"Give where want is silently clamorous, and men\'s necessities, not their tongues, do loudly call for thy mercies."

The less said of a dull sea voyage, the better; to Madam Wallingford and her young companion their slow crossing to the port of Bristol could be but a long delay. Each day of the first week seemed like a week in passing, though from very emptiness it might be but a moment in remembrance; time in itself being like money in itself,—nothing at all unless changed into action, sensation, material. At first, for these passengers by the Golden Dolphin, there was no hope of amusement of any sort to shorten the eventless hours. Their hearts were too heavy with comfortless anxieties.

The sea was calm, and the May winds light but steady from the west. It was very warm for the season of year, and the discouragements of early morning in the close cabin were easily blown away by the fresh air of the quarter-deck. The captain, a well-born man, but diffident in the company of ladies, left his vessel\'s owner and her young companion very much to themselves. Mary had kept to a sweet composure and uncomplainingness, for her old friend\'s sake, but she knew many difficult hours of regret and uncertainty now that, having once taken this great step, Madam Wallingford appeared to look to her entirely for support and counsel, and almost to forget upon how great an adventure they had set forth. All Mary\'s own cares and all her own obligations and beliefs sometimes rose before her mind, as if in jealous arraignment of her presence on the eastward-moving ship. Yet though she might think of her brother\'s displeasure and anxiety, and in the darkest moments of all might call herself a deserter, and count the slow hours of a restless night, when morning came, one look at Madam Wallingford\'s pale face in the gray light of their cabin was enough to reassure the bravery of her heart. In still worse hours of that poor lady\'s angry accusation of those whom she believed to be their country\'s enemies, Mary yet found it possible to be patient, as we always may be when Pity comes to help us; there was ever a final certainty in her breast that she had not done wrong,—that she was only yielding to an inevitable, irresistible force of love. Love itself had brought her out of her own country.

Often they sat pleasantly together upon the deck, the weather was so clear and fine, Mary being always at Madam Wallingford\'s feet on a stout little oaken footstool, busy with her needle to fashion a warmer head-covering, or to work at a piece of slow embroidery on a strip of linen that Peggy had long ago woven on their own loom. Often the hearts of both these women, who were mistresses of great houses and the caretakers of many dependents, were full of anxious thought of home and all its business.

Halfway from land to land, with the far horizon of a calm sea unbroken by mast or sail, the sky was so empty by day that the stars at night brought welcome evidence of life and even companionship, as if the great processes of the universe were akin to the conscious life on their own little ship. In spite of the cruelty of a doubt that would sometimes attack her, Mary never quite lost hold on a higher courage, or the belief that they were on their way to serve one whom they both loved, to do something which they alone could do. The thought struck her afresh, one afternoon, that they might easily enough run into danger as they came near land; they might not only fall an easy prey to some Yankee privateer (for their sailing papers were now from Halifax), but they might meet the well-manned Ranger herself, as they came upon the English coast. A quick flush brightened the girl\'s sea-browned cheeks, but a smile of confidence and amusement followed it.

Madam Wallingford was watching her from the long chair.

"You seem very cheerful to-day, my dear child," she said wistfully.

"I was heartened by a funny little dream in broad daylight," answered Mary frankly, looking up with something like love itself unveiled in her clear eyes.

"It is like to be anything but gay in Bristol, when we come to land," answered Madam Wallingford. "I had news in Halifax, when we lay there, that many of their best merchants in Bristol are broken, and are for a petition to Parliament to end these troubles quickly. All their once great trade with the colonies is done. I spent many happy months in Bristol when I was young. \'T was a noble town, with both riches and learning, and full of sights, too; it was a fit town for gentlefolk. I sometimes think that if anything could give back my old strength again, \'t would be to take the air upon the Clifton Downs."

"You will have many things to show me," said Mary, with a smile. "You are better already for the sea air, Madam. It does my heart good to see the change in you."

"Oh, dear child, if we were only there!" cried the poor lady. "Life is too hard for me; it seems sometimes as if I cannot bear it a moment longer. Yet I shall find strength for what I have to do. I wonder if we must take long journeys at once? \'T is not so far if Roger should be at Plymouth, as they believed among the Halifax friends. But I saw one stranger shake his head and look at me with pity, as I put my questions. He was from England, too, and just off the sea"—

"There is one thing I am certain of,—Roger is not dead," said Mary. "We are sure to find him soon," she added, in a different tone, when she had spoken out of her heart for very certainty. The mother\'s face took on a sweet look of relief; Mary was so strong-hearted, so sure of what she said, that it could not help being a comfort.

"Our cousin Davis will be gathering age," Madam Wallingford continued, after a little while. "I look to find her most sadly changed. She had been married two years already when I made my first voyage to England, and went to visit her."

Mary looked up eagerly from her work, as if to beg some further reminiscences of the past. Because she loved Madam Wallingford so well it was pleasant to share the past with her; the old distance between them grew narrower day by day.

"I was but a girl of seventeen when I first saw Bristol, and I went straight to her house from the ship, as I hope we may do now, if that dear heart still remains in a world that needs her," said the elder woman. "She is of kin to your own people, you must remember, as well as to the Wallingfords. Yes, she was glad of my visit, too, for she was still mourning for her mother. Being the youngest child, she had been close with her till her marriage, and always a favorite. They had never been parted for a night or slept but under the same roof, until young Davis would marry her, and could not be gainsaid. He had come to the Piscataqua plantations, supercargo of a great ship of his father\'s; the whole countryside had flocked to see so fine a vessel, when she lay in the stream at Portsmouth. She was called the Rose and Crown; she was painted and gilded in her cabin like a king\'s pleasure ship. He promised that his wife should come home every second year for a long visit, and bragged of their ships being always on the ocean; he said she should keep her carriage both on sea and on land. \'T was but the promise of a courting man, he was older than she, and already very masterful; he had grown stern and sober, and made grave laws for his household, when I saw it, two years later. He had come to be his father\'s sole heir, and felt the weight of great affairs, and said he could not spare his wife out of his sight, when she pleaded to return with me; a woman\'s place was in her husband\'s house. Mother and child had the sundering sea ever between them, and never looked in each other\'s face again; for Mistress Goodwin was too feeble to take the journey, though she was younger than I am now. He was an honest man and skillful merchant, was John Davis; but few men can read a woman\'s heart, which lives by longing, and not by reason; \'t is writ in another language.

"You have often heard of the mother, old Mistress Goodwin, who was taken to Canada by the savages, and who saw her child killed by them before her eyes? They threatened to kill her too because she wept, and an Indian woman pitied her, and flung water in her face to hide the tears," the speaker ended, much moved.

"Oh, yes. I always wish I could remember her," answered Mary. "She was a woman of great valor, and with such a history. \'T was like living two lifetimes in one." The girl\'s face shone with eagerness as she looked up, and again bent over her needlework. "She was the mother of all the Goodwins; they have cause enough for pride when they think of her."

"She had great beauty, too, even in her latest age, though her face was marked by sorrow," continued Madam Wallingford, easily led toward entertaining herself by the listener\'s\' interest, the hope of pleasing Mary. "Mistress Godwin was the skillful hostess of any company, small or great, and full of life even when she was bent double by her weight of years, and had seen most of her children die before her. There was a look in her eyes as of one who could see spirits, and yet she was called a very cheerful person. \'T was indeed a double life, as if she knew the next world long before she left this one. They said she was long remembered by the folk she lived among in Canada; she would have done much kindness there even in her distress. Her husband was a plain, kind man, very able and shrewd-witted, like most Goodwins, but she was born a Plaisted of the Great House; they were the best family then in the plantation. Oh yes, I can see her now as if she stood before me,—a small body, but lit with flame from no common altar of the gods!" exclaimed Madam Wallingford, after a moment\'s pause. "She had the fine dignity which so many women lack in these days, and knew no fear, they always said, except at the sight of some savage face. This I have often heard old people say of her earlier years, when the Indians were still in the country; she would be startled by them as if she came suddenly upon a serpent. Yet she would treat them kindly."

"I remember when some of our old men still brought their guns to church and stood them in the pews," said Mary; "but this year there were only two poor huts in the Vineyard, when the Indians came down the country to catch the salmon and dry them. There are but a feeble few of all their great tribe; \'t is strange to know that a whole nation has lived on our lands before us! I wonder if we shall disappear in our own turn? Peggy always says that when the first settlers came up the river they found traces of ancient settlement; the Vineyard was there, with its planted vines all run to waste and of a great age, and the old fields, too, which have given our river neighborhoods their name. Peggy says there were other white people in Barvick long ago; the old Indians had some strange legends of a folk who had gone away. Did Mistress Goodwin ever speak of her captivity, or the terrible march to Canada through the snow, when she was captured with the other Barvick folk, Madam?" asked Mary, with eagerness to return to their first subject. "People do not speak much of those old times now, since our own troubles came on."

"No, no, she would never talk of her trials; \'t was not her way," protested Madam Wallingford, and a shadow crossed her face. "\'T was her only happiness to forget such things. I can see her sitting in the sun with a fescue in her hand, teaching the little children. They needed bravery in those old days; nothing can haunt us as their fear of sudden assault and savage cruelty must have haunted them."

Mary thought quickly enough of that angry mob which had so lately gathered about her old friend\'s door, but she said nothing. The Sons of Liberty and their visit seemed to have left no permanent discomfort in Madam\'s mind. "No, no!" said the girl aloud. "We have grown so comfortable that even war has its luxuries; they have said that a common soldier grows dainty with his food and lodging, and the co............