Yet Boston was a loyal town, obedient to its liege lord and nearly as eager to serve him and to do him homage as it was to preserve its liberties and the independence, which gradual development had created and long usage had confirmed as inalienable, in the belief of all the patriotic citizens. Stoughton and Bradstreet, beholding the revolutionary tendency, which would have plunged the colony most unwisely into a sea of trouble, submitted to the new order of things, which for long they had seen coming, inevitably, out of the malignant spirit in which the Stuart dynasty had always desired to govern these non-conformist hard-heads.
There were many creatures in Boston swift to join the Tory party, under Randolph, for the plums of official recognition. Thus this party rapidly assumed considerable dimensions, and therefore power, to add to that of which the King himself was the fountain-head.
Boston at that time was a prosperous town of something more than six thousand souls. It was substantially built, if crookedly, for the most part of wood. Yet there was a fair sprinkling of brick houses along its cow-path streets, and a few were of stone, which, in several instances, had been brought to this undeveloped land from England. The town was distinctly English, both as to customs and thoughts, but the seeds which hardihood had sown, were to grow the pillars of Americanism—synonymous with a spirit of Democracy sufficient to inspire the world!
Naturally Isaiah Pinchbecker became a master-jackal under the new régime. Psalms Higgler, the lesser light of lick-spittling, became, by the same token, a lesser carnivora, but no less hungry to be feeding on the foe-masters of the recent past. And Pinchbecker, having found Adam in the town, was alert to find him again.
Yet not even Pinchbecker, with his knife-edge mind, devoted to evolving schemes of vengeance, could have comprehended the tigerish joy with which Randolph remembered Adam Rust, from that morning in the Crow and Arrow, and with which he now put two and two together, to arrive at Adam’s relationship with Garde Merrill.
Randolph was a subtle schemer, never fathomed by the Puritans, against whom he displayed such an implacable hatred. He was far too wise ever to appear as the point, when a thrust of revenge was to be delivered. He never for a moment relaxed his obsequious demeanor, nor his air of injured guiltlessness. Like all men of power, he had much material, self-offered, from which to choose his henchmen. He had chosen Pinchbecker wisely, for a hypocrite, a fawner, and an arrant knave who could work endless harm, in an underhanded fashion. But for his more aggressive employment he attached to his service a great, burly brute, with a face like a mastiff’s, an intelligence like a sloth’s, and a courage like that of a badger. This masterpiece of human animalism responded to the name of “Gallows,” for once a man had been hanged on his back, as in early English-Irish usage, and of this he was matchlessly proud.
Adam arrived in the midst of that first elation of Randolph and his following, the like of which is frequently the cause of reaction so violent as to quite reverse the fates themselves. But although the Puritans hated Dudley, almost more than Randolph, for traitorously joining the party of destruction, their growlings checked nothing of the all-importance which the creatures in power felt and made their fellow-beings feel. A spirit of sullen brooding settled on the people.
Unaware that Rust had been away from Boston, since he had seen him that day in Donner’s garden with Mistress Merrill, Pinchbecker had been seeking for him diligently, ever since Randolph’s return. But believing that his quarry would be found eventually in the vicinity of the Crow and Arrow, his field of investigations was narrow.
It had naturally happened, however, that Adam had quite forgotten to tell the beef-eaters of his change of abode in Boston. They would therefore proceed to the old tavern immediately upon their arrival. He thought of this before he landed. Having come ashore at twilight, he made it his duty to stroll to the Crow and Arrow, for the purpose of leaving a message for Pike and Halberd, when at last they should come to the town.