"Whose daughters ye are as long as ye do well and are not afraid with any amazement."

Late the next afternoon Mary Hamilton appeared at the north door of the house, and went quickly down the steep garden side toward the water. In the shallow slip between two large wharves lay some idle rowboats, which belonged to workmen who came every morning from up and down the river. The day\'s short hurry was nearly over; there was still a noise of heavy adzes hewing at a solid piece of oak timber, but a group of men had begun to cluster about a storehouse door to talk over the day\'s news.

The tide was going out, and a birch canoe which the young mistress had bespoken was already left high on the shore. She gave no anxious glance for her boatman, but got into a stranded skiff, and, reaching with a strong hand, caught the canoe and dragged it down along the slippery mud until she had it well afloat; then, stepping lightly aboard, took up her carved paddle, and looked before her to mark her course across the swift current. Wind and current and tide were all going seaward together with a determined rush.

There was a heavy gundalow floating down the stream toward the lower warehouse, to be loaded with potatoes for the Portsmouth market, and this was coming across the slip. The men on board gave a warning cry as they caught sight of a slender figure in the fragile craft; but Mary only laughed, and, with sufficient strength to court the emergency, struck her paddle deep into the water and shot out into the channel right across their bow. The current served well to keep her out of reach; the men had been holding back their clumsy great boat lest it should pass the wharf. One of them ran forward anxiously with his long sweep, as if he expected to see the canoe in distress like a drowning fly; but Miss Hamilton, without looking back, was pushing on across the river to gain the eddy on the farther side.

"She might ha\' held back a minute; she was liable to be catched an\' ploughed right under! A gal\'s just young enough to do that; men that\'s met danger don\'t see no sport in them tricks," grumbled the boatman.

"Some fools would ha\' tried to run astarn," said old Mr. Philpot, his companion, "an\' the suck o\' the water would ha\' catched \'em side up ag\'in\' us; no, she knowed what she was about. Kind of scairt me, though. Look at her set her paddle, strong as a man! Lord, she \'s a beauty, an\' \'s good \'s they make \'em!"

"Folks all thinks, down our way, she \'ll take it master hard the way young Wallin\'ford went off, \'thout note or warnin\'. They \'ve b\'en a-hoverin\' round all ready to fall to love-makin\', till this objection got roused \'bout his favorin\' the Tories. There\'d b\'en trouble a\'ready if he\'d stayed to home. I misdoubt they\'d smoked him out within half a week\'s time. Some o\' them fellows that hangs about Dover Landin\' and Christian Shore was bent on it, an\' they\'d had some better men \'long of \'em."

"Then \'t would have been as black a wrong as ever was done on this river!" exclaimed the elder man indignantly, looking back over his shoulder toward the long house of the Wallingfords, that stood peaceful in the autumn sunshine high above the river. "They \'ve been good folks in all their generations. The lad was young, an\' had n\'t formed his mind. As for Madam,—why, women folks is natural Tories; they hold by the past, same as men are fain to reach out and want change. She \'s feeble and fearful since the judge was taken away, an\' can\'t grope out to nothin\' new. I heared tell that one o\' her own brothers is different from the rest as all holds by the King, an\' has given as much as any man in Boston to carry on this war. There ain\'t no Loyalist inside my skin, but I despise to see a low lot o\' fools think smart o\' theirselves for bein\' sassy to their betters."

The other man looked a little crestfallen. "There\'s those as has it that the cap\'n o\' the Ranger would n\'t let nobody look at young miss whilst he was by," he hastened to say. "Folks say they \'re good as promised an\' have changed rings. I al\'ays heared he was a gre\'t man for the ladies; loves \'em an\' leaves \'em. I knowed men that had sailed with him in times past, an\' they said he kept the highest company in every port. But if all tales is true"—

"Mostly they ain\'t," retorted old Mr. Philpot scornfully.

"I don\'t know nothin\' \'t all about it; that\'s what folks say," answered his mate. "He\'s got the look of a bold commander, anyway, and a voice an\' eye that would wile a bird from a bush." But at this moment the gundalow bumped heavily against the wharf, and there was no more time for general conversation. Mary Hamilton paddled steadily up river in the smooth water of the eddy, now and then working hard to get round some rocky point that bit into the hurrying stream. The wind was driving the ebbing tide before it, so that the water had fallen quickly, and sometimes the still dripping boughs of overhanging alders and oaks swept the canoe from end to end, and spattered the kneeling girl with a cold shower by way of greeting. Sometimes a musquash splashed into the water or scuttled into his chilly hole under the bank, clattering an untidy heap of empty mussel shells as he went. All the shy little beasts, weasels and minks and squirrels, made haste to disappear before this harmless voyager, and came back again as she passed. The great fishhawks and crows sailed high overhead, secure but curious, and harder for civilization to dispossess of their rights than wild creatures that lived aground.

The air was dry and sweet, as if snow were coming, and all the falling leaves were down. Here and there might linger a tuft of latest frost flowers in a sheltered place, and the witch-hazel in the thickets was still sprinkled with bright bloom. Mary stopped once under the shore where a bough of this strange, spring-in-autumn flower grew over the water, and broke some twigs to lay gently before her in the canoe. The old Indian, last descendant of the chief Passaconaway, who had made the light craft and taught her to guide it, had taught her many other things of his wild and w............