The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Abandoned Farmer, by Sydney Herman Preston

The Abandoned Farmer

The
Abandoned Farmer

By Sydney H. Preston

Charles Scribner's Sons
New York 1901

Copyright, 1901, by
Charles Scribner's Sons
———
All rights reserved

CONTENTS

The Abandoned Farmer

I BEFORE THE PLUNGE

"You need to turn the little chap loose in the country," was the doctor's verdict, given in a low tone that didn't—thank Heaven!—attract Paul's attention, though if the child hadn't been absorbed for the moment in driving a brood of imaginary chickens into an imaginary coop under a real parlor table this indiscreet reference would have caused a scene. The doctor had been cautioned not to do or say anything that would arouse suspicion in the mind of our offspring as to the real nature of his visit, so he should have known better, but of course he couldn't know what a dread Paul had of sometime having to go somewhere without his parents.

Marion sank weakly into a chair, then sat up very straight and braced herself for what was coming; I made a frantic pantomimic appeal to the doctor for temporary silence, then I grabbed Paul by the arm, pointing out the fiction that the chickens had escaped around the end of the table into the hall. When he had darted out in pursuit I shut the door, turning in time to hear Marion say with a piteous break in her voice: "Doctor, tell us the worst—is it his lungs?"

His tone, to our over-anxious ears, had suggested a fear that he was about to break the news that our precious boy was doomed to an early grave, and it was a relief to see him not only smile, but look as if he would enjoy a hearty laugh. "Don't be alarmed, Mrs. Carton," he said cheerily. "He's a delicate little fellow, but spry as a cricket and quite sound. Send him to the country for six months,—and—ha ha!—don't coddle him so much."

Send our little Paul to the country! Even in her half-allayed anxiety Marion smiled at the idea. Paul, who had never been away from her tender care for one hour, who had howled with dismay when he gathered from our unguarded conversation that when little boys went to school they didn't take their parents too! Now Paul, up to this time, fortunately for our peace of mind, had been spared the ordinary illnesses and accidents of childhood; indeed, so carefully had he been guarded, that at the age of six he had never tasted unboiled water, unsterilized milk or unhygienic bread, and although he had learned to walk upstairs by himself, had never descended alone except when an anxious parent stood breathlessly at the foot of the stairs ready to break a possible fall. An ordinary child might have rebelled or evaded our watchfulness, but Paul was not an ordinary child, and he was preternaturally anxious to avoid danger and keep us up to the mark. His active little mind ferreted out supposititious disasters with alarming realism until our nerves were unstrung by the constant effort to guard against the possible calamities that he suggested.

Send Paul to the country? Send him—to the country! A likely thing, indeed!—and leave us to be tortured by mental visions of his dear little incapable feet projecting out of a water barrel or being mowed off by an overgrown lawn-mower, his helpless form impaled upon the horns of a bull or dangling from the mouth of a vicious horse.

That evening, after Paul was safely asleep, we talked the whole matter over. We had previously toyed with nebulous schemes of living in the country, but the doctor's opinion transformed what had seemed an impracticable but entrancingly delightful castle-in-the-air to a definite consideration of how we could make it an actuality. As Marion said, it was our plain duty to do what was best for Paul, even if we had to sacrifice a few extraneous luxuries in carrying it out, and when she used the word duty I knew that, come what would, we were going to live in the country. Duty is Marion's strong point; mine also, in a sort of second-hand way, for I have learned to obey the dictates of her conscience with an amazing alacrity. With her, the principle involved in the most trivial act is a matter of vital importance, while I am inclined to act first, and from that action deduce a principle to justify the course I have taken. Her mind is intensely analytical, and she believes rigidly what she ought to believe; I am, perhaps, a trifle more imaginative, more easily swayed by passing enthusiasms, more given to believing what I want to believe, less inclined to see a clear-cut difference between black and white.

It is not strange, therefore, that our opinions often differ, but in this case we were of one mind from the first, the only difficulty that faced us being the question of ways and means, and on this point Marion was, strange to say, more optimistic than I.

"I have a feeling, a presentiment," she said, in a tone of fervent conviction, "that if we make up our minds hard enough it will become possible. We've been talking about this for years, and I never felt until this moment that it was really going to be true."

For a moment her calm certainty influenced my hopes, then I shook my head doubtfully. "You forget," I rejoined, "that there's no other opening in sight, and as long as I'm doing 'Music and Drama' for the Observer I must stay in the city. If I had regular hours, if I were a bank clerk, for instance, we might live in the suburbs, but——"

"We've been over all that hundreds of times," she interrupted, "and you know that if you had been a bank clerk I wouldn't have married you. You're not going to give up journalism, but I'm sure something will happen to let us live where we want to live. And as for the suburbs, it seems to me it would be better to get a real farm in the real country. If we could find a good comfortable farm-house near the railroad with plenty of land around it, I don't believe it would cost us any more than one of those flimsy cottages with a garden plot attached that we looked at last year."

I found, as we talked the matter over, that Marion's imagination had been fired by the idea of some quaint old-fashioned homestead with gabled roof, open fireplaces and latticed windows, surrounded by ancient shade-trees and a straggling apple-orchard. All these accessories I could appreciate, and, in comparison, an ordinary suburban cottage, one of many others exactly alike, began to seem quite out of the question. There were delightful possibilities about buying a real farm, not to mention the inviting prospect of running it afterward.

"That's a capital idea!" I exclaimed, in eager approval. "I could raise a couple of hundred dollars to make the first payment, then we could give a mortgage for the balance and pay it off with the proceeds of the first year's crop. Then we could soon make enough money to——"

I stopped short, for I became aware that my wife was regarding me with a smile of loving toleration. "There you are again, Henry," she said, with a merry laugh. "What a lot of money we'd save if I let you carry out a few of your wild schemes! We're not going to raise one dollar to make a first payment; we're not going to give a mortgage, so you'll not be able to pay it off with the first year's crop."

"But it was your proposal," I protested, "you said——"

"I didn't say we might buy a farm, but I think we might be able to rent one for less than we pay for this house, and I'm sure we can live more cheaply in the country than in the city, if we make up our minds not to spend money needlessly."

It didn't seem to me that a rented farm without a mortgage could be as attractive as the one I had imagined, but I reluctantly admitted that Marion's plan might be more economical than mine. If I hadn't done so she certainly would have reminded me of some of my errors of judgment.

"And now," she continued, "the next thing to consider is how much money we can afford not to spend on the farm."

At that moment I had mentally unloaded a car of farm implements, resplendent in green and red paint, with the same feeling of delightful excitement that accompanies the unpacking of a Noah's ark. In fact, I had them arranged on the station platform and was directing my hired men how to load the wagons. "Can afford not to spend," I repeated abstractedly.

There was silence. When I awoke from my reverie I discovered that my wife was gazing at me with a curious expression, her lips tightly compressed. I stood to attention at once.

"Yes, Marion," I went on briskly. "I was just thinking about that. I was just calculating how many implements we could buy."

"Indeed? And have you decided whether you would rather go in for horse-raising or thoroughbred cattle?"

"No, I haven't got that far; but I think a herd of Jerseys would do to start with, then——"

"Then you are like other men! I wonder if any city man ever farmed without losing his common-sense. Can't you see, Henry, that we'd be hopelessly in debt if we started in that way? Why, even if we were wealthy the money would soon be all gone at that rate of spending. How many otherwise level-headed men do you know who have squandered fortunes in farming for pleasure?"

"Well, there's Judge Davis, and old Hamilton, and—oh, lots of them—but, you see, they didn't know how to manage, and I would profit by their mistakes. I wouldn't borrow five hundred dollars, for instance, to invest in Jerseys, without seeing my way clear to double the money in a year or two by selling gilt-edged butter."

"Now listen, Henry," said my wife, with the indulgent yet unrelenting smile of a mother who pushes a fragile vase beyond the reach of her infant's grasp; "you're not going to borrow one dollar; you're not going to have a herd of Jerseys; you're not going to buy reapers and threshing machines, horses and wagons and windmills. How much would a spade, a rake, and a hoe cost?"

I gasped. "A spade—a rake!——" I began incredulously, then I smiled a smile of feeble intelligence to conceal the fact that I failed to see the point: I know what it feels like to perpetrate a pointless joke.

"And a hoe," continued Marion, earnestly. "How much would they cost?"

"About two dollars," I replied, in vague wonderment.

"Then that settles it! You may spend two dollars in implements, but not another cent. And as for drains——"

"Perhaps you would allow three for them," I interjected, with a derisive laugh. "Judge Davis spent three thousand in underdraining his farm."

"Then we'll do without underdrains. Do you begin to see now what I mean by deciding how much money we can afford not to spend."

"I believe I do," I answered, amused yet fascinated by her idea. "It will total a large amount if you keep on, but I don't see how a farm can be made to pay without investing money in it. Why, you've got to put money into anything, even into a gold mine, before you can get returns."

It was an unfortunate illustration, as I learned from Marion's pitying look. I winced; I knew what was coming. "Henry," she said, and in her face I saw that she was responding to the call of duty, "I don't grudge one dollar of that money you put into the Emperor shares last year, even if the lesson is wasted on you, as it seems to be; for that experience made me determine that I would never trust your judgment about investments again when my common-sense tells me you are wrong. Aunt Sophy says that all men who haven't been brought up on a farm are attacked by an insane belief, at some period of their lives, that they can make money by farming. She says Uncle Philip had made a hundred thousand dollars in the grocery business when he retired and bought a farm. She implored him not to do it, but he persisted, saying there was heaps of money in farming if properly managed, and he could run a farm on business principles and make it pay. But when he died she found he had left only forty thousand dollars for her to live on, and she is convinced that if he hadn't been taken away so suddenly she would have been altogether penniless. Poor Aunt Sophy! She weeps more over that money than over Uncle Philip, and the worst of it is that some semi-religious novel she has read has unsettled her old-fashioned ideas about heaven so that she is afraid that when her turn comes she'll find him at it again. The thought has hardened her so that I shouldn't be surprised if she married old Mr. Fairman and renounced Uncle Philip."

I had been about to say that I felt myself to be peculiarly fitted to illustrate paying methods of farming, but I desisted. I had been inclined to resent Marion's taunt about the unlucky mining venture, but the serious recital of the woes of her uncle and aunt moved me to laughter. I jocularly declared I would go around to the bank to see if the money we had saved by not buying a farm had been placed to my credit, but her anxiety that I should understand her theory checked my innocent levity.

"You wouldn't make light of this matter," she said, reproachfully, "if you understood its importance. Now listen: what I mean is, that instead of calculating how much money we might be able to spend on the farm we should try to see how much we can do without spending. I am sure that is the right way to avoid making a farm not pay. For example, if you think you want to buy an electric potato-digger you ought to save up the money and then——"

"And then you'll decide that I can afford not to buy it!"

"Probably—but don't you see the money would then be clear profit, and you would have it instead of a useless machine."

"It wouldn't be useless—it would dig potatoes."

"It might dig potatoes, but Aunt Sophy says you can't depend on any of these contrivances, so the chances are that it would be useless; besides, you said the Emperor shares would dig gold, and they swallowed——"

The thought of mining shares is distasteful to me; to have them dragged into the conversation is distracting; to look forward to having every budding plan nipped by the chilling reminders of bygone mistakes that my temperament would allow me to forget was not to be endured. "Marion," I interrupted, hastily, "it's a capital plan! I'll agree to try it if we ever have a farm, if you'll promise never to do or say anything to remind me of that stroke of bad luck."

"Don't you mean bad management?" she asked, gayly. "You have a dreadfully lax memory about these things, and I know you would have forgotten the Emperor shares long ago if I hadn't reminded you. However, you know it's for your own good and——"

"It isn't," I protested, with vehemence. "It dulls my sensibilities and hardens my heart."

Marion shook her head dubiously, but she promised.

I do not believe in my own presentiments, for I never have any, unless the ever-present optimistic belief that everything I undertake is going to turn out well is a presentiment, but I have learned by experience to place a certain amount of dependence upon Marion's. Therefore, for a few days after our conversation I confidently expected something to turn up, and every day when I returned home from the office I saw by her inquiring expectant glance that she was looking for the fulfilment of her prediction. As time passed, however, I began to think she had been mistaken, though I did not say so, for I know how annoying it is to have one's mistakes pointed out when one is most keenly conscious of them. Besides, to refrain made me feel magnanimous, and that feeling, perhaps, caused a shade of pitying magnanimity to creep into my tone when we discussed the project; so Marion, who is intensely susceptible to inflections, was perfectly well aware that I was practising one of the higher virtues, as well as showing a delicate consideration for her feelings that she might well copy in regard to mine. Of course, we could do nothing but make plans during the winter; but as spring approached, without any prospect of a change that would give me regular hours of work, it seemed as if we should have to give up, for a time, the prospect of moving to the country.

It was one morning early in March that the unexpected did happen. I was at my desk reading a batch of indignant letters taking me to task for an opinion I had expressed in an article on musical culture when a summons arrived from the editor-in-chief. Up to that moment I had been amused by the denials of my assertion that the performance of a Bach fugue on the piano as part of a concert programme should be condemned as provocative of snobbish pretence; that the giving out of the theme by the performer had become the signal for the audience to assume an air of intense and exalted intellectual enjoyment, though not one person in a hundred could appreciate the logical development of such a composition or distinguish anything but a confused intermingling of the parts; but the summons from the editor made me regard the matter more seriously. I hurriedly looked over the article to see if I had laid myself open to reproof for indiscretion. Yes, I had! At the very end the statement glared at me that musicians listened to a fugue with the strained intentness of jugglers watching a fellow-performer keeping three balls in the air; I had committed the fatal oversight of not saying some musicians. Probably an irate deputation representing the profession so notoriously sensitive to truthful criticism had waited upon the editor to demand a public retraction of the libel.

"Sit down, Carton," said the editor, as I entered. "You've been doing 'Music and Drama' for two years now," he said musingly, laying down his pen, "and I don't think I have expressed my opinion of your work to you personally."

I shook my head mutely, afraid of what was coming next.

"That, however, doesn't indicate any want of appreciation on my part. You have changed the former commonplace rut of criticism to something that people read with interest, and if they laugh and swear alternately, so much the better. You have a knack of telling the truth with a light touch that is quite refreshing. How would you like to edit the agricultural page in the weekly?"

I gazed at him in bewilderment; ready to laugh if he meant to be jocular, incredulous of his serious intention. "The agricultural page!" I exclaimed.

"Rather sudden, eh? Well, I'll tell you how the matter stands. Old Rollings is out of it, and I've got to fill his place at once. Now it strikes me that farmers don't hanker after instruction in their newspaper—they want to be entertained, and I think you might make the thing go. The salary will be higher and you can take your own time for the work."

"But I don't know much about agriculture," I protested.

"That isn't of any consequence. There are the exchanges, the Farmer's Cyclopædia and the scissors, and you'll learn not to waste space by advising farmers to plant corn in hills three feet apart or to feed potato bugs on paris green. The main thing is to make the department entertaining, so let yourself go and be as funny as you like, provided there's a grain of horse-sense at the bottom. For instance, you might have an article on how to make the farm pay, taking as a text—um, let me see—ah—you might advocate——"

"The planting of summer boarders in rows three feet apart?" I ventured.

The editor leaned back in his chair and laughed. "Go ahead, Carton," he said warmly. "You mightn't be able to draw a better looking pig in a prize competition than the rest of us, but I'd bank on you making a pretty turn to his tail."

The die was cast, and yet, for a few days at least, I felt as one might, who, accustomed to prate of the certain bliss of a heavenly home, is suddenly presented with a pass to the delectable land. A kaleidoscopic vision dazzled me of a picturesque country house, an orchard, a cow, a horse, real hens for Paul, our own fruit and vegetables, but beyond I could not see clearly, for I was unnerved by the sudden transition from the fine arts to agriculture. I had gained a superficial insight into rural life from the stand-point of the summer boarder, but I was well aware that I didn't know as much about farming as about art and literature. However, the editor's confidence in my ability to do the work and Marion's glowing enthusiasm caused me to keep my misgivings to myself. Indeed, though I never boast, I find it difficult to detract from another person's estimate of my knowledge or attainments; it seems less egotistical to smile and look modest than to enlarge upon one's own affairs. There was just one thing that caused me a pang. Marion, in pointing out the advantage it would be to me to have a free hand in writing, casually acknowledged that for a long time she had felt that criticism was not my forte and that I would write better when I had more scope for my imagination. My pained surprise at this confession moved her to merriment, and she laughingly declared that a woman's vanity was all on the surface, but a man's was unfathomable. Did I answer back? No, I didn't, for when I am truly grieved I merely smile faintly with patient, loving forgiveness; besides, I didn't know what to say. Afterward—for I didn't realize it at the time—I saw that I felt hurt, not because she had underrated my previous work, but because she had heretofore simulated a proper appreciation of it. I cannot bear to think that my wife is capable of stooping to any kind of pretence, and I am quite single-minded in this, for I like her to be more perfect—infinitely more perfect—than I am. One would suppose this statement to be unquestionable. It isn't; she immediately asks why, and in the silence which follows when I am trying to think she repeats the query with such challenging meaningful emphasis that, alas!—I cannot say.

II PETER WAYDEAN IS FOUND WANTING

"No," said the postmistress, shaking her head dubiously, "I don't think you'd find a place to suit within a mile of this station. You say you want a small farm with a middling good house, and the only vacant place about here has a hundred acres and the house ain't no better than a shanty."

It was the prettiest bit of country that we had yet found in our search for our ideal farm, and the answer of the postmistress caused us keen disappointment. Paul's little hand, which had clutched mine with a tense expectant grip, suddenly relaxed. "Are we not going to live in the country?" he asked, in a trembling voice.

"Oh, I forgot the Waydean homestead," the postmistress called out, as we turned away; "but anyway I don't suppose"—she looked at us in turn with a speculative air, smiling slightly—"you could strike a bargain with old Peter."

"Why not?" demanded Marion eagerly. "Is it a nice place—is it near the railroad?"

"It's right next the turn of this road, about half a mile south. No one has lived there for twenty years, but he keeps the house in repair, and I guess it's cleaner than most houses that's lived in; but old Peter——" she stopped speaking, went to the door and looked apprehensively up and down the road. "Now I'll just tell you the plain truth," she continued confidentially. "I know it looks uncharitable to talk to strangers about your neighbors, but everyone round here knows what old Peter is, and if you're going to have any dealings with him you'll need to keep your eyes wide open. He's a crank and a screw, and some wouldn't know they was getting skinned till he'd got the job done. And such a man for law! It don't seem to matter much whether he wins or loses, he can't seem to get along without a suit going on. Now if he happened within earshot at this present minute he'd have the law of me and he'd summons you for witnesses."

"Thank you for the warning," I interjected, as she paused for breath. "What is the house like?"

"It's one of them old-fashioned kind, with tiny panes in the windows set cornery, and——"

"Not diamond panes, surely?" cried Marion, with a gasp of excitement.

The postmistress gazed at her with an expression of incredulous pity. "Oh, no," she replied; "just common glass, and I think you'd find it trying to have to look out of a different pane with both eyes. Then them big fireplaces would make it hard to heat, but you could board them up and put a base-burner in the hall and run the stovepipe——"

"Oh, no!" ejaculated Marion, in horror. "That would be dreadful! Are they real big fireplaces, with andirons?"

"They're big enough in all conscience, but I don't mind seeing any hand-irons. There's some rubbishy old brass firedogs and fixings."

Marion's eyes sparkled with joyful assurance and she stood up with an eager movement; I motioned her to wait.

"Do you happen to know," I asked the postmistress, "what is the rent of the place?"

"Well, he asks different rents from different people," she answered slowly, her features showing grim amusement, "and no one has ever managed to strike a bargain with him yet. Last spring a man came along from the city thinking as the place was standing idle anyway he ought to be able to rent it cheap for the summer, so he hunted Peter up to show him round. He was one of them big blustering sort of men that acts as if country people wasn't no better than door mats, but Peter followed him about as meek as Moses, carrying his overcoat and umbrella for him. They come in here about train time, then the man pulls out a dime and says, 'Here, my man,' says he, 'is something for your trouble. It's a ramshackle old house and ain't worth two hundred a year, but I'll give you fifty for six months.' Peter was looking at the dime in a puzzled sort of way, then he smiled a curious sort of smile and bit the edge before he put it in his pocket. 'You're most too kind, sir,' he says, 'for it has been a great entertainment to me to show you about, and I don't often have the company of a real gentleman. I'm sorry the place is beyond your means, but the fact is that I couldn't afford to let you have it less than two hundred a month. I'm sorry,' says he, 'that you had so much trouble for nothing, but I'll just slip this half-dollar into your pocket and you'll have it to spend when you get back to the city.' With that he lays down the overcoat and umbrella and walks out. And for all the fine clothes and jewelry of that man, he used such profane language that I had to ask him to stop or else step outside. That's just like old Peter—he's so touchy there's no getting on with him, though he can be as sweet as pie if he happens to take a fancy to a person. There was once a man——"

At this point Marion adroitly interposed with another question, and in two minutes we were on the road to Waydean. Paul and I straggled along behind, scarcely able to keep up with Marion's eager pace, as she breathlessly commented upon the delights of living in such a house as the postmistress had described. I became so enthusiastic, in sympathy with her, that by the time we caught a glimpse of the chimneys through a belt of trees I was almost persuaded that open fireplaces and diamond panes were the only essentials of an ideal house. We had been directed to look for the owner at the diminutive cottage he lived in a half mile farther along the road, but with a common impulse we turned in at once to the inviting roadway that led up to the old homestead. On our right a mossy board fence enclosed an old orchard, the gnarled and rugged trunks of the trees set in a carpet of newly sprouted grass, the shadows of the still leafless branches outlined on the knolls and hollows just, as Paul expressed it, like a real colored picture out of a real picture-book.

We hurried along the driveway canopied by the spreading branches of the pines that grew on each side, and rounding a curve we came within sight of a rambling frame house set on a knoll with a neatly terraced lawn sloping toward us.

From the moment Paul darted forward with a shout of delight and seated himself on the steps of a diminutive colonial porch we felt the joy of possession. We stood off and surveyed the roof. The shingles were delicately tinted in moss-green and a few bricks were missing from the upper courses of the chimneys, but the glass in the windows was unbroken and the house looked exceedingly habitable and home-like.

The front door was locked, so we peered in at the lower windows and then went round to the rear, finding the kitchen door wide open. Marion entered first and I saw her run across the room and drop on her knees in front of a cavernous brick fireplace with a little cry of delight. By the time I reached her she was emerging from its sooty recesses with a smudged but radiant countenance, smiling exultantly as she swung a rusty iron hook outward.

"What's that thing?" I asked.

"That thing!" she echoed, in pitying incredulity. "Do you mean to say, Henry, that you don't know a crane when you see one?"

Before I could plead ignorance she discovered that the ceiling was timbered, the walls wainscoted, and that a settle stood in the dim corner near the fireplace. "It isn't worth while looking at the rest of the house," she said, sitting down on the settle with a smile of perfect content; "you may go and find that old man. Whatever happens, we're going to rent this place, but don't tell him so—bring him to me. In the meantime, remember he's got to take a fancy to you, so be just as charming as you know how to be. Oh, you needn't laugh! I know charming doesn't seem the right word to apply to a man, but that's what you are when you do your best. You can be more agreeable than any man I ever knew, and you can be more—but there, do go, go—you'd stand around all day if you thought I'd go on talking about you."

There were several points connected with her remarks that I would have liked to have more fully explained, but she was so insistent that I prepared to go, and it was not my fault that I didn't start, for we suddenly became aware that Paul was missing. In frantic haste we searched the premises and at last found him sitting on a low mound of freshly turned-up sandy soil at the back of the barn, a batch of sand-cakes neatly laid out on a board beside him. Now Paul had never before sat on the ground, he had never learned how to make any kind of mud-pies, as far as we knew he had never heard of the art, yet some subtle instinct had drawn him to the only spot within reach where there was a heap of suitable soil. The sight was appalling, for it seemed as if our brief forgetfulness must result in his having an attack of pneumonia or some other dreadful ailment. Not a word did we say before Paul, of course, for we are careful not to alarm the dear boy, both for his sake and our own, but we conversed by expressive glances as we walked back toward the house, assuring each other that we must hope for the best and be prepared for the worst, and that by some miracle he might escape.

We had stopped to look down the entrance to a large underground root-house, the door of which was open, when from the inside came a succession of feeble groans. There was a heap of bags in the doorway, and in an instant I realized what had happened: that some man had been overcome by the poisonous gases that gather in pits where vegetables are stored.

I am not one who rashly plunges into danger without weighing the consequences, so I didn't bravely lose my life by rushing into the pit in the vain attempt to carry another man out, for I saw there were several good reasons against such a course. First, I knew that I couldn't carry a man anywhere even under the most favorable conditions; second, I couldn't bear to think of the shock to Marion if she should become a widow; third, it was perfectly clear to me that if I remained in the root-house Marion would attempt to save me, then Paul would remain outside and become an orphan, a howling orphan. Further, I was not justified in risking an undoubtedly valuable life for one that was probably of no account.

A long pole with a hook on the end would have been useful, or a piece of rope, but neither was to be found, and the groans of the man in the root-house were becoming still more alarming, so, noticing the heavy chain which held the well-bucket, I hurriedly tried to detach it, but to my despair I found it was securely spiked to the well-sweep. It was then that Marion made one of the most brilliant suggestions that I have known her to make: that by swinging the sweep to one side the chain would hang directly over the pit. I don't know that she saw the full utility of this move, but I did. Holding my breath, I stood in the doorway until I could dimly see the prostrate figure on the floor, then I darted inside, looped the chain about him and dragged him to the entrance. He was a heavily built, sharp-featured man, past middle age, and although he lay on the ground and gasped for breath there was a slight contortion of his features that suggested repressed mirth. Marion wanted me to go for help, but I told her that he was recovering and only needed to be moved from the entrance where he lay to the level ground where the air was fresher. She said I would never be able to get him up the incline, so I hastened to complete my task, my only fear being that help would arrive too soon. I tenderly arranged a pad of potato bags across his chest and back, then shortening the chain I passed it under his arms and again looped it around his body. All being ready, I climbed up on the weighted end of the well-sweep, but finding there was not enough weight I persuaded Marion to take my place, then I sprang up beside her. The effect was amazing to us, unaccustomed as we were to this primitive contrivance, for our end descended to the ground with a bump, and, like a hooked fish, high in the air dangled the man whom I had gone to so much trouble to save. He emerged from unconsciousness more rapidly than a butterfly from its chrysalis, and his remarks as he gyrated at the end of the chain were most abusive. The epithets were evidently intended for me, and my anger was aroused to such an extent that I felt inclined to let him stay where he was. "Keep cool," I shouted, "and I'll see about getting you down. Remember," I admonished him, "that—that there are ladies in the room. If you behave yourself and tell me where to find a ladder, I'll try to help you."

His face grew crimson and he struggled for speech. "A ladder!" he burst forth, at last. "Get off this darn' see-saw."

I got off, so did Marion; but I don't think we understood the proper way to get off, for there was a surprising thud, and I saw that my patient was sprawling on the ground under the beam. I hastened to his relief, reminding him as I unwound the chain that he should have taken my advice and waited for the ladder. He stood up unsteadily, wiping the dirt off his face with his sleeve, then he took off his coat, folded it with ceremony, laid it on the ground and squared up to me.

"Now," he said, with vicious determination, "I'm going to settle with you."

He was such a disreputable and absurd figure that I couldn't help smiling at his demonstrations. "Come, sir," I said persuasively; "you shouldn't give way to your temper. I know that from your stand-point, it seems annoying to enter a root-house and then discover that you are suspended at the end of a well-sweep, but I am not to blame. It would have been far less trouble to me to leave you to be smothered among your potatoes than to drag you out."

I spoke with effect; his expression changed, though he studied my face with suspicion. "What's your name?" he demanded.

"Henry Carton," I responded, with a certain hesitation, born of a diffidence that always seizes me when I try to make this announcement appear unimportant. "And yours?" I asked, genially.

"Waydean," he replied, gruffly.

"Peter Waydean!" I exclaimed, with sudden enthusiasm, as I grasped his hand. "The very man we were looking for! Allow me to introduce you to Mrs. Carton: Marion, Mr. Waydean."

He bowed awkwardly, putting on his coat. "Well sir," he ejaculated, with an explosive laugh, "you do beat the Dutch!"

If our host had been a little remiss on the score of politeness at first, he made up for it by profuse expressions of gratitude and by showing us every attention during the time we spent with him in looking over the place. I saw that he had taken a fancy to us, and that he liked the idea of having such desirable tenants, for his clear blue eyes, unusually limpid for an elderly man, beamed with kindly intention as he talked; at the same time, his truthfulness compelled him to say that he couldn't quite forgive me for having hoisted him so high with the well-sweep. "I tell you, Mr. Carton," he said, with a chuckle, "I'm mighty thankful to you for hauling me out of that pit, but all the same, I give you fair warning that I'm bound to get back on you for the way you done it."

After we had viewed the barn and stables we all went into the house to talk over the business. He was a man of strong family affection, so he would never part with the homestead, but we were just the sort of people to take care of what was dear to him, and he would be willing to rent the place to us. He could not live in such a large house himself, on account of his wife being an invalid, but he had often refused to rent it to other people, usually because—well, he didn't mind telling us, in confidence, it wasn't every family he would care to have as neighbors—and then, there was such a difference in children! Now that dear little lad of ours, he could swear, had never in his life thrown a stone at a window-pane or pencil-marked wall-paper—a little peaked, wasn't he?—but just wait till he had been six months at Waydean, and had bunnies and guinea-pigs, and chickens, turkeys, lambs and calves, and a pony of his own—just wait!

It was indeed a delicate matter for me to mention pecuniary compensation. Perhaps if I had been alone I would have ignored that point altogether, but Marion's significant glances I could not ignore, so, though it sounded positively brutal in the face of his disinterested appreciation of our worth, I asked him the rent.

He made a gesture implying utter indifference. The fact was that, though most of the people in the neighborhood were grasping and mean-minded, he was a man who was built straight-up-and-down-and-square-all-round, and what he considered above everything was that he would have congenial neighbors. The farm was worth—well, he wouldn't say what it was worth, but I might have it at three hundred dollars a year. There were fifty acres of land that would grow enough produce to pay the rent of the whole place and something over, and as I would need a good many implements he would sell me his for a fraction of their cost, and if I wanted a good team of horses and a few cows all I had to do was to make my choice among his.

I had been fascinated by the frankly ingenuous assurance of his manner; in fact, I was mentally exulting in my good fortune in finding such a generous landlord, when the sound of Marion's voice aroused me.

"Fifty acres, Mr. Waydean!" she exclaimed. "That would never do. My husband is quite opposed to the idea of trying to make money by farming, and——"

"Oh, quite," I interjected, shaking my head with emphasis.

"We want to live in the country," she continued, "but we can't afford to actually farm."

"Between ourselves, Mr. Waydean," I hastened to say, "I've seen so much of city people fooling away money in farming that I've made up my mind not to work any more land than I can attend to with a spade, a rake and a hoe."

He stared at us in turn, incredulity giving place to gloom as he realized that I was serious; then he turned to Marion in a burst of candor. "I tell you what, ma'am," he said, with warm approval, "I ain't met many men with so much downright common-sense as your husband. I'll own that I'm a bit sorry that he don't want to work the farm, for I'm getting old and I'd like a rest, but the truth is that running a farm costs a lot of money, and farmers come out at the wrong end of the horn most years. However, you've took a fancy to the place and I've took a shine to you, so I'll tell you what I'll do: I'll work the farming land myself, and you can take the house and grounds for four hundred a year."

Peter stood in the attitude of an auctioneer who is forced to throw away a desirable no-reserve lot on the first bid; surely, then, my ears had deceived me into thinking that this was a larger sum than he had asked for the whole farm.

Marion was the first to speak. "I don't quite see," she began dubiously, "isn't that more?"

"Certainly, ma'am," he responded; "but how far'd a hundred dollars go in wages for hired help? If I wasn't throwing in my work free I couldn't afford to take them fifty acres off your hands at that figure. Of course, I'd sooner you took the hull place at three hundred, then as much more would hire you a man, and if Mr. Carton looked after him pretty sharp there might be enough crop to feed your horses and cow, and he wouldn't have to spend more than a thousand dollars in stock and implements to start with."

I was slightly irritated that he addressed these remarks solely to Marion; one might have supposed that he thought she was the head of the family and that I was not even a party of the first part.

"I'll think the matter over," I began, with dignified hauteur, "and let you——"

Peter turned to me hastily. "That's as reasonable as I can do," he explained, with plaintive determination; "and I've got to know right away if you want the place."

"Well," I began, with an eager eye on Marion for the cue, "I—I——"

"There's another man after it," urged Peter, "and he's coming to-morrow for my answer."

Marion gasped. "We'd better pay the—the four"——

"The four hundred," I decided, for her, "and let you run the farm."

"Done," snapped Peter.

It was evening when we parted from Peter Waydean on the station platform. He shook me warmly by the hand as the train appeared.

"You're a gentleman, Mr. Carton, from the word go," he shouted hoarsely in my ear. "The bargain's made, and though there's no writing betwixt us, there's no need of any, for we're men of honor. I'll tell the other man"——

"Yes, certainly," I assented, detaching myself as the train slowed up.

"Not a word to the neighbors about the well-sweep, or about what you're paying for the place," he continued, holding the lapel of my coat. "They're a prying, gossiping lot, and I wouldn't like it known that you hoisted me on that darn see-saw. It's the first time Peter Waydean was ever treed, but considering that you're the man that done it, we'll cry quits."

As I caught a flashing steely glint in the depths of his ingenuous blue eyes the conviction was borne in upon me that, like the simulated stillness of a deadly revolving tool, his simplicity and truth were more apparent than real. And this was the impression that made me so silent and thoughtful on our journey back to the city.

For the close of such an eventful day we had little to say to each other. With every mile that we travelled an unpleasant suspicion grew stronger as I thought over the bargain with that guileful man; gradually the suspicion changed to a certainty, and then it was that I became aware that Marion, who had also been strangely silent, was studying me with a tantalizing air of knowing my thoughts.

"What is it?" I asked, with sudden annoyance.

"I was just thinking," she began, then she stopped to laugh gleefully—"do you remember what the postmistress said about him skin"——

"Don't repeat it," I snapped, squirming. "Of course I remember, but I don't see the application."

"Well, you shouldn't expect to if there isn't any," she said, with renewed mirth. "It was odd, too, that he warned you he'd pay you back for hoisting him."

"Will you be kind enough to explain the connection?" I demanded fiercely.

It really is unsafe to use that tone with Marion. There was a little flash in her eyes; my glare faltered, then her brief resentment melted into sympathy.

"Connection?" she answered. "Why, what connection could there be?"

My hand sought hers, in gratitude. There was a pause, then we both laughed, and somehow the bitterness of knowing I had been gulled passed away; I even felt a sympathetic appreciation of his artistic touch in assuring me that we were both men of honor.

Suddenly Marion grasped my arm. "Henry," she exclaimed, "he's the man you want!"

"The man I want?"

"Why, yes; didn't you say you wanted a central figure for that set of rural sketches you've planned?"

"By Jove," I cried, with kindling enthusiasm, "he's a character all ready made! If I do him justice, he'll be a—a regular gold mine."

I was rather puzzled by a meaning, but to me, inscrutable smile that lingered on Marion's face after this comment, but she so often sees more in a remark of mine than I do that I prefer not to spoil the effect by asking for an explanation.

III AN UPHEAVAL

The April day on which we moved to Waydean was an ideal one in regard to weather, and my arrangements came so near to perfection that we began the usually irksome work of moving with joyous zest. I had chalked a number on every piece of furniture and box of sundries, also on the door of each room in the farm-house, so as to avoid having the kitchen stove carried upstairs and the bedroom furniture placed in the parlor, and this plan elicited warm approbation from Marion. To say that her approval gratified me scarcely expresses my elation, for although I was proud of the plan I was quite prepared to have her point out some fatal defect. I can indulge in platitudes and commonplaces with impunity, but a really original, trade-marked idea is usually a gauntlet flung into the arena, the activity of my mind producing a reflex action upon hers. In this case I took extraordinary care to provide against anything happening to mar the successful carrying out of my scheme, not even closing the bargain with the owner of the moving van until he had indorsed it with enthusiasm. This man, Bliggs by name, urged me to patent the idea, waxing as indignant as if I had impugned his moral character when I modestly demurred.

"Look 'ere, Mr. Carton," he snapped, "wot could be more simpler? W'en there's a man or a woman a-standin' at the door shoutin' to be keerful an' hurry up, an' put this 'ere an' that there, an' hobstructin' gin'rally, there's bound to be trouble. W'y, in Lunnon you don't ketch the bobbies botherin' about common drunks in movin' season, for they knows there's goin' to be a full docket of assaults an' batteries an' 'busive langwidges. W'y, with your plan there wouldn't be none o' that, for a man 'd jest onload 'is dray as mum as a trained pig a-pickin' hout cards. Mr. Carton," he concluded, "Hi'll put every blessed piece in the right room an' set up yer kitchen stove an' bedstids free."

My heart warmed to Bliggs, for his active movements as he loaded the wagon inspired me with confidence, and when he drove off with his two helpers I had not a doubt but that he would carry out his cheerful assurances.

It was late in the afternoon by the time we locked the door of our dismantled house. The click of the lock sent a lump into my throat that caused me to turn quickly away, but Marion lingered, heaving a little sigh of regret. It is a peculiarity of hers to look back if that process is at all likely to result in a sigh; for my own part, I prefer to look straight ahead if I suspect there is to be any attempt to stir up my well of emotion, and, in consequence, on rare occasions I have been called cold-blooded. Paul is different in this respect; he is the dividing line between us. Marion caught him younger, and his plastic little soul has been moulded with loving care. He is sympathetic and responsive. He is not like any one musical instrument; he is like two. As easily moved as an Æolian harp, he has the fire, spirit and continuity of the bagpipes.

"Look, Paul!" said his mother tenderly, her eyes moistening. "Say 'Good-by, old house.'"

It was, at the least, an injudicious remark. Up to that moment we had been positively gleeful, and Paul had looked upon the change as a glorified picnic, for I had taken pains to instil the belief that Waydean would be an earthly elysium for a small boy; but now, with a woman's pensive touch, my carefully built fabric collapsed. Paul's big solemn eyes grew cloudy; a faint crescent appeared on each side of his mouth, deepening gradually. I watched this development in dumb despair, while Marion was absorbed in tender reminiscence, then, before I could utter a warning cry, his mouth shot open to the amazing degree that I knew so well. I grabbed him hastily, kneeling down. "Listen, Paul!" I shouted into his ear. "We'll move back—to-morrow—if you like."

I stood up suddenly, amazed; a hand had clutched my collar and almost pulled me backward—Marion's flashing eyes met mine. "Such a falsehood!" she gasped. "How dare you!"

I did not hear these words, but I knew what she said by the motion of her lips; besides, her manner made it perfectly plain that I was supposed to have infringed the truth, so speech was superfluous. As a matter of fact I could have disproved the charge, but not before Paul, for we strive to avoid discussing such matters before him; anyway, I would have needed a megaphone to make myself heard. Therefore, I stepped humbly aside, with a gesture that indicated my complete willingness to leave the matter to his mother.

"Paul, dear,—listen," she called out, bending over him; "we're not going to move back—ever."

The effect was instantaneous; he dropped to the sidewalk, renewing his efforts as he wriggled in anguish. I was obliged to pick him up in accordance with Marion's frantic gestures, and we retreated into the empty house, where she pacified him in course of time. I do not know the precise method she adopted, but I think, from snatches of conversation that reached me, that beautiful native birds figured largely—among others, storks! I know that storks do not grow at Waydean, yet I preserved a grim silence, thinking what a strong case I might make, were I not too generous to do so.

I was justly indignant, for I do not seem to be able to make Marion understand that, like her, I have a horror of untruth; in fact, I am more cautious in my statements than any other journalist I know; but while I am placidly content to accept any assertion of hers without question, she is likely to quibble over almost every statement I make. I admit that I am forgetful, that to-morrow I may say exactly the opposite to what I say to-day, that what I condemn in the abstract may seem to me expedient and proper under certain conditions, but I object to being openly accused of prevarication. Paul, as I have said, is not an ordinary child (and although people who are not his parents are inclined to use a compassionate tone in making that remark, I do so with defiant pride), therefore he should be treated with tactful consideration not accorded to common children. He responds to my sympathetic touch, I am glad to say, with sweet concords; that is, of course, if my elbow is not joggled by his mother. In this case, though I spoke in haste, my words would have stopped Paul's outcry had Marion left him to me, and had she not been prone to suspicion she would have seen that my statement was absolutely truthful. I knew that the child had been moved by a passing sentiment and would be more than content with our new home once he was transplanted, but I was deeply grieved at his mother suspecting me of being so base as not to be willing to move back to the city the next day if Paul liked.

We had missed the first afternoon train, and after a dreary wait for the next one we arrived at the little country station just at dusk, and before we reached Waydean darkness had fallen. We groped our way around to the back door and stumbled into the kitchen, where I lit a candle I had brought. My heart sank at the first glance about the room, for it was quite empty and I feared that our goods had not arrived, but when I peered fearfully into the next room I saw that what looked at first like a railroad box-car was a rectangular erection of all our household belongings. We stared incredulously by the light of the flickering candle, walking around the structure in despair. Next the ceiling, like a statue on its massive base, our cooking-stove perched giddily—Bliggs had set it up with a vengeance!—on the very bottom lay all our beds and bedding, hopelessly buried, for if I attempted to disturb the pile, down would plunge that threatening mass of metal. Bliggs was a fiend!

A strip of torn wall-paper hung down like a banner from a projecting curtain-pole; it was covered with rude pencillings, which we deciphered together after Paul had dropped asleep on my overcoat, with this result:

Mister Carton.

heluv a rode.

hosses nere ded.

men kickt.

basht em fur emtin botel.

basht em fur mutinin bout histin stov.

to dark to ce chok marks.

done nex bes stile.

heluv a gob wel dun.

wilyum bliggs.

I opened the kitchen door and looked despairingly out into the darkness; the twinkling light of the next farm-house shone far away like a star on the horizon; I must go over there and ask for food and lodging as if we were penniless wayfarers. Marion stood beside me, and together we tried to assure each other that the people whose light looked so cheery must be warm-hearted and hospitable enough to make us welcome. As we gazed, a second light appeared near the farm-house; evidently some person had come out with a lantern, for we could hear his carolling whistle accompanying the gliding movement of the light. It was coming nearer, for we could soon make out the lilting melody of the whistler and the encircling glow that surrounded him, and I felt Marion's grasp tighten on my arm with a sudden hope that had also sprung up in my breast. Nearer and nearer he came, until the globe of light grew larger and cast titanic shadows of a pair of nimble legs that passed around the end of the barn, through the yard, up to our very door, where we stood spellbound; then the whistle ceased, the lantern was raised, and by its dazzling glow we saw a little man with kindly gray eyes and thin reddish whiskers standing there.

"Good-evenin'!" he called out, cheerily. "We heard there was some people movin' in to-day, and we thought you might be kinder upsot, so I come to see if you wouldn't step along over to our place and have supper and stay the night. The missis has the beds ready, and Sairey knows how to fix things comfortable."

There was a moment's awkward pause, for we were dumb with excess of emotion.

"You don't know my name, and I don't know yourn," he proceeded. "Mine's Andy Taylor, and my place is next south, over there where you see that light."

I clutched his hand. "Mr. Taylor," I gasped, "come in. I was afraid you were an angel—perhaps you are, but we—we're awfully glad to see you."

"It's so good"—began Marion, then she collapsed.

"Why, where's your load?" he asked, looking around the vacant room.

I showed him, while Marion held the candle aloft. I related my wrongs with passionate fervor; I exhibited the Bliggs epistle, translating the rude characters as I traced them with a trembling forefinger and called down vengeance on the head of the perpetrator. A spasm shot across my visitor's face and his wide-open mouth closed with a snap; he leaned forward helplessly as if a sneeze had seized him, then a wild outburst of hilarity smote our astonished ears. "Oh, Lordy, Lordy!" he groaned. "The upliftin' power"—he pointed upward to the stove—"of—of strong drink!"

Andy Taylor's lantern shed its cheering rays over us as he led the way across the fields to the distant beacon-light of his house. Forlorn, homesick, discouraged, as we had been, his friendly hospitality filled us with gratitude too deep for words. His unquestioning acceptance of us as guests was staggering, accustomed as we were to the artificial restrictions of social intercourse in the city. As Marion said afterward, I might have been a temporarily retired burglar who had eloped with another man's wife and kidnapped a child, or we might have been dangerous lunatics, or worse,—we might have been vulgar people! But yet, with the all-embracing charity that thinketh no evil, Andy's sprightly step led us from the chaotic discomfort of our new home to the warmth and cheer that awaited us in his. No wonder, then, that Marion wept like a tired child on the shoulder of the motherly old lady who welcomed us, or that Andy, after one glance at my expressive face, backed away with a hurried remark about having to attend to the fire. Later, when Paul had been put to sleep in an old-fashioned billowy feather bed, we settled ourselves in the kitchen for a smoke. We could hear from the sitting-room the continuous restful murmur of the women's voices, rising and falling in the responsive cadences of that sweet communion that betokens, even in the most prosaic utterances, the mingling of kindred spirits of the gentle sex. I look back upon that evening as one of the pleasantest I ever spent, and I enjoyed to the full the quaint sayings and funny stories of the genial little man who entertained me.

The clock struck eleven before either of us noticed the lateness of the hour. Andy rose reluctantly, knocking the ashes out of his pipe.

"Well, Mr. Carton," said he, "I'm mighty glad you're goin' to be a neighbor of mine. The women-folk seem to have hit it off, too," he added, opening the door into the next room, "and"——

He stopped speaking, and a look of astonishment crossed his face as a tumultuous babel of conversation reached our ears. The voices no longer rose and fell—they rose steadily, each dominating the other, it seemed, and yet—marvel of marvels!—in perfect amity, though they no longer responded but spoke at one and the same time.

"If it was two men?" whispered Andy, with a chuckle.

"Exactly," I replied; "it would mean a fight."

We listened intently. It was a problem—simple to the speakers—of gussets, and pleats, and back widths, and yet not one connected sentence could we hear.

"I tell you what, Mr. Carton," said Andy, in his hoarse whisper, "I've been married forty-two years, and I ain't found anything yet as entertainin' as the ways of a woman."

"Well," I suggested, "what about the ways of two women?"

Andy doubled himself over in silent glee; as for me, I felt that I had said something rather neat, and tried not to smile myself. Just then the voices in the next room suddenly ceased.

"Well, I declare!" exclaimed Mrs. Taylor. "It's after eleven. I wonder what them men is talkin' about so quiet in the kitchen. If your husband lets him, Andy'll jest talk him blind, once he gets started."

Marion laughed merrily. "Why, Mrs. Taylor," she said, "how absurd! You don't know Henry, or you wouldn't say that."

"Talk about women gossipin', as men do, Mrs. Carton, I believe there's more gossip goes on among the men down at the post-office every day than all the women round here do in a week. Now Andy"——

At that moment Andy softly shut the door, shuffled a chair across the floor ostentatiously and announced in a loud tone that it was time to get to bed.

IV THE EDUCATION OF GRIGGS

We had lived for two months at Waydean, and, although as far as agricultural operations were concerned we might as well have been in the city, I had begun to appreciate the delights of a country life without the usual drudgery, worry and expense. I was not raising grain at two dollars a bushel to sell for fifty cents, or making butter at a cost of a dollar a pound to sell for a quarter of a dollar, but I had time during the hot weather to enjoy the sight of Peter Waydean's waving fields as I swung in a hammock under the trees, while that old sinner frizzled in the glaring sunlight over his work. Occasionally I refreshed myself by sauntering to the field where he happened to be working, to have a little friendly conversation with him, and I never failed to let him know that new beauties were revealed to me day by day in the agreement to pay him an extra hundred dollars for working his own land. At first he had showed signs of looking upon me with the contemptuous irritation of an angler who has accidentally landed a mud-pout, but when I artlessly hinted that I would have been willing to pay a higher rent for the place rather than make a slave of myself as he did, I could see that his previous delight in his own cleverness was completely overshadowed by the bitter regret that he had not made more of his opportunity.

We had no cattle of our own, but Peter's were in plain view in the lower field. We had no sheep, but Peter's little flock picturesquely dotted the landscape. We didn't own a horse, but, after all, Marion had a terror of being run away with, and I had made an inflexible rule never to go within range of a horse's hind legs. And in the matter of confining my farm expenditure to the price of a spade, a rake and a hoe, I had been most loyal and consistent; I had stuck not only to the letter of our agreement, but also to the spirit. Indeed, I was not merely resigned, but cheerful, knowing that the more closely I appeared to cling to Marion's plan the sooner would she begin to waver.

But a chance remark that I overheard Abner Davis make one morning as I boarded the train changed my mental attitude in an instant. "He ain't no reg'lar farmer—oh, Jiminy, no!—ha, ha!—he's jest"—How he finally labelled me to his fellow-rustic I never heard, for the train slowed up at the platform, and his voice was drowned in the noise. I just had time to turn, before I stepped on board, to cast a withering glance backwards—a glance that was wasted, however, for Abner was poking the other man in the side with his thumb and they were both doubled over with merriment. Of course, he hadn't intended me to hear, and I was quite aware that I was not a farmer, either regular or irregular, but it was this fact that made the remark so galling. There are two things I cannot bear: one is what Marion calls the truth, for that always turns out to be something odious and objectionable; the other is ridicule. That morning my mind was filled with bitterness, for Abner Davis had managed to combine in one brief remark the essence of much that I disliked to hear. The rhythmic beat of the car-wheels clanked out the derisive refrain, "He ain't—no reg—'lar far—mer!" By the time I reached the city I had decided it was due to my self-respect to put things on a different basis. Certainly, I was not a farmer. I had neither a horse, nor a cow, nor a sheep—no, not even a guinea-pig! I had no agricultural implements, except,—oh, hateful thought!—a spade, a rake and a hoe.

I was in this mood when Harold Jones unloaded Griggs upon me in the restaurant where I was taking lunch. I knew from the twinkle in Harold's eye when he introduced us that he meant mischief. "Griggs," he explained to me, "has got farm-on-the-brain. Carton," he explained to Griggs, "had such a severe attack that his mind is unhinged. He imagines—ha, ha!—that he's a farmer! Now you two sit down and exchange symptoms. I have to get back to the office."

I treated Griggs with distant civility, not because he was thrust upon me, but because it usually takes me a year or more to get beyond formalities with an acquaintance. But Griggs was impervious to hauteur; he was unconstrained and hearty enough for two. I could see that Harold had spoken the truth in his case, for his farming mania was at its height, and he was overjoyed at finding a man who had done what he merely dreamed of doing. He was a produce commission merchant, he told me, and he was convinced that he could double his income and prolong his life by running a farm in connection with his business. It was a simple proposition, he stated, that a child could grasp. A farmer makes a profit by farming, a commission merchant by commissioning; therefore, if the merchant were also a farmer would he not absorb both profits?

Griggs tilted his chair, hooked his thumbs into his waistcoat, and challenged me to point out a flaw in his theory. I declined, for the simple reason, I said, that it was flawless; then I rose to make my escape. Griggs adjured me to sit down for a minute; he had a few questions to ask, and I was the man of all men to give him the information he sought.

Now a stitch in time, it is said, saves nine; a lie, a little one, a mere clerical plea of a pressing engagement, would have saved ninety or more. Had I not instinctively refrained from loosening one stitch in my garment of righteousness it would not have been torn to tatters.

I hesitated; I sat down; I was lost. Griggs grew friendly, more friendly, affectionate; he addressed me by my surname, and I realized that I was in the clutches of the objectionable type of person who claps you on the back at the second meeting, and demands with a boisterous laugh, "How goes it, old man?"

Beginning with generalities pertaining to agriculture, he questioned me searchingly upon my private affairs. I can parry, and occasionally thrust—but not against a battering-ram. Grigg's questions were not to be evaded. I could have declined point-blank to answer, thus intimating that he was a boor, but that would have been unpleasant to me—perhaps not to Griggs. I could have followed my natural inclination by telling the truth, but I recoiled from laying bare to a stranger the peculiar economies of our rural life; besides, I shrink from intrusion with the same shyness that causes me to slink guiltily into a shop if I see a man approaching who is indebted to me. There was but one other alternative; I took it. I smiled my most frankly ingenuous smile; I beamed upon him with warm-hearted encouraging candor and—lied! Yes, lied with beggarly duplicity, and I kept on with Spartan fortitude; and so smooth is the grade on the broad and downward road that presently I was enjoying my own depravity. My imaginings no longer appeared as ugly bloated caterpillars, but spun themselves swiftly into chrysalides and instantly emerged as gorgeous butterflies, dazzling to their creator. And yet my mind remained alert and clear. Every statement that I made was notched deeply into my own brain, so that I could afterwards recall the slightest detail; into Griggs's also, for he snapped at, swallowed and assimilated every fragment of information with the avidity of a starved dog. We began in this way:—

"How many acres in your farm?"......"Fifty." (It really was my farm, for I was paying more than the rent of the whole place to Peter.)

"How many horses?"......"Five—two working teams and a fast driver." (Fortunately, I knew Peter's stable.)

"Cows? .. Calves?"......"Three cows—seven calves." (I was pretty sure of the cows, but I had to guess the calves.)

"Jupiter! You never raised seven calves from three cows?"......"Oh, yes. Three pair of twins—the odd one is last year's."

"Last year's! Thought you had only been farming two months?"......"Yes, but I bought one calf with her mother."

"Three pair of twins first season! Great Caesar—what luck! What did you pay for the farm?"......"Six thousand, two hundred and fifty."

"Cash?"......"Cash."

"The devil! You must be well fixed?"......"Oh,—so, so."

"How'd you make it?"......"Emperor stock."

"Emperor! You must have been in on the ground floor?"......"Ground floor."

"Oh Lord! How many men do you keep?"......"Just one."

"What do you have to pay him?"......"Three hundred a year."

"Must be a nice place for children. How many have you?"......"Five." (This was theoretically correct. Paul had invented two sisters and two brothers, all invisible, to play with. A man's family should be screened from publicity, and this reply seemed to make Paul strictly impersonal. He did not ask me how many wives I had.)

Now I looked upon this person as a man whom I would never meet again, never having met him before, and I parted from him with joy after having answered every question that he asked to his satisfaction, also to my own. I did not dream of entering a maze that would exhaust my ingenuity to find my way out of without ignominiously crying for help. But before I was done with Griggs I recalled many things of which I had never seen the full significance before. One was a tract I had read in my youth entitled, "The First False Step." Another was a remark that Marion had once made in anger: that I would say anything, without regard to veracity or the immediate future, to avoid unpleasantness. I had got her to retract the assertion to a certain extent by professing to be deeply wounded, as indeed I was, but I saw now that she knew me better than I knew myself.

Two days later, on my next trip to the city, I found Griggs awaiting me in my office. "Hello, old man!" he exclaimed enthusiastically. "I haven't been able to sleep since I saw you—can't think of anything but getting out to see your farm. Why, Carton, what's—what the dev"——

"Stand back," I cried warningly, with averted face and outstretched arm—"keep well away! I'm—I'm in trouble. My boy—my boy—" I sank into my chair and covered my face with my hands.

Griggs staggered back. "Which one?" he gasped.

"Which—oh,—ah—Andrew," I answered despairingly. "He broke out last night—I'm afraid it's—" I bowed my head.

"It's what?" demanded Griggs, moving rapidly away.

"Scarlet fever," I groaned.

Griggs vanished. "Say, Carton," he called out, from the other side of the door, "awfully sorry. Other kids all safe?"

I laughed—a hard metallic laugh—I knew it sounded like that, for I seemed to stand off and listen. Griggs didn't wait to hear more. "Hell!" he ejaculated, and his heavy footsteps pounded the stairs.

I thought that was the last of Griggs. It was—for nearly two months. By that time my point of view had changed, as the danger of complications receded, so that I sometimes found myself chuckling over the clever way in which I had managed to rid myself of an insufferable bore. I did not mention the matter to Marion, for I well knew that in some things she was incapable of judicial consideration, without regard to qualifying circumstances; then, reasoning and argument availed not. An act, she insists, is either right or wrong, therefore it is useless to juggle with words in trying to make out that it is mostly right and only a little wrong. Had Marion developed artistic ability, I am sure it would have been in the line of black and white, while my talent would as surely have run to color. It is the moral in a fable that appeals most strongly to her; it is the fable itself that delights my imagination. A moral is all very well in its place—like a capstone to a tower,—but there it should stay. To detach it for the purpose of concrete personal application, I have explained to Marion, is an outrage on the properties of family life. To choose the moment when a man is smarting under the consciousness of error for the purpose of pointing out the folly of his foolishness is positively inhuman. What, I ask, would have been the moral effect upon the prodigal had his father prepared a feast of proverbs instead of a fatted calf? This question she has never answered except by a baffling tight-lipped smile—a smile that convinces me of the utter folly of hoping that a woman will listen to reason. Yes, I had good cause to believe that mentioning the Griggs episode would lead to useless discussion.

It was a warm day in midsummer when I found a note from Griggs in my morning mail. He had learned at the office that I was spending my vacation at home, and he concluded that all danger of infection was over.

" ... Now, old chap," he wrote, "I can't wait any longer; I've got to have a look at your place. My wife has been dead against my buying a farm, but she has given in this much: that if I can find a city man who gets more out of his farm than he puts into it, she'll let me go ahead. So you're my man, Carton. I want you to give me the tip in regard to facts and figures, and if you have to dress them up a bit, like the Annual Report of a Loan and Investment Company, you may do so, with my blessing. I'm no good in that line myself, but I'm strong on a second-hand affidavit. I'll drive out on Thursday afternoon to have a look around your farm, then you can post me on details."

It was nine o'clock when I received this epistle. Griggs, I calculated, could not arrive before the middle of the afternoon, and he would probably not stay more than an hour or two, so as to leave time to drive back to the city by daylight. The problem that confronted me was whether it would be worse for me to tell the truth to Griggs, or to Marion, or to both, or to risk the probability of Marion learning it from Griggs, or of the latter from my wife. I shrank from each solution in turn, and yet, worst of all, was the thought of being burdened any longer by the secret of my own guilt. I could have made up my mind to confess to Marion had I not been sure that she would insist upon Griggs being told the instant he arrived. That thought hardened my heart. I had gone too far to retreat; Griggs should be deceived to the bitter end.

It was at this stage of my mental conflict that the thought of confiding in Andy Taylor came to me as a sudden inspiration. That dear old soul, I felt sure, would take a positive delight in helping me out of this difficulty; indeed, I thought of borrowing his farm for the afternoon, until a better plan presented itself. I couldn't see the humorous side of the matter very clearly just then, but I knew Andy would. He did. I found him hoeing his corn, but he willingly left his work and sat down in a shady spot with me to listen to my tale. I did not attempt to excuse myself; in fact, I was rather more severe in my self-condemnation than I thought the circumstances warranted. I wanted sympathy and encouragement; I wanted to be assured that I wasn't as miserable a sinner as I declared myself to be; and I knew that, in dealing with Marion, the way to get what I yearned for was to assume the most abject repentance. But my serious air failed to impress Andy, for he was so delighted with the humor of the situation that, at first, he gave himself up to unrestrained merriment. I had to paint my despair still more vividly before he subsided into helpful contemplation.

"To tell you the truth, Mr. Carton"—I winced at the word, and at the wink that accompanied it—"I think it's a darn good joke." He stopped to laugh once more, and I permitted a sorrowful smile to steal over my face. "And as for my opinion of your conduct," he went on, "I believe you're jest a nateral-born play-actor." I started in surprise, for this was not the kind of consolation I had expected. "That bein' the case," he concluded, "you ain't no ways blamable."

"Why, how do you make that out?" I asked, trying to conceal my elation.

"You done it," he answered, chewing a piece of June grass meditatively, with his eyes half-closed, "as innocent as that little boy of yourn when he makes believe he has all them brothers and sisters. You ain't got all the live-stock that you described, but you want 'em so bad that your imagination sort of got a cinch on your judgment."

I grasped his hand in speechless gratitude,—not only for the charitable view he took of my conduct, but also that he had pointed out the way to disarm Marion's criticism when the time came for me to confess my misdeeds. I looked at my watch. In three or four hours Griggs would appear; there was no time to lose.

"Mr. Taylor," I said, hesitatingly, not knowing just how to broach my plan, "having gone so far, I—I don't quite see my way clear, except—by going a little farther."

Andy nodded in perfect comprehension. "See that strip of tamarac swamp over there?" he asked. "Well, it ain't no more'n half a mile wide, and it'd come nateral to me to cut through there in a bee line, but if you was to try, the chances is that every bit of it would look like every other bit, and you'd be glad to git out even on the side you started in on."

"I would," I admitted. "If I could only start afresh!"

Andy chuckled again. "Well," he said, with hearty encouragement, "I'm prepared to holler round the edge, or go in to look you up, or anything you say. Now, what's your scheme?"

"It struck me," I replied, casting aside my embarrassment, "that perhaps you wouldn't mind lending me some stage furniture for the afternoon." I enumerated the required number of horses, cattle, hogs, and sheep.

Andy laughed in glee, then he shook his head in assumed solemnity. "No, Mr. Carton," he said, "I couldn't do that, but I'll give 'em to you outright; then, if you like, you can give 'em back to me in the evenin'."

I was touched by his evident desire to save me from any unnecessary perversion of the truth, but I assured him that Griggs would not think of asking me if the animals he saw on my place were my own; besides, I would feel overwhelmed by the munificence of this temporary gift. But Andy was obdurate, so I let him have his way. There was just one other difficulty—that of getting my wife away from Waydean for the afternoon, but that was easily arranged. I remembered that she was in the first stage of the rag-carpet fever, and had announced her intention of getting Mrs. Taylor to instruct her in the art, so when Andy brought me into the house to have a drink of fresh buttermilk, I had only to hint at Marion's desire to learn in order to secure a pressing invitation from Mrs. Taylor to bring her over in the afternoon.

Andy accompanied me to the gate. "Mr. Carton, keep up your spirits," he said encouragingly, in parting, "and everything will go all right. You needn't feel nervous about your wife gittin' back too soon, for when two women gits started rag-carpetin' they don't remember they've got husbands until on about supper-time. When they settle down we'll drive the stock over and arrange them to look nateral. I was goin' to wash my buggy this afternoon, and I was thinkin' I might as well do it over there. I ain't had no experience of play-actin', but you need someone to look like a hired man, and I guess I could do that."

I had thought of the hired man problem, and the same idea had occurred to me, but I knew it wasn't my place to make the suggestion. "No, Mr. Taylor," I replied; "I couldn't think of letting you take such a menial part. I'd rather give up the performance—" I wilted suddenly at his look of sceptical amusement—"unless," I added, "you would really like to do it."

"I really would," he responded, with a broad smile.

Griggs came. To my amazement, he asked no questions, at first. He had a business-like, preoccupied air, as if he were a bailiff preparing an inventory for a bill-of-sale, and he looked at me, I fancied, as if he suspected I had hastily hidden some of the effects that might legally be attached. He scarcely noticed Peter's growing crops, but he studied the domestic animals intently, jotting down memoranda in his note-book. The inspection evidently satisfied him that they were not stuffed, although in their unfamiliar surroundings the cattle wore a strained and unnatural expression, as if they thought he was an amateur photographer, and feared they might not be taken full face. His manner exasperated me, but I managed to treat him politely, even when he remarked that my hired man was a rum-looking old coon and that the horses needed grooming.

Suddenly he shut his note-book with a snap. "Carton," he burst forth, "I've been taken in!"

"Taken—in?" I ejaculated. He had an equine cast of countenance, and his eyes rolled in such a vicious way that I instinctively moved directly in front, looking at him fixedly. My surprise was not assumed.

"Duped—bamboozled—hoodwinked!" he snorted.

I grew pale with rage. I knew I did, though I could not see myself. My eyes flashed; I could feel them flashing. I would have given five dollars to see their scintillations in a mirror. I drew myself up to more than my full height—thank Heaven, I could at least see myself elongate! Andy Taylor, standing beside his buggy with a sopping sponge in one hand, his mouth hanging open and his reddish side-whiskers floating in the breeze, suddenly turned his back and hugged himself, his shoulders heaving in silent spasmodic convulsions.

"Mr. Griggs," I said icily, my tone, I was pleased to hear, as pale and frosty as a shaft of the aurora borealis, "what do you mean?"

"What do I mean?" he shouted. "I mean that I'll pay Harold Jones back for this—I'll teach him not to run a rig on me!"

"Harold—Jones?" I queried vacantly.

Griggs burst into a laugh that sounded like a horse's neigh. "Brace up, old man," he adjured me, slapping me on the back. "You don't seem to get on to my meaning, but you don't need to look like an idiot. I'll tell you the whole business."

Briefly, it seemed, he had happened to meet my friend Harold that day, and had mentioned his proposed visit to my farm; incidentally, a warm discussion had arisen. Harold had been convulsed with merriment at Griggs's conception of the extensive scope of my farming operations. When Griggs adduced his conversation with me as evidence Harold had laughed still more uproariously, declaring it was the best joke he ever heard—further, that my live-stock consisted of five old hens and some chickens. Griggs knew Harold to be fond of joking, but had, reluctantly, believed him. He had not expected, he admitted, to see such a well-stocked farm.

"In other words," I said, with some heat, "you expected to find that I"——

"Hold up!" interrupted Griggs hastily. "You see, Carton, I was mad at the thought of having been made a fool of. I can understand a fellow lying on a business deal, when it's to his interest, but to sit down and lie cold-bloodedly, just for recreation, like"——

"Like whom?" I demanded wrathfully, as he paused.

"Like that brute Jones," answered Griggs, with a vicious jerk of his head. "I'll get back on him, you bet!"

I began to see daylight. "Come away up to the house and we'll have a little refreshment," I said, with hospitable zeal.

Griggs brightened. It was a warm day, so I brought him around to the south veranda, but I would have entertained him anywhere else had I remembered that Paul was there. He was curled up in a chair, absorbed in a book. I knew he was oblivious of what had been going on, but there is never any certainty of what Paul may, or may not, say, and I felt a qualm of misgiving. Griggs proceeded to attract his attention by snapping his fingers, as if the boy were a puppy or an infant, remarking, to me, that he was wondering where I kept the kids. Now Paul is not shy, but we never could induce him to notice a stranger's advances without being formally introduced, consequently, if his mind is suddenly withdrawn from his imaginary world, he looks shy; worse, he looks as if he were unseeing, deaf, and an idiot. My mind was preoccupied, or I would have avoided difficulties by introducing Griggs, but I unfortunately neglected that formality. Paul's stolid and incurious gaze rested on my visitor; I looked on spellbound, knowing that his mind was working with intensity, and that something was coming; Griggs shuffled uneasily.

"Well, sonny," said Griggs, at last, "what do you think of me?"

I have watched a toad sit motionless waiting for a fly to come within reach with exactly Paul's expression. I noticed that his eyelids didn't even blink. Griggs glanced at me; I felt, rather than saw, the patronizing condolence of his look. It is the look of the proud father who raises children guaranteed to fit ready-made clothing.

"Paul," I prompted, with pregnant meaning, "why don't you answer? What do you think of this gentleman?"

"I think, father," he answered, in his dreamy, deliberate tone, addressing me pointedly, but still looking at Griggs, "that he looks like a horse."

I felt as if I were falling from a dizzy height, but the sensation was not altogether painful. Griggs bore up better than I could have hoped, and declared with an attempt at jocularity that he would rather look like a horse than a cow. I had no more presence of mind than to reprove Paul on the spot for his rudeness, a course which could only result in one of two things: a howl or an argument. This time it was an argument; but I could better have stood a howl, for he pointed out that his mother had taught him to always tell the truth, and——

"That will do, Paul," I interrupted, hurriedly. "Stand up, and I'll introduce you to Mr. Griggs."

I left them to entertain each other, while I escaped into the house for the refreshments. Had I not done so, nothing could have warded off an indignant dissertation from Paul on the difference he was careful to observe between stating actual facts that came under his observation and his habit of making up fictitious persons and events. The latter propensity we never checked, believing that nothing should be said to prevent the fullest development of his wonderful imagination. My own excursions in the realm of undiluted fiction were trifling in comparison to Paul's; before him, doubtless, lay a future with his pen beside which even mine must pale to insignificance.

The room I was in opened upon the veranda. Paul was sitting beside the window, and I could hear his voice distinctly, but only the alternate interrogatory rumble of his companion's. Evidently Griggs was making the most of his opportunity to learn more of my domestic concerns.

"Oh, he's all right," I heard Paul announce. "He was only playing sick to get out of working. Father said it wasn't worth while to send for the doctor, and we shut him up in the barn so that the others wouldn't take it. We didn't let him out till he said he was quite well thank-you."

"They're all half-brothers and half-sisters. Not of any consequence, you know—just to amuse me."

"Father said he guessed he'd send them to the Orphan's Home; he couldn't afford to feed such a large family. Then he said he'd let me keep them if I made them work hard for their board. I can tell you I keep them going."

"Father says he cares more for me than for the whole crowd, and that he shouldn't be expected to bring up step-children."

"Yes, I let them play for an hour on Saturdays."

"They're all out picking potato bugs except Tom. He's in jail."