Abigail looked up again, after a little, with something of animation.

"But the Pequod Indian—what became of her? If the saviour of my mother is alive, I must see her!"

Tituba cowered down to the floor again, and clasped both hands over her knees, as she answered:

"She could not help it. They tore the two children apart. One was driven into the forest; the other was carried into the meeting-house, and baptized with a new name, by the very hands that had driven her sister to the woods. In this golden-haired child, the soul of her own offspring had entered. How could she leave it to follow the other? Were not the wolves and panthers more merciful than the men who kept her little one?

"The Indian woman went into the edge of the woods, and built herself a bark wigwam; she gathered shells from the beach and strung them into wampum, which was money, as gold is now. She gathered willows from the brook, and made baskets which she carried on her back to the village, thus gaining a sight of the little one. Sometimes she would go into the meeting-house, that she might catch a glimpse of the beautiful girl who was possessed of her own child's soul, from the dark corner where these godly people allowed the Indians and negroes to creep and watch them as they worshipped God. They saw the Indian woman come Sunday after Sunday with her sorrowful face; so in time they began to regard her as a praying Indian, and one who might attain the salvation of her heathen soul, by looking at them from afar off. She was a harmless, humble creature, who asked but to follow the steps of the child she loved so much, without making it known that the little girl was any thing to her; like a dog they let her pass from dwelling to dwelling on week days, and in the meeting-house on Sundays, without hindrance. Sometimes she got a chance to speak to her child, to give her a bit of wampum, or a tiny basket to pick whortleberries in; and this was all the happiness she asked.

"One Sunday the Indian woman went into the meeting-house as usual. From her dark corner she peered out, looking for her child in the old place. The girl was not there, but down, close by the pulpit, she found her clothed in white, like a spirit from the far hunting-grounds. By her side was the minister, Samuel Parris, the man who had sat in judgment on her sister. Another minister preached in the pulpit; the people looked around restlessly, during the long sermon, and when it closed there was a rustling of dresses all over the house, like the stir of leaves in the forest.

"The Indian woman turned cold in her seat. For a little time she could not see; but when her eyes grew clear, her child, her beautiful child, whom she had worshipped afar off like a slave, that child stood in her white garments before the communion-table, with her hand in that of the old minister; and before them stood the man who had come down from the pulpit, muttering words that could not reach the dark corner where the poor Indian stood. But she knew that they were giving the young girl—her child—to that stern old man for his wife. Filled with horror, she strove to cry out and protest against it; but the tongue clove to the roof of her mouth, and she was dumb. When she struggled to get down from her high place in the gallery, and make her way to the pulpit, the beadle stopped her rudely. 'Indians were not permitted,' he said, 'to enter there.'

"While this poor Indian was struggling to pass him, the meeting broke up. The crowd came down the aisles, almost sweeping her away; but she stood firm, till that old man came forward, leading her child by the hand. His bride saw the Indian mother, of whom she had but a knowledge of vague kindnesses, and smiled softly as she drew near. Then the poor creature knew that it was too late; that her white enemies had bound the young one to them forever. So she forgot her own people, and followed the old man and his bride sorrowfully home to his house. There was no servant in the kitchen. She crept in through the back door and went to work. Her heart was full of bitterness and love: hate for him, love for her, the gentle one, who came in her meek beauty and settled down like a dove in his home.

"At first the Indian watched for an opportunity to tell the young wife that she had married the son of her mother's persecutor; that the father of Parris had been one of Anna Hutchinson's judges; and that he, her bridegroom, had been among the worst enemies of her own noble sister; but when she saw the young wife settling down in her new home, so serene and contented, the Indian's heart failed her, and she drudged on from day to day, putting the cruel duty off, till at last one night—"

Abby, who had been greatly excited during this recital, suddenly threw out her hand, laying it heavily on the old woman's shoulder.

"Do not speak of that. I cannot bear to hear in words what is in my own remembrance like a vague, wild dream. Enough! My mother died in that chair; her sister, Elizabeth Parris, expired the next day, with a new-born infant slumbering in her arms. That infant is my cousin Elizabeth. The meek, old man, whose heart began to break that night, was my mother's cruel, cruel judge. But the Indian woman—what became of her?"

The old woman folded her arms more tightly about her knees, and looked up with the glance of a faithful dog.

"Her children were dead, but their little ones had no mother, so she stayed in the kitchen."

"And died there?"

"Is Tituba dead that you ask this question of her?"

Abby stooped down, trembling all over, and drew the old woman up to her bosom. She kissed her withered face and her swarthy hands, with a burst of passionate feeling.

"And is it so? God forgive me that I did not guess this before! And you have been our slave, our drudge! The meanest work of the house has always been put upon Tituba—poor old Tituba, who saved our mothers from the flames, who followed us from wilderness to settlement, who left her own people for our sakes. And you are so old too! How many years, Tituba, has it taken to make this hair so gray?"

"Tituba is almost a hundred years old; but she can see like a night-hawk, and hear like a fox. When her children want help, they will find her thought keen and her feet swift!"

"But you shall work no more. I will save you from drudgery at least."

"No, no. Let Tituba alone. She is used to it. Work—work—work. What would Tituba be without work? Let her plod on in the old way, Mahaska. The tree thrives best in its own soil. Dig honeysuckles and wild strawberries from the wood—plant them in your garden, and they grow. But when an old hemlock begins to die like this, let it stand—stir not the earth about its roots."

The old woman touched her gray hair as she spoke, and drooped into her old position. Abby sat looking at her in tender astonishment. She could understand the great love which had brought that noble savage from the wilderness to be a drudge in her uncle's kitchen; it exalted the old, withered creature at her feet into a heroine.

"And for our sakes you gave up your people, your free life, all that makes the happiness of a forest child; and came here to be a slave!"

"Tituba only followed her child!" was the simple answer.

"But Elizabeth Parris knew nothing of all this! To her you are only—"

Abby broke off, for she felt that the truths she was about to speak were cruel.

"I am only old Tituba to her, but she is all the world to me."

"And yet you hate her father—her stern, kind-hearted father, for that the minister is."

"He was your mother's judge before he became her father!"

"And she is the grandchild of Anna Hutchinson, equally with myself!" said Abigail, musing.

"But not the child of King Philip. Not the sister of the last chief of the Wampanoags, who now wanders like a wild beast through the lands his people once owned. She, my golden-haired child, is not the one who must avenge her grandmother's wrongs. From the beginning, she and her mother were like singing birds to be fed and cared for. You and your mother were eagles, with strength to swoop on their enemies and your own. Elizabeth must never know the events that are making your face so dark."

"But why, why is the sunshine all for her, the darkness for me?" answered Abigail, with sorrowful bitterness.

The old woman began to weave her hands together, and rock to and fro with a troubled look.

"The eagle soars; the mocking-bird sings. One seeks her nest in the leaves, the other sits on the crags."

"The bleak, bare crags for me—flowery hollows for her," said Abigail, despondingly. "It was so with our mothers; it must be so with us."

As she spoke, the outer door of the house opened, and Wahpee, an old Indian, who, like Tituba, had been for years a hanger-on of the minister's kitchen, entered the sitting-room. He had been absent some days, and it was in expectation of his return that the young girl and Tituba were sitting up so late.

The Indian seemed tired with travel. His dress of homespun linen was torn in places, and the rents pinned up with thorns just plucked from their trees. The lank hair was moist, and a rain of perspiration glistened on his tawny forehead. Abby rose from her seat, and went eagerly toward him.

"Wahpee—Wahpee, have you seen him?—where is he now? Have any number of his people joined him yet?"

Wahpee shook his head.

"Ask Wahpee nothing; he has no words. Give him bread and dried-beef. The Wampanoags planted no corn, and they have no muskets to shoot down the deer that look in their eyes without moving as they file one by one through the woods. Even the young fawns grow bold, now that the warriors have given up their guns."

"And is he near and hungry?" cried Abby, hastening to the kitchen, where old Tituba was dragging forth bread from a huge oven, in which it had been left after the week's baking; and crowding loaf after loaf into a flour sack, she helped to lift it on Wahpee's back.

Both Abigail Williams and Tituba would have followed the old Indian into the forest; but he curtly ordered them back, and went on himself, carrying the bag of bread. They stole after him at a distance, notwithstanding his interdict, till they came to the meeting-house. Here they paused. The shadows upon the brink of the woods were black as death; and as the old man entered them he was lost in an instant.

"Let us wait," said Tituba, "they will come out together. Metacomet will come to his mother's grave; and then we shall know what he is doing."

Abigail went silently after the old woman, and sat down on a flat stone, half buried in moss and ferns, at the foot of a huge pine tree, which sheltered two graves. There she seemed covered by a vast pall, the shadows fell so heavily upon her.

Tituba dropped down at Abby's feet, and gathering her limbs together, began a low chant, that mingled in the shiver of the pine leaves with inexpressible mournfulness.

Abby leaned her head against the trunk of the pine and listened. Strange to say, that chant, instead of depressing, kindled her spirit. She never came to that spot, and heard the mysterious whispering of the leaves, without a wish for action, an unaccountable desire to plunge into the wilderness and remain there forever. Only one week before, she had wandered to the same spot, and there, for the first time, learned from his own lips that she had a brother; that the blood of King Philip mingled with that of Anna Hutchinson, the martyr, in her veins; and that on both sides the most terrible wrongs had been done to her ancestors by the very people with whom she had unconsciously worshipped; nay! by the man whose roof had given her a loving shelter, from the cradle up.

On that spot she had seen her kingly brother, in all the grandeur of a noble presence inherited from his father, blended with the softened grace of a mother, whose pure white blood softened the eagle glances of his eyes and gave a glow to his face, kindling that which would otherwise have been saturnine into the poetry of an ever changing expression.

The slave chief had been rescued from his chains in Bermuda; and after wandering over many countries, studying things that were far beyond the grasp of a mere savage, had come back to his native forests, to gather up the fragments of his people, and win back their rights, or avenge their wrongs. Night after night he had waited by those graves, under the pine tree, hoping that his sister would come and meet him.

She came at last, a thoughtful, innocent girl. The gentle romance of affection, for there could be little more in a child who remembered her mother only as she thought of her in dreams, led her to the edge of the wilderness. She went away again, wounded by a terrible knowledge—a sybil in her imagination, the pledged avenger of her mother's wrongs, and of her father's and her grandmother's murder.

Thus the son and daughter of King Philip had met, for the first time since their childhood. The boy knew that he still possessed a sister, and this thought inspired him to greater struggles. Then Abby Williams learned, from her brother's own lips, how it chanced that her brow was darker than the sunny forehead of her cousin Elizabeth; that wrong and death had scattered her family abroad, leaving her a dependent, where she should have been an avenger.

All that week the hopeless girl brooded on the terrors of her birth, and the wrongs her family had suffered; her days were one long, vague dream—her nights restless with tossing thought. Never again would she know what tranquil peace was under that roof! A journey of fifteen miles only separated her from her uncle Parris and Elizabeth, so far as space was concerned; but there was no means of measuring the interminable distance that had grown up between their souls and hers in one single week.

That night she had again spoken of her parents, and expected to see her brother. During the hours that she waited, old Tituba had crept to her feet, with new revelations and more startling surprises. The young girl listened, seated in the very chair that had been her mother's death-couch. She was a creature of sensitive feeling and keen imagination, a thoughtful, ardent girl, to whom such knowledge came like fire to steel, melting and hardening at the same time.