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Did Keziah tell you of the San Jose and the sailor who died of smallpox in this very building? In that room there?" "Yes. John, you " "I'm not raving. It's the truth. That sailor was Ansel Coffin. I watched with him and one night, the night before he died, he spoke Keziah's name. He spoke of New Bedford and of Trumet and of her, over and over again.
Keziah's face was pale with terror as she flew to do Jacob's bidding. She had a terrible fear of London streets, at night, as well she might, and the open country beyond was even worse to her excited imagination. And Cherry was so pretty, so simple, so credulous, and withal so utterly defenceless should there be any sort of attack made upon her.
So ended Sibyl's legend; in which Septimius was struck by a certain analogy to Aunt Keziah's Indian legend, both referring to a flower growing out of a grave; and also he did not fail to be impressed with the wild coincidence of this disappearance of an ancestor of the family long ago, and the appearance, at about the same epoch, of the first known ancestor of his own family, the man with wizard's attributes, with the bloody footstep, and whose sudden disappearance became a myth, under the idea that the Devil carried him away.
He seemed to do everything that was stated in the recipe, and yet no results came from it; the liquid that he produced was nauseous to the smell, to taste it he had a horrible repugnance, turbid, nasty, reminding him in most respects of poor Aunt Keziah's elixir; and it was a body without a soul, and that body dead.
"We were goin' ter write from Keziah's, but we were so tired we hurried right up an' come home. 'Tis nice ter get here; ain't it, Hester?" he finished, settling back in his chair. "'Nice'!" cried Hester tremulously, tugging at her bonnet strings. "'Nice' ain't no name for it, Jeremiah.
"No-o," Noah hesitated once more. "No-o, he ain't alone. She's there." "She? Who? Keziah Coffin?" "I don't cal'late Keziah's heard it yet. We was waitin' for you 'fore we said much to anybody. But she's there the the one that found him.
She asked no more questions, however; minding her own business was a specialty of Keziah's, and it was a rare quality in Trumet. Sunday was a cloudy, warm day, "muggy," so Captain Zeb described it. After the morning service Mr. Ellery, as usual, went home with Captain Daniels and Annabel. Keziah returned to the parsonage, ate a lonely dinner, washed the dishes, and sat down to read a library book.
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