Her voice came back silvery clear over the distance of water lying between them. "No; he is up at the Fountain Inn." "Ah, as I thought," the pedler muttered, with a meaning smile. "I'll just be in the nick o' time." "What think you it all means, Mary?" Dorothy asked, the two sitting close together in the boat. "What _all_ means?" echoed Mary, in an absent-minded way, her head turned toward the shore they were leaving, where on the higher land the far-away windows of the Fountain Inn were showing like glimmering stars in the light of the setting sun. "Why," Dorothy explained, smiling at Mary's abstraction, "all these soldiers coming down here? And Johnnie acts and talks as if he could tell something important, if he chose." "You know, Dot, we are like to have serious trouble,--perhaps a war with the mother country." "And all because of a parcel of old tea!" exclaimed Dorothy, with great scorn. Mary now turned her face in the direction the boat was going, and smiled faintly. "The tea is really what has brought matters to a head," she said. "But there is more in it than that alone, from what I've heard my father say. And there is much about it that we girls cannot rightly understand, or talk about very wisely. Only, I hope there will be no war. War is such a terrible thing," she added with a shudder, "and you know what Moll told us. I almost wish we had not gone to see her to-day." "I am not a bit sorry we went," said Dorothy, stoutly. "I am glad. What did she say,--something about a big black cloud full of lightnings and muttering thunder, coming from across the sea, to spread over the land and darken it? Was n't that it?" "Yes, and much more. Do you think she was asleep as she talked to us, Dot? She looked so strangely, and yet her eyes were wide open all the time." "Tyntie does the same thing at times. She says it's 'trance.' But Aunt Penine always puts me out of the kitchen when Tyntie gets that way, and so I don't know whether she talks or not. I mean to try and find out, if I can, the next time Tyntie gets into such a state." "Nothing seems strange for Indians to do or to be," Mary said musingly; "but I never heard of such things amongst white people." "Oh, yes, you did," Dorothy answered quickly. "Whatever are you thinking of, not to remember about the witches? 'T is said they could foretell to a certainty of future happenings. I wish I'd lived in those days, although it could not have been pleasant to see folks hanged for such knowledge. As for Moll Pitcher,--I guess she might have been treated as was old Mammie Redd." CHAPTER IV There was a long silence, broken at last by Mary saying, "Perhaps what some folk say of Moll is true,--that it is an evil gift she has. And yet she has a sweet face and gentle manner."