then – "
But Mary's white hand was over the laughing lips and silenced them.
"If your father should hear you talking in such fashion, Dot, I feel sure he would be displeased with me for having gone with you to see Moll." Mary made an effort to look and speak naturally, but her eyes were very bright and her face was still deeply flushed.
Dorothy smiled, and shook her curly head wilfully. "Not he," she said with decision; "leastway, not for long. He is stern enough, at times, to others; but he can never be severe with me."
"Ah, Dot, but you are surely a spoiled child," said Mary, with a fond glance at the winsome face.
Dorothy shrugged her small shoulders. "So Aunt Penine is always saying; but all the aunts in the world could never come 'twixt my father and me."
Little 'Bitha, who had been crooning softly to herself, and improvising, after a fashion of her own, —
"The sea is blue, blue, blue,
The sea is blue, and I love the sea,"
suddenly cried out, "Oh, Dot, look, look! What an ugly fish!"
They all looked, and saw a dead dogfish, its cruel teeth showing in the gaping jaws, go bobbing by, entangled in a mesh of floating seaweed.
"Him look like dead nigger," said Pashar, as he flung a pebble at it.
Old Leet scowled over his shoulder at his lively descendant.
"Dere'll be anudder, an' real true, dead nigger ter keep him company, ef ye don't sit still, an' quit grampussin' 'bout de boat," he growled; and. Pashar became very quiet.
They were now drawing in nearer to the shore, where the strip of sand-beach lay down below the rocky headland, upon the highest point of which stood Spray House, the home of Nicholson Broughton and his daughter Mary.
The house – a low, rambling building, with gabled roof – was perched upon the highest of a series of greenstone and syenite ledges, whose natural jaggedness had no need to be strengthened by art to render them a safe bulwark against the encroaching seas, when the storms flashed blinding mists and glittering spray about the diamond-paned windows.
These looked off over the open water, and past the point of land intervening between Great Bay and Marblehead Rock. Upon the latter was an odd beacon, – being a discarded pulpit from one of the Boston churches, whence, after hearing much of the noise and commotion of men, it had been transferred to this barren rock, there to listen to the ceaseless tumult of the battling sea.
Inland from Spray House stood the many great warehouses; and back of these stretched the pasture-lands, breaking here and there into rough hills, showing fields of golden splendor, where the wood-wax, or "dyer's weed," was growing in luxuriant wildness.
Several small boats were drawn up on the beach; and anchored a little way out, and directly opposite the front windows of Spray House, were two goodly-sized schooners, and a brig, their topmasts now touched by the fiery gold of sunset.
"I wish you were coming home with me, Mary," said Dorothy, as Leet ran the boat's nose into the shingle, and Pashar leaped out to hold the stern.
"I wish so, too. But you know it will not be many days before father goes up to Boston, and he said I should abide with you until he returned."
"That will be fine," said Dorothy, her face aglow with pleasure, as Mary, after dropping a light kiss upon her check, arose to leave the boat. "Only, if I were you, I should coax him to let me go to Boston."
"I did ask him; but he goes on public matters, he said, and was like to have a quick and a rough trip." Mary was now standing upon the beach.
"Well, be he gone a long or a short time, we shall all be very happy to have you with us. That you know, surely." And Dorothy kissed her hand to her friend, as Leet pulled out again into the water and rowed toward the upper end of the bay, while Mary took her way across the beach to the thread-like path leading up to the plateau that formed the back dooryard of Spray House.
In the yard was Joe, the darkey serving-man, busy cutting more wood to increase the already generous pile stored in the building near by, while Agnes, his niece, was in the kitchen, preparing the evening meal.
In the long, low, oak-panelled "living-room" of the house, its windows facing the water, Mary found her father. He was standing – a tall, finely built man, nearly fifty – gazing through an open window. His sturdy legs were well apart, as with hands in his trousers' pockets he was jingling his keys and loose coin in a restless sort of way, while he hummed to himself.
Mary entered so softly, or else his thoughts were so absorbing, that he did not notice her until she stood close beside him and slipped a hand within his arm. Then he started, and the scowl left his brow as he turned the frank, blue-gray eyes, so like her own, down upon her upturned, smiling face.
"Ha, Pigsney!" he exclaimed, now smiling himself. "And have you had a pleasant water-trip?" He looked at her lovingly, while he caressed the blonde head that just reached to his broad shoulder.
"Yes," she replied hurriedly. "And I met Johnnie Strings, who has but just come from over Salem way. He says there are quantities of soldiers there, and that they are like to come this way and spread all over the town."
"You speak of them, sweetheart, as if they might be another epidemic of smallpox," he said grimly, "And so they are, so they are, if not indeed something worse." And the scowl came back to his face as he looked off over the water at his brig and schooners.
"But what does it all mean, father?" Mary asked anxiously. "Think you they will meet with opposition should they actually come down here? Oh, it would be dreadful to have any fighting right here in our streets and before our very doors." The girl trembled, and her cheeks paled.
"Nay, nay, lass," and he patted her shoulder reassuringly; "cross no bridges until you come to them." Then he added rather impatiently, "What does Johnnie Strings mean by telling such tales to affright women-folk?"
"We – Dorothy Devereux and I – met him, and we made him talk. But he did not seem to want to tell us all he knew about it."
"And quite right," said her father, smiling again. "Lord pity the man who is fool enough to tell women – and girls, at that – all he knows of such matters, in days like these."
Mary looked up at him a little reproachfully, but he only bent and kissed her, as he said, now quite gravely: "I've much on my mind this night, my child, and I have to ask if you can be ready soon after supper to drive with me to the house of neighbor Devereux, and to stop there a few days with Dorothy. I have certain matters to talk over with him, and will pass the night there; and before daylight I must be on my way to Boston."
CHAPTER V
On Riverhead Beach, at the extreme southwest end, the Devereux family kept sundry boats, for greater convenience in reaching the town proper, without going around the Neck, by the open seaway; and some distance from the boat-house was their home, the way being along the shore and across the thriftily planted acres and through the woodland.
The same low stone house it was that had withstood the pirates' raid over one hundred years before. But the forests were now gone, although a noble wood still partially environed it. And beyond this were sloping hills and grassy meadows, through which ran a stream of pure, sweet water, wandering on through the dusk of the woods until it found the sea.
Here fed the flocks
