off to Plymouth on
business, and she saw a log of wood, just like a trunk of a felled
tree, lying in the shadow, and thought nothing of it, till, on looking
again a while after, she fancied it was come a bit nearer to the house,
and how her heart turned sick with fright, and how she dared not stir
at first, but shut her eyes while she counted a hundred, and looked
again, and the shadow was deeper, but she could see that the log was
nearer; so she ran in and bolted the door, and went up to where her
eldest lad lay. It was Elijah, and he was but sixteen then; but he rose
up at his mother's words, and took his father's long duck-gun down, and
he tried the loading, and spoke for the first time to put up a prayer
that God would give his aim good guidance, and went to a window that
gave a view upon the side where the log lay, and fired, and no one
dared to look what came of it, but all the household read the
Scriptures, and prayed the whole night long, till morning came and
showed a long stream of blood lying on the grass close by the log,
which the full sunlight showed to be no log at all, but just a Red
Indian covered with bark, and painted most skilfully, with his
war-knife by his side.'

All were breathless with listening, though to most the story, or such
like it, were familiar. Then another took up the tale of horror:

'And the pirates have been down at Marblehead since you were here,
Captain Holdernesse. 'Twas only the last winter they landed,--French
Papist pirates; and the people kept close within their houses, for they
knew not what would come of it; and they dragged folk ashore. There was
one woman among those folk--prisoners from some vessel, doubtless--and
the pirates took them by force to the inland marsh; and the Marblehead
folk kept still and quiet, every gun loaded, and every ear on the
watch, for who knew but what the wild sea-robbers might take a turn on
land next; and, in the dead of the night, they heard a woman's loud and
pitiful outcry from the marsh, 'Lord Jesu! have mercy on me! Save me
from the power of man, O Lord Jesu!' And the blood of all who heard the
cry ran cold with terror, till old Nance Hickson, who had been
stone-deaf and bedridden for years, stood up in the midst of the folk
all gathered together in her grandson's house, and said, that as they,
the dwellers in Marblehead, had not had brave hearts or faith enough to
go and succour the helpless, that cry of a dying woman should be in
the