The Green Door | Page 8

he. "Haven't I killed ten wolves and aren't their heads nailed to the
outside of the meeting-house?"
Letitia was quite sure that the boy lied, but she knew that he lied to
please her, and she liked him for it.
Great-great-grandmother Letitia sniffed. "You are the greatest braggart
in the Precinct," said she. "Nary a wolf have you killed, and you ran
because you heard a wild cat or a bear. Where are the Injuns, pray?"
"I know there were Injuns after me," said the boy earnestly, "but
perhaps I frightened them away. I brandished my knife as I ran."
Great-great-grandmother Letitia sniffed again, but she looked anxious.
"I hope," said she, "that father and mother will not be molested on their
way home."
"Give me a musket," declared the boy bravely, "and I will guard the
path."
"You!" returned Great-great-grandmother Letitia scornfully. "You are
naught but a child."
"I can handle a musket as well as a man," said Josephus Peabody with
such a straightening of his small back that it seemed positively
alarming, and another glance at Letitia, who returned it. She thought

him a very pretty boy, and quite brave, offering to guard the path all
alone, although he was so young, not much older than she was.
Great-great-grandmother Letitia took up a musket decidedly. "Very
well," said she, "if you can handle a musket like a man, here be the
chance. Take this musket, and I will take one, and Letitia will take one,
and we will leave the door ajar, so we can dash in if hard-pressed, and
we will keep watch lest father and mother be attacked unawares at the
threshold."
Letitia was horribly afraid, but she had learned in the Spartan
household of her ancestors, to be more afraid of fear than of anything
else, so she pulled a blanket over her head and shouldered a musket,
and, after the elder Letitia had unbarred and unbolted the door, they all
stepped out into the night, armed and ready to guard the house.
"Candace can handle a musket and so can little Phyllis at a pinch," said
the elder Letitia thoughtfully, "but I for one am thinking that your
Injuns are catamounts, Josephus Peabody."
"They are Injuns," said the boy stoutly, peering out into the gloom.
They were in perfect darkness, for it was a cloudy night, and not a ray
came from the house-door.
"For what reason were you abroad to-night?" inquired the elder in what
Letitia considered a disagreeably patronizing tone as addressed to such
a pretty brave little boy.
"I went to visit my rabbit traps," replied the boy, but his voice was
slightly hesitant.
"In this darkness?"
"I had a pine knot, but I flung it away when I heard the noises."
"A pine knot, and Injuns around, and you with naught but a scalping
knife? 'Tis not bravery but tomfoolery," said the elder Letitia. "I'll

warrant you stole out without the knowledge of Goodman Cephas
Holbrook and Mistress Holbrook, and they having taken you in as they
did and given you food and shelter, with nine of their own to care for,
and not knowing of a certainty who you might be."
Letitia felt sure that the boy hung his head in the darkness. He
mumbled something incoherent.
"It was out of the window in the lean-to you got, and ran away,"
declared the elder Letitia severely. "You are not a boy to be trusted.
You can remain here with Letitia, and I will stand guard a little way
down the path; and do not speak above a whisper, although I be sure
there be none but catamounts to hear."
With that, Great-great-grandmother Letitia, musket over shoulder,
moved down the path and stood quite concealed as if by a vast cloak of
night, an alert vigilant young figure with the hot blood of her time
leaping in her veins, and the shrewd brain of her time alive to
everything which might stir that darkness with sound or light.
"Who are you?" whispered Letitia to the boy.
"I am Josephus Peabody, but I was always called Joe till I came here,"
the boy whispered back.
Letitia pondered. The name sounded very familiar to her, just as the
boy's face had looked. Then suddenly she remembered. "When I was a
little girl," she whispered, "not more than seven--I am going on ten
now--I knew a little boy named Joe Peabody, and he was visiting his
grandmother, Mrs. Joe Peabody. She lives about half a mile from my
Aunt Peggy's around the corner of the road. It is a big white house next
to the graveyard."
"That was me," said the boy. "At least," he added in rather a dazed and
hopeless tone, "I suppose it was, and I guess I remember you too.