MASONIC TEMPLE.
“Charity begins at home,” replied Tom; “I must take care of myself in these hard times.”
“You have made so much money out of me,” said the speculator.
Tom lost his patience and his piety. “The devil take me,” said he, “if I have made a farthing!”
Just then there were three loud knocks at the street door. He stepped out to see who was there. A black man was holding a black horse, which neighed and stamped with impatience.
“Tom, you’re come for!” said the black fellow, gruffly. Tom shrunk back, but too late. He had left his little Bible at the bottom of his coat pocket, and his big Bible on the desk, buried under the mortgage he was about to foreclose. Never was sinner taken more unawares. The black man whisked him like a child astride the horse, and away he galloped in the midst of a thunder-storm. The clerks stuck their pens behind their ears, and stared after him from the windows. Away went Tom Walker, dashing down the streets, his white cap bobbing up and down, his morning-gown fluttering in the wind, and his steed striking fire out of the pavement at every bound. When the clerks turned to look for the black man he had disappeared.
Tom Walker never returned to foreclose the mortgage. A countryman who lived on the borders of the swamp, reported that in the height of the thunder-gust he had heard a great clattering of hoofs and a howling along the road, and that when he ran to the window he just caught sight of a figure, such as I have described, on a horse that galloped like mad across the fields, over the hills and down into the black hemlock swamp toward the old Indian fort; and that shortly after a thunder-bolt fell in that direction, which seemed to set the whole forest in a blaze.
The good people of Boston shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders, but had been so much accustomed to witches and goblins and tricks of the devil in all kinds of shapes from the first settlement of the colony, that they were not so much horror-struck as might have been expected. Trustees were appointed to take charge of Tom’s effects. There was nothing, however, to administer upon. On searching his coffers, all his bonds and mortgages were found reduced to cinders. In place of gold and silver, his iron chest was filled with chips and shavings; two skeletons lay in his stable instead of his half-starved horses; and the very next day his great house took fire and was burnt to the ground.
Such was the end of Tom Walker and his ill-gotten wealth. Let all griping money-brokers lay this to heart. The truth of it is not to be doubted. The very hole under the oak-trees, from whence he dug Kidd’s money, is to be seen to this day; and the neighboring swamp and old Indian fort is often haunted in stormy nights by a figure on horseback, in a morning-gown and white cap, which is doubtless the troubled spirit of the usurer. In fact, the story has resolved itself into a proverb, and is the origin of that popular saying, prevalent throughout New England, of “The Devil and Tom Walker.”
THE OLD SMOKE CHAMBER.
A PICTURE OF THE MOUNT HOPE LANDS, AND THEIR LEGENDS.
That the old Royall house was haunted had long been a legend in the Mount Hope lands. Nearly all of the old houses in this part of New England were haunted, or supposed to be. A house without its ghost lore would have been regarded in old colony days as a place of but little interest. Did not evil spirits tempt all good people, and frighten all wrong-doers? And what a colorless family that must have been to have been wholly neglected by the ghost-world! All old women had their ghost-stories, and not a few claimed that the “Prince of the Power of the Air” had made them, or some of their antique relatives, a special visit. There seems to have been few good spirits in those lively and dramatic old times. The Puritan imagination had no fairy-land, or Hebraic or mediæval angels. The telling of ghost-stories to children was held to be a very wholesome and pious occupation, but the relation of fairy tales would have been a sin. No historian has overdrawn these colonial superstitions. Witches walked the air, the dead did not sleep well nights, but were ever getting up out of their graves and returning to their old places to warn the living. The spirit-world of darkness was an ever-present reality, a nightly terror, and there were no angel chariots in the clouds, nor angel feet in the ways of sorrow and death. New England was a goblin-land. Going to bed in some distant chamber in an old oak house was a specially perilous journey for the young Puritan to make; one could never tell whether one’s dead grandfather was in his grave at that hour or not. Young folks with disturbed consciences went to bed with alacrity, and drew the sheets over their heads quickly, in Cotton Mather’s day.
The Mount Hope lands! How beautiful they were and are! But the old houses on them were filled with dark superstitions. This is not strange, for the Mount Hope lands had been the fields of great events. Few places in America had such a romantic history.
“Here once red warriors were wont to assemble,
Here lurid and ghostly their council fires shone,
Here the word of the chief made the ancient tribes tremble,
And the war-whoop rung out from Pometacom’s throne.
“Gone, gone are the tribes from the scenes that they cherished,
The forests no longer encompass the tide,
The happy flocks sleep where Pometacom perished,
And wanders the heron where Wetamoo died.
“And here on this ocean mound silently lying,
Where tidal waves falling the far seas intone,
Where the sail on the bay like the osprey is flying,
The olden tribes rest from their warfare unknown.
“The mild air of spring-time embeds them in flowers,
The orioles here from the tropics return,
The grain ripens on them in midsummer’s hours,
And mellowing falls by the river sides burn.”
If the archæologists may be trusted, here came Leif Ericson in A. D. 1000, and wintered in Mount Hope Bay. A rock is still shown at a place called the Narrows, on which is a partly effaced inscription, which is claimed to have been made by the Northmen. On the Mount Hope lands, it is probable, was the first temporary settlement ever made in the territory which is now the United States. This was nearly five hundred years before the Columbian discovery. Here lived Massasoit, whose great heart protected the infant colony of Plymouth for forty or more years. Massasoit was a poet by nature; he loved inspiring scenery, and he made the glacier-carved slope of land overhanging these bright waterways to the sea his royal seat. On this neck of land, between the Narragansett and the Mount Hope bays, were his three royal villages, or places of lodges, each hard by a living spring of water. There was passed the boyhood of Alexander (Wamsutta) and King Philip (Pometacom). Here the forests were full of game, the shores of shell-fish, and the bays were rich fishing-fields for the white and airy birch canoes. There came young John Hampden, the English patriot and commoner, already inspired to defend popular rights against kingly power. He made the visit with Edward Winslow, and found Massasoit at Sowams (now Warren, Rhode Island), one of the three royal villages. The chief was sick, and Hampden helped make broth for him, and to nurse him, and under his and Winslow’s care the old chief recovered; and it was Indian gratitude for the kindly offices of these two wonderful men that made him a lifelong friend to the growing colonies. The scene of John Hampden in the lodge of Massasoit by the living spring of Sowams, which may still be seen close to the Warren River, is worthy of a poet or painter. May it one day find both! Here Captain Kidd, of ballad fame, was supposed to have hidden treasure. Here came Roger Williams, in exile, and met in the lodge of Massasoit—what he had not found at Salem—the spirit of a Christian hospitality. It was here his mind was active in evolving the great principles of religious liberty that have emancipated the human conscience from the rule of state throughout the world. There should be a monument to Massasoit on the Mount Hope lands; no chieftain ever better deserved a shaft of fame. Here were King Philip’s war-dances, and here the romantic Wetamoo came to attend them, crossing the starlit bay in her white canoe. Here Philip was killed, returning a fugitive to the ancient burying-ground of his race, and the warrior-queen Wetamoo was drowned, with her heart in vain longing for the beautiful hills that on either side of the bay met her eyes. Here Washington came to rest in 1793, and was the guest of William Bradford, then a United States Senator, who lived at the Mount. The descendants of Governor Bradford used to relate how the two statesmen, clad in “black velvet, with ruffles about their wrists and at their bosoms, and with powdered hair, promenaded the piazza, and talked together hour after hour.”
JAPANESE HO-O-DEN.
Leif Ericson, Massasoit, John Hampden, Roger Williams, Washington—what an array of great names and noble associations! We may well claim that there are few spots on American soil which are so grand in historic events of a highly poetic coloring as the old Mount Hope lands. As to lesser men, we have not space for more than an allusion: Church, the Indian-fighter, of cruel memory, the heroes of the “Gaspee,” and the old privateers. Lafayette was quartered here, and General Burnside here made his home on the borders of the beautiful hills after the Union war. In the prosperous colonial years before the Revolution there came to live on the Mount Hope lands in summer some grand families whom the world has almost forgotten. Among them were the Vassals of Boston, and the Royalls, also rich Boston people, whose home was at the Mount. These people were royalists, and fled from the country at the beginning of the war, and their estates were confiscated. The Mount Hope farm of the Royalls was among the confiscated estates. These people fled to the Windward Islands. The old Vassal tomb may still be seen in Cambridge churchyard, Massachusetts, near Harvard College. Of course the confiscated estate of the Royalls became haunted after the flight of its stately owners. The white ghost of Penelope Royall is supposed never to have left the romantic farms, but to have remained to terrify whomsoever might live upon these enchanted regions of the rightful territories of good King George. In her happy days this queenly woman used to ride in her high chariot through Bristol, greatly to the admiration of the Wardwells, the Bosworths, the Gladdings, the Churches, the Byfields, and the well-to-do townspeople of the cool old port. The white sail that bore the Royalls drifted over the tropic seas, but not in imagination the ghostly form and robes of Penelope Royall. They stayed to affright the rebels, and to uphold the rights and the dignities of the Crown. All disloyal Bristol could not arrest the spirit of Penelope, which seems to have delighted in the freedom denied to the royalists in the flesh. She was a maiden lady, and a more stately person than either Anna or Priscilla Royall, the old royalist’s first and second wives. She loved the Mount Hope lands, and especially Mount Hope, and used often to visit the white ridge overlooking the bays, and gaze over the glittering waterways and the green expanse of Rhode Island, where Bishop Berkeley is said to have made his immortal prophecy. She died in the old house, and was buried near it.
It was near the close of the last century that Prudence Wardwell, a rich spinster, came to live on the old Royall farm on the Mount Hope lands. The house which she occupied was noted for its great chimney. All the old Bristol houses had enormous chimneys with great fireplaces. One of these chimneys, it has been said, would furnish sufficient material to build a modern cottage. Several of them once stood like monuments, after the houses they had warmed were gone; and cattle, in the winter, would sometimes find a shelter in their giant fireplaces.
Prudence Wardwell—“Aunt Prudence,” as she was known—brought to the great oak mansion a bound boy by the name of Peter Fayerweather. It had been her wish to live as nearly alone as possible, with but a single protector, and for this solitary guardian and sentinel she had chosen Peter. He was a tall, awkward lad, with great eyes and a shambling gait; but Aunt Prudence believed him to be honest, and she did not want a “handsome man” on the place. Peter was not handsome. Peter had objected to going to the Mount on account of the ghost folk there. His large eyes and large ears seemed to grow as he listened to the old tales of superstition. He had heard again and again with terror the awful tale of Captain Kidd: how that recreant son of the old Scottish minister and martyr had gone forth on the high seas to destroy pirates, and had turned pirate himself; how he had sunk his good father’s Bible “in the sand,” and had murdered William Moore, “as he sailed, as he sailed.”
“And left him in his gore,
As he sailed.”
The old pirate was said to come back to the Mount Hope lands on still moonlight nights, to see if any had found his buried treasures. None had. One frightened Bristoller had met the old captain carrying his head like a bundle under his arm. The old pirate was evidently in a hurry; if not, the good man who met him most certainly was after the strange vision.
Peter Fayerweather had no wish to see stately Penelope Royall or dark-visaged Captain Kidd on moonlit nights, or any other nights, or any ghost folks who did such odd things as to take off their heads and carry them under their arms. So, of all places, he begged Aunt Prudence not to take him to the solemn and lonely old oak house on the Mount. But Aunt Prudence did not fear ghosts. She “trusted in the Lord,” as she said, against any wandering visitors from another world. She was afraid of robbers, and it was on this account that she had secured the protective services of the giant Peter, who would have regarded a robber on any dark night as a most welcome friend. So the two came to the grand old house, Aunt Prudence fearing only robbers, and young Peter only ghosts.
“If you will protect me from robbers,” said the solitary old lady to Peter, on the day of their arrival, “I will protect you from spirits. What do you say, Peter?”
“Aunt Prudence,” said Peter, “I do not fear no mortal flesh, true as preachin’. Look there, and there.”
He waved his great arms about like a windmill, and swung them round and round, greatly to the old lady’s admiration.
“I have great confidence in you, Peter; I made a good choice when I took you, Peter. Do it again.”
Peter swung his great arms again round and round like a wheel. Aunt Prudence’s sense of security became very firm.
“That will do, Peter. If you should ever see a ghost, you call me; and if I should ever see a man, I will call you.”
“Heaven forbid that I should ever see a ghost!” said Peter; “it would just kill me dead, true as preachin’.”
The summer passed; the apples reddened in the shadowy orchards, and the frosts dropped the walnuts on the light beds of crimson leaves. The orioles went, and the ospreys. The beautiful Indian summer came and burned and faded. November, the month of shadows, came, and a coolness fell from the steel sky over the bay, and soon the light snow-crystals began to fall. No ghosts were seen in or about the old house; no robbers. Peter lost his fears, and Aunt Prudence became full of confidence, and the two were as happy as such a solitary life could make them. Aunt Prudence, at least, seemed perfectly happy and contented.
There was in the great chimney an odd receptacle, once common to such chimneys, but now almost forgotten even in England, known as the smoke chimney. The door to it, which was iron, opened in this old house into one of the upper rooms. The chamber consisted of iron bars on which fresh hams were stored in the fall, and through which the smoke passed from one of the lower fireplaces. It was in reality a smoke-house in the chimney; a place to smoke meats, in the days when such smoked meats were regarded as a greater luxury than now. Peter Fayerweather had not been slow to discover this fortress-like smoke chamber. Peter was not what would be called bright, but a bright idea illumined his dull face when he first opened the iron door.
“Ghosts? Ghosts?” he said to himself. “If I ever should—I know what I would do if I ever should—Nothing could ever get through that iron door, true as preachin’. If I ever should—”
A part of the predicate to Peter’s subjunctive sentence was wanting, but that a very helpful idea had come to him was evident from his luminous face. He had formed a very definite plan of security “if he ever should—”
Aunt Prudence too, in a careful survey of the premises, had been struck with the appearance of security and seclusion of the old smoke chamber. She too had examined it alone; and as sympathetic minds by a kind of telegraphy express themselves in like phrases, she also said:—
“If I ever should—No robber would think of such a place as that, anyhow. I will hang up a quilt over the iron door, and if I ever should—If I ever should—eh, well, if I ever should—I will.”
She too turned away from the dungeon-like place with a face full of animation and confidence. Certainly if Peter “ever should,” or if Aunt Prudence “ever should,” the old smoke chamber would be a very desirable and convenient seclusion. Now, Peter thought of seclusion only in the case of a ghost, and Aunt Prudence only in case that an unknown man of very selfish propensities should “break into the house;” and each evidently had received a sense of security on a careful inspection of the old smoke chamber. But neither made a confidant of what the other would do under certain alarming circumstances.
Peter, like most cowardly people who recover a sense of security, became suddenly very bold. He used to visit Bristol evenings, and return late, greatly to Aunt Prudence’s anxiety. It was the time of the once famous Episcopal and Methodist Episcopal revivals, and Peter claimed that he went to attend the meetings, which were the exciting topics of the old port and of the State. Aunt Prudence, who was a strict Calvinist, was not deeply in sympathy with these phenomenal meetings, which were called the “New Light Stir.” She advised Peter to “read his Bible at home.” But he still felt the necessity of going elsewhere for the interpretation of that good book, and so, to use his own expression, he continued to “follow up” the meetings.
Aunt Prudence’s patience at thus being left alone during the long winter evenings at last came to an end.
“Peter,” she said, one morning after Peter had attended a meeting that had held very late, “are you never afraid of meeting apparitions on your way home nights? Suppose you should—what would you do?”
Peter thought of the old smoke chamber, but that would not serve him in such a case. He knew Aunt Prudence’s purpose in making these appalling suggestions. He was not a very politic boy, but he was quite equal to the situation on this particular occasion.
“I would call for you, Aunt. You say that you are not afraid of ’em.”
Aunt Prudence felt flattered, but she still recalled amid her feeling of satisfaction that she must not be left alone.
“But, Peter, I would hate to see the ghost of Captain Kidd, or to see any of the old Indian apparitions. Don’t you know, Peter, that Mount Hope is a great Indian graveyard? I would not like to meet old Penelope Royall all in white going about in the wind; would you, Peter? It would be awful; now wouldn’t it, Peter?”
Peter’s great eyes and ears began to grow. His old nervous fears were coming back again, but he still coveted the freedom of his evenings.
“Aunt,” he said at last, very thoughtfully, “where do you suppose old Penelope Royall went when she died?”
“To heaven, I hope, Peter, even if she was a royalist.”
“Then why don’t she stay there? What would she want to be wanderin’ about in the wind in cold nights for?”
“For vengeance,” said Aunt, in an annoyed tone.
“For vengeance?” said Peter. “I shouldn’t think a woman after she had gone to heaven would have any more wicked feelings like that. I don’t believe she wanders about in the wind with thin clothes on anyway. Now say, do you, Aunt? Do you really think so? They dress comfortable up there. It don’t stand to reason, true as preachin’; now does it?”
Aunt felt the force of Peter’s argument. In fact, Peter was expressing her own firm convictions about such matters.
“But Captain Kidd, Peter, he was a dreadful man; I don’t think he has gone to heaven.”
“Where did he go, Aunt?”
Aunt Prudence replied with spirit and emphasis,—
“He went, Peter, where all wicked people go,—to the kingdom of darkness, where he is shut up for ever and ever. There now!”
Aunt Prudence was “clearing away the table,” as she called her morning work, when she uttered these startling and decisive words. She looked steadily at Peter, and felt that she had answered him and silenced him. She felt a kind of triumph in the pause that followed, and lifted her spectacles as though to say, “What do you think of that?”
“But, Aunt Prudence—”
“But what, Peter? This is a very alarming subject.”
“But who let him out?”
“Oh, Peter, Peter! You are becoming an awful boy. I always knew that those Methodist free salvation meetings would do you no good. You go right out to the wood-pile, and bring me in an armful of wood. You have no sense of theology, anyway. You are a poor daft fellow. ‘Who let him out?’ Did I ever!”
Peter went out, muttering that he didn’t “see how people can be shut up forever in another world, and be wandering about this world at the same time. It don’t stand to reason, nohow, true as preachin’.”
But although Peter’s reasoning seemed convincing, it did not quiet his superstitious fears. Whenever his conscience became a little disturbed, the picture of tall Penelope Royall wandering about in the wind “all in white” was before him. Even grim old Captain Kidd was not such an alarming object to his fancy as that. Captain Kidd was a man, and he felt sure that he would let him alone, if he did not trouble the buried treasure, but old Penelope Royall—she was a woman.
The Mount Hope lands were full of Indian stories, which were founded on tricks, and even worse stories of those whose wits cheated the devil out of his dues, when their grasping souls had bargained with the latter. Peter thought of these. There was one story that suggested to him that wit is equal to most conditions of life. It was a red settle story, but became a poem:—
“Among Rhode Island’s early sons
Was one whose orchards fair
By plenteous and well-flavored fruit,
Rewarded all his care.
“For household use they stored the best,
And all the rest, conveyed
To neighboring mill, were ground and pressed
And into cider made.
“The wandering Indian oft partook
The generous farmer’s cheer;
He liked his food, but better still
His cider fine and clear.
“And as he quaffed the pleasant draught
The kitchen fire before,
He longed for some to carry home,
And asked for more and more.
“The farmer saw a basket new,
Beside the Indian bold,
And smiling said, ‘I’ll give to you
As much as that will hold.’
“Both laughed, for how could liquid thing
Within a basket stay?
But yet, the jest unanswering,
The Indian went his way.
“When next from rest the farmers sprung
So very cold the morn,
The icicles like diamonds hung
On every eping and thorn.
“The brook that babbled by his door
Was deep, and clear, and strong,
And yet unfettered by the frost,
Leaped merrily along.
“The self-same Indian by this brook
The astonished farmer sees;
He laid his basket in the stream,
Then hung it up to freeze.
“And by this process oft renewed,
The basket soon became
A well-glazed vessel, tight and good,
Of most capacious frame.
“The door he entered speedily,
And claimed the promised boon;
The farmer laughed heartily,
Fulfilled his promise soon.
“Up to the basket’s brim he saw
The sparkling cider rise,
And to rejoice his absent squaw,
He bore away the prize.
“Long lived the good man at the farm,
The house is standing still,
And still leaps merrily along
The much diminished rill.
“And his descendants still remain,
And tell to those who ask it,
The story they have often heard
About the Indian’s basket.”
A wonderful reformation seemed to come over Peter. He began to stay at home, and go to bed very early, often as early as seven o’clock,—or at least he seemed to do these sober things. Aunt Prudence had gone to the door of his room once or twice after his early retiring, but had found it locked, and she had been unable to awake him, he “slept so sound.” “Boys do,” she said.
“Peter,” she said one morning, “tell me the truth, now; didn’t you hear me when I pounded and pounded on the door last night?”
“No, Aunt Prudence, true as preachin’ I did not.” And he did not.
The truth was that poor Peter had fallen from his integrity, even in these times of the great revivals. He had discovered that the great hall window was as handy as a door, and that he had only to leave it unfastened to return to the house at any time of the night without disturbing the sound slumbers of good Aunt Prudence. He was careful in taking this liberty to first lock his own room. These were wicked ways, it is true, and very bold ones for a quiet youth, and quite inconsistent with meeting-going habits. But the meetings at this period were wonderfully dramatic; everybody talked about them, and Peter’s curiosity quite overcame his moral sense.
The holidays were at hand. Thanksgiving was Aunt Prudence’s great annual festival, her Feast of Tabernacles; she made little account of Christmas, which, she told Peter, was a mere “relic of the Pope and the Dragon,” and which he associated with an old picture in the “Pilgrim’s Progress.”
Watch Night was the great annual occasion of the old Bristol Methodists. It took place on New Year’s Eve, when a great assembly used to meet to sing the old Wesleyan Watch Night hymns, written by Wesley for the Old London Foundry, and to watch “the old year out and the new year in.” The services of the Presiding Elder were sometimes secured for this memorable night, and if so, a “Love Feast” was held, and a multitude told their experiences, amid triumphant responses, ecstatic refrains, and sometimes strange exhibitions of trance, or of “losing one’s strength,” as the old phenomena were called.
Christmas was the Episcopal festival, and the Episcopal Church in Bristol was unlike any other at that time. It followed the revival methods of Whitefield and Lady Huntingdon. Christmas Eve was an occasion of universal charity. The poor were the guests of the church, and were entertained like princes. Peter well understood all these festivals, and he resolved to attend them all,—the old Orthodox church’s Thanksgiving, the Episcopal festival, and the Methodists’ solemn jubilee on New Year’s Eve. There was nothing sectarian about him. It was also his intention not to disturb the mind of Aunt Prudence about these matters,—the easy hall window would make it unnecessary.
CITY HALL.
Thanksgiving passed—it fell late this year; December came in mildly, as though the bright days were loath to go. The stillness before the winter storms filled the air. The withered grasses were silent now, without the voice of insect or bird. A white gull sometimes cleaved the still gray air, and the wild cry of the shore birds was sometimes heard. The nights were silvery and cold. The Mount Hope Bay and the Pocassett Hills in the frosty moonlight recalled the silence and melancholy fate of that ancient race which slumbered in the browned fields, Pometacom’s cliff and spring. The night air seemed peopled with shadows of painted chiefs and spectral armies forever gone. The river weeds were dead, and encased in a thin sheet of ice in the early mornings. Brown leaves still hung on the oaks, and red leaves of ivy on the long walls. Husking was over, and the yellow cones of the stalks of corn fodder glimmered on every farm. The fishing-boats were hauled upon the shore; everything—the sky, the blue bay, the fields, the working-men—seemed waiting for the coming of winter. The mild days grew shorter and shorter; the tall candles burned lower and lower each evening; the nights were glorious, and Christmas Eve came, rung in by the resonant bell of good St. Michael’s.
Aunt Prudence had resolved to depart from the Orthodox customs on this special year, and to make Peter a Christmas present. “He has become such a good boy of late,” she reasoned, “and so steady. Every one else is giving presents, and he ought to be rewarded.” She planned to fill a bag with good things for him, after the manner of the bountiful bag, and to hang it on his bedroom door on Christmas Eve. He would, as she thought, find it in the morning, and it would be a great surprise to him. It certainly would. She made the bag, purchased some sweetmeats for it, and began to fill it with useful articles. She knit for it a “comforter,” as a neck-scarf was called, several pairs of stockings, some “galluses,” and secured for it various other useful things, among them “Hervey’s Meditations,” “Young’s Night Thoughts,” and “The Fool of Quality,” all famous books in those sober days, and “good readin’.”
When the bag was nearly full it occurred to her that she ought to knit for it a pair of mittens. This happy thought, however, did not occur to her until the day before Christmas. Aunt Prudence was a rapid knitter. The needles flew under her skilled fingers so swiftly as to look like mere glimmers. “I can finish the mittens before eleven o’clock to-night,” she said to herself, “and then the bag will be all complete. I had as lief sit up late to-night as not, the nights are so long now.”
Peter retired early that evening.
“Going?” said Aunt Prudence as he left the room with his candle. “You seem dreadful sleepy of late. Well, that’s all right, I suppose. Boys do when they’re growing. Don’t forget to say your prayers, Peter. You’ve a great deal to be thankful for. Good-night, Peter. The Lord bless ye!”
Peter closed the door on receiving this serene benediction.
“He’s such a steady boy!” said the good woman, as she resumed her knitting. “He sha’n’t lose anything by it, either. Any boy will be steady if he is brought up right. There’s the trouble, people do not bring their children up right.” Her needles flew. It was inspiring to recall her great success in training Peter.
It was a still night. There was a faint moon, and the stars glimmered thick in the cloudless sky. Aunt Prudence looked out of the window at times, saw the still fields and bare trees, and thought of the past. The Mount seemed haunted—it always does on calm winter nights. Not by Leif, or Kidd, or the Royalls, or by Indian fighters, or Revolutionary heroes, or statesmen, but by that vanished and mysterious race whose forest capital was here, and whose arrow-heads still fill the fields and sand.
At nine the old Bristol bell rang out on the clear air.
“I shall have the work all done by ten,” said Aunt Prudence, and her needles flew again. She was very happy. She got up and looked out of the window for the tenth time—ghost-land.
The hands on the old English clock pointed to ten. The work was done, and Aunt Prudence drew the top of the bag together, and pinned upon the tape handle a sheet of paper, on which was written,
“Peter Fayerweather, a Present.”
It was half-past ten before Aunt Prudence opened the door to go with the bag bountiful to the door of Peter’s room. As she did so she thought that she heard a noise in the hall. She stepped back and listened with a beating heart. She surely heard the hall window close, and a careful step in the hall. Her heart bounded, and she gasped for breath; she had long had a presentiment of this danger.
She locked her door at once, withdrew the key, and kneeled down on the rug and looked through the key-hole very cautiously. There was only a faint moon and star light in the hall, but she saw the shadow of a tall man pass, and heard a dull step move in the direction of Peter’s room. Her house had been entered, surely; the expected event had really come. What should she do?
She stepped into her bedroom, which opened out of her sitting-room, where she had been knitting, and sunk down upon the white bed, and drew the bed-curtains. She would have groaned, but she dared not. Here she lay and trembled till the old clock struck eleven, the strokes sounding like a warning through the hollow rooms.
She must alarm Peter. How? Suppose she were to meet the robber in the hall? Her nervous system was so shaken that she felt that she could not be quiet any longer. She must do something, at any event. She arose, put aside the bed-curtains, drew from the bed the white counterpane, put it over her head like a great shawl, wrapped it around her, and going into the sitting-room, took the almost extinct candle, and unlocked the door and stepped cautiously into the hall. If ever a mortal looked like the traditional spectre, Aunt Prudence did then.