could do more with John through laughter, dear
heart; but the right is ever stronger with Mary than the humor of the
thing. My father and Mary I have known. And you, you I knew when in your
rage you fell upon the maid, baby that you were at five, and beat her
with your fists because she wantonly swept your treasures--a rose
petal, a beetle wing, a pebble, a feather--into her kitchen fire. I knew
you then, for so I had been beating at fate my life long. I knew you,
Will, and, dear child, always since I have watched and understood. Rebel
if you will; be free; but to be free, forget not, is to be conqueror
over that within self first."

Will caught her hand; he whispered; his voice burned hot with a child's
jealousy.

"'Tis said you are to wed Abraham Stripling, Ann, an' that the foreign
doctor who wants to wed you, broke Abra'm's head with his pestle."

Ann Hathaway laughed; her eyes were mocking now; she backed against
the lichened trunk of a giant elm by the roadside, a young, beauteous
thing, and looked at the boy in scorn. "I to marry Abraham Stripling!
Child though you are, you know me better than that. Did I not just tell
you I am free now--free? That I have held fast to my duty, and so come
to where I might be free? Have held them at bay--family, cousins,
elders, sweethearts--until now, the rest married and gone, and the tasks
as they gave them up come to be mine, my mother needs me, and my life
may be my own--and free. For who has come to wed me? Did I not just say
I was--I am--free? A soul groping lonely in the dark? No man's hand has
reached toward mine that I, a woman and a weakling, could not shake off.
When the masterful hand, groping, seizes mine, I shall know it, and I--I
will kiss it with my lips--and--and follow after."

[Illustration: "'When the masterful hand, groping, seizes mine, I shall
know it'"]

She came back to him as one from an ecstasy. "And now, child, go on
home. It is late. And hurry or Mary will be fretting. You have had your
cake and eaten it. Now go pay for it. 'Discipline must be maintained,'
says your Welsh schoolmaster. And sure he will flog you."

XI

But no one at home had missed him. The Henley Street house was full of
hurry and confusion when he arrived. No one noticed him. The neighbors
came in and out, Mistress Sadler and Mistress Snelling, and the foreign
doctor who would like to wed Ann, or passed on up to a room above, where
little sister Annie, named for Ann H