The Gentle Rebel Read online

  “I could use a few things,” she said, and for the next quarter of an hour she selected a small collection of items.

  “This be all?”

  “Yes. How much?”

  “Well, let’s see . . .” He added up the total, and she reached into her coat pocket to get the money.

  “Something wrong, miss?”

  Julie was searching her pockets frantically, but the leather pouch was gone. With a sickening feeling she remembered that the coat had fallen to the floor, and she knew that the heavy pouch must have slid out.

  “I—no!” she said, then turning to one side, she pulled the purse-strings around her neck free, and opening the pouch, paid for the merchandise from its slender store. It took two pounds, and she resolutely put away the fear that touched her as the man wrapped the goods in a paper and handed them to her.

  She left the shop so quickly that the shopkeeper came out to watch her disappear around a corner. “Funny sort of things for a young girl to want,” he muttered, then started shoveling snow from the walk.

  Julie walked down half a dozen streets, looking for some sort of privacy, and at last she found an old barn that was apparently deserted. She looked around furtively, then darted inside, her breath coming quickly. The place, she saw at once, was not being used, and she found a stall with a window that let a shaft of light into the darkness of what had been some sort of small harness room. She put her bag and the package on the floor, then slowly pulled the paper aside. Reaching down, she picked up a pair of scissors and held them up. She stared at them, then removed her bonnet and with a quick motion let her long hair down. It fell down her back, thick, black and lustrous, and she felt a momentary twinge of sadness, but then her lips tightened, and she reached back and awkwardly cut a long, thick tress. She held it up, looked at it for a long moment, then gave a half sob and dropped it to the floor and began snipping steadily.

  Thirty minutes later, when the door of the abandoned barn swung open, the figure that stepped outside looked nothing like Julie Sampson!

  The test came at once, for just as she slipped outside and was walking toward the main street, a man rounded the corner and walked right by her. Her heart almost stopped, but he only gave her a quick nod, said, “Morning,” and without another word or look passed on down the street.

  What he had seen was a young fellow, not over fifteen, with a soft cap pulled down over a head of roughly-cut black hair. To be sure, there was a little softness in the lad, something a little girlish in the curve of the cheeks—but no more so than in other city-raised lads.

  Julie had deliberately scuffed the gray homespun shirt, the knee breeches and brown stockings in the dirt, as well as the heavy wool coat that hung down to her knees. The garments were too large and so poorly cut that they effectively concealed her developing figure.

  She walked down the street carrying the case, which contained a few other masculine garments. All the clothing she had brought with her, along with personal feminine items, she had left in the loft, and the pile of hair she had buried.

  It took great courage for Julie to join the growing stream of people on their way to work, but she knew no other way was possible.

  I’ve got a chance! she thought. If I’m careful and keep to myself, I can do it.

  So she made her way to the outskirts of town, was picked up by an old man with a wagon load of glass windows headed for New Haven. He was a foul-mouthed old man, and the things he said to the young “fellow” beside him made her cheeks burn, but she managed to cover her confusion, and as the wagon rumbled along, she tried to ignore the fact that she had only a few pounds. She had no idea how she would get across the sea to her aunt’s, but one thing kept coming to her mind—a verse of scripture that Pastor Kelly seemed to love more than any other. He quoted it every time he preached, usually more than once. Now as the wagon bumped along over the rutted road and the old man told raw stories, Julie let that verse linger in her mind, saying it over and over again: “With God—nothing shall be impossible!”

  * * *

  During the weeks that followed, Julie felt as if she might wear that verse out, and more than once her faith almost failed. The pitifully small stack of coins dwindled rapidly, even though she spent money only for food—and not a great deal of that.

  She traveled where the wagons went that picked her up, falling into a kind of aimlessness. Her idea of getting to England she clung to stubbornly, but there was no money for her passage, so she moved steadily up the coast, touching briefly at Newport, only to discover the reward posters there as well.

  She had grown more assured with her disguise, discovering that people did not really care much, especially as the clothes she had bought grew dirty and worn. Sometimes she would stay in a barn and cut some wood for a meal with a farmer, but as she moved northward, the weather grew worse, and when she came to Boston on the third of February, a blizzard swept in from the west burying the city under ice and snow.

  In desperation, Julie tried to find a ship that would take her in exchange for work, but nothing was available. Few ships made the trip in such weather, and those that did go were usually able to make up a crew of able-bodied seamen.

  Her last coins went, and then she had nothing. She shoveled snow for some of the merchants, but most of the shops shut down, waiting for the warm breath of spring to thaw the city out.

  On the third day after her money ran out, Julie touched bottom. She had gone up and down the streets asking for work with the few merchants who still opened their businesses, and found none. For two days she had eaten nothing, and her head was aching with fatigue.

  Snow began to drift downward late in the afternoon, and with her stomach in a knot, she went to the harbor, stumbling through the falling snow, not really caring a great deal what happened.

  The cold paralyzed her hands, and finally she sat down facing the forest of masts, all white and glittering with snow and ice. The sounds of the city were muffled by the thick, fleecy blanket of snow, and she realized that she would have to get up and find shelter in a barn or in an alley, but she had no will to do it.

  Closing her eyes, she ignored the snow gathering on her head and whitening her clothing. She thought of her father and of those good times in the past. She remembered the church and Pastor Kelly with his thin face and hearty voice. She even remembered her mother, dead and buried—living only in her memories now.

  Julie sat there, dozing and thinking of the sweet warm days of the past—and still the snow fell. Gently it fell, making a soft blanket that was no longer cold, but seemed warm—warm as her memories and her dreams.

  Slowly she drifted into a gentle sleep like a little child.

  CHAPTER THREE

  A FAMILY DIVIDED

  Caleb Winslow was roused from a sound sleep by the sound of his brother’s head hitting the oak headboard with a solid THUNK! He turned his head and grinned as a muffled oath broke the morning silence.

  “Ministers aren’t supposed to swear,” Caleb said. By the thin gray light of the January sun he watched as his brother, holding the top of his head, swung his feet to the floor and sat up. “That must be a million times you’ve banged your head, Nathan. Appears to me you’d figure out a better way to wake up than beating your brains out every morning.”

  “Like what?” Nathan asked grumpily. “Cut my legs off and be a midget like you?” He stood up cautiously, avoiding the low, rough-hewn beam that dissected the small loft bedroom. He went to the oak washstand and, breaking the skim of ice from the water in the basin, began splashing his face, sputtering and wheezing. He worked up a thin lather and scraped at his cheeks with a razor.

  Caleb watched with interest, and when Nathan was finished, he said, “Think I’ll start shaving.” He had said this since Nathan had started shaving two years earlier and had no real intention of acting on it.

  “Shaving what?” Nathan grinned as he stripped off a flannel nightshirt and began pulling on his clothes. “Might as well look for whiskers
on an egg as on your face. Got to be a man to grow something to shave, boy!”

  Caleb’s face flushed and he rolled out of bed and thrust his chin forward. “A little hair on your face don’t make you a man!” His dark eyes flashed and he put his hands forward in a wrestling stance, adding, “You think you’re more of a man than me, Nathan; why, you just come on, and we’ll see!”

  A sudden grin touched the lips of the older boy, and he regarded the stocky figure of his brother fondly. “You’re getting too big to fool with.” He rubbed the top of his head and added ruefully, “I keep growing up and you keep growing around, Caleb—looks like we could sort of average out somehow!”

  The two did present a stark contrast. Caleb, at fifteen, was short but powerfully built. His chest was deep and pads of muscle swelled his upper body. His legs were thick and solid, and there was a ponderous quality to all his movements. He had a square chin, and even by the feeble morning light that streamed in, his dark coloring and dark eyes were visible.

  He stood there, a solid figure, looking up at Nathan, and there was a trace of envy in his dark eyes as he took in his brother’s tall form. Nathan was exactly six feet three inches tall, and though at seventeen he was two years older than Caleb, he had not filled out as he would later on. He had shot up like a weed for the past three years, his clothes becoming too short before they wore out. He had discovered his actual height by measuring the bed he shared with Caleb and found it to be exactly six feet and three inches long—which meant that if he got one inch too high in it, he would bash his head against the hard oak as he had done a few moments earlier. The only solution he could find was to sleep at an angle—a practice that did not make Caleb happy, since it meant sharing his half of the bed with his brother’s long legs.

  There was some awkwardness to Nathan’s movements as he finished dressing and moved toward the door, for he had grown so fast that his coordination had not yet caught up with his stature. He had the cautious movements of a very tall man—always measuring low beams and door openings. In spite of this coltish awkwardness, there were traces of grace and strength as he moved through the door, and most people who saw him asked themselves, What will he be like when he gets his full growth?

  But it was not only in height that the two differed; where Caleb had dark skin, blue-black eyes, and black hair, Nathan had auburn hair and the high complexion that frequently goes with that shade. His face was triangular, sloping down from a broad forehead to a pointed chin; his nose was rather short, but flared out at the base. Smallish ears almost hidden behind the hair, a wide mouth, straight eyebrows over a pair of startling light blue eyes—these were all part of the Winslow heritage that had come to him. He was almost delicate in feature, and some said he was pretty enough to be a girl. Yet there was a hint of stubborn strength in his features and a steadiness in his eyes that offset any touch of the feminine, and his long reach and developing strength had enabled him to hold his own in the youthful brawls that had come his way.

  “Better get yourself dressed,” Nathan called as he left the room. “I think Ma is frying donkers.”

  The fragrance of baking filled the house as they hurried down from the loft and into the broad hallway toward the kitchen. His mother turned as he entered, greeting him with a smile. “Good morning, Nathan.”

  “Morning, Mother.” His appetite was ferocious, and the smell of cooking meat made his stomach rumble. His mother made donkers from the week’s meat leftovers, chopped together with bread, apples, raisins and savory spices—fried and served with boiled pudding. He picked up a wooden spoon, filled it from the heavy black pot and jammed it into his mouth.

  “Nathan, you’ll burn your tongue off!” She took the spoon away from him, reached up and smoothed his hair down where it rose up in the back, and then pushed him toward the door. “You better get some firewood in before your father sees that empty wood box!”

  “That’s Caleb’s job,” he complained.

  “Oh? You’re too dignified to help around the house now that you’re going to college?”

  “I didn’t say that!”

  “You know Caleb does his work—and some of yours as well.”

  “All right, Mother, all right!”

  He stalked outside to the woodpile, and a mixture of righteous indignation and guilt made him make four trips to the house, piling up the short chunks of red oak until the box overflowed. His mother said nothing, but watched him out of the corner of her eye, a furtive smile springing to her lips as he dumped the last load, then slumped into his chair, a picture of wounded innocence.

  “You think that’s enough to do for a spell?”

  Molly Winslow’s maiden name had been Burns, and she had the type of beauty often seen in women of Scottish blood. She looked ten years younger than her forty-one years, and her ash-blonde hair had no more gray in it than it had when Adam Winslow had first seen her as a child on the streets of London. She had the figure of a young girl, and only a few lines around her eyes revealed her age.

  She nodded, but before she could answer, Caleb bustled into the kitchen. He came over to kiss his mother, as he always did, saying, “I’m starved, Ma!”

  “After that supper you ate last night,” Molly said tartly, “you’re not likely to die of hunger.” Her tone was sharp, but there was a fond light in her eyes as she looked at the boy. A stab of regret came to Nathan, mixed with envy, for he lacked the easy ways of his younger brother—especially where his parents were concerned. It was not that he loved them less than Caleb, but somewhere along the way an awkwardness had developed. Perhaps it was due to his tremendous height; it was, he recognized, much easier for both of them to see Caleb as a child—after all, who wants to reach up and caress a giant? But that resentful thought passed, and he knew that the wall between himself and his parents was the product of more than a few inches in his spine.

  The outer door swung open, and Adam Winslow stepped inside, his dark eyes sweeping the room quickly. His tread was soundless as he came to stand beside his chair. “Morning. Food smells good.” He greeted his sons, then sat down in an easy way, and while Molly was putting the food on the table, Adam sat there listening as Caleb chattered on about the trip to Boston. As he ran on, Nathan thought how odd it was that his brother talked so much, and he talked so little. You’d think he was going to be the minister instead of me! he thought suddenly.

  As Nathan’s mother put the hot bread on the table and sat down, suddenly he saw that room as he’d never seen it before—as if it were a painting with the title Puritan Family at Breakfast. It was a nice picture, too. They ate in the dining room on the Sabbath, and Mother set the table with china and silver, but on weekdays they ate in the kitchen. So in his mind he saw them sitting around the rough board table with the big fireplace, four of them but with an extra place set for five. His father claimed that the empty chair reminded them that they had an Unseen Guest with them at all times. It was a powerful image, and as a child Nathan had been a little afraid that God would come in and take His seat!

  As his father asked the usual blessing, Nathan stole a glance at him, thinking that the Unseen Guest thing was one of the few outer traces of imagination Adam Winslow ever showed. Oh, he was creative enough at the forge, making beautiful rifles or even silver jewelry, but he had little of fancy in him in other ways.

  Nathan thought that his father was the most practical looking man in the world. He was five feet ten and weighed one hundred eighty-five pounds, and if there was a stronger man in the county, he hadn’t shown up to prove it. Adam had a square face with dark skin and darker eyes, and his hair showed only a few gray strands in the midst of the black. His hands were almost square, thick with pads of muscle and scarred from years of work with iron and wood. Nathan took a quick glance at Caleb and almost smiled, for there was something comical in the way his younger brother sat there, a mirror image of the father! They both had the same darkness, the same powerful frame, and despite the fact that Caleb was much more of a talker th
an his father, they thought in the same way.

  “Did you pick up that last load from the warehouse, Nathan?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You remember that bale of prime beaver that Louis left up in the loft—the one Dupree brought in last winter?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  There was doubt in the way Nathan’s father stared at him. He’d always made the annual trip to Boston to haul the furs, but this year he was so far behind in the forge that Nathan argued him into letting him do it—and somehow he had done even more—he had talked him into letting the two of them stay the rest of the summer with their Uncle Charles!

  “I’ve been with you on the last five trips, Father,” he’d pleaded, and then Mother had joined in so that finally a week earlier he’d agreed to let Nathan make the trip. Then Caleb had set up a howl to go, so the two of them were to leave the following day, on their own for the first time in their lives.

  Now Nathan saw the questions in his father’s eyes, and knew that if he decided his sons weren’t to be trusted, he’d just take the furs himself. Right then Caleb jumped in, and for the first time in Nathan’s life he was glad his brother was such a talker!

  Caleb knew his father, and he began talking cheerfully about how good it was for young fellows to learn responsibility and how glad he was to have an older brother. As always, he got his way. Nathan saw through it in a second, but he’d learned to accept the fact long ago that his father had a weakness for his younger son.

  “It’ll be good for them, Adam.” Molly came over and put her arm around him, something which always gentled him down. “Charles wants them to come.”

  “I know. And I suppose the boys can learn something about business from him.” His eyes fell on Nathan and there was a peculiar glint in his glance that the older son couldn’t read. “But I can’t see what good it will do a minister to know about business.”