Agnes, the Maid of the Inn

As printed in Samuel Adams Drake (1884)

Told by unattributed — the collector names no informant · collected by Samuel Adams Drake · 1884 · Boston and eastern Massachusetts

THIS pretty story, a romance of real life, makes us ac- quainted with two noble, but impulsive natures, whose destinies first became interwoven in a way quite the reverse of the romantic. After perusing it, as one is pretty sure to do, from beginning to end, one is very apt to think that this poor Marble- head maiden, this outcast, if you will, whose great love, finally triumphing over pride, prejudice, suftering, cruel scorn, and every other moral impediment that the world puts in the way of duty, really confers honor upon the noble knight who at last gives her his name, by awakening in him truly ennobling and elevating sentiments. In such a life as that of Agnes one cannot help seeing a design. Without her Sir Henry Avas a mere votary of pleasure, a man of the world. She really made a man of him at last. But to our tale. In the summer of 1742 the course of olficial duty called the Collector of Boston to Marblehead. The incumbent of this office, which had been established with much opposition in the Colonial capital, and Avas little respected outside of it, was then Henry Frankland, of Mattersea, in Js'ottinghamshire, who was also connected with one of the greatest families in the North, and who was the heir presumptive to a baronetcy. This young man, who at the early age of twenty-six had come into the pos- session both of a fortune and of a highly lucrative and honorable appointment, was now in the pursuit of a career. With rank, wealth, and high social position as his birthright, with rare per- sonal attractions, and with the endowments which all these had brought to his aid, Henry Frankland's future bid fair to become unusually dazzling and brilliant. NEW-ENGLAND LEGENDS. Marblehead being at this period of her history the smuggling port for Boston, it is quite probable that the Collector's visit, though referred to other causes, looked to the repression of this contraband trade, by which the King's revenues were every day defrauded, and the laws of the realm more or less openly violated. Henry Frankland, having alighted at the Fountain Inn, found an unex- pected obstacle in his path. This was a young and remarkably beautiful girl, who was busily engaged in scrubbing the floor when he en- tered, and who, we are willing to affirm, found the time to dart an in- vestigating and appreciative glance at the handsome

Samuel Adams Drake, A Book of New England Legends and Folk Lore in Prose and Poetry (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1884)