Leif Ericson, Massasoit, John Hampden, Roger Williams, Washington—what an array of great names and noble associations! We may well claim that there are few spots on American soil which are so grand in historic events of a highly poetic coloring as the old Mount Hope lands. As to lesser men, we have not space for more than an allusion: Church, the Indian-fighter, of cruel memory, the heroes of the “Gaspee,” and the old privateers. Lafayette was quartered here, and General Burnside here made his home on the borders of the beautiful hills after the Union war. In the prosperous colonial years before the Revolution there came to live on the Mount Hope lands in summer some grand families whom the world has almost forgotten. Among them were the Vassals of Boston, and the Royalls, also rich Boston people, whose home was at the Mount. These people were royalists, and fled from the country at the beginning of the war, and their estates were confiscated. The Mount Hope farm of the Royalls was among the confiscated estates. These people fled to the Windward Islands. The old Vassal tomb may still be seen in Cambridge churchyard, Massachusetts, near Harvard College. Of course the confiscated estate of the Royalls became haunted after the flight of its stately owners. The white ghost of Penelope Royall is supposed never to have left the romantic farms, but to have remained to terrify whomsoever might live upon these enchanted regions of the rightful territories of good King George. In her happy days this queenly woman used to ride in her high chariot through Bristol, greatly to the admiration of the Wardwells, the Bosworths, the Gladdings, the Churches, the Byfields, and the well-to-do townspeople of the cool old port. The white sail that bore the Royalls drifted over the tropic seas, but not in imagination the ghostly form and robes of Penelope Royall. They stayed to affright the rebels, and to uphold the rights and the dignities of the Crown. All disloyal Bristol could not arrest the spirit of Penelope, which seems to have delighted in the freedom denied to the royalists in the flesh. She was a maiden lady, and a more stately person than either Anna or Priscilla Royall, the old royalist’s first and second wives. She loved the Mount Hope lands, and especially Mount Hope, and used often to visit the white ridge overlooking the bays, and gaze over the glittering waterways and the green expanse of Rhode Island, where Bishop Berkeley is said to have made his immortal prophecy. She died in the old house, and was buried near it.

It was near the close of the last century that Prudence Wardwell, a rich spinster, came to live on the old Royall farm on the Mount Hope lands. The house which she occupied was noted for its great chimney. All the old Bristol houses had enormous chimneys with great fireplaces. One of these chimneys, it has been said, would furnish sufficient material to build a modern cottage. Several of them once stood like monuments, after the houses they had warmed were gone; and cattle, in the winter, would sometimes find a shelter in their giant fireplaces.

Prudence Wardwell—“Aunt Prudence,” as she was known—brought to the great oak mansion a bound boy by the name of Peter Fayerweather. It had been her wish to live as nearly alone as possible, with but a single protector, and for this solitary guardian and sentinel she had chosen Peter. He was a tall, awkward lad, with great eyes and a shambling gait; but Aunt Prudence believed him to be honest, and she did not want a “handsome man” on the place. Peter was not handsome. Peter had objected to going to the Mount on account of the ghost folk there. His large eyes and large ears seemed to grow as he listened to the old tales of superstition. He had heard again and again with terror the awful tale of Captain Kidd: how that recreant son of the old Scottish minister and martyr had gone forth on the high seas to destroy pirates, and had turned pirate himself; how he had sunk his good father’s Bible “in the sand,” and had murdered William Moore, “as he sailed, as he sailed.”

“And left him in his gore,

As he sailed.”

The old pirate was said to come back to the Mount Hope lands on still moonlight nights, to see if any had found his buried treasures. None had. One frightened Bristoller had met the old captain carrying his head like a bundle under his arm. The old pirate was evidently in a hurry; if not, the good man who met him most certainly was after the strange vision.

Peter Fayerweather had no wish to see stately Penelope Royall or dark-visaged Captain Kidd on moonlit nights, or any other nights, or any ghost folks who did such odd things as to take off their heads and carry them under their arms. So, of all places, he begged Aunt Prudence not to take him to the solemn and lonely old oak house on the Mount. But Aunt Prudence did not fear ghosts. She “trusted in the Lord,” as she said, against any wandering visitors from another world. She was afraid of robbers, and it was on this account that she had secured the protective services of the giant Peter, who would have regarded a robber on any dark night as a most welcome friend. So the two came to the grand old house, Aunt Prudence fearing only robbers, and young Peter only ghosts.

“If you will protect me from robbers,” said the solitary old lady to Peter, on the day of their arrival, “I will protect you from spirits. What do you say, Peter?”

“Aunt Prudence,” said Peter, “I do not fear no mortal flesh, true as preachin’. Look there, and there.”

He waved his great arms about like a windmill, and swung them round and round, greatly to the old lady’s admiration.

“I have great confidence in you, Peter; I made a good choice when I took you, Peter. Do it again.”

Peter swung his great arms again round and round like a wheel. Aunt Prudence’s sense of security became very firm.

“That will do, Peter. If you should ever see a ghost, you call me; and if I should ever see a man, I will call you.”

“Heaven forbid that I should ever see a ghost!” said Peter; “it would just kill me dead, true as preachin’.”

The summer passed; the apples reddened in the shadowy orchards, and the frosts dropped the walnuts on the light beds of crimson leaves. The orioles went, and the ospreys. The beautiful Indian summer came and burned and faded. November, the month of shadows, came, and a coolness fell from the steel sky over the bay, and soon the light snow-crystals began to fall. No ghosts were seen in or about the old house; no robbers. Peter lost his fears, and Aunt Prudence became full of confidence, and the two were as happy as such a solitary life could make them. Aunt Prudence, at least, seemed perfectly happy and contented.

There was in the great chimney an odd receptacle, once common to such chimneys, but now almost forgotten even in England, known as the smoke chimney. The door to it, which was iron, opened in this old house into one of the upper rooms. The chamber consisted of iron bars on which fresh hams were stored in the fall, and through which the smoke passed from one of the lower fireplaces. It was in reality a smoke-house in the chimney; a place to smoke meats, in the days when such smoked meats were regarded as a greater luxury than now. Peter Fayerweather had not been slow to discover this fortress-like smoke chamber. Peter was not what would be called bright, but a bright idea illumined his dull face when he first opened the iron door.

“Ghosts? Ghosts?” he said to himself. “If I ever should—I know what I would do if I ever should—Nothing could ever get through that iron door, true as preachin’. If I ever should—”

A part of the predicate to Peter’s subjunctive sentence was wanting, but that a very helpful idea had come to him was evident from his luminous face. He had formed a very definite plan of security “if he ever should—”

Aunt Prudence too, in a careful survey of the premises, had been struck with the appearance of security and seclusion of the old smoke chamber. She too had examined it alone; and as sympathetic minds by a kind of telegraphy express themselves in like phrases, she also said:—

“If I ever should—No robber would think of such a place as that, anyhow. I will hang up a quilt over the iron door, and if I ever should—If I ever should—eh, well, if I ever should—I will.”

She too turned away from the dungeon-like place with a face full of animation and confidence. Certainly if Peter “ever should,” or if Aunt Prudence “ever should,” the old smoke chamber would be a very desirable and convenient seclusion. Now, Peter thought of seclusion only in the case of a ghost, and Aunt Prudence only in case that an unknown man of very selfish propensities should “break into the house;” and each evidently had received a sense of security on a careful inspection of the old smoke chamber. But neither made a confidant of what the other would do under certain alarming circumstances.

Peter, like most cowardly people who recover a sense of security, became suddenly very bold. He used to visit Bristol evenings, and return late, greatly to Aunt Prudence’s anxiety. It was the time of the once famous Episcopal and Methodist Episcopal revivals, and Peter claimed that he went to attend the meetings, which were the exciting topics of the old port and of the State. Aunt Prudence, who was a strict Calvinist, was not deeply in sympathy with these phenomenal meetings, which were called the “New Light Stir.” She advised Peter to “read his Bible at home.” But he still felt the necessity of going elsewhere for the interpretation of that good book, and so, to use his own expression, he continued to “follow up” the meetings.

Aunt Prudence’s patience at thus being left alone during the long winter evenings at last came to an end.

“Peter,” she said, one morning after Peter had attended a meeting that had held very late, “are you never afraid of meeting apparitions on your way home nights? Suppose you should—what would you do?”

Peter thought of the old smoke chamber, but that would not serve him in such a case. He knew Aunt Prudence’s purpose in making these appalling suggestions. He was not a very politic boy, but he was quite equal to the situation on this particular occasion.

“I would call for you, Aunt. You say that you are not afraid of ’em.”

Aunt Prudence felt flattered, but she still recalled amid her feeling of satisfaction that she must not be left alone.

“But, Peter, I would hate to see the ghost of Captain Kidd, or to see any of the old Indian apparitions. Don’t you know, Peter, that Mount Hope is a great Indian graveyard? I would not like to meet old Penelope Royall all in white going about in the wind; would you, Peter? It would be awful; now wouldn’t it, Peter?”

Peter’s great eyes and ears began to grow. His old nervous fears were coming back again, but he still coveted the freedom of his evenings.

“Aunt,” he said at last, very thoughtfully, “where do you suppose old Penelope Royall went when she died?”

“To heaven, I hope, Peter, even if she was a royalist.”

“Then why don’t she stay there? What would she want to be wanderin’ about in the wind in cold nights for?”

“For vengeance,” said Aunt, in an annoyed tone.

“For vengeance?” said Peter. “I shouldn’t think a woman after she had gone to heaven would have any more wicked feelings like that. I don’t believe she wanders about in the wind with thin clothes on anyway. Now say, do you, Aunt? Do you really think so? They dress comfortable up there. It don’t stand to reason, true as preachin’; now does it?”

Aunt felt the force of Peter’s argument. In fact, Peter was expressing her own firm convictions about such matters.

“But Captain Kidd, Peter, he was a dreadful man; I don’t think he has gone to heaven.”

“Where did he go, Aunt?”

Aunt Prudence replied with spirit and emphasis,—

“He went, Peter, where all wicked people go,—to the kingdom of darkness, where he is shut up for ever and ever. There now!”

Aunt Prudence was “clearing away the table,” as she called her morning work, when she uttered these startling and decisive words. She looked steadily at Peter, and felt that she had answered him and silenced him. She felt a kind of triumph in the pause that followed, and lifted her spectacles as though to say, “What do you think of that?”

“But, Aunt Prudence—”

“But what, Peter? This is a very alarming subject.”

“But who let him out?”

“Oh, Peter, Peter! You are becoming an awful boy. I always knew that those Methodist free salvation meetings would do you no good. You go right out to the wood-pile, and bring me in an armful of wood. You have no sense of theology, anyway. You are a poor daft fellow. ‘Who let him out?’ Did I ever!”

Peter went out, muttering that he didn’t “see how people can be shut up forever in another world, and be wandering about this world at the same time. It don’t stand to reason, nohow, true as preachin’.”

But although Peter’s reasoning seemed convincing, it did not quiet his superstitious fears. Whenever his conscience became a little disturbed, the picture of tall Penelope Royall wandering about in the wind “all in white” was before him. Even grim old Captain Kidd was not such an alarming object to his fancy as that. Captain Kidd was a man, and he felt sure that he would let him alone, if he did not trouble the buried treasure, but old Penelope Royall—she was a woman.

---

The Mount Hope lands were full of Indian stories, which were founded on tricks, and even worse stories of those whose wits cheated the devil out of his dues, when their grasping souls had bargained with the latter. Peter thought of these. There was one story that suggested to him that wit is equal to most conditions of life. It was a red settle story, but became a poem:—

“Among Rhode Island’s early sons

Was one whose orchards fair

By plenteous and well-flavored fruit,

Rewarded all his care.

“For household use they stored the best,

And all the rest, conveyed

To neighboring mill, were ground and pressed

And into cider made.

“The wandering Indian oft partook

The generous farmer’s cheer;

He liked his food, but better still

His cider fine and clear.

“And as he quaffed the pleasant draught

The kitchen fire before,

He longed for some to carry home,

And asked for more and more.

“The farmer saw a basket new,

Beside the Indian bold,

And smiling said, ‘I’ll give to you

As much as that will hold.’

“Both laughed, for how could liquid thing

Within a basket stay?

But yet, the jest unanswering,

The Indian went his way.

“When next from rest the farmers sprung

So very cold the morn,

The icicles like diamonds hung

On every eping and thorn.

“The brook that babbled by his door

Was deep, and clear, and strong,

And yet unfettered by the frost,

Leaped merrily along.

“The self-same Indian by this brook

The astonished farmer sees;

He laid his basket in the stream,

Then hung it up to freeze.

“And by this process oft renewed,

The basket soon became

A well-glazed vessel, tight and good,

Of most capacious frame.

“The door he entered speedily,

And claimed the promised boon;

The farmer laughed heartily,

Fulfilled his promise soon.

“Up to the basket’s brim he saw

The sparkling cider rise,

And to rejoice his absent squaw,

He bore away the prize.

“Long lived the good man at the farm,

The house is standing still,

And still leaps merrily along

The much diminished rill.

“And his descendants still remain,

And tell to those who ask it,

The story they have often heard

About the Indian’s basket.”

A wonderful reformation seemed to come over Peter. He began to stay at home, and go to bed very early, often as early as seven o’clock,—or at least he seemed to do these sober things. Aunt Prudence had gone to the door of his room once or twice after his early retiring, but had found it locked, and she had been unable to awake him, he “slept so sound.” “Boys do,” she said.

“Peter,” she said one morning, “tell me the truth, now; didn’t you hear me when I pounded and pounded on the door last night?”

“No, Aunt Prudence, true as preachin’ I did not.” And he did not.

The truth was that poor Peter had fallen from his integrity, even in these times of the great revivals. He had discovered that the great hall window was as handy as a door, and that he had only to leave it unfastened to return to the house at any time of the night without disturbing the sound slumbers of good Aunt Prudence. He was careful in taking this liberty to first lock his own room. These were wicked ways, it is true, and very bold ones for a quiet youth, and quite inconsistent with meeting-going habits. But the meetings at this period were wonderfully dramatic; everybody talked about them, and Peter’s curiosity quite overcame his moral sense.

The holidays were at hand. Thanksgiving was Aunt Prudence’s great annual festival, her Feast of Tabernacles; she made little account of Christmas, which, she told Peter, was a mere “relic of the Pope and the Dragon,” and which he associated with an old picture in the “Pilgrim’s Progress.”

Watch Night was the great annual occasion of the old Bristol Methodists. It took place on New Year’s Eve, when a great assembly used to meet to sing the old Wesleyan Watch Night hymns, written by Wesley for the Old London Foundry, and to watch “the old year out and the new year in.” The services of the Presiding Elder were sometimes secured for this memorable night, and if so, a “Love Feast” was held, and a multitude told their experiences, amid triumphant responses, ecstatic refrains, and sometimes strange exhibitions of trance, or of “losing one’s strength,” as the old phenomena were called.

Christmas was the Episcopal festival, and the Episcopal Church in Bristol was unlike any other at that time. It followed the revival methods of Whitefield and Lady Huntingdon. Christmas Eve was an occasion of universal charity. The poor were the guests of the church, and were entertained like princes. Peter well understood all these festivals, and he resolved to attend them all,—the old Orthodox church’s Thanksgiving, the Episcopal festival, and the Methodists’ solemn jubilee on New Year’s Eve. There was nothing sectarian about him. It was also his intention not to disturb the mind of Aunt Prudence about these matters,—the easy hall window would make it unnecessary.

Thanksgiving passed—it fell late this year; December came in mildly, as though the bright days were loath to go. The stillness before the winter storms filled the air. The withered grasses were silent now, without the voice of insect or bird. A white gull sometimes cleaved the still gray air, and the wild cry of the shore birds was sometimes heard. The nights were silvery and cold. The Mount Hope Bay and the Pocassett Hills in the frosty moonlight recalled the silence and melancholy fate of that ancient race which slumbered in the browned fields, Pometacom’s cliff and spring. The night air seemed peopled with shadows of painted chiefs and spectral armies forever gone. The river weeds were dead, and encased in a thin sheet of ice in the early mornings. Brown leaves still hung on the oaks, and red leaves of ivy on the long walls. Husking was over, and the yellow cones of the stalks of corn fodder glimmered on every farm. The fishing-boats were hauled upon the shore; everything—the sky, the blue bay, the fields, the working-men—seemed waiting for the coming of winter. The mild days grew shorter and shorter; the tall candles burned lower and lower each evening; the nights were glorious, and Christmas Eve came, rung in by the resonant bell of good St. Michael’s.

Aunt Prudence had resolved to depart from the Orthodox customs on this special year, and to make Peter a Christmas present. “He has become such a good boy of late,” she reasoned, “and so steady. Every one else is giving presents, and he ought to be rewarded.” She planned to fill a bag with good things for him, after the manner of the bountiful bag, and to hang it on his bedroom door on Christmas Eve. He would, as she thought, find it in the morning, and it would be a great surprise to him. It certainly would. She made the bag, purchased some sweetmeats for it, and began to fill it with useful articles. She knit for it a “comforter,” as a neck-scarf was called, several pairs of stockings, some “galluses,” and secured for it various other useful things, among them “Hervey’s Meditations,” “Young’s Night Thoughts,” and “The Fool of Quality,” all famous books in those sober days, and “good readin’.”

When the bag was nearly full it occurred to her that she ought to knit for it a pair of mittens. This happy thought, however, did not occur to her until the day before Christmas. Aunt Prudence was a rapid knitter. The needles flew under her skilled fingers so swiftly as to look like mere glimmers. “I can finish the mittens before eleven o’clock to-night,” she said to herself, “and then the bag will be all complete. I had as lief sit up late to-night as not, the nights are so long now.”

Peter retired early that evening.

“Going?” said Aunt Prudence as he left the room with his candle. “You seem dreadful sleepy of late. Well, that’s all right, I suppose. Boys do when they’re growing. Don’t forget to say your prayers, Peter. You’ve a great deal to be thankful for. Good-night, Peter. The Lord bless ye!”

Peter closed the door on receiving this serene benediction.

“He’s such a steady boy!” said the good woman, as she resumed her knitting. “He sha’n’t lose anything by it, either. Any boy will be steady if he is brought up right. There’s the trouble, people do not bring their children up right.” Her needles flew. It was inspiring to recall her great success in training Peter.

It was a still night. There was a faint moon, and the stars glimmered thick in the cloudless sky. Aunt Prudence looked out of the window at times, saw the still fields and bare trees, and thought of the past. The Mount seemed haunted—it always does on calm winter nights. Not by Leif, or Kidd, or the Royalls, or by Indian fighters, or Revolutionary heroes, or statesmen, but by that vanished and mysterious race whose forest capital was here, and whose arrow-heads still fill the fields and sand.

At nine the old Bristol bell rang out on the clear air.

“I shall have the work all done by ten,” said Aunt Prudence, and her needles flew again. She was very happy. She got up and looked out of the window for the tenth time—ghost-land.

The hands on the old English clock pointed to ten. The work was done, and Aunt Prudence drew the top of the bag together, and pinned upon the tape handle a sheet of paper, on which was written,

“Peter Fayerweather, a Present.”

It was half-past ten before Aunt Prudence opened the door to go with the bag bountiful to the door of Peter’s room. As she did so she thought that she heard a noise in the hall. She stepped back and listened with a beating heart. She surely heard the hall window close, and a careful step in the hall. Her heart bounded, and she gasped for breath; she had long had a presentiment of this danger.

She locked her door at once, withdrew the key, and kneeled down on the rug and looked through the key-hole very cautiously. There was only a faint moon and star light in the hall, but she saw the shadow of a tall man pass, and heard a dull step move in the direction of Peter’s room. Her house had been entered, surely; the expected event had really come. What should she do?

She stepped into her bedroom, which opened out of her sitting-room, where she had been knitting, and sunk down upon the white bed, and drew the bed-curtains. She would have groaned, but she dared not. Here she lay and trembled till the old clock struck eleven, the strokes sounding like a warning through the hollow rooms.

She must alarm Peter. How? Suppose she were to meet the robber in the hall? Her nervous system was so shaken that she felt that she could not be quiet any longer. She must do something, at any event. She arose, put aside the bed-curtains, drew from the bed the white counterpane, put it over her head like a great shawl, wrapped it around her, and going into the sitting-room, took the almost extinct candle, and unlocked the door and stepped cautiously into the hall. If ever a mortal looked like the traditional spectre, Aunt Prudence did then.

The hall was empty; all was still. The grim old portraits were there—like shadow people they were all.

She left the sitting-room door open, and moved silently and cautiously along toward Peter’s room. She tried Peter’s door. A great sense of relief came to her; it was unlocked. She opened it slowly, but a draught blew out the light. Terrified at this, she glided to Peter’s bed and seized the boy by the hair, gasping, “Peter, Peter, there’s a man in the house! Get up, get up! there’s a man in the house!” She shook him with a nervous energy, and repeated in stage-like whispers the words. She then vanished out of the room.

Peter awoke at the first touch of the rude hand, and his heart seemed to stop, and his blood to turn to frozen streams, as he saw an awful white spectre standing over his bed, and felt its bony fingers in his hair. Penelope flashed upon him. It surely was the ghost of Penelope; she had got away from the other world this time, surely, despite his reason and philosophy. He looked around wildly, saw the shadow of the old ox-saddle that adorned this room as a curiosity,—and Penelope, awful Penelope.

Penelope’s final shake of his great shoulders nearly put a period to his unromantic history. A chill like death came over him, and he fully believed that his last moments had come. The gasped words, “There’s a man in the house—get up!” were something of a relief. “A man!” If he would only appear! Then he beheld the unearthly white figure vanish through the door. It surely was Penelope. She had gone; and oh, if the man, if any man, would come!

He lay petrified for a moment, and then thought of the old smoke chamber. His decision was immediate. He leaped up, drew the dark patchwork coverlid around him, and darted upstairs. Past loom, hatchel, and spinning-wheel, he made his way to the iron door, leaped into the smoke chamber, closed the door behind him, and sank down in a heap, with a most decided resolution to leave the house in the morning forever, “true as preachin’.” He drew the industrial coverlid around him, leaving only an opening for his eyes.

Aunt Prudence went back to her room, and locked the door tremblingly, and waited for Peter’s step. But no Peter came. Her suspense grew unbearable again. Suddenly she too thought of the old smoke chamber, and drawing her ghostly robe again around her, she went into the hall, and silently and very cautiously made her dark way up the stairs. She too, past loom, hatchel, and spinning-wheel, found her way to the iron door, and pulling it open, prepared to enter the dark grated chamber.

If ever a mind was supped full of horror, it was Peter’s when he heard a noise at the iron door, and beheld the supposed ghost of Penelope Royall, tall and avengeful, standing before him. He uttered a pitiful shriek, slid through the iron bars, and dropped down the chimney into the fireplace. There he recovered himself at once, leaped up with a bound, fled from the house, and almost flew toward the town.

But Aunt Prudence? Shocked on finding the supposed robber in the old smoke chamber, she too fled precipitately for the outside door, turning over the spinning-wheel in her flight. Once into the open air, she made equal speed toward the slumbering village.

She did not see the form of Peter in advance of her; but he paused a moment for breath, and saw the supposed form of Penelope pursuing him, “all in white.” It stimulated his resolution to gain the town. It was a mile or more from the Mount Hope farms to the old village, and Peter fleeing from the ghost, and Aunt Prudence from the robber, went over this distance in a very brief part of the midnight hour.

“The Bristol clock struck the hour of twelve. An out-of-town Christmas Eve party were returning home at this late hour on foot, and on the skirts of the village were surprised by Peter, wrapped in his odd blanket. The merry-makers knew him well, laughed, and plied him with questions.

“The ghost!” he shrieked, as soon as he could recover his voice, and pointed to the hill. “Penelope!”

The astonished young people looked in the direction in which Peter had pointed. There surely was a tall white form that seemed to have wings and to come half flying toward them through the air. They had heard of such things, but had never seen one before. Had they numbered but two or three, they would have fled; but there were some ten or twelve in the party, and they waited the coming of the strange apparition.

“’Tis me she’s after—Penelope—’tis me,” screamed Peter. “The Lord have mercy upon me! My time is come now, true as preachin’.”

The white figure was soon before them. It no sooner reached the place than it sunk down upon the earth.

“Take me home with you; there’s a robber in the house!”

A ghost and a robber!

“It’s Aunt Prudence Wardwell,” said one of the young men, after a pause, on hearing such a midnight tale. “Why, Aunt Prudence, what is the matter?”

“Protect me—take me home, somewhere. Oh, there’s a robber in the house,—a robber!”

“Here’s Peter,” said the young man. “I thought he lived with you.”

“Peter?” gasped the woman all in white.

“Yes. Here, Peter, what does this mean?”

“I—I—thought, oh, I thought, Aunt Prudence, that you was a ghost. I did, true as preachin’.”

“How did you get here, Peter? Oh, there’s a robber in the house. Did you hear me when I called you? I saw him enter by the window,—saw him with my own eyes, Peter. He’s hid in the old smoke chamber. Oh, Peter, where shall we go, oh! oh!”

It was all clear to Peter now, painfully clear; the cloud had lifted.

“It was me, Aunty.”

“What?” Aunt Prudence’s tall form rose slowly.

“It was me who got into the house by the window.”

“You?”

“Yes—I must confess—I run away and went to the town to the festival. I did—I must confess—true as preachin’.”

“You?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Peter, let’s go home. What two dreadful-looking objects we are! I ain’t afraid of ghosts.”

“And I ain’t afraid of no robbers, nor no such. What a time we’ve made of it!—and the folks will all laugh at us too. Let’s go home. That’s the place for us, true as preachin’.”

The Robber and Ghost, two spectral figures, departed, with a great sense of relief, but with many reserved opinions. Peter never received the present of the bountiful bag, but neither ghosts nor robbers were ever known to trouble the Royall house again. It became a very quiet place, and Peter Fayerweather settled down there to his pastoral and domestic duties, and really fulfilled Aunt Prudence’s hopes of him, his thrifty farming doing real credit to the beautiful and historic Mount Hope Lands.[4]

A MONG the things that especially interested the Marlowes in the Manufacturing and Liberal Arts Building, was the German Exhibition of toys, and the Hans Christian Anderson room, in the Danish department. The Liberal Arts Building seemed to be the representative world, the exhibition of the very best that the human mind can accomplish under a single roof.

“The birds fly about over these forty acres,” said young Ephraim Marlowe, “and do not know that they are not out of doors.”

“The building is a prairie covered with glass, so it seems to me,” said Mr. Marlowe. “How bright and beautiful! Listen!”

As he spoke there fell upon the acres of industrial art the music of the chimes.

Our trio in their journeys often rested in the Building of Public Comfort, and at times on the wide, cool porticos and verandas of the Woman’s Building. They sometimes went for coffee to the Brazilian Garden, or to the Cafés of Costa Rica and Venezuela.

The Children’s Building was always a charm. A house to be delightful must have a generous and sympathetic soul, and this the Children’s Building had in Mrs. Clara Doty Bates, to whom this department largely owed its successful evolution. Mrs. Bates’ own room was filled with portraits of children’s authors, and the best books for the young.

The Folk-Lore Societies held their meetings in the Art Palace, in the city, where the Auxiliary Congresses met. There were many private meetings among these amiable story-tellers. In one of the twenty-eight or more halls devoted to such meetings, Mr. Marlowe related the story of “Waban,” and recited a legend associated with the arrival of the “Viking.”

During the visits of the Marlowes at the Fair, there occurred one day a very tragic scene. The Cold Storage Warehouse took fire, and some firemen were sent up to the top of the high tower. While they were there, the flames burst out around the tower below, and they saw that they were doomed.

One of these, seeing his fate, seemed to glory in the thought that his life was to end in sacrifice for others. He put his hand to his lips, threw a kiss to the awestruck multitude, and thus parting with the world leaped into the flames. A man never knows how noble he may be till his worth is put to the test. Mr. Marlowe, the Quaker, thought that this man’s death was the noblest scene that he saw at the great Fair.

The Court of Honor at night was a scene of the new world of electricity such as the past had never seen. One night amid the thronging thousands there burst over the vast area a song between the selections of the great orchestra. It was “Nearer my God to Thee.” It seemed like a cry in the night. At another time the song of “Old Folks at Home” in like manner followed the band.

The French building allured our trio, who were greatly interested in its beautiful rooms. The German building on the inside presented the stately and gloomy grandeur of an old cathedral. All of the foreign buildings were plans of their own countries, and in most of them, especially in the South American, one felt the charm and spell of what they were intended to express.

Day by day the delighted crowds surged on. One could hardly dream here that there was such a thing as death in the world. None of the faces seemed to wear any trace of sorrow or care. Every one appeared happy. O blessed hours! When will the world ever find in associated life such pleasure again?

A WABAN ROSE.

I went out to the bowery hills of the little town named Waban, to see the wonderful Waban roses. “There must be some legends here?” said I.

“There is,” said the gardener. Then we sat down among the roses, and he told it to me.

WABAN.

Tommy Trembly was a tinker. “Tommy Tinker” he might have been called, for, like his English craftsman of the same trade name, he was accustomed to roam

the country around,

Crying, “Old brass to mend.”

The old New England tinkers were useful folk in their day, but they are as dead to customs of the present time as poor Christopher Sly, whom the curious ballad of “The Tinker’s Good Fortune” put for a time in a duke’s place, and whom Shakespeare so happily celebrates in the Induction to the comedy of the “Taming of the Shrew.”

Our New England tinker, Tommy Trembly, did not experience any such good fortune as Christopher’s. But he resembled Sly in his alehouse habits, and like him, hoped for the accidents of fortune.

He did not chance to fall into the kindly hands of the good Duke of Burgundy, but he did fall into the pastoral court of Old Waban, the famous Indian judge. This did not bring him the fortune that he expected; and it is of Tommy Trembly’s ill-luck and misfortune as a witness in court that I have a somewhat curious provincial story to tell.

Old Waban’s name meant the wind. To the Indians of Natick he was the wind. His mind, it was believed, swept the sky, wandered free over the forests and streams, and comprehended all things. When the wind uttered his voice the truth was thought to have been spoken, and nothing more needed saying. The Wind was the oracle.

Waban’s name still lives. The beautifully shaded lake under the green hills about Wellesley College, over which the girl students often row in good weather, will always recall the name of the famous chief which it bears; and a pretty suburban village near Boston is also called Waban. The name is worth perpetuating, for Waban was a noble chief and an upright judge.

He was a judge more than a chief; and Natick, and other old towns on the winding Charles River, used to be full of anecdotes of his odd but wise edicts.

One of his writs against an evil-doer who bore the name of Jeremiah Offscow was long preserved.

It ran: “You, you big constable guide, you catch um Jeremiah Offscow, strong you hold um, safe you bring um afore me. Waban, justice of the peace.” He had a love of fine-sounding and rhythmic language, as the writ shows.

Waban’s principal residence was at Natick, but that name once comprehended the whole region along the Charles River occupied by the Natick Indians. The great tree at Brighton, under which he used to pray and preach, was for public safety recently cut down. It was the largest tree ever known in the New England Colonies.

Old Waban’s judgments at court were often severe. A young Indian justice of the peace came to him one day, and said:—

“What would you do in case where a whole company of Indians were found to have become drunk and quarrelsome?”

“I first tie them all up.”

“And then?”

“I would whip um plaintiff.”

“Yes?”

“And then I whip um ’fendant!”

The young Indian looked surprised.

“What I do with the witnesses in such a case? Listen.”

But I will not tell here what old Judge Waban would have done with a witness in such a situation, for it would anticipate my story.

Tommy Trembly, the tinker, roamed up and down the provincial towns, with a soldering iron and pail of solder in a loose bag on his back, crying lustily, as he passed a house, “Old brass to mend? Old brass to mend?” by which he meant: “Have you any kitchen utensils that need repairing?”

Much of the cooking and laundrying was done at this period in immense brass kettles, which after long use became thin and leaky, and the leaks were commonly mended by the wandering tinker during his visits.

Tommy Trembly was a pioneer of his craft. He used to wander from Boston up and down the towns on the Charles River, and into the Indian towns of Natick, Punkapoag and Magunkaquog, or “the place of great trees,” as Hopkinton was once called. Other tinkers wandered up the valley of the Merrimac.

Nearly every village had an “ordinary,” or eating-house. This place was sometimes more a drinking-house than an eating-house. Most of the disorderly conduct of those generally well-conducted days began in the mugs of these old taverns.

There were some twelve hundred Praying Indians, as the Christian Indians were called, in the villages near Boston at this time. These had been converted to Christianity through the efforts of John Eliot, the Indian apostle, who translated the Bible into the Indian tongue. The principal seat of the Praying Indians was at Natick, and Waban was their principal leader, governor, counsellor, and judge.

There was an ordinary near the borders of Lake Cochituate, not far from the Indian village, kept by one “Indian Pendergast” and his wife, which acquired a bad reputation from the brawls that had occurred there over the drinking-cups. Squaw Pendergast, as the hostess was called, was a sharp-eyed, money-loving Indian woman, who could speak English well; and it was her passion to secure as many pence and shillings as possible from every guest who came.

“’Tis the bar that makes the money, I tell you; ’tis the bar that makes the money. Slap!” she used to say, striking her hand on her long, jingling jacket.

“Yes,” once answered a grave old Indian deacon; “and it is the bar that loses the money at last, and good name and soul and all, as you will see, Squaw Pendergast. Ale money um heap poor!”

One early autumn day Tommy Trembly wandered away from Boston along the Charles River, through little settlements and past the farms, crying, when he saw a habitation, “Old brass to mend? Old brass to mend?”

The next afternoon found him at Natick. He had mended many pots and kettles by the way. The heats of early autumn were cooling now; the apples were reddening on the trees. There were thistle-downs on the roads and byways, and the graceful leaves of the sassafras were turning yellow.

Approaching Natick, Tommy ceased to cry, “Old brass to mend?” He had earned much money by the way, and his only thought now was of the ordinary, and of Squaw Pendergast’s hard cider and foaming mugs of ale. Here and there a farmer called to him to stop, but he did not heed.

“Here, stop, stop! Kettles, kettles!” shouted one goodwife; but Tommy did not even turn his head in response.

“Stop that wild tinker; kettles, kettles!” she cried to her hired man. “Kettles, kettles!” shouted the man, swinging his corn-knife; but on flew Tommy, unheeding.

“Are you flying to-day?” asked black-eyed Squaw Pendergast, as his dusty figure moved athwart the cool trunks of the trees.

“Ay, Squaw Pendergast, and it’s good money I’ve made to-day,” said Tommy, striking on a pocket in his leather breeches.

“It’s a lively supper that I have for you,” said the squaw. Tommy threw down his bag of tools and fanned himself with his hat, looking away to the sunset sky.

A “lively” supper Tommy made, but his pocket did not chink so lively after it was over. Some idling cattle-drovers came, and he took another supper with them; and after his two suppers were over his leather pocket did not chink at all. But the chink might have been heard in Squaw Pendergast’s long woollen pocket.

During the evening a quarrel arose between the half-intoxicated drovers and Pendergast, the keeper of the ordinary, who was an ale-drinking, indolent, disorderly Indian. The men disputed; the Indian interfered, and struck one of them to the floor, where he lay for a time insensible.

The squaw took her husband’s side in the quarrel, and threw firewood at the drovers; and amid it all the alarmed neighbors came to the place and demanded the keeping of the peace.

The idlers at the ordinary went away through fear of arrest, and with them disappeared Tommy Trembly’s bag of tinker’s tools, solder, and soldering irons.

The man recovered, but the next morning came an order from Judge Waban for the arrest of the Indian Pendergast and his squaw, and also a demand that Tommy Trembly should appear as witness.

The court day was appointed. Tommy was greatly frightened, for the eccentric punishments of Old Waban’s courts were famous; and the affair presented Tommy in no favorable light among the grave Puritan Indians.

“I am only a witness,” he said to the people who stared at him on the way, “only the witness, you know.”

“You don’t know what you will find yourself when you get into the court of Old Waban,” said a farmer. “If you weren’t a white man I would not like to stand in your place.”

The court was held on the brown fields near where Wellesley College now stands. The slopes were cooled by great oak shadows, and overlooked the lovely pond now called Lake Waban. All the people, Indians and white, gathered from skeleton villages around to witness the trial.

It was a hot autumn day. The locusts sang in the great oaks, and the ospreys whirled in the sky. The grasses rustled; the ferns were turning yellow, and blue gentians filled the dry beds of the summer weirs under the hills.

Here and there wild grasses hung from the trees, and everywhere the always curious bluejays floated and scolded, as if to ask what meant all this gathering of the people.

Old Waban sat under a patriarchal oak, grave and stately. A blanket trimmed with shells was thrown over him. He wore leather breeches, and herons’ plumes covered his head. He was an old man, but his hair was black and long. His hands were hard and brawny as copper, and as he sat down on a shelf of rock under the oak, he rested his chin on a staff.

Among the Indians who gathered around him were several who claimed to be nearly one hundred years old. Peambow, or Peam Boohan, the ruling elder of Hassanamesit (Groton), was there, and Pennahannit, or Captain Josiah, the governor-general of the Praying Indian towns. Several sagamores came in blankets and feathers, and some twenty or more white people were present.

Finally came Joshua Mayhew, Esq., on horseback, as the representative justice of the General Court of Massachusetts to the rustic court of the Christian Indian community. It was high noon, and old Judge Waban slowly rose, and stood with lifted hand. “Hear ye! hear ye! hear ye! Listen to the voice of the Wind.” He looked a forest patriarch, as he stood in the shadow of the sun-crowned oak.

“The peace has been broken. A white man is the witness of it. Let the prisoners be brought, and Thomas Trembly, who is the witness. Sit down!”

All sat down on the ground. The two prisoners were brought, with their hands tied behind them. After them came Tommy Trembly.

“Hear ye! hear ye! hear ye! Listen to the voice of the Wind,” said Old Waban, rising, with lifted hand. “Thomas Trembly, tell us the story of the fight which you saw at Pendergast’s.”

Tommy told his story,—the quarrel, and how he was robbed.

“It was a bad place?” said Waban, shaking his head.

“It was an orful bad place,—an orful place,” said Tommy.

“The people were all drinking there?”

“All drinking. Yes, it was orful.”

“Did you drink?”

“I took a warm supper. I had been travelling and tinkering.”

Squaw Pendergast bent her black eyes angrily upon him.

“And I was robbed,” said Tommy, with a martyr-like air. “The squaw she first got away from me all my money for—my supper. Then I was frightened, and then I was robbed. I have lost almost a week’s work.”

“Ugh!” said Old Waban; “hard times you’ve had. Ugh!”

“Hear ye! hear ye! hear ye! Listen to the voice of the Wind,” he presently said. “What shall be done with the Indian Pendergast?”

There was a council of the leading Indians.

“Let him be tied to a hornbeam, and given fifty lashes on his bare back,” said Waban.

A small hornbeam-tree stood near. Indian Pendergast was tied to it, his clothing was partly removed, and he was whipped, amid the silence of the assembly.

“Hear ye! hear ye! hear ye! Listen to the voice of the Wind,” said Old Waban. “What shall be done with the squaw?”

Another council, as before.

“Twenty-five lashes on her shoulders,” pronounced Old Waban.

She was led away to the hornbeam, and received the lashes in perfect silence, as though she had been an image.

“You got paid well,” said Tommy, as she was led by him after the chastisement.

“Hear ye! hear ye! hear ye! Listen to the voice of the Wind!” said Old Waban to the drovers. “Go, take your cattle and drive them away, and never do you come again to the honest Indian towns. If you come, you shall go to the hornbeam-tree, too. Go!”

He lifted his brown arm and pointed to the north. He stood like a statue. The drovers did not reply; they knew his right to order them away from the towns. The cattle were grazing in the meadowy pastures under the hills, among the tall swamp-grass and spearmint beds and fir-trees. The drovers hurried them away.

There was something grand in the old Indian as he stood there with lifted arm, the very picture of Justice and Truth. Here was a forest prophet who, under the Christian teaching of Eliot, had put the nature of the savage animal, to which he had been born, under his will, and was governed by his faith in God and moral sense.

He was called “The New Chief” because he had developed a new nature and become a new man. Odd his decisions in court often were, but there was moral sense in them, and he believed that when Waban the Wind spoke, he uttered the will of the Higher Power.

The people watched the drovers as they cracked their whips and disappeared among the blazed trees of the oaklands. Waban at length broke the silence.

“Hear ye! hear ye! hear ye! for the last time. Listen to the voice of the Wind. What shall be done with Thomas Trembly?”

“Done?” said Tommy, starting; “done with me? I haven’t done nothing. I’m white; you can’t touch me. I’m only a witness.”

“Ugh!” said Old Waban.

“I ought to be paid for my tinker’s tools,” said Tommy.

“Ugh!” said Old Waban, “you lost them there.”

“Yes, that was the very place where I lost them; and I’ll lose a week’s time beside.”

“And that because you were there?”

“Yes; and by good rights I ought to be paid the cost of my tools, and the money I lost at the inn after being so shamefully used there,” said Tommy.

“Ugh! Hear ye! hear ye! hear ye! Listen to the Wind. What shall be done with Thomas Trembly, the tinker?”

“Give him the ordinary,” said a white man. “Fine the Pendergasts by giving the tinker the ordinary.”

The chief again lifted his hand.

“Take him,” said Waban, “to the hornbeam-tree, and give him as many sound lashes as you gave the squaw.”

“What! You can’t! I am a white man!”

“But the white brother here,” said Waban, turning to Justice Mayhew, “approves my sentence. Take him to the hornbeam.”

“What for? what for?” screamed the tinker.

“What for?” said Waban. “What for? For being found in bad company. You shouldn’t have been there!”

Tommy received the chastisement in a very frantic manner, uttering the loudest protestations. When the lashes had been given he crept away, hardly lifting his eyes.

The people of Natick were slow to forget the old chief’s methods with witnesses who were found in bad company, and who “shouldn’t have been there.”