the why and
wherefore. But what her father could mean, unless to make her husband
pay for her by the pound (in which case she would have been a dear
bargain), she had not the least idea.

"And now," said honest John Hull to the servants "bring that box
hither."

The box to which the mint-master pointed was a huge, square, iron-bound,
oaken chest; it was big enough, my children, for all four of you to play
at hide-and-seek in. The servants tugged with might and main, but could
not lift this enormous receptacle, and were finally obliged to drag it
across the floor. Captain Hull then took a key from his girdle, unlocked
the chest, and lifted its ponderous lid. Behold! it was full to the brim
of bright pine-tree shillings, fresh from the mint; and Samuel Sewall
began to think that his father-in-law had got possession of all the
money in the Massachusetts treasury. But it was only the mint-master's
honest share of the coinage.

Then the servants, at Captain Hull's command, heaped double handfuls
of shillings into one side of the scales, while Betsey remained in the
other. Jingle, jingle, went the shillings, as handful after handful was
thrown in, till, plump and ponderous as she was, they fairly weighed the
young lady from the floor.

"There, son Sewall!" cried the honest mint-master, resuming his seat in
Grandfather's chair, "take these shillings for my daughter's portion.
Use her kindly, and thank Heaven for her. It is not every wife that's
worth her weight in silver!"

The children laughed heartily at this legend, and would hardly be
convinced but that Grandfather had made it out of his own head. He
assured them faithfully, however, that he had found it in the pages of
a grave historian, and had merely tried to tell it in a somewhat funnier
style. As for Samuel Sewall, he afterwards became chief justice of
Massachusetts.

"Well, Grandfather," remarked Clara, "if wedding portions nowadays were
paid as Miss Betsey's was, young ladies would not pride themselves upon
an airy figure, as many of them do."

CHAPTER VII. THE QUAKERS AND THE INDIANS.

WHEN his little audience next assembled round the chair, Grandfather
gave them a doleful history of the Quaker persecution, which began in
1656, and raged for about three years in Massachusetts.

He told them how, in the first place, twelve of the converts of George
Fox, the first Quaker in the world, had come over from England. They
seemed to be impelled by an earnes