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.