The sailor sat down on a rock, and placing the leathern bag at his feet kept on whittling with an energy that would have seemed spiteful but for his unmoved features. The traveller left him and walked forward toward the farm-house. Goody Brown was in her hand-loom weaving a piece of linen from the yarn she had spun a year before. Her rather trim feet, cased in calf-skin shoes and yarn stockings, even as her daily toil could make them, were rising and falling on the treadles with monotonous jerks. She leaned over from her seat in front of the huge loom, throwing her shuttle through the web with such earnest industry that every ten minutes the sharp click of the turning cloth-beam proclaimed her progress. Directly the headles--or harness, as she called it--would groan and struggle from the renewed tread of her feet, while the flight of the shuttle, the bang of the laith, and the thud of the treadles made such household music as the women of New England gloried in. She was busy fitting a quill into her shuttle when a strange form darkened the open door. But her heart was in her work, and she drew the thread through the eye of her shuttle with a quick breath and a motion of the tongue before she looked directly that way. Then she saw a remarkably handsome young man standing upon the threshold, holding his cap in one hand as if she had been an empress on her throne. "Madam." "Did you mean me?" said Dame Brown, laying down her shuttles, and tightening the strings of her linsey-woolsey apron. "Did you mean me, sir?" "Yes, if you are the mistress of this house." "For want of a better," answered the dame, drawing herself up primly. "I--I am a stranger. Have just come over in the ship which landed to-day." "What, another!" said Goody Brown, coming slowly out of her loom. "I had the hull house full last night." "I do not wish to incommode you, my good lady, only to inquire about those who set out so rashly in the boat before we came up to the wharf. They were all brought here, I am told." "Well, yes, I had a houseful of 'em overnight, but this morning they were well enough to go away." "What, all?" "All but the lady; she's completely tuckered out, and won't get out of her bed to-day, I reckon." "But she is not seriously hurt?" cried the man, almost gasping for breath. "No, I guess not; only kinder worn out. The yarb tea has done her a sight of good." The stranger looked at her eagerly as she spoke. A dozen questions seemed trembling on his lips; but he restrained them, only saying, in a voice that would tremble in spite of his efforts, "Then you are certain that she is out of danger?" "Sartin, of course. She'll be chirk as a bird to-morrow." The stranger sat down in the chair which the dame offered while she was speaking. A bowl of warm bread and milk stood on the kitchen hearth, close by the fire. Goody Brown took it up. "I've got to take this in, for she's getting hungry, but I won't be gone more'n a minute."