Mowers jump into the wagon and drive off his three sisters half a mile to their home, and after seeing Jenny Post ride off on a pillion behind her old brother, as in the gone-by days when wide roads and wagons were not, Swan sauntered carelessly towards Dorcas, and said, in a tone too low for her parents to hear, but very distinctly,—
"I must see you to-morrow night."
"I can't," was the murmured reply.
"For the last time, Dorcas! come down to the old pear-tree to-morrow, before sunset," he whispered, imploringly.
He was wise to turn suddenly away before her parents could hear him, touching on secular subjects, and before she could herself get up any new objection. Her objections, truly, were very faint and few, and, being tossed about awhile, finally settled out of sight. Henry would, she knew, come to his weekly wooing as soon as the setting sun proclaimed the Sabbath-day over. After that time she was safe. She could slip down the orchard to the pear-tree, and hear what was the important word, and what Swan meant by "the last."
Eight or ten persons, who lived at a distance from "meeting," were in the habit of partaking the hospitality of Colonel Fox, of a Sunday, as the hour's intermission gave them no opportunity to return to their distant homes. After the Puritan fashion, unlike enough to the present, families were restricted on Sunday to two meals, and those were provided with a Jewish regard to the fourth commandment. All labor was scrupulously anticipated or postponed, but such hospitality as consisted with the strict observance of the Sabbath was at the service of their friends.
On coming in at the door of the square room, with its sanded floor, its old desk, its spare bed in the corner, and its cherry table with wavy outlines, which had belonged to Colonel Fox's mother, Dorcas found the cloth already laid, and the bonnets and cardinals of half a dozen old friends on the bed.
In five minutes, early apples, old cider, and a plate of raised doughnuts, flanked by plates of mince- and apple-pie, rewarded the patience and piety of the company. Colonel Fox, solemnly, and as if he were quite accustomed to it, poured from a jug into large tumblers that held at least a pint, dropped three large lumps of loaf-sugar, filled the glass with water, grated some nutmeg on the top, and bade his guests refresh themselves with toddy, unless they preferred flip: if they did, they had only to say so: the poker was hot.
They all ate and drank, and by that time the bell rang again; and then they all went again. And if they heard Father Boardman at all, it was with utterly composed minds, when he told them it was their duty to be contented, even should their condemnation be eternally decreed, since it must, of course, be for the good of the whole, and for the glory of God. Hopkinsianism was in fashion then, and the minds of men in many parts of the country had accepted the logic of its founder, negatived as it was, in its practical application, by the sweetness of his Christian benevolence and his large humanity. Then the toddy helped them to swallow many doctrines that in our cold-water days are sharply and defiantly contested. The head is much clearer; whether hearts are better is doubtful.
After supper, and while yet the sun lingered smilingly over the Great Meadows and on the hills, behind which he sank, Dorcas, who had meanwhile adorned herself with Aunt Dorcas's bequest, broke the long silence, by whispering so low that her father's sleep should not be disturbed,—
"Mother, do you set much by this pin?"
"Of course I do, child! 'T was your Aunt Dorcas's," said Mrs. Fox, "your father's own sister."
"Yes, I know it, mother; but how did she come by it?"
All these years, and this was the first time Dorcas had asked the question! She colored a little, too, as if some secret thought or story were busy about her heart, as she looked at the ring.
"Well,—it was a man she 'xpected to 'a' bed. They was to 'a' ben merried, an' he was to 'a' gi'n up v'yagin'. But he was cast away, an' she never heerd nothin' about neither him nor the ship. He was waitin' to git means, an' he did, privateerin' an' so; but I 'xpect he was drownded," concluded Mrs. Fox, in a suitably plaintive tone.
And that was Aunt Dorcas's story.
CHAPTER II
If anybody is curious to know why there should be mystery or secrecy connected with Swan Day's meeting with Dorcas, or why they should meet under a pear-tree, instead of her father's roof-tree, in a rational way, it might be a sufficient answer, that there never was and never will be anything direct and straightforward about Cupid or his doings. But the real and more important reason was, that Colonel Fox did not like Swan, and had said, in so many words, that "he wouldn't have Swan Day a-hangin' round, no how!—that he was a poor kind of a shote,—that he wished both him and his clutter well out o' town,—and that he needn't think to make swans out of his geese, no time!"
In the first and last sentence, Colonel Fox indicated the ground of his dislike to the handsome young store-keeper, and his dread that Swan's eyes would somehow interfere with his own cherished plans of a union between the Fox and Mower farms. Whatever Colonel Fox determined on was done or to be done. He had anticipated the French proverb; and the "impossibility" made not the slightest difference. Therefore Dorcas had no notion of disobedience in her head, permanently. She solaced herself by the occasional luxury of departure from set rules, and she intended to depart in that way to-morrow,—for just five minutes,—just to hear what that foolish fellow wanted of her; and what could it be? and why was it the last time?—would he give her up?
Dorcas pondered the matter while the sun still crowned the heights, and glanced at her sleeping father in silence. Why should Colonel Fox dislike Swan so very much because he was a Britisher? All that was done with, long ago, and why not be peaceable? Just then her father drew the breath sharply between his teeth, as if in pain. It was the old wound, that had never been healed since the Battle of Bennington. He had lain on the ground,—Dorcas had often heard him tell the tale,—and had striven to slake his deathly thirst with the blood that he scooped up in the hollow of his hand from the ground about him. So terrible was the carnage where he lay. "A d–d Britisher had shot him,—another had driven his horse over him, and afterwards, while he lay half-dead, had tried to rob him!" Would he ever forget it? He would have continued, on the contrary, to fire and hack till the present day, but for the wound in his knee, which had disabled him for life, long before a peace was patched up with the mother-country. So he had retired to Walton, and before Continental money had depreciated more than half had bought acres by the thousand, and become generalissimo of flocks and herds. Through the admiration of his townsmen for his wounds, he rapidly and easily attained the rank of Colonel, without the discomfort of fighting for it; and from his excellent sense and the executive ability induced by military habits, became, in turn, justice of the peace, deacon of the church, town-clerk, and manager-general of Walton.
Nobody—that is to say, nobody in the family—spoke, when Colonel Fox was in the house, unless first spoken to,—not even Dorcas. Such were the domestic tactics of the last century, and Colonel Fox held fast to old notions.
The social ones were far more liberal,—so very liberal, indeed, so very free and easy, in the rural districts especially, that only a knowledge of the primitive conditions under which such manners grew up could possibly reconcile with them any impressions of purity and discretion. In hearing of manners, therefore, it is always necessary to remember that the children of country Puritans are and were wholly different in the grain from Paris or London society of the same period,—as different, for example, as the Goddess of Reason from our first mother, though at first glance one might think those two similar. New-England parents had the utmost confidence in their daughters, and almost no restraint was laid on social intercourse. Their personal dignity and propriety wore presupposed, as matters of course. Religion and virtue needed only to point, not to restrain.
The Colonel, on his part, took little heed of Dorcas's movements in the way of balls
