"Yes, that's Goody Brown's, I reckon."
The stranger stopped short.
"You may return now. I can make my way alone."
The sailor seemed a little disappointed, but he kept on whittling, and only answered:
"Wal, jest as you're a mind ter; but I kinder reckon you'll miss it in the long run."
"Miss it, how?"
"Oh, I don't mean nothing particular, only the streets of Boston are rather sarpentine for strangers, and I kinder feel as if I hadn't more 'en half arned my money yet."
The stranger fell into thought a moment and then answered cheerfully:
"You are right, my good fellow, I shall want a guide. Stay here and take charge of my bag till I come back; then we will return to the town together."
The sailor sat down on a rock, and placing the leathern bag at his feet kept on whittling with an energy that would have seemed spiteful but for his unmoved features. The traveller left him and walked forward toward the farm-house. Goody Brown was in her hand-loom weaving a piece of linen from the yarn she had spun a year before. Her rather trim feet, cased in calf-skin shoes and yarn stockings, even as her daily toil could make them, were rising and falling on the treadles with monotonous jerks. She leaned over from her seat in front of the huge loom, throwing her shuttle through the web with such earnest industry that every ten minutes the sharp click of the turning cloth-beam proclaimed her progress. Directly the headles—or harness, as she called it—would groan and struggle from the renewed tread of her feet, while the flight of the shuttle, the bang of the laith, and the thud of the treadles made such household music as the women of New England gloried in. She was busy fitting a quill into her shuttle when a strange form darkened the open door. But her heart was in her work, and she drew the thread through the eye of her shuttle with a quick breath and a motion of the tongue before she looked directly that way. Then she saw a remarkably handsome young man standing upon the threshold, holding his cap in one hand as if she had been an empress on her throne.