"And died there?"
"Is Tituba dead that you ask this question of her?"
Abby stooped down, trembling all over, and drew the old woman up to her bosom. She kissed her withered face and her swarthy hands, with a burst of passionate feeling.
"And is it so? God forgive me that I did not guess this before! And you have been our slave, our drudge! The meanest work of the house has always been put upon Tituba—poor old Tituba, who saved our mothers from the flames, who followed us from wilderness to settlement, who left her own people for our sakes. And you are so old too! How many years, Tituba, has it taken to make this hair so gray?"
"Tituba is almost a hundred years old; but she can see like a night-hawk, and hear like a fox. When her children want help, they will find her thought keen and her feet swift!"
"But you shall work no more. I will save you from drudgery at least."
"No, no. Let Tituba alone. She is used to it. Work—work—work. What would Tituba be without work? Let her plod on in the old way, Mahaska. The tree thrives best in its own soil. Dig honeysuckles and wild strawberries from the wood—plant them in your garden, and they grow. But when an old hemlock begins to die like this, let it stand—stir not the earth about its roots."
The old woman touched her gray hair as she spoke, and drooped into her old position. Abby sat looking at her in tender astonishment. She could understand the great love which had brought that noble savage from the wilderness to be a drudge in her uncle's kitchen; it exalted the old, withered creature at her feet into a heroine.
"And for our sakes you gave up your people, your free life, all that makes the happiness of a forest child; and came here to be a slave!"
"Tituba only followed her child!" was the simple answer.