“Have I? I never thought. I forgot she was here. Let us get back, then;” and the two brothers, without speaking a word, rowed down against the sweep of tide, the great Turtle in tow.
The three went home, still keeping a silence broken only by briefest possible question and answer.
The golden October night fell upon the old town. Pochaug River, its lone line of silver gathered in many a stretch of interval into which the moon looked calmly down, lay on the land for many a mile.
Again and again, during the evening, David Bushnell went out from the house and stood silently on the rough bridge that crossed the river by the door.
“Let David alone, mother,” urged Ezra, as she was about to follow him on one occasion. “He is thinking out something, and is better alone.”
That which the young man was thinking at the moment was, that he wished the moon would hurry and go down. He longed for darkness.
The night was growing cold. Frost was in the air.
As he stood on the rough logs, a post-rider, hurrying by with letters, came up.
“Holloa there!” he called aloud, not liking the looks of the man on the bridge.
“It’s I,—David Bushnell, Joe Downs! You can ride by in safety,” he responded, ringing out one of his merriest chimes of laughter at the very idea of being taken for a highwayman.