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Page 14
He was assigned to an occupation which removed him from the other
workmen. The strawberry bed was put under his sole charge. And often, of
mild, sunny afternoons, the knight, genial and gentle with dinner, would
stroll bare-headed to the pleasant strawberry bed, and have nice little
confidential chats with Israel; while Israel, charmed by the patriarchal
demeanor of this true Abrahamic gentleman, with a smile on his lip, and
tears of gratitude in his eyes, offered him, from time to time, the
plumpest berries of the bed.
When the strawberry season was over, other parts of the grounds were
assigned him. And so six months elapsed, when, at the recommendation of
Sir John, Israel procured a good berth in the garden of the Princess
Amelia.
So completely now had recent events metamorphosed him in all outward
things, that few suspected him of being any other than an Englishman.
Not even the knight's domestics. But in the princess's garden, being
obliged to work in company with many other laborers, the war was often
a topic of discussion among them. And "the d--d Yankee rebels" were not
seldom the object of scurrilous remark. Illy could the exile brook in
silence such insults upon the country for which he had bled, and for
whose honored sake he was that very instant a sufferer. More than once,
his indignation came very nigh getting the better of his prudence. He
longed for the war to end, that he might but speak a little bit of his
mind.
Now the superintendent of the garden was a harsh, overbearing man. The
workmen with tame servility endured his worst affronts. But Israel, bred
among mountains, found it impossible to restrain himself when made the
undeserved object of pitiless epithets. Ere two months went by, he
quitted the service of the princess, and engaged himself to a farmer in
a small village not far from Brentford. But hardly had he been here
three weeks, when a rumor again got afloat that he was a Yankee prisoner
of war. Whence this report arose he could never discover. No sooner did
it reach the ears of the soldiers, than they were on the alert. Luckily,
Israel was apprised of their intentions in time. But he was hard pushed.
He was hunted after with a perseverance worthy a less ignoble cause. He
had many hairbreadth escapes. Most assuredly he would have been
captured, had it not been for the secret good offices of a few
individuals, who, perhaps, were not unfriendly to the American side of
the question, though they durst not avow it.
Tracked one night by the soldiers to the house of one of these friends,
in whose garret he was concealed, he was obliged to force the skuttle,
and running along the roof, passed to those of adjoining houses to the
number of ten or twelve, finally succeeding in making his escape.
CHAPTER V.
ISRAEL IN THE LION'S DEN.
Harassed day and night, hunted from food and sleep, driven from hole to
hole like a fox in the woods, with no chance to earn an hour's wages, he
was at last advised by one whose sincerity he could not doubt, to apply,
on the good word of Sir John Millet, for a berth as laborer in the
King's Gardens at Kew. There, it was said, he would be entirely safe, as
no soldier durst approach those premises to molest any soul therein
employed. It struck the poor exile as curious, that the very den of the
British lion, the private grounds of the British King, should be
commended to a refugee as his securest asylum.
His nativity carefully concealed, and being personally introduced to the
chief gardener by one who well knew him; armed, too, with a line from
Sir John, and recommended by his introducer as uncommonly expert at
horticulture; Israel was soon installed as keeper of certain less
private plants and walks of the park.
It was here, to one of his near country retreats, that, coming from
perplexities of state--leaving far behind him the dingy old bricks of
St. James--George the Third was wont to walk up and down beneath the
long arbors formed by the interlockings of lofty trees.
More than once, raking the gravel, Israel through intervening foliage
would catch peeps in some private but parallel walk, of that lonely
figure, not more shadowy with overhanging leaves than with the shade of
royal meditations.
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