.
Desire clasped her hands and raised them in pleading toward the great
man who bent down toward her in surprise. The whole meeting-house was
still as Desire spoke in her sweet, high voice.
“Your Excellency, I beg your mercy for our dear Granny. She is not a
witch but a kind friend to all the children of Salem. It is I who should
be punished in her place. If your Excellency will but think back to the
last tithing day, you will remember that you gave two children, Jonathan
and me, a pumpkin for our play. We took it to Granny Hewitt’s house and
she helped us to make it into a Jack whose tallow drip, lighted, in
Granny’s window some one saw and spoke of to you. My father did not know
that it was my fault, else he would not have accused Granny. Oh, speak,
Jonathan, and attest to the truth of what I am saying!”
She turned to the little boy but Jonathan, made courageous by Desire’s
bravery, had gone to Mercy’s side.
“It was crows you saw on Gallows Hill,” he said in her ear. “You never,
never saw Granny Hewitt riding on a broomstick. Say so.”
Mercy looked into Granny’s tear-stained face. Then, with a rush of love
she threw herself into her arms. “I never saw Granny riding on a
broomstick. She isn’t a witch,” Mercy declared.
The white doors of the meeting-house opened wide and the people waited
with heads bowed, half in shame and half in joy, as Granny, surrounded
by the children, passed into the sunshine and the freedom outside. Then
they followed, making a kind of triumphal procession to the cottage at
the end of the street. Kind hands led Granny all the way and kind hearts
made her forget all about her experiences. In her window there still
stood the grinning Jack-o’-lantern, and at sight of it bursts of
laughter took away all thought of tears. One of the elders set it upon
one of Granny’s fence posts and then held Desire up beside it.
“Hurrah for the Jack-o’-lantern witch,” some one said, and the crowd
shouted their happiness and relief.
[Illustration: “THE JACK-O’-LANTERN WITCH”]
THE IRON STOVE
“Did you see him to-day?” asked a little girl in gray, all excitement,
as she opened the door to admit her brother.
The boy, shaking with the cold—for it was winter and his jacket was none
too thick—set down his basket on the rough deal table, and leaned over
the tiny fire that burned on the hearth. His eyes shone, though, as he
turned to answer his sister.
“Yes, Beth, I saw him down at the wharf and he gave me this.” As he
spoke, William drew from underneath his coat, where he had tucked it to
surprise Beth, a crude little brush made of rushes bound together with
narrow strips of willow.
“What is it?” Beth took the brush in her hands and held it up to the
light, looking at it curiously. She made a quaint picture in the
shifting light of the fire, a little Quaker girl of old Philadelphia,
her yellow curls tucked inside a close-fitting gray cap, and her
straight gray frock reaching almost to the heels of her heavy shoes.
“It is something new for cleaning,” William explained. He took the brush
and began sweeping up the ashes on the hearth, as Beth watched him
curiously. “Mr. Franklin brought a whole bunch of them down to the wharf
to show to people, and he gave me one.”
“How did he make it?” Beth asked curiously.
“It took him a whole year, for it had to grow first,” William explained.
“He saw some brush baskets last year that the sea captains had brought
fruit in, lying in the wet on the wharf. They had sprouted and sent out
shoots, so what did Mr. Franklin do but plant the shoots in his garden.
They grew and this year he had a fine crop of broom corn, as he called
it. He dried it, and bound it into these brushes. He has some with long
handles, and he calls them brooms.”
The children’s mother had come in now from the next room and she grasped
the hearth brush with eagerness.
“It is just what Philadelphia, the city of cleanliness, needs,” she
said, as she went to work brushing the corners of the window sills and
the mantle piece. “If we were to take more thought of our houses and
less of these street brawls as to who is for, and who is against the
king, it would be better.”
“That is what Mr. Franklin does,” William said. “Do you remember how the
streets were full of quarreling folk last summer, and a hard thunder
storm came up that every one thought was sent directly from the skies as
a punishment for our wickedness? The women and children were crying, and
the men praying when Mr. Franklin came in their midst. I can see him
now, looking like a prophet with his long hair flowing over his
shoulders and his long cloak streaming out behind him. As the skies
flashed with lightning and the thunder crashed he told them not to be
afraid. He said that he would give them lightning rods to put on their
houses that would keep them from burning down.”
“Yes,” their mother said. “He helps us all very much. Mr. Franklin is
truly our good neighbor in Philadelphia.”
As her mother finished speaking, Beth emptied the basket that William
had brought in. There was not a great deal in it—a little flour, some
tea, a very tiny package of sugar, and some potatoes. She arranged them
on the shelves in the kitchen, shivering a little as she moved about the
cold room.
Chill comfort it would seem to a child to-day. Philadelphia was a new
city, and these settlers from across the sea had brought little with
them to make their lives cheerful. Outside, huge piles of snow drifted
the narrow streets and were banked on the low stone doorsteps of the
small red brick houses. A chill wind blew up from the wharves and such
of the Friends as were out hurried along with bent heads, against which
the cold beat, and they wrapped their long cloaks closely around them.
It was almost as cold in the Arnold’s house as it was outside. The
children’s father had not been able to stand the hardships of the new
country, and there were only Beth, and William, and their mother left to
face this winter. Mrs. Arnold did fine sewing, and William ran errands
for the sailors and merchantmen down at the wharves, having his basket
filled with provisions in return for his work. It was a hard winter for
them, though; no one could deny that.
Mrs. Arnold drew her chair up to the fireplace now and opened her bag of
sewing. Beth leaned over her shoulder as she watched the thin, white
fingers trying to fly in and out of white cloth.
“Your fingers are stiff with the cold,” Beth exclaimed as she blew the
coals with the bellows and then rubbed her mother’s hands.
“Not very,” she tried to smile.
“Yes, very,” William said as he swung his arms and blew on his finger
tips. “We’re all of us cold. It would be easier to work if we could only
keep warm.”
Just then they heard a rap at the brass knocker of their door. Beth ran
to open it, and both children shouted with delight as a strange,
slightly stooping figure entered. His long white hair made him look like
some old patriarch. His forehead was high, and his eyes deep set in his
long, thin face. His long cloak folded him like a mantle. He reached out
two toil-hardened hands to greet the family.
“Mr. Franklin!” their mother exclaimed. “We are most glad to see you.
You are our very welcome guest always, but it is poor hospitality we are
able to offer you. Our fire is very small and the house cold.”
“A small fire is better than none,” their guest said, “and the welcome
in Friend Arnold’s house is always so warm that it makes a fire
unnecessary. Still,” he looked at the children’s blue lips and pinched
cheeks, “I wish that your hearth were wider.”
He crossed to the fireplace, feeling of the bricks and measuring with
his eye the breadth and depth of the opening in the chimney. He seemed
lost in thought for a moment, and then his face suddenly shone with a
smile like the one it had worn when he had seen the first green shoots
of the broom corn pushing their way up through the ground of his garden.
“What is it, Mr. Franklin?” Beth asked. “What do you see up in our
chimney?”
“A surprise,” the good neighbor of Philadelphia replied. “If I make no
mistake in my plans, you will see that surprise before long. In the
meantime, be of good cheer.”
He was gone as quickly as he had come, but he had left a glow of cheer
and neighborliness behind him. All Philadelphia was warmed in this way
by Benjamin Franklin. Whenever he crossed a threshold, he brought the
spirit of comfort and helpfulness to the house.
“What do you suppose he meant?” Beth asked as the door closed behind the
quaint figure of the man.
“I wonder,” William said. Then he took out his speller and copy book and
the words of their visitor were soon forgotten.
But all Philadelphia began to wonder soon at the doings at the big white
house where Benjamin Franklin lived. The neighbors were used to hearing
busy sounds of hammering and tinkering coming from the back where Mr.
Franklin had built himself a workshop. Now, however, he sent away for a
small forge and its flying sparks could be seen and the sound of its
bellows heard in the stillness of the long, cold winter nights. Great
slabs of iron were unloaded for him at the wharf, and for days no one
saw him. He was shut up in his workshop and from morning until night
passers-by heard ringing blows on iron coming from it as if it were the
shop of some country blacksmith.
“Benjamin Franklin wastes his time,” said some of the Philadelphians.
“He should be in the town hall, helping us to settle some of our land
disputes.”
But others spoke more kindly of the man of helpful hands.
“Mr. Franklin is making Philadelphia truly a City of Friends by being
the best Friend of us all,” they said.
None could explain Benjamin Franklin’s present occupation, though.
In the middle of the winter Beth and William and their mother went to a
friend’s house to stay for a week. Mrs. Arnold was not well, and the
house was very cold. The week for which they were invited lengthened
into two, then three.
“We must go home,” Mrs. Arnold said at last. “Mr. Franklin said that he
would stop this afternoon and help William carry the carpet bag. It is
time that we began our work again.”
[Illustration: “THEY TOOK THEIR HOMEWARD WAY THROUGH THE SNOW”]
As they took their homeward way through the snow, they noticed, again,
the happy smile on Mr. Franklin’s kind face. He held the handle of the
bag with one hand and Beth’s chilly little fingers with the other. He
was the spryest of them all as they hurried on. They understood why, as
they opened the door of their home.
They started, at first, wondering if, by any chance they had come to the
wrong house. No, there were the familiar things just as they had left
them; the row of shining copper pans on the wall, the polished
candlesticks on the mantel piece, the warming pan in the corner and the
braided rag rugs on the floor. But the house was as warm as summer. They
had never felt such comforting heat in the winter time before. The
fireplace, that had been all too tiny, was gone. In its place, against
the chimney, was a crude iron stove, partly like a fireplace in shape,
but with a top and sides that held and spread the heat of the glowing
fire inside until the whole room glowed with it.
[Illustration: THE FIRST STOVE]