Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/312

 length of Prison Lane (now St. Peter's Street) into Essex Street.

As the gloomy train wound along its way through the crowd, and just as it turned the corner into Essex Street, an Indian, closely wrapped in his blanket, dropped, as if by the merest chance, a bit of pine-bough into the slow-moving cart.

Apparently by accident the little missile fell; but it had been thrown by a dexterous hand, and with a calculated and certain aim. Lightly it brushed Alice's fair, bended head, touched her clenched hands, and fell into the cart before her. But Alice, moving on in a trance of giddy horror, with her heart "so full that feeling almost seemed unfelt," did not notice it. If she had, she might have recognized in it a token of the hope it was meant to convey to her.

Pashemet had received the little wampum chain—he was true to his pledge. Even then he was in town with a party of his bravest young warriors, although to make himself known even to Alice would possibly have defeated his object.

Gradually and unobserved, half a dozen