A Century Too Soon Part 19

"Anywhere so you leave my house."

The stranger had made no effort as yet to rise, and the child who sat at his side with her head on his knee still slept. Someone brought in a lighted wax taper, and the strange man, gazing on the face of the sleeping child, asked:

"Can she remain? See, she has had no food all day and has journeyed, oh, so far! Won't you let her remain?"

"No, I will have none of you with me."

"But she hath done no wrong," persisted the father.

The stubborn landlord shook his head and answered:

"It brings ill luck to one having such about. You must away and take her with you."

The large, sad-eyed man bent over the sleeping child and whispered:

"Ester!"

She awoke in a moment and cast a bewildered glance about the room, as a child will on being suddenly aroused.

"We must go," the father said, sadly.

She made no complaint, but, rising, with a feminine instinct common even in a girl of her tender years, adjusted her ruffled hood and dress.

They went out into the night, for the sun had long since set, and the far-off stars one by one opened their little eyes, until the heavens were glittering with diamonds. They entered a small street in which there were numerous gardens, some being merely enclosures with stone fences. Among these gardens and fences he saw a house the window of which was illuminated, and he looked through the open cas.e.m.e.nt as he had done at the inn. It was a cozy, whitewashed room, with a bed, a rude cradle, a few chairs and an old-fas.h.i.+oned matchlock hanging on a rack made of deer's antlers on the wall. A plain table was laid for supper in the middle of the room, a wax taper burned on the mantel lighting up the interior of the Puritan's home. A man forty years of age sat at the table with a baby on his knee. Two children, one four and the other two years old, sat at his side, while the mother was placing supper on the table. What a tempting sight for a hungry man! Could one conceive a more happy family picture? The travellers looked on, and the father was almost maddened when he glanced at his own child.

"Papa, I am so hungry and so tired," she whispered. "Won't you ask them if we can stay here?"

Fugitives from the law must have a care where they go, and to whom they appeal, yet Ester's father was growing more desperate every moment. He went boldly to the door and gave a timid rap with his knuckle. That hand once bold enough to strike a king from his throne was weak and trembling on this night. At sound of the knock, the husband and father seemed to have suddenly changed. The lion may sport and play with his whelps in his lair, but when the intruder enters his domestic abode, all is changed. He rose, took up the light and went to the door. He was a tall man and, judging from his charcoal-begrimed features, a blacksmith, and he wore a large leathern ap.r.o.n which came quite to his shoulder. As he threw back his head the s.h.i.+rt-front opened, displaying his bare neck and hairy chest. His face was sullen, with a bull-dog expression on it.

Without a moment's hesitation, the stranger began:

"I am weary, and my child hath had no food to-day. Would you, for money, give us a morsel to eat and a blanket and corner in which to sleep?"

"Who are you?" asked the smith.

"We came from New Plymouth, and have walked all day. I will pay you well for what you give us."

The blacksmith loved money; but those were troublesome times, and people had to be careful whom they admitted into their houses. The king had been restored and was pursuing his enemies with a vengeance, and to harbor a _regicide_ might mean death on the scaffold. The smith thought of all this, and asked:

"Why do you not go to one of the inns?"

"There is no room there."

"Nonsense! that is impossible. Have you been to Robinson's?"

"I have been to all."

"Well?"

The traveller continued with some hesitation, "I do not know why; but they all refuse to take us in."

The man knew there was something wrong with the travellers, and turning about, he held a whispered consultation with his wife. She was heard to say in a faint whisper: "It is the same, a man with a child." Then the smith turned on the stranger, and said:

"Be off."

The proud eye of a daring trooper in despair is the saddest sight one ever gazed upon. Such was the look of the humiliated man, as, with his starving child, he turned from the last door. At times the spirit of revenge rose in his breast, and he was inclined to turn on the men who refused his child food, drink and shelter, and with his stout knotted stick beat out their brains; but, on second thought, he restrained himself and said:

"No--no; I will not make an outlaw of myself. I am not a robber."

He who had been the commander of thousands, the king of the battle-field, at whose name princes grew pale and thrones tottered, was now a wanderer from house to house, rejected at every door.

"I am so hungry," murmured Ester. "If I had but a morsel of food, I could sleep under a tree."

He heard the plaintive appeal, and it wrung his fatherly heart. Through his teeth he hissed:

"If I am made a savage let all the world beware."

They were climbing a hill to enter another part of the town, when they came upon a kind old Puritan woman, who paused to gaze in compa.s.sion on the wayfarers. If others kept off from them as though they were creatures to contaminate by a touch, she seemed to entertain no such fears. Coming quite close, she said:

"Prythee, friend, why do you not get this child to bed?"

"I would, good woman, had I a bed for her; but, alas, all doors are shut against us."

"Surely not all!"

"I have tried the inns and the home of the smith; but they seem to fear us, as if we were polution."

"Have you called at that house?" she asked, pointing to a steep-roofed building, the top of which was just visible over the hill in the light of the rising moon.

"No, who lives there?"

"Mathew Stevens, a very good old man."

"Has he a heart? Is he brave?"

"He has a heart tender enough, and he is brave enough to shelter the oppressed, in spite of other people's opinions."

The woman went her way, and the traveller and his weary child went slowly over the hill to the house. It seemed a great distance. Many a time after that Ester traversed the distance alone and thought it short; but on that night rods were lengthened out into miles. As they were pa.s.sing the window, Ester saw a man about the age of her father reading a Bible. He sat at a table on which burned a taper, and his wife and children were gathered about listening. Surely a man who would read the Bible would not refuse them food and shelter. She staggered up to the door by her father's side, in a dazed, half-conscious manner, and was cognizant of his knocking, and the door being opened. Their story was told briefly, and then warm arms encircled the little fugitive, a colored slave prepared a supper, and Ester was awakened to eat it, after which she sank into slumber on her father's breast.

CHAPTER XI.

TYRANNY AND FLIGHT.

"Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness, Some boundless contiguity of shade, Where rumor of oppression and deceit, Of successful or unsuccessful war, Might never reach me more."

--Cowper.