“I trow they will bring back nobody,” said she, her nose high in air, and her voice shrilling over the drone of the wheel; “an they could not do the bidding of a poor lone widow-woman, and fetch her the cap and bellows from Boston, they’ll fetch nobody home from Canada. I would I had ear of Governor Dudley. I trow men with minds upon their task would be sent.” Eunice kept jerking her head as she scolded, and spun like a bee angry with its own humming. Silence sat knitting, and paid no heed. She had paid no heed to any of the talk about Ensign Sheldon’s and Freedom Wells’s journey to Canada. She had not seemed to listen when Widow Spear had tried to explain the matter to her. “It may be, sweetheart, if it be the will of the Lord, that they will bring David back to thee,” she had said over and over, and Silence had knitted and made no response. She was the only one in Deerfield who was not torn with excitement and suspense as the months went by, and the only one unmoved by joy or disappointment when in May John Sheldon and Freedom Wells returned with five of the captives. But David Walcott was not among them. “Said I not ’twould be so?” scolded Eunice Bishop. “Knew I not ’twould be so when they forgot to get the cap and the bellows in Boston? The one of all the captives that could have saved a poor maid’s wits they leave behind. There’s Mary Sheldon come home, and she a-coloring red before Freedom Wells, and everybody in the room a-seeing it. I trow they might have done somewhat for poor Silence,” and Eunice broke down and wailed and wept, but Silence shed not a tear. Before long she stole out to the terrace and called “David! David! David!” over the north meadow, and strained her blue eyes towards Canada, and held out her fair arms, but it was with no new disappointment and desolation. There was never a day nor a night that Silence called not over the north meadow like a spring bird from the bush to her absent mate, and people heard her and sighed and shuddered. One afternoon in the last of the month of June, as Silence was thrusting her face between the leaves of a wild cherry-tree and calling “David! David! David!” David himself broke through the thicket and stood before her. He and three other young men had escaped from their captivity and come home, and the four, crawling half dead across the meadow, had heard Silence’s voice from the terrace above, and David, leaving the others, had made his way to her. “Silence!” he said, and held out his poor arms, panting. But Silence looked past him. “David! David! David Walcott!” she called. David could scarcely stand for trembling, and he grasped a branch of the cherry-tree to steady himself, and swayed with it. “Know--you not--who I am, Silence?” he said.