Heralds of Empire / Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade

CHAPTER III

TOUCHING WITCHCRAFT

That interrupted lesson with Rebecca finished my schooling. I was set to learning the mysteries of accounts in Eli Kirke's warehouse.

"How goes the keeping of accounts, Ramsay?" he questioned soon after I had been in tutelage.

I had always intended to try my fortune in the English court when I came of age, and the air of the counting-house ill suited a royalist's health.

"Why, sir," I made answer, picking my words not to trip his displeasure, "I get as much as I can—and I give as little as I can; and those be all the accounts that ever I intend to keep."

Aunt Ruth looked up from her spinning-wheel in a way that had become an alarm signal. Eli Kirke glanced dubiously to the blasphemy box, as though my words were actionable. There was no sound but the drone of the loom till I slipped from the room. Then they both began to talk. Soon after came transfer from the counting-house to the fur trade. That took me through the shadowy forests from town to town, and when I returned my old comrades seemed shot of a sudden from youth to manhood.

There was Ben Gillam, a giff-gaffing blade home from the north sea, so topful of spray that salt water spilled over at every word.

"Split me fore and aft," exclaims Ben, "if I sail not a ship of my own next year! I'll take the boat without commission. Stocking and my father have made an offer," he hinted darkly. "I'll go without commission!"

"And risk being strangled for't, if the French governor catch you."

"Body o' me!" flouts Ben, ripping out a peck of oaths that had cost dear and meant a day in the stocks if the elders heard, "who's going to inform when my father sails the only other ship in the bay? Devil sink my soul to the bottom of the sea if I don't take a boat to Hudson Bay under the French governor's nose!"

"A boat of your own," I laughed. "What for, Ben?"

"For the same as your Prince Rupert, Prince Robber, took his. Go out light as a cork, come back loaded with Spanish gold to the water-line." Ben paused to take a pinch of snuff and display his new embroidered waist-coat.

"Look you at the wealth in the beaver trade," he added. "M. Radisson went home with George Carteret not worth a curse, formed the Fur Company, and came back from Hudson Bay with pelts packed to the quarter-deck. Devil sink me! but they say, after the fur sale, the gentlemen adventurers had to haul the gold through London streets with carts! Bread o' grace, Ramsay, have half an eye for your own purse!" he urged. "There is a life for a man o' spirit! Why don't you join the beaver trade, Ramsay?"

Why not, indeed? 'Twas that or turn cut-purse and road-lifter for a youth of birth without means in those days.

Of Jack Battle I saw less. He shipped with the fishing boats in the summer and cruised with any vagrant craft for the winter. When he came ashore he was as small and eel-like and shy and awkward as ever, with the same dumb fidelity in his eyes.

And what a snowy maid had Rebecca become! Sitting behind her spinning-wheel, with her dainty fingers darting in the sunlight, she seemed the pink and whitest thing that ever grew, with a look on her face of apple-blossoms in June; but the sly wench had grown mighty demure with me. When I laughed over that ending to our last lesson, she must affect an air of injury. 'Twas neither her fault nor mine, I declare, coaxing back her good-humour; 'twas the fault of the face. I wanted to see where the white began and the pink ended. Then Rebecca, with cheeks a-bloom under the hiding of her bonnet, quickens steps to the meeting-house; but as a matter of course we walk home together, for behind march the older folk, staidly discoursing of doctrine.

"Rebecca," I say, "you did not take your eyes off the preacher for one minute."

"How do you know, Ramsay?" retorts Rebecca, turning her face away with a dimple trembling in her chin, albeit it was the Sabbath.

"That preacher is too handsome to be sound in his doctrine, Rebecca."

Then she grows so mighty prim she must ask which heading of the sermon pleases me best.

"I liked the last," I declare; and with that, we are at the turnstile.

Hortense became a vision of something lost, a type of what I had known when great ladies came to our country hall. M. Picot himself took her on the grand tour of the Continent. How much we had been hoping to see more of her I did not realize till she came back and we saw less.

Once I encountered M. Picot and his ward on the wharf. Her curls were more wayward than of old and her large eyes more lustrous, full of deep, new lights, dark like the flash of a black diamond. Her form appeared slender against the long, flowing mantilla shot with gold like any grand dame's. She wore a white beaver with plumes sweeping down on her curls. Indeed, little Hortense seemed altogether such a great lady that I held back, though she was looking straight towards me.

"Give you good-e'en, Ramsay," salutes M. Picot, a small, thin man with pointed beard, eyebrows of a fierce curlicue, and an expression under half-shut lids like cat's eyes in the dark. "Give you good-e'en! Can you guess who this is?"

As if any one could forget Hortense! But I did not say so. Instead, I begged leave to welcome her back by saluting the tips of her gloved fingers. She asked me if I minded that drowning of Ben long ago. Then she wanted to know of Jack.

"I hear you are fur trading, Ramsay?" remarks M. Picot with the inflection of a question.

I told him somewhat of the trade, and he broke out in almost the same words as Ben Gillam. 'Twas the life for a gentleman of spirit. Why didn't I join the beaver trade of Hudson Bay? And did I know of any secret league between Captain Zachariah Gillam and Mr. Stocking to trade without commission?

"Ah, Hillary," he sighed, "had we been beaver trading like Radisson instead of pounding pestles, we might have had little Hortense restored."

"Restored!" thought I. And M. Picot must have seen my surprise, for he drew back to his shell like a pricked snail. Observing that the wind was chill, he bade me an icy good-night.

I had no desire to pry into M. Picot's secrets, but I could not help knowing that he had unbended to me because he was interested in the fur trade. From that 'twas but a step to the guess that he had come to New England to amass wealth to restore Mistress Hortense. Restore her to what? There I pulled up sharp. 'Twas none of my affair; and yet, in spite of resolves, it daily became more of my affair. Do what I would, spending part of every day with Rebecca, that image of lustrous eyes under the white beaver, the plume nodding above the curls, the slender figure outlined against the gold-shot mantilla, became a haunting memory. Countless times I blotted out that mental picture with a sweep of common sense. "She was a pert miss, with her head full of French nonsense and a nose held too high in air." Then a memory of the eyes under the beaver, and fancy was at it again spinning cobwebs in moonshine.

M. Picot kept more aloof than formerly, and was as heartily hated for it as the little minds of a little place ever hate those apart.

Occasionally, in the forest far back from the settlement, I caught a flying glimpse of Lincoln green; and Hortense went through the woods, hard as her Irish hunter could gallop, followed by the blackamoor, churning up and down on a blowing nag. Once I had the good luck to restore a dropped gauntlet before the blackamoor could come. With eyes alight she threw me a flashing thanks and was off, a sunbeam through the forest shades; and something was thumping under a velvet waistcoat faster than the greyhound's pace. A moment later, back came the hound in springy stretches, with the riders at full gallop.

Her whip fell, but this time she did not turn.

But when I carried the whip to the doctor's house that night, M. Picot received it with scant grace!

Whispers—gall-midges among evil tongues—were raising a buzz that boded ill for the doctor. France had paid spies among the English, some said. Deliverance Dobbins, a frumpish, fizgig of a maid, ever complaining of bodily ills though her chuffy cheeks were red as pippins, reported that one day when she had gone for simples she had seen strange, dead things in the jars of M. Picot's dispensary. At this I laughed as Rebecca told it me, and old Tibbie winked behind the little Puritan maid's head; for my father, like the princes, had known that love of the new sciences which became a passion among gentlemen. Had I not noticed the mole on the French doctor's cheek? Rebecca asked. I had: what of it?

"The crops have been blighted," says Rebecca; though what connection that had with M. Picot's mole, I could not see.

"Deliverance Dobbins oft hath racking pains," says Rebecca, with that air of injury which became her demure dimples so well.

"Drat that Deliverance Dobbins for a low-bred mongrel mischief-maker!" cries old Tibbie from the pantry door.

"Tibbie," I order, "hold your tongue and drop an angel in the blasphemy box."

"'Twas good coin wasted," the old nurse vowed; but I must needs put some curb on her royalist tongue, which was ever running a-riot in that Puritan household.

It was an accident, in the end, that threw me across M. Picot's path. I had gone to have him bind up a splintered wrist, and he invited me to stay for a round of piquet. I, having only one hand, must beg Mistress Hortense to sort the cards for me.

She sat so near that I could not see her. You may guess I lost every game.

"Tut! tut! Hillary dear, 'tis a poor helper Ramsay gained when he asked your hand. Pish! pish!" he added, seeing our faces crimson; "come away," and he carried me off to the dispensary, as though his preserved reptiles would be more interesting than Hortense.

With an indifference a trifle too marked, he brought me round to the fur trade and wanted to know whether I would be willing to risk trading without a license, on shares with a partner.

"Quick wealth that way, Ramsay, an you have courage to go to the north. An it were not for Hortense, I'd hire that young rapscallion of a Gillam to take me north."

I caught his drift, and had to tell him that I meant to try my fortune in the English court.

But he paid small heed to what I said, gazing absently at the creatures in the jars.

"'Twould be devilish dangerous for a girl," he muttered, pulling fiercely at his mustache.

"Do you mean the court, sir?" I asked.

"Aye," returned the doctor with a dry laugh that meant the opposite of his words. "An you incline to the court, learn the tricks o' the foils, or rogues will slit both purse and throat."

And all the while he was smiling as though my going to the court were an odd notion.

"If I could but find a master," I lamented.

"Come to me of an evening," says M. Picot. "I'll teach you, and you can tell me of the fur trade."

You may be sure I went as often as ever I could. M. Picot took me upstairs to a sort of hunting room. It had a great many ponderous oak pieces carved after the Flemish pattern and a few little bandy-legged chairs and gilded tables with courtly scenes painted on top, which he said Mistress Hortense had brought back as of the latest French fashion. The blackamoor drew close the iron shutters; for, though those in the world must know the ways of the world, worldling practices were a sad offence to New England. Shoving the furnishings aside, M. Picot picked from the armory rack two slim foils resembling Spanish rapiers and prepared to give me my lesson. Carte and tierce, low carte and flanconnade, he taught me with many a ringing clash of steel till beads were dripping from our brows like rain-drops.

"Bravo!" shouted M. Picot in a pause. "Are you son o' the Stanhope that fought on the king's side?"

I said that I was.

"I knew the rascal that got the estate from the king," says M. Picot, with a curious look from Hortense to me; and he told me of Blood, the freebooter, who stole the king's crown but won royal favour by his bravado and entered court service for the doing of deeds that bore not the light of day.

Nightly I went to the French doctor's house, and I learned every wicked trick of thrust and parry that M. Picot knew. Once when I bungled a foul lunge, which M. Picot said was a habit of the infamous Blood, his weapon touched my chest, and Mistress Hortense uttered a sharp cry.

"What—what—what!" exclaims M. Picot, whirling on her.

"'Twas so real," murmurs Hortense, biting her lip.

After that she sat still enough. Then the steel was exchanged for cards; and when I lost too steadily M. Picot broke out: "Pish, boy, your luck fails here! Hillary, child, go practise thy songs on the spinet."

Or: "Hortense, go mull us a smack o' wine!"

Or: "Ha, ha, little witch! Up yet? Late hours make old ladies."

And Hortense must go off, so that I never saw her alone but once. 'Twas the night before I was to leave for the trade.

The blackamoor appeared to say that Deliverance Dobbins was "a-goin' in fits" on the dispensary floor.

"Faith, doctor," said I, "she used to have dumps on our turnstile."

"Yes," laughed Hortense, "small wonder she had dumps on that turnstile! Ramsay used to tilt her backward."

M. Picot hastened away, laughing. Hortense was in a great carved high-back chair with clumsy, wooden cupids floundering all about the tall head-rest. Her face was alight in soft-hued crimson flaming from an Arabian cresset stuck in sockets against the Flemish cabinet.

"A child's trick," began Hortense, catching at the shafts of light.

"I often think of those old days on the beach."

"So do I," said Hortense.

"I wish they could come back."

"So do I," smiled Hortense. Then, as if to check more: "I suppose, Ramsay, you would want to drown us all—Ben and Jack and Rebecca and me."

"And I suppose you would want to stand us all on our heads," I retorted.

Then we both laughed, and Hortense demanded if I had as much skill with the lyre as with the sword. She had heard that I was much given to chanting vain airs and wanton songs, she said.

And this is what I sang, with a heart that knocked to the notes of the old madrigal like the precentor's tuning-fork to a meeting-house psalm:

"Lady, when I behold the roses sprouting,
        Which, clad in damask mantles, deck the arbours,
        And then behold your lips where sweet love harbours,
My eyes perplex me with a double doubting,
Whether the roses be your lips, or your lips the roses."

Barely had I finished when Mistress Hortense seats herself at the spinet, and, changing the words to suit her saucy fancy, trills off that ballad but newly writ by one of our English courtiers:

"Shall I, wasting in despair,
Die because--_Rebecca's_--fair?
Or make pale my cheeks with care
'Cause _Rebecca's_ rosier are?"

"Hortense!" I protested.

"Be _he_ fairer than the day
Or the _June-field coils of hay_;
If _he_ be not so to me,
What care I how _fine_ he be?"

There was such merriment in the dark-lashed eyes, I defy Eli Kirke himself to have taken offence; and so, like many another youth, I was all too ready to be the pipe on which a dainty lady played her stops. As the song faded to the last tinkling notes of the spinet her fingers took to touching low, tuneless melodies like thoughts creeping into thoughts, or perfume of flowers in the dark. The melting airs slipped into silence, and Hortense shut her eyes, "to get the memory of it," she said. I thought she meant some new-fangled tune.

"This is memory enough for me," said I.

"Oh?" asked Hortense, and she uncovered all the blaze of the dark lights hid in those eyes.

"Faith, Hortense," I answered, like a moth gone giddy in flame, "your naughty music wakes echoes of what souls must hear in paradise."

"Then it isn't naughty," said Hortense, beginning to play fiercely, striking false notes and discords and things.

"Hortense," said I.

"No—Ramsay!" cried Hortense, jangling harder than ever.

"But—yes!—Hortense——"

And in bustled M. Picot, hastier than need, methought.

"What, Hillary? Not a-bed yet, child? Ha!—crow's-feet under eyes to-morrow! Bed, little baggage! Forget not thy prayers! Pish! Pish! Good-night! Good-night!"

That is the way an older man takes it.

"Now, devil fly away with that prying wench of a Deliverance Dobbins!" ejaculated M. Picot, stamping about. "Oh, I'll cure her fanciful fits! Pish! Pish! That frump and her fits! Bad blood, Ramsay; low-bred, low-bred! 'Tis ever the way of her kind to blab of aches and stuffed stomachs that were well if left empty. An she come prying into my chemicals, taking fits when she's caught, I'll mix her a pill o' Deliverance!" And M. Picot laughed heartily at his own joke.

The next morning I was off to the trade. Though I hardly acknowledged the reason to myself, any youth can guess why I made excuse to come back soon. As I rode up, Rebecca stood at our gate. She had no smile. Had I not been thinking of another, I had noticed the sadness of her face; but when she moved back a pace, I flung out some foolishness about a gate being no bar if one had a mind to jump. Then she brought me sharp to my senses as I sprang to the ground.

"Ramsay," she exclaimed, "M. Picot and Mistress Hortense are in jail charged with sorcery! M. Picot is like to be hanged! An they do not confess, they may be set in the bilboes and whipped. There is talk of putting Mistress Hortense to the test."

"The test!"

'Twas as if a great weight struck away power to think, for the test meant neither more nor less than torture till confession were wrung from agony. The night went black and Rebecca's voice came as from some far place.

"Ramsay, you are hurting—you are crushing my hands!"

Poor child, she was crying; and the words I would have said stuck fast behind sealed lips. She seemed to understand, for she went on:

"Deliverance Dobbins saw strange things in his house. She went to spy. He hath crazed her intellectuals. She hath dumb fits."

Now I understood. This trouble was the result of M. Picot's threat; but little Rebecca's voice was tinkling on like a bell in a dome.

"My father hath the key to their ward. My father saith there is like to be trouble if they do not confess—"

"Confess!" I broke out. "Confess what? If they confess the lie they will be burned for witchcraft. And if they refuse to confess, they will be hanged for not telling the lie. Pretty justice! And your holy men fined one fellow a hundred pounds for calling their justices a pack of jackasses——"

"Sentence is to be pronounced to-morrow after communion," said Rebecca.

"After communion?" I could say no more. On that of all days for tyranny's crime!

God forgive me for despairing of mankind that night. I thought freedom had been won in the Commonwealth war, but that was only freedom of body. A greater strife was to wage for freedom of soul.

CHAPTER IV

REBECCA AND JACK BATTLE CONSPIRE

'Twas cockcrow when I left pacing the shore where we had so often played in childhood; and through the darkness came the howl of M. Picot's hound, scratching outside the prison gate.

As well reason with maniacs as fanatics, say I, for they hide as much folly under the mask of conscience as ever court fool wore 'neath painted face. There was Mr. Stocking, as well-meaning a man as trod earth, obdurate beyond persuasion against poor M. Picot under his charge. Might I not speak to the French doctor through the bars of his window? By no means, Mr. Stocking assured. If once the great door were unlocked, who could tell what black arts a sorcerer might use?

"Look you, Ramsay lad," says he, "I've had this brass key made against his witchcraft, and I do not trust it to the hands of the jailer."

Then, I fear, I pleaded too keenly; for, suspecting collusion with M. Picot, the warden of the court-house grew frigid and bade me ask Eli Kirke's opinion on witchcraft.

"'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,'" rasped Eli Kirke, his stern eyes ablaze from an inner fire. "'A man' also, or woman, that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death.' Think you M. Picot burns incense to the serpent in his jars for the healing of mankind?" he demanded fiercely.

"Yes," said I, "'tis for the healing of mankind by experimentation with chemicals. Knowledge of God nor chemicals springs full grown from man's head, Uncle Eli. Both must be learned. That is all the meaning of his jars and crucibles. He is only trying to learn what laws God ordained among materials. And when M. Picot makes mistakes, it is the same as when the Church makes mistakes and learns wisdom by blunders."

Eli Kirke blinked his eyes as though my monstrous pleadings dazed him.

"'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,'" he cried doggedly. "Do the Scriptures lie, Ramsay Stanhope? Tell me that?"

"No," said I. "The Scriptures condemn liars, and the man who pretends witchcraft is a liar. There's no such thing. That is why the Scriptures command burning." I paused. He made no answer, and I pleaded on.

"But M. Picot denies witchcraft, and you would burn him for not lying."

Never think to gain a stubborn antagonist by partial concession. M. Radisson used to say if you give an enemy an inch he will claim an ell. 'Twas so with Eli Kirke, for he leaped to his feet in a fine frenzy and bade me cease juggling Holy Writ.

"'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,'" he shouted. "'Tis abomination! It shall utterly be put away from you! Because of this hidden iniquity the colony hath fallen on evil days. Let it perish root and branch!"

But Tibbie breaks in upon his declamation by throwing wide the library door, and in marches a line of pale-faced ascetics, rigid of jaw, cold of eye, and exalted with that gloomy fervour which counts burning life's highest joy. Among them was the famous witch-hanger of after years, a mere youth then, but about his lips the hard lines of a spiritual zeal scarce differing from pride.

"God was awakening the churches by marvellous signs," said one, extending a lank, cold hand to salute Eli Kirke.

"Have we not wrestled mightily for signs and wonders?" demanded another with jaw of steel. And one description of the generation seeking signs was all but off the tip of my tongue.

"Some aver there be no witches—so fearfully hath error gone abroad," lamented young Mather, keen to be heard then, as he always was. "Brethren, toleration would make a kingdom of chaos, a Sodom, a Gomorrah, a Babylon!"

Faith, it needed no horoscope to forecast that young divine's dark future!

I stood it as long as I could, with palms itching to knock their solemn heads together like so many bowling balls; but when one cadaverous-faced fellow, whose sanctity had gone bilious from lack of sunshine, whined out against "the saucy miss," meaning thereby Mistress Hortense, and another prayed Heaven through his nose that his daughter might "lie in her grave ere she minced her steps with such dissoluteness of hair and unseemly broideries and bright colours, showing the lightness of her mind," and a third averred that "a cucking-stool would teach a maid to walk more shamefacedly," I whirled upon them in a fury that had disinherited me from Eli Kirke's graces ere I spake ten words.

"Sirs," said I, "your slatternly wenches may be dead ere they match Mistress Hortense! As for wearing light colours, the devil himself is painted black. Let them who are doing shameful acts to the innocent walk shamefacedly! For shame, sirs, to cloak malice and jealousy of M. Picot under religion! New England will remember this blot against you and curse you for it! An you listen to Deliverance Dobbins's lies, what hinders any lying wench sending good men to the scaffold?"

At first they listened agape, but now the hot blood rushed to their faces.

"Hold thy tongue, lad!" roared Eli Kirke. Then, as if to atone for that violence: "The Lord rebuke thee," he added solemnly.

And I flung from the house dumb with impotent rage.

My thoughts were as the snatched sleep of a sick man's dreams. Again the hideous nightmare of the old martyr at the shambles; but now the shambles were in the New World and the martyr was M. Picot. Something cold touched my hand through the dark, and there crouched M. Picot's hound, whining for its master. Automatically I followed across the commons to the court-house square. It stopped at the prison gate, sniffing and whining and begging in. Poor dog! What could I do? I tried to coax it away, but it lay at the wall like a stone.

Of the long service in the new-built meeting-house I remember very little. Beat of drums, not bells, called to church in those days, and the beat was to me as a funeral march. The pale face of the preacher in the high pulpit overtowering us all was alight with stern zeal. The elders, sitting in a row below the pulpit facing us, listened to the fierce diatribe against the dark arts with looks of approbation that boded ill for M. Picot; and at every fresh fusillade of texts to bolster his argument, the line of deacons below the elders glanced back at the preacher approvingly. Rebecca sat on that side of the congregation assigned to the women with a dumb look of sympathy on the sweet hooded face. The prisoners were not present. At the end of the service the preacher paused; and there fell a great hush in which men scarce breathed, for sentence was to be pronounced. But the preacher only announced that before handing the case to the civil court of oyer and terminer for judgment, the elders wished to hold it in meditation for another day.

The singing of the dismissal psalm began and a smothered cry seemed to break from Rebecca's pew. Then the preacher had raised his hands above bowed heads. The service was over. The people crowded solemnly out, and I was left alone in the gathering darkness—alone with the ghosts of youth's illusions mocking from the gloom. Religion, then, did not always mean right! There were tyrants of souls as well as tyrants of sword. Prayers were uttered that were fitter for hearing in hell than in Heaven. Good men could deceive themselves into crime cloaking spiritual malice, sect jealousy, race hatred with an unctuous text. Here, in New England, where men had come for freedom, was tyranny masking in the guise of religion. Preachers as jealous of the power slipping from their hands as ever was primate of England! A poor gentleman hounded to his death because he practised the sciences! Millions of victims all the world over burned for witchcraft, sacrificed to a Moloch of superstition in the name of a Christ who came to let in the light of knowledge on all superstition!

Could I have found a wilderness where was no human face, I think I had fled to it that night. And, indeed, when you come to think of my breaking with Eli Kirke, 'twas the witch trial that drove me to the wilderness.

There was yet a respite. But the Church still dominated the civil courts, and a transfer of the case meant that the Church would throw the onus of executing sentence on those lay figures who were the puppets of a Pharisaical oligarchy.

There was no time to appeal to England. There was no chance of sudden rescue. New England had not the stuff of which mobs are made.

I thought of appealing to the mercy of the judges; but what mercy had Eli Kirke received at the hands of royalists that he should be merciful to them?

I thought of firing the prison; but the walls were stone, and the night wet, and the outcome doubtful.

I thought of the cell window; but if there had been any hope that way, M. Picot had worked an escape.

Bowing my head to think—to pray—to imprecate, I lost all sense of time and place. Some one had slipped quietly into the dark of the church. I felt rather than saw a nearing presence. But I paid no heed, for despair blotted out all thought. Whoever it was came feeling a way down the dark aisle.

Then hot tears fell upon my hands. In the gloom there paused a childlike figure.

"Rebecca!"

She panted out a wordless cry. Then she came closer and laid a hand on my arm. She was struggling to subdue sobs. The question came in a shivering breath.

"Is Hortense—so dear?"

"So dear, Rebecca."

"She must be wondrous happy, Ramsay." A tumult of effort. "If I could only take her place——"

"Take her place, Rebecca?"

"My father hath the key—if—if—if I took her place, she might go free."

"Take her place, child! What folly is this—dear, kind Rebecca? Would 't be any better to send you to the rope than Hortense? No—no—dear child!"

At that her agitation abated, and she puzzled as if to say more.

"Dear Rebecca," said I, comforting her as I would a sister, "dear child, run home. Forget not little Hortense in thy prayers."

May the angel of forgiveness spread a broader mantle across our blunders than our sins, but could I have said worse?

"I have cooked dainties with my own hands. I have sent her cakes every day," sobbed Rebecca.

"Go home now, Rebecca," I begged.

But she stood silent.

"Rebecca—what is it?"

"You have not been to see me for a year, Ramsay."

I could scarce believe my ears.

"My father is away to-night. Will you not come?"

"But, Rebecca——"

"I have never asked a thing of you before."

"But, Rebecca——"

"Will you come for Hortense's sake?" she interrupted, with a little sharp, hard, falsetto note in her baby voice.

"Rebecca," I demanded, "what do you mean?"

But she snapped back like the peevish child that she was: "An you come not when I ask you, you may stay!" And she had gone.

What was she trying to say with her dark hints and overnice scruples of a Puritan conscience? And was not that Jack Battle greeting her outside in the dark?

I tore after Rebecca at such speed that I had cannoned into open arms before I saw a hulking form across the way.

"Fall-back—fall-edge!" roared Jack, closing his arms about me. "'Tis Ramsay himself, with a sword like a butcher's cleaver and a wit like a broadaxe!"

"Have you not heard, Jack?"

"Heard! Ship ahoy!" cried Jack. "Split me to the chin like a cod! Stood I not abaft of you all day long, packed like a herring in a pickle! 'Twas a pretty kettle of fish in your Noah's ark to-day! 'Tis all along o' goodness gone stale from too much salt," says Jack.

I told him of little Rebecca, and asked what he made of it. He said he made of it that fools didn't love in the right place—which was not to the point, whatever Jack thought of Rebecca. Linking his arm through mine, he headed me about.

"Captain Gillam, Ben's father, sails for England at sunrise," vouched Jack.

"What has that to do with Mistress Hortense?" I returned testily.

"'Tis a swift ship to sail in."

"To sail in, Jack Battle?"—I caught at the hope. "Out with your plan, man!"

"And be hanged for it," snaps Jack, falling silent.

We were opposite the prison. He pointed to a light behind the bars.

"They are the only prisoners," he said. "They must be in there."

"One could pass a note through those bars with a long pole," I observed, gazing over the yard wall.

"Or a key," answered Jack.

He paused before Rebecca's house to the left of the prison.

"Ramsay," inquired Jack quizzically, "do you happen to have heard who has the keys?"

"Rebecca's father is warden."

"And Rebecca's father is from home to-night," says he, facing me squarely to the lantern above the door.

How did he know that? Then I remembered the voices outside the church.

"Jack—what did Rebecca mean——"

"Not to be hanged," interrupts Jack. "'Tis all along o' having too much conscience, Ramsay. They must either lie like a Dutchman and be damned, or tell the truth and be hanged. Now, ship ahoy," says he, "to the quarterdeck!" and he flung me forcibly up the steps.

Rebecca, herself, red-eyed and reserved, threw wide the door. She motioned me to a bench seat opposite the fireplace and fastened her gaze above the mantel till mine followed there too. A bunch of keys hung from an iron rack.

"What are those, Rebecca?"

"The largest is for the gate," says she with the panic of conscience running from fire. "The brass one unlocks the great door, and—and—the—M. Picot's cell unbolts," she stammered.

"May I examine them, Rebecca?"

"I will even draw you a pint of cider," says Rebecca evasively, with great trepidation, "but come back soon," she called, tripping off to the wine-cellar door.

Snatching the keys, I was down the steps at a leap.

"The large one for the gate, Jack! The brass one for the big door, and the cell unbolts!"

"Ease your helm, sonny!" says Jack, catching the bunch from my clasp. "Fall-back—fall-edge!" he laughed in that awful mockery of the axeman's block. "Fall-back—fall-edge! If there's any hacking of necks, mine is thicker than yours! I'll run the risks. Do you wait here in shadow."

And he darted away. The gate creaked as it gave.

Then I waited for what seemed eternity.

A night-watchman shuffled along with swinging lantern, calling out: "What ho? What ho?" Townsfolks rode through the streets with a clatter of the chairmen's feet; but no words were bandied by the fellows, for a Sabbath hush lay over the night. A great hackney-coach nigh mired in mud as it lumbered through mid-road. And M. Picot's hound came sniffing hungrily to me.

A glare of light shot aslant the dark. Softly the door of Rebecca's house opened. A frail figure was silhouetted against the light. The wick above snuffed out. The figure drew in without a single look, leaving the door ajar. But an hour ago, the iron righteousness of bigots had filled my soul with revolt. Now the sight of that little Puritan maid brought prayers to my lips and a Te Deum to my soul.

The prison gate swung open again with rusty protest. Two hooded figures slipped through the dark. Jack Battle had locked the gate and the keys were in my hand.

"Take them back," he gurgled out with school-lad glee. "'Twill be a pretty to-do of witchcraft to-morrow when they find a cell empty. Go hire passage to England in Captain Gillam's boat!"

"Captain Gillam's boat?"

"Yes, or Master Ben's pirate-ship of the north, if she's there," and he had dashed off in the dark.

When Rebecca appeared above the cellar-way with a flagon that reamed to a beaded top, the keys were back on the wall.

"I was overlong," panted Rebecca, with eyes averted as of old to the folds of her white stomacher. "'Twas a stubborn bung and hard to draw."

"Dear little cheat! God bless you!—and bless you!—and bless you, Rebecca!" I cried.

At which the poor child took fright.

"It—it—it was not all a lie, Ramsay," she stammered. "The bung was hard—and—and—and I didn't hasten——"

"Dear comrade—good-bye, forever!" I called from the dark-of the step.

"Forever?" asked the faint voice of a forlorn figure black in the doorway.

Dear, snowy, self-sacrificing spirit—'tis my clearest memory of her with the thin, grieved voice coming through the dark.

I ran to the wharf hard as ever heels nerved by fear and joy and triumph and love could carry me. The passage I easily engaged from the ship's mate, who dinned into my unlistening ears full account of the north sea, whither Captain Gillam was to go for the Fur Company, and whither, too, Master Ben was keen to sail, "a pirateer, along o' his own risk and gain," explained the mate with a wink, "pirateer or privateer, call 'em what you will, Mister; the Susan with white sails in Boston Town, and Le Bon Garçon with sails black as the devil himself up in Quebec, ha—ha—and I'll give ye odds on it, Mister, the devil himself don't catch Master Ben! Why, bless you, gentlemen, who's to jail 'im here for droppin' Spanish gold in his own hold and poachin' furs on the king's preserve o' the north sea, when Stocking, the warden, 'imself owns 'alf the Susan and Cap'en Gillam, 'is father, is master o' the king's ship?"

"They do say," he babbled on, "now that Radisson, the French jack-a-boots, hath given the slip to the King's Company, he sails from Quebec in ship o' his own. If him and Ben and the Capiten meet—oh, there'll be times! There'll be times!"

And "times" there were sure enough; but of that I had then small care and shook the loquacious rascal off so that he left me in peace.

First came the servants, trundling cart-loads of cases, which passed unnoticed; for the town bell had tolled the close of Sabbath, and Monday shipping had begun.

The cusp of a watery moon faded in the gray dawn streaks of a muffled sky, and at last came the chairmen, with Jack running alert.

From the chairs stepped the blackamoor, painted as white as paste. Then a New Amsterdam gentleman slipped out from the curtains, followed by his page-boy and servants.

"Jack," I asked, "where is Hortense?"

The page glanced from under curls.

"Dear Jack," she whispered, standing high on her heels nigh as tall as the sailor lad. And poor Jack Battle, not knowing how to play down, stood blushing, cap in hand, till she laughed a queer little laugh and, bidding him good-bye, told him to remember that she had the squirrel stuffed.

To me she said no word. Her hand touched mine quick farewell. The long lashes lifted.

There was a look on her face.

I ask no greater joy in Paradise than memory of that look.

One lone, gray star hung over the masthead. The ship careened across the billows till star and mast-top met.

Jack fetched a deep sigh.

"There be work for sailors in England," he said.

In a flash I thought that I knew what he had meant by fools not loving in the right place.

"That were folly, Jack! She hath her station!"

Jack Battle pointed to the fading steel point above the vanishing masthead.

"Doth looking hurt yon star?" asks Jack.

"Nay; but looking may strain the eyes; and the arrows of longing come back void."

He answered nothing, and we lingered heavy hearted till the sun came up over the pillowed waves turning the tumbling waters to molten gold.

Between us and the fan-like rays behind the glossy billows—was no ship.

Hortense was safe!

There was an end-all to undared hopes.