CHAPTER XXIX.
THE ENEMY IN POWER.
ADAM found his faithful beef-eaters on the verge of the grave. The miserable old rogues had no better sense than to be pining to death like two masterless dogs. They had been ill enough, in all conscience, and even somewhat mentally disordered, but there had been no sufficient grounds for the pair to believe themselves abandoned by their “Sachem,” and there had been absolutely no excuse for them to refuse to eat.
However, the rascals nearly “wagged” themselves to pieces when Rust was finally beside them, and the way they laughed was most suggestively like the glad whimpering of two dumbly loving animals expressing their joy. Adam would have scolded the two for having brought themselves to such a condition of weakness and bones, only that he had not the heart to do this justice to the case.
There was, however, no such thing as getting the old fellows back on their pins in a week, nor yet in two, nor three. They even hesitated, after he had come, between running backward toward their long sleep and coming along with him to vales of renewed health. They were like affectionate creatures divided between two masters. The grim visitor had come so near to winning them both, with his beckoning, that they appeared to think it their duty to die.
Adam, however, was a persuasive force. He had won them away from themselves before; he won them again on this occasion. Captain Kidd, a braw Scotsman, who ordinarily dropped his native dialect, having little affection for his country, his father having suffered tortures for becoming a non-conformist clergyman, felt he must needs relapse into something barbaric to express himself on the beef-eaters.
“Of all the twas that ere twad,” said he, “you’re muckle the strangest twa.”
By this he meant to convey that of all the couples that ever mated, the two old rascals were the oddest pair.
The convalescence being a slow affair, Adam was obliged to give up all thought of returning immediately to Boston. Yet so hopeful was he that every day would perform some miracle of restoring the strength to the muscles and the meat to the bones of his retinue, that it was not until he had been away from Garde for more than three weeks that he finally wrote to tell her of why he had failed to return. But the letter, for some unknown reason, was never delivered.
At length, however, what with the fulness of summer come upon them and the hope which Adam had inspired in their breasts, the beef-eaters became padded out to the fulness of their old-time grandeur, and once more swaggered about and bragged of their prowess.
Adam’s money had, by this time, dwindled down to a sum which was not at all difficult to transport from place to place, nor even from pocket to pocket. Having no heart to put the retinue on shipboard, to convey them to Massachusetts, he sacrificed nearly his last bit of coin to secure them passage, by coach and wagon, from Manhattan to Boston. This left him either one of two expedients for himself. He could walk, or he could make shift to secure a passage by vessel, giving work as payment for the favor. He argued that once in Boston he would accept the position offered by Goodwife Phipps at the ship-yard, and hither also would he take his followers, so that by honest toil they might all be happy and continue their time-sealed companionship, and desert the rolling-stone business as an occupation.
It was not without misgivings that the beef-eaters accepted this arrangement. But being obedient things that would willingly have gone into fire, or the sea itself, at Adam’s command or wish, they meekly bade him a temporary adieu and saw him depart before them, a ship being several days ahead of the coach in point of time for departing.
In the meantime, history had been making fast in Boston. The crafty Randolph, whose coup had long been prepared, had returned from New Amsterdam, bearing a commission from the King of England declaring the charter null and void and delegating upon him power to form a new provisional government for the colony of Massachusetts. Great tracts of territory, comprising New Hampshire, Maine and other areas, were lopped off from the province at one fell blow. Randolph created Joseph Dudley provisional governor, Dudley having long been seeking his favor, against this final moment of changes. The courts fell into the hands of the newly-elected power. The soldiers, constabulary, everything assumed an ultra-English tone and arrogance. The people clenched their fists and wrought their passions up to a point where rebellions are lighted in a night.
Yet Boston was a loyal town, obedient to its liege lord and nearly as eager to serve him and to do him homage as it was to preserve its liberties and the independence, which gradual development had created and long usage had confirmed as inalienable, in the belief of all the patriotic citizens. Stoughton and Bradstreet, beholding the revolutionary tendency, which would have plunged the colony most unwisely into a sea of trouble, submitted to the new order of things, which for long they had seen coming, inevitably, out of the malignant spirit in which the Stuart dynasty had always desired to govern these non-conformist hard-heads.
There were many creatures in Boston swift to join the Tory party, under Randolph, for the plums of official recognition. Thus this party rapidly assumed considerable dimensions, and therefore power, to add to that of which the King himself was the fountain-head.
Boston at that time was a prosperous town of something more than six thousand souls. It was substantially built, if crookedly, for the most part of wood. Yet there was a fair sprinkling of brick houses along its cow-path streets, and a few were of stone, which, in several instances, had been brought to this undeveloped land from England. The town was distinctly English, both as to customs and thoughts, but the seeds which hardihood had sown, were to grow the pillars of Americanism—synonymous with a spirit of Democracy sufficient to inspire the world!
Naturally Isaiah Pinchbecker became a master-jackal under the new régime. Psalms Higgler, the lesser light of lick-spittling, became, by the same token, a lesser carnivora, but no less hungry to be feeding on the foe-masters of the recent past. And Pinchbecker, having found Adam in the town, was alert to find him again.
Yet not even Pinchbecker, with his knife-edge mind, devoted to evolving schemes of vengeance, could have comprehended the tigerish joy with which Randolph remembered Adam Rust, from that morning in the Crow and Arrow, and with which he now put two and two together, to arrive at Adam’s relationship with Garde Merrill.
Randolph was a subtle schemer, never fathomed by the Puritans, against whom he displayed such an implacable hatred. He was far too wise ever to appear as the point, when a thrust of revenge was to be delivered. He never for a moment relaxed his obsequious demeanor, nor his air of injured guiltlessness. Like all men of power, he had much material, self-offered, from which to choose his henchmen. He had chosen Pinchbecker wisely, for a hypocrite, a fawner, and an arrant knave who could work endless harm, in an underhanded fashion. But for his more aggressive employment he attached to his service a great, burly brute, with a face like a mastiff’s, an intelligence like a sloth’s, and a courage like that of a badger. This masterpiece of human animalism responded to the name of “Gallows,” for once a man had been hanged on his back, as in early English-Irish usage, and of this he was matchlessly proud.
Adam arrived in the midst of that first elation of Randolph and his following, the like of which is frequently the cause of reaction so violent as to quite reverse the fates themselves. But although the Puritans hated Dudley, almost more than Randolph, for traitorously joining the party of destruction, their growlings checked nothing of the all-importance which the creatures in power felt and made their fellow-beings feel. A spirit of sullen brooding settled on the people.
Unaware that Rust had been away from Boston, since he had seen him that day in Donner’s garden with Mistress Merrill, Pinchbecker had been seeking for him diligently, ever since Randolph’s return. But believing that his quarry would be found eventually in the vicinity of the Crow and Arrow, his field of investigations was narrow.
It had naturally happened, however, that Adam had quite forgotten to tell the beef-eaters of his change of abode in Boston. They would therefore proceed to the old tavern immediately upon their arrival. He thought of this before he landed. Having come ashore at twilight, he made it his duty to stroll to the Crow and Arrow, for the purpose of leaving a message for Pike and Halberd, when at last they should come to the town.