EBEN HOLDEN
A TALE OF THE NORTH COUNTRY
By Irving Bacheller
CONTENTS
PREFACE
Early in the last century the hardy wood-choppers began to come west, out of Vermont. They founded their homes in the Adirondack wildernesses and cleared their rough acres with the axe and the charcoal pit. After years of toil in a rigorous climate they left their sons little besides a stumpy farm and a coon-skin overcoat. Far from the centres of life their amusements, their humours, their religion, their folk lore, their views of things had in them the flavour of the timber lands, the simplicity of childhood. Every son was nurtured in the love of honour and of industry, and the hope of sometime being president. It is to be feared this latter thing and the love of right living, for its own sake, were more in their thoughts than the immortal crown that had been the inspiration of their fathers. Leaving the farm for the more promising life of the big city they were as men born anew, and their second infancy was like that of Hercules. They had the strength of manhood, the tireless energy of children and some hope of the highest things. The pageant of the big town—its novelty, its promise, its art, its activity—quickened their highest powers, put them to their best effort. And in all great enterprises they became the pathfinders, like their fathers in the primeval forest.
This book has grown out of such enforced leisure as one may find in a busy life. Chapters begun in the publicity of a Pullman car have been finished in the cheerless solitude of a hotel chamber. Some have had their beginning in a sleepless night and their end in a day of bronchitis. A certain pious farmer in the north country when, like Agricola, he was about to die, requested the doubtful glory of this epitaph: 'He was a poor sinner, but he done his best' Save for the fact that I am an excellent sinner, in a literary sense, the words may stand for all the apology I have to make.
The characters were mostly men and women I have known and who left with me a love of my kind that even a wide experience with knavery and misfortune has never dissipated. For my knowledge of Mr Greeley I am chiefly indebted to David P. Rhoades, his publisher, to Philip Fitzpatrick, his pressman, to the files of the Tribune and to many books.
IRVING BACHELLER New York City, 7 April 1900
BOOK ONE
Chapter I
Of all the people that ever went west that expedition was the most remarkable.
A small boy in a big basket on the back of a jolly old man, who carried a cane in one hand, a rifle in the other; a black dog serving as scout, skirmisher and rear guard—that was the size of it. They were the survivors of a ruined home in the north of Vermont, and were travelling far into the valley of the St Lawrence, but with no particular destination.
Midsummer had passed them in their journey; their clothes were covered with dust; their faces browning in the hot sun. It was a very small boy that sat inside the basket and clung to the rim, his tow head shaking as the old man walked. He saw wonderful things, day after day, looking down at the green fields or peering into the gloomy reaches of the wood; and he talked about them.
'Uncle Eb—is that where the swifts are?' he would ask often; and the old man would answer, 'No; they ain't real sassy this time o' year. They lay 'round in the deep dingles every day.'
Then the small voice would sing idly or prattle with an imaginary being that had a habit of peeking over the edge of the basket or would shout a greeting to some bird or butterfly and ask finally: 'Tired, Uncle Eb?'
Sometimes the old gentleman would say 'not very', and keep on, looking thoughtfully at the ground. Then, again, he would stop and mop his bald head with a big red handkerchief and say, a little tremor of irritation in his voice: 'Tired! who wouldn't be tired with a big elephant like you on his back all day? I'd be 'shamed o' myself t' set there an' let an old man carry me from Dan to Beersheba. Git out now an' shake yer legs.'
I was the small boy and I remember it was always a great relief to get out of the basket, and having run ahead, to lie in the grass among the wild flowers, and jump up at him as he came along.
Uncle Eb had been working for my father five years before I was born. He was not a strong man and had never been able to carry the wide swath of the other help in the fields, but we all loved him for his kindness and his knack of story-telling. He was a bachelor who came over the mountain from Pleasant Valley, a little bundle of clothes on his shoulder, and bringing a name that enriched the nomenclature of our neighbourhood. It was Eben Holden.
He had a cheerful temper and an imagination that was a very wilderness of oddities. Bears and panthers growled and were very terrible in that strange country. He had invented an animal more treacherous than any in the woods, and he called it a swift. 'Sumthin' like a panther', he described the look of it: a fearsome creature that lay in the edge of the woods at sundown and made a noise like a woman crying, to lure the unwary. It would light one's eye with fear to hear Uncle Eb lift his voice in the cry of the swift. Many a time in the twilight when the bay of a hound or some far cry came faintly through the wooded hills, I have seen him lift his hand and bid us hark. And when we had listened a moment, our eyes wide with wonder, he would turn and say in a low, half-whispered tone: ''S a swift' I suppose we needed more the fear of God, but the young children of the pioneer needed also the fear of the woods or they would have strayed to their death in them.
A big bass viol, taller than himself, had long been the solace of his Sundays. After he had shaved—a ceremony so solemn that it seemed a rite of his religion—that sacred viol was uncovered. He carried it sometimes to the back piazza and sometimes to the barn, where the horses shook and trembled at the roaring thunder of the strings. When he began playing we children had to get well out of the way, and keep our distance. I remember now the look of him, then—his thin face, his soft black eyes, his long nose, the suit of broadcloth, the stock and standing collar and, above all, the solemnity in his manner when that big devil of a thing was leaning on his breast.
As to his playing I have never heard a more fearful sound in any time of peace or one less creditable to a Christian. Weekdays he was addicted to the milder sin of the flute and, after chores, if there were no one to talk with him, he would sit long and pour his soul into that magic bar of boxwood.
Uncle Eb had another great accomplishment. He was what they call in the north country 'a natural cooner'. After nightfall, when the corn was ripening, he spoke in a whisper and had his ear cocked for coons. But he loved all kinds of good fun.
So this man had a boy in his heart and a boy in his basket that evening we left the old house. My father and mother and older brother had been drowned in the lake, where they had gone for a day of pleasure. I had then a small understanding of my loss, hat I have learned since that the farm was not worth the mortgage and that everything had to be sold. Uncle Eb and I—a little lad, a very little lad of six—were all that was left of what had been in that home. Some were for sending me to the county house; but they decided, finally, to turn me over to a dissolute uncle, with some allowance for my keep. Therein Uncle Eb was to be reckoned with. He had set his heart on keeping me, but he was a farm-hand without any home or visible property and not, therefore, in the mind of the authorities, a proper guardian. He had me with him in the old house, and the very night he heard they were coming after me in the morning, we started on our journey. I remember he was a long time tying packages of bread and butter and tea and boiled eggs to the rim of the basket, so that they hung on the outside. Then he put a woollen shawl and an oilcloth blanket on the bottom, pulled the straps over his shoulders and buckled them, standing before the looking-glass, and, hang put on my cap and coat, stood me on the table, and stooped so that I could climb into the basket—a pack basket, that he had used in hunting, the top a little smaller than the bottom. Once in, I could stand comfortably or sit facing sideways, my back and knees wedged from port to starboard. With me in my place he blew out the lantern and groped his way to the road, his cane in one hand, his rifle in the other. Fred, our old dog—a black shepherd, with tawny points—came after us. Uncle Eb scolded him and tried to send him back, but I pleaded for the poor creature and that settled it, he was one of our party.
'Dunno how we'll feed him,' said Uncle Eb. 'Our own mouths are big enough t' take all we can carry, but I hain' no heart t' leave 'im all 'lone there.'
I was old for my age, they tell me, and had a serious look and a wise way of talking, for a boy so young; but I had no notion of what lay before or behind us.
'Now, boy, take a good look at the old house,' I remember he whispered to me at the gate that night ''Tain't likely ye'll ever see it ag'in. Keep quiet now,' he added, letting down the bars at the foot of the lane. 'We're goin' west an' we mustn't let the grass grow under us. Got t'be purty spry I can tell ye.'
It was quite dark and he felt his way carefully down the cow-paths into the broad pasture. With every step I kept a sharp lookout for swifts, and the moon shone after a while, making my work easier.
I had to hold my head down, presently, when the tall brush began to whip the basket and I heard the big boots of Uncle Eb ripping the briars. Then we came into the blackness of the thick timber and I could hear him feeling his way over the dead leaves with his cane. I got down, shortly, and walked beside him, holding on to the rifle with one hand. We stumbled, often, and were long in the trail before we could see the moonlight through the tree columns. In the clearing I climbed to my seat again and by and by we came to the road where my companion sat down resting his load on a boulder.
'Pretty hot, Uncle Eb, pretty hot,' he said to himself, fanning his brow with that old felt hat he wore everywhere. 'We've come three mile er more without a stop an' I guess we'd better rest a jiffy.'
My legs ached too, and I was getting very sleepy. I remember the jolt of the basket as he rose, and hearing him say, 'Well, Uncle Eb, I guess we'd better be goin'.'
The elbow that held my head, lying on the rim of the basket, was already numb; but the prickling could no longer rouse me, and half-dead with weariness, I fell asleep. Uncle Eb has told me since, that I tumbled out of the basket once, and that he had a time of it getting me in again, but I remember nothing more of that day's history.
When I woke in the morning, I could hear the crackling of fire, and felt very warm and cosy wrapped in the big shawl. I got a cheery greeting from Uncle Eb, who was feeding the fire with a big heap of sticks that he had piled together. Old Fred was licking my hands with his rough tongue, and I suppose that is what waked me. Tea was steeping in the little pot that hung over the fire, and our breakfast of boiled eggs and bread and butter lay on a paper beside it. I remember well the scene of our little camp that morning. We had come to a strange country, and there was no road in sight. A wooded hill lay back of us, and, just before, ran a noisy little brook, winding between smooth banks, through a long pasture into a dense wood. Behind a wall on the opposite shore a great field of rustling corn filled a broad valley and stood higher than a man's head.
While I went to wash my face in the clear water Uncle Eb was husking some ears of corn that he took out of his pocket, and had them roasting over the fire in a moment. We ate heartily, giving Fred two big slices of bread and butter, packing up with enough remaining for another day. Breakfast over we doused the fire and Uncle Eb put on his basket He made after a squirrel, presently, with old Fred, and brought him down out of a tree by hurling stones at him and then the faithful follower of our camp got a bit of meat for his breakfast. We climbed the wall, as he ate, and buried ourselves in the deep corn. The fragrant, silky tassels brushed my face and the corn hissed at our intrusion, crossing its green sabers in our path. Far in the field my companion heaped a little of the soft earth for a pillow, spread the oil cloth between rows and, as we lay down, drew the big shawl over us. Uncle Eb was tired after the toil of that night and went asleep almost as soon as he was down. Before I dropped off Fred came and licked my face and stepped over me, his tail wagging for leave, and curled upon the shawl at my feet. I could see no sky in that gloomy green aisle of corn. This going to bed in the morning seemed a foolish business to me that day and I lay a long time looking up at the rustling canopy overhead. I remember listening to the waves that came whispering out of the further field, nearer and nearer, until they swept over us with a roaring swash of leaves, like that of water flooding among rocks, as I have heard it often. A twinge of homesickness came to me and the snoring of Uncle Eb gave me no comfort. I remember covering my head and crying softly as I thought of those who had gone away and whom I was to meet in a far country, called Heaven, whither we were going. I forgot my sorrow, finally, in sleep. When I awoke it had grown dusk under the corn. I felt for Uncle Eb and he was gone. Then I called to him.
'Hush, boy! lie low,' he whispered, bending over me, a sharp look in his eye.' 'Fraid they're after us.'
He sat kneeling beside me, holding Fred by the collar and listening. I could hear voices, the rustle of the corn and the tramp of feet near by. It was thundering in the distance—that heavy, shaking thunder that seems to take hold of the earth, and there were sounds in the corn like the drawing of sabers and the rush of many feet. The noisy thunder clouds came nearer and the voices that had made us tremble were no longer heard. Uncle Eb began to fasten the oil blanket to the stalks of corn for a shelter. The rain came roaring over us. The sound of it was like that of a host of cavalry coming at a gallop. We lay bracing the stalks, the blanket tied above us and were quite dry for a time. The rain rattled in the sounding sheaves and then came flooding down the steep gutters. Above us beam and rafter creaked, swaying, and showing glimpses of the dark sky. The rain passed—we could hear the last battalion leaving the field—and then the tumult ended as suddenly as it began. The corn trembled a few moments and hushed to a faint whisper. Then we could hear only the drip of raindrops leaking through the green roof. It was dark under the corn.
Chapter 2
We heard no more of the voices. Uncle Eb had brought an armful of wood, and some water in the teapot, while I was sleeping. As soon as the rain had passed he stood listening awhile and shortly opened his knife and made a little clearing in the corn by cutting a few hills.
'We've got to do it,' he said, 'er we can't take any comfort, an' the man tol' me I could have all the corn I wanted.'
'Did you see him, Uncle Eb?' I remember asking.
'Yes,' he answered, whittling in the dark. 'I saw him when I went out for the water an' it was he tol' me they were after us.'
He took a look at the sky after a while, and, remarking that he guessed they couldn't see his smoke now, began to kindle the fire. As it burned up he stuck two crotches and hung his teapot on a stick' that lay in them, so it took the heat of the flame, as I had seen him do in the morning. Our grotto, in the corn, was shortly as cheerful as any room in a palace, and our fire sent its light into the long aisles that opened opposite, and nobody could see the warm glow of it but ourselves.
'We'll hev our supper,' said Uncle Eb, as he opened a paper and spread out the eggs and bread and butter and crackers. 'We'll jest hev our supper an' by 'n by when everyone's abed we'll make tracks in the dirt, I can tell ye.'
Our supper over, Uncle Eb let me look at his tobacco-box—a shiny thing of German silver that always seemed to snap out a quick farewell to me before it dove into his pocket. He was very cheerful and communicative, and joked a good deal as we lay there waiting in the firelight. I got some further acquaintance with the swift, learning among other things that it had no appetite for the pure in heart.
'Why not?' I enquired.
'Well,' said Uncle Eb, 'it's like this: the meaner the boy, the sweeter the meat.'
He sang an old song as he sat by the fire, with a whistled interlude between lines, and the swing of it, even now, carries me back to that far day in the fields. I lay with my head in his lap while he was singing.
Years after, when I could have carried him on my back' he wrote down for me the words of the old song. Here they are, about as he sang them, although there are evidences of repair, in certain lines, to supply the loss of phrases that had dropped out of his memory:
I was goin' to Salem one bright summer day,
I met a young maiden a goin' my way;
O, my fallow, faddeling fallow, faddel away.
An' many a time I had seen her before,
But I never dare tell 'er the love thet I bore.
O, my fallow, etc.
'Oh, where are you goin' my purty fair maid?'
'O, sir, I am goin' t' Salem,' she said.
O, my fallow, etc.
'O, why are ye goin' so far in a day?
Fer warm is the weather and long is the way.'
O, my fallow, etc.
'O, sir I've forgorten, I hev, I declare,
But it's nothin' to eat an' its nothin' to wear.'
O, my fallow, etc.
'Oho! then I hev it, ye purty young miss!
I'll bet it is only three words an' a kiss.'
O, my fallow, etc.
'Young woman, young woman, O how will it dew
If I go see yer lover 'n bring 'em t' you?'
O, my fallow, etc.
''S a very long journey,' says she, 'I am told,
An' before ye got back, they would surely be cold.'
O, my fallow, etc.
'I hev 'em right with me, I vum an' I vow,
An' if you don't object I'll deliver 'em now.'
O, my fallow, etc.
She laid her fair head all on to my breast,
An' ye wouldn't know more if I tol' ye the rest
O, my fallow, etc.
I went asleep after awhile in spite of all, right in the middle of a story. The droning voice of Uncle Eb and the feel of his hand upon my forehead called me back, blinking, once or twice, but not for long. The fire was gone down to a few embers when Uncle Eb woke me and the grotto was lit only by a sprinkle of moonlight from above.
'Mos' twelve o'clock,' he whispered. 'Better be off.'
The basket was on his back and he was all ready. I followed him through the long aisle of corn, clinging to the tall of his coat. The golden lantern of the moon hung near the zenith and when we came out in the open we could see into the far fields. I climbed into my basket at the wall and as Uncle Eb carried me over the brook, stopping on a flat rock midway to take a drink, I could see the sky in the water, and it seemed as if a misstep would have tumbled me into the moon.
'Hear the crickets holler,' said Uncle Eb, as he followed the bank up into the open pasture.
'What makes 'em holler?' I asked.
'O, they're jes' filin' their saws an' thinkin'. Mebbe tellin' o' what's happened 'em. Been a hard day fer them little folks. Terrible flood in their country. Everyone on em hed t' git up a steeple quick 'she could er be drownded. They hev their troubles an' they talk 'bout 'em, too.'
'What do they file their saws for?' I enquired.
'Well, ye know,' said he, 'where they live the timber's thick an' they hev hard work clearin' t' mek a home.'
I was getting too sleepy for further talk. He made his way from field to field, stopping sometimes to look off at the distant mountains then at the sky or to whack the dry stalks of mullen with his cane. I remember he let down some bars after a long walk and stepped into a smooth roadway. He stood resting a little while, his basket on the top bar, and then the moon that I had been watching went down behind the broad rim of his hat and I fell into utter forgetfulness. My eyes opened on a lovely scene at daylight. Uncle Eb had laid me on a mossy knoll in a bit of timber and through an opening right in front of us I could see a broad level of shining water, and the great green mountain on the further shore seemed to be up to its belly in the sea.
'Hello there!' said Uncle Eb; 'here we are at Lake Champlain.'
I could hear the fire crackling and smell the odour of steeping tea.
'Ye flopped 'round like a fish in thet basket,' said Uncle Eb. ''Guess ye must a been drearnin' O' bears. Jumped so ye scairt me. Didn't know but I had a wil' cat on my shoulders.'
Uncle Eb had taken a fish-line out of his pocket and was tying it to a rude pole that he had cut and trinmed with his jack-knife.
'I've found some crawfish here,' he said, 'an' I'm goin' t' try fer a bite on the p'int O' rocks there.'
'Goin' t' git some fish, Uncle Eb?' I enquired.
'Wouldn't say't I was, er wouldn't say't I wasn't,' he answered. 'Jes goin' t' try.'
Uncle Eb was always careful not to commit himself on a doubtful point. He had fixed his hook and sinker in a moment and then we went out on a rocky point nearby and threw off into the deep water. Suddenly Uncle Eb gave a jerk that brought a groan out of him and then let his hook go down again, his hands trembling, his face severe.
'By mighty! Uncle Eb,' he muttered to himself, 'I thought we hed him thet time.'
He jerked again presently, and then I could see a tug on the line that made me jump. A big fish came thrashing into the air in a minute. He tried to swing it ashore, but the pole bent and the fish got a fresh hold of the water and took the end of the pole under. Uncle Eb gave it a lift then that brought it ashore and a good bit of water with it. I remember how the fish slapped me with its wet tail and sprinkled my face shaking itself between my boots. It was a big bass and in a little while we had three of them. Uncle Eb dressed them and laid them over the fire on a gridiron of green birch, salting them as they cooked. I remember they went with a fine relish and the last of our eggs and bread and butter went with them.
Our breakfast over, Uncle Eb made me promise to stay with Fred and the basket while he went away to find a man who could row us across. In about an hour I heard a boat coming and the dog and I went out on the point of rocks where we saw Uncle Eb and another man, heading for us, half over the cove. The bow bumped the rocks beneath us in a minute. Then the stranger dropped his oars and stood staring at me and the dog.
'Say, mister,' said he presently, 'can't go no further. There's a reward offered fer you an' thet boy.'
Uncle Eb called him aside and was talking to him a long time.
I never knew what was said, but they came at last and took us into the boat and the stranger was very friendly.
When we had come near the landing on the 'York State' side, I remember he gave us our bearings.
'Keep t' the woods,' he said, 'till you're out o' harm's way. Don't go near the stage road fer a while. Ye'll find a store a little way up the mountain. Git yer provisions there an' about eighty rod farther ye'll strike the trail. It'll take ye over the mountain north an' t' Paradise Road. Then take the white church on yer right shoulder an' go straight west.'
I would not have remembered it so well but for the fact that Uncle Eb wrote it all down in his account book and that has helped me over many a slippery place in my memory of those events. At the store we got some crackers and cheese, tea and coffee, dried beef and herring, a bit of honey and a loaf of bread that was sliced and buttered before it was done up. We were off in the woods by nine o'clock, according to Uncle Eb's diary, and I remember the trail led us into thick brush where I had to get out and walk a long way. It was smooth under foot, however, and at noon we came to a slash in the timber, full of briars that were all aglow with big blackberries. We filled our hats with them and Uncle Eb found a spring, beside which we built a fire and had a memorable meal that made me glad of my hunger.
Then we spread the oilcloth and lay down for another sleep. We could see the glow of the setting sun through the tree-tops when we woke, and began our packing.
'We'll hev t' hurry,' said Uncle Eb, 'er we'll never git out o' the woods t'night 'S 'bout six mile er more t' Paradise Road, es I mek it. Come, yer slower 'n a toad in a tar barrel.'
We hurried off on the trail and I remember Fred looked very crestfallen with two big packages tied to his collar. He delayed a bit by trying to shake them off, but Uncle Eb gave him a sharp word or two and then he walked along very thoughtfully. Uncle Eb was a little out of patience that evening, and I thought he bore down too harshly in his rebuke of the old dog.
'You shif'less cuss,' he said to him, 'ye'd jes' dew nothin' but chase squirrels an' let me break my back t' carry yer dinner.'
It was glooming fast in the thick timber, and Uncle Eb almost ran with me while the way was plain. The last ringing note of the wood thrush had died away and in a little while it was so dark I could distinguish nothing but the looming mass of tree trunks.
He stopped suddenly and strained his eyes in the dark. Then he whistled a sharp, sliding note, and the sound of it gave me some hint of his trouble.
'Git down, Willie,' said he, 'an' tek my hand. I'm 'fraid we're lost here 'n the big woods.'
We groped about for a minute, trying to find the trail.
'No use,' he said presently, 'we'll hev t' stop right here. Oughter known berter 'n t' come through s' near sundown. Guess it was more 'n anybody could do.'
He built a fire and began to lay out a supper for us then, while Fred sat down by me to be relieved of his bundles. Our supper was rather dry, for we had no water, but it was only two hours since we left the spring, so we were not suffering yet. Uncle Eb took out of the fire a burning brand of pine and went away into the gloomy woods, holding it above his head, while Fred and I sat by the fire.
''S lucky we didn't go no further,' he said, as he came in after a few minutes. 'There's a big prec'pice over yender. Dunno how deep 't is. Guess we'd a found out purty soon.'
He cut some boughs of hemlock, growing near us, and spread them in a little hollow. That done, we covered them with the oilcloth, and sat down comfortably by the fire. Uncle Eb had a serious look and was not inclined to talk or story telling. Before turning in he asked me to kneel and say my prayer as I had done every evening at the feet of my mother. I remember, clearly, kneeling before my old companion and hearing the echo of my small voice there in the dark and lonely woods.
I remember too, and even more clearly, how he bent his head and covered his eyes in that brief moment. I had a great dread of darkness and imagined much evil of the forest, but somehow I had no fear if he were near me. When we had fixed the fire and lain down for the night on the fragrant hemlock and covered ourselves with the shawl, Uncle Eb lay on one side of me and old Fred on the other, so I felt secure indeed. The night had many voices there in the deep wood. Away in the distance I could hear a strange, wild cry, and I asked what it was and Uncle Eb whispered back, ''s a loon.' Down the side of the mountain a shrill bark rang in the timber and that was a fox, according to my patient oracle. Anon we heard the crash and thunder of a falling tree and a murmur that followed in the wake of the last echo.
'Big tree fallin'!' said Uncle Eb, as he lay gaping. 'It has t' break a way t' the ground an' it must hurt. Did ye notice how the woods tremble? If we was up above them we could see the hole thet tree hed made. Jes' like an open grave till the others hev filed it with their tops.'
My ears had gone deaf with drowsiness when a quick stir in the body of Uncle Eb brought me back to my senses. He was up on his elbow listening and the firelight had sunk to a glimmer. Fred lay shivering and growling beside me. I could hear no other sound.
'Be still,' said Uncle Eb, as he boxed the dog's ears. Then he rose and began to stir the fire and lay on more wood. As the flame leaped and threw its light into the tree-tops a shrill cry, like the scream of a frightened woman, only louder and more terrible to hear brought me to my feet, crying. I knew the source of it was near us and ran to Uncle Eb in a fearful panic.
'Hush, boy,' said he as it died away and went echoing in the far forest. 'I'll take care o' you. Don't be scairt. He's more 'fraid uv us than we are o' him. He's makin' off now.'
We heard then a great crackling of dead brush on the mountain above us. It grew fainter as we listened. In a little while the woods were silent.
'It's the ol' man o' the woods,' said Uncle Eb. 'E's out takin' a walk.'
'Will he hurt folks?' I enquired.
'Tow!' he answered, 'jest as harmless as a kitten.'
Chapter 3
Naturally there were a good many things I wanted to know about 'the ol' man o' the woods,' but Uncle Eb would take no part in any further conversation.
So I had to lie down beside him again and think out the problem as best I could. My mind was never more acutely conscious and it gathered many strange impressions, wandering in the kingdom of Fear, as I looked up at the tree-tops. Uncle Eb had built a furious fire and the warmth of it made me sleepy at last. Both he and old Fred had been snoring a long time when I ceased to hear them. Uncle Eb woke me at daylight, in the morning, and said we must be off to find the trail. He left me by the fire a little while and went looking on all sides and came back no wiser. We were both thirsty and started off on rough footing, without stopping to eat. We climbed and crawled for hours, it seemed to me, and everywhere the fallen tree trunks were heaped in our way. Uncle Eb sat down on one of them awhile to rest.
'Like the bones o' the dead,' said he, as he took a chew of tobacco and picked at the rotten skeleton of a fallen tree. We were both pretty well out of breath and of hope also, if I remember rightly, when we rested again under the low hanging boughs of a basswood for a bite of luncheon. Uncle Eb opened the little box of honey and spread some of it on our bread and butter. In a moment I noticed that half a dozen bees had lit in the open box.
'Lord Harry! here's honey bees,' said he, as he covered the box so as to keep them in, and tumbled everything else into the basket. 'Make haste now, Willie, and follow me with all yer might,' he added.
In a minute he let out one of the bees, and started running in the direction it flew. It went but a few feet and then rose into the tree-top.
'He's goin' t' git up into the open air,' said Uncle Eb. 'But I've got his bearins' an' I guess he knows the way all right.'
We took the direction indicated for a few minutes and then Uncle Eb let out another prisoner. The bee flew off a little way and then rose in a slanting course to the tree-tops. He showed us, however, that we were looking the right way.
'Them little fellers hev got a good compass,' said Uncle Eb, as we followed the line of the bees. 'It p'ints home ev'ry time, an' never makes a mistake.'
We went further this time before releasing another. He showed us that we had borne out of our course a little and as we turned to follow there were half a dozen bees flying around the box, as if begging for admission.
'Here they are back agin,' said Uncle Eb, 'an' they've told a lot o' their cronies 'bout the man an' the boy with honey.'
At length one of them flew over our heads and back in the direction we had come from.
'Ah, ha,' said Uncle Eb, 'it's a bee tree an' we've passed it, but I'm goin' t' keep lettin' 'em in an' out. Never heard uv a swarm o' bees goin' fur away an' so we mus' be near the clearin'.'
In a little while we let one go that took a road of its own. The others had gone back over our heads; this one bore off to the right in front of us, and we followed. I was riding in the basket and was first to see the light of the open through the tree-tops. But I didn't know what it meant until I heard the hearty 'hurrah' of Uncle Eb.
We had come to smooth footing in a grove of maples and the clean trunks of the trees stood up as straight as a granite column. Presently we came out upon wide fields of corn and clover, and as we looked back upon the grove it had a rounded front and I think of it now as the vestibule of the great forest.
'It's a reg'lar big tomb,' said Uncle Eb, looking back over his shoulder into the gloomy cavern of the woods.
We could see a log house in the clearing, and we made for it as fast as our legs would carry us. We had a mighty thirst and when we came to a little brook in the meadow we laid down and drank and drank until we were fairly grunting with fullness. Then we filled our teapot and went on. Men were reaping with their cradles in a field of grain and, as we neared the log house, a woman came out in the dooryard and, lifting a shell to her lips, blew a blast that rushed over the clearing and rang in the woods beyond it A loud halloo came back from the men.
A small dog rushed out at Fred, barking, and, I suppose, with some lack of respect, for the old dog laid hold of him in a violent temper and sent him away yelping. We must have presented an evil aspect, for our clothes were torn and we were both limping with fatigue. The woman had a kindly face and, after looking at us a moment, came and stooped before me and held my small face in her hands turning it so she could look into my eyes.
'You poor little critter,' said she, 'where you goin'?'
Uncle Eb told her something about my father and mother being dead and our going west Then she hugged and kissed me and made me very miserable, I remember, wetting my face with her tears, that were quite beyond my comprehension.
'Jethro,' said she, as the men came into the yard, 'I want ye t' look at this boy. Did ye ever see such a cunnin' little critter? Jes' look at them bright eyes!' and then she held me to her breast and nearly smothered me and began to hum a bit of an old song.
'Yer full o' mother love,' said her husband, as he sat down on the grass a moment 'Lost her only baby, an' the good Lord has sent no other. I swan, he has got putty eyes. Jes' as blue as a May flower. Ain't ye hungry? Come right in, both o' ye, an' set down t' the table with us.'
They made room for us and we sat down between the bare elbows of the hired men. I remember my eyes came only to the top of the table. So the good woman brought the family Bible and sitting on that firm foundation I ate my dinner of salt pork and potatoes and milk gravy, a diet as grateful as it was familiar to my taste.
'Orphan, eh?' said the man of the house, looking down at me.
'Orphan,' Uncle Eb answered, nodding his head.
'God-fearin' folks?'
'Best in the world,' said Uncle Eb.
Want t' bind 'im out?' the man asked.
'Couldn't spare 'im,' said Uncle Eb, decisively.
'Where ye goin'?'
Uncle Eb hesitated, groping for an answer, I suppose, that would do no violence to our mutual understanding.
'Goin' t' heaven,' I ventured to say presently—an answer that gave rise to conflicting emotions at the table.
'That's right,' said Uncle Eb, turning to me and patting my head. 'We're on the road t' heaven, I hope, an' ye'll see it someday, sartin sure, if ye keep in the straight road and be a good boy.'
After dinner the good woman took off my clothes and put me in bed while she mended them. I went asleep then and did not awake for a long time. When I got up at last she brought a big basin of water and washed me with such motherly tenderness in voice and manner that I have never forgotten it. Uncle Eb lay sleeping on the lounge and when she had finished dressing me, Fred and I went out to play in the garden. It was supper time in a little while and then, again, the woman winded the shell and the men came up from the field. We sat down to eat with them, as we had done at noon, and Uncle Eb consented to spend the night after some urging. He helped them with the milking, and as I stood beside him shot a jet of the warm white flood into my mouth, that tickled it so I ran away laughing. The milking done, I sat on Uncle Eb's knee in the door-yard with all the rest of that household, hearing many tales of the wilderness, and of robbery and murder on Paradise Road. I got the impression that it was a country of unexampled wickedness and ferocity in men and animals. One man told about the ghost of Burnt Bridge; how the bridge had burnt one afternoon and how a certain traveller in the dark of the night driving down the hill above it, fell to his death at the brink of the culvert.
'An' every night since then,' said the man, very positively, ye can hear him drivin' down thet hill—jes' as plain as ye can hear me talkin'—the rattle o' the wheels an' all. It stops sudden an' then ye can hear 'im hit the rocks way down there at the bottom O' the gulley an' groan an' groan. An' folks say it's a curse on the town for leavin' thet hole open.'
'What's a ghost, Uncle Eb?' I whispered.
'Somethin' like a swift,' he answered, 'but not so powerful. We heard a panther las' night,' he added, turning to our host. 'Hollered like sin when he see the fire.'
'Scairt!' said the man o' the house gaping. 'That's what ailed him. I've lived twenty year on Paradise Road an' it was all woods when I put up the cabin. Seen deer on the doorstep an' bears in the garden, an' panthers in the fields. But I tell ye there's no critter so terrible as a man. All the animals know 'im—how he roars, an' spits fire an' smoke an' lead so it goes through a body er bites off a leg, mebbe. Guess they'd made friends with me but them I didn't kill went away smarting with holes in 'em. An' I guess they told all their people 'bout me—the terrible critter that walked on its hind legs an' lied a white face an' drew up an' spit 'is teeth into their vitals 'cross a ten-acre lot. An' putty soon they concluded they didn't want t' hev no truck with me. They thought thin clearin' was the valley o' death an' they got very careful. But the deer they kep' peekin' in at me. Sumthin' funny 'bout a deer—they're so cu'rus. Seem's though they loved the look o' me an' the taste o' the tame grass. Mebbe God meant em t' serve in the yoke some way an' be the friend o' man. They're the outcasts o' the forest—the prey o' the other animals an' men like 'em only when they're dead. An' they're the purtiest critter alive an' the spryest an' the mos' graceful.'
'Men are the mos' terrible of all critters, an' the meanest,' said Uncle Eb. 'They're the only critters that kill fer fun.'
'Bedtime,' said our host, rising presently. 'Got t' be up early 'n the morning.'
We climbed a ladder to the top floor of the cabin with the hired men, of whom there were two. The good lady of the house had made a bed for us on the floor and I remember Fred came up the ladder too, and lay down beside us. Uncle Eb was up with the men in the morning and at breakfast time my hostess came and woke me with kisses and helped me to dress. When we were about going she brought a little wagon out of the cellar that had been a playing of her dead boy, and said I could have it. This wonderful wagon was just the thing for the journey we were making. When I held the little tongue in my hand I was half-way to heaven already. It had four stout wheels and a beautiful red box. Her brother had sent it all the way from New York and it had stood so long in the cellar it was now much in need of repair. Uncle Eb took it to the tool shop in the stable and put it in shipshape order and made a little pair of thills to go in place of the tongue. Then he made a big flat collar and a back-pad out of the leather in old boot-legs, and rigged a pair of tugs out of two pieces of rope. Old Fred was quite cast down when he stood in harness between the shafts.
He had waited patiently to have his collar fitted; he had grinned and panted and wagged his tail with no suspicion of the serious and humiliating career he was entering upon. Now he stood with a sober face and his aspect was full of meditation.
'You fightin' hound!' said Uncle Eb, 'I hope this'll improve yer character.'
Fred tried to sit down when Uncle Eb tied a leading rope to his collar. When he heard the wheels rattle and felt the pull of the wagon he looked back at it and growled a little and started to run. Uncle Eb shouted 'whoa', and held him back, and then the dog got down on his belly and trembled until we patted his head and gave him a kind word. He seemed to understand presently and came along with a steady stride. Our hostess met us at the gate and the look of her face when she bade us goodbye and tucked some cookies into my pocket, has always lingered in my memory and put in me a mighty respect for all women. The sound of her voice, the tears, the waving of her handkerchief, as we went away, are among the things that have made me what I am.
We stowed our packages in the wagon box and I walked a few miles and then got into the empty basket. Fred tipped his load over once or twice, but got a steady gait in the way of industry after a while and a more cheerful look. We had our dinner by the roadside on the bank of a brook, an hour or so after midday, and came to a little village about sundown. As we were nearing it there was some excitement among the dogs and one of them tackled Fred. He went into battle very promptly, the wagon jumping and rattling until it turned bottom up. Re-enforced by Uncle Eb's cane he soon saw the heels of his aggressor and stood growling savagely. He was like the goal in a puzzle maze all wound and tangled in his harness and it took some time to get his face before him and his feet free.
At a small grocery where groups of men, just out of the fields, were sitting, their arms bare to the elbows, we bought more bread and butter. In paying for it Uncle Eb took a package out of his trouser pocket to get his change. It was tied in a red handkerchief and I remember it looked to be about the size of his fist. He was putting it back when it fell from his hand, heavily, and I could hear the chink of coin as it struck. One of the men, who sat near, picked it up and gave it back to him. As I remember well, his kindness had an evil flavour, for he winked at his companions, who nudged each other as they smiled knowingly. Uncle Eb was a bit cross, when I climbed into the basket, and walked along in silence so rapidly it worried the dog to keep pace. The leading rope was tied to the stock of the rifle and Fred's walking gait was too slow for the comfort of his neck.
'You shifless cuss! I'll put a kink in your neck fer you if ye don't walk up,' said Uncle Eb, as he looked back at the dog, in a temper wholly unworthy of him.
We had crossed a deep valley and were climbing a long hill in the dusky twilight.
'Willie,' said Uncle Eb, 'your eyes are better'n mine—look back and see if anyone's comin'.'
'Can't see anyone,' I answered.
'Look 'way back in the road as fur as ye can see.
I did so, but I could see no one. He slackened his pace a little after that and before we had passed the hill it was getting dark. The road ran into woods and a river cut through them a little way from the clearing.
'Supper time, Uncle Eb,' I suggested, as we came to the bridge.
'Supper time, Uncle Eb,' he answered, turning down to the shore.
I got out of the basket then and followed him in the brush. Fred found it hard travelling here and shortly we took off his harness and left the wagon, transferring its load to the basket, while we pushed on to find a camping place. Back in the thick timber a long way from the road, we built a fire and had our supper. It was a dry nook in the pines—'tight as a house,' Uncle Eb said—and carpeted with the fragrant needles. When we lay on our backs in the firelight I remember the weary, droning voice of Uncle Eb had an impressive accompaniment of whispers. While he told stories I had a glowing cinder on the end of a stick and was weaving fiery skeins in the gloom.
He had been telling me of a panther he had met in the woods, one day, and how the creature ran away at the sight of him.
'Why's a panther 'fraid o' folks?' I enquired.
'Wall, ye see, they used t' be friendly, years 'n years ago—folks 'n panthers—but they want eggszac'ly cal'lated t' git along t'gether some way. An' ol' she panther gin 'em one uv her cubs, a great while ago, jes t' make frien's. The cub he grew big 'n used t' play 'n be very gentle. They wuz a boy he tuk to, an' both on 'em got very friendly. The boy 'n the panther went off one day 'n the woods—guess 'twas more 'n a hundred year ago—an' was lost. Walked all over 'n fin'ly got t' goin' round 'n round 'n a big circle 'til they was both on 'em tired out. Come night they lay down es hungry es tew bears. The boy he was kind o' 'fraid 'o the dark, so he got up clus t' the panther 'n lay 'tween his paws. The boy he thought the panther smelt funny an' the panther he didn't jes' like the smell o' the boy. An' the boy he hed the legache 'n kicked the panther 'n the belly, so 't he kin' o' gagged 'n spit an' they want neither on 'em reel comf'able. The sof paws o' the panther was jes' like pincushions. He'd great hooks in 'em sharper 'n the p'int uv a needle. An' when he was goin' t' sleep he'd run 'em out jes' like an ol' cat—kind o' playfull—'n purr 'n pull. All t' once the boy felt sumthin' like a lot o' needles prickin' his back. Made him jump 'n holler like Sam Hill. The panther he spit sassy 'n riz up 'n smelt o' the ground. Didn't neither on 'em know what was the matter. Bime bye they lay down ag'in. 'Twant only a little while 'fore the boy felt somethin' prickin' uv him. He hollered 'n kicked ag'in. The panther he growled 'n spit 'n dumb a tree 'n sot on a limb 'n peeked over at thet queer little critter. Couldn't neither on 'em understan' it. The boy c'u'd see the eyes o' the panther 'n the dark. Shone like tew live coals eggszac'ly. The panther 'd never sot 'n a tree when he was hungry, 'n see a boy below him. Sumthin' tol' him t' jump. Tail went swish in the leaves like thet. His whiskers quivered, his tongue come out. C'u'd think o' nuthin' but his big empty belly. The boy was scairt. He up with his gun quick es a flash. Aimed at his eyes 'n let 'er flicker. Blew a lot o' smoke 'n bird shot 'n paper waddin' right up in t' his face. The panther he lost his whiskers 'n one eye 'n got his hide fill' o' shot 'n fell off the tree like a ripe apple 'n run fer his life. Thought he'd never see nuthin' c'u'd growl 'n spits powerful es thet boy. Never c'u'd bear the sight uv a man after thet. Allwus made him gag 'n spit t' think o' the man critter. Went off tew his own folks 'n tol' o' the boy 'at spit fire 'n smoke 'n growled so't almos' tore his ears off An' now, whenever they hear a gun go off they allwus thank it's the man critter growlin'. An' they gag 'n spit 'n look es if it made 'em sick t' the stomach. An' the man folks they didn't hev no good 'pimon o' the panthers after thet. Haint never been frien's any more. Fact is a man, he can be any kind uv a beast, but a panther he can't be nuthin' but jest a panther.'
Then, too, as we lay there in the firelight, Uncle Eb told the remarkable story of the gingerbread hear. He told it slowly, as if his invention were severely taxed.
'Once they wuz a boy got lost. Was goin' cross lots t' play with 'nother boy 'n lied t' go through a strip o' woods. Went off the trail t' chase a butterfly 'n got lost. Hed his kite 'n' cross-gun 'n' he wandered all over 'til he was tired 'n hungry. Then he lay down t' cry on a bed o' moss. Putty quick they was a big black bear come along.
'“What's the matter?” said the bear.
'“Hungry,” says the boy.
'“Tell ye what I'll dew,” says the bear. “If ye'll scratch my back fer me I'll let ye cut a piece o' my tail off t' eat.”
'Bear's tail, ye know, hes a lot o' meat on it—heam tell it was gran' good fare. So the boy he scratched the bear's back an' the bear he grinned an' made his paw go patitty-pat on the ground—it did feel so splendid. Then the boy tuk his jack-knife 'n begun t' cut off the bear's tail. The bear he flew mad 'n growled 'n growled so the boy he stopped 'n didn't dast cut no more.
'“Hurts awful,” says the bear. “Couldn't never stan' it. Tell ye what I'll dew. Ye scratched my back an' now I'll scratch your'n.”
'Gee whiz!' said I.
'Yessir, that's what the bear said,' Uncle Eb went on. 'The boy he up 'n run like a nailer. The bear he laughed hearty 'n scratched the ground like Sam Hill, 'n flung the dirt higher'n his head.
'“Look here,” says he, as the boy stopped, “I jes' swallered a piece o mutton. Run yer hand int' my throat an I'll let ye hev it.”
'The bear he opened his mouth an' showed his big teeth.'
'Whew!' I whistled.
'Thet's eggszac'ly what he done,' said Uncle Eb. 'He showed 'em plain. The boy was scairter'n a weasel. The bear he jumped up 'an down on his hind legs 'n laughed 'n' hollered 'n' shook himself.
'“Only jes' foolin,” says he, when he see the boy was goin' t' run ag'in. “What ye 'fraid uv?”
'“Can't bear t' stay here,” says the boy, “'less ye'll keep yer mouth shet.”
'An the bear he shet his mouth 'n pinted to the big pocket 'n his fur coat 'n winked 'n motioned t' the boy.
'The bear he reely did hev a pocket on the side uv his big fur coat. The boy slid his hand in up t' the elbow. Wha' d'ye s'pose he found?'
'Durmo,' said I.
'Sumthin' t' eat,' he continued. 'Boy liked it best uv all things.'
I guessed everything I could think of, from cookies to beefsteak, and gave up.
'Gingerbread,' said he, soberly, at length.
'Thought ye said bears couldn't talk,' I objected.
'Wall, the boy 'd fell asleep an' he'd only dreamed o' the bear,' said Uncle Eb. 'Ye see, bears can talk when boys are dreamin' uv 'em. Come daylight, the boy got up 'n ketched a crow. Broke his wing with the cross-gun. Then he tied the kite swing on t' the crow's leg, an' the crow flopped along 'n the boy followed him 'n bime bye they come out a cornfield, where the crow'd been used t' comin' fer his dinner.'
'What 'come o' the boy?' said I.
'Went home,' said he, gaping, as he lay on his back and looked up at the tree-tops. 'An' he allwus said a bear was good comp'ny if he'd only keep his mouth shet—jes' like some folks I've hearn uv.'
'An' what 'come o' the crow?'
'Went t' the ol' crow doctor 'n got his wing fixed,' he said, drowsily. And in a moment I heard him snoring.
We had been asleep a long time when the barking of Fred woke us. I could just see Uncle Eb in the dim light of the fire, kneeling beside me, the rifle in his hand.
'I'll fill ye full o' lead if ye come any nearer,' he shouted.
Chapter 4
We listened awhile then but heard no sound in the thicket, although Fred was growling ominously, his hair on end. As for myself I never had a more fearful hour than that we suffered before the light of morning came.
I made no outcry, but clung to my old companion, trembling. He did not stir for a few minutes, and then we crept cautiously into the small hemlocks on one side of the opening.
'Keep still,' he whispered, 'don't move er speak.'
Presently we heard a move in the brush and then quick as a flash Uncle Eb lifted his rifle and fired in the direction of it Before the loud echo had gone off in the woods we heard something break through the brush at a run.
''S a man,' said Uncle Eb, as he listened. 'He ain't a losin' no time nuther.'
We sat listening as the sound grew fainter, and when it ceased entirely Uncle Eb said he must have got to the road. After a little the light of the morning began sifting down through the tree-tops and was greeted with innumerable songs.
'He done noble,' said Uncle Eb, patting the old dog as he rose to poke the fire. 'Putty good chap I call 'im! He can hev half o' my dinner any time he wants it.'
'Who do you suppose it was?' I enquired.
'Robbers, I guess,' he answered, 'an' they'll be layin' fer us when we go out, mebbe; but, if they are, Fred'll find 'em an' I've got Ol' Trusty here 'n' I guess thet'll take care uv us.'
His rifle was always flattered with that name of Ol' Trusty when it had done him a good turn.
Soon as the light had come clear he went out in the near woods with dog and rifle and beat around in the brush. He returned shortly and said he had seen where they came and went.
'I'd a killed em deader 'n a door nail,' said he, laying down the old rifle, 'if they'd a come any nearer.'
Then we brought water from the river and had our breakfast. Fred went on ahead of us, when we started for the road, scurrying through the brush on both sides of the trail, as if he knew what was expected of him. He flushed a number of partridges and Uncle Eb killed one of them on our way to the road. We resumed our journey without any further adventure. It was so smooth and level under foot that Uncle Eb let me get in the wagon after Fred was hitched to it The old dog went along soberly and without much effort, save when we came to hills or sandy places, when I always got out and ran on behind. Uncle Eb showed me how to brake the wheels with a long stick going downhill. I remember how it hit the dog's heels at the first down grade, and how he ran to keep out of the way of it We were going like mad in half a minute, Uncle Eb coming after us calling to the dog. Fred only looked over his shoulder, with a wild eye, at the rattling wagon and ran the harder. He leaped aside at the bottom and then we went all in a heap. Fortunately no harm was done.
'I declare!' said Uncle Eb as he came up to us, puffing like a spent horse, and picked me up unhurt and began to untangle the harness of old Fred, 'I guess he must a thought the devil was after him.'
The dog growled a little for a moment and bit at the harness, but coaxing reassured him and he went along all right again on the level. At a small settlement the children came out and ran along beside my wagon, laughing and asking me questions. Some of them tried to pet the dog, but old Fred kept to his labour at the heels of Uncle Eb and looked neither to right nor left. We stopped under a tree by the side of a narrow brook for our dinner, and one incident of that meal I think of always when I think of Uncle Eb. It shows the manner of man he was and with what understanding and sympathy he regarded every living thing. In rinsing his teapot he accidentally poured a bit of water on a big bumble-bee. The poor creature struggled to lift hill, and then another downpour caught him and still another until his wings fell drenched. Then his breast began heaving violently, his legs stiffened behind him and he sank, head downward, in the grass. Uncle Eb saw the death throes of the bee and knelt down and lifted the dead body by one of its wings.
'Jes' look at his velvet coat,' he said, 'an' his wings all wet n' stiff. They'll never carry him another journey. It's too bad a man has t' kill every step he takes.'
The bee's tail was moving faintly and Uncle Eb laid him out in the warm sunlight and fanned him awhile with his hat, trying to bring back the breath of life.
'Guilty!' he said, presently, coming back with a sober face. 'Thet's a dead bee. No tellin' how many was dependent on him er what plans he bed. Must a gi'n him a lot o' pleasure t' fly round in the sunlight, workin' every fair day. 'S all over now.'
He had a gloomy face for an hour after that and many a time, in the days that followed, I heard him speak of the murdered bee.
We lay resting awhile after dinner and watching a big city of ants. Uncle Eb told me how they tilled the soil of the mound every year and sowed their own kind of grain—a small white seed like rice—and reaped their harvest in the late summer, storing the crop in their dry cellars under ground. He told me also the story of the ant lion—a big beetle that lives in the jungles of the grain and the grass—of which I remember only an outline, more or less imperfect.
Here it is in my own rewording of his tale: On a bright day one of the little black folks went off on a long road in a great field of barley. He was going to another city of his own people to bring helpers for the harvest. He came shortly to a sandy place where the barley was thin and the hot sunlight lay near to the ground. In a little valley close by the road of the ants he saw a deep pit, in the sand, with steep sides sloping to a point in the middle and as big around as a biscuit. Now the ants are a curious people and go looking for things that are new and wonderful as they walk abroad, so they have much to tell worth hearing after a journey. The little traveller was young and had no fear, so he left the road and went down to the pit and peeped over the side of it.
'What in the world is the meaning of this queer place?' he asked himself as he ran around the rim. In a moment he had stepped over and the soft sand began to cave and slide beneath him. Quick as a flash the big lion-beetle rose up in the centre of the pit and began to reach for him. Then his legs flew in the caving sand and the young ant struck his blades in it to hold the little he could gain. Upward he struggled, leaping and floundering in the dust. He had got near the rim and had stopped, clinging to get his breath, when the lion began flinging the sand at him with his long feelers. It rose in a cloud and fell on the back of the ant and pulled at him as it swept down. He could feel the mighty cleavers of the lion striking near his hind legs and pulling the sand from under them. He must go down in a moment and he knew what that meant. He had heard the old men of the tribe tell often—how they hold one helpless and slash him into a dozen pieces. He was letting go, in despair, when he felt a hand on his neck. Looking up he saw one of his own people reaching over the rim, and in a jiffy they had shut their fangs together. He moved little by little as the other tagged at him, and in a moment was out of the trap and could feel the honest earth under him. When they had got home and told their adventure, some were for going to slay the beetle.
'There is never a pit in the path o' duty,' said the wise old chief of the little black folks. 'See that you keep in the straight road.'
'If our brother had not left the straight road,' said one who stood near, 'he that was in danger would have gone down into the pit.'
'It matters much,' he answered, 'whether it was kindness or curiosity that led him out of the road. But he that follows a fool hath much need of wisdom, for if he save the fool do ye not see that he hath encouraged folly?'
Of course I had then no proper understanding of the chiefs counsel, nor do I pretend even to remember it from that first telling, but the tale was told frequently in the course of my long acquaintance with Uncle Eb.
The diary of my good old friend lies before me as I write, the leaves turned yellow and the entries dim. I remember how stern he grew of an evening when he took out this sacred little record of our wanderings and began to write in it with his stub of a pencil. He wrote slowly and read and reread each entry with great care as I held the torch for him. 'Be still, boy—be still,' he would say when some pressing interrogatory passed my lips, and then he would bend to his work while the point of his pencil bored further into my patience. Beginning here I shall quote a few entries from the diary as they cover, with sufficient detail, an uneventful period of our journey.
AUGUST 20 Killed a partridge today. Biled it in the teapot for dinner. Went good. 14 mild.
AUGUST 21 Seen a deer this morning. Fred fit ag'in. Come near spilin' the wagon. Hed to stop and fix the ex. 10 mild.
AUGUST 22 Clumb a tree this morning after wild grapes. Come near falling. Gin me a little crick in the back. Willie hes got a stun bruze. 12 mild.
AUGUST 23 Went in swinmun. Ketched a few fish before breakfus'. Got provisions an' two case knives an' one fork, also one tin pie-plate. Used same to fry fish for dinner. 14 mild.
AUGUST 24 Got some spirits for Willie to rub on my back. Boots wearing out. Terrible hot. Lay in the shade in the heat of the day. Gypsies come an' camped by us tonight. 10 mild.
I remember well the coming of those gypsies. We were fishing in sight of the road and our fire was crackling on the smooth cropped shore. The big wagons of the gypsies—there were four of them as red and beautiful as those of a circus caravan—halted about sundown while the men came over a moment to scan the field. Presently they went back and turned their wagons into the siding and began to unhitch. Then a lot of barefooted children, and women under gay shawls, overran the field gathering wood and making ready for night. Meanwhile swarthy drivers took the horses to water and tethered them with long ropes so they could crop the grass of the roadside.
One tall, bony man, with a face almost as black as that of an Indian, brought a big iron pot and set it up near the water. A big stew of beef bone, leeks and potatoes began to cook shortly, and I remember it had such a goodly smell I was minded to ask them for a taste of it. A little city of strange people had surrounded us of a sudden. Uncle Eb thought of going on, but the night was coming fast and there would be no moon and we were footsore and hungry. Women and children came over to our fire, after supper, and made more of me than I liked. I remember taking refuge between the knees of Uncle Eb, and Fred sat close in front of us growling fiercely when they came too near. They stood about, looking down at us and whispered together, and one young miss of the tribe came up and tried to kiss me in spite of Fred's warnings: She had flashing black eyes and hair as dark as the night, that fell in a curling mass upon her shoulders; but, somehow, I had a mighty fear of her and fought with desperation to keep my face from the touch of her red lips. Uncle Eb laughed and held Fred by the collar, and I began to cry out in terror, presently, when, to my great relief, she let go and ran away to her own people. They all went away to their wagons, save one young man, who was tall with light hair and a fair skin, and who looked like none of the other gypsies.
'Take care of yourself,' he whispered, as soon as the rest had gone. 'These are bad people. You'd better be off.'
The young man left us and Uncle Eb began to pack up at once. They were going to bed in their wagons when we came away. I stood in the basket and Fred drew the wagon that had in it only a few bundles. A mile or more further on we came to a lonely, deserted cabin close to the road. It had began to thunder in the distance and the wind was blowing damp.
'Guess nobody lives here,' said Uncle Eb as he turned in at the sagging gate and began to cross the little patch of weeds and hollyhocks behind it 'Door's half down, but I guess it'll de better'n no house. Goin' t' rain sartin.'
I was nodding a little about then, I remember; but I was wide awake when he took me out of the basket The old house stood on a high hill, and we could see the stars of heaven through the ruined door and one of the back windows. Uncle Eb lifted the leaning door a little and shoved it aside. We heard then a quick stir in the old house—a loud and ghostly rattle it seems now as I think of it—like that made by linen shaking on the line. Uncle Eb took a step backward as if it had startled him.
'Guess it's nuthin' to be 'fraid of;' he said, feeling in the pet of his coat He had struck a match in a moment. By its flickering light I could see only a bit of rubbish on the floor.
'Full o' white owls,' said he, stepping inside, where the rustling was now continuous. 'They'll do us no harm.'
I could see them now flying about under the low ceiling. Uncle Eb gathered an armful of grass and clover, in the near field, and spread it in a corner well away from the ruined door and windows. Covered with our blanket it made a fairly comfortable bed. Soon as we had lain down, the rain began to rattle on the shaky roof and flashes of lightning lit every corner of the old room.
I have had, ever, a curious love of storms, and, from the time when memory began its record in my brain, it has delighted me to hear at night the roar of thunder and see the swift play of the lightning. I lay between Uncle Eb and the old dog, who both went asleep shortly. Less wearied I presume than either of them, for I had done none of the carrying, and had slept along time that day in the shade of a tree, I was awake an hour or more after they were snoring. Every flash lit the old room like the full glare of the noonday sun. I remember it showed me an old cradle, piled full of rubbish, a rusty scythe hung in the rotting sash of a window, a few lengths of stove-pipe and a plough in one corner, and three staring white owls that sat on a beam above the doorway. The rain roared on the old roof shortly, and came dripping down through the bare boards above us. A big drop struck in my face and I moved a little. Then I saw what made me hold my breath a moment and cover my head with the shawl. A flash of lightning revealed a tall, ragged man looking in at the doorway. I lay close to Uncle Eb imagining much evil of that vision but made no outcry.
Snugged in between my two companions I felt reasonably secure and soon fell asleep. The sun, streaming in at the open door, roused me in the morning. At the beginning of each day of our journey I woke to find Uncle Eb cooking at the fire. He was lying beside me, this morning, his eyes open.
'Fraid I'm hard sick,' he said as I kissed him.
'What's the matter?' I enquired.
He struggled to a sitting posture, groaning so it went to my heart.
'Rheumatiz,' he answered presently.
He got to his feet, little by little, and every move he made gave him great pain. With one hand on his cane and the other on my shoulder he made his way slowly to the broken gate. Even now I can see clearly the fair prospect of that high place—a valley reaching to distant hills and a river winding through it, glimmering in the sunlight; a long wooded ledge breaking into naked, grassy slopes on one side of the valley and on the other a deep forest rolling to the far horizon; between them big patches of yellow grain and white buckwheat and green pasture land and greener meadows and the straight road, with white houses on either side of it, glorious in a double fringe of golden rod and purple aster and yellow John's-wort and the deep blue of the Jacob's ladder.
'Looks a good deal like the promised land,' said Uncle Eb. 'Hain't got much further t' go.'
He sat on the rotting threshold while I pulled some of the weeds in front of the doorstep and brought kindlings out of the house and built a fire. While we were eating I told Uncle Eb of the man that I had seen in the night.
'Guess you was dreamin',' he said, and, while I stood firm for the reality of that I had seen, it held our thought only for a brief moment. My companion was unable to walk that day so we lay by, in the shelter of the old house, eating as little of our scanty store as we could do with. I went to a spring near by for water and picked a good mess of blackberries that I hid away until supper time, so as to surprise Uncle Eb. A longer day than that we spent in the old house, after our coming, I have never known. I made the room a bit tidier and gathered more grass for bedding. Uncle Eb felt better as the day grew warm. I had a busy time of it that morning bathing his back in the spirits and rubbing until my small arms ached. I have heard him tell often how vigorously I worked that day and how I would say: 'I'll take care o' you, Uncle Eb—won't I, Uncle Eb?' as my little hands flew with redoubled energy on his bare skin. That finished we lay down sleeping until the sun was low, when I made ready the supper that took the last of everything we had to eat. Uncle Eb was more like himself that evening and, sitting up in the corner, as the darkness came, told me the story of Squirreltown and Frog Ferry, which came to be so great a standby in those days that, even now, I can recall much of the language in which he told it.
'Once,' he said, 'there was a boy thet hed two grey squirrels in a cage. They kep' thinkin' o' the time they used t' scamper in the tree-tops an' make nests an' eat all the nuts they wanted an' play I spy in the thick leaves. An they grew poor an' looked kind o' ragged an' sickly an' downhearted. When he brought 'em outdoors they used t' look up in the trees an' run in the wire wheel as if they thought they could get there sometime if they kep' goin'. As the boy grew older he see it was cruel to keep 'em shet in a cage, but he'd hed em a long time an' couldn't bear t' give 'em up.
'One day he was out in the woods a little back o' the clearin'. All t' once he heard a swift holler. 'Twas nearby an' echoed so he couldn't tell which way it come from. He run fer home but the critter ketched 'im before he got out o' the woods an' took 'im into a cave, an' give 'im t' the little swifts t' play with. The boy cried terrible. The swifts they laughed an' nudged each other.
'“O ain't he cute!” says one. “He's a beauty!” says another. “Cur'us how he can git along without any fur,” says the mother swift, as she run er nose over 'is bare foot. He thought of 'is folks waitin' fer him an' he begged em t' let 'im go. Then they come an' smelt 'im over.
'“Yer sech a cunnin' critter,” says the mother swift, “we couldn't spare ye.”
'“Want to see my mother,” says the boy sobbing.
'“Couldn't afford t' let ye go—yer so cute,” says the swift. “Bring the poor critter a bone an' a bit o' snake meat.”
'The boy couldn't eat. They fixed a bed fer him, but 'twant clean. The feel uv it made his back ache an' the smell uv it made him sick to his stomach.
'“When the swifts hed comp'ny they 'd bring 'em overt' look at him there 'n his dark corner.” “S a boy,” said the mother swift pokin' him with a long stick “Wouldn't ye like t' see 'im run?” Then she punched him until he got up an' run 'round the cave fer his life. Happened one day et a very benevolent swift come int' the cave.
'“'S a pity t' keep the boy here,” said he; “he looks bad.”
'“But he makes fun fer the children,” said the swift.
'“Fun that makes misery is only fit fer a fool,” said the visitor.
'They let him go thet day. Soon as he got hum he thought o' the squirrels an' was tickled t' find 'em alive. He tak 'em off to an island, in the middle of a big lake, thet very day, an' set the cage on the shore n' opened it He thought he would come back sometime an' see how they was ginin' along. The cage was made of light wire an' hed a tin bottom fastened to a big piece o' plank. At fust they was 'fraid t' leave it an' peeked out o' the door an' scratched their heads's if they thought it a resky business. After awhile one stepped out careful an' then the other followed. They tried t' climb a tree, but their nails was wore off an' they kep' fallin' back. Then they went off 'n the brush t' find some nuts. There was only pines an' poppies an' white birch an' a few berry bushes on the island. They went t' the water's edge on every side, but there was nuthin there a squirrel ud give a flirt uv his tail fer. 'Twas near dark when they come back t' the cage hungry as tew bears. They found a few crumbs o' bread in the cup an' divided 'em even. Then they went t' bed 'n their ol' nest.
'It hed been rainin' a week in the mount'ins. Thet night the lake rose a foot er more an' 'fore mornin' the cage begun t' rock a teenty bit as the water lifted the plank. They slep' all the better fer thet an' they dreamed they was up in a tree at the end uv a big bough. The cage begun t' sway sideways and then it let go o' the shore an' spun 'round once er twice an' sailed out 'n the deep water. There was a light breeze blowin' offshore an' purty soon it was pitchin' like a ship in the sea. But the two squirrels was very tired an' never woke up 'til sunrise. They got a terrible scare when they see the water 'round 'em an' felt the motion o' the ship. Both on 'em ran into the wire wheel an' that bore down the stern o' the ship so the under wires touched the water. They made it spin like a buzz saw an' got their clothes all wet. The ship went faster when they worked the wheel, an' bime bye they got tired an' come out on the main deck. The water washed over it a little so they clim up the roof thet was a kin' uv a hurricane deck. It made the ship sway an' rock fearful but they hung on 'midships, an' clung t' the handle that stuck up like a top mast. Their big tails was spread over their shoulders, an' the wind rose an' the ship went faster 'n faster. They could see the main shore where the big woods come down t' the water 'n' all the while it kep' a comin' nearer 'n' nearer. But they was so hungry didn't seem possible they could live to git there.
'Ye know squirrels are a savin' people. In the day o' plenty they think o' the day o' poverty an' lay by fer it. All at once one uv 'em thought uv a few kernels o' corn, he hed pushed through a little crack in the tin floor one day a long time ago. It happened there was quite a hole under the crack an' each uv 'em bad stored some kernels unbeknown t' the other. So they hed a good supper 'n' some left fer a bite 'n the mornin'. 'Fore daylight the ship made her pott 'n' lay to, 'side liv a log in a little cove. The bullfrogs jumped on her main deck an' begun t' holler soon as she hove to: “all ashore! all ashore! all ashore!” The two squirrels woke up but lay quiet 'til the sun rose. Then they come out on the log 'et looked like a long dock an' run ashore 'n' foun' some o' their own folks in the bush. An' when they bed tol' their story the ol' father o' the tribe got up 'n a tree an' hollered himself hoarse preachin' 'bout how 't paid t' be savin'.
'“An' we should learn t' save our wisdom es well es our nuts,” said a sassy brother; “fer each needs his own wisdom fer his own affairs.”
'An the little ship went back 'n' forth 'cross the cove as the win' blew. The squirrels hed many a fine ride in her an' the frogs were the ferrymen. An' all 'long thet shore 'twas known es Frog Ferry 'mong the squirrel folks.'
It was very dark when he finished the tale an' as we lay gaping a few minutes after my last query about those funny people of the lake margin I could hear nothing but the chirping of the crickets. I was feeling a bit sleepy when I heard the boards creak above our heads. Uncle Eli raised himself and lay braced upon his elbow listening. In a few moments we heard a sound as of someone coming softly down the ladder at the other end of the room. It was so dark I could see nothing.
'Who's there?' Uncle Eb demanded.
'Don't p'int thet gun at me,' somebody whispered. 'This is my home and I warn ye t' leave it er I'll do ye harm.'
Chapter 5
Here I shall quote you again from the diary of Uncle Eb. 'It was so dark I couldn't see a han' before me. “Don't p'int yer gun at me,” the man whispered. Thought 'twas funny he could see me when I couldn't see him. Said 'twas his home an' we'd better leave. Tol him I was sick (rumatiz) an' couldn't stir. Said he was sorry an' come over near us. Tol' him I was an' ol' man goin' west with a small boy. Stopped in the rain. Got sick. Out o' purvisions. 'Bout ready t' die. Did'n know what t' do. Started t' stike a match an' the man said don't make no light cos I don't want to hev ye see my face. Never let nobody see my face. Said he never went out 'less 'twas a dark night until folks was abed. Said we looked like good folks. Scairt me a little cos we couldn't see a thing. Also he said don't be 'fraid of me. Do what I can fer ye.'
I remember the man crossed the creaking floor and sat down near us after he had parleyed with Uncle Eb awhile in whispers. Young as I was I keep a vivid impression of that night and, aided by the diary of Uncle Eb, I have made a record of what was said that is, in the main, accurate.
'Do you know where you are?' he enquired presently, whispering as he had done before.
'I've no idee,' said Uncle Eb.
'Well, down the hill is Paradise Valley in the township o' Faraway,' he continued. 'It's the end o' Paradise Road an' a purty country. Been settled a long time an' the farms are big an' prosperous—kind uv a land o' plenty. That big house at the foot o' the hill is Dave Brower's. He's the richest man in the valley.'
'How do you happen t' be livin' here?—if ye don't min' tellin' me,' Uncle Eb asked.
'Crazy,' said he; ''fraid uv everybody an' everybody's 'fraid o' me. Lived a good long time in this way. Winters I go into the big woods. Got a camp in a big cave an' when I'm there I see a little daylight. Here 'n the clearin' I'm only up in the night-time. Thet's how I've come to see so well in the dark. It's give me cat's eyes.'
'Don't ye git lonesome?' Uncle Eb asked.
'Awful—sometimes,' he answered with a sad sigh, 'an' it seems good t' talk with somebody besides myself. I get enough to eat generally. There are deer in the woods an' cows in the fields, ye know, an' potatoes an' corn an' berries an' apples, an' all thet kind o' thing. Then I've got my traps in the woods where I ketch partridges, an' squirrels an' coons an' all the meat I need. I've got a place in the thick timber t' do my cookin'—all I want t' do—in the middle of the night Sometimes I come here an' spend a day in the garret if I'm caught in a storm or if I happen to stay a little too late in the valley. Once in a great while I meet a man somewhere in the open but he always gits away quick as he can. Guess they think I'm a ghost—dunno what I think o' them.'
Our host went on talking as if he were glad to tell the secrets of his heart to some creature of his own kind. I have often wondered at his frankness; but there was a fatherly tenderness, I remember in the voice of Uncle Eb, and I judge it tempted his confidence. Probably the love of companionship can never be so dead in a man but that the voice of kindness may call it back to life again.
'I'll bring you a bite t' eat before morning,' he said, presently, as he rose to go, 'leet me feel o' your han', mister.'
Uncle Eb gave him his hand and thanked him.
'Feels good. First I've hed hold of in a long time,' he whispered.
'What's the day o' the month?'
'The twenty-fifth.'
'I must remember. Where did you come from?'
Uncle Eb told him, briefly, the story of our going west
'Guess you'd never do me no harm—would ye?' the man asked. 'Not a bit,' Uncle Eb answered.
Then he bade us goodbye, crossed the creaking floor and went away in the darkness.
'Sing'lar character!' Uncle Eb muttered.
I was getting drowsy and that was the last I heard. In the morning we found a small pail of milk sitting near us, a roasted partridge, two fried fish and some boiled potatoes. It was more than enough to carry us through the day with a fair allowance for Fred. Uncle Eb was a bit better but very lame at that and kept to his bed the greater part of the day. The time went slow with me I remember. Uncle Eb was not cheerful and told me but one story and that had no life in it. At dusk he let me go out in the road to play awhile with Fred and the wagon, but came to the door and called us in shortly. I went to bed in a rather unhappy frame of mind. The dog roused me by barking in the middle of the right and I heard again the familiar whisper of the stranger.
'Sh-h-h! be still, dog,' he whispered; but I was up to my ears in sleep and went under shortly, so I have no knowledge of what passed that night. Uncle Eb tells in his diary that he had a talk with him lasting more than an hour, but goes no further and never seemed willing to talk much about that interview or others that followed it.
I only know the man had brought more milk and fish and fowl for us. We stayed another day in the old house, that went like the last, and the night man came again to see Uncle Eb. The next morning my companion was able to walk more freely, but Fred and I had to stop and wait for him very often going down the big hill. I was mighty glad when we were leaving the musty old house for good and had the dog hitched with all our traps in the wagon. It was a bright morning and the sunlight glimmered on the dew in the broad valley. The men were just coming from breakfast when we turned in at David Brower's. A barefooted little girl a bit older than I, with red cheeks and blue eyes and long curly hair, that shone like gold in the sunlight, came running out to meet us and led me up to the doorstep, highly amused at the sight of Fred and the wagon. I regarded her with curiosity and suspicion at first, while Uncle Eb was talking with the men. I shall never forget that moment when David Brower came and lifted me by the shoulders, high above his head, and shook me as if to test my mettle. He led me into the house then where his wife was working.
'What do you think of this small bit of a boy?' he asked.
She had already knelt on the floor and put her arms about my neck and kissed me.
'Am' no home,' said he. 'Come all the way from Vermont with an ol' man. They're worn out both uv 'em. Guess we'd better take 'em in awhile.'
'O yes, mother—please, mother,' put in the little girl who was holding my hand. 'He can sleep with me, mother. Please let him stay.'
She knelt beside me and put her arms around my little shoulders and drew me to her breast and spoke to me very tenderly.
'Please let him stay,' the girl pleaded again.
'David,' said the woman, 'I couldn't turn the little thing away. Won't ye hand me those cookies.'
And so our life began in Paradise Valley. Ten minutes later I was playing my first game of 'I spy' with little Hope Brower, among the fragrant stooks of wheat in the field back of the garden.
Chapter 6
The lone pine stood in Brower's pasture, just clear of the woods. When the sun rose, one could see its taper shadow stretching away to the foot of Woody Ledge, and at sunset it lay like a fallen mast athwart the cow-paths, its long top arm a flying pennant on the side of Bowman's Hill. In summer this bar of shadow moved like a clock-hand on the green dial of the pasture, and the help could tell the time by the slant of it. Lone Pine had a mighty girth at the bottom, and its bare body tapered into the sky as straight as an arrow. Uncle Eb used to say that its one long, naked branch that swung and creaked near the top of it, like a sign of hospitality on the highway of the birds, was two hundred feet above ground. There were a few stubs here and there upon its shaft—the roost of crows and owls and hen-hawks. It must have passed for a low resort in the feathered kingdom because it was only the robbers of the sky that halted on Lone Pine.
This towering shaft of dead timber commemorated the ancient forest through which the northern Yankees cut their trails in the beginning of the century. They were a tall, big fisted, brawny lot of men who came across the Adirondacks from Vermont, and began to break the green canopy that for ages had covered the valley of the St Lawrence. Generally they drove a cow with them, and such game as they could kill on the journey supplemented their diet of 'pudding and milk'. Some settled where the wagon broke or where they had buried a member of the family, and there they cleared the forests that once covered the smooth acres of today. Gradually the rough surface of the trail grew smoother until it became Paradise Road—the well-worn thoroughfare of the stagecoach with its 'inns and outs', as the drivers used to say—the inns where the 'men folks' sat in the firelight of the blazing logs after supper and told tales of adventure until bedtime, while the women sat with their knitting in the parlour, and the young men wrestled in the stableyard. The men of middle age had stooped and massive shoulders, and deep-furrowed brows: Tell one of them he was growing old and he might answer you by holding his whip in front of him and leaping over it between his hands.
There was a little clearing around that big pine tree when David Brower settled in the valley. Its shadows shifting in the light of sun and moon, like the arm of a compass, swept the spreading acres of his farm, and he built his house some forty rods from the foot of it on higher ground. David was the oldest of thirteen children. His father had died the year before he came to St Lawrence county, leaving him nothing but heavy responsibilities. Fortunately, his great strength and his kindly nature were equal to the burden. Mother and children were landed safely in their new home on Bowman's Hill the day that David was eighteen. I have heard the old folks of that country tell what a splendid figure of a man he was those days—six feet one in his stockings and broad at the shoulder. His eyes were grey and set under heavy brows. I have never forgotten the big man that laid hold of me and the broad clean-shaven serious face, that looked into mine the day I came to Paradise Valley. As I write I can see plainly his dimpled chin, his large nose, his firm mouth that was the key to his character. 'Open or shet,' I have heard the old folks say, 'it showed he was no fool.'
After two years David took a wife and settled in Paradise Valley. He prospered in a small way considered handsome thereabouts. In a few years he had cleared the rich acres of his farm to the sugar bush that was the north vestibule of the big forest; he had seen the clearing widen until he could discern the bare summits of the distant hills, and, far as he could see, were the neat white houses of the settlers. Children had come, three of them—the eldest a son who had left home and died in a far country long before we came to Paradise Valley—the youngest a baby.
I could not have enjoyed my new home more if I had been born in it. I had much need of a mother's tenderness, no doubt, for I remember with what a sense of peace and comfort I lay on the lap of Elizabeth Brower, that first evening, and heard her singing as she rocked. The little daughter stood at her knees, looking down at me and patting my bare toes or reaching over to feel my face.
'God sent him to us—didn't he, mother?' said she.
'Maybe,' Mrs Brower answered, 'we'll be good to him, anyway.'
Then that old query came into my mind. I asked them if it was heaven where we were.
'No,' they answered.
''Tain't anywhere near here, is it?' I went on.
Then she told me about the gate of death, and began sowing in me the seed of God's truth—as I know now the seed of many harvests. I slept with Uncle Eb in the garret, that night, and for long after we came to the Brower's. He continued to get better, and was shortly able to give his hand to the work of the farm.
There was room for all of us in that ample wilderness of his imagination, and the cry of the swift woke its echoes every evening for a time. Bears and panthers prowled in the deep thickets, but the swifts took a firmer grip on us, being bolder and more terrible. Uncle Eb became a great favourite in the family, and David Brower came to know soon that he was 'a good man to work' and could be trusted 'to look after things'. We had not been there long when I heard Elizabeth speak of Nehemiah—her lost son—and his name was often on the lips of others. He was a boy of sixteen when he went away, and I learned no more of him until long afterwards.
A month or more after we came to Faraway, I remember we went 'cross lots in a big box wagon to the orchard on the hill and gathered apples that fell in a shower when Uncle Eb went up to shake them down. Then cane the raw days of late October, when the crows went flying southward before the wind—a noisy pirate fleet that filled the sky at times—and when we all put on our mittens and went down the winding cow-paths to the grove of butternuts in the pasture. The great roof of the wilderness had turned red and faded into yellow. Soon its rafters began to show through, and then, in a day or two, they were all bare but for some patches of evergreen. Great, golden drifts of foliage lay higher than a man's head in the timber land about the clearing. We had our best fun then, playing 'I spy' in the groves.
In that fragrant deep of leaves one might lie undiscovered a long time. He could hear roaring like that of water at every move of the finder, wallowing nearer and nearer possibly, in his search. Old Fred came generally rooting his way to us in the deep drift with unerring accuracy.
And shortly winter came out of the north and, of a night, after rapping at the windows and howling in the chimney and roaring in the big woods, took possession of the earth. That was a time when hard cider flowed freely and recollection found a ready tongue among the older folk, and the young enjoyed many diversions, including measles and whooping cough.
Chapter 7
I had a lot of fun that first winter, but none that I can remember more gratefully than our trip in the sledgehouse—a tight little house fitted and fastened to a big sledge. Uncle Eb had to go to mill at Hillsborough, some twelve miles away, and Hope and I, after much coaxing and many family counsels, got leave to go with him. The sky was cloudless, and the frosty air was all aglow in the sunlight that morning we started. There was a little sheet iron stove in one corner of the sledgehouse, walled in with zinc and anchored with wires; a layer of hay covered the floor and over that we spread our furs and blankets. The house had an open front, and Uncle Eb sat on the doorstep, as it were, to drive, while we sat behind him on the blankets.
'I love you very much,' said Hope, embracing me, after we were seated. Her affection embarrassed me, I remember. It seemed unmanly to be petted like a doll.
'I hate to be kissed,' I said, pulling away from her, at which Uncle Eb laughed heartily.
The day came when I would have given half my life for the words I held so cheaply then.
'You'd better be good t' me,' she answered, 'for when mother dies I'm goin' t' take care o' you. Uncle Eb and Gran'ma Bisnette an' you an' everybody I love is goin' t' come an' live with me in a big, big house. An' I'm goin' t' put you t' bed nights an' hear ye say yer prayers an everything.'
'Who'll do the spankin?' Uncle Eb asked.
'My husban',' she answered, with a sigh at the thought of all the trouble that lay before her.
'An' I'll make him rub your back, too, Uncle Eb,' she added. 'Wall, I rather guess he'll object to that,' said he.
'Then you can give 'ins five cents, an' I guess he'll be glad t' do it,' she answered promptly.
'Poor man! He won't know whether he's runnin' a poorhouse er a hospital, will he?' said Uncle Eb. 'Look here, children,' he added, taking out his old leather wallet, as he held the reins between his knees. 'Here's tew shillin' apiece for ye, an' I want ye t' spend it jest eggsackly as ye please.' The last words were spoken slowly and with emphasis.
We took the two silver pieces that he handed to us and looked them all over and compared them.
'I know what I'll do,' said she, suddenly. 'I'm goin' t' buy my mother a new dress, or mebbe a beautiful ring,' she added thoughtfully.
For my own part I did not know what I should buy. I wanted a real gun most of all and my inclination oscillated between that and a red rocking horse. My mind was very busy while I sat in silence. Presently I rose and went to Uncle Eb and whispered in his ear.
'Do you think I could get a real rifle with two shilin'?' I enquired anxiously.
'No,' he answered in a low tone that seemed to respect my confidence. 'Bime by, when you're older, I'll buy ye a rifle—a real rip snorter, too, with a shiny barrel 'n a silver lock. When ye get down t, the village ye'll see lots o' things y'd rather hev, prob'ly. If I was you, children,' he added, in a louder tone, 'I wouldn't buy a thing but nuts 'n' raisins.'
'Nuts 'n' raisins!' Hope exclaimed, scornfully.
'Nuts 'n' raisins,' he repeated. 'They're cheap 'n' satisfyin'. If ye eat enough uv 'em you'll never want anything else in this world.'
I failed to see the irony in Uncle Eb's remark and the suggestion seemed to have a good deal of merit, the more I thought it over.
''T any rate,' said Uncle Eb, 'I'd git somethin' fer my own selves.'
'Well,' said Hope, 'You tell us a lot o' things we could buy.'
'Less see!' said Uncle Eb, looking very serious. 'There's bootjacks an' there's warmin' pans 'n' mustard plasters 'n' liver pads 'n' all them kind o' things.'
We both shook our heads very doubtfully.
'Then,' he added, 'there are jimmyjacks 'n' silver no nuthin's.'
There were many other suggestions but none of them were decisive.
The snow lay deep on either side of the way and there was a glimmer on every white hillside where Jack Frost had sown his diamonds. Here and there a fox track crossed the smooth level of the valley and dwindled on the distant hills like a seam in a great white robe. It grew warmer as the sun rose, and we were a jolly company behind the merry jingle of the sleigh bells. We had had a long spell of quiet weather and the road lay in two furrows worn as smooth as ice at the bottom.
'Consarn it!' said Uncle Eb looking up at the sky, after we had been on the road an hour or so. 'There's a sun dog. Wouldn't wonder if we got a snowstorm' fore night.
I was running behind the sledge and standing on the brake hooks going downhill. He made me get in when he saw the sun dog, and let our horse—a rat-tailed bay known as Old Doctor—go at a merry pace.
We were awed to silence when we came in sight of Hillsborough, with spires looming far into the sky, as it seemed to me then, and buildings that bullied me with their big bulk, so that I had no heart for the spending of the two shillings Uncle Eb had given me. Such sublimity of proportion I have never seen since; and yet it was all very small indeed. The stores had a smell about them that was like chloroform in its effect upon me; for, once in them, I fell into a kind of trance and had scarce sense enough to know my own mind. The smart clerks, who generally came and asked, 'Well, young man, what can I do for you?' I regarded with fear and suspicion. I clung the tighter to my coin always, and said nothing, although I saw many a trinket whose glitter went to my soul with a mighty fascination. We both stood staring silently at the show cases, our tongues helpless with awe and wonder. Finally, after a whispered conference, Hope asked for a 'silver no nothing', and provoked so much laughter that we both fled to the sidewalk. Uncle Eb had to do our buying for us in the end.
'Wall, what'll ye hev?' he said to me at length.
I tried to think-it was no easy thing to do after all I had seen.
'Guess I'll take a jacknife,' I whispered.
'Give this boy a knife,' he demanded. 'Wants t' be good 'n sharp. Might hev t' skin a swift with it sometime.'
'What ye want?' he asked, then turning to Hope.
'A doll,' she whispered.
'White or black?' said he.
'White,' said she, 'with dark eyes and hair.'
'Want a reel, splendid, firs'-class doll,' he said to the clerk. 'Thet one'll do, there, with the sky-blue dress 'n the pink apron.'
We were worn out with excitement when we left for home under lowering skies. We children lay side by side under the robes, the doll between us, and were soon asleep. It was growing dark when Uncle Eb woke us, and the snow was driving in at the doorway. The air was full of snow, I remember, and Old Doctor was wading to his knees in a drift. We were up in the hills and the wind whistled in our little chimney. Uncle Eb had a serious look in his face. The snow grew deeper and Old Doctor went slower every moment.
'Six mild from home,' Uncle Eb muttered, as he held up to rest a moment. 'Six mild from home. 'Fraid we're in fer a night uv it.'
We got to the top of Fadden's Hill about dark, and the snow lay so deep in the cut we all got out for fear the house would tip over. Old Doctor floundered along a bit further until he went down in the drift and lay between the shafts half buried. We had a shovel that always hung beside a small hatchet in the sledgehouse—for one might need much beside the grace of God of a winter's day in that country—and with it Uncle Eb began to uncover the horse. We children stood in the sledgehouse door watching him and holding the lantern. Old Doctor was on his feet in a few minutes.
''Tain' no use tryin',' said Uncle Eb, as he began to unhitch. 'Can't go no further t'night.'
Then he dug away the snow beside the sledgehouse, and hitched Old Doctor to the horseshoe that was nailed to the rear end of it. That done, he clambered up the side of the cut and took some rails off the fence and shoved them over on the roof of the house, so that one end rested there and the other on the high bank beside us. Then he cut a lot of hemlock boughs with the hatchet, and thatched the roof he had made over Old Doctor, binding them with the reins. Bringing more rails, he leaned them to the others on the windward side and nailed a big blanket over them, piecing it out with hemlock thatching, so it made a fairly comfortable shelter. We were under the wind in this deep cut on Fadden's Hill, and the snow piled in upon us rapidly. We had a warm blanket for Old Doctor and two big buffalo robes for our own use. We gave him a good feed of hay and oats, and then Uncle Eb cut up a fence rail with our hatchet and built a roaring fire in the stove. We had got a bit chilly wading in the snow, and the fire gave us a mighty sense of comfort.
'I thought somethin' might happen,' said Uncle Eb, as he hung his lantern to the ridge pole and took a big paper parcel out of his great coat pocket. 'I thought mebbe somethin' might happen, an' so I brought along a bite o' luncheon.'
He gave us dried herring and bread and butter and cheese.
''S a little dry,' he remarked, while we were eating, 'but it's drier where there's none.'
We had a pail of snow on top of the little stove and plenty of good drinking water for ourselves and the Old Doctor in a few minutes.
After supper Uncle Eb went up the side of the cut and brought back a lot of hemlock boughs and spread them under Old Doctor for bedding.
Then we all sat around the stove on the warm robes and listened to the wind howling above our little roof and the stories of Uncle Eb. The hissing of the snow as it beat upon the sledgehouse grew fainter by and by, and Uncle Eb said he guessed we were pretty well covered up. We fell asleep soon. I remember he stopped in the middle of a wolf story, and, seeing that our eyes were shut, pulled us back from the fire a little and covered us with one of the robes. It had been a mighty struggle between Sleep and Romance, and Sleep had won. I roused myself and begged him to go on with the story, but he only said, 'Hush, boy; it's bedtime,' and turned up the lantern and went out of doors. I woke once or twice in the night and saw him putting wood on the fire. He had put out the light. The gleam of the fire shone on his face when he opened the stove door.
'Gittin' a leetle cool here, Uncle Eb,' he was saying to himself.
We were up at daylight, and even then it was snowing and blowing fiercely. There were two feet of snow on the sledgehouse roof, and we were nearly buried in the bank. Uncle Eb had to do a lot of shoveling to get out of doors and into the stable. Old Doctor was quite out of the wind in a cave of snow and nickering for his breakfast. There was plenty for him, but we were on short rations. Uncle Eb put on the snow shoes, after we had eaten what there was left, and, cautioning us to keep in, set out for Fadden's across lots. He came back inside of an hour with a good supply of provisions in a basket on his shoulder. The wind had gone down and the air was milder. Big flakes of snow came fluttering slowly downward out of a dark sky. After dinner we went up on top of the sledgehouse and saw a big scraper coming in the valley below. Six teams of oxen were drawing it, and we could see the flying furrows on either side of the scraper as it ploughed in the deep drifts. Uncle Eb put on the snow shoes again, and, with Hope on his back and me clinging to his hand, he went down to meet them and to tell of our plight. The front team had wallowed to their ears, and the men were digging them out with shovels when we got to the scraper. A score of men and boys clung to the sides of that big, hollow wedge, and put their weight on it as the oxen pulled. We got on with the others, I remember, and I was swept off as soon as the scraper started by a roaring avalanche of snow that came down upon our heads and buried me completely. I was up again and had a fresh hold in a jiffy, and clung to my place until I was nearly smothered by the flying snow. It was great fun for me, and they were all shouting and hallooing as if it were a fine holiday. They made slow progress, however, and we left them shortly on their promise to try to reach us before night. If they failed to get through, one of them said he would drive over to Paradise Valley, if possible, and tell the Browers we were all right.
On our return, Uncle Eb began shoveling a tunnel in the cut. When we got through to the open late in the afternoon we saw the scraper party going back with their teams.
'Guess they've gi'n up fer t'day,' said he. 'Snow's powerful deep down there below the bridge. Mebbe we can get 'round to where the road's clear by goin' 'cross lots. I've a good mind t' try it.'
Then he went over in the field and picked a winding way down the hill toward the river, while we children stood watching him. He came back soon and took down a bit of the fence and harnessed Old Doctor and hitched him to the sledgehouse. The tunnel was just wide enough to let us through with a tight pinch here and there. The footing was rather soft' and the horse had hard pulling. We went in the field, struggling on afoot—we little people—while Uncle Eb led the horse. He had to stop frequently to tunnel through a snowdrift, and at dusk we had only got half-way to the bridge from our cave in the cut. Of a sudden Old Doctor went up to his neck in a wall of deep snow that seemed to cut us off completely. He struggled a moment, falling on his side and wrenching the shafts from the runners. Uncle Eb went to work vigorously with his shovel and had soon cut a narrow box stall in the deep snow around Old Doctor. Just beyond the hill dipped sharply and down the slope we could see the stubble sticking through the shallow snow. 'We'll hev t' stop right where we are until mornin',' he said. 'It's mos' dark now.
Our little house stood tilting forward about half-way down the hill, its runners buried in the snow. A few hundred yards below was a cliff where the shore fell to the river some thirty feet It had stopped snowing, and the air had grown warmer, but the sky was dark We put nearly all the hay in the sledgehouse under Old Doctor and gave him the last of the oats and a warm cover of blankets. Then Uncle Eb went away to the fence for more wood, while we spread the supper. He was very tired, I remember, and we all turned in for the night a short time after we had eaten. The little stove was roaring like a furnace when we spread our blankets on the sloping floor and lay down, our feet to the front, and drew the warm robes over us. Uncle Eb, who had had no sleep the night before, began to snore heavily before we children had stopped whispering. He was still snoring, and Hope sound asleep, when I woke in the night and heard the rain falling on our little roof and felt the warm breath of the south wind. The water dripping from the eaves and falling far and near upon the yielding snow had many voices. I was half-asleep when I heard a new noise under the sledge. Something struck the front corner of the sledgehouse—a heavy, muffled blow—and brushed the noisy boards. Then I heard the timbers creak and felt the runners leaping over the soft snow. I remember it was like a dream of falling. I raised myself and stared about me. We were slipping down the steep floor. The lantern, burning dimly under the roof, swung and rattled. Uncle Eb was up on his elbow staring wildly. I could feel the jar and rush of the runners and the rain that seemed to roar as it dashed into my face. Then, suddenly, the sledgehouse gave a great leap into the air and the grating of the runners ceased. The lantern went hard against the roof; there was a mighty roar in my ears; then we heard a noise like thunder and felt the shock of a blow that set my back aching, and cracked the roof above our heads. It was all still for a second; then we children began to cry, and Uncle Eb staggered to his feet and lit the lantern that had gone out and that had no globe, I remember, as he held it down to our faces.
'Hush! Are you hurt?' he said, as he knelt before us. 'Git up now, see if ye can stand.'
We got to our feet, neither of us much the worse for what had happened—My knuckles were cut a bit by a splinter, and Hope had been hit on the shins by the lantern globe as it fell.
'By the Lord Harry!' said Uncle Eb, when he saw we were not hurt. 'Wonder what hit us.'
We followed him outside while he was speaking.
'We've slid downhill,' he said. 'Went over the cliff. Went kerplunk in the deep snow, er there'd have been nuthin' left uv us. Snow's meltin' jest as if it was July.'
Uncle Eb helped us into our heavy coats, and then with a blanket over his arm led us into the wet snow. We came out upon clear ice in a moment and picked our way along the lowering shore. At length Uncle Eb clambered up, pulling us up after him, one by one. Then he whistled to Old Doctor, who whinnied a quick reply. He left us standing together, the blanket over our heads, and went away in the dark whistling as he had done before. We could hear Old Doctor answer as he came near, and presently Uncle Eb returned leading the horse by the halter. Then he put us both on Old Doctor's back, threw the blanket over our heads, and started slowly for the road. We clung to each other as the horse staggered in the soft snow, and kept our places with some aid from Uncle Eb. We crossed the fence presently, and then for a way it was hard going. We found fair footing after we had passed the big scraper, and, coming to a house a mile or so down the road called them out of bed. It was growing light and they made us comfortable around a big stove, and gave us breakfast. The good man of the house took us home in a big sleigh after the chores were done. We met David Brower coming after us, and if we'd been gone a year we couldn't have received a warmer welcome.
Chapter 8
Of all that long season of snow, I remember most pleasantly the days that were sweetened with the sugar-making. When the sun was lifting his course in the clearing sky, and March had got the temper of the lamb, and the frozen pulses of the forest had begun to stir, the great kettle was mounted in the yard and all gave a hand to the washing of spouts and buckets. Then came tapping time, in which I helped carry the buckets and tasted the sweet flow that followed the auger's wound. The woods were merry with our shouts, and, shortly, one could hear the heart-beat of the maples in the sounding bucket. It was the reveille of spring. Towering trees shook down the gathered storms of snow and felt for the sunlight. The arch and shanty were repaired, the great iron kettle was scoured and lifted to its place, and then came the boiling. It was a great, an inestimable privilege to sit on the robes of faded fur, in the shanty, and hear the fire roaring under the kettle and smell the sweet odour of the boiling sap. Uncle Eb minded the shanty and the fire and the woods rang with his merry songs. When I think of that phase of the sugaring, I am face to face with one of the greatest perils of my life. My foster father had consented to let me spend a night with Uncle Eb in the shanty, and I was to sleep on the robes, where he would be beside me when he was not tending the fire. It had been a mild, bright day, and David came up with our supper at sunset. He sat talking with Uncle Eb for an hour or so, and the woods were darkling when he went away.
When he started on the dark trail that led to the clearing, I wondered at his courage—it was so black beyond the firelight. While we sat alone I plead for a story, but the thoughts of Uncle Eb had gone to roost early in a sort of gloomy meditation.
'Be still, my boy,' said he, 'an' go t' sleep. I ain't agoin' t' tell no yarns an' git ye all stirred up. Ye go t' sleep. Come mornin' we'll go down t' the brook an' see if we can't find a mink or tew 'n the traps.'
I remember hearing a great crackling of twigs in the dark wood before I slept. As I lifted my head, Uncle Eb whispered, 'Hark!' and we both listened. A bent and aged figure came stalking into the firelight. His long white hair mingled with his beard and covered his coat collar behind.
'Don't be scairt,' said Uncle Eb. ''Tain' no bear. It's nuthin' but a poet.'
I knew him for a man who wandered much and had a rhyme for everyone—a kindly man with a reputation for laziness and without any home.
'Bilin', eh?' said the poet
'Bilin',' said Uncle Eb.
'I'm bilin' over 'n the next bush,' said the poet, sitting down.
'How's everything in Jingleville?' Uncle Eb enquired.
Then the newcomer answered:
'Well, neighbour dear, in Jingleville
We live by faith but we eat our fill;
An' what w'u'd we do if it wa'n't fer prayer?
Fer we can't raise a thing but whiskers an' hair.'
'Cur'us how you can talk po'try,' said Uncle Eb. 'The only thing I've got agin you is them whiskers an' thet hair. 'Tain't Christian.'
''Tain't what's on the head, but what's in it—thet's the important thing,' said the poet. 'Did I ever tell ye what I wrote about the birds?'
'Don' know's ye ever did,' said Uncle Eb, stirring his fire.
'The boy'll like it, mebbe,' said he, taking a dirty piece of paper out of his pocket and holding it to the light.
The poem interested me, young as I was, not less than the strange figure of the old poet who lived unknown in the backwoods, and who died, I dare say, with many a finer song in his heart. I remember how he stood in the firelight and chanted the words in a sing-song tone. He gave us that rude copy of the poem, and here it is:
THE ROBIN'S WEDDING
Young robin red breast hed a beautiful nest an' he says to his love says he:
It's ready now on a rocking bough
In the top of a maple tree.
I've lined it with down an' the velvet brown on the waist of a bumble-bee.
They were married next day, in the land o' the hay, the lady bird an' he.
The bobolink came an' the wife o' the same
An' the lark an' the fiddle de dee.
An' the crow came down in a minister gown—there was nothing
that he didn't see.
He fluttered his wing as they ast him to sing an' he tried fer t' clear
out his throat;
He hemmed an' he hawed an' be hawked an' he cawed
But he couldn't deliver a note.
The swallow was there an' he ushered each pair with his linsey an'
claw hammer coat.
The bobolink tried fer t' flirt with the bride in a way thet was sassy
an' bold.
An' the notes that he took as he shivered an' shook
Hed a sound like the jingle of gold.
He sat on a briar an' laughed at the choir an' said thet the music was old.
The sexton he came—Mr Spider by name—a citizen hairy and grey.
His rope in a steeple, he called the good people
That live in the land o' the hay.
The ants an' the squgs an' the crickets an' bugs—came out in a
mighty array.
Some came down from Barleytown an' the neighbouring city o' Rye.
An' the little black people they climbed every steeple
An' sat looking up at the sky.
They came fer t' see what a wedding might be an' they
furnished the cake an' the pie.
I remember he turned to me when he had finished and took one of my small hands and held it in his hard palm and looked at it and then into my face.
'Ah, boy!' he said, 'your way shall lead you far from here, and you shall get learning and wealth and win—victories.'
'What nonsense are you talking, Jed Ferry?' said Uncle Eb.
'O, you all think I'm a fool an' a humbug, 'cos I look it. Why, Eben Holden, if you was what ye looked, ye'd be in the presidential chair. Folks here 'n the valley think o' nuthin' but hard work—most uv 'em, an' I tell ye now this boy ain't a goin' t' be wuth putty on a farm. Look a' them slender hands.
'There was a man come to me the other day an' wanted t' hev a poem 'bout his wife that hed jes' died. I ast him t' tell me all 'bout her.
'“Wall,” said he, after he had scratched his head an' thought a minute, “she was a dretful good woman t' work.”
'“Anything else?” I asked.
'He thought agin fer a minute.
'“Broke her leg once,” he said, “an' was laid up fer more'n a year.”
“Must o' suffered,” said I.
'“Not then,” he answered. “Ruther enjoyed it layin' abed an' readin' an' bein' rubbed, but 'twas hard on the children.”
'“S'pose ye loved her,” I said.
'Then the tears come into his eyes an' he couldn't speak fer a minute. Putty soon he whispered “Yes” kind o' confidential. 'Course he loved her, but these Yankees are ashamed o' their feelin's. They hev tender thoughts, but they hide 'em as careful as the wild goose hides her eggs. I wrote a poem t' please him, an' goin' home I made up one fer myself, an 'it run 'bout like this:
O give me more than a life, I beg,
That finds real joy in a broken leg.
Whose only thought is t' work an' save
An' whose only rest is in the grave.
Saving an' scrimping from day to day
While its best it has squandered an' flung away
Fer a life like that of which I tell
Would rob me quite o' the dread o' hell.
'Toil an' slave an' scrimp an' save—thet's 'bout all we think uv 'n this country. 'Tain't right, Holden.'
'No, 'tain't right,' said Uncle Eb.
'I know I'm a poor, mis'rable critter. Kind o' out o' tune with everybody I know. Alwus quarrelled with my own folks, an' now I ain't got any home. Someday I'm goin' t' die in the poorhouse er on the ground under these woods. But I tell ye'—here he spoke in a voice that grew loud with feeling—'mebbe I've been lazy, as they say, but I've got more out o' my life than any o' these fools. And someday God'll honour me far above them. When my wife an' I parted I wrote some lines that say well my meaning. It was only a log house we had, but this will show what I got out of it.' Then he spoke the lines, his voice trembling with emotion.
'O humble home! Thou hadst a secret door
Thro' which I looked, betimes, with wondering eye
On treasures that no palace ever wore
But now—goodbye!
In hallowed scenes what feet have trod thy stage!
The babe, the maiden, leaving home to wed
The young man going forth by duty led
And faltering age.
Thou hadst a magic window broad and high
The light and glory of the morning shone
Thro' it, however dark the day had grown,
Or bleak the sky.
'I know Dave Brower's folks hev got brains an' decency, but when thet boy is old enough t' take care uv himself, let him git out o' this country. I tell ye he'll never make a farmer, an' if he marries an' settles down here he'll git t' be a poet, mebbe, er some such shif'less cuss, an' die in the poorhouse. Guess I better git back t' my bilin' now. Good-night,' he added, rising and buttoning his old coat as he walked away.
'Sing'lar man!' Uncle Eli exclaimed, thoughtfully, 'but anyone thet picks him up fer a fool'll find him a counterfeit.'
Young as I was, the rugged, elemental power of the old poet had somehow got to my heart and stirred my imagination. It all came not fully to my understanding until later. Little by little it grew upon me, and what an effect it had upon my thought and life ever after I should not dare to estimate. And soon I sought out the 'poet of the hills,' as they called him, and got to know and even to respect him in spite of his unlovely aspect.
Uncle Eb skimmed the boiling sap, put more wood on the fire and came and pulled off his boots and lay down beside me under the robe. And, hearing the boil of the sap and the crackle of the burning logs in the arch, I soon went asleep.
I remember feeling Uncle Eb's hand upon my cheek, and how I rose and stared about me in the fading shadows of a dream as he shook me gently.
'Wake up, my boy,' said he. 'Come, we mus' put fer home.'
The fire was out. The old man held a lantern as he stood before me, the blaze flickering. There was a fearsome darkness all around.
'Come, Willy, make haste,' he whispered, as I rubbed my eyes. 'Put on yer boots, an' here's yer little coat 'n' muffler.'
There was a mighty roar in the forest and icy puffs of snow came whistling in upon us. We stored the robes and pails and buckets and covered the big kettle.
The lofty tree-tops reeled and creaked above us, and a deep, sonorous moan was sweeping through the woods, as if the fingers of the wind had touched a mighty harp string in the timber. We could hear the crash and thunder of falling trees.
'Make haste! Make haste! It's resky here,' said Uncle Eb, and he held my hand and ran. We started through the brush and steered as straight as we could for the clearing. The little box of light he carried was soon sheathed in snow, and I remember how he stopped, half out of breath, often, and brushed it with his mittens to let out the light. We had made the scattering growth of little timber at the edge of the woods when the globe of the lantern snapped and fell. A moment later we stood in utter darkness. I knew, for the first time, then that we were in a bad fix.
'I guess God'll take care of us, Willy,' said Uncle Eb. 'If he don't, we'll never get there in this world never!'
It was a black and icy wall of night and storm on every side of us. I never saw a time when the light of God's heaven was so utterly extinguished; the cold never went to my bone as on that bitter night. My hands and feet were numb with aching, as the roar of the trees grew fainter in the open. I remember how I lagged, and how the old man urged me on, and how we toiled in the wind and darkness, straining our eyes for some familiar thing. Of a sudden we stumbled upon a wall that we had passed an hour or so before.
'Oh!' he groaned, and made that funny, deprecating cluck with his tongue, that I have heard so much from Yankee lips.
'God o' mercy!' said he, 'we've gone 'round in a half-circle. Now we'll take the wall an' mebbe it'll bring us home.'
I thought I couldn't keep my feet any longer, for an irresistible drowsiness had come over me. The voice of Uncle Eb seemed far away, and when I sank in the snow and shut my eyes to sleep he shook me as a terrier shakes a rat.
'Wake up, my boy,' said he, 'ye musn't sleep.'
Then he boxed my ears until I cried, and picked me up and ran with me along the side of the wall. I was but dimly conscious when he dropped me under a tree whose bare twigs lashed the air and stung my cheeks. I heard him tearing the branches savagely and muttering, 'Thanks to God, it's the blue beech.' I shall never forget how he turned and held to my hand and put the whip on me as I lay in the snow, and how the sting of it started my blood. Up I sprang in a jiffy and howled and danced. The stout rod bent and circled on me like a hoop of fire. Then I turned and tried to run while he clung to my coat tails, and every step I felt the stinging grab of the beech. There is a little seam across my cheek today that marks a footfall of one of those whips. In a moment I was as wide awake as Uncle Eb and needed no more stimulation.
The wall led us to the pasture lane, and there it was easy enough to make our way to the barnyard and up to the door of the house, which had a candle in every window, I remember. David was up and dressed to come after us, and I recall how he took Uncle Eb in his arms, when he fell fainting on the doorstep, and carried him to the lounge. I saw the blood on my face as I passed the mirror, and Elizabeth Brower came running and gave me one glance and rushed out of doors with the dipper. It was full of snow when she ran in and tore the wrappings off my neck and began to rub my ears and cheeks with the cold snow, calling loudly for Grandma Bisnette. She came in a moment and helped at the stripping of our feet and legs. I remember that she slit my trousers with the shears as I lay on the floor, while the others rubbed my feet with the snow. Our hands and ears were badly frosted, but in an hour the whiteness had gone out of them and the returning blood burnt like a fire.
'How queer he stares!' I heard them say when Uncle Eb first came to, and in a moment a roar of laughter broke from him.
'I'll never fergit,' said he presently, 'if I live a thousan' years, the lickin' I gin thet boy; but it hurt me worse'n it hurt him.'
Then he told the story of the blue beech.
The next day was that 'cold Friday' long remembered by those who felt its deadly chill—a day when water thrown in the magic air came down in clinking crystals, and sheaths of frost lay thick upon the windows. But that and the one before it were among the few days in that early period that lie, like a rock, under my character.
Chapter 9
Grandma Bisnette came from Canada to work for the Browers. She was a big, cheerful woman, with a dialect, an amiable disposition and a swarthy, wrinkled face. She had a loose front tooth that occupied all the leisure of her tongue. When she sat at her knitting this big tooth clicked incessantly. On every stitch her tongue went in and out across it' and I, standing often by her knees, regarded the process with great curiosity.
The reader may gather much from these frank and informing words of Grandma Bisnette. 'When I los' my man, Mon Dieu! I have two son. An' when I come across I bring him with me. Abe he rough; but den he no bad man.'
Abe was the butcher of the neighbourhood—that red-handed, stony-hearted, necessary man whom the Yankee farmer in that north country hires to do the cruel things that have to be done. He wore ragged, dirty clothes and had a voice like a steam whistle. His rough, black hair fell low and mingled with his scanty beard. His hands were stained too often with the blood of some creature we loved. I always crept under the bed in Mrs Brower's room when Abe came—he was such a terror to me with his bloody work and noisy oaths. Such men were the curse of the cleanly homes in that country. There was much to shock the ears and eyes of children in the life of the farm. It was a fashion among the help to decorate their speech with profanity for the mere sound of it' and the foul mouthings of low-minded men spread like a pestilence in the fields.
Abe came always with an old bay horse and a rickety buckboard. His one foot on the dash, as he rode, gave the picture a dare-devil finish. The lash of his bull-whip sang around him, and his great voice sent its blasts of noise ahead. When we heard a fearful yell and rumble in the distance, we knew Abe was coming.
'Abe he come,' said Grandma Bisnette. 'Mon Dieu! he make de leetle rock fly.'
It was like the coming of a locomotive with roar of wheel and whistle. In my childhood, as soon as I saw the cloud of dust, I put for the bed and from its friendly cover would peek out' often, but never venture far until the man of blood had gone.
To us children he was a marvel of wickedness. There were those who told how he had stood in the storm one night and dared the Almighty to send the lightning upon him.
The dog Fred had grown so old and infirm that one day they sent for Abe to come and put an end to his misery. Every man on the farm loved the old dog and not one of them would raise a hand to kill him. Hope and I heard what Abe was coming to do, and when the men had gone to the fields, that summer morning, we lifted Fred into the little wagon in which he had once drawn me and starting back of the barn stole away with him through the deep grass of the meadow until we came out upon the highroad far below. We had planned to take him to school and make him a nest in the woodshed where he could share our luncheon and be out of the way of peril. After a good deal of difficulty and heavy pulling we got to the road at last. The old dog, now blind and helpless, sat contentedly in the wagon while its wheels creaked and groaned beneath him. We had gone but a short way in the road when we heard the red bridge roar under rushing wheels and the familiar yell of Abe.
'We'd better run,' said Hope, ''er we'll git swore at.'
I looked about me in a panic for some place to hide the party, but Abe was coming fast and there was only time to pick up clubs and stand our ground.
'Here!' the man shouted as he pulled up along side of us, 'where ye goin' with that dog?'
'Go 'way,' I answered, between anger and tears, lifting my club in a threatening manner.
He laughed then—a loud guffaw that rang in the near woods.
'What'll ye give me,' he asked leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, 'What'll ye give me if I don't kill him?'
I thought a moment. Then I put my hand in my pocket and presently took out my jack-knife—that treasure Uncle Eb had bought for me—and looked at it fondly.
Then I offered it to him.
Again he laughed loudly.
'Anything else?' he demanded while Hope sat hugging the old dog that was licking her hands.
'Got forty cents that I saved for the fair,' said I promptly.
Abe backed his horse and turned in the road.
'Wall boy,' he said, 'Tell 'em I've gone home.'
Then his great voice shouted, 'g'lang' the lash of his whip sang in the air and off he went.
We were first to arrive at the schoolhouse, that morning, and when the other children came we had Fred on a comfortable bed of grass in a corner of the woodshed. What with all the worry of that day I said my lessons poorly and went home with a load on my heart. Tomorrow would be Saturday; how were we to get food and water to the dog? They asked at home if we had seen old Fred and we both declared we had not—the first lie that ever laid its burden on my conscience. We both saved all our bread and butter and doughnuts next day, but we had so many chores to do it was impossible to go to the schoolhouse with them. So we agreed to steal away that night when all were asleep and take the food from its hiding place.
In the excitement of the day neither of us had eaten much. They thought we were ill and sent us to bed early. When Hope came into my room above stairs late in the evening we were both desperately hungry. We looked at our store of doughnuts and bread and butter under my bed. We counted it over.
'Won't you try one o' the doughnuts,' I whispered hoping that she would say yes so that I could try one also; for they did smell mighty good.
''Twouldn't be right,' said she regretfully. 'There ain't any more 'n he'll want now.
''Twouldn't be right,' I repeated with a sigh as I looked longingly at one of the big doughnuts. 'Couldn't bear t' do it—could you?'
'Don't seem as if I could,' she whispered, thoughtfully, her chin upon her hand.
Then she rose and went to the window.
'O my! how dark it is!' she whispered, looking out into the night.
'Purty dark!' I said, 'but you needn't be 'fraid. I'll take care o' you. If we should meet a bear I'll growl right back at him—that's what Uncle Eb tol' me t' do. I'm awful stout—most a man now! Can't nuthin' scare me.'
We could hear them talking below stairs and we went back to bed, intending to go forth later when the house was still. But' unfortunately for our adventure I fell asleep.
It was morning when I opened my eyes again. We children looked accusingly at each other while eating breakfast. Then we had to be washed and dressed in our best clothes to go to meeting. When the wagon was at the door and we were ready to start I had doughnuts and bread and butter in every pocket of my coat and trousers. I got in quickly and pulled the blanket over me so as to conceal the fullness of my pockets. We arrived so late I had no chance to go to the dog before we went into meeting. I was wearing boots that were too small for me, and when I entered with the others and sat down upon one of those straight backed seats of plain, unpainted pine my feet felt as if I had been caught in a bear trap. There was always such a silence in the room after the elder had sat down and adjusted his spectacles that I could hear the ticking of the watch he carried in the pocket of his broadcloth waistcoat. For my own part I know I looked with too much longing for the good of my soul on the great gold chain that spanned the broad convexity of his stomach. Presently I observed that a couple of young women were looking at me and whispering. Then suddenly I became aware that there were sundry protuberances on my person caused by bread and butter and doughnuts, and I felt very miserable indeed. Now and then as the elder spoke the loud, accusing neigh of some horse, tethered to the fence in the schoolyard, mingled with his thunder. After the good elder had been preaching an hour his big, fat body seemed to swim in my tears. When he had finished the choir sang. Their singing was a thing that appealed to the eye as well as the ear. Uncle Eb used to say it was a great comfort to see Elkenah Samson sing bass. His great mouth opened widely in this form of praise and his eyes had a wild stare in them when he aimed at the low notes.
Ransom Walker, a man of great dignity, with a bristling moustache, who had once been a schoolmaster, led the choir and carried the tenor part. It was no small privilege after the elder had announced the hymn, to see him rise and tap the desk with his tuning fork and hold it to his ear solemnly. Then he would seem to press his chin full hard upon his throat while he warbled a scale. Immediately, soprano, alto, bass and tenor launched forth upon the sea of song. The parts were like the treacherous and conflicting currents of a tide that tossed them roughly and sometimes overturned their craft. And Ransom Walker showed always a proper sense of danger and responsibility. Generally they got to port safely on these brief excursions, though exhausted. He had a way of beating time with his head while singing and I have no doubt it was a great help to him.
The elder came over to me after meeting, having taken my tears for a sign of conviction.
'May the Lord bless and comfort you, my boy!' said he.
I got away shortly and made for the door. Uncle Eb stopped me.
'My stars, Willie!' said he putting his hand on my upper coat pocket' 'what ye got in there?'
'Doughnuts,' I answered.
'An' what's this?' he asked touching one of my side pockets.
'Doughnuts,' I repeated.
'An' this,' touching another.
'That's doughnuts too,' I said.
'An' this,' he continued going down to my trousers pocket.
'Bread an' butter,' I answered, shamefacedly, and on the verge of tears.
'Jerusalem!' he exclaimed, 'must a 'spected a purty long sermon.
'Brought 'em fer ol' Fred,' I replied.
'Ol' Fred!' he whispered, 'where's he?'
I told my secret then and we both went out with Hope to where we had left him. He lay with his head between his paws on the bed of grass just as I had seen him lie many a time when his legs were weary with travel on Paradise Road, and when his days were yet full of pleasure. We called to him and Uncle Eb knelt and touched his head. Then he lifted the dog's nose, looked a moment into the sightless eyes and let it fall again.
'Fred's gone,' said he in a low tone as he turned away. 'Got there ahead uv us, Willy.'
Hope and I sat down by the old dog and wept bitterly.
Chapter 10
Uncle Eb was a born lover of fun. But he had a solemn way of fishing that was no credit to a cheerful man. It was the same when he played the bass viol, but that was also a kind of fishing at which he tried his luck in a roaring torrent of sound. Both forms of dissipation gave him a serious look and manner, that came near severity. They brought on his face only the light of hope and anticipation or the shadow of disappointment.
We had finished our stent early the day of which I am writing. When we had dug our worms and were on our way to the brook with pole and line a squint of elation had hold of Uncle Eb's face. Long wrinkles deepened as he looked into the sky for a sign of the weather, and then relaxed a bit as he turned his eyes upon the smooth sward. It was no time for idle talk. We tiptoed over the leafy carpet of the woods. Soon as I spoke he lifted his hand with a warning 'Sh—h!' The murmur of the stream was in our ears. Kneeling on a mossy knoll we baited the hooks; then Uncle Eb beckoned to me.
I came to him on tiptoe.
'See thet there foam 'long side o' the big log?' he whispered, pointing with his finger.
I nodded.
'Cre-e-ep up jest as ca-a-areful as ye can,' he went on whispering. 'Drop in a leetle above an' let 'er float down.'
Then he went on, below me, lifting his feet in slow and stealthy strides.
He halted by a bit of driftwood and cautiously threw in, his arm extended, his figure alert. The squint on his face took a firmer grip. Suddenly his pole gave a leap, the water splashed, his line sang in the air and a fish went up like a rocket. As we were looking into the treetops it thumped the shore beside him, quivered a moment and flopped down the bank He scrambled after it and went to his knees in the brook coming up empty-handed. The water was slopping out of his boot legs.
'Whew!' said he, panting with excitement, as I came over to him. 'Reg'lar ol' he one,' he added, looking down at his boots. 'Got away from me—consarn him! Hed a leetle too much power in the arm.'
He emptied his boots, baited up and went back to his fishing. As I looked up at him he stood leaning over the stream jiggling his hook. In a moment I saw a tug at the line. The end of his pole went under water like a flash. It bent double as Uncle Eb gave it a lift. The fish began to dive and rush. The line cut the water in a broad semicircle and then went far and near with long, quick slashes. The pole nodded and writhed like a thing of life. Then Uncle Eb had a look on him that is one of the treasures of my memory. In a moment the fish went away with such a violent rush, to save him, he had to throw his pole into the water.
'Heavens an' airth!' he shouted, 'the ol' settler!'
The pole turned quickly and went lengthwise into the rapids. He ran down the bank and I after him. The pole was speeding through the swift water. We scrambled over logs and through bushes, but the pole went faster than we. Presently it stopped and swung around. Uncle Eb went splashing into the brook. Almost within reach of the pole he dashed his foot upon a stone, falling headlong in the current. I was close upon his heels and gave him a hand. He rose hatless, dripping from head to foot and pressed on. He lifted his pole. The line clung to a snag and then gave way; the tackle was missing. He looked at it silently, tilting his head. We walked slowly to the shore. Neither spoke for a moment.
'Must have been a big fish,' I remarked.
'Powerful!' said he, chewing vigorously on his quid of tobacco as he shook his head and looked down at his wet clothing. 'In a desp'rit fix, ain't I?'
'Too bad!' I exclaimed.
'Seldom ever hed sech a disapp'intment,' he said. 'Ruther counted on ketchin' thet fish—he was s' well hooked.'
He looked longingly at the water a moment 'If I don't go hum,' said he, 'an' keep my mouth shet I'll say sumthin' I'll be sorry fer.'
He was never quite the same after that. He told often of his struggle with this unseen, mysterious fish and I imagined he was a bit more given to reflection. He had had hold of the 'ol' settler of Deep Hole'—a fish of great influence and renown there in Faraway. Most of the local fishermen had felt him tug at the line one time or another. No man had ever seen him for the water was black in Deep Hole. No fish had ever exerted a greater influence on the thought, the imagination, the manners or the moral character of his contemporaries. Tip Taylor always took off his hat and sighed when he spoke of the 'ol' settler'. Ransom Walker said he had once seen his top fin and thought it longer than a razor. Ransom took to idleness and chewing tobacco immediately after his encounter with the big fish, and both vices stuck to him as long as he lived. Everyone had his theory of the 'ol' settler'. Most agreed he was a very heavy trout. Tip Taylor used to say that in his opinion ''twas nuthin' more'n a plain, overgrown, common sucker,' but Tip came from the Sucker Brook country where suckers lived in colder water and were more entitled to respect.
Mose Tupper had never had his hook in the 'ol' settler' and would believe none of the many stories of adventure at Deep Hole that had thrilled the township.
'Thet fish hes made s' many liars 'round here ye dimno who t' b'lieve,' he had said at the corners one day, after Uncle Eb had told his story of the big fish. 'Somebody 't knows how t' fish hed oughter go 'n ketch him fer the good o' the town—thet's what I think.'
Now Mr Tupper was an excellent man but his incredulity was always too bluntly put. It had even led to some ill feeling.
He came in at our place one evening with a big hook and line from 'down east'—the kind of tackle used in salt water.
'What ye goin' t' dew with it?' Uncle Eb enquired.
'Ketch thet fish ye talk s' much about—goin' t' put him out o' the way.'
''Tain't fair,' said Uncle Eb, 'its reedic'lous. Like leading a pup with a log chain.'
'Don't care,' said Mose, 'I'm goin' t' go fishin t'morrer. If there reely is any sech fish—which I don't believe there is—I'm goin' t' rassle with him an' mebbe tek him out o' the river. Thet fish is sp'llin' the moral character o' this town. He oughter be rode on a rail—thet fish hed.'
How he would punish a trout in that manner Mr Tupper failed to explain, but his metaphor was always a worse fit than his trousers and that was bad enough.
It was just before haying and, there being little to do, we had also planned to try our luck in the morning. When, at sunrise, we were walking down the cow-path to the woods I saw Uncle Eb had a coil of bed cord on his shoulder.
'What's that for?' I asked.
'Wall,' said he, 'goin' t' hev fun anyway. If we can't ketch one thing we'll try another.'
We had great luck that morning and when our basket was near full we came to Deep Hole and made ready for a swim in the water above it. Uncle Eb had looped an end of the bed cord and tied a few pebbles on it with bits of string.
'Now,' said he presently, 'I want t' sink this loop t' the bottom an' pass the end o' the cord under the driftwood so 't we can fetch it 'crost under water.'
There was a big stump, just opposite, with roots running down the bank into the stream. I shoved the line under the drift with a pole and then hauled it across where Uncle Eb drew it up the bank under the stump roots.
'In 'bout half an hour I cal'late Mose Tupper'll be 'long,' he whispered. 'Wisht ye'd put on yer clo's an' lay here back o' the stump an' hold on t' the cord. When ye feel a bite give a yank er two an' haul in like Sam Hill—fifteen feet er more quicker'n scat. Snatch his pole right away from him. Then lay still.'
Uncle Eb left me, shortly, going up stream. It was near an hour before I heard them coming. Uncle Eb was talking in a low tone as they came down the other bank.
'Drop right in there,' he was saying, 'an' let her drag down, through the deep water, deliberate like. Git clus t' the bottom.'
Peering through a screen of bushes I could see an eager look on the unlovely face of Moses. He stood leaning toward the water and jiggling his hook along the bottom. Suddenly I saw Mose jerk and felt the cord move. I gave it a double twitch and began to pull. He held hard for a jiffy and then stumbled and let go yelling like mad. The pole hit the water with a splash and went out of sight like a diving frog. I brought it well under the foam and driftwood. Deep Hole resumed its calm, unruffled aspect. Mose went running toward Uncle Eb.
''S a whale!' he shouted. 'Ripped the pole away quicker'n lightnin'.'
'Where is it?' Uncle Eb asked.
'Tuk it away f'm me,' said Moses. 'Grabbed it jes' like thet,' he added with a violent jerk of his hand.
'What d' he dew with it?' Uncle Eb enquired.
Mose looked thoughtfully at the water and scratched his head, his features all a tremble.
'Dunno,' said he. 'Swallered it mebbe.'
'Mean t' say ye lost hook, line, sinker 'n pole?'
'Hook, line, sinker 'n pole,' he answered mournfully. 'Come nigh haulin' me in tew.'
''Tain't possible,' said Uncle Eb.
Mose expectorated, his hands upon his hips, looking down at the water.
'Wouldn't eggzac'ly say 'twas possible,' he drawled, 'but 'twas a fact.'
'Yer mistaken,' said Uncle Eb.
'No I hain't,' was the answer, 'I tell ye I see it.'
'Then if ye see it the nex' thing ye orter see 's a doctor. There's sumthin' wrong with you sumwheres.'
'Only one thing the matter o' me,' said Mose with a little twinge of remorse. 'I'm jest a natural born perfec' dum fool. Never c'u'd b'lieve there was any sech fish.'
'Nobody ever said there was any sech fish,' said Uncle Eb. 'He's done more t' you 'n he ever done t' me. Never served me no sech trick as thet. If I was you I'd never ask nobody t' b'lieve it 'S a leetle tew much.'
Mose went slowly and picked up his hat. Then he returned to the bank and looked regretfully at the water.
'Never see the beat o' thet,' he went on. 'Never see sech power 'n a fish. Knocks the spots off any fish I ever hearn of.'
'Ye riled him with that big tackle o' yourn,' said Uncle Eb. 'He wouldn't stan' it.'
'Feel jest as if I'd hed holt uv a wil' cat,' said Mose. 'Tuk the hull thing—pole an' all—quicker 'n lightnin'. Nice a bit o' hickory as a man ever see. Gol' durned if I ever heem o' the like o' that, ever.'
He sat down a moment on the bank.
'Got t' rest a minute,' he remarked. 'Feel kind o' wopsy after thet squabble.'
They soon went away. And when Mose told the story of 'the swallered pole' he got the same sort of reputation he had given to others. Only it was real and large and lasting.
'Wha' d' ye think uv it?' he asked, when he had finished.
'Wall,' said Ransom Walker, 'wouldn't want t' say right out plain t' yer face.'
''Twouldn't he p'lite,' said Uncle Eb soberly.
'Sound a leetle ha'sh,' Tip Taylor added.
'Thet fish has jerked the fear o' God out o' ye—thet's the way it looks t' me,' said Carlyle Barber.
'Yer up 'n the air, Mose,' said another. 'Need a sinker on ye.' They bullied him—they talked him down, demurring mildly, but firmly.
'Tell ye what I'll do,' said Mose sheepishly, 'I'll b'lieve you fellers if you'll b'lieve me.'
'What, swop even? Not much!' said one, with emphasis. ''Twouldn't be fair. Ye've ast us t' b'lieve a genuwine out 'n out impossibility.'
Mose lifted his hat and scratched his head thoughtfully. There was a look of embarrassment in his face.
'Might a ben dreamin',' said he slowly. 'I swear it's gittin' so here 'n this town a feller can't hardly b'lieve himself.'
'Fur 's my experience goes,' said Ransom Walker, 'he'd be a fool 'f he did.'
''Minds me o' the time I went fishin' with Ab Thomas,' said Uncle Eb. 'He ketched an ol' socker the fast thing. I went off by myself 'n got a good sized fish, but 'twant s' big 's hisn. So I tuk 'n opened his mouth n poured in a lot o' fine shot. When I come back Ab he looked at my fish 'n begun t' brag. When we weighed 'em mine was a leetle heavier.
'“What!” says he. “'Tain't possible thet leetle cuss uv a trout 's heavier 'n mine.”
''Tis sarrin,' I said.
'“Dummed deceivin' business,” said he as he hefted 'em both. “Gittin' so ye can't hardly b'lieve the stillyards.”'
Chapter 11
The fifth summer was passing since we came down Paradise Road—the dog, Uncle Eb and I. Times innumerable I had heard my good old friend tell the story of our coming west until its every incident was familiar to me as the alphabet. Else I fear my youthful memory would have served me poorly for a chronicle of my childhood so exact and so extended as this I have written. Uncle Eb's hair was white now and the voices of the swift and the panther had grown mild and tremulous and unsatisfactory and even absurd. Time had tamed the monsters of that imaginary wilderness and I had begun to lose my respect for them. But one fear had remained with me as I grew older—the fear of the night man. Every boy and girl in the valley trembled at the mention of him. Many a time I had held awake in the late evening to hear the men talk of him before they went asleep—Uncle Eb and Tip Taylor. I remember a night when Tip said, in a low awesome tone, that he was a ghost. The word carried into my soul the first thought of its great and fearful mystery.
'Years and years ago,' said he, 'there was a boy by the name of Nehemiah Brower. An' he killed another boy, once, by accident an' run away an' was drownded.'
'Drownded!' said Uncle Eb. 'How?'
'In the ocean,' the first answered gaping. 'Went away off 'round the world an' they got a letter that said he was drownded on his way to Van Dieman's Land.'
'To Van Dieman's Land!'
'Yes, an some say the night man is the ghost o' the one he killed.'
I remember waking that night and hearing excited whispers at the window near my bed. It was very dark in the room and at first I could not tell who was there.
'Don't you see him?' Tip whispered.
'Where?' I heard Uncle Be ask
'Under the pine trees—see him move.'
At that I was up at the window myself and could plainly see the dark figure of a man standing under the little pine below us.
'The night man, I guess,' said Uncle Be, 'but he won't do no harm. Let him alone; he's going' away now.'
We saw him disappear behind the trees and then we got back into our beds again. I covered my head with the bedclothes and said a small prayer for the poor night man.
And in this atmosphere of mystery and adventure, among the plain folk of Faraway, whose care of me when I was in great need, and whose love of me always, I count among the priceless treasures of God's providence, my childhood passed. And the day came near when I was to begin to play my poor part in the world.
BOOK TWO
Chapter 12
It was a time of new things—that winter when I saw the end of my fifteenth year. Then I began to enjoy the finer humours of life in Faraway—to see with understanding; and by God's grace—to feel.
The land of play and fear and fable was now far behind me and I had begun to feel the infinite in the ancient forest' in the everlasting hills, in the deep of heaven, in all the ways of men. Hope Brower was now near woman grown. She had a beauty of face and form that was the talk of the countryside. I have travelled far and seen many a fair face hut never one more to my eye. I have heard men say she was like a girl out of a story-book those days.
Late years something had come between us. Long ago we had fallen out of each other's confidence, and ever since she had seemed to shun me. It was the trip in the sledgehouse that' years after, came up between us and broke our childish intimacy. Uncle Be had told, before company, how she had kissed me that day and bespoke me for a husband, and while the others laughed loudly she had gone out of the room crying. She would have little to say to me then. I began to play with boys and she with girls. And it made me miserable to hear the boys a bit older than I gossip of her beauty and accuse each other of the sweet disgrace of love.
But I must hasten to those events in Faraway that shaped our destinies. And first comes that memorable night when I had the privilege of escorting Hope to the school lyceum where the argument of Jed Feary—poet of the hills—fired my soul with an ambition that has remained with me always.
Uncle Be suggested that I ask Hope to go with me.
'Prance right up to her,' he said, 'an' say you'd be glad of the pleasure of her company.
It seemed to me a very dubious thing to do. I looked thoughtful and turned red in the face.
'Young man,' he continued, 'the boy thet's 'fraid o' women'll never hev whiskers.'
'How's that?' I enquired.
'Be scairt t' death,' he answered,' 'fore they've hed time t' start Ye want t' step right up t' the rack jes' if ye'd bought an' paid fer yerself an' was proud o' yer bargain.'
I took his advice and when I found Hope alone in the parlour I came and asked her, very awkwardly as I now remember, to go with me.
She looked at me, blushing, and said she would ask her mother.
And she did, and we walked to the schoolhouse together that evening, her hand holding my arm, timidly, the most serious pair that ever struggled with the problem of deportment on such an occasion. I was oppressed with a heavy sense of responsibility in every word I uttered.
Ann Jane Foster, known as 'Scooter Jane', for her rapid walk and stiff carriage, met us at the corners on her way to the schoolhouse.
'Big turn out I guess,' said she. 'Jed Feary 'n' Squire Town is comin' over from Jingleville an' all the big guns'll be there. I love t' hear Jed Feary speak, he's so techin'.'
Ann Jane was always looking around for some event likely to touch her feelings. She went to every funeral in Faraway and, when sorrow was scarce in her own vicinity, journeyed far in quest of it.
'Wouldn't wonder 'f the fur flew when they git t' going',' she remarked, and then hurried on, her head erect, her body motionless, her legs flying. Such energy as she gave to the pursuit of mourning I have never seen equalled in any other form of dissipation.
The schoolhouse was nearly full of people when we came in. The big boys were wrestling in the yard; men were lounging on the rude seats, inside, idly discussing crops and cattle and lapsing into silence, frequently, that bore the signs both of expectancy and reflection. Young men and young women sat together on one side of the house whispering and giggling. Alone among them was the big and eccentric granddaughter of Mrs Bisnette, who was always slapping some youngster for impertinence. Jed Feary and Squire Town sat together behind a pile of books, both looking very serious. The long hair and beard of the old poet were now white and his form bent with age. He came over and spoke to us and took a curl of Hope's hair in his stiffened fingers and held it to the lamplight.
'What silky gold!' he whispered.' 'S a skein o' fate, my dear girl!'
Suddenly the schoolteacher rapped on the desk and bade us come to order and Ransom Walker was called to the chair.
'Thet there is talent in Faraway township,' he said, having reluctantly come to the platform, 'and talent of the very highest order, no one can deny who has ever attended a lyceum at the Howard schoolhouse. I see evidences of talent in every face before me. And I wish to ask what are the two great talents of the Yankee—talents that made our forefathers famous the world over? I pause for an answer.'
He had once been a schoolmaster and that accounted for his didactic style.
'What are the two great talents of the Yankee?' he repeated, his hands clasped before him.
'Doughnuts an' pie,' said Uncle Be who sat in a far corner.
'No sir,' Mr Walker answered, 'there's some hev a talent fer sawin' wood, but we don't count that. It's war an' speakin', they are the two great talents of the Yankee. But his greatest talent is the gift o' gab. Give him a chance t' talk it over with his enemy an' he'll lick 'im without a fight. An' when his enemy is another Yankee—why, they both git licked, jest as it was in the case of the man thet sold me lightnin' rods. He was sorry he done it before I got through with him. If we did not encourage this talent in our sons they would be talked to death by our daughters. Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me pleasure t' say that the best speakers in Faraway township have come here t' discuss the important question:
'Resolved, that intemperance has caused more misery than war?
'I call upon Moses Tupper to open for the affirmative.'
Moses, as I have remarked, had a most unlovely face with a thin and bristling growth of whiskers. In giving him features Nature had been generous to a fault. He had a large red nose, and a mouth vastly too big for any proper use. It was a mouth fashioned for odd sayings. He was well to do and boasted often that he was a self-made man. Uncle Be used to say that if Mose Tupper had had the 'makin' uv himself he'd oughter done it more careful.'
I remember not much of the speech he made, but the picture of him, as he rose on tiptoe and swung his arms like a man fighting bees, and his drawling tones are as familiar as the things of yesterday.
'Gentlemen an' ladies,' said he presently, 'let me show you a pictur'. It is the drunkard's child. It is hungry an' there ain't no food in its home. The child is poorer'n a straw-fed hoss. 'Tain't hed a thing t' eat since day before yistiddy. Pictur' it to yourselves as it comes cryin' to its mother an' says:
'“Ma! Gi' me a piece o' bread an' butter.”
'She covers her face with her apron an' says she, “There am none left, my child.”
'An' bime bye the child comes agin' an' holds up its poor little han's an' says: “Ma! please gi' me a piece O' cake.”
'An' she goes an' looks out O' the winder, er mebbe pokes the fire, an' says: “There am' none left, my child.”
'An' bime bye it comes agin' an' it says: “Please gi' me a little piece O' pie.”
'An' she mebbe flops into a chair an' says, sobbin', “There ain' none left, my child.”
'No pie! Now, Mr Chairman!' exclaimed the orator, as he lifted both hands high above his head, 'If this ain't misery, in God's name, what is it?
'Years ago, when I was a young man, Mr President, I went to a dance one night at the village of Migleyville. I got a toothache, an' the Devil tempted me with whiskey, an' I tuk one glass an' then another an' purty soon I began t' thank I was a mighty hefty sort of a character, I did, an' I stud on a corner an' stumped everybody t' fight with me, an' bime bye an accomanodatin' kind of a chap come along, an' that's all I remember O' what happened. When I come to, my coat tails had been tore off, I'd lost one leg O' my trousers, a bran new silver watch, tew dollars in money, an a pair O' spectacles. When I stud up an' tried t' realise what hed happened I felt jes' like a blind rooster with only one leg an' no tail feathers.'
A roar of laughter followed these frank remarks of Mr Tupper and broke into a storm of merriment when Uncle Eb rose and said:
'Mr President, I hope you see that the misfortunes of our friend was due t' war, an' not to intemperance.'
Mr Tupper was unhorsed. For some minutes he stood helpless or shaking with the emotion that possessed all. Then he finished lamely and sat down.
The narrowness of the man that saw so much where there was so little in his own experience and in the trivial events of his own township was what I now recognise as most valuable to the purpose of this history. It was a narrowness that covered a multitude of people in St Lawrence county in those days.
Jed Feary was greeted with applause and then by respectful silence when he rose to speak. The fame of his verse and his learning had gone far beyond the narrow boundaries of the township in which he lived. It was the biggest thing in the county. Many a poor sinner who had gone out of Faraway to his long home got his first praise in the obituary poem by Jed Feary. These tributes were generally published in the county paper and paid for by the relatives of the deceased at the rate of a dollar a day for the time spent on them, or by a few days of board and lodging glory and consolation that was, alas! too cheap, as one might see by a glance at his forlorn figure. I shall never forget the courtly manner, so strangely in contrast with the rude deportment of other men in that place, with which he addressed the chairman and the people. The drawling dialect of the vicinity that flavoured his conversation fell from him like a mantle as he spoke and the light in his soul shone upon that little company a great light, as I now remember, that filled me with burning thoughts of the world and its mighty theatre of action. The way of my life lay clear before me, as I listened, and its days of toil and the sweet success my God has given me, although I take it humbly and hold it infinitely above my merit. I was to get learning and seek some way of expressing what was in me.
It would ill become me to try to repeat the words of this venerable seer, but he showed that intemperance was an individual sin, while war was a national evil. That one meant often the ruin of a race; the other the ruin of a family; that one was as the ocean, the other as a single drop in its waters. And he told us of the fall of empires and the millions that had suffered the oppression of the conqueror and perished by the sword since Agamemnon.
After the debate a young lady read a literary paper full of clumsy wit, rude chronicles of the countryside, essays on 'Spring', and like topics—the work of the best talent of Faraway. Then came the decision, after which the meeting adjourned.
At the door some other boys tried 'to cut me out'. I came through the noisy crowd, however, with Hope on my arm and my heart full of a great happiness.
'Did you like it?' she asked.
'Very much,' I answered.
'What did you enjoy most?'
'Your company,' I said, with a fine air of gallantry.
'Honestly?'
'Honestly. I want to take you to Rickard's sometime?'
That was indeed a long cherished hope.
'Maybe I won't let you,' she said.
'Wouldn't you?'
'You'd better ask me sometime and see.'
'I shall. I wouldn't ask any other girl.'
'Well,' she added, with a sigh, 'if a boy likes one girl I don't think he ought to have anything to do with other girls. I hate a flirt.'
I happened to hear a footfall in the snow behind us, and looking back saw Ann Jane Foster going slow in easy hearing. She knew all, as we soon found out.
'I dew jes love t' see young folks enjoy themselves,' said she, 'it's entrancin'.'
Coming in at our gate I saw a man going over the wall back of the big stables. The house was dark.
'Did you see the night man?' Elizabeth Brower whispered as I lit the lamp. 'Went through the garden just now. I've been watching him here at the window.'
Chapter 13
The love of labour was counted a great virtue there in Faraway. As for myself I could never put my heart in a hoe handle or in any like tool of toil. They made a blister upon my spirit as well as upon my hands. I tried to find in the sweat of my brow that exalted pleasure of which Mr Greeley had visions in his comfortable retreat on Printing House Square. But unfortunately I had not his point of view.
Hanging in my library, where I may see it as I write, is the old sickle of Uncle Eb. The hard hickory of its handle is worn thin by the grip of his hand. It becomes a melancholy symbol when I remember how also the hickory had worn him thin and bent him low, and how infinitely better than all the harvesting of the sickle was the strength of that man, diminishing as it wore the wood. I cannot help smiling when I look at the sickle and thank of the soft hands and tender amplitude of Mr Greeley.
The great editor had been a playmate of David Brower when they were boys, and his paper was read with much reverence in our home.
'How quick ye can plough a ten-acre lot with a pen,' Uncle Eb used to say when we had gone up to bed after father had been reading aloud from his Tribune.
Such was the power of the press in that country one had but to say of any doubtful thing, 'Seen it in print,' to stop all argument. If there were any further doubt he had only to say that he had read it either in the Tribune or the Bible, and couldn't remember which. Then it was a mere question of veracity in the speaker. Books and other reading were carefully put away for an improbable time of leisure.
'I might break my leg sometime,' said David Brower, 'then they'll come handy.' But the Tribune was read carefully every week.
I have seen David Brower stop and look at me while I have been digging potatoes, with a sober grin such as came to him always after he had swapped 'hosses' and got the worst of it. Then he would show me again, with a little impatience in his manner, how to hold the handle and straddle the row. He would watch me for a moment, turn to Uncle Eb, laugh hopelessly and say: 'Thet boy'll hev to be a minister. He can't work.'
But for Elizabeth Brower it might have gone hard with me those days. My mind was always on my books or my last talk with Jed Feary, and she shared my confidence and fed my hopes and shielded me as much as possible from the heavy work. Hope had a better head for mathematics than I, and had always helped me with my sums, but I had a better memory and an aptitude in other things that kept me at the head of most of my classes. Best of all at school I enjoyed the 'compositions'—I had many thoughts, such as they were, and some facility of expression, I doubt not, for a child. Many chronicles of the countryside came off my pen—sketches of odd events and characters there in Faraway. These were read to the assembled household. Elizabeth Brower would sit looking gravely down at me, as I stood by her knees reading, in those days of my early boyhood. Uncle Eb listened with his head turned curiously, as if his ear were cocked for coons. Sometimes he and David Brower would slap their knees and laugh heartily, whereat my foster mother would give them a quick glance and shake her head. For she was always fearful of the day when she should see in her children the birth of vanity, and sought to put it off as far as might be. Sometimes she would cover her mouth to hide a smile, and, when I had finished, look warningly at the rest, and say it was good, for a little boy. Her praise never went further, and indeed all those people hated flattery as they did the devil and frowned upon conceit She said that when the love of flattery got hold of one he would lie to gain it.
I can see this slender, blue-eyed woman as I write. She is walking up and down beside her spinning-wheel. I can hear the dreary buz-z-z-z of the spindle as she feeds it with the fleecy ropes. That loud crescendo echoes in the still house of memory. I can hear her singing as she steps forward and slows the wheel and swings the cradle with her foot:
'On the other side of Jordan,
In the sweet fields of Eden,
Where the tree of Life is blooming,
There is rest for you.
She lays her hand to the spokes again and the roar of the spindle drowns her voice.
All day, from the breakfast hour to supper time, I have heard the dismal sound of the spinning as she walked the floor, content to sing of rest but never taking it.
Her home was almost a miracle of neatness. She could work with no peace of mind until the house had been swept and dusted. A fly speck on the window was enough to cloud her day. She went to town with David now and then—not oftener than once a quarter—and came back ill and exhausted. If she sat in a store waiting for David, while he went to mill or smithy, her imagination gave her no rest. That dirt abhorring mind of hers would begin to clean the windows, and when that was finished it would sweep the floor and dust the counters. In due course it would lower the big chandelier and take out all the lamps and wash the chimneys with soap and water and rub them till they shone. Then, if David had not come, it would put in the rest of its time on the woodwork. With all her cleaning I am sure the good woman kept her soul spotless. Elizabeth Brower believed in goodness and the love of God, and knew no fear. Uncle Eb used to say that wherever Elizabeth Brower went hereafter it would have to be clean and comfortable.
Elder Whitmarsh came often to dinner of a Sunday, when he and Mrs Brower talked volubly about the Scriptures, he taking a sterner view of God than she would allow. He was an Englishman by birth, who had settled in Faraway because there he had found relief for a serious affliction of asthma.
He came over one noon in the early summer, that followed the event of our last chapter, to tell us of a strawberry party that evening at the White Church.
'I've had a wonderful experience,' said he as he took a seat on the piazza, while Mrs Brower came and sat near him. 'I've discovered a great genius—a wandering fiddler, and I shall try to bring him to play for us.'
'A fiddler! why, Elder!' said she, 'you astonish me!'
'Nothing but sacred music,' he said, lifting his hand. 'I heard him play all the grand things today—“Rock of Ages”, “Nearer My God, to Thee”, “The Marseillaise” and “Home, Sweet Home”. Lifted me off my feet! I've heard the great masters in New York and London, but no greater player than this man.'
'Where is he and where did he come from?'
'He's at my house now,' said the good man. 'I found him this morning. He stood under a tree by the road side, above Northrup's. As I came near I heard the strains of “The Marseillaise”. For more than an hour I sat there listening. It was wonderful, Mrs Brower, wonderful! The poor fellow is eccentric. He never spoke to me. His clothes were dusty and worn. But his music went to my heart like a voice from Heaven. When he had finished I took him home with me, gave him food and a new coat, and left him sleeping. I want you to come over, and be sure to bring Hope. She must sing for us.'
'Mr Brower will be tired out, but perhaps the young people may go,' she said, looking at Hope and me.
My heart gave a leap as I saw in Hope's eyes a reflection of my own joy. In a moment she came and gave her mother a sounding kiss and asked her what she should wear.
'I must look my best, mother,' she said.
'My child,' said the elder, 'it's what you do and not what you wear that's important.'
'They're both important, Elder,' said my foster mother. You should teach your people the duty of comeliness. They honour their Maker when they look their best.'
The spirit of liberalism was abroad in the sons of the Puritans. In Elizabeth Brower the ardent austerity of her race had been freely diluted with humour and cheerfulness and human sympathy. It used to be said of Deacon Hospur, a good but lazy man, that he was given both to prayer and profanity. Uncle Eb, who had once heard the deacon swear, when the latter had been bruised by a kicking cow, said that, so far as he knew, the deacon never swore except when 'twas necessary. Indeed, most of those men had, I doubt not, too little of that fear of God in them that characterised their fathers. And yet, as shall appear, there were in Faraway some relics of a stern faith.
Hope came out in fine feather, and although I have seen many grand ladles, gowned for the eyes of kings, I have never seen a lovelier figure than when, that evening, she came tripping down to the buggy. It was three miles to the white Church, and riding over in the twilight I laid the plan of my life before her. She sat a moment in silence after I had finished.
'I am going away, too,' she remarked, with a sigh.
'Going away!' I said with some surprise, for in all my plans I had secretly counted on returning in grand style to take her back with me.
'Going away,' said she decisively.
'It isn't nice for girls to go away from home,' I said.
'It isn't nice for boys, either,' said she.
We had come to the church, its open doors and windows all aglow with light. I helped her out at the steps, and hitched my horse under the long shed. We entered together and made our way through the chattering crowd to the little cloakroom in one corner. Elder Whitmarsh arrived in a moment and the fiddler, a short, stout, stupid-looking man, his fiddle in a black box under his arm, followed him to the platform that had been cleared of its pulpit The stranger stood staring vacantly at the crowd until the elder motioned him to a chair, when he obeyed with the hesitating, blind obedience of a dog. Then the elder made a brief prayer, and after a few remarks flavoured with puns, sacred and immemorial as the pulpit itself, started a brief programme of entertainment. A broad smile marked the beginning of his lighter mood. His manner seemed to say: 'Now, ladies and gentlemen, if you will give good heed, you shall see I can be witty on occasion.'
Then a young man came to the platform and recited, after which Hope went forward and sang 'The Land o' the Leal' with such spirit that I can feel my blood go faster even now as I thank of it, and of that girlish figure crowned with a glory of fair curls that fell low upon her waist and mingled with the wild pink roses at her bosom. The fiddler sat quietly as if he heard nothing until she began to sing, when he turned to look at her. The elder announced, after the ballad, that he had brought with him a wonderful musician who would favour them with some sacred music. He used the word 'sacred' because he had observed, I suppose, that certain of the 'hardshells' were looking askance at the fiddle. There was an awkward moment in which the fiddler made no move or sign of intelligence. The elder stepped near him and whispered. Getting no response, he returned to the front of the platform and said: 'We shall first resign ourselves to social intercourse and the good things the ladies have provided.'
Mountains of frosted cake reared their snowy summits on a long table, and the strawberries, heaped in saucers around them, were like red foothills. I remember that while they were serving us Hope and I were introduced to one Robert Livingstone—a young New Yorker, stopping at the inn near by, on his way to the big woods. He was a handsome fellow, with such a fine air of gallantry and so prig in fashionable clothes that he made me feel awkward and uncomfortable.
'I have never heard anything more delightful than that ballad,' he said to Hope. 'You must have your voice trained—you really must. It will make a great name for you.'
I wondered then why his words hurt me to the soul. The castle of my dreams had fallen as he spoke. A new light came into her face—I did not know then what it meant.
'Will you let me call upon you before I leave—may I?' He turned to me while she stood silent. 'I wish to see your father,' he added.
'Certainly,' she answered, blushing, 'you may come—if you care to come.
The musician had begun to thrum the strings of his violin. We turned to look at him. He still sat in his chair, his ear bent to the echoing chamber of the violin. Soon he laid his bow to the strings and a great chord hushed every whisper and died into a sweet, low melody, in which his thought seemed to be feeling its way through sombre paths of sound. The music brightened, the bow went faster, and suddenly 'The Girl I Left Behind Me' came rushing off the strings. A look of amazement gathered on the elder's face and deepened into horror. It went from one to another as if it had been a dish of ipecac. Ann Jane Foster went directly for her things, and with a most unchristian look hurried out into the night. Half a dozen others followed her, while the unholy music went on, its merry echoes rioting in that sacred room, hallowed with memories of the hour of conviction, of the day of mourning, of the coming of the bride in her beauty.
Deacon Hospur rose and began to drawl a sort of apology, when the player stopped suddenly and shot an oath at him. The deacon staggered under the shock of it. His whiskers seemed to lift a bit like the hair of a cat under provocation. Then he tried to speak, but only stuttered helplessly a moment as if his tongue were oscillating between silence and profanity, and was finally pulled down by his wife, who had laid hold of his coat tails. If it had been any other man than Deacon Hospur it would have gone badly with the musician then and there, but we boys saw his discomfiture with positive gratitude. In a moment all rose, the dishes were gathered up, and many hurried away with indignant glances at the poor elder, who was busy taking counsel with some of the brethren.
I have never seen a more pathetic figure than that of poor Nick Goodall as he sat there thrumming the strings of which he was a Heaven-born master. I saw him often after that night—a poor, halfwitted creature, who wandered from inn to inn there in the north country, trading music for hospitality. A thoroughly intelligible sentence never passed his lips, but he had a great gift of eloquence in music. Nobody knew whence he had come or any particular of his birth or training or family. But for his sullen temper, that broke into wild, unmeaning profanity at times, Nick Goodall would have made fame and fortune.
He stared at the thinning crowd as if he had begun dimly to comprehend the havoc he had wrought. Then he put on his hat, came down off the platform, and shuffled out of the open door, his violin in one hand, its box in the other. There were not more than a dozen of us who followed him into the little churchyard. The moon was rising, and the shadows of lilac and rose bush, of slab and monument lay long across the green mounds. Standing there between the graves of the dead he began to play. I shall never forget that solemn calling of the silver string:
'Come ye disconsolate where'er ye languish.'
It was a new voice, a revelation, a light where darkness had been, to Hope and to me. We stood listening far into the night, forgetful of everything, even the swift flight of the hours.
Loud, impassioned chords rose into the moonlit sky and sank to a faint whisper of melody, when we could hear the gossip of the birds in the belfry and under the eaves; trembling tones of supplication, wailing notes of longing and regret swept through the silent avenues of the churchyard, thrilling us with their eloquence. For the first time we heard the music of Handel, of Mendelssohn, of Paganini, and felt its power, then knowing neither name nor theme. Hour by hour he played on for the mere joy of it. When we shook hands with the elder and tiptoed to the buggy he was still playing. We drove slowly and listened a long way down the road. I could hear the strains of that ballad, then new to me, but now familiar, growing fainter in the distance:
O ye'll tak' the high road an' I'll tak' the low road An' I'll be in Scotland afore ye; But me an' me true love will never meet again On the bonnie, bonnie banks o' Loch Lomond.
what connection it may have had with the history of poor Nick Goodall [*1] I have often wondered.
[*1] Poor Nick Coodall died in the almshouse of Jefferson
County some thirty years ago. A better account of this
incident was widely printed at that time.
As the last note died into silence I turned to Hope, and she was crying.
'Why are you crying?' I asked, in as miserable a moment as I have ever known.
'It's the music,' she said.
We both sat in silence, then, hearing only the creak of the buggy as it sped over the sandy road. Well ahead of us I saw a man who suddenly turned aside, vaulting over the fence and running into the near woods.
'The night man!' I exclaimed, pulling up a moment to observe him.
Then a buggy came in sight, and presently we heard a loud 'hello' from David Brower, who, worried by our long stay, had come out in quest of us.
Chapter 14
Hope's love of music became a passion after that night. Young Mr Livingstone, 'the city chap' we had met at the church, came over next day. His enthusiasm for her voice gave us all great hope of it. David Brower said he would take her away to the big city when she was older. They soon decided to send her in September to the big school in Hillsborough.
'She's got t' be a lady,' said David Brower, as he drew her into his lap the day we had all discussed the matter. 'She's learnt everything in the 'rithinetic an' geography an' speller. I want her t' learn somethin' more scientific.'
'Now you're talkin',' said Uncle Eb. 'There's lots o' things ye can't learn by cipherin'. Nuthin's too good fer Hope.'
'I'd like t' know what you men expect of her anyway,' said Elizabeth Brower.
'A high stepper,' said Uncle Eb. 'We want a slick coat, a kind uv a toppy head, an a lot O' ginger. So't when we hitch 'er t' the pole bime bye we shan't be 'shamed o' her.'
'Eggzac'ly,' said David Brower, laughing. 'An' then she shall have the best harness in the market.'
Hope did not seem to comprehend all the rustic metaphors that had been applied to her. A look of puzzled amusement came over her face, and then she ran away into the garden, her hair streaming from under her white sun-bonnet.
'Never see sech a beauty! Beats the world,' said Uncle Eb in a whisper, whereat both David and Elizabeth shook their heads.
'Lord o' mercy! Don't let her know it,' Elizabeth answered, in a low tone. 'She's beginning to have-'
Just then Hope came by us leading her pet filly that had been born within the month. Immediately Mrs Brower changed the subject.
'To have what?' David enquired as soon as the girl was out of hearing.
'Suspicions,' said Elizabeth mournfully. 'Spends a good deal of her time at the looking-glass. I think the other girls tell her and then that young Livingstone has been turning her head.'
'Turning her head!' he exclaimed.
'Turning her head,' she answered. 'He sat here the other day and deliberately told her that he had never seen such a complexion and such lovely hair.'
Elizabeth Brower mocked his accent with a show of contempt that feebly echoed my own emotions.
'That's the way o' city folks, mother,' said David.
'It's a bad way,' she answered. 'I do not thank he ought to come here. Hope's a child yet, and we mustn't let her get notions.'
'I'll tell him not t' come any more,' said David, as he and Uncle Eb rose to go to their work.'
'I'm 'fraid she ought not to go away to school for a year yet,' said Elizabeth, a troubled look in her face.
'Pshaw, mother! Ye can't keep her under yer wing alwus,' said he. 'Well, David, you know she is very young and uncommonly—' she hesitated.
'Han'some,' said he, 'we might as well own up if she is our child.'
'If she goes away,' continued Elizabeth, 'some of us ought t' go with her.'
Then Uncle Eb and David went to their work in the fields and I to my own task That very evening they began to talk of renting the farm and going to town with the children.
I had a stent of cording wood that day and finished it before two o'clock Then I got my pole of mountain ash, made hook and line ready, dug some worms and went fishing. I cared not so much for the fishing as for the solitude of the woods. I had a bit of think to do. In the thick timber there was a place where Tinkle brook began to hurry and break into murmurs on a pebble bar, as if its feet were tickled. A few more steps and it burst into a peal of laughter that lasted half the year as it tumbled over narrow shelves of rock into a foamy pool. Many a day I had sat fishing for hours at the little fall under a birch tree, among the brakes and moss. No ray of sunlight ever got to the dark water below me—the lair of many a big fish that had yielded to the temptation of my bait. Here I lay in the cool shade while a singular sort of heart sickness came over me. A wild partridge was beating his gong in the near woods all the afternoon. The sound of the water seemed to break in the tree-tops and fall back upon me. I had lain there thinking an hour or more when I caught the jar of approaching footsteps. Looking up I saw Jed Feary coming through the bushes, pole in hand.
'Fishin'?' he asked.
'Only thinking,' I answered.
'Couldn't be in better business,' said he as he sat down beside me.
More than once he had been my father confessor and I was glad he had come.
'In love?' he asked. 'No boy ever thinks unless he's in love.'
'In trouble,' said I.
'Same thing,' he answered, lighting his pipe. 'Love is trouble with a bit of sugar in it—the sweetest trouble a man can have. What's the matter?'
'It's a great secret,' I said, 'I have never told it. I am in love.'
'Knew it,' he said, puffing at his pipe and smiling in a kindly way. 'Now let's put in the trouble.'
'She does not love me,' I answered.
'Glad of it,' he remarked. 'I've got a secret t, tell you.'
'What's that?' I enquired.
'Wouldn't tell anybody else for the world, my boy,' he said, 'it's between you an' me.'
'Between you an' me,' I repeated.
'Well,' he said, you're a fool.'
'That's no secret,' I answered much embarrassed.
'Yes it is,' he insisted, 'you're smart enough an' ye can have most anything in this world if ye take the right road. Ye've grown t' be a great big strapping fellow but you're only—sixteen?'
'That's all,' I said mournfully.
'Ye're as big a fool to go falling in love as I'd be. Ye're too young an' I'm too old. I say to you, wait. Ye've got to go t' college.'
'College!' I exclaimed, incredulously.
'Yes! an' thet's another secret,' said he. I tol' David Brower what I thought o' your writing thet essay on bugs in pertickier—an' I tol' 'im what people were sayin' o' your work in school.'
'What d' he say?' I asked.
'Said Hope had tol' him all about it—that she was as proud o' you as she was uv her curls, an' I believe it. “Well,” says I, “y' oughter sen' that boy t' college.” “Goin' to,” says he. “He'll go t' the 'Cademy this fall if he wants to. Then he can go t' college soon's he's ready.” Threw up my hat an' shouted I was that glad.'
As he spoke the old man's face kindled with enthusiasm. In me he had one who understood him, who saw truth in his thought, music in his verse, a noble simplicity in his soul. I took his hand in mine and thanked him heartily. Then we rose and came away together.
'Remember,' he said, as we parted at the corner, 'there's a way laid out fer you. In God's time it will lead to every good thing you desire. Don't jump over the fence. Don't try t' pass any milestun 'fore ye've come to it. Don't mope. Keep yer head cool with philosophy, yer feet warm with travel an' don't worry bout yer heart. It won't turn t' stun if ye do keep it awhile. Allwus hev enough of it about ye t' do business with. Goodbye!'
Chapter 15
Gerald Brower, who was a baby when I came to live at Faraway, and was now eleven, had caught a cold in seed time, and he had never quite recovered. His coughing had begun to keep him awake, and one night it brought alarm to the whole household. Elizabeth Brower was up early in the morning and called Uncle Eb, who went away for the doctor as soon as light came. We ate our breakfast in silence. Father and mother and Grandma Bisnette spoke only in low tones and somehow the anxiety in their faces went to my heart. Uncle Eb returned about eight o'clock and said the doctor was coming. Old Doctor Bigsby was a very great man in that country. Other physicians called him far and wide for consultation. I had always regarded him with a kind of awe intensified by the aroma of his drugs and the gleam of his lancet. Once I had been his patient and then I had trembled at his approach. When he took my little wrist in his big hand, I remember with what reluctance I stuck out my quivering tongue, black, as I feared with evidences of prevarication.
He was a picture for a painter man as he came that morning erect in his gig. Who could forget the hoary majesty of his head—his 'stovepipe' tilted back, his white locks flying about his ears? He had a long nose, a smooth-shaven face and a left eye that was a trifle turned. His thoughts were generally one day behind the calendar. Today he seemed to be digesting the affairs of yesterday. He was, therefore, absentminded, to a degree that made no end of gossip. If he came out one day with shoe-strings flying, in his remorse the next he would forget his collar; if one told him a good joke today, he might not seem to hear it, but tomorrow he would take it up in its turn and shake with laughter.
I remember how, that morning after noting the symptoms of his patient, he sat a little in silent reflection. He knew that colour in the cheek, that look in the eye—he had seen so much of it. His legs were crossed and one elbow thrown carelessly over the back of his chair. We all sat looking at him anxiously. In a moment he began chewing hard on his quid of tobacco. Uncle Eb pushed the cuspidor a bit nearer. The doctor expectorated freely and resumed his attitude of reflection. The clock ticked loudly, the patient sighed, our anxiety increased. Uncle Eb spoke to father, in a low tone, whereupon the doctor turned suddenly, with a little grunt of enquiry, and seeing he was not addressed, sank again into thoughtful repose. I had begun to fear the worst when suddenly the hand of the doctor swept the bald peak of benevolence at the top of his head. Then a smile began to spread over his face. It was as if some feather of thought had begun to tickle him. In a moment his head was nodding with laughter that brought a great sense of relief to all of us. In a slow, deliberate tone he began to speak:
'I was over t' Rat Tupper's t'other day,' said he, 'Rat was sitting with me in the door yard. Purty soon a young chap came in, with a scythe, and asked if he might use the grindstun. He was a new hired man from somewhere near. He didn't know Rat, an' Rat didn't know him. So Rat o' course had t' crack one o' his jokes.
'“May I use yer grindstun?” said the young feller.
'“Dunno,” said Rat, “I'm only the hired man here. Go an' ask Mis' Tupper.”
'The ol' lady had overheard him an' so she says t' the young feller, “Yes—ye can use the grindstun. The hired man out there'll turn it fer ye.”
'Rat see he was trapped, an' so he went out under the plum tree, where the stun was, an' begun t' turn. The scythe was dull an' the young feller bore on harder'n wuz reely decent fer a long time. Rat begun t' git very sober lookin'.
'“Ain't ye 'bout done,” said he.
'“Putty nigh,” said the young feller bearin' down a leetle harder all the time.
'Rat made the stun go faster. Putty soon he asked agin, “Ain't ye done yit?”
'“Putty nigh!” says the other, feeling o' the edge.
'“I'm done,” said Rat, an' he let go o' the handle. “I dunno 'bout the scythe but I'm a good deal sharper'n I wuz.”
'“You're the hired man here ain't ye?” said the young feller.
'“No, I ain't,” said Rat. “'D rather own up t' bein' a liar than turn that stun another minnit.”
As soon as he was fairly started with this droll narrative the strain of the situation was relieved. We were all laughing as much at his deliberate way of narration as at the story itself.
Suddenly he turned to Elizabeth Brower and said, very soberly, 'Will you bring me some water in a glass?'
Then he opened his chest of medicine, made some powders and told us how to give them.
'In a few days I would take him into the big woods for a while,' he said. 'See how it agrees with him.'
Then he gathered up his things and mother went with him to the gig.
Humour was one of the specifics of Doctor Bigsby. He was always a poor man. He had a way of lumping his bills, at about so much, in settlement and probably never kept books. A side of pork paid for many a long journey. He came to his death riding over the hills one bitter day not long after the time of which I write, to reach a patient.
The haying over, we made ready for our trip into the woods. Uncle Eb and Tip Taylor, who knew the forest, and myself, were to go with Gerald to Blueberry Lake. We loaded our wagon with provisions one evening and made ready to be off at the break of day.
Chapter 16
I remember how hopefully we started that morning with Elizabeth Brower and Hope waving their handkerchiefs on the porch and David near them whittling. They had told us what to do and what not to do over and over again. I sat with Gerald on blankets that were spread over a thick mat of hay. The morning air was sweet with the odour of new hay and the music of the bobolink. Uncle Eb and Tip Taylor sang merrily as we rode over the hills.
When we entered the shade of the big forest Uncle Eb got out his rifle and loaded it. He sat a long time whispering and looking eagerly for game to right and left. He was still a boy. One could see evidences of age only in his white hair and beard and wrinkled brow. He retained the little tufts in front of his ears, and lately had grown a silver crescent of thin and silky hair that circled his throat under a bare chin. Young as I was I had no keener relish for a holiday than he. At noon we halted beside a brook and unhitched our horses. Then we caught some fish, built a fire and cooked them, and brewed our tea. At sunset we halted at Tuley Pond, looking along its reedy margin, under purple tamaracks, for deer. There was a great silence, here in the deep of the woods, and Tip Taylor's axe, while he peeled the bark for our camp, seemed to fill the wilderness with echoes. It was after dark when the shanty was covered and we lay on its fragrant mow of balsam and hemlock. The great logs that we had rolled in front of our shanty were set afire and shortly supper was cooking.
Gerald had stood the journey well. Uncle Eb and he stayed in while Tip and I got our jack ready and went off in quest of a dugout He said Bill Ellsworth had one hid in a thicket on the south side of Tuley. We found it after an hour's tramp near by. It needed a little repairing but we soon made it water worthy, and then took our seats, he in the stern, with the paddle, and I in the bow with the gun. Slowly and silently we clove a way through the star-sown shadows. It was like the hushed and mystic movement of a dream. We seemed to be above the deep of heaven, the stars below us. The shadow of the forest in the still water looked like the wall of some mighty castle with towers and battlements and myriads of windows lighted for a fete. Once the groan of a nighthawk fell out of the upper air with a sound like that of a stone striking in water. I thought little of the deer Tip was after. His only aim in life was the one he got with a gun barrel. I had forgotten all but the beauty of the scene. Suddenly Tip roused me by laying his hand to the gunwale and gently shaking the dugout. In the dark distance, ahead of us, I could hear the faint tinkle of dripping water. Then I knew a deer was feeding not far away and that the water was falling from his muzzle. When I opened my jack we were close upon him. His eyes gleamed. I shot high above the deer that went splashing ashore before I had pulled my trigger. After the roar of the gun had got away, in the distant timber, Tip mentioned a place abhorred of all men, turned and paddled for the landing.
'Could 'a killed 'im with a club,' said he snickering. 'Guess he must a looked putty tall didn't he?'
'Why?' I asked.
'Cos ye aimed into the sky,' said he. 'Mebbe ye thought he was a bird.'
'My hand trembled a little,' said I.
''Minds me of Bill Barber,' he said in a half-whisper, as he worked his paddle, chuckling with amusement.
'How's that?' I asked.
'Nothin' safe but the thing he shoots at,' said he. 'Terrible bad shot. Kills a cow every time he goes huntin'.'
Uncle Eb was stirring the fire when we came whispering into camp, and Gerald lay asleep under the blankets.
'Willie couldn't hit the broadside of a bam,' said Tip. 'He don't take to it nat'ral.'
'Killin' an' book learnin' don't often go together,' said Uncle Eb.
I turned in by the side of Gerald and Uncle Eb went off with Tip for another trip in the dugout. The night was chilly but the fire flooded our shanty with its warm glow. What with the light, and the boughs under us, and the strangeness of the black forest we got little sleep. I heard the gun roar late in the night, and when I woke again Uncle Eb and Tip Taylor were standing over the fire in the chilly grey of the morning. A dead deer hung on the limb of a tree near by. They began dressing it while Gerald and I went to the spring for water, peeled potatoes, and got the pots boiling. After a hearty breakfast we packed up, and were soon on the road again, reaching Blueberry Lake before noon. There we hired a boat of the lonely keeper of the reservoir, found an abandoned camp with an excellent bark shanty and made ourselves at home.
That evening in camp was one to be remembered. An Thomas, the guide who tended the reservoir, came over and sat beside our fire until bedtime. He had spent years in the wilderness going out for nothing less important than an annual spree at circus time. He eyed us over, each in turn, as if he thought us all very rare and interesting.
'Many bears here?' Uncle Eb enquired.
'More plenty 'n human bein's,' he answered, puffing lazily at his pipe with a dead calm in his voice and manner that I have never seen equalled except in a tropic sea.
'See 'em often?' I asked.
He emptied his pipe, striking it on his palm until the bowl rang, without answering. Then he blew into the stem with great violence.
'Three or four 'n a summer, mebbe,' he said at length.
'Ever git sassy?' Uncle Eb asked.
He whipped a coal out of the ashes then and lifted it in his fingers to the bowl of his pipe.
'Never real sassy,' he said between vigourous puffs. 'One stole a ham off my pyazz las' summer; Al Fifield brought 't in fer me one day—smelt good too! I kep' savin' uv it thinkin' I'd enjoy it all the more when I did hev it. One day I went off cuttin' timber an' stayed 'til mos' night. Comin' home I got t' thinkin' o' thet ham, an' made up my mind I'd hev some fer supper. The more I thought uv it the faster I hurried an' when I got hum I was hungrier'n I'd been fer a year. When I see the ol' bear's tracks an' the empty peg where the ham had hung I went t' work an' got mad. Then I started after thet bear. Tracked 'im over yender, up Cat Mountin'.'
Here Ab paused. He had a way of stopping always at the most interesting point to puff at his pipe. It looked as if he were getting up steam for another sentence and these delays had the effect of 'continued in our next'.
'Kill 'im?' Uncle Eb asked.
'Licked him,' he said.
'Huh!' we remarked incredulously.
'Licked 'im,' he repeated chucking. 'Went into his cave with a sledge stake an' whaled 'im—whaled 'im 'til he run fer his life.'
Whether it was true or not I have never been sure, even to this day, but Ab's manner was at once modest and convincing.
'Should 'a thought he'd 'a rassled with ye,' Uncle Eb remarked.
'Didn't give 'im time,' said Ab, as he took out his knife and began slowly to sharpen a stick.
'Don't never wan' t' rassle with no bear,' he added, 'but hams is too scurce here 'n the woods t' hev 'em tuk away 'fore ye know the taste uv 'em. I ain't never been hard on bears. Don't seldom ever set no traps an' I ain't shot a bear fer mor'n 'n ten year. But they've got t' be decent. If any bear steals my vittles he's goin' t' git cuffed bard.'
Ab's tongue had limbered up at last. His pipe was going well and he seemed to have struck an easy grade. There was a tone of injury and aggrievement in his talk of the bear's ingratitude. He snailed over his whittling as we laughed heartily at the droll effect of it all.
'D'ye ever hear o' the wild man 'at roams 'round'n these woods?' he asked.
'Never did,' said Uncle Eb.
'I've seen 'im more times 'n ye could shake a stick at,' said Ab crossing his legs comfortably and spitting into the fire. 'Kind o' thank he's the same man folks tells uv down 'n Paradise Valley there—'at goes 'round 'n the clearin' after bedtime.'
'The night man!' I exclaimed.
'Guess thet's what they call 'im,' said Ab. 'Curus man! Sometimes I've hed a good squint at 'im off 'n the woods. He's wilder 'n a deer an' I've seen 'im jump over logs, half as high as this shanty, jest as easy as ye 'd hop a twig. Tried t' foller 'im once er twice but tain' no use. He's quicker 'n a wil' cat.'
'What kind of a lookin' man is he?' Tip Taylor asked.
'Great, big, broad-shouldered feller,' said Ab. 'Six feet tall if he's an inch. Hed a kind of a deerskin jacket on when I seen 'im an' breeches an' moccasins made o' some kind o' hide. I recollec' one day I was over on the ridge two mile er more from the Stillwater goin' south. I seen 'im gittin' a drink at the spring there 'n the burnt timber. An' if I ain't mistaken there was a real live panther playin' 'round 'im. If 't wa'n't a panther 'twas pesky nigh it I can tell ye. The critter see me fast an' drew up 'is back. Then the man got up quickerin' a flash. Soon 'she see me—Jeemimey! didn't they move. Never see no human critter run as he did! A big tree hed fell 'cross a lot o' bush right 'n his path. I'll be gol dummed if 'twan't higher 'n my head! But he cleared it—jest as easy as a grasshopper'd go over a straw. I'd like t' know wher he comes from, gol dummed if I wouldn't. He's the consarndest queerest animal 'n these woods.'
Ab emphasised this lucid view of the night man by an animated movement of his fist that held the big hunting knife with which he whittled. Then he emptied his pipe and began cutting more tobacco.
'Some says 'e 's a ghost,' said Tip Taylor, splitting his sentence with a yawn, as he lay on a buffalo robe in the shanty.
'Shucks an' shoestrings!' said Ab, 'he looks too nat'ral. Don't believe no ghost ever wore whiskers an' long hair like his'n. Thet don't hol' t' reason.'
This remark was followed by dead silence. Tip seemed to lack both courage and information with which to prolong the argument.
Gerald had long been asleep and we were all worn out with uphill travelling and the lack of rest. Uncle Eb went out to look after the horses that were tethered near us. Ab rose, looked up through the tree-tops, ventured a guess about the weather, and strode off into the darkness.
We were five days in camp, hunting, fishing, fighting files and picking blueberries. Gerald's cough had not improved at all—it was, if anything, a bit worse than it had been and the worry of that had clouded our holiday. We were not in high spirits when, finally, we decided to break camp the next afternoon.
The morning of our fourth day at Blueberry Uncle Eb and I crossed the lake, at daylight, to fish awhile in Soda Brook and gather orchids then abundant and beautiful in that part of the woods. We headed for camp at noon and were well away from shore when a wild yell rang in the dead timber that choked the wide inlet behind us. I was rowing and stopped the oars while we both looked back at the naked trees, belly deep in the water.
But for the dry limbs, here and there, they would have looked like masts of sunken ships. In a moment another wild whoop came rushing over the water. Thinking it might be somebody in trouble we worked about and pulled for the mouth of the inlet. Suddenly I saw a boat coming in the dead timber. There were three men in it, two of whom were paddling. They yelled like mad men as they caught sight of us, and one of them waved a bottle in the air.
'They're Indians,' said Uncle Eb. 'Drunk as lords. Guess we'd better git out o' the way.'
I put about and with a hearty pull made for the other side of the lake, three miles away. The Indians came after us, their yells echoing in the far forest. Suddenly one of them lifted his rifle, as if taking aim at us, and, bang it went the ball ricocheting across our bows.
'Crazy drunk,' said Uncle Eb, 'an' they're in fer trouble. Pull with all yer might.'
I did that same putting my arms so stiffly to their task I feared the oars would break.
In a moment another ball came splintering the gunwales right between us, but fortunately, well above the water line. Being half a mile from shore I saw we were in great peril. Uncle Eb reached for his rifle, his hand trembling.
'Sink 'em,' I shouted, 'an' do it quick or they'll sink us.'
My old companion took careful aim and his ball hit them right on the starboard bow below the water line. A splash told where it had landed. They stopped yelling. The man in the bow clapped his hat against the side of the boat.
'Guess we've gin 'em a little business t' ten' to,' said Uncle Eb as he made haste to load his rifle.
The Indian at the bow was lifting his rifle again. He seemed to reel as he took aim. He was very slow about it. I kept pulling as I watched him. I saw that their boat was slowly sinking. I had a strange fear that he would hit me in the stomach. I dodged when I saw the flash of his rifle. His ball struck the water, ten feet away from us, and threw a spray into my face.
Uncle Eb had lifted his rifle to shoot again. Suddenly the Indian, who had shot at us, went overboard. In a second they were all in the water, their boat bottom up.
'Now take yer time,' said Uncle Eb coolly, a frown upon his face.
'They'll drown,' said I.
'Don't care if they do, consam 'em,' he answered. 'They're some o' them St Regis devils, an' when they git whisky in 'em they'd jes' soon kill ye as look at ye. They am' no better 'n rats.'
We kept on our way and by and by a wind came up that gave us both some comfort, for we knew it would soon blow them ashore. Ab Thomas had come to our camp and sat with Tip and Gerald when we got there. We told of our adventure and then Ab gave us a bad turn, and a proper appreciation of our luck, by telling us that they were a gang of cut-throats—the worst in the wilderness.
'They'd a robbed ye sure,' he said. 'It's the same gang 'at killed a man on Cat Mountain las' summer, an' I'll bet a dollar on it.'
Tip had everything ready for our journey home. Each day Gerald had grown paler and thinner. As we wrapped him in a shawl and tenderly helped him into the wagon I read his doom in his face. We saw so much of that kind of thing in our stern climate we knew what it meant. Our fun was over. We sat in silence, speeding down the long hills in the fading light of the afternoon. Those few solemn hours in which I heard only the wagon's rumble and the sweet calls of the whip-poor-will-waves of music on a sea of silence-started me in a way of thought which has led me high and low these many years and still invites me. The day was near its end when we got to the first big clearing. From the top of a high hill we could see above the far forest, the red rim of the setting sun, big with winding from the skein of day, that was now flying off the tree-tops in the west.
We stopped to feed the horses and to take a bite of jerked venison, wrapped ourselves warmer, for it was now dunk and chilly, and went on again. The road went mostly downhill, going out of the woods, and we could make good time. It was near midnight when we drove in at our gate. There was a light in the sitting-room and Uncle Eb and I went in with Gerald at once. Elizabeth Brower knelt at the feet of her son, unbuttoned his coat and took off his muffler. Then she put her arms about his neck while neither spoke nor uttered any sound. Both mother and son felt and understood and were silent. The ancient law of God, that rends asunder and makes havoc of our plans, bore heavy on them in that moment, I have no doubt, but neither murmured. Uncle Eb began to pump vigorously at the cistern while David fussed with the fire. We were all quaking inwardly but neither betrayed a sign of it. It is a way the Puritan has of suffering. His emotions are like the deep undercurrents of the sea.
Chapter 17
If I were writing a novel merely I should try to fill it with merriment and good cheer. I should thrust no sorrow upon the reader save that he might feel for having wasted his time. We have small need of manufactured sorrow when, truly, there is so much of the real thing on every side of us. But this book is nothing more nor less than a history, and by the same token it cannot be all as I would have wished it. In October following the events of the last chapter, Gerald died of consumption, having borne a lingering illness with great fortitude. I, who had come there a homeless orphan in a basket, and who, with the God-given eloquence of childhood had brought them to take me to their hearts and the old man that was with me as well, was now the only son left to Elizabeth and David Brower. There were those who called it folly at the time they took us in, I have heard, but he who shall read this history to the end shall see how that kind of folly may profit one or even many here in this hard world.
It was a gloomy summer for all of us. The industry and patience with which Hope bore her trial, night and day, is the sweetest recollection of my youth. It brought to her young face a tender soberness of womanhood—a subtle change of expression that made her all the more dear to me. Every day, rain or shine, the old doctor had come to visit his patient, sometimes sitting an hour and gazing thoughtfully in his face, occasionally asking a question, or telling a quaint anecdote. And then came the end.
The sky was cold and grey in the late autumn and the leaves were drifted deep in the edge of the woodlands when Hope and I went away to school together at Hillsborough. Uncle Eb drove us to our boarding place in town. When we bade him goodbye and saw him driving away, alone in the wagon, we hardly dared look at each other for the tears in our eyes.
David Brower had taken board for us at the house of one Solomon Rollin—universally known as 'Cooky' Rollin; that was one of the first things I learned at the Academy. It seemed that many years ago he had taken his girl to a dance and offered her, in lieu of supper, cookies that he had thoughtfully brought with him. Thus cheaply he had come to life-long distinction.
'You know Rollin's Ancient History, don't you?' the young man asked who sat with me at school that first day.
'Have it at home,' I answered, 'It's in five volumes.'
'I mean the history of Sol Rollin, the man you are boarding with,' said he smiling at me and then he told the story of the cookies.
The principal of the Hillsborough Academy was a big, brawny bachelor of Scotch descent, with a stem face and cold, grey, glaring eyes. When he stood towering above us on his platform in the main room of the building where I sat, there was an alertness in his figure, and a look of responsibility in his face, that reminded me of the pictures of Napoleon at Waterloo. He always carried a stout ruler that had blistered a shank of every mischievous boy in school. As he stood by the line, that came marching into prayers every morning he would frequently pull out a boy, administer a loud whack or two, shake him violently and force him into a seat. The day I began my studies at the Academy I saw him put two dents in the wall with the heels of a young man who had failed in his algebra. To a bashful and sensitive youth, just out of a country home, the sight of such violence was appalling. My first talk with him, however, renewed my courage. He had heard I was a good scholar and talked with me in a friendly way about my plans. Both Hope and I were under him in algebra and Latin. I well remember my first error in his class. I had misconstrued a Latin sentence. He looked at me, a smile and a sneer crowding each other for possession of his face. In a loud, jeering tone he cried: 'Mirabile dictu!'
I looked at him in doubt of his meaning.
'Mirabile dictu!' he shouted, his tongue trilling the r.
I corrected my error.
'Perfect!' he cried again. 'Puer pulchre! Next!'
He never went further than that with me in the way of correction. My size and my skill as a wrestler, that shortly ensured for me the respect of the boys, helped me to win the esteem of the master. I learned my lessons and kept out of mischief. But others of equal proficiency were not so fortunate. He was apt to be hard on a light man who could be handled without over-exertion.
Uncle Eb came in to see me one day and sat awhile with me in my seat. While he was there the master took a boy by the collar and almost literally wiped the blackboard with him. There was a great clatter of heels for a moment. Uncle Eb went away shortly and was at Sol Rollin's when I came to dinner.
'Powerful man ain't he?' said Uncle Eb.
'Rather,' I said.
'Turned that boy into a reg'lar horse fiddle,' he remarked. 'Must 'ave unsot his reason.'
'Unnecessary!' I said.
'Reminded me o' the time 'at Tip Taylor got his tooth pulled,' said he. 'Shook 'im up so 'at he thought he'd had his neck put out o' ji'nt.'
Sol Rollin was one of my studies that winter. He was a carpenter by trade and his oddities were new and delightful. He whistled as he worked, he whistled as he read, he whistled right merrily as he walked up and down the streets—a short, slight figure with a round boyish face and a fringe of iron-grey hair under his chin. The little man had one big passion—that for getting and saving. The ancient thrift of his race had pinched him small and narrow as a foot is stunted by a tight shoe. His mind was a bit out of register as we say in the printing business. His vocabulary was rich and vivid and stimulating.
'Somebody broke into the arsenic today,' he announced, one evening, at the supper table.
'The arsenic,' said somebody, 'what arsenic?'
'Why the place where they keep the powder,' he answered.
'Oh! the arsenal.'
'Yes, the arsenal,' he said, cackling with laughter at his error. Then he grew serious.
'Stole all the ambition out of it,' he added.
'You mean ammunition, don't you, Solomon?' his wife enquired.
'Certainly,' said he, 'wasn't that what I said.'
When he had said a thing that met his own approval Sol Rollin would cackle most cheerfully and then crack a knuckle by twisting a finger. His laugh was mostly out of register also. It had a sad lack of relevancy. He laughed on principle rather than provocation. Some sort of secret comedy of which the world knew nothing, was passing in his mind; it seemed to have its exits and its entrances, its villain, its clown and its miser who got all the applause.
While working his joy was unconfined. Many a time I have sat and watched him in his little shop, its window dim with cobwebs. Sometimes he would stop whistling and cackle heartily as he worked his plane or drew his pencil to the square. I have even seen him drop his tools and give his undivided attention to laughter. He did not like to be interrupted—he loved his own company the best while he was 'doin' business'. I went one day when he was singing the two lines and their quaint chorus which was all he ever sang in my hearing; which gave him great relief, I have no doubt, when lip weary with whistling:
Sez I 'Dan'l Skinner, I thank yer mighty mean
To send me up the river, With a sev'n dollar team'
Lul-ly, ul—ly, diddie ul—ly, diddleul—lydee, Oh,
lul-ly, ul—ly, diddle ul—ly, diddle ul—ly dee.
'Mr Rollin!' I said.
Yes siree,' said he, pausing in the midst of his chorus to look up at me.
'Where can I get a piece of yellow pine?'
'See 'n a minute,' he said. Then he continued his sawing and his song, '“Says I Dan Skinner, I thank yer mighty mean”—what d' ye want it fer?' he asked stopping abruptly.
'Going to make a ruler,' I answered.
'“T' sen' me up the river with a seven dollar team,”' he went on, picking out a piece of smooth planed lumber, and handing it to me.
'How much is it worth?' I enquired.
He whistled a moment as he surveyed it carefully.
''Bout one cent,' he answered seriously.
I handed him the money and sat down awhile to watch him as he went on with his work. It was the cheapest amusement I have yet enjoyed. Indeed Sol Rollin became a dissipation, a subtle and seductive habit that grew upon me and on one pretext or another I went every Saturday to the shop if I had not gone home.
'What ye goin' t' be?'
He stopped his saw, and looked at me, waiting for my answer.
At last the time had come when I must declare myself and I did.
'A journalist,' I replied.
'What's that?' he enquired curiously.
'An editor,' I said.
'A printer man?'
'A printer man.'
'Huh!' said he. 'Mebbe I'll give ye a job. Sairey tol' me I'd orter t' 'ave some cards printed. I'll want good plain print: Solomon Rollin, Cappenter 'n J'iner, Hillsborough, NY—soun's putty good don't it.'
'Beautiful,' I answered.
'I'll git a big lot on 'em,' he said. 'I'll want one for Sister Susan 'at's out in Minnesoty—no, I guess I'll send 'er tew, so she can give one away—an' one fer my brother, Eliphalet, an' one apiece fer my three cousins over 'n Vermont, an' one fer my Aunt Mirandy. Le's see-tew an' one is three an' three is six an' one is seven. Then I'll git a few struck off fer the folks here—guess they'll thank I'm gittin' up 'n the world.'
He shook and snickered with anticipation of the glory of it. Pure vanity inspired him in the matter and it had in it no vulgar consideration of business policy. He whistled a lively tune as he bent to his work again.
'Yer sister says ye're a splendid scholar!' said he. 'Hear'n 'er braggin' 'bout ye t'other night; she thinks a good deal o' her brother, I can tell ye. Guess I know what she's gain' t' give ye Crissmus.'
'What's that?' I asked, with a curiosity more youthful than becoming.
'Don't ye never let on,' said he.
'Never,' said I.
'Hear'n 'em tell,' he said,' 'twas a gol' lockup, with 'er pictur' in it.'
'Oh, a locket!' I exclaimed.
'That's it,' he replied, 'an' pure gol', too.'
I turned to go.
'Hope she'll grow up a savin' woman,' he remarked. ''Fraid she won't never be very good t' worlt.'
'Why not?' I enquired.
'Han's are too little an' white,' he answered.
'She won't have to,' I said.
He cackled uproariously for a moment, then grew serious.
'Her father's rich,' he said, 'the richest man o' Faraway, an I guess she won't never hev anything t' dew but set'n sing an' play the melodium.'
'She can do as she likes,' I said.
He stood a moment looking down as if meditating on the delights he had pictured.
'Gol!' he exclaimed suddenly.
My subject had begun to study me, and I came away to escape further examination.
Chapter 18
I ought to say that I have had and shall have to chronicle herein much that would seem to indicate a mighty conceit of myself. Unfortunately the little word 'I' throws a big shadow in this history. It looms up all too frequently in every page for the sign of a modest man. But, indeed, I cannot help it, for he was the only observer of all there is to tell. Now there is much, for example, in the very marrow of my history—things that never would have happened, things that never would have been said, but for my fame as a scholar. My learning was of small account, for, it must be remembered, I am writing of a time when any degree of scholarship was counted remarkable among the simple folk of Faraway.
Hope took singing lessons and sang in church every Sunday. David or Uncle Eb came down for us often of a Saturday and brought us back before service in the morning. One may find in that town today many who will love to tell him of the voice and beauty and sweetness of Hope Brower those days, and of what they expected regarding her and me. We went out a good deal evenings to concerts, lectures at the churches or the college, or to visit some of the many people who invited us to their homes.
We had a recess of two weeks at the winter holidays and David Brower came after us the day the term ended. O, the great happiness of that day before Christmas when we came flying home in the sleigh behind a new team of greys and felt the intoxication of the frosty air, and drove in at dusk after the lamps were lit and we could see mother and Uncle Eb and Grandma Bisnette looking out of the window, and a steaming dinner on the table! I declare! it is long since then, but I cannot ever think of that time without wiping my glasses and taking a moment off. Tip Taylor took the horses and we all came in where the kettle was singing on the stove and loving hands helped us out of our wraps. The supper was a merry feast, the like of which one may find only by returning to his boyhood. Mack! that is a long journey for some of us.
Supper over and the dishes out of the way we gathered about the stove with cider and butternuts.
'Well,' said Hope, 'I've got some news to tell you—this boy is the best scholar of his age in this county.'
'Thet so?' said David.
Uncle Eb stopped his hmnmer that was lifted to crack a butternut and pulled his chair close to Hope's. Elizabeth looked at her daughter and then at me, a smile and a protest in her face.
'True as you live,' said Hope. 'The master told me so. He's first in everything, and in the Town Hall the other night he spelt everybody down.'
'What! In Hillsborough?' Uncle Eb asked incredulously.
'Yes, in Hillsborough,' said Hope, 'and there were doctors and lawyers and college students and I don't know who all in the match.'
'Most reemarkable!' said David Brower.
'Treemenjious!' exclaimed Uncle Eb.
'I heard about it over at the mills t'day,' said Tip Taylor.
'Merd Dieu!' exclaimed Grandma Bisnette, crossing herself.
Elizabeth Brower was unable to stem this tide of enthusiasm. I had tried to stop it, but, instantly, it had gone beyond my control. If I could be hurt by praise the mischief had been done.
'It's very nice, indeed,' said she soberly. 'I do hope it won't make him conceited. He should remember that people do not always mean what they say.'
'He's too sensible for that, mother,' said David.
'Shucks!' said Uncle Eb, 'he ain' no fool if he is a good speller—not by a dum sight!'
'Tip,' said David, 'you'll find a box in the sleigh 'at come by express. I wish ye'd go'n git it.'
We all stood looking while Tip brought it in and pried off the top boards with a hatchet.
'Careful, now!' Uncle Eb cautioned him. 'Might spile sumthin'.'
The top off, Uncle Eb removed a layer of pasteboard. Then he pulled out a lot of coloured tissue paper, and under that was a package, wrapped and tied. Something was written on it. He held it up and tried to read the writing.
'Can't see without my spectacles,' he said, handing it to me.
'For Hope,' I read, as I passed it to her.
'Hooray!' said Uncle Eb, as he lifted another, and the last package, from the box.
'For Mrs Brower,' were the words I read upon that one.
The strings were cut, the wrappers torn away, and two big rolls of shiny silk loosened their coils on the table. Hope uttered a cry of delight. A murmur of surprise and admiration passed from one to another. Elizabeth lifted a rustling fold and held it to the lamplight We passed our hands over the smooth sheen of the silk.
'Wall, I swan!' said Uncle Eb. 'Jes' like a kitten's ear!'
'Eggzac'ly!' said David Brower.
Elizabeth lifted the silk and let it flow to her feet Then for a little she looked down, draping it to her skirt and moving her foot to make the silk rustle. For the moment she was young again.
'David,' she said, still looking at the glory of glossy black that covered her plain dress.
'Well, mother,' he answered.
'Was you fool enough t' go'n buy this stuff fer me?'
'No, mother—it come from New York City,' he said.
'From New York City?' was the exclamation of all.
Elizabeth Brower looked thoughtfully at her husband.
'Clear from New York City?' she repeated.
'From New York City,' said he.
'Wall, of all things!' said Uncle Eb, looking over his spectacles from one to another.
'It's from the Livingstone boy,' said Mrs Brower. 'I've heard he's the son of a rich man.'
''Fraid he took a great fancy t' Hope,' said David.
'Father,' said the girl, you've no right to say that. I'm sure he never cared a straw for me.'
'I don't think we ought to keep it,' said Mrs Brower, looking up thoughtfully.
'Shucks and shavin's!' said Uncle Eb. 'Ye don't know but what I had it sent myself.'
Hope went over and put her arms around his neck.
'Did you, Uncle Eb?' she asked. 'Now you tell me the truth, Uncle Eb.'
'Wouldn't say 't I did,' he answered, 'but I don' want 'a see ye go sendin' uv it back. Ye dunno who sent it.'
'What'll I do with it?' Mrs Brower asked, laughing in a way that showed a sense of absurdity. 'I'd a been tickled with it thirty years ago, but now-folks 'ud think I was crazy.'
'Never heard such fol de rol,' said Uncle Eb. 'If ye move t' the village it'll come handy t' go t' meetin' in.'
That seemed to be unanswerable and conclusive, at least for the time being, and the silk was laid away. We sat talking until late bedtime, Hope and I, telling of our studies and of the many people we had met in Hillsborough.
We hung up our stockings just as we had always done Christmas Eve, and were up betimes in the morning to find them filled with many simple but delightful things, and one which I treasure to this day—the locket and its picture of which I had been surreptitiously informed.
At two o'clock we had a fine dinner of roast turkey and chicken pie, with plenty of good cider, and the mince pie, of blessed memory, such as only a daughter of New England may dare try to make.
Uncle Eb went upstairs after dinner and presently we heard him descending with a slow and heavy foot. I opened the stair door and there he stood with the old bass viol that had long lain neglected in a dusty corner of the attic. Many a night I had heard it groan as the strings loosened, in the years it had lain on its back, helpless and forgotten. It was like a dreamer, snoring in his sleep, and murmuring of that he saw in his dreams. Uncle Eb had dusted and strung it and glued its weaker joints. He sat down with it, the severe look of old upon his face, and set the strings roaring as he tuned them. Then he brought the sacred treasure to me and leaned it against my shoulder.
'There that's a Crissmus present fer ye, Willie,' said he. 'It may help ye t' pass away the time once in a while.'
I thanked him warmly.
''S a reel firs'-class instrument,' he said. 'Been a rip snorter 'n its day.' He took from his bosom then the old heart pin of silver that he had always worn of a Sunday.
'Goin' t' give ye thet, too,' he said. 'Dunno's ye'll ever care to wear it, but I want ye should hev sumthin' ye can carry'n yer pocket t' remember me by.'
I did not dare trust myself to speak, and I sat helplessly turning that relic of a better day in my fingers.
'It's genuwine silver,' said he proudly.
I took his old hand in mine and raised it reverently to my lips.
'Hear'n 'em tell 'bout goin' t' the village, an' I says t' myself, “Uncle Eb,” says I, “we'll hev t' be goin'. 'Tain' no place fer you in the village.”'
'Holden,' said David Brower, 'don't ye never talk like that ag'in. Yer just the same as married t' this family, an' ye can't ever git away from us.'
And he never did until his help was needed in other and fairer fields, I am sure, than those of Faraway—God knows where.
Chapter 19
Tip Taylor was, in the main, a serious-minded man. A cross eye enhanced the natural solemnity of his countenance. He was little given to talk or laughter unless he were on a hunt, and then he only whispered his joy. He had seen a good bit of the world through the peek sight of his rifle, and there was something always in the feel of a gun that lifted him to higher moods. And yet one could reach a tender spot in him without the aid of a gun. That winter vacation I set myself to study things for declamation—specimens of the eloquence of Daniel Webster and Henry Clay and James Otis and Patrick Henry. I practiced them in the barn, often, in sight and hearing of the assembled herd and some of those fiery passages were rather too loud and threatening for the peace and comfort of my audience. The oxen seemed always to be expecting the sting of the bull whip; they stared at me timidly, tilting their ears every moment, as if to empty them of a heavy load; while the horses snorted with apprehension. This haranguing of the herd had been going on a week or more when Uncle Eb and I, returning from a distant part of the farm, heard a great uproar in the stable. Looking in at a window we saw Tip Taylor, his back toward us, extemporising a speech. He was pressing his argument with gestures and the tone of thunder. We listened a moment, while a worried look came over the face of Uncle Eb. Tip's words were meaningless save for the secret aspiration they served to advertise. My old companion thought Tip had gone crazy, and immediately swung the door and stepped in. The orator fell suddenly from his lofty altitude and became a very sober looking hired man.
'What's the matter?' Uncle Eb enquired.
'Practicin',' said Tip soberly, as he turned slowly, his face damp and red with exertion.
'Fer what?' Uncle Eb enquired.
'Fer the 'sylum, I guess,' he answered, with a faint smile.
'Ye don' need no more practice,' Uncle Eb answered. 'Looks t' me as though ye was purty well prepared.'
To me there was a touch of pathos in this show of the deeper things in Tip's nature that had been kindled to eruption by my spouting. He would not come in to dinner that day, probably from an unfounded fear that we would make fun of his flight—a thing we should have been far from doing once we understood him.
It was a bitter day of one of the coldest winters we had ever known. A shrieking wind came over the hills, driving a scud of snow before it The stock in the stables, we all came in, soon after dinner, and sat comfortably by the fire with cider, checkers and old sledge. The dismal roar of the trees and the wind-wail in the chimney served only to increase our pleasure. It was growing dusk when mother, peering through the sheath of frost on a window pane, uttered an exclamation of surprise.
'Why! who is this at the door?' said she. 'Why! It's a man in a cutter.' Father was near the door and he swung it open quickly. There stood a horse and cutter, a man sitting in it, heavily muffled. The horse was shivering and the man sat motionless.
'Hello!' said David Brower in a loud voice.
He got no answer and ran bareheaded to the sleigh.
'Come, quick, Holden,' he called, 'it's Doctor Bigsby.'