Silver Heels heard and smiled at the old man. The faintest quiver curved her mouth; there was a shadow of pain in her eyes.
The fire from the crucible tinted her cheeks; she raised both bared arms to push back her cl.u.s.tering hair. Hazel gray, her brave eyes met mine across the witch-vapour curling from the melting-pot.
"Do you recall how the ferret, Vix, did bite Peter"s tight breeches, Michael?"
"Ay," said I, striving to smile.
"And--and the jack-knife made by Barlow?"
"Ay."
She flushed to the temples and looked at my left hand. The scar was there. I raised my hand and kissed the blessed mark.
"Dear, dear Michael," she whispered, "truly you were ever the dearest and n.o.blest and best of all!"
"Unfit to kiss thy shoon"s latchet, sweet--"
"Yet hast untied the latchets of my heart."
A stillness fell on the old tavern; the Minute Men stood silently at the loopholes, the barefoot drummer sat on his drum, hands folded, watching with solemn, childish eyes the nuggets of lead sink, bubble, and melt.
A militiaman came down-stairs for a bag of bullets.
"They be piping hot yet," said the drummer-boy, "and not close pared."
But the soldier carelessly gathered heaping handfuls in his calloused palms, and went up the bare, creaking stairs again to his post among the pigeons.
The heat of the brazier had started the perspiration on Silver Heels"s face and neck; tiny drops glistened like fresh dew on a blossom. She stood, dreamily brushing with the back of her hand the soft hair from her brow. Her dark-fringed eyes on me; under her loosened kerchief I saw the calm breathing stir her neck and bosom gently as a white flower stirs at a breath of June.
"The scent of the sweet-fern," she murmured; "do you savour it from the pastures?"
I looked at her in pity.
"Ay, dear heart," she whispered, with a sad little smile, "I am homesick to the bones of me, sick for the blue hills o" Tryon and the whistling martin-birds, sick for the scented brake and the smell of sweet water babbling, sick for your arm around me, and your man"s strength to crush me to you and take the kiss my very soul does ache to give."
A voice broke in from the pigeon-loft above, "Is there a woman below to sew bandages?"
"Truly there is, sir," called back Silver Heels.
"I"ll take the mould," said the small drummer, "but you are to come when the fight begins, for I mean to do a deal o" drumming!"
She started towards the stairway, then turned to look at me.
"My post is wherever you are," I said, stepping to her side.
I took her little hand, all warm and moist from the bullet-moulding, and I kissed the palm and the delicate, rounded wrist.
"There is a long war before us ere we find a home," I said.
"I know," she said, faintly.
"A long, long war; separation, sadness. Will you wed me before I go to join with Cresap"s men?"
"Ay," she said.
"There is a parson below, Silver Heels."
Her face went scarlet.
"Let it be now," I whispered, with my arm around her.
She looked up into my eyes. I leaned over the landing-rail and called out, "Send a man for the parson of Woburn!"
An Acton man stepped out on the tavern porch and shouted for the parson. Presently the good man came, in rusty black, shouldering a fowling-piece, his pockets bulging with a Bible and Book of Common Prayer, his wig all caked and wet from a tour through the dewy willows behind the inn.
"Is there sickness here--or wounds?" he asked, anxiously. Then he saw me above and came wheezing up the stairs.
"Heart-sickness, sir," I said; "we be dying, both of us, for the heart"s ease you may bring us through your holy office."
At length he understood--Silver Heels striving to keep her sweet eyes lifted when he spoke to her, and I quiet and determined, asking that he lose no time, for no man knew how long we few here in the tavern had to live. In the same breath I summoned a soldier from the south loophole in the garret, and asked him to witness for me; and he took off his hat and stood sheepishly twirling it, rifle in hand.
And so we were wedded, there in the ancient garret, the pigeons coo-cooing overhead, the blue wasps buzzing up and down the window-gla.s.s, and our hands joined before the aged parson of Woburn town. I had the plain gold ring which I had bought in Albany for this purpose, nor dreamed to wed my sweetheart with it thus!--and O the sweetness in her lips and eyes when I drew it from the cord around my neck and placed it on her smooth finger at the word!
Little else I remember, save that the old parson kissed her, and the soldier kissed her outstretched hand, and let his gun fall for bashful fright. Nor that we were truly wedded did I understand, even when the parson of Woburn went away down the creaking stairs with his fowling-piece over his shoulder, leaving us standing mute together under the canopy of swinging herbs. We still held hands, standing quiet, in a vague expectation of some mystery yet to come. Children that we were!--the mystery of mysteries had been wrought, never to be undone till time should end.
A pigeon flew, whimpering, to the beam above us, then strutted and bowed and coo-cooed to its startled, sleek, white sweetheart; a wind blew through the rafters, stirring the dry bunches of catnip, mint, and thyme, till they swung above, scented censers all, exhaling incense.
There was a pile of cotton cloth on the floor; Silver Heels sank down beside it and began to tear it into strips for sewing bandages.
I looked from the window, seeing nothing.
Presently the Minute Man at the south loop spoke:
"A man riding this way--there!--on the Concord Road!"
Silver Heels on the floor worked steadily, ripping the snowy cotton.
"There is smoke yonder on the Concord Road," said the Minute Man.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "AND SO WE WERE WEDDED"]
I roused and rubbed my eyes.
"Do you hear firing," he asked, "far away in the west?"
"Yes."
"Concord lies northwest."