A Little Maid of Province Town

								

before nightfall, and she will not be quickly seen there."
Anne needed no urging. With another look toward the big ship, she fled
back along the sandy road toward the pasture, and in a short time the
brown cow, much surprised and offended, was being driven at a run down the
pasture slope, around the grove of scrubby maples to the little valley
beyond.
Anne waited until Brownie had sufficiently recovered from her surprise to
begin feeding again, apparently well content with her new pasturage, and
then walked slowly back toward the harbor. The village seemed almost
deserted. The children were not playing about the boats; there was no one
bringing water from the spring near the shore, and as Anne looked out
toward the harbor, she saw two more big ships coming swiftly toward
anchorage.
"Poor Brownie!" she said aloud, for if there was danger in one ship she
was sure that three meant that there was no hope for the gentle brown cow
which she had just driven to a place of safety.
Before night a boatload of British sailors had landed, filled their
water-barrels at the spring, bought some young calves of Joseph
Starkweather and returned quietly to their ships.
"They seem civil enough," said Captain Stoddard that night as he talked
the newcomers over with his wife. "They know we could make no stand
against them, but they treated Joseph Starkweather fairly enough."
Anne listened eagerly. "Will they take Brownie?" she asked.
"Indeed they won't if I can help it," answered Mrs. Stoddard; "we'll not
drive the creature back and forth while the British are about. I can slip
over the hill with a bucket and milk her night and morning. She's gentle,
and there's no need of letting the pirates see how sleek and fat the
creature is."
"And may I go with you, Mistress Stoddard?" asked Anne.
"Of course, child," answered Mrs. Stoddard, smilingly.
After Anne had gone up to the loft to bed Captain Stoddard said slowly:
"She seems a good child."
"That she does, Enos. Good and careful of her clothes, and eager to be of
help to me. She saves me many a step."
"'Tis John Nelson, they say, who has brought the Britishers into harbor,"
responded Captain Enos slowly. "Joseph Starkweather swears that one of the
sailors told him so when he bargained for the calves."
"Anne's not to blame!" declared Mrs. Stoddard loyally, but there was a
note of anxiety in her voice; "as you said yourself, Enos, she's a good
child."
"I'll not be keeping her if it proves true," declared the man stubbornly.
"True it is that they ask no military duty of any man in Province Town,
but we're loyal folk just the same. We may have to barter with the British
to save our poor lives, instead of turning guns on them as we should; but
no man shall say that I took in a British spy's child and cared for it."
"They'd but say you did a Christian deed at the most," said his wife.
"You're not a hard man, Enos."
"I'll not harbor a traitor's child," he insisted, and Mrs. Stoddard went