I have done a little injustice to Tom Hutchins—the warm-hearted lad who had been so in love with little Rose Mason, and was sure to be in love with every boy or girl who awoke his admiration, or needed his help. It was he who had proposed to draw Paul home on his sled, on his first lonely school day, and since that time a warm friendship had sprung up between the two lads. The first liking had been cemented by an exchange of doughnuts, wonder cakes, and red-cheeked apples. Then Tom had undertaken to teach Paul English in conversational lessons, and picked up a few scraps of French from the boy, fairly believing himself to be speaking a foreign language when he twisted his hard, New England tongue into imitations of Paul's pretty broken English, in which the boy could now make himself understood. In the midst of his eager work on the dam, Tom saw Paul standing alone on the bank and called to him. But Paul shook his head, with a sad smile, and shrunk further away from the water. Then Tom gave one great heave at the log which was to complete the dam, shook the mud from his hands, and went dripping up the bank, with his face all aglow, and smiling as if he had just come out of a spring shower, and was inviting his friend down to watch the wild flowers start up in his track. "Are you cold, Paul?" he asked, dancing about till the water splashed over the tops of his boots. "Why, it's a'most like summer," returned Tom. "Splendid." "Is it?" Paul asked, shivering worse than ever, as he thought what a forlorn idea of summer people must have in that frigid land. "Why, how you do shiver," cried Tom. "Let's take a run up the hill and back, or you'll freeze solid." "But you want to play," Paul said; "go with the boys, they are calling for you." "Let 'em," replied Tom, philosophically, consoled at once by the idea that his playmates needed his assistance, and too full of generous kindness for any thought of leaving Paul to his loneliness. "Come along—let's see who'll get to the top first." At the conclusion of their race Paul had got a color in his cheeks, and felt somewhat less like an icicle than before. Then Tom paused, and looked Paul in the face quite seriously. "Come down here among the hemlocks; I want to talk to you where the boys can't hear. We might do it in French, you know—you and I—but mebby we'd better have it out according to the spelling-book." Paul smiled, and followed his friend to the bank of the river, where they sat down under the sheltering hemlock boughs. Tom shivered a little, but he shook the weakness off, and broke forth at once into the subject that was on his mind. Tom's head was full of Katharine Allen and her troubles, a subject upon which he and Paul had held many earnest conversations, interspersed by mysterious hints about Rose Mason and Tom's unhappy state of mind regarding her absence in some unknown country. Paul shook his head sadly by way of answer. "Not any better?" asked Tom. "Wal, I'm sorry for her, anyhow. Little Rose liked her, and she was always good to Rose. It scares me to death to think what they're going to do to her." "Who?" asked Paul. "Why the law, of course," replied Tom, shocked at his friend's ignorance. "You know they're going to take her to prison as soon as she's well enough to be carried there." "Yes, I know. They are wicked men, too wicked," exclaimed Paul; "why can't they leave her alone?" "You mustn't say any thing agin the squire," returned Tom, with his New England respect for the law and its ministers. "I'm sorry for her, but you see she kinder killed the baby, poor little critter—I guess she was crazy, though, I do, but marm won't hear on it." "Why don't her husband come and help her," Paul suggested. "She haint got any—oh, dear no, that's the worst on it, marm says." "Oh, she must have." "Oh, must she!" retorted Tom, exulting in his knowledge of this world's wickedness, gained from conversations he had overheard concerning the poor girl, yet perplexed, and quite unable to settle the matter to his own satisfaction. Still he had no intention of allowing Paul to suppose that his wisdom was more than half assumed. "I'm glad Miss Rose ain't here, anyhow," he observed; "she'd break her heart about all this. I know she would." "Katharine is getting stronger; they talk of carrying her off in a day or two," continued Tom. "I heard our folks say so this morning." Paul's great eyes dimmed with tears, then a quick passion turned them into fire. "I could kill them," he said. "Yes, I could." "'Twouldn't be no use," remarked Tom, sapiently; "'cause they'd only take you off too. I wish we could do something, though—I wish we could." "Can't we?" questioned Paul, his face kindling with eagerness. "Oh, don't you think we could?" "You're such a little bit of a chap," Tom replied, eyeing his companion, with a natural exultation at his own superiority in point of inches and weight. "I'm little," Paul said, "but I am very brave—oh, you don't know! And Jube—Jube is strong like a lion, he could do any thing." "I wonder if she couldn't run away," Tom burst out, quite overcome by his own inspiration. "I don't suppose she could run, you know, but she might get away." "And we could help," Paul said, his quick intelligence seizing at once upon the suggestion; "I am sure we could." "Why, my marm would kill me!" exclaimed Tom. "Wouldn't I ketch it, oh, my!" "You would beg and pray," said Paul; "she could not refuse—she would be willing." "Wal, I guess we wouldn't ask her—'tain't disobeyin' when you hain't been told not to do a thing, and nobody can tell you what to do when they never heerd of it." "We could help her," he kept repeating; "I am sure we could." "I do wonder what the squire would say?" said Tom, giggling at the very idea, although somewhat frightened at its audacity. "Wouldn't there be a rumpus—oh, my golly!" He laughed outright, and Paul joined him from sympathy with that merry face; but he became thoughtful again in a moment. "You are certain they would take her away from home and lock her up in that dark, lonesome place you call a prison?" he inquired. "Sure as a gun. Par says so, and he knows the squires and lawyers about here all to pieces; but that aint the worst of it, not by a jug full." The good-hearted little fellow's voice began to choke in his throat, and he burst into a laugh to keep from sobbing outright. "What can be worse than that?" inquired Paul, startled by his friend's demonstration. "They'll kill her!" Paul turned deadly pale. The horror in Tom's words had struck him dumb. "They'll hang her up on a gallows made of two high posts, with a cross-bar on the top," continued Tom, shuddering at his own words, "and a halter fastened to the cross-bar, which they will tie round her pretty white neck, that Rose used to hug so much." "And so it does me," cried Tom, dashing the tears from his blue eyes. "But you ought to know it just as it is, the burning brand and all." "The burning brand—what is that?" asked Paul, faintly. "The hot iron that they stamp M—that's for murderer, you know—on her hand!" "Oh, me!" sighed Paul. "That petite white hand!" "Sometimes the courts do that, and let 'em live in Simsbury all the rest of their lives. Sometimes they hang 'em right up. I don't know which they'll do to her." "But they will do some of these awful things?" questioned Paul, breathing as if he was chilled through with the cold. "Of course, they've got to do it. The law won't let 'em back out if they wanted to." "Oh, dear, it makes me feel so wicked," cried Paul, brave thoughts kindling through the pallor of his face. "I want to cry and strike somebody at the same time." "Strike! I want to maul some of 'em! Oh, if them courts was only little boys, and I the law, wouldn't they come down on their marrow bones and beg her pardon for thinking of such a thing. Besides, do you see, Paul, I don't believe she killed the baby. Anyway, them little creatures, with long flannel petticoats a hanging over their feet, are always doing things to torment grown folks, catching the rash, and measles, and chickenpox, to say nothing of a habit they get into of hiccuping right in a feller's face when he's told to tend 'em. Babies! They're the only thing I ever raly had agin "Perhaps he rather liked them!" suggested Paul. "Liked 'em. Well, maybe he did, there's no saying; besides, they're well enough in their place, and that, according to my notion, is sound asleep in the cradle. Anyhow, what's the use of making sich a time about it when one of 'em stops crying for good and all, and what on airth could anybody think that ere young gal wanted with one of 'em a tagging after her?" "I don't know," replied Paul, tenderly; "but from the way she looks at the empty cradle sometimes, it seems to me as if she wanted it there very much." "Of course she does. It's a way of the wimmen folks have. I don't know about marm, for our cradle never is empty; but some wimmen make such fools of themselves, it's enough to set a feller agin the whole pack and boodle on 'em." "You don't mean all the beautiful ladies," said Paul, thinking sadly of his own sweet mother. "There's marm—she's a purty good kind of a woman after all, and Miss Mason, harnsome as a pictur. Then, little Rose—oh, my! don't you wish you could see her, with her white aprons ruffled all around, and her long curls, just like a wax doll. But then the generality of 'em—well, I don't want to say nothin'." "That was a very nice little lady that gave me one apple with the brown coat." "She? yes, she'll do; but we're going off the handle, you and I. What's the good of talking about the best on 'em if Katharine Allen has got to be hung! As I "I am sure it died of its own accord," said Paul. "Of course; anybody but a squire would a found that out long ago." "And she would be much glad to have the little baby back again." "Wall, I don't know about that," said Tom, shaking his head doubtfully; "Katharine Allen's got some sense, I reckon; squalling must come unnatral in that ar house—now I leave it to you." "But they will hang her dead." "No doubt about it." "Or burn her poor petite hand." "Both on 'em, for all what I know, without you and I stand up to the rack like men, and tell the laws, and squires, and constables to go to old scratch." "What is old scratch?" "Well, I don't just know; but he's a feller that's always about times like this." "But hadn't we better let the laws, and the squires, and all the rest alone, and try very much to help her?" suggested Paul. "In course we had; I only threw them in sort of promiscuous. Now I'll tell you what my idee is: Katharine is getting stronger every day, you know." "Yes," said Paul; "she sat up in a chair this morning, "Did he say that?" inquired Tom, breathlessly. "Yes; the man said that. Then madame—that is the old mother—she look frightened very much, and said, no take the poor sick child away too soon. Then the man said up-stairs was best—high from ground, very sure." "That's bad," muttered Tom. "Ladders are scarce and heavy to lift." "So," continued Paul, "they move my bed into another room, and take up many things for her, because the man thinks it sure." "Well," cried Tom, coming out in force, "'what can't be cured must be endured,' as par says. There may be a ladder about Mrs. Allen's premises. To-morrow morning, when I come after you, we'll just take a survey there. About that cuffy friend of yourn, I want to have some talk with him. When there's ladders to be used, I'm afraid you and I couldn't come quite up to the scratch." "But Jube, Jube he come right up to old scratch for us—very strong Jube—very brave, like lion." "You're sartin that cuffy would do it; that he wouldn't slump through?" "What, Jube? oh, yes, he do any thing I say; very good Jube, never slump." "Well, then, we're a hull team, you and I and the nigger. Yes, and a hoss to let. If we don't get Katy Allen out of that end window, I don't know what's what; but, then, what are we to do with her when that's done?" "Oh, dear, where can we go?" Tom folded his arms and drooped his head. Here was a difficulty which he hadn't thought of before. All at once Paul brightened up. "We will take her to New York. If David Rice is there he'll be very good, and so glad Jube and we did it for his sister." "Yes," cried Tom, "That's a genuine idee. I'll hook par's yaller wagon and drive down to the sloop atween two days, they'll never think of searching aboard a sloop. But oh, golly, golly, here's a fix. It takes money to travel in that ere genteel way, and I haint got more'n a ninepence on earth." "Money?" cried Paul, eagerly. "What you call gold with the king's head on it?" "I don't know about gold, never saw none of that ere money. What I mean is silver with a spread-eagle on one side and a woman's head on t'other." "I am sure that gold is money," said Paul, recovering from his first look of disappointment, "for Jube gave it to the people as we came along, and they gave him back silver like that you speak of, more pieces than the gold, oh very much." "And how much have you got?" Paul put his delicate hands together. "So much full, three, four, five times." Tom emitted a low whistle. "Oh, golly, that's up to chalk, and you're sartin the tavern keepers and captains gave you silver money for it?" "Sure I saw." "And Jube will shell out—no mistake about that, ha?" "Jube what?" "What, give the money?" "Yes; chink!" "Oh, yes—sure." "Then we're sot up in business. Three stout fellers, saddles lying about loose in some barn or other, yaller wagon standing ready, harness chucked under the seat, horses whinnering to be druv, and that ere poor gal ready to jump out of the window when we say the word. Now, Paul, this is just what you must do. Get the nigger—I mean our friend Jube—for when a darkey has his double hands full of chink to do as he pleases with, he's got a right to be treated like folks, for that makes him an individual; get him ready to toe the mark when we give the word. Jest tell her that Tom—she knows me—is on hand, and working for her like sixty, and just the minute she's well enough to cut, we'll have her out of that winder. Then you sleep with one eye open, and tell me every word that officer says." "Yes," said Paul, "I'll do every thing; but hadn't we better say something to madam?" "Do you mean Mrs. Allen?" answered Tom, dropping his chin into the hollow of one hand, in a thoughtful way. "No; I should rather say not. She's got strict notions about things, and might put the wrong spoke into our wheel. Now, if I was going to tell anybody, it would be the doctor; he's clear grit, he is, and wouldn't stop us if we run through his own home lot with that ere gal. Ketch him telling." By this time the boys were chilled through with standing in the wet and cold. Tom's teeth chattered in his head as he uttered this encomium on the doctor, who As Paul went toiling up the hill that day, he saw Jube coming toward him—a circumstance that often happened on his way from school. How his beautiful face kindled up at the sight of his friend. His pace quickened, and the trouble went out from his eyes as he held out the little, cold hand, in its wet mitten, for Jube to lead him home, as usual. Jube drew off the mitten, and took the chilled hand in his broad palm, caressing it as if it had been a bird. |