The Pot of Gold, and Other Stories Part 27

He stopped and stared when Ann ran up to him.

"Mr. White," said she, all breathless, "here's--something--I guess yer didn't see yesterday."

Mr. White set down the milk pail, took the blue jacket which she handed him, and scrutinized it sharply by the light of the lantern.

"I guess we didn't see it," said he finally. "I will put it down--it's worth about three pence, I judge. Where"--

"Silas, Silas!" called a shrill voice from the house. Silas White dropped the jacket and trotted briskly in, his lantern bobbing agitatedly. He never delayed a moment when his wife called; important and tyrannical as the little man was abroad, he had his own tyrant at home.

Ann did not wait for him to return; she s.n.a.t.c.hed up the blue jacket and fled home, leaping like a little deer over the h.o.a.ry fields. She hung up the precious old jacket behind the shed door again, and no one ever knew the whole story of its entrance in the inventory. If she had been questioned, she would have told the truth boldly, though. But Samuel Wales's Inventory had for its last item that blue jacket, spelled after Silas White's own individual method, as was many another word in the long list. Silas White consulted his own taste with respect to capital letters too.

After a few weeks, Grandma said she must have Ann again; and back she went. Grandma was very feeble lately, and everybody humored her. Mrs.

Polly was sorry to have the little girl leave her. She said it was wonderful how much she had improved. But she would not have admitted that the improvement was owing to the different influence she had been under; she said Ann had outgrown her mischievous ways.

Grandma did not live very long after this, however. Mrs. Polly had her bound girl at her own disposal in a year's time. Poor Ann was sorrowful enough for a long while after Grandma's death. She wore the beloved gold beads round her neck, and a sad ache in her heart. The dear old woman had taken the beads off her neck with her own hands and given them to Ann before she died, that there might be no mistake about it.

Mrs. Polly said she was glad Ann had them. "You might jist as well have 'em as Dorcas's girl," said she; "she set enough sight more by you."

Ann could not help growing cheerful again, after a while. Affairs in Mrs. Polly's house were much brighter for her, in some ways, than they had ever been before.

Either the hot iron of affliction had smoothed some of the puckers out of her mistress's disposition, or she was growing, naturally, less sharp and dictatorial. Any way, she was becoming as gentle and loving with Ann as it was in her nature to be, and Ann, following her impulsive temper, returned all the affection with vigor, and never bestowed a thought on past unpleasantness.

For the next two years, Ann's position in the family grew to be more and more that of a daughter. If it had not been for the indentures, lying serenely in that tall wooden desk, she would almost have forgotten, herself, that she was a bound girl.

One spring afternoon, when Ann was about sixteen years old, her mistress called her solemnly into the fore-room. "Ann," said she, "come here, I want to speak to you."

Nabby stared wonderingly; and Ann, as she obeyed, felt awed. There was something unusual in her mistress's tone.

Standing there in the fore-room, in the august company of the best bed, with its high posts and flowered-chintz curtains, the best chest of drawers, and the best chairs, Ann listened to what Mrs. Polly had to tell her. It was a plan which almost took her breath away; for it was this: Mrs. Polly proposed to adopt her, and change her name to Wales. She would be no longer Ann Ginnins, and a bound girl: but Ann Wales, and a daughter in her mother's home.

Ann dropped into one of the best chairs, and sat there, her little dark face very pale. "Should I have the--papers?" she gasped at length.

"Your papers? Yes, child, you can have them."

"I don't want them," cried Ann, "never! I want them to stay just where they are, till my time is out. If I am adopted, I don't want the papers!"

Mrs. Polly stared. She had never known how Ann had taken the indentures with her on her run-away trip years ago; but now Ann told her the whole story. In her grat.i.tude to her mistress, and her contrition, she had to.

It was so long ago in Ann's childhood, it did not seem so very dreadful to Mrs. Polly, probably. But Ann insisted on the indentures remaining in the desk, even after the papers of adoption were made out, and she had become "Ann Wales." It seemed to go a little way toward satisfying her conscience. This adoption meant a good deal to Ann; for besides a legal home, and a mother, it secured to her a right in a comfortable property in the future. Mrs. Polly Wales was considered very well off. She was a smart business-woman, and knew how to take care of her property too. She still hired Phineas Adams to carry on the blacksmith's business, and kept her farm-work running just as her husband had. Neither she nor Ann were afraid of work, and Ann Wales used to milk the cows, and escort them to and from pasture, as faithfully as Ann Ginnins.

It was along in springtime when Ann was adopted, and Mrs. Polly fulfilled her part of the contract in the indentures by getting the Sunday suit therein spoken of.

They often rode on horseback to meeting, but they usually walked on the fine Sundays in spring. Ann had probably never been so happy in her life as she was walking by Mrs. Polly's side to meeting that first Sunday after her adoption. Most of the way was through the woods; the tender light green boughs met over their heads; the violets and anemones were springing beside their path. There were green buds and white blossoms all around; the sky showed blue between the waving branches, and the birds were singing.

Ann in her pretty petticoat of rose-colored stuff, stepping daintily over the young gra.s.s and the flowers, looked and felt like a part of it all. Her dark cheeks had a beautiful red glow on them; her black eyes shone. She was as straight and graceful and stately as an Indian.

"She's as handsome as a picture," thought Mrs. Polly in her secret heart. A good many people said that Ann resembled Mrs. Polly in her youth, and that may have added force to her admiration.

Her new gown was very fine for those days; but fine as she was, and adopted daughter though she was, Ann did not omit her thrifty ways for once. This identical morning Mrs. Polly and she carried their best shoes under their arms, and wore their old ones, till within a short distance from the meeting-house. Then the old shoes were tucked away under a stone wall for safety, and the best ones put on. Stone walls, very likely, sheltered a good many well-worn little shoes, of a Puritan Sabbath, that their prudent owners might appear in the House of G.o.d trimly shod. Ah! these beautiful, new, peaked-toed, high-heeled shoes of Ann's--what would she have said to walking in them all the way to meeting!

If that Sunday was an eventful one to Ann Wales, so was the week following. The next Tuesday, right after dinner, she was up in a little unfinished chamber over the kitchen, where they did such work when the weather permitted, carding wool. All at once, she heard voices down below. They had a strange inflection, which gave her warning at once. She dropped her work and listened. "What is the matter?" thought she.

Then there was a heavy tramp on the stairs, and Captain Abraham French stood in the door, his stern weather-beaten face white and set. Mrs.

Polly followed him, looking very pale and excited.

"When did you see anything of our Hannah?" asked Captain French, controlling as best he could the tremor in his resolute voice.

Ann rose, gathering up her big blue ap.r.o.n, cards, wool and all. "Oh,"

she cried, "not since last Sabbath, at meeting! What is it?"

"She's lost," answered Captain French. "She started to go up to her Aunt Sarah's Monday forenoon; and Enos has just been down, and they haven't seen anything of her." Poor Captain French gave a deep groan.

Then they all went down into the kitchen together, talking and lamenting. And then, Captain French was galloping away on his gray horse to call a.s.sistance, and Ann was flying away over the fields, blue ap.r.o.n, cards, wool and all.

"O, Ann!" Mrs. Polly cried after, "where are you going?"

"I'm going--to find--Hannah!" Ann shouted back, in a shrill, desperate voice, and kept on.

She had no definite notion as to where she was going; she had only one thought--Hannah French, her darling, tender, little Hannah French, her friend whom she loved better than a sister, was lost.

A good three miles from the Wales home was a large tract of rough land, half-swamp, known as "Bear Swamp." There was an opinion, more or less correct, that bears might be found there. Some had been shot in that vicinity. Why Ann turned her footsteps in that direction, she could not have told herself. Possibly the vague impression of conversations she and Hannah had had, lingering in her mind, had something to do with it. Many a time the two little girls had remarked to each other with a shudder, "How awful it would be to get lost in Bear Swamp."

Any way, Ann went straight there, through pasture and woodland, over ditches and stone walls. She knew every step of the way for a long distance. When she gradually got into the unfamiliar wilderness of the swamp, a thought struck her--suppose she got lost too! It would be easy enough--the unbroken forest stretched for miles in some directions. She would not find a living thing but Indians, and, maybe, wild beasts, the whole distance.

If she should get lost she would not find Hannah, and the people would have to hunt for her too. But Ann had quick wits for an emergency. She had actually carried those cards, with a big wad of wool between them all the time, in her gathered-up ap.r.o.n. Now she began picking off little bits of wool and marking her way with them, sticking them on the trees and bushes. Every few feet a fluffy sc.r.a.p of wool showed the road Ann had gone.

But poor Ann went on, farther and farther--and no sign of Hannah. She kept calling her from time to time, hallooing at the top of her shrill sweet voice: "Hannah! Hannah! Hannah Fre-nch!"

But never a response got the dauntless little girl, slipping almost up to her knees sometimes, in black swamp-mud; and sometimes stumbling painfully over tree-stumps, and through tangled undergrowth.

"I'll go till my wool gives out," said Ann Wales; then she used it more sparingly.

But it was almost gone before she thought she heard in the distance a faint little cry in response to her call: "Hannah! Hannah Fre-nch!"

She called again and listened. Yes; she certainly did hear a little cry off toward the west. Calling from time to time, she went as nearly as she could in that direction. The pitiful answering cry grew louder and nearer; finally Ann could distinguish Hannah's voice.

Wild with joy, she came, at last, upon her sitting on a fallen hemlock-tree, her pretty face pale, and her sweet blue eyes strained with terror.

"O, Hannah!" "O, Ann!"

"How did you ever get here, Hannah?"

"I--started for aunt Sarah's--that morning," explained Hannah, between sobs. "And--I got frightened in the woods, about a mile from father's.

I saw something ahead I thought was a bear. A great black thing! Then I ran--and, somehow, the first thing I knew, I was lost. I walked and walked, and it seems to me I kept coming right back to the same place.

Finally I sat down here, and staid; I thought it was all the way for me to be found."

"O, Hannah! what did you do last night?"

"I staid somewhere, under some pine-trees," replied Hannah, with a shudder; "and I kept hearing things--O, Ann!"