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In Dark New England Days
by
There was a solemn hush in the house; the two sisters were safe from their neighbors, and there was no fear of interruption at such an hour in that hard-working community, tired with a day’s work that had been early begun. If any one came knocking at the door, both door and windows were securely fastened.
The eager sisters bent above the chest, they held their breath and talked in softest whispers. With stealthy tread a man came out of the woods near by.
He stopped to listen, came nearer, stopped again, and then crept close to the old house. He stepped upon the banking, next the window with the warped shutter; there was a knothole in it high above the women’s heads, towards the top. As they leaned over the chest, an eager eye watched them. If they had turned that way suspiciously, the eye might have caught the flicker of the lamp and betrayed itself. No, they were too busy: the eye at the shutter watched and watched.
There was a certain feeling of relief in the sisters’ minds because the contents of the chest were so commonplace at first sight. There were some old belongings dating back to their father’s early days of seafaring. They unfolded a waistcoat pattern or two of figured stuff which they had seen him fold and put away again and again. Once he had given Betsey a gay China silk handkerchief, and here were two more like it. They had not known what a store of treasures might be waiting for them, but the reality so far was disappointing; there was much spare room to begin with, and the wares within looked pinched and few. There were bundles of papers, old receipts, some letters in two not very thick bundles, some old account books with worn edges, and a blackened silver can which looked very small in comparison with their anticipation, being an heirloom and jealously hoarded and secreted by the old man. The women began to feel as if his lean angry figure were bending with them over the sea chest.
They opened a package wrapped in many layers of old soft paper–a worked piece of Indian muslin, and an embroidered red scarf which they had never seen before. “He must have brought them home to mother,” said Betsey with a great outburst of feeling. “He never was the same man again; he never would let nobody else have them when he found she was dead, poor old father!”
Hannah looked wistfully at the treasures. She rebuked herself for selfishness, but she thought of her pinched girlhood and the delight these things would have been. Ah yes! it was too late now for many things besides the sprigged muslin. “If I was young as I was once there’s lots o’ things I’d like to do now I’m free,” said Hannah with a gentle sigh; but her sister checked her anxiously–it was fitting that they should preserve a semblance of mourning even to themselves.
The lamp stood in a kitchen chair at the chest’s end and shone full across their faces. Betsey looked intent and sober as she turned over the old man’s treasures. Under the India mull was an antique pair of buff trousers, a waistcoat of strange old-fashioned foreign stuff, and a blue coat with brass buttons, brought home from over seas, as the women knew, for their father’s wedding clothes. They had seen him carry them out at long intervals to hang them in the spring sunshine; he had been very feeble the last time, and Hannah remembered that she had longed to take them from his shaking hands.
“I declare for ‘t I wish ‘t we had laid him out in ’em, ‘stead o’ the robe,” she whispered; but Betsey made no answer. She was kneeling still, but held herself upright and looked away. It was evident that she was lost in her own thoughts.