on them
unawares. The cries of strange birds, the unwonted colour of some of
them, all suggested to the imaginative or unaccustomed traveller the
idea of war-whoops and painted deadly enemies. But at last they drew
near to Salem, which rivalled Boston in size in those days, and boasted
the name of one or two streets, although to an English eye they looked
rather more like irregularly built houses, clustered round the
meeting-house, or rather one of the meeting-houses, for a second was in
process of building. The whole place was surrounded with two circles of
stockades; between the two were the gardens and grazing ground for
those who dreaded their cattle straying into the woods, and the
consequent danger of reclaiming them.

The lad who drove them flogged his spent horse into a trot, as they
went through Salem to Ralph Hickson's house. It was evening, the
leisure time for the inhabitants, and their children were at play
before the houses. Lois was struck by the beauty of one wee toddling
child, and turned to look after it; it caught its little foot in a
stump of wood, and fell with a cry that brought the mother out in
affright. As she ran out, her eye caught Lois's anxious gaze, although
the noise of the heavy wheels drowned the sound of her words of inquiry
as to the nature of the hurt the child had received. Nor had Lois time
to think long upon the matter, for the instant after, the horse was
pulled up at the door of a good, square, substantial wooden house,
plastered over into a creamy white, perhaps as handsome a house as any
in Salem; and there she was told by the driver that her uncle, Ralph
Hickson, lived. In the flurry of the moment she did not notice, but
Captain Holdernesse did, that no one came out at the unwonted sound of
wheels, to receive and welcome her. She was lifted down by the old
sailor, and led into a large room, almost like the hall of some English
manor-house as to size. A tall, gaunt young man of three or four and
twenty, sat on a bench by one of the windows, reading a great folio by
the fading light of day. He did not rise when they came in, but looked
at them with surprise, no gleam of intelligence coming into his stern,
dark face. There was no woman in the house-place. Captain Holdernesse
paused a moment, and then said:

'Is this house Ralph Hickson's?'

'It is,' said the young man, in a slow, deep voice. But he added no
word further.

'This is his niece, Lois Barclay,' said the captain,