The Strange Death of Mistress Coffin by Robert J. Begiebing Page B

is our refuge.”
    August 7, 1646
    Goodman Higgins is a great benefit to me. My life and affairs here are faring well. I am in small ways engaged in the business of the town, as well as our property, and have emerged fromthat shroud of loneliness I wore at first. As I think on it, there is little difference between my actual circumstances now and before Mr. C.’s departure. Was I not completely abandoned already? I feel now an increasing fullness of responsibility and liberty that lightens my burden. I consult with those women with whom I have some business on a particular day and with Jared Higgins. They have proved sufficient to all questions and problems that arise thus far.
    My trials have proved bearable in comparison with others’. There was a maid at Dover who, professing religion and prone to sudden distractions and speaking in tongues, gave monstrous birth to a creature reported to have horny incrustations about its head. This prodigy called her deportment suddenly into question, and she is now rumored to be a witch. She and her family have removed to Maine, to some unknown point, to avoid the investigations of elders and magistrates. Although she may discover that she must flee again to some farther and more congenial place, Rhode Island perhaps, where all—heretics and strangers—may enter with impunity.
    September 24, 1646
    The dryness of the daily air and coolness at night restore us. The whole town is busy with haying, harvesting, and all those first preparations against the coming winter. Goodman Higgins is so busy that I believe he finds it difficult to keep up his responsibilities in my behalf. Sometimes he brings his young son along to quicken his labors. He is a man so different from Mr. C. that one might mistake them for two separate creatures in God’s creation. H. has that noticeable lack of learning and refinement of speech. Yet he seems a worthy man—industrious and indefatigable, capable of any chore, repair, or discovery. He is so full of sound advice about the house, planting fields, or barnyard that we have grown less like mistress and hirelingthan like true neighbors on good terms. He cares much for his family, I believe, who prosper, and seems the most practically competent and casually daring man I ever met with. He will attempt anything and explore any place or region. His adventures are famous among us.
    There is a roughness and quickness about his movements too that match his devil-may-care attitude of plunging into things. This buoyancy I believe to be a large part of his success at so many undertakings, whether they be familiar or novel to him. He is never melancholic, seems ever in good humor, even if he may be angered momentarily by some recalcitrant beast or immovable object. He accomplishes each day with that cockiness I have seen in youthful soldiers or seamen, but carried, in this instance, into the maturity of manhood.
    If his speech and manner can be sometimes coarse, his aspect is pleasant, his form manly and strong, his natural manner that of all lusty fellows upon the earth. He is neither tall nor stout, but about his limbs, his whole body, there is an animal sinuosity making him more subtle and stronger than one might guess from his size. His sandy hair is generally unkempt yet thick, falling like wet leaves about his face as he labors vigorously. His joy lies in productive activity, resolving some problem or task, especially if others might find the task daunting. Mr. C. could hardly have found a more able or effective man in my necessity.
    October 9, 1646
    This evening as I sat in the milkhouse heavily wrapped and lazily huddled against our milch cow Patience, Goodman Higgins looked around the corner and spoke: “Taste of winter in the air, Mistress Coffin!” I jumped as he spoke, dulled as I was by my fatigue, the cow’s warmth, the milky squirtings of the warm teats.
    I chided him for such a start. He said he had come to lookafter the