he said, a smile showing about the corners of his lips. "Are you His Gracious Majesty, Dot, that you speak of yourself as 'We'?"
At the sound of her baby name, all the brightness returned to her face, and glancing up at him, she whispered mischievously, "Look in the thicket behind you."
He turned to send a keen glance into the clump of bushes and vines growing some dozen yards closer to the road he had just left; and there he caught a glimpse of pale blue – like female raiment – showing amid the foliage.
Wheeling his horse quickly, he rode toward it; and what he now saw was a tall, blonde girl of eighteen or thereabouts, who arose slowly from where she had been hiding, and came forward with a dignity that savored of defiance, although there seemed to be a smile lurking in the corners of her mouth.
Her gypsy hat hung by its blue ribbons on one white rounded arm, bared to the elbow, as the fashion of her sleeve left it. The neck of her pale blue gown was low cut; but a small cape of the same material was over it, – crossed, fichu-wise, on her bosom, and then carried under the arms, to be knotted at the back.
Her round white throat rose out of the sheer blue drapery in fine, strong lines, to support a regal head, crowned with a glory of pale brown hair, now bared to the sun, and glinting as though golden sparkles were caught in its silky meshes.
As she approached, the rider held up his horse, and sat motionless, staring at her, while a merry peal of laughter, silvery as chiming bells, broke from sixteen-year-old Dorothy.
"Mary Broughton!" the young man exclaimed at length, as he looked wonderingly at the fair-haired girl.
She paused a yard away and swept him a mocking courtesy as she said, – and her musical voice was of the quality we are told is "good in woman," – "Aye; at your service, Master John Devereux."
"Then you have been with our madcap here?" he asked, now finding his tongue more readily.
"All the afternoon – an it please you, sir," she replied in the same tone of playful irony.
"It does please me," he said, now with a smile, "for it was much better than had Dot been alone, as I supposed at first. But think you it is safe for you two girls to come wandering over here by yourselves?" And in the look of his dark eyes, in the very tone of his voice, there was something different, – more caressing than had been found even for his small sister, who had now drawn close to them.
Mary Broughton slipped her arm through Dorothy's, and the mockery left her face.
"I suppose not," she answered frankly. "But, to tell the truth, I had not thought of such a thing until you mentioned it. We've not met a soul, save Hugh Knollys, who was riding into the inn yard as we came from Moll Pitcher's."
"And so you have been to consult Moll's oracle?" the young man said banteringly.
The white lids fell over the honest blue eyes that had been looking straight up into his own. The girl seemed greatly embarrassed, and her color deepened, while Dorothy only giggled, and slyly pinched the arm upon which her slender fingers were resting.
Mary gave her a quick glance of reproof. Then she raised her eyes and said hesitatingly, "We heard she was down from Lynn, on a visit to her father."
"You girls are bewitched with Moll Pitcher and her prophecies," he exclaimed with a laugh.
"Ah – but she tells such wonderful things," began Dorothy, impetuously. But Mary Broughton laid a small white hand over the red lips and glanced warningly at her companion.
"What did she tell?" the young man asked. But now Dorothy only smiled, and shook her head.
"Come, Dorothy," Mary said, "we had best get back to the boat." And she turned to go; but the younger girl hung back.
"Are you going to a meeting at the inn, Jack?" she inquired, looking at her brother.
"Little girls must not ask questions," he answered, yet smiling at her lovingly. "But do you hasten to the boat, and get home, Dot, you and Mary. It troubles me that you should be about here. Hurry home, now, – there's a good little girl." But he looked at both of them as he spoke.
"Shall you be home by evening?" his sister asked, keeping her face toward him as she backed away, obliged to move in the direction of the beach; for Mary, still holding her arm, was walking along.
He nodded and smiled; then riding back to the highway, wheeled his horse and stopped to watch the two figures making their hurried way across the marsh. But his eyes rested longest upon one of them, tall and regal, her blonde head showing golden in the waning light, the vivid green of the marshes and the deep purple of the sea making a defining background for the beauty of the woman to whom John Devereux had given his lifelong love.
CHAPTER III
"Oh, Mary, there is Johnnie Strings!" exclaimed Dorothy, as they drew near shore, where lay the rowboat, beached on the sand, with Leet, the faithful old darkey, sitting close by, awaiting the pleasure of his adored young mistress.
Near him a little girl of seven was gathering pebbles, her heavy blonde braids touching the tawny sand whenever she stooped in her search. And crouched by his grandfather Leet was the boy Pashar, looking like an animated inkspot upon the brightness all about. His white eyeballs and teeth showed sharply by contrast with their onyx-like settings, as he sat with his thick lips agape, literally drinking in the words of the redoubtable Johnnie Strings, a wiry, sharp-faced little man, whose garments resembled the dry, faded tints of the autumn woods.
Johnnie, with his pedler's pack, stored with a seemingly unlimited variety of wares, was a well-known and welcome visitor to every housewife in town. He lived when at home (which was rarely) in a hut-like abode up among the rocks of Skinner's Head; and the highway between Boston and Gloucester was tramped by him many times during the year.
He owned a raw-boned nag of milk-white hue, and rejoicing in the name of Lavinia Amelia; and these two, with a yellow cur, constituted the entire ménage of the Strings household.
Johnnie, like Topsy, must have "just growed," for aught anyone ever knew of a parent Strings. The one item of information possessed by his acquaintances was that his name was not Johnnie Strings at all, but "Stand-fast-on-high Stringer," – an indication that he must have received his baptism at Puritanical hands.
Either "Stand-fast-on-high" became more unregenerate as his infancy was left behind, or else his associates had no great taste for Biblical terms as applied to every-day use; for his real name had long since become vulgarized to the common earthiness of "Johnnie," and "Stringer" had been reduced to "Strings."
He now sat upon his pack – a smaller one than he usually carried – and was saying to Leet, "Now that there be so cantankerous a lot o' them pesky King's soldiers 'bout us, there's no sayin' what day or night they won't overrun the hull country, from the Governor's house at Salem, clean over here to the sea; an' every man will be wise, that owns cattle, to sleep with one eye an' ear open, an' a gun within reach."
"What are you saying, Johnnie Strings?" called out Dorothy, as she and Mary came up. "Are you trying to frighten old Leet into fits?"
The little pedler sprang to his feet and snatched off his battered wreck of a hat, showing a scant lot of carroty hair, gathered tightly into a rusty black ribbon at the nape of his weather-beaten neck.
"Only sayin' God's truth, sweet mistress," he answered, bowing and scraping with elaborate politeness. "I've just come from over Salem way; an' yesterday evenin'
