Part 15

Peter went to bed that night, happy with the new thought that he, himself, might some day go to college.

LITTLE JANE'S GENTIANS.

"Have you never seen a fringed gentian?" asked little blue-eyed Jane. "If you will go down that path with me, I'll show you where they grow."

Benjamin was about to follow, when his father reined in his horse at the gate and called, "Come, Ben, we must start for home!"

"Never mind," whispered little Jane, "I'll bring one to you at the meeting-house on the Sabbath."

John Cutts lifted his boy to the horse's back, and with the bag of meal behind the saddle they started homeward over beaten paths through the woods to the clearing, some two miles from the settlement. This happened as long ago as 1671, when the fire on the hearth was the only kind used. Benjamin was glad to get close to it this cold fall night, as he listened to his father's account of the many wolves shot that week, whose heads, Benjamin knew, would be hung on the meeting-house door until the captors received their bounty.

On Sunday morning John Cutts examined his musket closely, for he dared not start to meeting without it. Indians as well as wolves were feared. His wife sat on the horse behind him, and Benjamin rode before. Traveling over the narrow paths, they passed but few people on their way.

Sunday was a day of fear for Benjamin, for outside the church door was built a large wooden cage which held the stocks, while a pillory was constructed on top, both of which were to hold in most uncomfortable positions those who disturbed the meeting.

Inside the church his mother sat on one side, his father on the other. Benjamin was always left at the back with a row of boys under the piercing eye of Nicholas Bond, the tything man, who kept strict order with his rod and an occasional nod to the cage outside.

On this particular morning when Benjamin dropped into his seat at the end of the row and near the door, he thought seriously of the whispered word he had overheard outside.

"Little Jane is lost. There are several searching parties out!"

"This is the morning," thought Benjamin, "that little Jane was going to bring me the gentians. I wonder if anyone would think of searching that path for her!"

He glanced at the unusual number of wolves' heads hung on the door and thought of those still living in the woods. The guns stacked by the doorway suggested lurking Indians. His fear for little Jane's safety so increased that he became restless and soon received a sharp rap on the shins from the tything man.

It was during the long prayer when all heads were bowed that his fear for Jane became greater than his fear of the cage. Could it be that Nicholas Bond was nodding? Benjamin slipped from his seat, crept out the door, and flew down the road outside. The risk was great, for if he should be caught, the horror of the cage awaited him.

He was soon out of sight of the church and had turned down the gentian path without meeting any one. He knew enough of woodcraft to break a branch here and turn a stone there to mark his way. The gentians were found, and some had been picked, but Jane answered none of his shouts. He returned the same way until he found a branching path.

"She might have taken that by mistake," he thought.

It was a long search before Benjamin came upon the little girl asleep on the ground, with her hands full of gentians. "Oh, Jane, Jane, wake up and come quickly! The wolves or the Indians might find us!"

Together they ran down the path to the turn and up the right one to the church, which they reached just as the people came out, troubled by the disappearance of Benjamin. A searching party came from the opposite direction, and Jane's father caught his little girl up in his arms, while Benjamin told his part of the story. His father proudly patted him on the back and swung him up on the saddle, but little Jane scrambled to her feet and darting to his side reached up her plump little hand, exclaiming, "I picked these gentians for you, Benjamin!"

THE CHURCH LAW

It was now 1675. Four years had passed since Jane Fryer gathered the gentians for Benjamin. Her father, Jonathan Fryer, had moved from the neighborhood of the meeting-house far up the river-side, where he found better land for cultivation. He still held a strong church interest and built for his family a small shed at the rear of the meeting-house. Here they could warm themselves by a hearth fire before the service in the unheated building and take a hot dinner before the long walk home.

Jane was now an energetic girl of ten. One February afternoon she rested her bucket of water on the icy edge of the well as she watched her father striding homeward down the hill slope. As he reached her, he picked up the heavy bucket and entered the house, where his boy Tom was placing a huge log on the fire, and his wife stood ready to fill the kettle with water and hang it on the crane. Jane had followed her father and waited with expectant silence until Jonathan Fryer announced--

"I am going to Boston!"

"Father!" exclaimed Tom.

"This winter?" asked his wife, while Jane embraced her dearly loved father as if he were off for the moon. Boston was fifty-eight miles away.

"I have just attended town-meeting," he explained. "The sixty pounds which we have pledged to Harvard College annually must be paid. There are also town matters for consultation."

As it was February, Jonathan Fryer decided to travel on horseback by an inland route to Boston.

During his absence, the family had cause for anxiety in the weather. Storms and a moderating temperature were bad, for Jonathan Fryer had frozen rivers to cross.

On the night of the second Saturday after his departure, he returned weary and exhausted from a hard and perilous trip. Jane had spent many hours watching for her father and was eager to make him comfortable. She hung about him with every attention, and laughed when he nodded with sleep.