This quaint document was carefully locked up, with some old deeds and other valuable papers, in his desk, by the “s:d Samuel Wales,” one hundred and thirty years ago.  The desk was a rude, unpainted pine affair, and it reared itself on its four stilt-like legs in a corner of his kitchen, in his house in the South Precinct of Braintree.  The sharp eyes of the little “s:d apprentice” had noted it oftener and more enviously than any other article of furniture in the house.  On the night of her arrival, after her journey of fourteen miles from Boston, over a rough bridle-road, on a jolting horse, clinging tremblingly to her new “Master,” she peered through her little red fingers at the desk swallowing up those precious papers which Samuel Wales drew from his pocket with an important air.  She was hardly five years old, but she was an acute child; and she watched her master draw forth the papers, show them to his wife, Polly, and lock them up in the desk, with the full understanding that they had something to do with her coming to this strange place; and, already, a shadowy purpose began to form itself in her mind.

She sat on a cunning little wooden stool, close to the fireplace, and kept her small chapped hands persistently over her face; she was scared, and grieved, and, withal, a trifle sulky.  Mrs. Polly Wales cooked some Indian meal mush for supper in an iron pot swinging from its trammel over the blazing logs, and cast scrutinizing glances at the little stranger.  She had welcomed her kindly, taken off her outer garments, and established her on the little stool in the warmest corner, but the child had given a very ungracious response.  She would not answer a word to Mrs. Wales’ coaxing questions, but twitched herself away with all her small might, and kept her hands tightly over her eyes, only peering between her fingers when she thought no one was noticing.

She had behaved after the same fashion all the way from Boston, as Mr. Wales told his wife in a whisper.  The two were a little dismayed, at the whole appearance of the small apprentice; to tell the truth, she was not in the least what they had expected.  They had been revolving this scheme of taking “a bound girl” for some time in their minds; and, Samuel Wales’ gossip in Boston, Sam Vaughan, had been requested to keep a lookout for a suitable person.

So, when word came that one had been found, Mr. Wales had started at once for the city.  When he saw the child, he was dismayed.  He had expected to see a girl of ten; this one was hardly five, and she had anything but the demure and decorous air which his Puritan mind esteemed becoming and appropriate in a little maiden.  Her hair was black and curled tightly, instead of being brown and straight parted in the middle, and combed smoothly over her ears as his taste regulated; her eyes were black and flashing, instead of being blue, and downcast.  The minute he saw the child, he felt a disapproval of her rise