But spring awoke the dead earth, and sleeping roots aroused with fresh forces from their torpor, and sent up green signals to the birds above. A spark of light awoke in Hitty's eye; she planned to get away, to steal the boat from its hidden cove in the bushes and push off down the friendly current of the river,--anywhere away from him! anywhere! though it should be to wreck on the great ocean, but still away from him! Night after night she rose from her bed to hazard the attempt, but her heart failed, and her trembling limbs refused their aid. At length moonlight came to her aid, and when all the house slept she stole downstairs with bare, noiseless feet, and sped like a ghost across the meadow to the river-bank. Poor weak hands! vainly they fumbled with the knotted rope that bound the skiff to a crooked elm over-hanging the water,--all in vain for many lingering minutes; but presently the obdurate knot gave way, and, turning to gather up her shawl, there, close behind her, so close that his hot breath seemed to sear her cheek, stood her husband, clear in the moonlight, with a sneer on his face, and the lurid glow of drunkenness, that made a savage brute of a bad man, gleaming in his deep-set eyes. Hitty neither shrieked nor ran; despair nerved her,--despair turned her rigid before his face. "Well," said he, "where are you going?" "I am going away,--away from you,--anywhere in the world away from you!" answered she, with the boldness of desperation. "Ha, ha! going away from me!--that's a d--d good joke, a'n't it? Away from your husband! You fool! you can't get away from me! you're mine, soul and body,--this world and the next! Don't you know that? Where's your promise, eh?--'for better, for worse!'--and a'n't I worse, you cursed fool, you? You didn't put on the handcuffs for nothing; heaven and hell can't get you away from me as long as you've got on that little shiny fetter on your finger,--don't you know that?" The maddened woman made a quick wrench to pull away from him her left hand, which he held in his, taunting her with the ring that symbolized their eternal bonds; but he was too quick for her. "Hollo!" laughed he; "want to get rid of it, don't you? No, no! that won't do,--that won't do! I'll make it safe!" And lifting her like a child in his arms, he carried her across the meadow, back to the house, and down a flight of crazy steps into the cellar, where a little forge was all ablaze with white-hot coal, and the two ill-visaged men she well knew by sight were busy with sets of odd tools and fragments of metal, while on a bench near by, and in the seat of an old chair, lay piles of fresh coin. They were a gang of counterfeiters. Abner Dimock thrust his wife into the chair, sweeping the gilt eagles to the floor as one of the men angrily started up, demanding, with an oath, what he brought that woman there for to hang them all.