From slumped dejection on the bed, Ben saw the door opening so gradually and softly that he feared his eyes were playing a trick. Even as Reuben slipped in and closed the door with the same caution, Ben was slow to believe it. Reuben had not even troubled to lay a finger over his lips, certain that Ben would smother any sound of greeting.
Reuben's shirt bulged. He lifted from it a rolled-up length of harness leather five or six feet long, and crossed at once to the window. As Ben joined him he spoke sparingly, in an undertone that would not carry so far as a whisper: "Must be now—we'll have no other chance. I have some food. Bit of new snow, maybe enough to hide our tracks."
They worked together in silence and complete understanding, easing the window open, fastening the end of the strap to a shutter-hook. Though far short of the ground, it lessened the drop to reasonable safety. Ben let himself down first, dropping easily on the old snow. Large soft flakes of the new were dreamily floating. He stood in silence with waiting arms.
"Ah, what happened to the day?"
"Ben, hush! We mustn't be heard talking in the street...."
"Right, here, Ru. Up the hill and east...."
"That might be the last house, you think?"
"Hope so."
"The day was a bad dream, Ben. Take this—you ha'n't eaten all day. Got another half-loaf under my shirt, and a chunk I cut from a ham I found in the shed, all I could carry.... Think this'll cover our tracks?"
"Not unless it thickens some."
"Pray it does."
"Nay, it better hold off a while or we'll lose these sled-tracks and direction with 'em...."
"I cursed old Anna when she was holding me. She—I mean Grandmother—made me wash my mouth with vinegar, then I must sit not moving all morning. Then they all went to meeting but Jonas, who locked me in a closet so he could mind his chores. Damn them all, I say God-damn them!"
"Hush, Ru! Grandmother only thought——"
"I say she doesn't think. I say she hath no heart at all, and your mouth'll be scarred all your days like Sam Belding's head."
"It will not—and don't speak so loud. Could be houses back of those trees, it's too dark to be sure."
"I will be quiet, Ben, but I say I cannot forgive her nor I will not, and I'll sooner die in the snow than ever go back in that house."
"We can't go back, that's sure. But Ru, to her we were—don't you understand?—sinful. And I was, too—I ought never to have spoken to her so. I lost my head somehow."
"But Mother, or Father, or anyone with a heart, would have forgiven anything you said at such a time. I cursed you, when I was out of my wits. You forgave at once, when I reminded you you could scarce remember it."
"What you said was nothing. What I said to Grandmother was—well, too much somehow. There's a strangeness—let's not think of it. We need all our wits to find the way here.... Can you make out the sled-marks? My eyes don't feel just right."
"Yes, I can see them. Ben, art thou fevered? Thy hand is too hot."
"I don't think so. I was hungry, and the food you brought will hold me up."
"They let me eat heavy at supper, and I did so, knowing we might have a chance—Ben, are you having trouble walking?"
"No, no, I slipped, that was all. It's from fretting all day in that room and doing nothing. My head's clearing already."
"You were to have a flogging in the morning. It would have been today, but the minister was ill. He preached for Lecture Day, but then went home with a sore throat. Grandmother and old Anna were talking of it when they came back, Anna saying the flogging should be in the public square, but Grandmother said it would be at the house, and first the minister should instruct you and pray. I say let them pray for their own salvation."
"Ru——"
"I'll be quiet. But I make no peace with them, never."
"The snow's stopped?"
"It's less here under the trees."
"Trees? We're under—oh yes, I see."
"Ben—thou didst not know it?"
"I was keeping my eyes on the ground, to find those sled-marks."
"Oh ... I was thinking and planning all evening. They put me in an attic room, next the Lloyds, I was forced to wait till they went a-futtering and then a-snoring.... Ben, if it's a hundred miles to Roxbury—we can do ten miles, maybe fifteen, in a day. You've got your knife, and I stole one from the kitchen—better than nothing. We can find something. The food will last a few days anyway."
"We'll get to Roxbury."
"Wish to rest a while?"
"I think I'd best not, Ru, unless—art thou tired?"
"I'll never tire. And then the Spice Islands?"
Chapter Four
In windless calm under the pines, Reuben's dark-dilated eyes could still find the furrows where sled-runners had passed, and the half-moons of dainty hoof prints. Nothing stirred within the vague archway continually opening before him. Gradually, tree and rock and snow came to possess sharper lines, stronger shadows; somewhere, a birth of new light—"Ben," he said, "it's the moon."
"Where, Ru? I can't find it."
"Somewhere ahead...."
Since they came under the shelter of the trees—and that was a long time ago—Reuben had felt no longer the cold kiss of snowflakes. It had been nothing but a flurry, now ended. At a curve in the road he discovered, through a break in the treetops, a grayness brightening. He halted; Ben blundered into him, arms slipping clumsily around him as if in need of support. Dull rags of cloud dropped away from the naked radiance. "I told you, Ben. There she rides." Ben was smiling. "Ben—all's well?... I did right? We could not have stayed, and thou to be flogged, maybe put in the stocks."
"The stocks, was it?"
"Yes, old Anna was yattering about that too when they came home from the sermon, and Grandmother never said her nay."
"Of course thou'st done right.... They'll search. That snow wasn't enough to hide anything."
"No.... We've walked more than an hour—must have done five miles."
"We can walk another five." Though standing quietly, Ben was breathing too fast, his eyes too steadily fixed on the new light in the sky.
In the woods Ben always had been leader. And there it was Ben's natural way to send his glance flickering everywhere. Reuben recalled the voice of Jesse Plum: "No Inj'an'll ever surprise you, Ben. Swoonds, you could look at a squirrel while the little bugger jumps from one branch to the next, and tell me its age and gender, and if she be female whether she got little 'uns." Jesse had not croaked that in flattery. Wilderness had been near and vital to Jesse; he never made a mock of it, and was capable of scolding either boy for walking noisily in dead leaves.
"Ben, do you feel——"
"All's well. Let's go on."
Reuben walked on ahead, trying to set an easier pace. Surely, surely there was no reason why Ben should fall ill....
In time the forest opened to a park-like region where perhaps in past seasons the Indians had followed their custom of burning over the land, killing new growth and brush, allowing established trees to expand their side branches in isolation. Through more