CHAPTER XXXIII.
REPUDIATED SILVER.
SOMETIME, along toward the middle of the night, Adam tripped, on a root which lay in his path, and in catching himself so that his small partner should not be injured, he sprained his foot. He proceeded onward without sparing the member, however, for he had begun to feel a fever of impatience.
His foot swelled. It finally pained him excessively, so that he limped. He wore away the night, but when the morning came, he was obliged to snatch an hour of sleep, so great was the sense of exhaustion come upon him.
His face had become pale. With his hair unkempt, his eyes expressive of the fever in his veins and his mouth somewhat drawn, he was not a little haggard, as he resumed his lame, onward march. The child in his arms was no burden to his enduring strength, but as a load on his heart the little chap was heavy indeed. Sleeping, the miniature man appeared to be sinking in a final rest, so wan had his tiny face become. Waking, he gazed at Adam with such a dumb inquiry ever present in his great, wistful eyes, that Rust began to wish he would complain—would cry, would make some little sound to break his baby silence.
They were obliged to rest frequently, throughout the day. Try as he might, Adam could not cover the ground rapidly. Whenever he resumed walking, after sitting for a moment on a log, or a rock, he found his foot had become so bad that, in the late afternoon, he gave up halting thus altogether.
The twilight came upon him, then the night-fall. At last, with a smothered cry of delight on his lips, he saw the gleam of a light. He had come to the farm-house where he had stopped to return the English dandy’s horse and to eat his last supper. Thinking thereby to disguise himself, even if only slightly, he halted, threw off his leather jerkin, sword and coat, turned the latter inside out and concealed his weapon and outside garment in the brush. Thus altered in appearance, he dragged his aching foot across the space between the woods and the house, where he knocked upon the door and entered.
“Who’s there?” cried the farmer, in a fright which recent events had instilled in his being. He was a shaking old bachelor, suspected by many who knew him of being a miser with a great horde of gold on his premises.
Adam was confronted by the man, as soon as he stepped across the threshold.
“Food, man,” he said, hoarsely. “Food, or this child will die!”
The man recognized him instantly. He fairly quaked with dread.
“Go out! Go out!” he cried. “I’ve no food here—I’ve nothing here!”
“Peace!” commanded Adam. “Bring me forth something to eat for the child, you knave, or I shall find it for myself.”
He looked terrible enough to execute a much more dreadful threat. The farmer retreated before him, cringing and whining.
“I have nothing, or you should have it,” he said, with a whimper. “My neighbors—ten minutes’ walk up the clearing—go to them. They have plenty, and I have nothing.”
Adam remembered the scantiness of the fare he had tasted here before. Nevertheless it had been food, and anything now might save his little partner’s life.
“Then you go, friend,” he ordered. “Make haste and bring me what you can, from your neighbors’!”
The man seemed about to refuse. He changed his mind abruptly.
“I’ll go. I’ll go!” he hastened to say, and without his hat, or waiting for anything further, he hobbled out at the door and was gone.
Rust lost no time in ransacking the cupboard. To his unspeakable disappointment he found that the man had not spoken wide of the truth. There was as little here, in the way of a few gnawed crusts of bread and a rind of cheese, as might well stand between nothing and something to eat and to feed to a starving child. His heart sank within him. But then he thought that inasmuch as the farmer had told the truth about his larder, he would be the more likely to have spoken correctly about the neighbors. He would soon be back with something fit for the wee Narragansett.
Adam looked at the baby-boy compassionately. The little fellow was awake, looking up, winking slowly, asking his dumb, wistful question with his eyes.
Adam patted him softly while he waited. “I’m a wretched mother, little partner,” he said. “But we’ll soon have you banqueting, now. Can’t you speak up a little bit? Don’t you want to give old Adam just one little smile? No? Well, never mind. Little man is tired.”
He had placed his charge in a chair. Soon growing impatient, he limped about the room, crunching a crust of bread in his teeth, abstractedly. Unable to endure the suspense, he went again to the cupboard and threw everything down, in his search for something fit for the child. There was nothing more than he had seen before. He went to the water pail and drank, for his mouth had found the crust a poor substitute for food.
Yet no sooner had he sipped the water than a sense of the deliciousness of the dry bread pervaded his being. He ran to gather up the other crusts at once and limped to the child in a frenzy of gladness.
“Here, little man,” he said, kneeling down on the floor. “If you can only chew that up and then take a sip of water, you will think the King’s kitchen has opened.”
He gently thrust a small piece of the rock-hard bread between the little chap’s lips, where, to his intense disappointment, it remained.
“Can’t you chew it?” he said. “Just try, for old Adam.”
The child was too weak to do anything but wink. Its appealing gaze was more than Adam could stand.
“What can Adam do for the little man?” he said.
He limped painfully back and forth again. The farmer should have returned before this. What could be keeping the wretch? The rover saw that the little life was fluttering, uncertainly, not yet sure of its wings on which to fly away.
“I have it!” he cried, in sudden exultation. “Bread and water!”
He hobbled across the room, snatched up a cup, crunched a fistful of crusts in his hand, put them in his cup and filled it half to the top with water. Then he stirred the hard pieces with his finger and crushed them smaller and padded them up against the side of the vessel, working the mass softer in feverish haste. Impatient to get results, he put the cup to the baby’s lips.
“Drink,” he coaxed. “Take a little, like a good partner. Can’t you take a little weeny bit?”
Groaning, thus to find the small Narragansett so weak, he hobbled about to find a spoon, with which he came hastily limping back. To his joy then, he saw a little of the slightly nutritious water disappear between the silent lips. He crooned with delight, hitched himself closer and plied his spoon clumsily, but with all the patience of a woman.
The child began to take the nourishment with interest.
Adam was happy in the midst of this new-found expedient, when the door behind him was suddenly thrown open, violently, and in burst half a dozen constables, armed to the teeth and panting wildly.
“Give up! I arrest you in the name of the King!” cried the foremost of the men. He presented a pistol at the head of the kneeling man. “Take him!” he screamed to his following, and before Rust could so much as rise, on his wounded foot, he was suddenly struggling in a mass of men who had fallen upon him.
He got to his feet. He knocked three of the constables endways. But his strength was gone quickly, so long had he been famished, and so far had he taxed his endurance. They overpowered him, making a noise of mad confusion. They threw him toward a chair. He made one cry of anguish and protest. Three of the scrambling clods fell together upon the little partner, and when they arose, his little heart had ceased to beat.
The farmer-miser now came worming his way through the door. He was laughing like a wolf.
“You’ve got him!” he cried. “I told you! I told you! Heh, heh, heh. I’m not in league with thieves and murderers. Here, here, take your silver! I’ll none of your silver!”
He took from his pocket the coin which the rover had paid him to take back the Englishman’s horse and threw it hysterically down at Adam’s feet.