"The bleak, bare crags for me—flowery hollows for her," said Abigail, despondingly. "It was so with our mothers; it must be so with us."
As she spoke, the outer door of the house opened, and Wahpee, an old Indian, who, like Tituba, had been for years a hanger-on of the minister's kitchen, entered the sitting-room. He had been absent some days, and it was in expectation of his return that the young girl and Tituba were sitting up so late.
The Indian seemed tired with travel. His dress of homespun linen was torn in places, and the rents pinned up with thorns just plucked from their trees. The lank hair was moist, and a rain of perspiration glistened on his tawny forehead. Abby rose from her seat, and went eagerly toward him.
"Wahpee—Wahpee, have you seen him?—where is he now? Have any number of his people joined him yet?"
Wahpee shook his head.
"Ask Wahpee nothing; he has no words. Give him bread and dried-beef. The Wampanoags planted no corn, and they have no muskets to shoot down the deer that look in their eyes without moving as they file one by one through the woods. Even the young fawns grow bold, now that the warriors have given up their guns."
"And is he near and hungry?" cried Abby, hastening to the kitchen, where old Tituba was dragging forth bread from a huge oven, in which it had been left after the week's baking; and crowding loaf after loaf into a flour sack, she helped to lift it on Wahpee's back.
Both Abigail Williams and Tituba would have followed the old Indian into the forest; but he curtly ordered them back, and went on himself, carrying the bag of bread. They stole after him at a distance, notwithstanding his interdict, till they came to the meeting-house. Here they paused. The shadows upon the brink of the woods were black as death; and as the old man entered them he was lost in an instant.
"Let us wait," said Tituba, "they will come out together. Metacomet will come to his mother's grave; and then we shall know what he is doing."
Abigail went silently after the old woman, and sat down on a flat stone, half buried in moss and ferns, at the foot of a huge pine tree, which sheltered two graves. There she seemed covered by a vast pall, the shadows fell so heavily upon her.