Matters came to a crisis in the spring of 1703. The family had "gone a-sugaring" in Mr. Hoyt's "plantation" of maples, and the Sergeant and Mary had been left to watch the great kettle of sap as it seethed and boiled over the coals. The text which heads our story was one from which the Rev. John Williams had preached on the preceding Sunday, and the sermon had been the subject of conversation that day.
"I fear me much that thou art but as that kettle, Judah," was the remark of Goodwife Hoyt as she moved away after another bucket of sap—"mere sounding brass and a tinkling cowbell!"
Roguish Sally Hoyt, the younger sister of modest Mary, could not forbear a saucy fling at the lovers.
"Yea, Judah, art thou like the kettle," she said, striking it a rap with the paddle with which she was stirring its contents. But the kettle, full to the brim of syrup, failed to respond with its usual resonant ring. "Hearest thou, Sergeant? It is no more 'sounding brass,' the reason thereof being that it is so filled with fire and sweetness that it can hold no more. The same being a token, brethren, as our godly pastor would say, that the heart of our beloved brother Sergeant Wright is so filled with that charity which is love, that he hath lost his proper and natural brazen-facedness, and can no more convey the knowledge of his condition to the lady of his choice than can this kettle utter the clamor which is natural unto it."
"Go thy ways for a saucy hussy," exclaimed Mary, with sudden consciousness, and with a mocking laugh the merry girl was gone. But the fat was in the fire, and when Goodwife Hoyt returned with more sap, she found the syrup there too, and the Sergeant kissing the unresisting Mary behind a neighboring maple. For which wanton proceeding the good woman, since she could not banish him from her family, sent away her daughter to dwell with a distant relative, saying ere she went:
"I do prophesy that this silly affection will presently fail; so long as I have a tongue in my mouth I will speak against it, for the knowledge that I have of Sergeant Wright tendeth not to edifying."
The Sergeant did not reply verbally; but when Mary in her exile opened her Bible to the chapter containing the text which had led to a declaration, she was attracted by another which bore marginal notes in a well known hand and which seemed to answer for him:
"Charity," which is love, "never faileth; but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away."
Time passed on, and one winter's night the French and Indians burst upon the little town of Deerfield, and carried it away captive. The last sight that the Sergeant caught through the open kitchen door was of the great brass kettle which he and Mr. Hoyt had the night before filled with wort or new beer, standing by the side of Mary's ironing-board; then the blazing timbers fell over both with a deafening crash, and he was marched away with pinioned arms.
The horrors of that captivity are too well known to need repetition. Through them all Sergeant Wright, by his manly heroism and patient endurance, his care for Sally, and filial devotion to Mrs. Hoyt, at last so won her unwilling heart that she was constrained to admit that the old prejudicial knowledge which she had of him had vanished away.