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PAGE The Creature Sprang to Its Feet 1 A Blanket Fell Over Her Head 65 She Worked Steadily 112 “This Is From Boston” 163 The Boat Began to Tip 196

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“I don’t know what I can do with you, I’m sure!” declared Mistress Stoddard, looking down at the small girl who stood on her door-step gazing wistfully up at her.

“A man at the wharf said that you didn’t have any little girls,” responded the child, “and so I thought——”

“’Twas Joe Starkweather told you, I’ll be bound,” said Mrs. Stoddard. “Well, he’s seven of his own to fend for.”

“Seven little girls?” said Anne Nelson, in an almost terror-stricken voice, her dark eyes looking earnestly into the stern face that frowned down upon her. “And what would become of them if their mother should die, and their father be lost at sea?”

“Sure enough. You have sense, child. But the Starkweathers are all boys. Well, come in. You can take your bundle to the loft and leave it, and we’ll see what I can find for you to do. How old are you?”

“Eight last March,” responded Anne.

“Well, a child of eight isn’t much use in a house, but maybe you can save me steps.”

“Yes, indeed, Mistress Stoddard; I did a deal to help my father about the house. He said I could do as much as a woman. I can sweep out for you, and lay the table and wash the dishes, and bring in the wood and water, and——” there came a break in the little girl’s voice, and the woman reached out a kindly hand and took the child’s bundle.

“Come in,” she said, and Anne instantly felt the tenderness of her voice. “We are poor enough, but you’ll be welcome to food and shelter, child, till such time as some of your own kinsfolk send for thee.”

“I have no kinsfolk,” declared Anne; “my father told me that.”

“Come you in; you’ll have a bed and a crust while I have them to give you,” declared the woman, and Anne Nelson went across the threshold and up to the bare loft, where she put her bundle down on a wooden stool and looked about the room.

There was but a narrow bed in the corner, covered with a patchwork quilt, and the wooden stool where Anne had put her bundle. The one narrow window looked off across the sandy cart tracks which served as a road toward the blue waters of Cape Cod Bay. It was early June, and the strong breath of the sea filled the rough little house, bringing with it the fragrance of the wild cherry blossoms and an odor of pine from the scrubby growths on the low line of hills back of the little settlement.

It was just a year ago, Anne remembered, as she unwrapped her bundle, that she and her father had sailed across the harbor from Ipswich, where her mother had died.

“We will live here, at the very end of the world, where a man may think as he pleases,” her father had said, and had moved their few household possessions into a three-roomed house near the shore. Then he had given his time to fishing, leaving Anne alone in the little house to do as she pleased.

She was a quiet child, and found entertainment in building sand houses on the beach, in wandering along the shore searching for bright shells and smooth pebbles, and in doing such simple household tasks as her youth admitted. A week before her appearance at Mrs. Stoddard’s door, John Nelson had gone out in his fishing-boat, and now he had been given up as lost. No sign of him had been seen by the other fishermen, and it was generally believed by his neighbors that his sloop had foundered and that John Nelson had perished.

Some there were, however, who declared John Nelson to be a British spy, and hesitated not to say that he had sailed away to join some vessel of the British fleet with information as to the convenience of the harbor of Province Town, and with such other news as he had brought from Ipswich and the settlements nearer Boston. For it was just before the war of the American Revolution, when men were watched sharply and taken to task speedily for any lack of loyalty to the American colonies. And John Nelson had many a time declared that he believed England meant well by her American possessions,—a statement which set many of his neighbors against him.

“‘Mean well,’ indeed!” Joseph Starkweather had replied to his neighbor’s remark. “When they have closed the port of Boston, so that no ship but the king’s war-ships dare go in and out? Even our fishing-boats are closely watched. Already the Boston people are beginning to need many things. Americans are not going to submit to feeding British soldiers while their own men go hungry.”

But now Joseph Starkweather was the only man who interested himself in the lonely child. Day after day of that first week of her father’s absence Anne had stayed close to the little house, looking hopefully out across the harbor for a sight of his boat; and day after day Joseph Starkweather had come lounging down the beach to speak with the child, to ask her what she had for breakfast, and if she slept safe and unafraid.

“The meal is gone,” she told him one morning, “and I do not sleep now—I wait and listen for my father;” and then it was that he told her she must seek another home.

“You are too young to stay alone,” he said; “pick up a bundle of your clothes and go to Mrs. Stoddard on the hill. She hasn’t a chick or child of her own. Like as not you’ll be a blessing to her.” And Anne, used to obedience and sorrow, obeyed.

There was nothing of much value in the small house, but on the day after Anne’s entrance as a member of the Stoddard family, Captain Stoddard loaded the poor sticks of furniture on a handcart, and pulled it through the sandy tracks to his cottage door.

“It’s the child of an English spy you’re giving shelter to,” he had said, when Martha Stoddard had told him that Anne was to live with them, “and she’ll bring no luck to the house.” But his wife had made no response; the dark-eyed, elfish-looking child had already found a place in the woman’s heart.

“I don’t eat so very much,” Anne announced as Mrs. Stoddard gave her a bowl of corn mush and milk when she came down-stairs.

“You’ll eat what you want in this