The old
end-chimney bore it toughly up, however, and the low brick props under
the corners stood plumb. Within lay a single room with open beams, a
sort of cupboard stairway projecting over the fireplace, and another
door and window were in the rear. Before this fireplace sat Meshach
Milburn on an old chair, fairly revealed by the light of some of the
burning weather-boarding he had thrown upon the hearth. On the hearth
was a little heap of the bog iron ore and a bottle.
"Come in, Samson!" he called. "Don't think me turned drunkard because I
am taking this whiskey. I drink it to keep out the malaria, and partly
as a communion cup; for to-night the barefooted ghosts who have drooped
and withered here are with me in spirit."
"Dey was all good Milburns who lived heah, marster," said the negro.
"Dey had hard times, but did no sin. Dey shook wid chills and fevers,
not wid conscience."
"I shall shake with neither," said the money-lender. "Go up into the
loft, and sleep till you are called. I want the horses early for
Princess Anne!"
The negro obeyed without remark, and disappeared behind the
cupboard-like door. Milburn sat before the fire, and looked into it
long, while a procession of thoughts and phantoms passed before it.
He saw a poor family of independent Puritans setting sail at different
dates from English seaports. Some were indentured servants, hoping for a
career; others were avoiding the civil wars; others were small political
malefactors, noisy against the oppressions of their hero, Cromwell, and
conspirators against his power; and, thrown by him in English jails,
were only delivered to be sold into slavery, driven through the streets
of market-towns, placed on troop ships between the decks, among the
horses, and set up at auction in Barbadoes, like the blacks; whence they
in time continued onward westward.
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