Part 3

“She’s in there,” sobbed John Carson’s wife, pointing to the bedroom door--“in there with little Mercy, Goodman Sheldon.”

“Is--the child hurt, and--Hannah a-tending her?”

The women wept, and pushed each other forward to tell him, but Captain Isaac Moulton spoke out, and drove the knife home like an honest soldier, who will kill if he must, but not mangle.

“Goodwife Sheldon lies yonder, shot dead in her bed, and we found the child dead on the hearth-stone,” said Isaac Moulton.

John Sheldon turned his gaze on him.

“The judgments of the Lord are just and righteous altogether,” said Isaac Moulton, confronting him with stern defiance.

“Amen,” returned John Sheldon. He took off his cloak, and hung it up on the peg as he was used.

“Where is David Walcott?” asked Silence, standing before him.

“David, he is gone with the Indians to Canada, and the boys, Ebenezer and Remembrance.”

“Where is David?”

“I tell ye, lass, he is gone with the French and Indians to Canada; and you need be thankful he was but your sweetheart, and ye not wed, with a half-score of babes to be taken too. The curse that was upon the women of Jerusalem is upon the women of Deerfield.” John Sheldon looked sternly into Silence’s white wild face; then his voice softened. “Take heart, lass,” said he. “Erelong I shall go to Governor Dudley and get help, and then after them to Canada, and fetch them back. Take heart; I will fetch thee thy sweetheart presently.”

Silence returned to her seat in the fireplace. Goody Crane looked across at her. “He will come back over the north meadow,” she whispered. “Keep watch over the north meadow; but ’twill be a long day ere ye see him.”

Silence paid seemingly little heed. She paid little heed to Ensign John Sheldon relating how the French and Indians, with Hertel de Rouville at their head, were on the road to Canada with their captives; of the fight on the meadow between the retreating foe and the brave band of Deerfield and Hatfield men, who had made a stand there to intercept them; how they had been obliged to cease firing because the captives were threatened; and the pitiful tale of Parson John Williams, two of whose children were killed, dragged through the wilderness with the others, and his sick wife.

“Had folk listened to him, we had all been safe in our good houses with our belongings,” cried Eunice Bishop.

“They will not drag Goodwife Williams far,” said Goody Crane, “nor the babe at her breast. I trow well it hath stopped wailing ere now.”

“How know you that?” questioned Eunice Bishop, turning sharply on her.

But the old woman only nodded her head, and Silence paid no heed, for she was not there. Her slender girlish shape sat by the hearth fire in John Sheldon’s house in Deerfield, her fair head showed like a delicate flower, but Silence Hoit was following her lover to Canada. Every step that he took painfully through pathless forests, on treacherous ice, and desolate snow fields, she took more painfully still; every knife gleaming over his head she saw. She bore his every qualm of hunger and pain and cold, and it was all the harder because they struck on her bare heart with no flesh between, for she sat in the flesh in Deerfield, and her heart went with her lover to Canada.

The sun stood higher, but it was still bitter cold; the blue frost on the windows did not melt, and the icicles on the eaves, which nearly touched the sharp snow-drifts underneath, did not drip. The desolate survivors of the terrible night began work among the black ruins of their homes. They cared as well as they might for the dead in Deerfield street, and the dead on the meadow where the fight had been. Their muscles were all tense with the cold, their faces seamed and blue with it, but their hearts were strained with a fiercer cold than that. Not one man of them but had one or more slain, with dead face upturned, seeking his in the morning light, or on that awful road to Canada. Ever as the men worked they turned their eyes northward, and met grimly the icy blast of the north wind, and sometimes to their excited fancies it seemed to bring to their ears the cries of their friends who were facing it also, and they stood still and listened.

Silence Hoit crept out of the house and down the road a little way, and then stood looking over the meadow towards the north. Her fair hair tossed in the wind, her pale cheeks turned pink, the wind struck full upon her delicate figure. She had come out without her blanket.

“David!” she called. “David! David! David!” The north wind bore down upon her, shrieking with a wild fury like a savage of the air; the dry branches of a small tree near her struck her in the face. “David!” she called again. “David! David!” She swelled out her white throat like a bird, and her voice was shrill and sweet and far-reaching. The men moving about on the meadow below, and stooping over the dead, looked up at her, but she did not heed them. She had come through a break in the palisades; on each side of her the frozen snow-drifts slanted sharply to their tops, and they glittered with blue lights like glaciers in the morning sun over those drifts the enemy had passed the night before.

The men on the meadow saw Silence’s hair blowing like a yellow banner between the drifts of snow.

“The poor lass has come out bareheaded,” said Ensign Sheldon. “She is near out of her mind for David Walcott.”

“A man should have no sweetheart in these times, unless he would her heart be broke,” said a young man beside him. He was hardly more than a boy, and his face was as rosy as a girl’s in the wind. He kept close to Ensign Sheldon, and his mind was full of young Mary Sheldon travelling to Canada on her weary little feet. He had often, on a Sabbath day, looked across the meeting-house at her, and thought that there was no maiden like her in Deerfield.

Ensign John Sheldon thought of his sweetheart lying with her heart still in her freezing bedroom, and stooped over a dead Hatfield man whose face was frozen into the snow.

The young man, whose name was Freedom Wells, bent over to help him. Then he started. “What’s that?” he cried.

“’Tis only Silence Hoit calling David Walcott again,” replied Ensign Sheldon.

The voice had sounded like Mary Sheldon’s to Freedom. The tears rolled over his boyish cheeks as he put his hands into the snow and tried to dig it away from the dead man’s face.

“David! David! David!” called Silence.

Suddenly her aunt threw a wiry arm around her. “Be you gone clean daft,” she shrieked against the wind, “standing here calling David Walcott? Know you not he is a half-day’s journey towards Canada an the savages have not scalped him and left him by the way? Standing here with your hair blowing and no blanket! Into the house with ye!”

Silence followed her aunt unresistingly. The women in Ensign Sheldon’s house were hard at work. They were baking in the great brick oven, spinning, and even dipping poor Goodwife Sheldon’s candles.

“Bind up your hair, like an honest maid, and go to spinning,” said Eunice, and she pointed to the spinning-wheel which had been saved from her own house. “We that be spared have to work, and not sit down and trot our own hearts on our knees. There is scarce a yard of linen left in Deerfield, to say naught of woollen cloth. Bind up your hair!”

And Silence bound up her hair, and sat down by her wheel meekly, and yet with a certain dignity. Indeed, through all the disorder of her mind, that delicate maiden dignity never forsook her, and there was never aught but respect shown her.

As time went on, it became quite evident that although the fair semblance of Silence Hoit still walked the Deerfield street, sat in the meeting-house, and toiled at the spinning-wheel and the loom, yet she was as surely not there as though she had been haled to Canada with the other captives on that terrible February night. It became the general opinion that Silence Hoit would never be quite her old self again and walk in the goodly company of all her fair wits unless David Walcott should be redeemed from captivity and restored to her. Then, it was accounted possible, the mending of the calamity which had brought her disorder upon her might remove it.

“Ye wait,” Widow Eunice Bishop would say, hetchelling flax the while as though it were the scalp-locks of the enemy--“ye wait. If once David Walcott show his face, ye’ll see Silence Hoit be not so lacking. She hath a tenderer heart than some I could mention, who go about smiling when their nearest of kin lie in torment in Indian lodges. She cares naught for picking up a new sweetheart. She hath a steady heart that be not so easy turned as some. Silence was never a light hussy, a-dancing hither and thither off the bridle-path for a new flower on the bushes. An’, for all ye call her lacking now, there be not a maid in Deerfield does such a day’s task as she.”

And that last statement was quite true. All the Deerfield women, the matrons and maidens, toiled unceasingly, with a kind of stern patience like that which served their husbands and lovers in the frontier corn-fields, and which served all the dauntless border settlers, who were forced continually to rebuild after destruction, like way-side ants whose nests are always being trampled underfoot. There was need of unflinching toil at wheel and loom, for there was great scarcity of household linen in Deerfield, and Silence Hoit’s shapely white maiden hands flinched less than any.

Nevertheless, many a day, in the morning when the snowy meadows were full of blue lights, at sunset when all the snow levels were rosy, but more particularly in wintry moonlight when the country was like a waste of silver, would Silence Hoit leave suddenly her household task, and hasten to the terrace overlooking the north meadow, and shriek out: “David! David! David Walcott!”

The village children never jeered at her, as they would sometimes jeer at Goody Crane if not restrained by their elders. They eyed with a mixture of wonder and admiration Silence’s beautiful bewildered face, with the curves of gold hair around the pink cheeks, and the fretwork of tortoise-shell surmounting it. David Walcott had given Silence her shell comb, and she was never seen without it.

Many a time when Silence called to David from the terrace of the north meadow, some of the little village maids in their homespun pinafores would join her and call with her. They had no fear of her, as they had of Goody Crane.

Indeed, Goody Crane, after the massacre, was in worse repute than ever in Deerfield. There were dark rumors concerning her whereabouts upon that awful night. Some among the devout and godly were fain to believe that the old woman had been in league with the powers of darkness and their allies the savages, and had so escaped harm. Some even whispered that in the thickest of the slaughter, when Deerfield was in the midst of that storm of fire, old Goody Crane’s laugh had been heard, and one, looking up, had spied her high overhead riding her broomstick, her face red with the glare of the flames. The old woman was sheltered under protest, and had Deerfield not been a frontier town, and graver matters continually in mind, she might have come to harm in consequence of the gloomy suspicions concerning her.

Many a night after the massacre would the windows fly up and anxious faces peer out. It was as if the ears of the people were tuned up to the pitch of the Indian warwhoops, and their very thoughts made the nights ring with them.

The palisades were well looked to; there was never a slope of frozen snow again to form foothold for the enemy, and the sentry never slept at his post. But the anxious women listened all winter for the warwhoops, and many a time it seemed they heard them. In the midst of their nervous terror it was often a sore temptation to consult old Goody Crane, since she was held to have occult knowledge.

“I’ll warrant old Goody Crane could tell us in a twinkling whether or no the Indians would come before morning,” Eunice Bishop said one fierce windy night that called to mind the one of the massacre.

“Knowledge got in unlawful ways would avail us naught,” returned Goodwife Spear. “I trow the Lord be yet able to protect His people.”

“I doubt not that,” said Eunice Bishop, “but I would like well to know if I had best bury my hood and my spinning-wheel and looking-glass in a snow-drift to-night. I have no mind the Indians shall get them. I warrant she knows well.”

But Eunice Bishop did not consult Goody Crane, although she watched her narrowly and had a sharp ear to her mutterings as she sat in the chimney-corner. Eunice and Silence were living in John Sheldon’s house, as did many of the survivors for some time after the massacre. It was the largest house in the village, and most of its original inhabitants were dead or gone into captivity. The people all huddled together fearfully in the few houses that were left, and the women’s spinning-wheels and looms jostled each other.

As soon as the weather moderated, the work of building new dwellings commenced, and went on bravely with the advance of the spring. The air was full of the calls of spring birds and the strokes of axes and hammers. A little house was built on the site of their old one for Widow Bishop and Silence Hoit. Widow Sarah Spear also lived with them, and Goody Crane took frequent shelter at their fireside. So they were a household of women, with loaded muskets at hand, and spinning-wheels and looms at full hum. They had but a scanty household store, although Widow Bishop tried in every way to increase it. Several times during the summer she took perilous journeys to Hatfield and Squakheak, for the purpose of bartering skeins of yarn or rolls of wool for household articles. In December, when Ensign Sheldon with young Freedom Wells went down to Boston to consult with Governor Dudley concerning an expedition to Canada to redeem the captives, Widow Eunice Bishop, having saved a few shillings, burdened him with a commission to purchase for her a new cap and a pair of bellows. She was much angered when he returned without them, having quite forgotten them in his press of business.

On the day when John Sheldon and Freedom Wells started upon their terrible journey of three hundred miles to redeem the captives, Eunice Bishop scolded well as she spun by her hearth fire.

“I trow they will bring back nobody,” said she, her nose high in air, and her voice shrilling over the drone of the wheel; “an they could not do the bidding of a poor lone widow-woman, and fetch her the cap and bellows from Boston, they’ll fetch nobody home from Canada. I would I had ear of Governor Dudley. I trow men with minds upon their task would be sent.” Eunice kept jerking her head as she scolded, and spun like a bee angry with its own humming.

Silence sat knitting, and paid no heed. She had paid no heed to any of the talk about Ensign Sheldon’s and Freedom Wells’s journey to Canada. She had not seemed to listen when Widow Spear had tried to explain the matter to her. “It may be, sweetheart, if it be the will of the Lord, that they will bring David back to thee,” she had said over and over, and Silence had knitted and made no response.

She was the only one in Deerfield who was not torn with excitement and suspense as the months went by, and the only one unmoved by joy or disappointment when in May John Sheldon and Freedom Wells returned with five of the captives. But David Walcott was not among them.

“Said I not ’twould be so?” scolded Eunice Bishop. “Knew I not ’twould be so when they forgot to get the cap and the bellows in Boston? The one of all the captives that could have saved a poor maid’s wits they leave behind. There’s Mary Sheldon come home, and she a-coloring red before Freedom Wells, and everybody in the room a-seeing it. I trow they might have done somewhat for poor Silence,” and Eunice broke down and wailed and wept, but Silence shed not a tear. Before long she stole out to the terrace and called “David! David! David!” over the north meadow, and strained her blue eyes towards Canada, and held out her fair arms, but it was with no new disappointment and desolation.

There was never a day nor a night that Silence called not over the north meadow like a spring bird from the bush to her absent mate, and people heard her and sighed and shuddered. One afternoon in the last of the month of June, as Silence was thrusting her face between the leaves of a wild cherry-tree and calling “David! David! David!” David himself broke through the thicket and stood before her. He and three other young men had escaped from their captivity and come home, and the four, crawling half dead across the meadow, had heard Silence’s voice from the terrace above, and David, leaving the others, had made his way to her.

“Silence!” he said, and held out his poor arms, panting.

But Silence looked past him. “David! David! David Walcott!” she called.

David could scarcely stand for trembling, and he grasped a branch of the cherry-tree to steady himself, and swayed with it.

“Know--you not--who I am, Silence?” he said.

But she made as though she did not hear, and called again, always looking past him. And David Walcott, being near spent with fatigue and starvation, wound himself feebly around the trunk of the tree, and the tears dropped over his cheeks as he looked at her; and she called past him, until some women came and led him away and tried to comfort him, telling him how it was with her, and that she would soon know him when he looked more like himself.

But the summer wore away and she did not know him, although he constantly followed her beseechingly. His elders even reproved him for paying so little heed to his work in the colony. “It is not meet for a young man to be so weaned from usefulness by grief for a maid,” said they. But David Walcott would at any time leave his reaping-hook in the corn and his axe in the tree, leave aught but his post as sentry, when he heard Silence calling him over the north meadow. He would stand at her elbow and say, in his voice that broke like a woman’s: “Here I am, sweetheart, at thy side. I pray thee turn thy head.” But she would not let her eyes rest upon him for more than a second’s space, turning them ever past him towards Canada, and calling in his very ears with a sad longing that tore his heart: “David! David! David!” It was as if her mind, reaching out always and speeding fast in search of him, had gotten such impetus that she passed the very object of her search and knew it not.

Now and then would David Walcott grow desperate, fling his arms around her, and kiss her upon her cold delicate lips and cheeks as if he would make her recognize him by force; but she would free herself from him with a passionless resentment that left him helpless.

One day in autumn, when the borders of the Deerfield meadows were a smoky purple with wild asters, and golden-rods flashed out like golden flames in the midst of them, David Walcott had been pleading vainly with Silence as she stood calling on the north terrace. Suddenly he turned and rushed away, and his face was all convulsed like a weeping child’s. As he came out of the thicket he met the old woman Goody Crane, and would fain have hidden his face from her, but she stopped him.

“Prithee stop a moment’s space, Master David Walcott,” said she.

“What would you?” David cried out in a surly tone, and he dashed the back of his hand across his eyes.

“’Tis full moon to-night,” said the old woman, in a whisper. “Come out here to-night when the moon shall be an hour high, and I promise ye she shall know ye.”

The young man stared at her.

“I tell ye Mistress Silence Hoit shall know ye to-night,” repeated the old woman. Her voice sounded hollow in the depths of her great hood, which she donned early in the fall. Her eyes in the gloom of it gleamed with a small dark brightness.

“I’ll have no witch-work tried on her,” said David, roughly.

“I’ll try no witch-work but mine own wits,” said Goody Crane. “If they would hang me for a witch for that, then they may. None but I can cure her. I tell ye, come out here to-night when the moon is an hour high; and mind ye wear a white sheep’s fleece over your shoulders. I’ll harm her not so much with my witch-work as ye’ll do with your love, for all your prating.”

The old woman pushed past him to where Silence stood calling, and waited there, standing in the shadow cast by the wild cherry-tree until she ceased and turned away. Then she caught hold of the skirt of her gown, and David stood, hidden by the thicket, listening.

“I prithee, Mistress Silence Hoit, listen but a moment,” said Goody Crane.

Silence paused, and smiled at her gently and wearily.

“Give me your hand,” demanded the old woman.

And Silence held out her hand, flashing white in the green gloom, as if she cared not.

The old woman turned the palm, bending her hooded head low over it. “He draweth near!” she cried out suddenly; “he draweth near, with a white sheep’s fleece over his shoulders! He cometh through the woods from Canada. He will cross the meadow when the moon is an hour high to-night. He will wear a white sheep’s fleece over his shoulders, and ye’ll know him by that.”

Silence’s wandering eyes fastened upon her face.

The old woman caught hold of her shoulders and shook her to and fro. “David! David! David Walcott!” she screamed. “David Walcott with a white sheep’s fleece on his back! On the meadow! To-night when the moon’s an hour high! Be ye out here to-night, Silence Hoit, if ye’d see him a-coming down from the north!”

Silence gasped faintly when the old woman released her and went muttering away. Presently she crept home, and sat down with her knitting-work in the chimney-place.