When, at the close of the year 1839, Reverend Samuel Bax visited Troy for the first time, to preach his trial sermon at Salem chapel, he arrived by Bontigo’s van, late on a Saturday night, and departed again for Plymouth at seven o’clock on Monday morning. He had just turned twenty-one, and looked younger, and the zeal of his calling was strong upon him. Moreover, he was shaken with nervous anxiety for the success of his sermon; so that it is no marvel if he carried away but blurred and misty impressions of the little port, and the congregation that sat beneath him that morning, ostensibly reverent, but actually on the lookout for heresy or any sign of weakness. Their impressions, at any rate, were sharp enough. They counted his thumps upon the desk, noted his one reference to “the original Greek,” saw and remembered the flush of his young face and the glow in his eye as he hammered the doctrine of the redemption out of original sin. The deacons fixed the subject of these trial sermons, and had chosen original sin, on the ground that a good beginning was half the battle. The maids in the congregation knew beforehand that he was unmarried, and came out of the chapel knowing also that his eyes were brown, that his hair had a reddish tinge in certain lights, that one of his cuffs was frayed slightly, but his black coat had scarcely been worn a dozen times, with other trifles. They loitered by the chapel door until he came out, in company with Deacon Snowden, who was conveying him off to dinner. The deacon, on week days, was harbor-master of the port, and on Sundays afforded himself roasted duck for dinner. Lizzie Snowden walked at her father’s right hand. She was a slightly bloodless blonde, tall, with a pretty complexion, and hair upon which it was rumored she could sit if she were so minded. The girls watched the young preacher and his entertainers as they moved down the hill, the deacon talking, and his daughter turning her head aside as if it were merely in the section of the world situated on her right hand that she took the least interest.
“That’s to show ’en the big plait,” commented one of the group behind. “He can’t turn his head hes way, but it stares ’en in the face.”
“An’ her features look best from the left side, as everybody knows.”
“I reckon, if he’s chosen minister, that Lizzie’ll have ’en,” said a tall, lanky girl. She was apprenticed to a dressmaker and engaged to a young tinsmith. Having laid aside ambition on her own account, she flung in this remark as an apple of discord.
“Tenifer Hosken has a chance. He’s fair-skinned hissel’, and Lizzie’s too near his own color. Black’s mate is white, as they say.”
“There’s Sue Tregraine. She’ll have more money than either, when her father dies.”
“What, marry one o’ Ruan!” the speaker tittered, despitefully.
“Why not?”
