“Jacob, when my son—­he is now absent with his father—­reaches his tenth year, give him this, and say that it is a gift from his mother, and contains a lock of her hair.  Can I trust you faithfully to perform this office of love?”

Tears filled her eyes; then her breast heaved with a great sob.

“As Heaven is my witness, madam,” answered Jacob Perkins, “it shall be done.”

“Remember,” she said, “that you are only to give this to John, and not until his tenth year.  Keep my gift sacred from the knowledge of every one until that time, and then let the communication be to him alone.”

Jacob Perkins promised to do according to her wishes, and then left her looking so pale, sad, and miserable, that, to use his own words, “he never could recall her image as she stood looking, not at him, but past him, as if trying to explore the future, without thinking of some marble statue in a grave-yard.”

She was never seen in S——­again.

CHAPTER IV.

The excitement in the little town of S——­, when Jacob returned from Boston, and told his singular story, may well be imagined.  The whole community was in a buzz.

It was found that Mrs. Allen had so arranged matters, as to get all the servants away from the house, on one pretence or another, for that night, except an old negro woman, famous for her good sleeping qualities; and she was in the land of forgetfulness long before the hour appointed for flight.

Many conjectures were made, and one or two rather philanthropic individuals proposed, as a common duty, an attempt to arrest the fugitives and bring them back.  But there were none to second this, the general sentiment being, that Captain Allen was fully competent to look after his own affairs.  And that he wood look after them, and promptly too, on his return, none doubted for an instant.  As for Jacob Perkins, no one professed a willingness to stand in his shoes.  The fire-eating Captain would most probably blow that gentleman’s brains out in the heat of his first excitement.  Poor Jacob, not a very courageous man, was almost beside himself with fear, when his view of the case was confidently asserted.  One advised this course of conduct on the part of Jacob, and another advised that, while all agreed that it would on no account be safe for him to fall in the Captain’s way immediately on his return.  More than a dozen people, friends of Jacob, were on the alert, to give him the earliest intelligence of Captain Allen’s arrival in S——­, that he might hide himself until the first fearful outbreak of passion was over.

Well, in about two weeks the Captain returned with his little son.  Expectation was on tip-toe.  People’s hearts beat in their mouths.  There were some who would not have been surprised at any startling occurrence; an apparition of the scarred sea-dog, rushing along the streets, slashing his sword about like a madman, would have seemed to them nothing extraordinary, under the circumstances.