SILENCE

At dusk Silence went down the Deerfield street to Ensign John Sheldon’s

house. She wore her red blanket over her head, pinned closely under her

chin, and her white profile showed whiter between the scarlet folds.

She had been spinning all day, and shreds of wool still clung to her

indigo petticoat; now and then one floated off on the north wind. It

was bitter cold, and the snow was four feet deep. Silence’s breath went

before her in a cloud; the snow creaked under her feet. All over the

village the crust was so firm that men could walk upon it. The houses

were half sunken in sharp, rigid drifts of snow; their roofs were laden

with it; icicles hung from the eaves. All the elms were white with snow

frozen to them so strongly that it was not shaken off when they were

lashed by the fierce wind.

There was an odor of boiling meal in the air; the housewives were

preparing supper. Silence had eaten hers; she and her aunt, Widow

Eunice Bishop, supped early. She had not far to go to Ensign

Sheldon’s. She was nearly there when she heard quick footsteps on the

creaking snow behind her. Her heart beat quickly, but she did not look

around. “Silence,” said a voice. Then she paused, and waited, with her

eyes cast down and her mouth grave, until David Walcott reached her.

“What do you out this cold night, sweetheart?” he said.

“I am going down to Goodwife Sheldon’s,” replied Silence. Then suddenly

she cried out, wildly: “Oh, David, what is that on your cloak? What is

it?”

David looked curiously at his cloak. “I see naught on my cloak save old

weather stains,” said he. “What mean you, Silence?”

Silence quieted down suddenly. “It is gone now,” said she, in a subdued

voice.

“What did you see, Silence?”

Silence turned towards him; her face quivered convulsively. “I saw a

blotch of blood,” she cried. “I have been seeing them everywhere all

day. I have seen them on the snow as I came along.”

David Walcott looked down at her in a bewildered way. He carried

his musket over his shoulder, and was shrugged up in his cloak; his

heavy, flaxen mustache was stiff and white with frost. He had just

been relieved from his post as sentry, and it was no child’s play to

patrol Deerfield village on a day like that, nor had it been for many

previous days. The weather had been so severe that even the French and

Indians, lurking like hungry wolves in the neighborhood, had hesitated

to descend upon the town, and had stayed in camp.

“What mean you, Silence?” he said.

“What I say,” returned Silence, in a strained voice. “I have seen

blotches of blood everywhere all day. The enemy will be upon us.”

David laughed loudly, and Silence caught his arm. “Don’t laugh

so loud,” she whispered. Then David laughed again. “You be all

overwrought, sweetheart,” said he. “I have kept guard all the afternoon

by the northern palisades, and I have seen not so much as a red fox

on the meadow. I tell thee the French and Indians have gone back to

Canada. There is no more need of fear.”

“I have started all day and all last night at the sound of warwhoops,”

said Silence.

“Thy head is nigh turned with these troublous times, poor lass. We must

cross the road now to Ensign Sheldon’s house. Come quickly, or you will

perish in this cold.”

“Nay, my head is not turned,” said Silence, as they hurried on over the

crust; “the enemy be hiding in the forests beyond the meadows. David,

they be not gone.”

“And I tell thee they be gone, sweetheart. Think you not we should

have seen their camp smoke had they been there? And we have had trusty

scouts out. Come in, and my aunt, Hannah Sheldon, shall talk thee out

of this folly.”

The front windows of John Sheldon’s house were all flickering red from

the hearth fire. David flung open the door, and they entered. There was

such a goodly blaze from the great logs in the wide fireplace that even

the shadows in the remote corners of the large keeping-room were dusky

red, and the faces of all the people in the room had a clear red glow

upon them.

Goodwife Hannah Sheldon stood before the fire, stirring some porridge

in a great pot that hung on the crane; some fair-haired children sat

around a basket shelling corn, a slight young girl in a snuff-yellow

gown was spinning, and an old woman in a quilted hood crouched in a

corner of the fireplace, holding out her lean hands to the heat.

Goodwife Sheldon turned around when the door opened. “Good-day,

Mistress Silence Hoit,” she called out, and her voice was sweet, but

deep like a man’s. “Draw near to the fire, for in truth you must be

near perishing with the cold.”

“There’ll be fire enough ere morning, I trow, to warm the whole

township,” said the old woman in the corner. Her small black eyes

gleamed sharply out of the gloom of her great hood; her yellow face

was all drawn and puckered towards the centre of her shrewdly leering

mouth.

“Now you hush your croaking, Goody Crane,” cried Hannah Sheldon. “Draw

the stool near to the fire for Silence, David. I cannot stop stirring,

or the porridge will burn. How fares your aunt this cold weather,

Silence?”

“Well, except for her rheumatism,” replied Silence. She sat down on the

stool that David placed for her, and slipped her blanket back from her

head. Her beautiful face, full of a grave and delicate stateliness,

drooped towards the fire, her smooth fair hair was folded in clear

curves like the leaves of a lily around her ears, and she wore a high,

transparent, tortoise-shell comb like a coronet in the knot at the back

of her head.

David Walcott had pulled off his cap and cloak, and stood looking

down at her. “Silence is all overwrought by this talk of Indians,” he

remarked, presently, and a blush came over his weather-beaten blond

face at the tenderness in his own tone.

“The Indians have gone back to Canada,” said Goodwife Sheldon, in a

magisterial voice. She stirred the porridge faster; it was steaming

fiercely.

“So I tell her,” said David.

Silence looked up in Hannah Sheldon’s sober, masterly face. “Goodwife,

may I have a word in private with you?” she asked, in a half-whisper.

“As soon as I take the porridge off,” replied Goodwife Sheldon.

“God grant it be not the last time she takes the porridge off!” said

the old woman.

Hannah Sheldon laughed. “Here be Goody Crane in a sorry mind to-night,”

said she. “Wait till she have a sup of this good porridge, and I trow

she’ll pack off the Indians to Canada in a half-hour!”

Hannah began dipping out the porridge. When she had placed generous

dishes of it on the table and bidden everybody draw up, she motioned to

Silence. “Now, Mistress Silence,” said she, “come into the bedroom if

you would have a word with me.”

Silence followed her into the little north room opening out of the

keeping-room, where Ensign John Sheldon and his wife Hannah had slept

for many years. It was icy cold, and the thick fur of frost on the

little window-panes sent out sparkles in the candle-light. The two

women stood beside the great chintz draped and canopied bed, Hannah

holding the flaring candle. “Now, what is it?” said she.

“Oh, Goodwife Sheldon!” said Silence. Her face remained quite still,

but it was as if one could see her soul fluttering beneath it.

“You be all overwrought, as David saith,” cried Goodwife Sheldon, and

her voice had a motherly harshness in it. Silence had no mother, and

her lover, David Walcott, had none. Hannah was his aunt, and loved

him like her son, so she felt towards Silence as towards her son’s

betrothed.

“In truth I know not what it is,” said Silence, in a kind of reserved

terror, “but there has been all day a great heaviness of spirit upon

me, and last night I dreamed. All day I have fancied I saw blood here

and there. Sometimes, when I have looked out of the window, the whole

snow hath suddenly glared with red. Goodwife Sheldon, think you the

Indians and the French have in truth gone back to Canada?”

Goodwife Sheldon hesitated a moment, then she spoke up cheerily. “In

truth have they!” cried she. “John said but this noon that naught of

them had been seen for some time.”

“So David said,” returned Silence; “but this heaviness will not be

driven away. You know how Parson Williams hath spoken in warning in the

pulpit and elsewhere, and besought us to be vigilant. He holdeth that

the savages be not gone.”

Hannah Sheldon smiled. “Parson Williams is a godly man, but prone ever

to look upon the dark side,” said she.

“If the Indians should come to-night--” said Silence.

“I tell ye they will not come, child. I shall lay me down in that bed

a-trusting in the Lord, and having no fear against the time I shall

arise from it.”

“If the Indians should come-- Goodwife Sheldon, be not angered; hear

me. If they should come, I pray you keep David here to defend you in

this house, and let him not out to seek me. You know well that our

house is musket-proof as well as this, and it has long been agreed that

they who live nearest, whose houses have not thick walls, shall come

to ours and help us make defence. I pray you let not David out of the

house to seek me, should there be a surprise to-night. I pray you give

me your promise for this, Goodwife Sheldon.”

Hannah Sheldon laughed. “In truth will I give thee the promise, if it

makes thee easier, child,” said she. “At the very first war-screech

will I tie David in the chimney-corner with my apron-string, unless you

lend me yours. But there will be no war-screech to-night, nor to-morrow

night, nor the night after that. The Lord will preserve His people

that trust in Him. To-day have I set a web of linen in the loom, and

I have candles ready to dip to-morrow, and the day after that I have

a quilting. I look not for Indians. If they come I will set them to

work. Fear not for David, sweetheart. In truth you should have a bolder

heart, an’ you look to be a soldier’s wife some day.”

“I would I had never been aught to him, that he might not be put in

jeopardy to defend me!” said Silence, and her words seemed visible in a

white cloud at her mouth.

“We must not stay here in the cold,” said Goodwife Sheldon. “Out with

ye, Silence, and have a sup of hot porridge, and then David shall see

ye home.”

Silence sipped a cup of the hot porridge obediently, then she pinned

her red blanket over her head. Hannah Sheldon assisted her, bringing it

warmly over her face. “’Tis bitter cold,” she said. “Now have no more

fear, Mistress Silence; the Indians will not come to-night; but do you

come over to-morrow, and keep me company while I dip the candles.”

“There’ll be company enough--there’ll be a whole houseful,” muttered

the old woman in the corner; but nobody heeded her. She was a lonely

and wretched old creature whom people sheltered from pity, although she

was somewhat feared and held in ill repute. There were rumors that she

was well versed in all the dark lore of witchcraft, and held commerce

with unlawful beings. The children of Deerfield village looked askance

at her, and clung to their mothers if they met her on the street, for

they whispered among themselves that old Goody Crane rode through the

air on a broom in the night-time.

Silence and David passed out into the keen night. “If you meet my

good-man, hasten him home, for the porridge is cooling,” Hannah

Sheldon called after them.

They met not a soul on Deerfield street, and parted at Silence’s door.

David would have entered had she bidden him, but she said peremptorily

that she had a hard task of spinning that evening, and then she wished

him good-night, and without a kiss, for Silence Hoit was chary of

caresses. But to-night she called him back ere he was fairly in the

street. “David,” she called, and he ran back.

“What is it, Silence?” he asked.

She put back her blanket, threw her arms around his neck, and clung to

him trembling.

“Why, sweetheart,” he whispered, “what has come over thee?”

“You know--this house is made like--a fort,” she said, bringing out

her words in gasps, “and--there are muskets, and--powder stored in it,

and--Captain Moulton, and his sons, and--John Carson will come, and

make--a stand in it. I have--no fear should--the Indians come. Remember

that I have no fear, and shall be safe here, David.”

David laughed, and patted her clinging shoulders. “Yes, I will

remember, Silence,” he said; “but the Indians will not come.”

“Remember that I am safe here, and have no fear,” she repeated. Then

she kissed him of her own accord, as if she had been his wife, and

entered the house, and he went away, wondering.

Silence’s aunt, Widow Eunice Bishop, did not look up when the door

opened; she was knitting by the fire, sitting erect with her mouth

pursed. She had a hostile expression, as if she were listening to

some opposite argument. Silence hung her blanket on a peg; she stood

irresolute a minute, then she breathed on the frosty window and cleared

a space through which she could look out. Her aunt gave a quick, fierce

glance at her, then she tossed back her head and knitted. Silence

stood staring out of the little peep-hole in the frosty pane. Her aunt

glanced at her again, then she spoke.

“I should think if you had been out gossiping and gadding for two

hours, you had better get yourself at some work now,” she said, “unless

your heart be set on idling. A pretty house-wife you’ll make!”

“Come here quick, quick!” Silence cried out.

Her aunt started, but she would not get up; she knitted, scowling. “I

cannot afford to idle if other folk can,” said she. “I have no desire

to keep running to windows and standing there gaping, as you have done

all this day.”

“Oh, aunt, I pray you to come,” said Silence, and she turned her white

face over her shoulder towards her aunt; “there is somewhat wrong

surely.”

Widow Bishop got up, still scowling, and went over to the window.

Silence stood aside and pointed to the little clear circle in the midst

of the frost. “Over there to the north,” she said, in a quick, low

voice.

Her aunt adjusted her horn spectacles and bent her head stiffly. “I see

naught,” said she.

“A red glare in the north!”

“A red glare in the north! Be ye out of your mind, wench! There be no

red glare in the north. Everything be quiet in the town. Get ye away

from the window and to your work. I have no more patience with such

doings. Here have I left my knitting for nothing, and I just about

setting the heel. You’d best keep to your spinning instead of spying

out of the window at your own nightmares, and gadding about the town

after David Walcott. Pretty doings for a modest maid, I call it,

following after young men in this fashion!”

Silence turned on her aunt, and her blue eyes gleamed dark; she held up

her head like a queen. “I follow not after young men,” she said.

“Heard I not David Walcott’s voice at the door? Went you not to

Goodwife Sheldon’s, where he lives? Was it not his voice--hey?”

“Yes, ’twas, an’ I had a right to go there an I chose, an’ ’twas naught

unmaidenly,” said Silence.

“’Twas unmaidenly in my day,” retorted her aunt; “perhaps ’tis

different now.” She had returned to her seat, and was clashing her

knitting-needles like two swords in a duel.

Silence pulled a spinning-wheel before the fire and fell to work. The

wheel turned so rapidly that the spokes were a revolving shadow; there

was a sound as if a bee had entered the room.

“I stayed at home, and your uncle did the courting,” Widow Eunice

Bishop continued, in a voice that demanded response.

But Silence made none. She went on spinning. Her aunt eyed her

maliciously. “I never went after nightfall to his house that he might

see me home,” said she. “I trow my mother would have locked me up in

the garret, and kept me on meal and water for a week, had I done aught

so bold.”

Silence spun on. Her aunt threw her head back, and knitted, jerking

out her elbows. Neither of them spoke again until the clock struck

nine. Then Widow Bishop wound her ball of yarn closer, and stuck in

the knitting-needles, and rose. “’Tis time to put out the candle,” she

said, “and _I_ have done a good day’s work, and feel need of rest.

They that have idled cannot make it up by wasting tallow.” She threw

open the door that led to her bedroom, and a blast of icy confined

air rushed in. She untied the black cap that framed her nervous face

austerely, and her gray head, with its tight rosette of hair on the

crown, appeared. Silence set her spinning-wheel back, and raked the

ashes over the hearth fire. Then she took the candle and climbed the

stairs to her own chamber. Her aunt was already in bed, her pale,

white-frilled face sunk in the icy feather pillow; but she did not

bid her good-night: not on account of her anger; there was seldom any

such formal courtesy exchanged between the women. Silence’s chamber

had one side sloping with the slope of the roof, and in it were two

dormer-windows looking towards the north. She set her candle on

the table, breathed on one of these windows, as she had on the one

down-stairs, and looked out. She stood there several minutes, then she

turned away, shaking her head. The room was very cold. She let down her

smooth fair hair, and her fingers began to redden; she took off her

kerchief; then she stopped, and looked hesitatingly at her bed, with

its blue curtains. She set her mouth hard, and put on her kerchief.

Then she sat down on the edge of her bed and waited. After a while

she pulled a quilt from the bed and wrapped it around her. Still she

did not shiver. She had blown out the candle, and the room was very

dark. All her nerves seemed screwed tight like fiddle-strings, and her

thoughts beat upon them and made terrific waves of sound in her ears.

She saw sparks and flashes like diamond fire in the darkness. She

had her hands clinched tight, but she did not feel her hands nor her

feet--she did not feel her whole body. She sat so until two o’clock in

the morning. When the clock down in the keeping-room struck the hours,

the peals shocked her back for a minute to her old sense of herself;

then she lost it again. Just after the clock struck two, while the

silvery reverberation of the bell tone was still in her ears, and she

was breathing a little freer, a great rosy glow suffused the frosty

windows. A horrible discord of sound arose without. Above everything

else came something like a peal of laughter from wild beasts or fiends.

Silence arose and went down-stairs. Her aunt rushed out of her bedroom,

shrieking, and caught hold of her. “Oh, Silence, what is it, what is

it?” she cried.

“Get away till I light a candle,” said Silence. She fairly pushed her

aunt off, shovelled the ashes from the coals in the fireplace, and

lighted a candle. Then she threw some wood on the smouldering fire. Her

aunt was running around the room screaming. There came a great pound on

the door.

“It’s the Indians! it’s the Indians! don’t let ’em in!” shrieked her

aunt. “Don’t let them in! don’t let them!” She placed her lean shoulder

in her white bed-gown against the door. “Go away! go away!” she yelled.

“You can’t come in! O Lord Almighty, save us!”

“You stand off,” said Silence. She took hold of her aunt’s shoulders.

“Be quiet,” she commanded. Then she called out, in a firm voice, “Who

is there?”

At the shout in response she drew the great iron bolts quickly and

flung open the heavy nail-studded door. There was a press of frantic,

white-faced people into the room; then the door was slammed to and the

bolts shot. It was very still in the room, except for the shuffling

rush of the men’s feet, and now and then a stern, gasping order. The

children did not cry; all the noise was without. The house might have

stood in the midst of some awful wilderness peopled with fiendish

beasts, from the noise without. The cries seemed actually in the room.

The children’s eyes glared white over their mothers’ shoulders.

The men hurriedly strengthened the window-shutters with props of logs,

and fitted the muskets into the loop-holes. Suddenly there was a great

crash at the door, and a wilder yell outside. The muskets opened fire,

and some of the women rushed to the door and pressed fiercely against

it with their delicate shoulders, their white, desperate faces turning

back dumbly, like a spiritual phalanx of defence. Silence and her aunt

were among them.

Suddenly Widow Eunice Bishop, at a fresh onslaught upon the door, and

a fiercer yell, lifted up her voice and shrieked back in a rage as mad

as theirs. Her speech, too, was almost inarticulate, and the sense of

it lost in a savage frenzy; her tongue stuttered over abusive epithets;

but for a second she prevailed over the terrible chorus without. It was

like the solo of a fury. Then louder yells drowned her out; the muskets

cracked faster; the men rammed in the charges; the savages fell back

somewhat; the blows on the door ceased.

Silence ran up the stairs to her chamber, and peeped cautiously out of

a little dormer-window. Deerfield village was roaring with flames, the

sky and snow were red, and leaping through the glare came the painted

savages, a savage white face and the waving sword of a French officer

in their midst. The awful warwhoops and the death-cries of her friends

and neighbors sounded in her ears. She saw, close under her window, the

dark sweep of the tomahawk, the quick glance of the scalping-knife, and

the red starting of caps of blood. She saw infants dashed through the

air, and the backward-straining forms of shrieking women dragged down

the street; but she saw not David Walcott anywhere.

She eyed in an agony some dark bodies lying like logs in the snow. A

wild impulse seized her to run out, turn their dead faces, and see

that none of them was her lover’s. Her room was full of red light;

everything in it showed distinctly. The roof of the next house crashed

in, and the sparks and cinders shot up like a volcano. There was a

great outcry of terror from below, and Silence hurried down. The

Indians were trying to fire the house from the west side. They had

piled a bank of brush against it, and the men had hacked new loop-holes

and were beating them back.

John Carson’s wife clutched Silence as she entered the keeping-room.

“They are trying to set the house on fire,” she gasped, “and--the

bullets are giving out!” The woman held a little child hugged close to

her breast; she strained him closer. “They shall not have him, anyway,”

she said. Her mouth looked white and stiff.

“Put him down and help, then,” said Silence. She began pulling the

pewter plates off the dresser.

“What be you doing with my pewter plates?” screamed her aunt at her

elbow.

Silence said nothing. She went on piling the plates under her arm.

“Think you I will have the pewter plates I have had ever since I was

wed, melted to make bullets for those limbs of Satan?”

Silence carried the plates to the fire; the women piled on wood and

made it hotter. John Carson’s wife laid her baby on the settle and

helped, and Widow Bishop brought out her pewter spoons, and her silver

cream-jug when the pewter ran low, and finally her dead husband’s

knee-buckles from the cedar chest. All the pewter and silver in Widow

Eunice Bishop’s house were melted down that night. The women worked

with desperate zeal to supply the men with bullets, and just before

the ammunition failed, the Indians left Deerfield village, with their

captives in their train.

The men had stopped firing at last. Everything was quiet outside,

except for the flurry of musket-shots down on the meadow, where the

skirmish was going on between the Hatfield men and the retreating

French and Indians. The dawn was breaking, but not a shutter had been

stirred in the Bishop house; the inmates were clustered together, their

ears straining for another outburst of slaughter.

Suddenly there was a strange crackling sound overhead; a puff of hot

smoke came into the room from the stairway. The roof had caught fire

from the shower of sparks, and the stanch house that had withstood all

the fury of the savages was going the way of its neighbors.

The men rushed up the stair, and fell back. “We can’t save it!” Captain

Isaac Moulton said, hoarsely. He was an old man, and his white hair

tossed wildly around his powder-blackened face.

Widow Eunice Bishop scuttled into her bedroom, and got her best

silk hood and her giltframed looking-glass. “Silence, get out the

feather-bed!” she shrieked.

The keeping-room was stifling with smoke. Captain Moulton loosened

a window-shutter cautiously and peered out. “I see no sign of the

savages,” he said. They unbolted the door, and opened it inch by inch,

but there was no exultant shout in response. The crack of muskets on

the meadow sounded louder; that was all.

Widow Eunice Bishop pushed forward before the others; the danger by

fire to her household goods had driven her own danger from her mind,

which could compass but one terror at a time. “Let me forth!” she

cried; and she laid the looking-glass and silk hood on the snow, and

pelted back into the smoke for her feather-bed and the best andirons.

Silence carried out the spinning-wheel, and the others caught up

various articles which they had wit to see in the panic. They piled

them up on the snow outside, and huddled together, staring fearfully

down the village street. They saw, amid the smouldering ruins, Ensign

John Sheldon’s house standing.

“We must make for that,” said Captain Isaac Moulton, and they started.

The men went before and behind, with their muskets in readiness,

and the women and children walked between. Widow Bishop carried the

looking-glass; somebody had helped her to bring out her feather-bed,

and she had dragged it to a clean place well away from the burning

house.

The dawnlight lay pale and cold in the east; it was steadily overcoming

the fire-glow from the ruins. Nobody would have known Deerfield

village. The night before the sun had gone down upon the snowy slants

of humble roofs and the peaceful rise of smoke from pleasant hearth

fires. The curtained windows had gleamed out one by one with mild

candle-light, and serene faces of white-capped matrons preparing supper

had passed them. Now, on both sides of Deerfield street were beds of

glowing red coals; grotesque ruins of door-posts and chimneys in the

semblances of blackened martyrs stood crumbling in the midst of them,

and twisted charred heaps, which the people eyed trembling, lay in the

old doorways. The snow showed great red patches in the gathering light,

and in them lay still bodies that seemed to move.

Silence Hoit sprang out from the hurrying throng, and turned the head

of one dead man whose face she could not see. The horror of his red

crown did not move her. She only saw that he was not David Walcott. She

stooped and wiped off her hands in some snow.

“That is Israel Bennett,” the others groaned.

John Carson’s wife had been the dead man’s sister. She hugged her baby

tighter, and pressed more closely to her husband’s back. There was no

longer any sound of musketry on the meadows. There was not a sound to

be heard except the wind in the dry trees and the panting breaths of

the knot of people.

A dead baby lay directly in the path, and a woman caught it up, and

tried to warm it at her breast. She wrapped her cloak around it, and

wiped its little bloody face with her apron. “’Tis not dead,” she

declared, frantically; “the child is not dead!” She had not shed a

tear nor uttered a wail before, but now she began sobbing aloud over

the dead child. It was Goodwife Barnard’s, and no kin to her; she was

a single woman. The others were looking right and left for lurking

savages; she looked only at the little cold face on her bosom. “The

child breathes,” she said, and hurried on faster that she might get

succor for it.

The party halted before Ensign John Sheldon’s house. The stout door was

fast, but there was a hole in it, as if hacked by a tomahawk. The men

tried it and shook it. “Open, open, Goodwife Sheldon!” they hallooed.

“Friends! friends! Open the door!” But there was no response.

Silence Hoit left the throng at the door, and began clambering up

on a slant of icy snow to a window which was flung wide open. The

window-sill was stained with blood, and so was the snow.

One of the men caught Silence and tried to hold her back. “There may be

Indians in there,” he whispered, hoarsely.

But Silence broke away from him, and was in through the window, and

the men followed her, and unbolted the door for the women, who pressed

in wildly, and flung it to again. A child who was among them, little

Comfort Arms, stationed herself directly with her tiny back against the

door, with her mouth set like a soldier’s, and her blue eyes gleaming

fierce under her flaxen locks. “They shall not get in,” said she.

Somehow she had gotten hold of a great horse-pistol, which she carried

like a doll.

Nobody heeded her, Silence least of all. She stared about the room,

with her lips parted. Right before her on the hearth lay a little

three-year-old girl, Mercy Sheldon, her pretty head in a pool of blood,

but Silence cast only an indifferent glance when the others gathered

about her, groaning and sighing.

Suddenly Silence sprang towards a dark heap near the pantry door, but

it was only a woman’s quilted petticoat.

The spinning-wheel lay broken on the floor, and all the simple

furniture was strewn about wildly. Silence went into Goodwife Sheldon’s

bedroom, and the others followed her, trembling, all except little

Comfort Arms, who stood unflinchingly with her back pressed against

the door, and the single woman, Grace Mather; she stayed behind, and

put wood on the fire, after she had picked up the quilted petticoat,

and laid the dead baby tenderly wrapped in it on the settle. Then she

pulled the settle forward before the fire, and knelt before it, and

fell to chafing the little limbs of the dead baby, weeping as she did

so.

Goodwife Sheldon’s bedroom was in wild disorder. A candle still burned,

although it was very low, on the table, whose linen cover had great

red finger-prints on it. Goodwife Sheldon’s decent clothes were tossed

about on the floor; the curtains of the bed were half torn away.

Silence pressed forward unshrinkingly towards the bed; the others, even

the men, hung back. There lay Goodwife Sheldon dead in her bed. All

the light in the room, the candle-light and the low daylight, seemed

to focus upon her white, frozen profile propped stiffly on the pillow,

where she had fallen back when the bullet came through that hole in the

door.

Silence looked at her. “Where is David, Goodwife Sheldon?” said she.

Eunice Bishop sprang forward. “Be you clean out of your mind, Silence

Hoit?” she cried. “Know you not she’s dead? She’s dead! Oh, she’s dead,

she’s dead! An’ here’s her best silk hood trampled underfoot on the

floor!” Eunice snatched up the hood, and seized Silence by the arm, but

she pushed her back.

“Where is David? Where is he gone?” she demanded again of the dead

woman.

The other women came crowding around Silence then, and tried to soothe

her and reason with her, while their own faces were white with horror

and woe. Goodwife Sarah Spear, an old woman whose sons lay dead in the

street outside, put an arm around the girl, and tried to draw her head

to her broad bosom.

“Mayhap you will find him, sweetheart,” she said. “He’s not among the

dead out there.”

But Silence broke away from the motherly arm, and sped wildly through

the other rooms, with the people at her heels, and her aunt crying

vainly after her. They found no more dead in the house; naught but ruin

and disorder, and bloody footprints and handprints of savages.

When they returned to the keeping-room, Silence seated herself on a

stool by the fire, and held out her hands towards the blaze to warm

them. The daylight was broad outside now, and the great clock that had

come from overseas ticked; the Indians had not touched that.

Captain Isaac Moulton lifted little Mercy Sheldon from the hearth and

carried her to her dead mother in the bedroom, and two of the older

women went in there and shut the door. Little Comfort Arms still stood

with her back against the outer door, and Grace Mather tended the dead

baby on the settle.

“What do ye with that dead child?” a woman called out roughly to her.

“I tell ye ’tis not dead; it breathes,” returned Grace Mather; and she

never turned her harsh, plain face from the dead child.

“An’ I tell ye ’tis dead.”

“An’ I tell ye ’tis not dead. I need but some hot posset for it.”

Goodwife Carson began to weep. She hugged her own living baby tighter.

“Let her alone!” she sobbed. “I wonder our wits be not all gone.” She

went sobbing over to little Comfort Arms at the door. “Come away,

sweetheart, and draw near the fire,” she pleaded, brokenly.

The little girl looked obstinately up at her. “They shall not come in,”

she said. “The wicked savages shall not come in again.”

“No more shall they, an’ the Lord be willing, sweet. But, I pray you,

come away from the door now.”

Comfort shook her head, and she looked like her father as he fought on

the Deerfield meadows.

“The savages are gone, sweet.”

But Comfort answered not a word, and Goodwife Carson sat down and began

to nurse her baby. One of the women hung the porridge-kettle over the

fire; another put some potatoes in the ashes to bake. Presently the

two women came out of Goodwife Sheldon’s bedroom with grave, strained

faces, and held their stiff blue fingers out to the hearth fire.

Eunice Bishop, who was stirring the porridge, looked at them with sharp

curiosity. “How look they?” she whispered.

“As peaceful as if they slept,” replied Goodwife Spear, who was one of

the women.

“And the child’s head?”

“We put on her little white cap with the lace frills.”

Eunice stirred the bubbling porridge, scowling in the heat and steam;

some of the women laid the table with Hannah Sheldon’s linen cloth and

pewter dishes, and presently the breakfast was dished up.

Little Comfort Arms had sunk at the foot of the nail-studded door

in a deep slumber. She slept at her post like the faithless sentry

whose slumbers the night before had brought about the destruction of

Deerfield village. Goodwife Spear raised her up, but her curly head

drooped helplessly.

“Wake up, Comfort, and have a sup of hot porridge,” she called in her

ear.

She led her over to the table, Comfort stumbling weakly at

arm’s-length, and set her on a stool with a dish of porridge before

her, which she ate uncertainly in a dazed fashion, with her eyes

filming and her head nodding.

They all gathered gravely around the table, except Silence Hoit and

Grace Mather. Silence sat still, staring at the fire, and Grace had

dipped out a little cup of the hot porridge, and was trying to feed it

to the dead baby, with crooning words.

“Silence, why come you not to the table?” her aunt called out.

“I want nothing,” answered Silence.

“I see not why you should so set yourself up before the others, as

having so much more to bear,” said Eunice, sharply. “There is Goodwife

Spear, with her sons unburied on the road yonder, and she eats her

porridge with good relish.”

John Carson’s wife set her baby on her husband’s knee, and carried a

dish of porridge to Silence.

“Try and eat it, sweet,” she whispered. She was near Silence’s age.

Silence looked up at her. “I want it not,” said she.

“But he may not be dead, sweet. He may presently be home. You would not

he should find you spent and fainting. Perchance he may have wounds for

you to tend.”

Silence seized the dish and began to eat the porridge in great

spoonfuls, gulping it down fast.

The people at the table eyed her sadly and whispered, and they also

cast frequent glances at Grace Mather bending over the dead baby. Once

Captain Isaac Moulton called out to her in his gruff old voice, which

he tried to soften, and she answered back, sharply: “Think ye I will

leave this child while it breathes, Captain Isaac Moulton? In faith I

am the only one of ye all who has regard to it.”

But suddenly, when the meal was half over, Grace Mather arose, and

gathered up the little dead baby, carried it into Goodwife Sheldon’s

bedroom, and was gone some time.

“She has lost her wits,” said Eunice Bishop. “Think you not we should

follow her? She may do some harm.”

“Nay, let her be,” said Goodwife Spear.

When at last Grace Mather came out of the bedroom, and they all turned

to look at her, her face was stern but quite composed. “I found a

little clean linen shift in the chest,” she said to Goodwife Spear, who

nodded gravely. Then she sat down at the table and ate.

The people, as they ate, cast frequent glances at the barred door and

the shuttered windows. The daylight was broad outside, but there was

no glimmer of it in the room, and the candles were lighted. They dared

not yet remove the barricades, and the muskets were in readiness: the

Indians might return.

All at once there was a shrill clamor at the door, and men sprang to

their muskets. The women clutched each other, panting.

“Unbar the door!” shrieked a quavering old voice. “I tell ye, unbar the

door! I be nigh frozen a-standing here. Unbar the door! The Indians are

gone hours ago.”

“’Tis Goody Crane!” cried Eunice Bishop.

Captain Isaac Moulton shot back the bolts and opened the door a little

way, while the men stood close at his back, and Goody Crane slid in

like a swift black shadow out of the daylight.

She crouched down close to the fire, trembling and groaning, and the

women gave her some hot porridge.

“Where have ye been?” demanded Eunice Bishop.

“Where they found me not,” replied the old woman, and there was a

sudden leer like a light in the gloom of her great hood. She motioned

towards the bedroom door.

“Goody Sheldon sleeps late this morning, and so doth Mercy,” said she.

“I trow she will not dip her candles to-day.”

The people looked at each other; a subtler horror than that of the

night before shook their spirits.

Captain Isaac Moulton towered over the old woman on the hearth. “How

knew you Goodwife Sheldon and Mercy were dead?” he asked, sternly.

[Illustration: AT ENSIGN SHELDON’S HOUSE THE MORNING AFTER THE MASSACRE]

The old woman leered up at him undauntedly; her head bobbed. There was

a curious grotesqueness about her blanketed and hooded figure when

in motion. There was so little of the old woman herself visible that

motion surprised, as it would have done in a puppet. “Told I not Goody

Sheldon last night she would never stir porridge again?” said she.

“Who stirred the porridge this morning? I trow Goody Sheldon’s hands

be too stiff and too cold, though they have stirred well in their day.

Hath she dipped her candles yet? Hath she begun on her weaving? I trow

’twill be a long day ere Mary Sheldon’s linen-chest be filled, if she

herself go a-gadding to Canada and her mother sleep so late.”

“Eat this hot porridge and stop your croaking,” said Goodwife Spear,

stooping over her.

The old woman extended her two shaking hands for the dish. “That was

what she said last night,” she returned. “The living echo the dead, and

that is enough wisdom for a witch.”

“You’ll be burned for a witch yet, Goody Crane, an you be not careful,”

cried Eunice Bishop.

“There is fire enough outside to burn all the witches in the land,”

muttered the old woman, sipping her porridge. Suddenly she eyed Silence

sitting motionless opposite. “Where be your sweetheart this fine

morning, Silence Hoit?” she inquired.

Silence looked at her. There was a strange likeness between the

glitter in her blue eyes and that in Goody Crane’s black ones.

The old woman’s great hood nodded over the porridge-dish. “I can tell

ye, Mistress Silence,” she said, thickly, as she ate. “He is gone to

Canada on a moose-hunt, and unless I be far wrong, he hath taken thy

wits with him.”

“How know you David Walcott is gone to Canada?” cried Eunice Bishop;

and Silence stared at her with her hard blue eyes.

Silence’s soft fair hair hung all matted like uncombed flax over her

pale cheeks. There was a rigid, dead look about her girlish forehead

and her sweet mouth.

“I know,” returned Goody Crane, nodding her head.

The women washed the pewter dishes, set them back on the dresser, and

swept the floor. Little Comfort Arms had been carried up-stairs and

laid in the bed whence poor Mary Sheldon had been dragged and haled

to Canada. The men stood talking near their stacked muskets. One of

the shutters had been opened and the candles put out. The winter sun

shone in the window as it had shone before, but the poor folk in Ensign

Sheldon’s keeping-room saw it with a certain shock, as if it were a

stranger. That morning their own hearts had in them such strangeness

that they transferred it like motion to all familiar objects. The very

iron dogs in the Sheldon fireplace seemed on the leap with tragedy,

and the porridge-kettle swung darkly out of some former age.

Now and then one of the men opened the door cautiously and peered out

and listened. The reek of the smouldering village came in at the door,

but there was not a sound except the whistling howl of the savage north

wind, which still swept over the valley. There was not a shot to be

heard from the meadows. The men discussed the wisdom of leaving the

women for a short space and going forth to explore, but Widow Eunice

Bishop interposed, thrusting her sharp face in among them.

“Here we be,” scolded she, “a passel of women and children, and Hannah

Sheldon and Mercy a-lying dead, and me with my house burnt down,

and nothing saved except my silk hood and my looking-glass and my

feather-bed, and it’s a mercy if that’s not all smooched, and you talk

of going off and leaving us!”

The men looked doubtfully at one another; then there was the hissing

creak of footsteps on the snow outside, and Widow Bishop screamed. “Oh,

the Indians have come back!” she proclaimed.

Silence looked up.

The door was tried from without.

“Who’s there?” cried out Captain Moulton.

“John Sheldon,” responded a hoarse voice. “Who’s inside?”

Captain Moulton threw open the door, and John Sheldon stood there.

His severe and sober face was painted like an Indian’s with blood and

powder grime; he stood staring in at the company.

“Come in, quick, and let us bar the door!” screamed Eunice Bishop.

John Sheldon came in hesitatingly, and stood looking around the room.

“Have you but just come from the meadows?” inquired Captain Moulton.

But John Sheldon did not seem to hear him. He stared at the company,

who all stood still staring back at him; then he looked hard and long

at the doors, as if expecting some one to enter. The eyes of the others

followed his, but no one spoke.

“Where’s Hannah?” asked John Sheldon.

Then the women began to weep.

“She’s in there,” sobbed John Carson’s wife, pointing to the bedroom

door--“in there with little Mercy, Goodman Sheldon.”

“Is--the child hurt, and--Hannah a-tending her?”

The women wept, and pushed each other forward to tell him, but Captain

Isaac Moulton spoke out, and drove the knife home like an honest

soldier, who will kill if he must, but not mangle.

“Goodwife Sheldon lies yonder, shot dead in her bed, and we found the

child dead on the hearth-stone,” said Isaac Moulton.

John Sheldon turned his gaze on him.

“The judgments of the Lord are just and righteous altogether,” said

Isaac Moulton, confronting him with stern defiance.

“Amen,” returned John Sheldon. He took off his cloak, and hung it up on

the peg as he was used.

“Where is David Walcott?” asked Silence, standing before him.

“David, he is gone with the Indians to Canada, and the boys, Ebenezer

and Remembrance.”

“Where is David?”

“I tell ye, lass, he is gone with the French and Indians to Canada;

and you need be thankful he was but your sweetheart, and ye not wed,

with a half-score of babes to be taken too. The curse that was upon the

women of Jerusalem is upon the women of Deerfield.” John Sheldon looked

sternly into Silence’s white wild face; then his voice softened. “Take

heart, lass,” said he. “Erelong I shall go to Governor Dudley and get

help, and then after them to Canada, and fetch them back. Take heart; I

will fetch thee thy sweetheart presently.”

Silence returned to her seat in the fireplace. Goody Crane looked

across at her. “He will come back over the north meadow,” she

whispered. “Keep watch over the north meadow; but ’twill be a long day

ere ye see him.”

Silence paid seemingly little heed. She paid little heed to Ensign John

Sheldon relating how the French and Indians, with Hertel de Rouville

at their head, were on the road to Canada with their captives; of the

fight on the meadow between the retreating foe and the brave band of

Deerfield and Hatfield men, who had made a stand there to intercept

them; how they had been obliged to cease firing because the captives

were threatened; and the pitiful tale of Parson John Williams, two of

whose children were killed, dragged through the wilderness with the

others, and his sick wife.

“Had folk listened to him, we had all been safe in our good houses with

our belongings,” cried Eunice Bishop.

“They will not drag Goodwife Williams far,” said Goody Crane, “nor the

babe at her breast. I trow well it hath stopped wailing ere now.”

“How know you that?” questioned Eunice Bishop, turning sharply on her.

But the old woman only nodded her head, and Silence paid no heed, for

she was not there. Her slender girlish shape sat by the hearth fire in

John Sheldon’s house in Deerfield, her fair head showed like a delicate

flower, but Silence Hoit was following her lover to Canada. Every step

that he took painfully through pathless forests, on treacherous ice,

and desolate snow fields, she took more painfully still; every knife

gleaming over his head she saw. She bore his every qualm of hunger

and pain and cold, and it was all the harder because they struck on

her bare heart with no flesh between, for she sat in the flesh in

Deerfield, and her heart went with her lover to Canada.

The sun stood higher, but it was still bitter cold; the blue frost on

the windows did not melt, and the icicles on the eaves, which nearly

touched the sharp snow-drifts underneath, did not drip. The desolate

survivors of the terrible night began work among the black ruins of

their homes. They cared as well as they might for the dead in Deerfield

street, and the dead on the meadow where the fight had been. Their

muscles were all tense with the cold, their faces seamed and blue with

it, but their hearts were strained with a fiercer cold than that. Not

one man of them but had one or more slain, with dead face upturned,

seeking his in the morning light, or on that awful road to Canada. Ever

as the men worked they turned their eyes northward, and met grimly the

icy blast of the north wind, and sometimes to their excited fancies

it seemed to bring to their ears the cries of their friends who were

facing it also, and they stood still and listened.

Silence Hoit crept out of the house and down the road a little way,

and then stood looking over the meadow towards the north. Her fair hair

tossed in the wind, her pale cheeks turned pink, the wind struck full

upon her delicate figure. She had come out without her blanket.

“David!” she called. “David! David! David!” The north wind bore down

upon her, shrieking with a wild fury like a savage of the air; the dry

branches of a small tree near her struck her in the face. “David!” she

called again. “David! David!” She swelled out her white throat like

a bird, and her voice was shrill and sweet and far-reaching. The men

moving about on the meadow below, and stooping over the dead, looked up

at her, but she did not heed them. She had come through a break in the

palisades; on each side of her the frozen snow-drifts slanted sharply

to their tops, and they glittered with blue lights like glaciers in the

morning sun over those drifts the enemy had passed the night before.

The men on the meadow saw Silence’s hair blowing like a yellow banner

between the drifts of snow.

“The poor lass has come out bareheaded,” said Ensign Sheldon. “She is

near out of her mind for David Walcott.”

“A man should have no sweetheart in these times, unless he would her

heart be broke,” said a young man beside him. He was hardly more than

a boy, and his face was as rosy as a girl’s in the wind. He kept

close to Ensign Sheldon, and his mind was full of young Mary Sheldon

travelling to Canada on her weary little feet. He had often, on a

Sabbath day, looked across the meeting-house at her, and thought that

there was no maiden like her in Deerfield.

Ensign John Sheldon thought of his sweetheart lying with her heart

still in her freezing bedroom, and stooped over a dead Hatfield man

whose face was frozen into the snow.

The young man, whose name was Freedom Wells, bent over to help him.

Then he started. “What’s that?” he cried.

“’Tis only Silence Hoit calling David Walcott again,” replied Ensign

Sheldon.

The voice had sounded like Mary Sheldon’s to Freedom. The tears rolled

over his boyish cheeks as he put his hands into the snow and tried to

dig it away from the dead man’s face.

“David! David! David!” called Silence.

Suddenly her aunt threw a wiry arm around her. “Be you gone clean

daft,” she shrieked against the wind, “standing here calling David

Walcott? Know you not he is a half-day’s journey towards Canada an the

savages have not scalped him and left him by the way? Standing here

with your hair blowing and no blanket! Into the house with ye!”

Silence followed her aunt unresistingly. The women in Ensign Sheldon’s

house were hard at work. They were baking in the great brick oven,

spinning, and even dipping poor Goodwife Sheldon’s candles.

“Bind up your hair, like an honest maid, and go to spinning,” said

Eunice, and she pointed to the spinning-wheel which had been saved from

her own house. “We that be spared have to work, and not sit down and

trot our own hearts on our knees. There is scarce a yard of linen left

in Deerfield, to say naught of woollen cloth. Bind up your hair!”

And Silence bound up her hair, and sat down by her wheel meekly, and

yet with a certain dignity. Indeed, through all the disorder of her

mind, that delicate maiden dignity never forsook her, and there was

never aught but respect shown her.

As time went on, it became quite evident that although the fair

semblance of Silence Hoit still walked the Deerfield street, sat in the

meeting-house, and toiled at the spinning-wheel and the loom, yet she

was as surely not there as though she had been haled to Canada with the

other captives on that terrible February night. It became the general

opinion that Silence Hoit would never be quite her old self again and

walk in the goodly company of all her fair wits unless David Walcott

should be redeemed from captivity and restored to her. Then, it was

accounted possible, the mending of the calamity which had brought her

disorder upon her might remove it.

“Ye wait,” Widow Eunice Bishop would say, hetchelling flax the while as

though it were the scalp-locks of the enemy--“ye wait. If once David

Walcott show his face, ye’ll see Silence Hoit be not so lacking. She

hath a tenderer heart than some I could mention, who go about smiling

when their nearest of kin lie in torment in Indian lodges. She cares

naught for picking up a new sweetheart. She hath a steady heart that be

not so easy turned as some. Silence was never a light hussy, a-dancing

hither and thither off the bridle-path for a new flower on the bushes.

An’, for all ye call her lacking now, there be not a maid in Deerfield

does such a day’s task as she.”

And that last statement was quite true. All the Deerfield women, the

matrons and maidens, toiled unceasingly, with a kind of stern patience

like that which served their husbands and lovers in the frontier

corn-fields, and which served all the dauntless border settlers, who

were forced continually to rebuild after destruction, like way-side

ants whose nests are always being trampled underfoot. There was need

of unflinching toil at wheel and loom, for there was great scarcity of

household linen in Deerfield, and Silence Hoit’s shapely white maiden

hands flinched less than any.

Nevertheless, many a day, in the morning when the snowy meadows were

full of blue lights, at sunset when all the snow levels were rosy, but

more particularly in wintry moonlight when the country was like a waste

of silver, would Silence Hoit leave suddenly her household task, and

hasten to the terrace overlooking the north meadow, and shriek out:

“David! David! David Walcott!”

The village children never jeered at her, as they would sometimes jeer

at Goody Crane if not restrained by their elders. They eyed with a

mixture of wonder and admiration Silence’s beautiful bewildered face,

with the curves of gold hair around the pink cheeks, and the fretwork

of tortoise-shell surmounting it. David Walcott had given Silence her

shell comb, and she was never seen without it.

Many a time when Silence called to David from the terrace of the north

meadow, some of the little village maids in their homespun pinafores

would join her and call with her. They had no fear of her, as they had

of Goody Crane.

Indeed, Goody Crane, after the massacre, was in worse repute than ever

in Deerfield. There were dark rumors concerning her whereabouts upon

that awful night. Some among the devout and godly were fain to believe

that the old woman had been in league with the powers of darkness and

their allies the savages, and had so escaped harm. Some even whispered

that in the thickest of the slaughter, when Deerfield was in the midst

of that storm of fire, old Goody Crane’s laugh had been heard, and one,

looking up, had spied her high overhead riding her broomstick, her face

red with the glare of the flames. The old woman was sheltered under

protest, and had Deerfield not been a frontier town, and graver matters

continually in mind, she might have come to harm in consequence of the

gloomy suspicions concerning her.

Many a night after the massacre would the windows fly up and anxious

faces peer out. It was as if the ears of the people were tuned up to

the pitch of the Indian warwhoops, and their very thoughts made the

nights ring with them.

The palisades were well looked to; there was never a slope of frozen

snow again to form foothold for the enemy, and the sentry never

slept at his post. But the anxious women listened all winter for the

warwhoops, and many a time it seemed they heard them. In the midst of

their nervous terror it was often a sore temptation to consult old

Goody Crane, since she was held to have occult knowledge.

“I’ll warrant old Goody Crane could tell us in a twinkling whether

or no the Indians would come before morning,” Eunice Bishop said one

fierce windy night that called to mind the one of the massacre.

“Knowledge got in unlawful ways would avail us naught,” returned

Goodwife Spear. “I trow the Lord be yet able to protect His people.”

“I doubt not that,” said Eunice Bishop, “but I would like well to know

if I had best bury my hood and my spinning-wheel and looking-glass in

a snow-drift to-night. I have no mind the Indians shall get them. I

warrant she knows well.”

But Eunice Bishop did not consult Goody Crane, although she watched

her narrowly and had a sharp ear to her mutterings as she sat in the

chimney-corner. Eunice and Silence were living in John Sheldon’s

house, as did many of the survivors for some time after the massacre.

It was the largest house in the village, and most of its original

inhabitants were dead or gone into captivity. The people all huddled

together fearfully in the few houses that were left, and the women’s

spinning-wheels and looms jostled each other.

As soon as the weather moderated, the work of building new dwellings

commenced, and went on bravely with the advance of the spring. The

air was full of the calls of spring birds and the strokes of axes and

hammers. A little house was built on the site of their old one for

Widow Bishop and Silence Hoit. Widow Sarah Spear also lived with them,

and Goody Crane took frequent shelter at their fireside. So they were

a household of women, with loaded muskets at hand, and spinning-wheels

and looms at full hum. They had but a scanty household store, although

Widow Bishop tried in every way to increase it. Several times during

the summer she took perilous journeys to Hatfield and Squakheak, for

the purpose of bartering skeins of yarn or rolls of wool for household

articles. In December, when Ensign Sheldon with young Freedom Wells

went down to Boston to consult with Governor Dudley concerning an

expedition to Canada to redeem the captives, Widow Eunice Bishop,

having saved a few shillings, burdened him with a commission to

purchase for her a new cap and a pair of bellows. She was much angered

when he returned without them, having quite forgotten them in his press

of business.

On the day when John Sheldon and Freedom Wells started upon their

terrible journey of three hundred miles to redeem the captives, Eunice

Bishop scolded well as she spun by her hearth fire.

“I trow they will bring back nobody,” said she, her nose high in air,

and her voice shrilling over the drone of the wheel; “an they could not

do the bidding of a poor lone widow-woman, and fetch her the cap and

bellows from Boston, they’ll fetch nobody home from Canada. I would I

had ear of Governor Dudley. I trow men with minds upon their task would

be sent.” Eunice kept jerking her head as she scolded, and spun like a

bee angry with its own humming.

Silence sat knitting, and paid no heed. She had paid no heed to any of

the talk about Ensign Sheldon’s and Freedom Wells’s journey to Canada.

She had not seemed to listen when Widow Spear had tried to explain the

matter to her. “It may be, sweetheart, if it be the will of the Lord,

that they will bring David back to thee,” she had said over and over,

and Silence had knitted and made no response.

She was the only one in Deerfield who was not torn with excitement and

suspense as the months went by, and the only one unmoved by joy or

disappointment when in May John Sheldon and Freedom Wells returned with

five of the captives. But David Walcott was not among them.

“Said I not ’twould be so?” scolded Eunice Bishop. “Knew I not ’twould

be so when they forgot to get the cap and the bellows in Boston? The

one of all the captives that could have saved a poor maid’s wits they

leave behind. There’s Mary Sheldon come home, and she a-coloring red

before Freedom Wells, and everybody in the room a-seeing it. I trow

they might have done somewhat for poor Silence,” and Eunice broke down

and wailed and wept, but Silence shed not a tear. Before long she stole

out to the terrace and called “David! David! David!” over the north

meadow, and strained her blue eyes towards Canada, and held out her

fair arms, but it was with no new disappointment and desolation.

There was never a day nor a night that Silence called not over the

north meadow like a spring bird from the bush to her absent mate, and

people heard her and sighed and shuddered. One afternoon in the last of

the month of June, as Silence was thrusting her face between the leaves

of a wild cherry-tree and calling “David! David! David!” David himself

broke through the thicket and stood before her. He and three other

young men had escaped from their captivity and come home, and the four,

crawling half dead across the meadow, had heard Silence’s voice from

the terrace above, and David, leaving the others, had made his way to

her.

“Silence!” he said, and held out his poor arms, panting.

But Silence looked past him. “David! David! David Walcott!” she called.

David could scarcely stand for trembling, and he grasped a branch of

the cherry-tree to steady himself, and swayed with it.

“Know--you not--who I am, Silence?” he said.

But she made as though she did not hear, and called again, always

looking past him. And David Walcott, being near spent with fatigue and

starvation, wound himself feebly around the trunk of the tree, and the

tears dropped over his cheeks as he looked at her; and she called past

him, until some women came and led him away and tried to comfort him,

telling him how it was with her, and that she would soon know him when

he looked more like himself.

But the summer wore away and she did not know him, although he

constantly followed her beseechingly. His elders even reproved him for

paying so little heed to his work in the colony. “It is not meet for a

young man to be so weaned from usefulness by grief for a maid,” said

they. But David Walcott would at any time leave his reaping-hook in

the corn and his axe in the tree, leave aught but his post as sentry,

when he heard Silence calling him over the north meadow. He would stand

at her elbow and say, in his voice that broke like a woman’s: “Here I

am, sweetheart, at thy side. I pray thee turn thy head.” But she would

not let her eyes rest upon him for more than a second’s space, turning

them ever past him towards Canada, and calling in his very ears with a

sad longing that tore his heart: “David! David! David!” It was as if

her mind, reaching out always and speeding fast in search of him, had

gotten such impetus that she passed the very object of her search and

knew it not.

Now and then would David Walcott grow desperate, fling his arms around

her, and kiss her upon her cold delicate lips and cheeks as if he would

make her recognize him by force; but she would free herself from him

with a passionless resentment that left him helpless.

One day in autumn, when the borders of the Deerfield meadows were a

smoky purple with wild asters, and golden-rods flashed out like golden

flames in the midst of them, David Walcott had been pleading vainly

with Silence as she stood calling on the north terrace. Suddenly he

turned and rushed away, and his face was all convulsed like a weeping

child’s. As he came out of the thicket he met the old woman Goody

Crane, and would fain have hidden his face from her, but she stopped

him.

“Prithee stop a moment’s space, Master David Walcott,” said she.

“What would you?” David cried out in a surly tone, and he dashed the

back of his hand across his eyes.

“’Tis full moon to-night,” said the old woman, in a whisper. “Come out

here to-night when the moon shall be an hour high, and I promise ye she

shall know ye.”

The young man stared at her.

“I tell ye Mistress Silence Hoit shall know ye to-night,” repeated

the old woman. Her voice sounded hollow in the depths of her great

hood, which she donned early in the fall. Her eyes in the gloom of it

gleamed with a small dark brightness.

“I’ll have no witch-work tried on her,” said David, roughly.

“I’ll try no witch-work but mine own wits,” said Goody Crane. “If they

would hang me for a witch for that, then they may. None but I can cure

her. I tell ye, come out here to-night when the moon is an hour high;

and mind ye wear a white sheep’s fleece over your shoulders. I’ll harm

her not so much with my witch-work as ye’ll do with your love, for all

your prating.”

The old woman pushed past him to where Silence stood calling, and

waited there, standing in the shadow cast by the wild cherry-tree until

she ceased and turned away. Then she caught hold of the skirt of her

gown, and David stood, hidden by the thicket, listening.

“I prithee, Mistress Silence Hoit, listen but a moment,” said Goody

Crane.

Silence paused, and smiled at her gently and wearily.

“Give me your hand,” demanded the old woman.

And Silence held out her hand, flashing white in the green gloom, as if

she cared not.

The old woman turned the palm, bending her hooded head low over it.

“He draweth near!” she cried out suddenly; “he draweth near, with a

white sheep’s fleece over his shoulders! He cometh through the woods

from Canada. He will cross the meadow when the moon is an hour high

to-night. He will wear a white sheep’s fleece over his shoulders, and

ye’ll know him by that.”

Silence’s wandering eyes fastened upon her face.

The old woman caught hold of her shoulders and shook her to and fro.

“David! David! David Walcott!” she screamed. “David Walcott with a

white sheep’s fleece on his back! On the meadow! To-night when the

moon’s an hour high! Be ye out here to-night, Silence Hoit, if ye’d see

him a-coming down from the north!”

Silence gasped faintly when the old woman released her and went

muttering away. Presently she crept home, and sat down with her

knitting-work in the chimney-place.

When Eunice Bishop hung on the porridge-kettle, Goody Crane lifted the

latch-string and came in. It was growing dusky, but the moon would not

rise for an hour yet. Goody Crane sat opposite Silence, with her eyes

fixed upon her, and Silence, in spite of herself, kept looking at her.

A gold brooch at the old woman’s throat glittered in the firelight,

and that seemed to catch Silence’s eyes. She finally knitted with them

fixed upon it.

She scarcely took her eyes away when she ate her supper; then she sat

down to her knitting and knitted, and gazed, in spite of herself, at

the gold spot on the old woman’s throat.

The moon arose; the tree branches before the windows tossed half

in silver light; the air was shrill with crickets. Silence stirred

uneasily, and dropped stitches in her knitting-work. “He draweth near,”

muttered Goody Crane, and Silence quivered.

The moon was a half-hour high. Widow Bishop was spinning, Widow Spear

was winding quills, and Silence knitted. “He draweth near,” muttered

Goody Crane.

“I’ll have no witchcraft!” Silence cried out, suddenly and sharply. Her

aunt stopped spinning, and Widow Spear started.

“What’s that?” said her aunt. But Silence was knitting again.

“What meant you by that?” asked her aunt, sharply.

“I have dropped a stitch,” said Silence.

Her aunt spun again, with occasional wary glances. The moon was

three-quarters of an hour high. Silence gazed steadily at the gold

brooch at Goody Crane’s throat.

“The moon is near an hour high; you had best be going,” said the old

woman, in a low monotone.

Silence arose directly.

“Where go you at this time of night?” grumbled her aunt. But Silence

glided past her.

“You’ll lose your good name as well as your wits,” cried Eunice. But

she did not try to stop Silence, for she knew it was useless.

“A white sheep’s fleece over his shoulders,” muttered Goody Crane as

Silence went out of the door; and the other women marvelled what she

meant.

Silence Hoit went swiftly and softly down Deerfield street to her

old haunt on the north meadow terrace. She pushed in among the wild

cherry-trees, which waved, white with the moonlight, like ghostly arms

in her face. Then she called, setting her face towards Canada and the

north: “David! David! David!” But her voice had a different tone in it,

and it broke with her heart-beats.

David Walcott came slowly across the meadow below; a white fleece of a

sheep thrown over his back caught the moonlight. He came on, and on,

and on; then he went up the terrace to Silence. Her face, white like a

white flower in the moonlight, shone out suddenly close before him. He

waited a second, then he spoke. “Silence!” he said.

Then Silence gave a great cry, and threw her arms around his neck, and

pressed softly and wildly against him with her wet cheek to his.

“Know you who ’tis, sweetheart?”

“Oh, David, David!”

The trees arched like arbors with the weight of the wild grapes, which

made the air sweet; the night insects called from the bushes; Deerfield

village and the whole valley lay in the moonlight like a landscape

of silver. The lovers stood in each other’s arms, motionless, and

seemingly fixed as the New England flora around them, as if they too

might reappear hundreds of spring-times hence, with their loves as

fairly in blossom.