After a while, the tale comes how, two years or more before, the Indians came by stealth to a plantation to the north, murdered an overseer and stole away a bonded servant girl. The gardener saw them drag her off by her yellow hair. I think to meself, how the gardener must have settled a score on his own account, good luck to him, and if they choose to think I was forced into captivity, then they have my leave to do so, if it makes them hap九九藏书py, as long as they leave me be. Which, because the Minister has a powerful desire to save my soul, and his wife fond of the little one, having none of her own, they do, for theyve paid out good money to keep us from the law. And dont I earn my keep, do all the rough work, carry water, hew wood.

The Ministers wife come out of the kitchen with an old gown of hers and tells me to cover up my breasts, for shame, but the child cri藏书网es and will not be pacified. Yet she is decent, and the Minister, also, as their acts now prove for they would not let the soldiers take me to Annestown with them but offered the captain a good sum of money to leave me with them, for the sake of my innocent baby. The captain hums and haws, the Minister adds another guinea, the fine soldier pockets the gold and all ride off and the Minister would give my child some Bible name, Isaac or I99lib•netshmael or some such name. "Hasnt he got a good enough name already?" says I. But the Minister says: "Little Shooting Star is no name for a Christian," and a baptised Christian my boy must be if his soul may be admitted to the congregation of the blessed though the poor thing will never find his daddy there. And when shall these dead rise up and be avenged? But, as for me, I will not call him by the name the Minister gav九九藏书e him; nor do I talk to him in any but the Indian language when nobody else is there.

So I scrubbed the Ministers floor, cooked the dinner, washed the clothes and for all the Minister swears theyve come to build the City of God in the New World, I was the same skivvy as Id been in Lancashire and no openings for a whore in the Community of the Saints, either, if I could have found in my heart the least desire to take up my old trade again. But tha九-九-藏-书-网t I could not; the Indians had damned me for a good woman once and for all.

By and by the missus comes to me and says: "You are still a young woman, Mary, and Jabez Mather says he will have you for a wife since his own died of the flux but he will not take the child so I shall keep him." But she will never have my little lad for her son, nor will I have Jabez Mather for my husband, nor any man living, but sit and weep by the waters of Babylon.