“The earth—all.”
“And thou wert left all alone. I pity thee, Mordecai.”
Now, Quaker Eunice knit. She not only knit stockings and garters, but comforters for the neck, and gallows, as suspenders for trousers were then called. The latter were called galluses. She did not knit these useful and convenient articles for her own people alone, but for those who most needed them.
When serene Aunt Eunice saw how friendless the drover boy Mordecai was, her benevolent heart quickened, and she resolved to knit for him a comforter of many bright colors, a yard long, and a pair of gallows of stout twine, to give him on his return another year, when the cattle traders should come down from Boston. It took time to fabricate these high-art treasures of many kinds and colors. So when Mordecai was leaving the inn this year, she called after him:
“Mordecai, thee halt in thy goings.”
Mordecai looked back.
“Boy, thee has no mother to look after thee now, except from the spirit-world. I am going to knit a comforter for thee that will go around thy neck three times and hang down at that. I will set the dye-pot and dye the wool—the ash-barrel is almost full now. And thee listen. I am going to knit a pair of gallows for thee——”
The boy’s eyes dilated. He had never heard the word used before except for the cords that hung pirates on the green isle in Boston harbor. Did she expect him to be hung?
“I will knit the gallows stout and strong, so that they will hold. But I must not tell thee all about it now—thee shall know all another year, after killing-time, in the Indian summer, when the wich-hazels that bloom in the fall are in flower.”
Mordecai, who had been filled with New England superstitions by the drovers’ tales in the country inns, stood with open mouth, when Aunt Eunice added: