“No, indeed,” replied Stephen gaily, “and when I climb King James’ Tree again I will surely be more careful.”
Mistress Sheffield, as she heard his cheery words, turned quickly and went out of the room, closing the door behind her.
“Lest you have such another mischance,” said Amos, “I think I must give you my lucky penny that is supposed to keep off just such evil fortune.” As he spoke he felt in the deep pockets of his sailor’s coat and drew forth a battered old silver coin. “It may have power and it may have none, but certain it is that I have carried it since I was a smaller boy than you and have not yet come to any very grievous harm in spite of many adventurings. It once belonged to—whom do you suppose? None other than Master Simon’s sworn enemy, the shoemaker, Samuel Skerry.”
“Samuel Skerry?” repeated Stephen, wondering. “I thought that he disappeared the day after Margeret Bardwell’s marriage and was never seen again. My mother has told me many tales of the shoemaker and his wicked ways, but she has never spoken of his homecoming.”
“I think she never knew of it,” replied Amos, “nor am I myself certain, though I have pondered the matter a hundred times, whether he ever really came back or not. But my old nurse swore always that he did. When our house was crowded she used to dwell sometimes in the shoemaker’s cottage, and it was there she thought she saw him.”
“You say he came back?” questioned Stephen. “I do not see how he dared.”
“I am not sure if he really did, but such was old Betsey’s tale. She said that as she went toward her little dwelling very late one winter night she was amazed to see footsteps in the snow along the path and to catch the glint of firelight through the window. She peeped in through a crack of the door and saw the shoemaker himself, a little shrunken, bent, old man, leaning over the hearth and holding out his hands to the blaze. Then, while she watched, he climbed upon the seat of the big armchair and thrust his hand into an opening behind the cupboard. She was holding her breath and peering in with such curiosity as to what he would do next that she leaned over hard against the rickety old door and it burst open, casting her headlong into the room.”
“O-oh,” gasped Stephen, wriggling in delighted excitement, although the sudden movement cost him a sharp reminder of his recent fall; “oh, what happened then?”
“She screamed aloud with terror, thinking she was in the presence of a ghost, and he too gave a startled cry as he stepped down from the chair and dropped something that rolled ringing and jingling across the floor. But in a moment he turned upon her with eager questionings, about Master Simon and Roger Bardwell and my grandmother, Margeret Radpath. And over and over he asked, ‘But Master Simon’s garden, does it bloom as fair as once it did?’ Something he said also of a message, having to do with Master Simon, that he had come all the long way across the sea to leave with the minister of Hopewell, yet what such an errand might be he would not say. In the end he gave her the silver coin that had fallen jingling upon the floor, saying, ‘I found this in my old hiding-hole behind the cupboard where it chanced to be left behind after my hasty flight. They say that money long lost and found again brings good luck, so keep it to buy your silence concerning my visit here.’ She took the coin and bent to examine it in the firelight, for it was one of the clumsy old shillings of the Colony’s first coinage. When she looked up again—he was gone. She came running back to the kitchen door of our big house and burst in among the other servants crying that there were ghosts and witches in the shoemaker’s hut and that she would never enter its door again. Nor did she! But the coin she held in high reverence as a lucky charm and insisted upon giving it to me when I was eight years old.”
“Do you believe she really saw the shoemaker?” asked Stephen. “Did you never hear more of his visit than that?”