ppeals more directly to the interest and imagination of
the lover of what is picturesque than the story of Agnes Surriage, the
Maid of Marblehead. The tale is so improbable, according to every-day
standards, so in form with the truest sentiment, and so calculated to
satisfy every exaction of literary art, that even the most credulous
might be forgiven for ascribing it to the fancy of the romancer rather
than to the research of the historian.

Yet when one remembers that the scene of the first act of Agnes
Surriage's life drama is laid in quaint old Marblehead, the tale itself
instantly gains in credibility. For nothing would be too romantic to fit
Marblehead. This town is fantastic in the extreme, builded, to quote
Miss Alice Brown, who has written delightfully of Agnes and her life,
"as if by a generation of autocratic landowners, each with a wilful bee
in his bonnet."[1] For Marblehead is no misnomer, and the early settlers
had to plant their houses and make their streets as best they could. As
a matter of stern fact, every house in Marblehead had to be like the
wise man's in the Bible: "built upon a rock." The dwellings themselves
were founded upon solid ledges, while the principal streets followed the
natural valleys between. The smaller dividing paths led each and
every one of them to the impressive old Town House, and to that other
comfortable centre of social interests, the Fountain Inn, with its
near-by pump. This pump, by the bye, has a very real connection with the
story of Agnes Surriage, for it was here, according to one legend, that
Charles Henry Frankland first saw the maid who is the heroine of our
story.

[Illustration: AGNES SURRIAGE PUMP, MARBLEHEAD, MASS.]

The gallant Sir Harry was at this time (1742) collector of the port of
Boston, a place to which he had been appointed shortly before, by virtue
of his family's great influence at the court of George the Second. No
more distinguished house than that of Frankland was indeed to be found
in all England at this time. A lineal descendant of Oliver Cromwell, our
hero was born in Bengal, May 10, 1716, during his father's residence
abroad as governor of the East India Company's factory. The personal
attractiveness of Frankland's whole family was marked. It is even said
that a lady of this house was sought in marriage by Charles the Second,
in spite of the fact that a Capulet-Montague feud must ever have existed
between the line of Cromwell and that of Cha