John Penn returned to Philadelphia without visiting Penn’s Valley or Penn’s Cave or John Penn’s Creek. He had seen them previously in 1755 when they bore their original Indian names, and his heart was still sad. It was not long after returning that he again started on another expedition up the Susquehanna, traveling by canoe, just as his grandfather, William Penn, had done in his supposedly fabulous trip to the sources of the West Branch at Cherry Tree, in 1700. A stop was made at Fisher’s stone house, Fisher’s Ferry. A group of pioneers had heard of his coming and gave the little Governor a rousing ovation. He felt nearest to being happy when among the frontier people, who understood him, and his trials had, like Byron, made him “the friend of mountains”; he was still simple at heart. In the kitchen, seated by the inglenook, he heard someone’s incessant coughing in an inner room. He asked the landlord, old Peter Fisher, who was suffering so acutely.
“Why, sir,” replied Fisher, “it’s an Englishwoman dying.”
In those days people’s nationalities in Pennsylvania were more sharply defined, and any English-speaking person was always called an “Englishwoman” or an “Englishman,” as the case might be.
“Tell me about her,” said the Governor, with ill-concealed curiosity.
“It’s a strange story, it might give Your Worship offense,” faltered the old innkeeper. “They tell it, sir, though it’s doubtless a lie, that Your Excellency cared for this Englishwoman, and your enemies had her kidnapped by two Indians and taken to Canada. The Indians were paid for keeping her there until a few years ago, when their remittances suddenly stopped and they came home; one, it is said, was murdered soon after. Arvas, his companion, was accused of the crime, but he stopped here for a night, a few weeks afterwards, and swore to me that he was guiltless. The Englishwoman finally got away and walked all the way back from a place called Muskoka, but she caught cold and consumption on the way, and is on her death-bed now. I knew her in all her youth and beauty at Peter Allen’s, where she was always the belle of the balls there; she had been brought up a Quaker, but my, how she could dance. You would not know her now.”
“I want to see her,” said the Governor, rising to his feet.
It was getting dark, so Fisher lit a rushlight, and led the way. He opened the heavy door without rapping. His wife and daughter sat on high-backed rush-bottomed chairs on either side of the big four-poster bed, which had come from the Rhine country. On the bed lay a woman of about forty years, frightfully emaciated by suffering, whose exaggeratedly clear-cut features were accentuated in their marble look by the pallor of oncoming dissolution. Her wavy, dark hair, parted in the middle, made her face seem even whiter.
“Mary, Mary,” said the little Governor, as he ran to her side, seizing the white hands which lay on the flowered coverlet.
“John, my darling John,” gasped the dying woman.
“Leave us alone together,” commanded the Governor.