Читать книгу Hope Leslie (Historical Novel) - Catharine Maria Sedgwick - Страница 7

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“But ah, who can deceive his destiny,

Or ween, by Warning, to avoid his Fate?”

The Faerie Queene

On the following morning Mr Fletcher set out for Boston, and escaping all perils by flood and field, he arrived there at the expiration of nine days, having accomplished the journey, now the affair of a single day, with unusual expedition.

His wards were accompanied by two individuals who were now, with them, to become permanent members of his family. Mrs Grafton, the sister of their father, and one Master Cradock, a scholar “skilled in the tongues,” who attended them as their tutor. Mrs Grafton was a widow, far on the shady side of fifty; though, as that was a subject to which she never alluded, she probably regarded age with the feelings ascribed to her sex, that being the last quality for which womankind would wish to be honoured, as is said by one whose satire is so good-humoured that even its truth may be endured. She was, unhappily for herself as her lot was cast, a zealous adherent to the church of England. Good people, who take upon themselves the supervisorship of their neighbours’ consciences, abounded in that age; and from them Mrs Grafton received frequent exhortations and remonstrances. To these she uniformly replied, ‘that a faith and mode of religion that had saved so many was good enough to save her’ – ‘that she had received her belief, just as it was, from her father, and that he, not she, was responsible for it.’ Offensive such opinions must needs be in a community of professed reformers, but the good lady did not make them more so by the obtrusiveness of overwrought zeal. To confess the truth, her mind was far more intent on the forms of head-pieces, than modes of faith; and she was far more ambitious of being the leader of fashion, than the leader of a sect. She would have contended more earnestly for a favourite recipe, than a favourite dogma; and though she undoubtedly believed “a saint in crape” to be “twice a saint in lawn,” and fearlessly maintained that “no man could suitably administer the offices of religion without ‘gown, surplice, and wig,’” yet she chiefly directed her hostilities against the puritanical attire of the ladies of the colony, who, she insisted, ‘did most unnaturally belie their nature as women, and their birth and bringing-up as gentlewomen, by their ill-fashioned, ill-sorted, and unbecoming apparel.’ To this heresy she was fast gaining proselytes; for, if we may believe the “simple cobbler of Agawam,” there were, even in those early and pure day, “nugiperous gentle dames who inquired what dress the Queen is in this week.” The contagion spread rapidly; and when some of the most vigilant and zealous sentinels proposed that the preachers should make it the subject of public and personal reproof, it was whispered that the scandal was not limited to idle maidens, but that certain of the deacons’ wives were in it, and it was deemed more prudent to adopt gentle and private measures to eradicate the evil; an evil so deeply felt as to be bewailed by the merciless ‘cobbler,’ above quoted, in the following affecting terms: “Methinks it would break the hearts of Englishmen to see so many goodly English women imprisoned in French cages, peeping out of their hood-holes for some men of mercy to help them with a little wit, and nobody relieves them. We have about five or six of them in our colony. If I see any of them accidentally, I cannot cleanse my phansie of them for a month after.”

It would seem marvellous that a woman like Mrs Grafton, apparently engrossed with the world, living on the foam and froth of life, should become a voluntary exile to the colonies; but, to do her justice, she was kind-hearted and affectionate – susceptible of strong and controlling attachment, and the infant children of a brother on whom she had doted, outweighed her love of frivolous pleasures and personal indulgence.

She certainly believed that the resolution of her sister to go to the wilderness, had no parallel in the history of human folly and madness; but the resolution once taken, and, as she perceived, unconquerable, she made her own destiny conformable, not without some restiveness, but without serious repining. It was an unexpected shock to her to be compelled to leave Boston for a condition of life not only more rude and inconvenient, but really dangerous. Necessity, however, is more potent than philosophy, and Mrs Grafton, like most people, submitted with patience to an inevitable evil.

As ‘good Master Cradock’ was a man rather acted upon than acting, we shall leave him to be discovered by our readers as the light of others falls on him.

Mr Fletcher received the children – the relicts and gifts of a woman whom he had loved as few men can love, with an intense interest. The youngest, Mary, was a pretty petted child, wayward and bashful. She repelled Mr Fletcher’s caresses, and ran away from him to shelter herself in her aunt’s arms – but Alice, the eldest, seemed instinctively to return the love that beamed in the first glance that Mr Fletcher cast on her – in that brief eager glance he saw the living and beautiful image of her mother. So much was he impressed with the resemblance, that he said, in a letter to his wife, that it reminded him of the heathen doctrine of metempsychosis – and he could almost believe the spirit of the mother was transferred to the bosom of the child. The arrangement Mr Fletcher made, for the transportation of his charge to Springfield, might probably be traced to the preference inspired by this resemblance.

He dispatched the little Mary with her aunt and the brother of Magawisca, the Indian boy Oneco, and such attendants as were necessary for their safe conduct – and he retained Alice and the tutor to be the companions of his journey. Before the children were separated, they were baptised by the Reverend Mr Cotton, and in commemoration of the Christian graces of their mother, their names were changed to the puritanical appellations of Hope and Faith.

Mr Fletcher was detained, at first by business, and afterwards by ill-health, much longer than he had expected, and the fall, winter, and earliest months of spring wore away before he was able to set his face homeward. In the mean time, his little community at Bethel proceeded more harmoniously than could have been hoped from the discordant materials of which it was composed. This was owing, in great part, to the wise and gentle Mrs Fletcher, the sun of her little system – all were obedient to the silent influence that controlled, without being perceived. But a letter which she wrote to Mr Fletcher, just before his return, containing some important domestic details, may be deemed worth the perusal of our readers.

Springfield, 1636.

To my good and honoured husband!

Thy kind letter was duly received fourteen days after date, and was most welcome to me, containing, as it does, a portion of that stream of kindness that is ever flowing out from thy bountiful nature towards me. Sweet and refreshing was it, as these gentle days of spring after our sullen winter. Winter! ever disconsolate in these parts, but made tenfold more dreary by the absence of that precious light by which I have ever been cheered and guided.

I thank thee heartily, my dear life, that thou dost so warmly commend my poor endeavours to do well in thy absence. I have truly tried to be faithful to my little nestlings, and to cheer them with notes of gladness when I have drooped inwardly for the voice of my mate. Yet my anxious thoughts have been more with thee than with myself; nor have I been unmindful of any of thy perplexities by sickness and otherwise, but in all thy troubles I have been troubled, and have ever prayed, that whatever might betide me, thou mightest return, in safety, to thy desiring family.

I have had many difficulties to contend with in thy absence, of which I have forborne to inform thee, deeming it the duty of a wife never to disquiet her husband with her household cares; but now that, with the Lord’s permission, thou art so soon to be with us, I would fain render unto thee an account of my stewardship, knowing that thou art not an hard master, and wilt consider the will and not the weakness of thy loving wife.

This Dame Grafton is strangely out of place here – fitter for a parlour bird, than a flight into the wilderness; and but that she cometh commended to us as a widow, a name that is a draft from the Lord upon every Christian heart, we might find it hard to brook her light and wordly ways. She raileth, and yet I think not with an evil mind, but rather ignorantly, at our most precious faith, and hath even ventured to read aloud from her book of Common Prayer – an offence that she hath been prevented from repeating by the somewhat profane jest of our son Everell; whose love of mischief, proceeding from the gay temper of youth, I trust you will overlook. It was a few nights ago, when a storm was raging, that the poor lady’s fears were greatly excited. My womanish apprehensions had a hard struggle with my duty, so terrific was the hideous howling of the wolves, mingling with the blasts that swept through the forest; but I stilled my beating heart with the thought, that my children leant on me, and I must not betray my weakness. But Dame Grafton was beside herself. At one moment she fancied we should be the prey of the wild beast, and at the next, that she heard the alarm yell of the savages. Everell brought her, her prayer book, and affecting a well-beseeming gravity, he begged her to look out the prayer for distressed women, in imminent danger of being scalped by North American Indians. The poor lady, distracted with terror, seized the book, and turned over leaf after leaf, Everell meanwhile affecting to aid her search. In vain I shook my head, reprovingly, at the boy – in vain I assured Mistress Grafton that I trusted we were in no danger; she was beyond the influence of reason; nothing allayed her fears, till chancing to catch a glance of Everell’s eye, she detected the lurking laughter, and rapping him soundly over the ears with her book, she left the room greatly enraged. I grieve to add, that Everell evinced small sorrow for his levity, though I admonished him thereupon. At the same time I thought it a fit occasion to commend the sagacity whereby he had detected the shortcomings of written prayers, and to express my hope, that unpromising as his beginnings are, he may prove a son of Jacob that shall wrestle and prevail.

I have something farther to say of Everell, who is, in the main, a most devoted son, and as I believe, an apt scholar; as his master telleth me that he readeth Latin like his mother tongue, and is well grounded in the Greek. The boy doth greatly affect the company of the Pequod girl, Magawisca. If, in his studies, he meets with any trait of heroism, (and with such, truly, her mind doth seem naturally to assimilate) he straightway calleth for her and rendereth it into English, in which she hath made such marvellous progress, that I am sometimes startled with the beautiful forms in which she clothes her simple thoughts. She, in her turn, doth take much delight in describing to him the customs of her people, and relating their traditionary tales, which are like pictures, captivating to a youthful imagination. He hath taught her to read, and reads to her Spenser’s rhymes, and many other books of the like kind; of which, I am sorry to say, Dame Grafton hath brought hither stores. I have not forbidden him to read them, well knowing that the appetite of youth is often whetted by denial; and fearing that the boy might be tempted, secretly, to evade my authority; and I would rather expose him to all the mischief of this unprofitable lore, than to tempt him to a deceit that might corrupt the sweet fountain of truth – the well-spring of all that is good and noble.

I have gone far from my subject. When my boy comes before my mind’s eye, I can see no other object. But to return. I have not been unmindful of my duty to the Indian girl, but have endeavoured to instil into her mind the first principles of our religion, as contained in Mr Cotton’s Catechism, and elsewhere. But, alas! to these her eye is shut and her ear is closed, not only with that blindness and deafness common to the natural man, but she entertaineth an aversion, which has the fixedness of principle, and doth continually remind me of Hannibal’s hatred to Rome, and is like that inwrought with her filial piety. I have, in vain, attempted to subdue her to the drudgery of domestic service, and make her take part with Jennet; but as hopefully might you yoke a deer with an ox. It is not that she lacks obedience to me – so far as it seems she can command her duty, she is ever complying; but it appeareth impossible to her to clip the wings of her soaring thoughts, and keep them down to household matters.

I have, sometimes, marvelled at the providence of God, in bestowing on this child of the forest, such rare gifts of mind, and other and outward beauties. Her voice hath a natural deep and most sweet melody in it, far beyond any stringed instrument. She hath too, (think not that I, like Everell, am, as Jennet saith, a charmed bird to her) she hath, though yet a child in years, that in her mien that doth bring to mind the lofty Judith, and the gracious Esther. When I once said this to Everell, he replied, “Oh, mother! is she not more like the gentle and tender Ruth?” To him she may be, and therefore it is, that innocent and safe as the intercourse of these children now is, it is for thee to decide whether it be not most wise to remove the maiden from our dwelling. Two young plants that have sprung up in close neighbourhood, may be separated while young; but if disjoined after their fibres are all intertwined, one, or perchance both, may perish.

Think not that this anxiety springs from the mistaken fancy of a woman, that love is the natural channel for all the purposes, and thoughts, and hopes, and feelings of human life. Neither think, I beseech thee, that doting with a foolish fondness upon my noble boy, I magnify into importance whatsoever concerneth him. No – my heart yearneth towards this poor heathen orphan girl; and when I see her, in his absence, starting at every sound, and her restless eye turning an asking glance at every opening of the door; every movement betokening a disquieted spirit, and then the sweet contentment that stealeth over her face when he appeareth; – oh, my honoured husband! all my woman’s nature feeleth for her – not for any present evil, but for what may betide.

Having commended this subject to thy better wisdom, I will leave caring for it to speak to thee of others of thy household. Your three little girls are thriving mightily, and as to the baby, you will not be ashamed to own him; though you will not recognise, in the bouncing boy that plays bo-peep and creeps quite over the room, the little creature who had scarcely opened his eyes on the world, when you went away. He is by far the largest child I ever had, and the most knowing; he has cut his front upper teeth, and sheweth signs of two more. He is surprisingly fond of Oneco, and clappeth his hands with joy whenever he sees him. Indeed, the boy is a favourite with all the young ones, and greatly aideth me by continually pleasuring them. He is far different from his sister – gay and volatile, giving scarcely one thought to the past, and not one care to the future. His sister often taketh him apart to discourse with him, and sometimes doth produce a cast of seriousness over his countenance, but at the next presented object, it vanisheth as speedily as a shadow before a sunbeam. He hath commended himself greatly to the favour of Dame Grafton, by his devotion to her little favourite: a spoiled child is she, and it seemeth a pity that the name of Faith was given to her, since her shrinking timid character doth not promise, in any manner, to resemble that most potent of the Christian graces. Oneco hath always some charm to lure her waywardness. He bringeth home the treasures of the woods to please her – berries, and wild flowers, and the beautiful plumage of birds that are brought down by his unerring aim. Everell hath much advantage from the woodcraft of Oneco: the two boys daily enrich our table, which, in truth, hath need of such helps, with the spoils of the air and water.

I am grieved to tell thee that some misrule hath crept in among thy servants in thy absence. Alas, what are sheep without their shepherd! Digby is, as ever, faithful – not serving with eye-service; but Hutton hath consorted much with some evildoers, who have been violating the law of God and the law of our land, by meeting together in merry companies, playing cards, dancing, and the like. For these offences, they were brought before Mr Pynchon, and sentenced to receive, each, “twenty stripes well laid on.” Hutton furthermore, having been overtaken with drink, was condemned to wear suspended around his neck for one month, a bit of wood on which Toper is legibly written: – and Darby, who is ever a dawdler, having gone, last Saturday, with the cart to the village, dilly-dallied about there, and did not set out on his return till the sun was quite down, both to the eye and by the calender. Accordingly, early on the following Monday, he was summoned before Mr Pynchon, and ordered to receive ten stripes, but by reason of his youth and my intercession, which, being by a private letter, doubtless had some effect, the punishment was remitted; whereupon he heartily promised amendment and a better carriage.

There hath been some alarm here within the last few days, on account of certain Indians who have been seen lurking in the woods around us. They are reported not to have a friendly appearance. We have been advised to remove, for the present, to the Fort; but as I feel no apprehension, I shall not disarrange my family by taking a step that would savour more of fear than prudence. I say I feel no apprehension – yet I must confess it – I have a cowardly womanish spirit, and fear is set in motion by the very mention of danger. There are vague forebodings hanging about me, and I cannot drive them away even by the thought that your presence, my honoured husband, will soon relieve me from all agitating apprehensions, and repair all the faults of my poor judgment. Fearful thoughts press on me – untoward accidents have prolonged thy absence – our re-union may yet be far distant, and if it should never chance in this world, oh remember that if I have fallen far short in duty, the measure of my love hath been full. I have ever known that mine was Leah’s portion – that I was not the chosen and the loved one; and this has sometimes made me fearful – often joyless – but remember, it is only the perfect love of the husband that casteth out the fear of the wife.

I have one request to prefer to thee which I have lacked courage to make by word of mouth, and therefore now commend it by letter to thy kindness. Be gracious unto me, my dear husband, and deem not that I overstep the modest bound of a woman’s right in meddling with that which is thy prerogative – the ordering of our eldest son’s education. Everell here hath few except spiritual privileges. God, who seeth my heart, knoweth I do not undervalue these – the manna of the wilderness. Yet to them might be added worldly helps, to aid the growth of the boy’s noble gifts, a kind Providence having opened a wide door therefor in the generous offer of my brother Stretton. True, he hath not attained to our light whereby manifold errors of church and state are made visible; yet he hath ever borne himself uprightly, and to us, most lovingly, and as I remember there was a good Samaritan, and a faithful centurion, I think we are permitted to enlarge the bounds of our charity to those who work righteousness, albeit not of our communion.

Thou hast already sown the good seed in our boy’s heart, and it hath been (I say it not presumingly) nurtured with a mother’s tears and prayers. Trust then to the promised blessing, and fear not to permit him to pass a few years in England, whence he will return to be a crown of glory to thee, my husband, and a blessing and honour to our chosen country. Importunity, I know, is not beseeming in a wife – it is the instrument of weakness, whereby, like the mouse in the fable, she would gnaw away what she cannot break. I will not, therefore, urge thee farther, but leave the decision to thy wisdom and thy love. And now, my dear husband, I kiss and embrace thee, and may God company with thee, and restore thee, if it be his good pleasure, to thy ever faithful and loving and obedient wife,

Martha Fletcher.

To her honoured husband these be delivered.

The above letter may indicate, but it feebly expresses, the character and state of mind of the writer. She never magnified her love by words, but expressed it by that self-devoting, self-sacrificing conduct to her husband and children, which characterizes, in all ages and circumstances, faithful and devoted woman. She was too generous to communicate all her fears, (about which a woman is usually least reserved) to her husband.

Some occurrences of the preceding day had given her just cause of alarm. At a short distance from Bethel, (the name that Mr Fletcher had given his residence) there lived an old Indian woman, one of the few survivors of a tribe who had been faithful allies of the Pequods. After the destruction of her people, she had strayed up the banks of the Connecticut, and remained in Springfield. She was in the habit of supplying Mrs Fletcher with wild berries and herbs, and receiving favours in return, and on that day went thither, as it appeared, on her customary errand. She had made her usual barter, and had drawn her blanket around her as if to depart, but still she lingered standing before Mrs Fletcher and looking fixedly at her. Mrs Fletcher did not at first observe her; her head was bent over her infant sleeping on her lap, in the attitude of listening to its soft breathing. As she perused its innocent face a mother’s beautiful visions floated before her; but, as she raised her eye and met the piercing glance of the old woman, a dark cloud came over the clear heaven of her thoughts. Nelema’s brow was contracted, her lips drawn in, and her little sunken eye gleamed like a diamond from its dark recess.

“Why do you look at my baby thus?” asked Mrs Fletcher.

The old woman replied in her own dialect, in a hurried inarticulate manner. “What says she, Magawisca?” asked Mrs Fletcher of the Indian girl who stood beside her, and seemed to listen with unwonted interest.

“She says, madam, the baby is like a flower just opened to the sun, with no stain upon it – that he better pass now to the Great Spirit. She says this world is all a rough place – all sharp stones, and deep waters, and black clouds.”

“Oh, she is old, Magawisca, and the days have come to her that have no pleasure in them. Look there,” she said, “Nelema, at my son Everell;’ the boy was at the moment passing the window, flushed with exercise and triumphantly displaying a string of game that he had just brought from the forest – “Is there not sunshine in my boy’s face! To him every day is bright, and every path is smooth.”

“Ah!” replied the old woman with a heavy groan, “I had sons too – and grandsons; but where are they? They trod the earth as lightly as that boy; but they have fallen like our forest trees, before the stroke of the English axe. Of all my race, there is not one, now, in whose veins my blood runs. Sometimes, when the spirits of the storm are howling about my wigwam, I hear the voices of my children crying for vengeance, and then I could myself deal the death blow.” Nelema spoke with vehemence and wild gesture; and her language, though interpreted by Magawisca’s soft voice, had little tendency to allay the feeling her manner inspired. Mrs Fletcher recoiled from her, and instinctively drew her baby closer to her breast.

“Nay,” said the old woman, “fear me not, I have had kindness from thee, thy blankets have warmed me, I have been fed from thy table, and drank of thy cup, and what is this arm,” and she threw back her blanket and stretched out her naked, shrivelled, trembling arm, “what is this to do the work of vengeance?”

She paused for an instant, glanced her eye wildly around the room, and then again fixed it on Mrs Fletcher and her infant. “They spared not our homes,” she said; “there where our old men spoke, where was heard the song of the maiden, and the laugh of our children; there now all is silence, dust, and ashes. I can neither harm thee, nor help thee. When the stream of vengeance rolls over the land, the tender shoot must be broken, and the goodly tree uprooted, that gave its pleasant shade and fruits to all.”

“It is a shame and a sin,” said Jennet who entered the room just as Magawisca was conveyveying Nelema’s speech to Mrs Fletcher; “a crying shame, for this heathen hag to be pouring forth here as if she were gifted like the prophets of old; she that can only see into the future by reading the devil’s book, and if that be the case, as more than one has mistrusted, it were best, forthwith, to deliver her to the judges and cast her into prison.”

“Peace, Jennet,” said Mrs Fletcher, alarmed lest Nelema should hear her, and her feelings, which were then at an exalted pitch, should be wrought to frenzy; but her apprehensions were groundless; the old woman saw nothing but the visions of her imagination; heard nothing but the fancied voices of the spirits of her race. She continued for a few moments to utter her thoughts in low inarticulate murmurs, and then, without again addressing Mrs Fletcher, or raising her eyes, she left the house.

A few moments after her departure, Mrs Fletcher perceived that she had dropped at her feet a little roll, which she found on examination, to be an arrow, and the rattle of a rattlesnake enveloped in a skin of the same reptile. She knew it was the custom of the savages to express much meaning by these symbols, and she turned to demand an explanation of Magawisca, who was deeply skilled in all the ways of her people.

Magawisca had disappeared, and Jennet, who had ever looked on the poor girl with a jealous and an evil eye, took this occasion to give vent to her feelings. “It is a pity,” she said, “the child is out of the way the first time she was like to do a service; she may be skilled in snake’s rattles, and bloody arrows, for I make no doubt she is as used to them, as I am to my broom and scrubbing-cloth.”

“Will you call Magawisca to me,” said Mrs Fletcher, in a voice that from her would have been a silencing reproof to a more sensitive ear than Jennet’s; but she, no ways daunted, replied, “Ah! that will I, madam, if I can find her; but where to look for her no mere mortal can tell; for she does not stay longer on a perch than a butterfly, unless indeed, it be when she is working on Mr Everell’s moccasins, or filling his ears with wild fables about those rampaging Indians. Ah, there she is!” she exclaimed, looking through the window, “talking with Nelema, just a little way in the wood – there, I see their heads above those scrub – oaks – see their wild motions – see Magawisca starts homeward – now the old woman pulls her back – now she seems entreating Nelema – the old hag shakes her head – Magawisca covers her eyes – what can all this mean? no good, I am sure. The girl is ever going to Nelema’s hut, and of moonlight nights too, when they say witches work their will – birds of a feather flock together. Well, I know one thing, that if Master Everell was mine, I would sooner, in faith, cast him into the lion’s den, or the fiery furnace, than leave him to this crafty offspring of a race that are the children and heirs of the evil one.”

“Jennet,” said Mrs Fletcher, “thy tongue far outruns thy discretion. Restrain thy foolish thoughts, and bid Magawisca come to me.”

Jennet sullenly obeyed, and soon after Magawisca entered. Mrs Fletcher was struck with her changed aspect. She turned away, as one conscious of possessing a secret, and fearful that the eye, the herald of the soul, will speak unbidden. Her air was troubled and anxious, and instead of her usual light and lofty step, she moved timidly and dejectedly.

“Come to me, Magawisca,” said Mrs Fletcher, “and deal truly by me, as I have ever dealt by thee.”

She obeyed, and as she stood by Mrs Fletcher the poor girl’s tears dropped on her benefactor’s lap. “Thou hast been more than true,” she said, “thou hast been kind to me as the mother-bird that shelters the wanderer in her nest.”

“Then, Magawisca, if it concerneth me to know it, thou wilt explain the meaning of this roll which Nelema dropped at my feet.”

The girl started and became very pale – to an observing eye, the changes of the olive skin are as apparent as those of a fairer complexion. She took the roll from Mrs Fletcher and shut her eyes fast. Her bosom heaved convulsively; but after a short struggle with conflicting feelings, she said, deliberately, in a low voice – “That which I may speak without bringing down on me the curse of my father’s race, I will speak. This,” she added, unfolding the snake’s skin, “this betokeneth the unseen and silent approach of an enemy. This, you know,” and she held up the rattle, “is the warning voice that speaketh of danger near. And this,” she concluded, taking the arrow in her trembling hand, “this is the symbol of death.”

“And why, Magawisca, are these fearful tokens given to me? Dost thou know, girl, aught of a threatening enemy – of an ambushed foe?”

“I have said all that I may say,” she replied.

Mrs Fletcher questioned further, but could obtain no satisfaction. Magawisca’s lips were sealed; and it was certain that if her resolution did not yield to the entreaties of her own heart, it would resist every other influence.

Mrs Fletcher summoned Everell, and bade him urge Magawisca to disclose whatever Nelema had communicated. He did so, but sportively, for, he said, “the old woman was cracked, and Magawisca’s head was turned. If there were indeed danger,” he continued, “and Magawisca was apprised of it, think you, mother, she would permit us to remain in ignorance?” He turned an appealing glance to Magawisca, but her face was averted. Without suspecting this was intentional, he continued, “you ought to do penance, Magawisca, for the alarm you have given mother. You and I will act as her patrol tonight.”

Magawisca assented, and appeared relieved by the proposition, though her gloom was not lightened by Everell’s gaiety. Mrs Fletcher did not, of course, acquiesce in this arrangement, but she deemed it prudent to communicate her apprehensions to her trusty Digby. After a short consultation, it was agreed that Digby should remain on guard during the night, and that the two other menservants should have their muskets in order, and be ready at a moment’s warning. Such precautions were not infrequent, and caused no unusual excitement in the household. Mrs Fletcher had it, as she expressed herself, ‘borne in upon her mind, after the evening exercise, to make some remarks upon the uncertainty of life.’ She then dismissed the family to their several apartments, and herself retired to indite the epistle given above.

Everell observed Magawisca closely through the evening, and he was convinced, from the abstraction of her manner and from the efforts she made, (which were now apparent to him) to maintain a calm demeanor, that there was more ground for his mother’s apprehensions than he, at first, supposed. He determined to be the companion of Digby’s watch, and standing high in that good fellow’s confidence, he made a private arrangement with him, which he easily effected without his mother’s knowledge, for his youthful zeal did not render him regardless of the impropriety of heightening her fears.