The startled shoemaker jerked himself backward and dropped what he was holding in his hand. The object rolled to the old woman’s feet and she bent stiffly to pick it up. It was a big pewter bowl, wrought with raised figures and flowers, as she could feel in the dark. Evidently he had brought it as the most convenient receptacle for dipping out the brine. Utterly bewildered she turned it round and round in her hands and asked again in a trembling voice: “What are you doing?” “I am watering Master Simon’s garden,” the shoemaker answered with a mocking chuckle. “I am giving to those plants he pets and cherishes a drink of scalding salt water, so that to-morrow, when the bride comes forth, she will find a desert for her marriage place and every flower perished never to grow again. Give back my bowl ere I take it from you.” “I did not know,” she gasped, “that living man could be so evil!” “You know it now, then,” he snarled, “and you know how I hate Master Simon and his goodness and his garden. You can say farewell to the flowers, for this night will see their ruin.” “It shall not,” she cried. “No one shall dare lay hand upon leaf or flower that belongs to him. The good that has been wrought here comes not so easily to an end.” In spite of her determined words, however, she was shaking with terror and retreating before him as he advanced threateningly. In stepping back she brushed smartly against the edge of the nearest beehive and heard a faint murmur from the bees within. The shoemaker had come quite close. “How will you stop me?” he jeered. “Will you call Master Simon, who cannot leave his chair? Or will you restrain me yourself, you, an old woman who can only limp and groan as she walks along? No, Master Simon’s garden has come to the end of its glory. Do you remember what the Scotch minister said?” “And you,” cried the old woman scornfully, “you are the instrument of Providence, I suppose, chosen to carry out the preacher’s words! People said when he vanished that he had gone back to the Devil, his master; perhaps you are his servant left behind to continue his work. Hark you, Samuel Skerry, if you dare to destroy good Master Simon’s garden, you will have to reckon with the people of Hopewell. I verily believe that they would burn down your house, should you do such a deed.” “Cease your old woman’s chatter,” he ordered sharply. “I fear the people of Hopewell just as little as I do you. There is no power on earth can stop me now.”