Greatly embarrassed, Newman shambled forth and, turning, faced us.

"Now, sir," said the master, "catch the key-note from me. Do! Now re—mi," and so forth.

Bear-Tone had great difficulty in getting Newman through the scale. "'Fraid you never'll make a great singer, my boy," he said, "but you may be able to grumble bass a little, if you prove to have an ear that can follow. Next on that seat."

The pupil so designated was a Bagdad boy named Freeman Knights. He hoarsely rattled off, "Do, re, mi, fa, sol," all on the same tone. When Bear-Tone had spent some moments in trying to make him rise and fall on the notes, he exclaimed:

"My dear boy, you may be able to drive oxen, but you'll never sing. It wouldn't do you any good to stay here, and as the room is crowded the best thing you can do is to run home."

Opening the door, he gave Freeman a friendly pat on the shoulder and a push into better air outside.

Afterwards came Freeman's sister, Nellie Knights; she could discern no difference between do and la—at which Bear-Tone heaved a sigh.

"Wai, sis, you'll be able to call chickens, I guess, because that's all on one note, but 'twouldn't be worth while for you to try to sing, or torment a pianner. There are plenty of girls tormentin' pianners now. I guess you'd better go home, too; it may come on to snow."

Nellie departed angrily and slammed the door. Bear-Tone looked after her. "Yes," he said, "'tis kind of hard to say that to a girl. Don't wonder she's a little mad. And yet, that's the kindest thing I can do. Even in Scripter there was the sheep and the goats; the goats couldn't sing, and the sheep could; they had to be separated."

He went on testing voices and sending the "goats" home. Some of the "goats," however, lingered round outside, made remarks and peeped in at the windows. In an hour their number had grown to eighteen or twenty.

Dreading the ordeal, I slunk into a back seat. I saw my cousin, Addison, who had a fairly good voice, join the "sheep," and then Theodora, Ellen, Kate and Thomas; but I could not escape the ordeal forever, and at last my turn came. When Bear-Tone bade me sing the scale, fear so constricted my vocal cords that I squealed rather than sang.

"Sonny, there's lots of things a boy can do besides sing," Bear-Tone said as he laughingly consigned me to the outer darkness. "It's no great blessing, after all." He patted my shoulder. "I can sing a little, but I've never been good for much else. So don't you feel bad about it."

But I did feel bad, and, joining the "goats" outside, I helped to organize a hostile demonstration. We began to march round the schoolhouse, howling Yankee Doodle. Our discordant noise drew a prompt response. The door opened and Bear-Tone's huge form appeared.

"In about one harf of one minute more I'll be out there and give ye a lesson in Yankee Doodle!" he cried, laughing. His tone sounded good-natured; yet for some reason none of us thought it best to renew the disturbance.

Most of the "goats" dispersed, but, not wishing to walk home alone, I hung round waiting for the others. One window of the schoolroom had been raised, and through that I watched proceedings. Bear-Tone had now tested all the voices except one, and his face showed that he had not been having a very pleasant time. Up in the back seat there still remained one girl, Helen Thomas, who had, according to common report, a rather good voice; yet she was so modest that few had ever heard her either sing or recite.

I saw her come forward, when the master beckoned, and sing her do, re, mi. Bear-Tone, who had stood waiting somewhat apathetically, came suddenly to attention. "Sing that again, little girl," he said.

Encouraged by his kind glance, Helen again sang the scale in her clear voice. A radiant look overspread Bear-Tone's big face.

"Wal, wal!" he cried. "But you've a voice, little one! Sing that with me."

Big voice and girl's voice blended and chorded.

"Ah, but you will make a singer, little one!" Bear-Tone exclaimed. "Now sing Woodland with me. Never mind notes, sing by ear."

A really beautiful volume of sound came through the window at which I listened. Bear-Tone and his new-found treasure sang The Star-Spangled Banner and several of the songs of the Civil War, then just ended—ballads still popular with us and fraught with touching memories: Tenting To-night on the Old Camp Ground, Dearest Love, Do You Remember? and Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys Are Marching. Bear-Tone's rich voice chorded beautifully with Helen's sweet, high notes.

As we were getting into the pung to go home after the meeting, and Helen and her older sister, Elizabeth, were setting off, Bear-Tone dashed out, bareheaded, with his big face beaming.

"Be sure you come again," he said to her, in a tone that was almost imploring. "You can sing! Oh, you can sing! I'll teach you! I'll teach you!"

The singing school that winter served chiefly as a pretty background for Bear-Tone's delight in Helen Thomas's voice, the interest he took in it, and the untiring efforts he made to teach her.

"One of the rarest of voices!" he said to the old Squire one night when he had come to the farmhouse on one of his frequent visits. "Not once will you find one in fifty years. It's a deep tribble. Why, Squire, that girl's voice is a discovery! And it will grow in her, Squire! It is just starting now, but by the time she's twenty-five it will come out wonderful."

The soprano of the particular quality that Bear-Tone called "deep tribble" is that sometimes called a "falcon" soprano, or dramatic soprano, in distinction from light soprano. It is better known and more enthusiastically appreciated by those proficient in music than by the general public. Bear-Tone, however, recognized it in his new pupil, as if from instinct.

The other pupils were somewhat neglected that winter; but no one complained, for it was such a pleasure to hear Bear-Tone and Helen sing. Many visitors came; and once the old Squire attended a meeting, in order to hear Bear-Tone's remarkable pupil. In Days of Old when Knights were Bold, dear old Juanita, and Roll on, Silver Moon, were some of their favorite songs, Still a "goat," and always a "goat," I am not capable of describing music; but school and visitors sat enchanted when Helen and Bear-Tone sang.

Helen's parents were opposed to having their daughter become a professional singer. They were willing that she should sing in church and at funerals, but not in opera. For a long time Bear-Tone labored to convince them that a voice like Helen's has a divine mission in the world, to please, to touch and to ennoble the hearts of the people.

At last he induced them to let him take Helen to Portland, in order that a well-known teacher there might hear her sing and give an opinion. Bear-Tone was to pay the expenses of the trip himself.

The city teacher was enthusiastic over the girl and urged that she be given opportunity for further study; but in view of the opposition at home that was not easily managed. But Bear-Tone would not be denied. He sacrificed the scanty earnings of a whole winter's round of singing schools in country school districts to send her to the city for a course of lessons.

The next year the question of her studying abroad came up. If Helen were to make the most of her voice, she must have it trained by masters in Italy and Paris. Her parents were unwilling to assist her to cross the ocean.

Bear-Tone was a poor man; his singing schools never brought him more than a few hundred dollars a year. He owned a little house in a neighboring village, where he kept "bachelor's hall"; he had a piano, a cabinet organ, a bugle, a guitar and several other musical instruments, including one fairly valuable old violin from which he was wont of an evening to produce wonderfully sweet, sad strains.

No one except the officials of the local savings bank knew how Bear-Tone raised the money for Helen Thomas's first trip abroad, but he did it. Long afterwards people learned that he had mortgaged everything he possessed, even the old violin, in order to provide the necessary money.

Helen went to Europe and studied for two years. She made her debut at Milan, sang in several of the great cities on the Continent, and at last, with a reputation as a great singer fully established, returned home four years later to sing in New York.

Bear-Tone meanwhile was teaching his singing schools, as usual, in the rural districts of Maine. Once or twice during those two years of study he had managed to send a little money to Helen, to help out with the expenses. Now he postponed his three bi-weekly schools for one week and made his first and only trip to New York—the journey of a lifetime. Perhaps he had at first hoped that he might meet her and be welcomed. If so, he changed his mind on reaching the metropolis. Aware of his uncouthness, he resolved not to shame her by claiming recognition. But he went three times to hear her sing, first in Aida, then in Faust, and afterwards in Les Huguenots; heard her magic notes, saw her in all her queenly beauty—but saw her from the shelter of a pillar in the rear of the great opera house. On the fifth day he returned home as quietly as he had gone.

Perhaps a month after he came back, while driving to one of his singing schools on a bitter night in February, he took a severe cold. For lack of any proper care at his little lonesome, chilly house, his cold a day or two later turned into pneumonia, and from that he died.

The savings bank took the house and the musical instruments. The piano, the organ, the old violin and other things were sold at auction. And probably Helen Thomas, whose brilliant career he had made possible, never heard anything about the circumstances of his death.



CHAPTER VIII

WHEN WE HUNTED THE STRIPED CATAMOUNT

The following week Tom Edwards and I had a somewhat exciting adventure which, however, by no means covered us with glory. During the previous winter and, indeed, for several winters before that, there had been rumors current of a strange, fierce animal which came down, from the "great woods" to devour dead lambs that were cast forth from the farmers' barns in February and March.

At that time nearly every farmer in the vicinity kept a flock of from fifty to a hundred sheep. During the warm season the animals got their own living in the back pastures; in winter they were fed on nothing better than hay. The animals usually came out in the spring thin and weak, with the ewes in poor condition to raise their lambs. In consequence, many of the lambs died soon after birth, and were thrown out on the snow for the crows and wild animals to dispose of.

The old Squire had begun to feed corn to his flock during the latter part of the winter, and urged his neighbors to do so; but many of them did not have the corn and preferred to let nature take its course.

The mysterious animal that the boys were talking about seemed to have formed the habit of visiting that region every spring. Not even the older people knew to what species it belonged. It came round the barns at night, and no one had ever seen it distinctly. Some believed it to be a catamount or panther; others who had caught glimpses of it said that it was a black creature with white stripes.

Traps had been set for it, but always without success. Mr. Wilbur, one of the neighbors, had watched from his barn and fired a charge of buckshot at it; but immediately the creature had disappeared in the darkness, carrying off a lamb. It visited one place or another nearly every night for a month or more—as long, indeed, as the supply of lambs held out. Then it would vanish until the following spring.

On the day above referred to I saw Tom coming across the snowy fields that lay between the Edwards' farm and the old Squire's. Guessing that he had something to tell me, I hastened forth to meet him.

"That old striped catamount has come round again!" Tom exclaimed. "He was at Batchelder's last night and got two dead lambs. And night before last he was at Wilbur's. I've got four dead lambs saved up. And old Hughy Glinds has told me a way to watch for him and shoot him."

Hughy Glinds was a rheumatic old man who lived in a small log house up in the edge of the great woods and made baskets for a living. In his younger days he had been a trapper and was therefore a high authority in such matters among the boys.

"We shall have to have a sleigh or a pung to watch from," Tom explained. "Old Hughy says to carry out a dead lamb and leave it near the bushes below our barn, and to haul a sleigh there and leave it a little way off, and do this for three or four nights till old Striped gets used to seeing the sleigh. Then, after he has come four nights, we're to go there early in the evening and hide in the sleigh, with a loaded gun. Old Striped will be used to seeing the sleigh there, and won't be suspicious.

"Pa don't want me to take our sleigh so long," Tom went on. "He wants to use it before we'd be through with it. But"—and I now began to see why Tom had been so willing to share with me the glory of killing the marauder—"there's an old sleigh out here behind your barn. Nobody uses it now. Couldn't we take that?"

I felt sure that the old Squire would not care, but I proposed to ask the opinion of Addison. Tom opposed our taking Addison into our confidence.

"He's older, and he'd get all the credit for it," he objected.

Addison, moreover, had driven to the village that morning; and after some discussion we decided to take the sleigh on our own responsibility. It was partly buried in a snowdrift; but we dug it out, and then drew it across the fields on the snow crust—lifting it over three stone walls—to a little knoll below the Edwards barn.

We concluded to lay the dead lamb on the top of the knoll at a little distance from the woods; the sleigh we left on the southeast side about fifteen paces away. Tom thought that he could shoot accurately at that distance, even at night.

For my own part I thought fifteen paces much too near. Misgivings had begun to beset me.

"What if you miss him, Tom?" I said.

"I shan't miss him," he declared firmly.

"But, Tom, what if you only wounded him and he came rushing straight at us?"

"Oh, I'll fix him!" Tom exclaimed. But I had become very apprehensive; and at last, Tom helped me to bring cedar rails and posts from a fence near by to construct a kind of fortress round the sleigh. We set the posts in the hard snow and made a fence, six rails high—to protect ourselves. Even then I was afraid it might jump the fence.

"He won't jump much with seven buckshot and a ball in him!" said Tom.

We left the empty sleigh there for three nights in succession; and every morning Tom came over to tell me that the lamb had been taken.

"The plan works just as old Hughy told me it would," he said; "but I've got only one lamb more, so we'll have to watch to-night. Don't tell anybody, but about bedtime you come over." Tom was full of eagerness.

I was in a feverish state of mind all day, especially as night drew on. If I had not been ashamed to fail Tom, I think I should have backed out. At eight o'clock I pretended to start for bed; then, stealing out at the back door, I hurried across the fields to the Edwards place. A new moon was shining faintly over the woods in the west.

Tom was in the wood-house, loading the gun, an old army rifle, bored out for shot. "I've got in six fingers of powder," he whispered.

We took a buffalo skin and a horse blanket from the stable, and armed with the gun, and an axe besides, proceeded cautiously out to the sleigh. Tom had laid the dead lamb on the knoll.

Climbing over the fence, we ensconced ourselves in the old sleigh. It was a chilly night, with gusts of wind from the northwest. We laid the axe where it would be at hand in case of need; and Tom trained the gun across the fence rail in the direction of the knoll.

"Like's not he won't come till toward morning," he whispered; "but we must stay awake and keep listening for him. Don't you go to sleep."

I thought that sleep was the last thing I was likely to be guilty of. I wished myself at home. The tales I had heard of the voracity and fierceness of the striped catamount were made much more terrible by the darkness. My position was so cramped and the old sleigh so hard that I had to squirm occasionally; but every time I did so, Tom whispered:

"Sh! Don't rattle round. He may hear us."

An hour or two, which seemed ages long, dragged by; the crescent moon sank behind the tree-tops and die night darkened. At last, in spite of myself, I grew drowsy, but every few moments I started broad awake and clutched the handle of the axe. Several times Tom whispered:

"I believe you're asleep."

"I'm not!" I protested.

"Well, you jump as if you were," he retorted.

By and by Tom himself started spasmodically, and I accused him of having slept; but he denied it in a most positive whisper. Suddenly, in an interval between two naps, I heard a sound different from the soughing of the wind, a sound like claws or toenails scratching on the snow crust. It came from the direction of the knoll, or beyond it.

"Tom, Tom, he's coming!" I whispered.

Tom, starting up from a nap, gripped the gunstock. "Yes, siree," he said. "He is." He cocked the gun, and the barrel squeaked faintly on the rail. "By jinks, I see him!"

I, too, discerned a shadowy, dark object at the top of the snow-crusted knoll. Tom was twisting round to get aim across the rail—and the next instant both of us were nearly kicked out of the sleigh by the recoil of the greatly overloaded gun. We both scrambled to our feet, for we heard an ugly snarl. I think the animal leaped upward; I was sure I saw something big and black rise six feet in the air, as if it were coming straight for the sleigh!

The instinct of self-preservation is a strong one. The first thing I realized I was over the fence rails, on the side toward the Edwards barn, running for dear life on the snow crust—and Tom was close behind me! We never stopped, even to look back, till we were at the barn and round the farther corner of it. There we pulled up to catch our breath. Nothing was pursuing us, nor could we hear anything.

After we had listened a while, Tom ran into the house and waked his father. Mr. Edwards, however, was slow to believe that we had hit the animal, and refused to dress and go out. It was now about two o'clock. I did not like to go home alone, and so went to bed with Tom. In consequence of our vigils we slept till sunrise. Meanwhile, on going out to milk, Tom's father had had the curiosity to visit the scene of our adventure. A trail of blood spots leading from the knoll into the woods convinced him that we had really damaged the prowler; and picking up the axe that I had dropped, he followed the trail. Large red stains at intervals showed that the animal had stopped frequently to grovel on the snow. About half a mile from the knoll, Mr. Edwards came upon the beast, in a fir thicket, making distressful sounds, and quite helpless to defend itself. A blow on the head from the poll of the axe finished the creature; and, taking it by the tail, Mr. Edwards dragged it to the house. The carcass was lying in the dooryard when Tom's mother waked us.

"Get up and see your striped catamount!" she called up the chamber stairs.

Hastily donning our clothes we rushed down. Truth to say, the "monster" of so many startling stories was somewhat disappointing to contemplate. It was far from being so big as we had thought it in the night—indeed, it was no larger than a medium-sized dog. It had coarse black hair with two indistinct, yellowish-white stripes, or bands, along its sides. Its legs were short, but strong, its claws white, hooked and about an inch and a quarter long. The head was broad and flat, and the ears were low and wide apart. It was not in the least like a catamount. In short, it was, as the reader may have guessed, a wolverene, or glutton, an animal rarely seen in Maine even by the early settlers, for its habitat is much farther north.

As Tom and I stood looking the creature over, my cousin Theodora appeared, coming from the old Squire's to make inquiries for me. They had missed me and were uneasy about me.

During the day every boy in the neighborhood came to see the animal, and many of the older people, too. In fact, several people came from a considerable distance to look at the beast. The "glory" was Tom's for making so good a shot in the night, yet, in a way, I shared it with him.

"Don't you ever say a word about our running from the sleigh," Tom cautioned me many times that day, and added that he would never have run except for my bad example.

I was obliged to put up in silence with that reflection on my bravery.



CHAPTER IX

THE LOST OXEN

It was now approaching time to tap the maples again; but owing to the disaster which had befallen our effort to make maple syrup for profit the previous spring, neither Addison nor myself felt much inclination to undertake it. The matter was talked over at the breakfast table one morning and noting our lukewarmness on the subject, the old Squire remarked that as the sugar lot had been tapped steadily every spring for twenty years or more, it would be quite as well perhaps to give the maples a rest for one season.

That same morning, too, Tom Edwards came over in haste to tell us, with a very sober face, that their oxen had disappeared mysteriously, and ask us to join in the search to find them. They were a yoke of "sparked" oxen—red and white in contrasting patches. Each had wide-spread horns and a "star" in his face. Bright and Broad were their names, and they were eight years old.

Neighbor Jotham Edwards was one of those simpleminded, hard-working farmers who ought to prosper but who never do. It is not easy to say just what the reason was for much of his ill fortune. Born under an unlucky planet, some people said; but that, of course, is childish. The real reason doubtless was lack of good judgment in his business enterprises.

Whatever he undertook nearly always turned out badly. His carts and ploughs broke unaccountably, his horses were strangely prone to run away and smash things, and something was frequently the matter with his crops. Twice, I remember, he broke a leg, and each time he had to lie six weeks on his back for the bone to knit. Felons on his fingers tormented him; and it was a notable season that he did not have a big, painful boil or a bad cut from a scythe or from an axe. One mishap seemed to lead to another.

Jotham's constant ill fortune was the more noticeable among his neighbors because his father, Jonathan, had been a careful, prosperous farmer who kept his place in excellent order, raised good crops and had the best cattle of any one thereabouts. Within a few years after the place had passed under Jotham's control it was mortgaged, the buildings and the fences were in bad repair, and the fields were weedy. Yet that man worked summer and winter as hard and as steadily as ever a man did or could.

Two winters before he had contracted with old Zack Lurvey to cut three hundred thousand feet of hemlock logs and draw them to the bank of a small river where in the spring they could be floated down to Lurvey's Mills. For hauling the logs he had two yokes of oxen, the yoke of large eight-year-olds that I have already described, and another yoke of small, white-faced cattle. During the first winter the off ox of the smaller pair stepped into a hole between two roots, broke its leg and had to be killed. Afterwards Jotham worked the nigh ox in a crooked yoke in front of his larger oxen and went on with the job from December until March.

But, as all teamsters know, oxen that are worked hard all day in winter weather require corn meal or other equally nourishing provender in addition to hay. Now, Jotham had nothing for his team except hay of inferior quality. In consequence, as the winter advanced the cattle lost flesh and became very weak. By March they could scarcely walk with their loads, and at last there came a morning when Jotham could not get the older oxen even to rise to their feet. He was obliged to give up work with them, and finally came home after turning them loose to help themselves to what hay was left at the camp.

The old Squire did not often concern himself with the affairs of his neighbors, but he went up to the logging camp with Jotham; and when he saw the pitiful condition the cattle were in he remonstrated with him.

"This is too bad," he said. "You have worked these oxen nearly to death, and you haven't half fed them!"

"Wal, my oxen don't have to work any harder than I do!" Jotham replied angrily. "I ain't able to buy corn for them. They must work without it."

"You only lose by such a foolish course," the old Squire said to him.

But Jotham was not a man who could easily be convinced of his errors. All his affairs were going badly; arguing with him only made him impatient.

The snow was now so soft that the oxen in their emaciated and weakened condition could not be driven home, and again Jotham left them at the camp to help themselves to fodder. He promised, however, to send better hay and some potatoes up to them the next day. But during the following night a great storm set in that carried off nearly all the snow and caused such a freshet in the streams and the brooks that it was impracticable to reach the camp for a week or longer. Then one night the small, white-faced ox made his appearance at the Edwards barn, having come home of his own accord.

The next morning Jotham went up on foot to see how his other cattle were faring. The flood had now largely subsided; but it was plain that during the storm the water had flowed back round the camp to a depth of several feet. The oxen were nowhere to be seen, nor could he discern their tracks round the camp or in the woods that surrounded it. He tried to track them with a dog, but without success.

Several of Jotham's neighbors assisted him in the search. Where the oxen had gone or what had become of them was a mystery; the party searched the forest in vain for a distance of five or six miles on all sides. Some of the men thought that the oxen had fallen into the stream and had drowned; it was not likely that they had been stolen. Jotham was at last obliged to buy another yoke of cattle in order to do his spring work on the farm.

Two years passed, and Jotham's oxen were almost forgotten. During the second winter, after school had closed in the old Squire's district, Willis Murch, a young friend of mine who lived near us, went on a trapping trip to the headwaters of Lurvey's Stream, where the oxen had disappeared and where he had a camp. One Saturday he came home for supplies and invited me to go back with him and spend Sunday. The distance was perhaps fourteen miles; and we had to travel on snowshoes, for at the time—it was February—the snow was nearly four feet deep in the woods. We had a fine time there in camp that night and the next morning went to look at Willis's traps.

That afternoon, after we had got back to camp and cooked our dinner, Willis said to me, "Now, if you will promise not to tell, I'll show you something that will make you laugh."

I promised readily enough, without thinking much about the matter.

"Come on, then," said he; and we put on our snowshoes again and prepared to start. But, though I questioned him with growing curiosity, he would not tell me what we were to see. "Oh, you'll find out soon enough," he said.

Willis led off, and I followed. I should think we went as much as five miles through the black growth to the north of Willis's camp and came finally to a frozen brook, which we followed for a mile round to the northeast.

"I was prospecting up this way a week ago," Willis said. "I had an idea of setting traps on this brook. It flows into a large pond a little way ahead of us, but just before we get to the pond it winds through a swamp of little spotted maple, moose bush and alder."

"I guess it's beaver you're going to show me," I remarked.

"Guess again," said Willis, "But keep still. Step in my tracks and don't make the brush crack."

The small growth was so thick that we could see only a little way ahead. Willis pushed slowly through it for some time; then, stopping short, he motioned to me over his shoulder to come forward. Not twenty yards away I distinguished the red-and-white hair of a large animal that was browsing on a clump of bushes. It stood in a pathway trodden so deep into the snow that its legs were completely hidden. In surprise I saw that it had broad horns.

"Why, that's an ox!" I exclaimed.

"Yes," said Willis, laughing. "His mate is round here, too."

"Willis," I almost shouted, "they must be the oxen Jotham lost two years ago!"

"Sure!" said Willis. "But don't make such a noise. There are moose here."

"Moose!" I whispered.

"There's a cow moose with two moose calves. When I was here last Thursday afternoon there were three deer with them. The snow's got so deep they are yarding here together. They get water at the brook, and I saw where they had dug down through the snow to get to the dry swamp grass underneath. They won't leave their yard if we don't scare them; they couldn't run in the deep snow."

We thought that probably the oxen had grown wild from being off in the woods so long. However, Willis advanced slowly, calling, "Co-boss!" Seeing us coming and hearing human voices, the old ox lifted his muzzle toward us and snuffed genially. He did not appear to be afraid, but behaved as if he were glad to see us. The other one—old Broad—had been lying down near by out of sight in the deep pathway, but now he suddenly rose and stood staring at us. We approached to within ten feet of them. They appeared to be in fairly good flesh, and their hair seemed very thick. Evidently they had wandered off from the logging camp and had been living a free, wild life ever since. In the small open meadows along the upper course of the stream there was plenty of wild grass. And, like deer, cattle will subsist in winter on the twigs of freshly grown bushes. Even such food as that, with freedom, was better than the cruel servitude of Jotham!

On going round to the far side of the yard we spied the three deer, the cow moose and her two yearling calves. They appeared unwilling to run away in the deep snow, but would not let us approach near enough to see them clearly through the bushes.

"You could shoot one of those deer," I said to Willis; but he declared that he would never shoot a deer or a moose when it was snow-bound in a yard.

We lingered near the yard for an hour or more. By speaking kindly to the oxen I found that I could go very close to them; they had by no means forgotten human beings. On our way back to Willis's camp he reminded me of my promise. "Now, don't you tell where those oxen are; don't tell anybody!"

"But, Willis, don't you think Jotham ought to know?" I asked.

"No, I don't!" Willis exclaimed. "He has abused those oxen enough! They've got away from him, and I'm glad of it! I'll never tell him where they are!"

We argued the question all the way to camp, and at last Willis said bluntly that he should not have taken me to see them if he had thought that I would tell. "You promised not to," said he. That was true, and there the matter rested overnight.

When I started home the next morning Willis walked with me for two miles or more. We had not mentioned Jotham's oxen since the previous afternoon; but I plainly saw that Willis had been thinking the matter over, for, after we separated and had each gone a few steps on his way, he called after me:

"Are you going to tell about that?"

"No," said I, and walked on.

"Well, if you're not going to feel right about it, ask the old Squire what he thinks. If he says that Jotham ought to be told, perhaps you had better tell him." And Willis hastened away.

But on reaching home I found that the old Squire had set off for Portland early that morning to see about selling his lumber and was not to return for a week. So I said nothing to any one. The night after he got back I watched for a chance to speak with him alone. After supper he went into the sitting-room to look over his lumber accounts, and I stole in after him.

"You remember Jotham's oxen, gramp?" I began.

"Why, yes," said he, looking up.

"Well, I know where they are," I continued.

"Where?" he exclaimed in astonishment.

I then told him where Willis had found them and about the yard and the moose and deer we had seen with the oxen. "Willis doesn't want Jotham told," I added. "He says Jotham has abused those oxen enough, and that he is glad they got away from him. He made me promise not to tell any one at first, but finally he said that I might tell you, and that we should do as you think best."

The old Squire gave me an odd look. Then he laughed and resumed his accounts for what seemed to me a long while. I had the feeling that he wished I had not told him.

At last he looked up. "I suppose, now that we have found this out, Jotham will have to be told. They are his oxen, of course, and we should not feel right if we were to keep this from him. It wouldn't be quite the neighborly thing to do—to conceal it. So you had better go over and tell him."

Almost every one likes to carry news, whether good or bad; and within fifteen minutes I had reached the Edwards farmhouse. Jotham, who was taking a late supper, came to the door.

"What will you give to know where your lost oxen are?" I cried.

"Where are they? Do you know?" he exclaimed. Then I told him where Willis and I had seen them. "Wal, I vum!" said Jotham. "Left me and took to the woods! And I've lost two years' work from 'em!"

For a moment I was sorry I had told him.

The next day he journeyed up to Willis's camp with several neighbors; and from there they all snowshoed to the yard to see the oxen and the moose. The strangely assorted little herd was still there, and, so far as could be judged, no one else had discovered them.

Jotham had intended to drive the oxen home; but the party found the snow so deep that they thought it best to leave them where they were for a while. Since it was now the first week of March, the snow could be expected to settle considerably within a fortnight.

I think it was the eighteenth of the month when Jotham and four other men finally went to get the oxen. They took a gun, with the intention of shooting one or more of the deer. A disagreeable surprise awaited them at the yard.

At that time—it was before the days of game wardens—what were known as "meat-and-hide hunters" often came down over the boundary from Canada and slaughtered moose and deer while the animals were snow-bound. The lawless poachers frequently came in parties and sometimes searched the woods for twenty or thirty miles below the Line in quest of yards.

Apparently such a raiding party had found Willis's yard and had shot not only the six deer and moose but Jotham's oxen as well. Blood on the snow and refuse where the animals had been hung up for skinning and dressing, made what had happened only too plain.

Poor Jotham came home much cast down. "That's just my luck!" he lamented. "Everything always goes just that way with me!"



CHAPTER X

BETHESDA

If anything was missing at the old farmhouse—clothes-brush, soap, comb or other articles of daily use—some one almost always would exclaim, "Look in Bethesda!" or "I left it in Bethesda!" Bethesda was one of those household words that you use without thought of its original significance or of the amused query that it raises in the minds of strangers.

Like most New England houses built seventy-five years ago, the farmhouse at the old Squire's had been planned without thought of bathing facilities. The family washtub, brought to the kitchen of a Saturday night, and filled with well water tempered slightly by a few quarts from the teakettle, served the purpose. We were not so badly off as our ancestors had been, however, for in 1865, when we young folks went home to live at the old Squire's, stoves were fully in vogue and farmhouses were comfortably warmed. Bathing on winter nights was uncomfortable enough, we thought, but it was not the desperately chilly business that it must have been when farmhouses were heated by a single fireplace.

In the sitting-room we had both a fireplace and an "air-tight" for the coldest weather. In grandmother Ruth's room there was a "fireside companion," and in the front room a "soapstone comfort," with sides and top of a certain kind of variegated limestone that held heat through the winter nights.

So much heat rose from the lower rooms that the bedrooms on the floor above, where we young folks slept, were by no means uncomfortably cold, even in zero weather. Grandmother Ruth would open the hall doors an hour before it was time for us to go to bed, to let the superfluous heat rise for our benefit.

In the matter of bathing, however, a great deal was left to be desired at the old house. There were six of us to take turns at that one tub. Grandmother Ruth took charge: she saw to it that we did not take too long, and listened to the tearful complaints about the coldness of the water. On Saturday nights her lot was not a happy one. She used to sit just outside the kitchen door and call our names when our turns came; and as each of us went by she would hand us our change of underclothing.

Although the brass kettle was kept heating on the stove all the while, we had trouble in getting enough warm water to "take the chill off." More than once—unbeknown to grandmother Ruth—I followed Addison in the tub without changing the water. He had appreciably warmed it up. One night Halstead twitted me about it at the supper table, and I recollect that the lack of proper sensibility that I had shown scandalized the entire family.

"Oh, Joseph!" grandmother often exclaimed to the old Squire. "We must have some better way for these children to bathe. They are getting older and larger, and I certainly cannot manage it much longer."

Things went on in that way for the first two years of our sojourn at the old place—until after the old Squire had installed a hydraulic ram down at the brook, which forced plenty of water up to the house and the barns. Then, in October of the third year, the old gentleman bestirred himself.

He had been as anxious as any one to improve our bathing facilities, but it is not an easy job to add a bathroom to a farmhouse. He walked about at the back of the house for hours, and made several excursions to a hollow at a distance in the rear of the place, and also climbed to the attic, all the while whistling softly:

"Roll on, Silver Moon, Guide the traveler on his way."

That was always a sure sign that he was getting interested in some scheme.

Then things began to move in earnest. Two carpenters appeared and laid the sills for an addition to the house, twenty feet long by eighteen feet wide, just behind the kitchen, which was in the L. The room that they built had a door opening directly into the kitchen. The floor, I remember, was of maple and the walls of matched spruce.

Meanwhile the old Squire had had a sewer dug about three hundred feet long; and to hold the water supply he built a tank of about a thousand gallons' capacity, made of pine planks; the tank was in the attic directly over the kitchen stove, so that in winter heat would rise under it through a little scuttle in the floor and prevent the water from freezing.

From the tank the pipes that led to the new bathroom ran down close to the chimney and the stove pipe. Those bathroom pipes gave the old Squire much anxiety; there was not a plumber in town; the old gentleman had to do the work himself, with the help of a hardware dealer from the village, six miles away.

But if the pipe gave him anxiety, the bathtub gave him more. When he inquired at Portland about their cost, he was somewhat staggered to learn that the price of a regular tub was fifty-eight dollars.

But the old Squire had an inventive brain. He drove up to the mill, selected a large, sound pine log about four feet in diameter and set old Davy Glinds, a brother of Hughy Glinds, to excavate a tub from it with an adze. In his younger days Davy Glinds had been a ship carpenter, and was skilled in the use of the broadaxe and the adze. He fashioned a good-looking tub, five feet long by two and a half wide, smooth hewn within and without. When painted white the tub presented a very creditable appearance.

The old Squire was so pleased with it that he had Glinds make another; and then, discovering how cheaply pine bathtubs could be made, he hit upon a new notion. The more he studied on a thing like that, the more the subject unfolded in his dear old head. Why, the old Squire asked himself, need the Saturday-night bath occupy a whole evening because the eight or ten members of the family had to take turns in one tub, when we could just as well have more tubs?

Before grandmother Ruth fairly realized what he was about, the old gentleman had five of these pine tubs ranged there in the new lean-to. He had the carpenters inclose each tub within a sealed partition of spruce boards. There was thus formed a little hall five feet wide in the center of the new bathroom, from which small doors opened to each tub.

"What do you mean, Joseph, by so many tubs?" grandmother cried in astonishment, when she discovered what he was doing.

"Well, Ruth," he said, "I thought we'd have a tub for the boys, a tub for the girls, then tubs for you and me, mother, and one for our hired help."

"Sakes alive, Joe! All those tubs to keep clean!"

"But didn't you want a large bathroom?" the old Squire rejoined, with twinkling eyes.

"Yes, yes," cried grandmother, "but I had no idea you were going to make a regular Bethesda!"

Bethesda! Sure enough, like the pool in Jerusalem, it had five porches! And that name, born of grandmother Ruth's indignant surprise, stuck to it ever afterwards.

When the old Squire began work on that bathroom he expected to have it finished in a month. But one difficulty after another arose: the tank leaked; the sewer clogged; nothing would work. If the hardware dealer from the village came once to help, he came fifty times! His own experience in bathrooms was limited. Then, to have hot water in abundance, it was necessary to send to Portland for a seventy-five-gallon copper heater; and six weeks passed before that order was filled.

November, December and January passed before Bethesda was ready to turn on the water; and then we found that the kitchen stove would not heat so large a heater, or at least would not do it and serve as a cook-stove at the same time. Nor would it sufficiently warm the bathroom in very cold weather even with the kitchen door open. Then one night in February the pipes at the far end froze and burst, and the hardware man had to make us another hasty visit.

To ward off such accidents in the future the old Squire now had recourse to what is known as the Granger furnace—a convenience that was then just coming into general favor among farmers. They are cosy, heat-holding contrivances, made of brick and lined either with fire brick or iron; they have an iron top with pot holes in which you can set kettles. The old Squire connected ours with the heater, and he placed it so that half of it projected into the new bathroom, through the partition wall of the kitchen. It served its purpose effectively and on winter nights diffused a genial glow both in the kitchen and in the bathroom.

But it was the middle of April before the bathroom was completed; and the cost was actually between eight and nine hundred dollars!

"My sakes, Joseph!" grandmother exclaimed. "Another bathroom like that would put us in the poor-house. And the neighbors all think we're crazy!"

The old Squire, however, rubbed his hands with a smile of satisfaction. "I call it rather fine. I guess we are going to like it," he said.

Like it we did, certainly. Bathing was no longer an ordeal, but a delight. There was plenty of warm water; you had only to pick your tub, enter your cubicle and shut the door. Bethesda, with its Granger furnace and big water heater, was a veritable household joy.

"Ruth," the old Squire said, "all I'm sorry for is that I didn't do this thirty years ago. When I reflect on the cold, miserable baths we have taken and the other privations you and I have endured all these years it makes me heartsick to think what I've neglected."

"But nine hundred dollars, Joseph!" grandmother interposed with a scandalized expression. "That's an awful bill!"

"Yes," the old Squire admitted, "but we shall survive it."

Grandmother was right about our neighbors. What they said among themselves would no doubt have been illuminating if we had heard it; but they maintained complete silence when we were present. But we noticed that when they called at the farmhouse they cast curious and perhaps envious glances at the new lean-to.

Then an amusing thing happened. We had been enjoying Bethesda for a few weeks, but had not yet got past our daily pride in it, when one hot evening in the latter part of June who should come driving into the yard but David Barker, "the Burns of Maine," a poet and humorist of state-wide renown.

The old Squire had met him several times; but his visit that night was accidental. He had come into our part of the state to visit a kinsman, but had got off his proper route and had called at our house to ask how far away this relative lived.

"It is nine or ten miles up there," the old Squire said when they had shaken hands. "You are off your route. Better take out your horse and spend the night with us. You can find your way better by daylight."

After some further conversation Mr. Barker decided to accept the old Squire's invitation. While grandmother and Ellen got supper for our guest, the old Squire escorted him to the hand bowl that he had put in at the end of the bathroom hall. I imagine that the old Squire was just a little proud of our recent accommodations.

"And, David, if you would like a bath before retiring to-night, just step in here and make yourself at home," he said and opened several of the doors to the little cubicles.

David looked the tubs over, first one and then another.

"Wal, Squire," he said at last, in that peculiar voice of his, "I've sometimes wondered why our Maine folks had so few bathtubs, and sometimes been a little ashamed on't. But now I see how 'tis. You've got all the bathtubs there are cornered up here at your place!"

He continued joking about our bathrooms while he was eating supper; and later, before retiring, he said, "I know you are a neat woman, Aunt Ruth, and I guess before I go to bed I'll take a turn in your bathroom."

Ellen gave him a lamp; and he went in and shut the door. Fifteen minutes—half an hour—nearly an hour—passed, and still he was in there; and we heard him turning on and letting off water, apparently barrels of it! Occasionally, too, we heard a door open and shut.

At last, when nearly an hour and a half had elapsed, the old Squire, wondering whether anything were wrong, went to the bathroom door. He knocked, and on getting a response inquired whether there was any trouble.

"Doesn't the water run, David?" he asked. "Is it too cold for you? How are you getting on in there?"

"Getting on beautifully," came the muffled voice of the humorist above the splashing within. "Doing a great job. Only one tub more! Four off and one to come."

"But, David!" the old Squire began in considerable astonishment.

"Yes. Sure. It takes time. But I know Aunt Ruth is an awful neat woman, and I determined to do a full job!"

He had been taking a bath in each of the five tubs in succession. That was Barker humor.



CHAPTER XI

WHEN WE WALKED THE TOWN LINES

It was some time the following week, I think, that the old Squire looked across to us at the breakfast table and said, "Boys, don't you want to walk the town lines for me? I think I shall let you do it this time—and have the fee," he added, smiling.

The old gentleman was one of the selectmen of the town that year; and an old law, or municipal regulation, required that one or more of the selectmen should walk the town lines—follow round the town boundaries on foot—once a year, to see that the people of adjoining towns, or others, were not trespassing. The practice of walking the town lines is now almost or quite obsolete, but it was a needed precaution when inhabitants were few and when the thirty-six square miles of a township consisted mostly of forest. At this time the southern half of our town was already taken up in farms, but the northern part was still in forest lots. The selectmen usually walked the north lines only.

When the state domain, almost all dense forest, was first surveyed, the land was laid off in ranges, so-called, and tiers of lots. The various grants of land to persons for public services were also surveyed in a similar manner and the corners and lines established by means of stakes and stones, and of blazed trees. If a large rock happened to lie at the corner of a range or lot, the surveyor sometimes marked it with a drill. Such rocks made the best corners.

Usually the four corners of the town were established by means of low, square granite posts, set in the earth and with the initial letter of the township cut in it with a drill.

As if it were yesterday I remember that sharp, cold morning. Hard-frozen snow a foot deep still covered the cleared land, and in the woods it was much deeper. The first heavy rainstorm of spring had come two days before, but it had cleared off cold and windy the preceding evening, with snow squalls and zero weather again. Nevertheless, Addison and I were delighted at the old Squire's proposal, especially since the old gentleman had hinted that we could have the fee, which was usually four dollars when two of the selectmen walked the lines and were out all day.

"Go to the northeast corner of the town first," the old Squire said. "The corner post is three miles and a half from here; you will find it in the cleared land a hundred rods northeast of the barn on the Jotham Silver place. Start from there and go due west till you reach the wood-lot on the Silver farm. There the blazed trees begin, and you will have to go from one to another. It is forest nearly all the way after that for six miles, till you come to the northwest town corner.

"You can take my compass if you like," the old Squire added. "But it will not be of much use to you, for it will be easier to follow the blazed trees or corner stakes. Take our lightest axe with you and renew the old blazes on the trees." He apparently felt some misgivings that we might get lost, for he added, "If you want to ask Thomas to go with you, you may."

Tom was more accustomed to being in the woods than either of us; but Addison hesitated about inviting him, for of course if he went we should have to divide the fee with him. However, the old Squire seemed to wish to have him go with us, and at last, while Theodora was putting up a substantial luncheon for us, Ellen ran over to carry the invitation to Tom. He was willing enough to go and came back with her, carrying his shotgun.

"It will be a long jaunt," the old gentleman said as we started off. "But if you move on briskly and don't stop by the way, you can get back before dark."

The snow crust was so hard and the walking so good that we struck directly across the fields and pastures to the northeast and within an hour reached the town corner on the Silver farm. At that point our tramp along the north line of the town began, and we went from one blazed tree to another and freshened the blazes.

We went on rapidly, crossed Hedgehog Ridge and descended to Stoss Pond, which the town line crossed obliquely. We had expected to cross the pond on the ice; but the recent great rainstorm and thaw had flooded the ice to a depth of six or eight inches. New ice was already forming, but it would not quite bear our weight, and we had to make a detour of a mile through swamps round the south end of the pond and pick up the line again on the opposite shore.

Stoss Pond Mountain then confronted us, and it was almost noon when we neared Wild Brook; we heard it roaring as we approached and feared that we should find it very high.

"We may have to fell a tree over it to get across," Addison said.

So it seemed, for upon emerging on the bank we saw a yellow torrent twenty feet or more wide and four or five feet deep rushing tumultuously down the rocky channel.

Tom, however, who had come out on the bank a little way below, shouted to us, above the roar, to come that way, and we rejoined him at a bend where the opposite bank was high. He was in the act of crossing cautiously on a snow bridge. During the winter a great snowdrift, seven or eight feet deep, had lodged in the brook; and the recent freshet had merely cut a channel beneath it, leaving a frozen arch that spanned the torrent.

"Don't do it!" Addison shouted to him. "It will fall with you!"

But, extending one foot slowly ahead of the other, Tom safely crossed to the other side.

"Come on!" he shouted. "It will hold."

Addison, however, held back. The bridge looked dangerous; if it broke down, whoever was on it would be thrown into the water and carried downstream in the icy torrent.

"Oh, it's strong enough!" Tom exclaimed. "That will hold all right." And to show how firm it was, he came part way back across the frozen arch and stood still.

It was an unlucky action. The whole bridge suddenly collapsed under him, and down went Tom with it into the rushing water, which whirled him along toward a jam of ice and drift stuff twenty or thirty yards below. By flinging his arms across one of those great cakes of hard-frozen snow he managed to keep his head up; and he shouted lustily for us to help him. He bumped against the jam and hung there, fighting with both arms to keep from being carried under it.

Addison, who had the axe, ran down the bank and with a few strokes cut a moosewood sapling, which we thrust out to Tom. He caught hold of it, and then, by pulling hard, we hauled him to the bank and helped him out.

Oh, but wasn't he a wet boy, and didn't his teeth chatter! In fact, all three of us were wet, for, in our excitement, Addison and I had gone in knee-deep, and the water had splashed over us. In that bitter cold wind we felt it keenly. Tom was nearly torpid; he seemed unable to speak, and we could hardly make him take a step. His face and hands were blue.

"What shall we do with him?" Addison whispered to me in alarm. "It's five miles home. I'm afraid he'll freeze."

We then thought of the old Squire's logging camp on Papoose Pond, the outlet of which entered Wild Brook about half a mile above where we had tried to cross it. We knew that there was a cooking stove in the camp and decided that our best plan was to take Tom there and dry his clothes. Getting him between us, we tried to make him run, but he seemed unable to move his feet.

"Run, run, Tom!" we shouted to him. "Run, or you'll freeze!"

He seemed not to hear or care. In our desperation we slapped him and dragged him along between us. Finally his legs moved a little, and he began to step.

"Run, run with us!" Addison kept urging.

At last we got him going, although he shook so hard that he shook us with him. The exertion did him good. We hustled him along and, following the brook, came presently to a disused lumber road that led to the logging camp in the woods a few hundred yards from the shore of the pond. All three of us were panting hard when we reached it, but our wet clothes were frozen stiff.

We rushed Tom into the camp and, finding matches on a shelf behind the stovepipe, kindled a fire of such dry stuff as we found at hand. Then, as the place warmed up, we pulled off Tom's frozen outer coat and waistcoat, got the water out of his boots, and set him behind the stove.

Still he shook and could speak only with difficulty. We kept a hot fire and finally boiled water in a kettle and, gathering wintergreen leaves from a knoll outside the camp, made a hot tea for him.

At last we put him into the bunk and covered him as best we could with our own coats, which we did not miss, since the camp was now as hot as an oven. For more than an hour longer, however, his tremors continued in spite of the heat. Addison and I took turns rushing outside to cut wood from dry spruces to keep the stove hot. A little later, as I came in with an armful, I found Addison watching Tom.

"Sh!" he said. "He's asleep."

The afternoon was waning; a cold, windy night was coming on.

"What shall we do?" Addison whispered in perplexity. "I don't believe we ought to take him out; his clothes aren't dry yet. We shall have to stay here all night with him."

"But what will the folks at home think?" I exclaimed.

"Of course they will worry about us," Addison replied gloomily. "But I'm afraid Tom will get his death o' cold if we take him out. We ought to keep him warm."

Our own wet clothes had dried by that time, and, feeling hungry, we ate a part of our luncheon. Night came on with snow squalls; the wind roared in the forest. It was so bleak that we gave up all idea of going home; and, after bringing in ten or a dozen armfuls of wood, we settled down to spend the night there. Still Tom slept, but he breathed easier and had ceased to shiver. Suddenly he sat up and cried, "Help!"

"Don't you know where you are?" Addison asked. "Still dreaming?"

He stared round in the feeble light. "Oh, yes!" he said and laughed. "It's the old camp. I tumbled into the brook. But what makes it so dark?"

"It's night. You have been asleep two or three hours. We shall have to stay here till morning."

"With nothing to eat?" Tom exclaimed. "I'm hungry!"

In his haste to set off from home with Ellen he had neglected to take any luncheon. We divided with him what we had left; and he ate hungrily.

While he was eating, we heard a sound of squalling, indistinct above the roar of the wind in the woods.

"Bobcat!" Tom exclaimed. Then he added, "But it sounds more like an old gander."

"May be a flock of wild geese passing over," Addison said. "They sometimes fly by night."

"Not on such a cold night in such a wind," Tom replied.

Soon we heard the same sounds again.

"That's an old gander, sure," Tom admitted.

"Seems to come from the same place," Addison remarked. "Out on Papoose Pond, I guess."

"Yes, siree!" Tom exclaimed. "A flock of geese has come down on that pond. If I had my gun, I could get a goose. But my gun is in Wild Brook," he added regretfully. "I let go of it when I fell in."

The squalling continued at intervals. The night was so boisterous, however, that we did not leave the camp and after a time fell asleep in the old bunk.

The cold waked me soon after daybreak. Tom and Addison were still asleep, with their coats pulled snugly about their shoulders and their feet drawn up. I rekindled the fire and clattered round the stove. Still they snoozed on; and soon afterwards, hearing the same squalling sounds again, I stole forth in the bleak dawn to see what I could discover.

When I had pushed through the swamp of thick cedar that lay between the camp and the pond, I beheld a goose flapping its wings and squalling scarcely more than a stone's throw away. A second glance, in the increasing light, showed me the forms of other geese, great numbers of them on the newly formed ice. On this pond, as on the other, water had gathered over the winter ice and then frozen again.

With the exception of this one gander, the flock was sitting there very still and quiet. The gander waddled among the others, plucking at them with his pink beak, as if to stir them up. Now and then he straightened up, flapped his wings and squalled dolorously. None of the others I noticed flapped, stirred or made any movement whatever. They looked as if they were asleep, and many of them had their heads under their wings.

At last I went out toward them on the new ice, which had now frozen solid enough to bear me. The gander rose in the air and circled overhead, squalling fearfully. On going nearer, I saw that all those geese were frozen in, and that they were dead; the entire flock, except that one powerful old gander, had perished there. They were frozen in the ice so firmly that I could not pull them out; in fact, I could scarcely bend the necks of those that had tucked them under their wings. I counted forty-one of them besides the gander.

While I was looking them over, Tom and Addison appeared on the shore. They had waked and missed me, but, hearing the gander, had guessed that I had gone to the pond. Both were astonished and could hardly believe their eyes till they came out where I stood and tried to lift the geese.

"We shall have to chop them out with the axe!" Tom exclaimed. "By jingo, boys, here's goose feathers enough to make two feather beds and pillows to boot."

The gander, still squalling, circled over us again.

"The old fellow feels bad," Addison remarked. "He has lost his whole big family."

We decided that the geese on their way north had been out in the rainstorm, and that when the weather cleared and turned cold so suddenly, with snow squalls, they had become bewildered, perhaps, and had descended on the pond. The cold wave was so sharp that, being quite without food, they had frozen into the ice and perished there.

"Well, old boy," Tom said, addressing the gander that now stood flapping his wings at us a few hundred feet away, "you've lost your women-folks. We may as well have them as the bobcats."

He fetched the axe, and we cut away the ice round the geese and then carried six loads of them down to camp.

If we had had any proper means of preparing a goose we should certainly have put one to bake in the stove oven; for all three of us were hungry. As it was, Addison said we had better make a scoot, load the geese on it, and take the nearest way home. We had only the axe and our jackknives to work with, and it was nine o'clock before we had built a rude sled and loaded the geese on it.

As we were about to start we heard a familiar voice cry, "Well, well; there they are!" And who should come through the cedars but the old Squire! A little behind him was Tom's father.

On account of the severity of the weather both families had been much alarmed when we failed to come home the night before. Making an early start that morning, Mr. Edwards and the old Squire had driven to the Silver farm and, leaving their team there, had followed the town line in search of us. On reaching Wild Brook they had seen that the snow bridge had fallen, and at first they had been badly frightened. On looking round, however, they had found the marks of our boot heels on the frozen snow, heading up-stream, and had immediately guessed that we had gone to the old camp. So we had their company on the way home; and much astonished both of them were at the sight of so many geese.

The two households shared the goose feathers. The meat was in excellent condition for cooking, and our two families had many a good meal of roast goose. We sent six of the birds to the town farm, and we heard afterwards that the seventeen paupers there partook of a grand goose dinner, garnished with apple sauce. But I have often thought of that old gander flying north to the breeding grounds alone.

The following week we walked the remaining part of the town line and received the fee.



CHAPTER XII

THE ROSE-QUARTZ SPRING

Throughout that entire season the old Squire was much interested in a project for making a fortune from the sale of spring water. The water of the celebrated Poland Spring, twenty miles from our place—where the Poland Spring Hotel now stands—was already enjoying an enviable popularity; and up in our north pasture on the side of Nubble Hill, there was, and still is, a fine spring, the water of which did not differ in analysis from that of the Poland Spring. It is the "boiling" type of spring, and the water, which is stone-cold, bubbles up through white quartzose sand at the foot of a low granite ledge. It flows throughout the year at the rate of about eight gallons a minute.

It had always been called the Nubble Spring, but when the old Squire and Addison made their plans for selling the spring water they rechristened it the Rose-Quartz Spring on account of an outcrop of rose quartz in the ledges near by.

They had the water analyzed by a chemist in Boston, who pronounced it as pure as Poland water, and, indeed, so like it that he could detect no difference. All of us were soon enthusiastic about the project.

First we set to work to make the spring more attractive. We cleared up the site and formed a granite basin for the water, sheltered by a little kiosk with seats where visitors could sit as they drank. We also cleared up the slope round it and set out borders of young pine and balm-of-Gilead trees.

We sent samples of the water in bottles and kegs to dealers in spring waters, along with a descriptive circular—which Addison composed—and the statement of analysis. Addison embellished the circular with several pictures of the spring and its surroundings, and cited medical opinions on the value of pure waters of this class. We also invited our neighbors and fellow townsmen to come and drink at our spring.

Very soon orders began to come in. The name itself, the Rose-Quartz Spring, was fortunate, for it conveyed a suggestion of crystal purity; that with the analysis induced numbers of people in the great cities, especially in Chicago, to try it.

Less was known in 1868 than now of the precautions that it is necessary to take in sending spring water to distant places, in order to insure its keeping pure. Little was known of microbes or antisepsis.

The old Squire and Addison decided that they would have to send the water to their customers in kegs of various sizes and in barrels; but as kegs made of oak staves, or of spruce, would impart a woody taste to the water, they hit upon the expedient of making the staves of sugar-maple wood. The old Squire had a great quantity of staves sawed at his hardwood flooring mill, and at the cooper shop had them made into kegs and barrels of all sizes from five gallons' capacity up to fifty gallons'. After the kegs were set up we filled them with water and allowed them to soak for a week to take out all taste of the wood before we filled them from the spring and sent them away.

We believed that that precaution was sufficient, but now it is known that spring water can be kept safe only by putting it in glass bottles and glass carboys. No water will keep sweet in barrels for any great length of time, particularly when exported to hot climates.

The spring was nearly a mile from the farmhouse; and at a little distance below it we built a shed and set up a large kettle for boiling water to scald out the kegs and barrels that came back from customers and dealers to be refilled. We were careful not only to rinse them but also to soak them before we cleaned them with scalding water. As the business of sending off the water grew, the old Squire kept a hired man at the spring and the shed to look after the kegs and to draw the water. His name was James Doane. He had been with the old Squire six years and as a rule was a trustworthy man and a good worker. He had one failing: occasionally, although not very often, he would get drunk.

So firm was the old Squire's faith in the water that we drew a supply of it to the house every second morning. Addison fitted up a little "water room" in the farmhouse L, and we kept water there in large bottles, cooled, for drinking. The water seemed to do us good, for we were all unusually healthy that summer. "Here's the true elixir of health," the old Squire often said as he drew a glass of it and sat down in the pleasant, cool "water room" to enjoy it.

Addison and he had fixed the price of the water at twenty-five cents a gallon, although we made our neighbors and fellow townsmen welcome to all they cared to come and get. We first advertised the water in June, and sales increased slowly throughout the summer and fall. Apparently the water gave good satisfaction, for the kegs came back to be refilled. By the following May the success of the venture seemed assured. Those who were using the water spoke well of it, and the demand was growing. In April we received orders for more than nine hundred gallons, and in May for more than thirteen hundred gallons.

The old Squire was very happy over the success of the enterprise. "It's a fine, clean business," he said. "That water has done us good, and it will do others good; and if they drink that, they will drink less whiskey."

Addison spent the evenings in making out bills and attending to the correspondence; for there were other matters that had to be attended to besides the Rose-Quartz Spring. Besides the farm work we had to look after the hardwood flooring mill that summer and the white-birch dowel mill. For several days toward the end of June we did not even have time to go up to the spring for our usual supply of water. But we kept Jim Doane there under instructions to attend carefully to the putting up of the water. It was his sole business, and he seemed to be attending to it properly. He was at the spring every day and boarded at the house of a neighbor, named Murch, who lived nearer to Nubble Hill than we did. Every day, too, we noticed the smoke of the fire under the kettle in which he heated water for scalding out the casks.

The first hint we had that things were going wrong was when Willis Murch told Addison that Doane had been on a spree, and that for several days he had been so badly under the influence of liquor that he did not know what he was about.

On hearing that news Addison and the old Squire hastened to the spring. Jim was there, sober enough now, and working industriously. But he looked bad, and his account of how he had done his work for the last week was far from clear. The old Squire gave him another job at the dowel mill and stationed his brother, Asa Doane, a strictly temperate man, at the spring. We could not learn just what had happened during the past ten days, but we hoped that no serious neglect had occurred.

But there had.

Toward the middle of July a letter of complaint came—the first we had ever received. "This barrel of water from your spring is not keeping good," were the exact words of it. I remember them well, for we read them over and over again. Addison replied at once, and sent another barrel in its place.

Before another week had passed a second complaint came. "This last barrel of water from your spring is turning 'ropy,'" it said. Another customer sent his barrel back when half full, with a letter saying, "It isn't fit to drink. The barrel is slimy inside."

Addison examined the barrel carefully, and found that there was, indeed, an appreciable film of vegetable growth on the staves inside. The taste of the water also was quite different.

Within a fortnight four more barrels and kegs were returned to us, in at least two cases accompanied by sharp words of condemnation. "No better than pond water," one customer wrote.

We carefully examined the inside of all these barrels and kegs as soon as they came back. Besides invisible impurities in the water, there was in every one more or less visible dirt, even bits of grass and slivers of wood.

There was only one conclusion to reach: Jim Doane had not been careful in filling the kegs and had not properly cleansed and scalded them. As nearly as we could discover from bits of information that came out subsequently, there were days and days when he was too "hazy" to know whether he had cleansed the barrels or not. He had filled them and sent them off in foul condition.

Addison wrote more than fifty letters to customers, defending the purity of Rose-Quartz Spring water, relating the facts of this recent "accident" and asking for a continued trial of it. I suppose that people at a distance thought that if there had been carelessness once there might be again. Very likely, too, they suspected that the water had never been so pure as we had declared it to be. Owners of other springs who had put water on the market improved the opportunity to circulate reports that Rose-Quartz water would not "keep." We got possession of three circulars in which that damaging statement had been sent broadcast.

There is probably no commodity in the world that depends so much on a reputation for purity as spring water. By September the orders for water had fallen off to a most disheartening extent. Scarcely three hundred gallons were called for.

In the hope that this was merely a temporary set-back, and knowing that there was no fault in the water itself, the old Squire spent a thousand dollars in advertisements to stem the tide of adverse criticism. So far as we could discover, the effort produced little or no effect on sales. The opinion had gone abroad that the water would not keep pure for any great length of time. By the following spring sales had dwindled to such an extent that it was hardly worth while to continue the business. Considered as a commercial asset, the Rose-Quartz Spring was dead.

Regretfully we gave up the enterprise and let the spring fall into disuse. It was then, I remember, that the old Squire said, "It takes us one lifetime to learn how to do things."



CHAPTER XIII

FOX PILLS

ABOUT this time an affair which had long been worrying Addison and myself came to a final settlement.

Up in the great woods, three or four miles from the old Squire's farm, there was a clearing of thirty or forty acres in which stood an old house and barn, long unoccupied. A lonelier place can hardly be imagined. Sombre spruce and fir woods inclosed the clearing on all sides; and over the tree-tops on the east side loomed the three rugged dark peaks of the Stoss Pond mountains.

Thirty years before, Lumen Bartlett, a young man about twenty years old, had cleared the land with his own labor, built the house and barn, and a little later gone to live there with his wife, Althea, who was younger even than he.

Life in so remote a place must have been somewhat solitary; but they were very happy, it is said, for a year and a half. Then one morning they fell to quarreling bitterly over so trifling a thing as a cedar broom. In the anger of the moment Althea made a bundle of her clothing and without a word of farewell set off on foot to go home to her parents, who lived ten miles away.

Lumen, equally stubborn, took his axe and went out to his work of clearing land for a new field. No one saw him alive afterwards; but two weeks later some hunters found his body in the woods. Apparently the tops of several of the trees he had been trying to cut down had lodged together, and to bring them down he had cut another large tree on which they hung. This last tree must have started to fall suddenly. Lumen ran the wrong way and was caught under the top of one of the lodged trees as it came crashing down. The marks showed that he had tried, probably for hours, to cut off with his pocket knife one large branch that lay across his body. They found the knife with the blade broken. He had also tried to free himself by digging with his bare fingers into the hard, rocky earth. If Lumen had been to blame for the quarrel, he paid a fearful penalty.

Afterwards, however, Althea declared that she had been to blame; and if that were true, she also paid a sad penalty. During the few remaining years of her life she was never in her right mind. She used to imagine that she heard Lumen calling to her for help, and several times, eluding her parents, she made her way back to the clearing. Every time when they found her she was wandering about the place, stopping now and then as if to listen, then flitting on again, saying in a sad singsong, "I'm coming, Lumen! Oh, I'll come back!"

Naturally, persons of a superstitious nature began to imagine that they, too, heard strange cries at the deserted farm, for no one ever lived there subsequently. Very likely they did hear cries—the cries of wild animals; that old clearing in the woods was a great place for bears, foxes, raccoons and "lucivees."

A year or two before we young folks went home to live on the old farm the town sold this deserted lot at auction for unpaid taxes. Some years before, vagrant woodsmen had accidentally burned the old house; but the barn, a weathered, gray structure, was still intact. Since the land adjoined other timber lots that the old Squire owned, he bid it off and let it lie unoccupied except as a pasture where sheep, or young stock that needed little care, could be put away for the summer. The soil was good, and the grass was excellent in quality.

One year, in May, after we had repaired the brush fence, we turned into it our three Morgan colts along with two Percherons from a stock farm near the village, a Morgan three-year-old belonging to our neighbors, the Edwardses, three colts owned by other neighbors, and a beautiful sorrel three-year-old mare, the pet of young Mrs. Kennard, wife of the principal at the village academy. Her father, who had recently died, had given her the colt.

All four Morgans were dark-chestnut colts, lithe but strong and clear-eyed. And what chests and loins they had for their size! They were not so showy as the larger, dappled Percherons, perhaps, but they were better all-round horses. Lib, Brown and Joe were the names of our Morgans; Chet was the name that the Edwards young folks gave theirs. Yet none of them was so pretty as Mrs. Kennard's Sylph. She was, indeed, a blonde fairy of a mare, as graceful as a deer.

On the afternoon that we took Sylph up to the clearing, Mrs. Kennard walked all the way with us, because she wished to see for herself what the place was like. When she saw what a remote, wild region it was, she was loath to leave her pet there, and Mr. Kennard had some ado to reassure her. At last, after giving the colt many farewell pats and caresses, she came away with us. On the way home she said over and over to Addison and me, "Be sure to go up often and see that Sylph is all right." And, laughing a little, we promised that we would, and that we would also give the colt sugar lumps as well as her weekly salt.

"Salting" the sheep and young cattle that were out at pasture for the season was one of our weekly duties. When we were very busy we sometimes put it off until Sunday morning. Sometimes it slipped our minds altogether for a few days, or even for a week; but Mrs. Kennard's solicitude for her pet had touched our hearts, and we resolved that we should always be prompt in performing the task.

The colts had been turned out on Tuesday; and the following Sunday morning after breakfast Addison and I, with the girls accompanying us, set off with the salt and the sugar lumps. It was a long walk for the girls, but an inspiring one on such a bright morning. The songs of birds and the chatter of squirrels filled the woodland. Fresh green heads of bosky ferns and wake-robin were pushing up through the old mats of last year's foliage.

"How jealous the rest of them will be of Sylph!" said Ellen, who had the sugar lumps. "I believe I shall give each of them a lump, so that they won't be spiteful and kick her."

As we neared the bars in the brush fence we saw several of the colts at the upper side of the clearing beyond the old barn. At the first call from us, up went their pretty heads; there was a general whinny, and then they came racing to the bars to greet us. Perhaps they had been a little homesick so far from stables and barns.

"One—two—three—four—why, they are not all here!" Theodora said. "Here are only seven. Lib isn't here, or Mrs. Kennard's Sylph."

"Oh, I guess they're not far off," Addison said, and began calling, "Co' jack, co' jack!" He wanted them all there before he dropped the salt in little piles on the grassy greensward.

But the absent ones did not come. Ellen ventured the opinion that they might have jumped the fence and wandered off.

"Oh, they wouldn't separate up here in the woods," Addison said. "Colts keep together when off in a back pasture like this."

But when he went on calling and they still did not come, we began really to fear that they had got out and strayed.

"Let's go round the fence," Addison said at last, "and see if we find a gap, or hoofprints on the outside, where they have jumped over."

He and Theodora went one way, Ellen and I the other. We met halfway round the clearing without having discovered either gaps in the fence or tracks outside. Remembering that horses, when rolling, sometimes get cast in hollows between knolls, we searched the entire clearing, and even looked into the old barn, the door of which stood slightly ajar; but we found no trace of the missing animals and began to believe that they really had jumped out.

We gave the seven colts their salt and were about to start home to report to the old Squire when Ellen remarked that we had not actually looked among the alders down by the brook, where the colts went for water.

"Oh, but those colts would not stay down there by themselves all this time with us calling them!" Addison exclaimed.

"But let's just take a look, to be certain," Ellen replied, and she and I ran down there.

We had no more than pushed our way through the alder clumps when two crows rose silently and went flapping away; and then I caught sight of something that made me stop short: the body of one of the Morgan colts—our Lib—lying close to the brook!

"Oh!" gasped Ellen. "It's dead!"

Pushing on through the alders, we saw one of the Percherons near the Morgan. The sight affected Ellen so much that she turned back; but I went on and a little farther up the brook found the sorrel lying stark and stiff.

A moment later Ellen returned, with Addison and Theodora. Both girls were moved to tears as they gazed at poor Sylph; they felt even worse about her than about our own Morgan.

"Oh, what will Mrs. Kennard say?" Ellen cried. "How dreadfully she will feel!"

Addison closely examined the bodies of the colts. "I cannot understand what did it!" he exclaimed. "No marks. No blood. It wasn't wild animals. It couldn't have been lightning, for there hasn't been a thundershower this season. Must be something they've eaten."

We looked all along the brook, but could see no Indian poke, the fresh growths of which will poison stock. Nor had we ever seen ground hemlock or poisonous ivy there. The clearing was nearly all good, grassy upland such as farmers consider a safe pasturage. Truly the shadow of tragedy seemed to hover there.

We bore our sorrowful tidings home, and the old Squire was as much astonished and mystified as every one else. None of us had the heart either to carry the sad news or even to send word of it to Mrs. Kennard; but we notified the owner of the Percherons at once. He came to look into the matter the next morning.

The affair made an unusual stir, and all that Monday a considerable number of persons walked up to the clearing to see if they could determine the cause of the colts' mysterious death. Many and various were the conjectures. Some professed to believe that the colts had been wantonly poisoned. "It's a state-prison offense to lay poison for domestic animals," we overheard several of them say; but no one could find any motive for such a deed.

The owner of the Percheron brought a horse doctor, who made a careful examination, but he was unable to determine anything more than that the horses had died of a virulent poison. We buried them that afternoon.

Before night the news had reached Mrs. Kennard. In her grief she not only reproached herself bitterly for allowing Sylph to be turned out in so wild a place but held the old Squire and all of us as somehow to blame for her pet's death. The owner of the Percherons also intimated that he should hold us liable for his loss, although when a man turns his stock out in a neighbor's pasture it is generally on the understanding that it is at his own risk. He took away his other Percheron colt; and during the day all the other persons who had colts up there took their animals home. In all respects the occurrence was most disagreeable—a truly black Monday with us. The old Squire said little, except that he wanted the right thing done.

For an hour or more after we went to bed that night Addison and I lay talking about the affair, but we could think of no explanation of the strange occurrence and at last fell asleep. The next morning, however, the solution of the mystery flashed into Addison's mind. As we were dressing at five o'clock, he suddenly turned to me and exclaimed in a queer voice:

"I know what killed those colts!"

"What?" I asked.

"That fox bed!"

For a whole minute we stood there, half dressed, looking at each other in consternation. Without doubt, the blame for the loss of the colts was on us. What the consequences might be we hardly dared to think.

"What shall we do?" I exclaimed.

Addison looked alarmed as he answered in a low tone, "Keep quiet—till we think it over."

"We must tell the old Squire," I said.

"But there's Willis," Addison reminded me. "It was Willis who made the bed, you know."

The old clearing was, as I have said, a great place for foxes; and the preceding fall Addison and I, wishing to add to the fund we were accumulating for our expenses when we should go away to college, had entered into a kind of partnership with Willis Murch to do a little trapping up there. Addison and I were little more than silent partners, however; Willis actually tended the traps.

But there are years, as every trapper knows, when you cannot get a fox into a steel trap by any amount of artfulness. What the reason is, I do not know, unless some fox that has been trapped and that has escaped passes the word round among all the other foxes. There were plenty of foxes coming to the clearing; we never went up there without seeing fresh signs about the old barn. Yet Willis got no fox.

What is more strange, it was so all over New England that fall; foxes kept clear of steel traps. As the fur market was quick, certain city dealers began sending out offers of "fox pills" to trappers whom they had on their lists. Willis received one of those letters and showed it to us. The fox pills were, of course, poison and were to be inclosed in little balls of tallow and laid where foxes were known to come.

Trappers were advised to use them but were properly cautioned how and where to expose them. After picking up one of the pills, a fox would make for the nearest running water as fast as he could go; and that was the place for the trapper to look for him, for, after drinking, the fox soon expired. It has been argued that poison is more humane than the steel trap, since it brings a quick death; but both are cruel. There are also other considerations that weigh against the use of poison; but at that time there was no law against it.

The furrier who wrote to Willis offered to send him a box of those pills for seventy-five cents. We talked it over and agreed to try it, and Addison and I contributed the money.

A few days later Willis received the pills and proceeded to lay them out after a plan of his own. He cut several tallow candles into pieces about an inch long, and embedded a pill in each. When he had prepared twenty or more of those pieces of poisoned tallow, he put them in what he called a fox bed, of oat chaff, behind that old barn. The bed was about as large as the floor of a small room. At that time of year farmers were killing poultry, and Willis collected a basketful of chickens' and turkeys' heads to put into the bed along with the pieces of tallow. He thought that the foxes would smell the heads and dig the bed over.

We had said nothing to any one about it. The old Squire was away from home; but we knew pretty well that he would not approve of that method of getting foxes. Indeed, he had little sympathy with the use of traps. Willis was the only one who looked after the bed, or, indeed, who went up to the clearing at all.

During the next three or four weeks Willis gathered in not less than ten pelts, I think. They were mostly red foxes, but one was a large "crossed gray," the skin of which brought twenty-two dollars. After every few days Willis "doctored" the bed with more pills; he probably used more than a hundred.

What had happened to the colts was now clear. They had nuzzled that chaff for the oat grains that were left in it and had picked up some of those little balls of tallow. We wondered now that we had not at once guessed the cause of their death, and we wondered, too, that we had not thought of the fox bed and the danger from it when we first turned the colts into the pasture. The fact remains, however, that it had never occurred to us that fox pills would poison colts as well as foxes.

All that day as we worked we brooded over it; and that evening, when we had done the chores, we stole off to the Murches' and, calling Willis out, told him about it and asked him what he thought we had better do. At first he was incredulous, then thoroughly alarmed. It was not so much the thought of having to settle for the loss of the horses that terrified him as it was the dread that he might be imprisoned for exposing poison to domestic animals.

"Don't say a word!" he exclaimed. "Nobody knows about that fox bed. If we keep still, it will never come out."

Addison and I both felt that such secrecy would leave us with a mighty mean feeling in our hearts; but Willis begged us never to say a word about it to any one. He was as penitent as we were, I think; but the thought that he might have to go to jail filled him with panic.

We went home in a very uncomfortable frame of mind, without having reached any decision.

"We've got to square this somehow," Addison said. "If I had the money, I'd settle for the colts and say nothing more to Willis about it."

"Money wouldn't make Mrs. Kennard feel much better," I said.

"That's so; but we might find a pretty sorrel colt somewhere, and make her a present of it in place, of Sylph—if we only had the money."

If it had not been for Willis, I rather think that we should have gone to the old Squire that very evening and told him the whole story; but the legal consequences of the affair troubled us, and since they affected Willis more than they affected us we did not like to say anything.

Week after week went by without our being able to bring ourselves to confess. The concealment was a source of daily uneasiness to us; although we rarely spoke of the affair to each other, it was always on our minds. Whenever we did speak of it together, Addison would say, "We've got to straighten that out," or, "I hate to have that colt scrape hanging on us in this way." We tried several times to get Willis's consent to our telling the old Squire; but he had brooded over the thing so long that he had convinced himself that if his act became known he would surely be sent to the penitentiary.

So there the matter lay covered up all summer until one afternoon in September, when the old Squire drove to the village to contract for his apple barrels, and I went with him to get a pair of boots. Just as we were starting for home we met Mrs. Kennard. Previously she had often visited us at the farm, but since the death of Sylph she had not come near us. The old Squire tried to-day to be more cordial than ever, but Mrs. Kennard answered him rather coldly. She started on, but turned suddenly and asked whether we had learned anything more about the death of those colts.

"And, oh, do you think that poor Sylph lay there, suffering, a long time?" she exclaimed, with tears in her eyes. "I keep thinking of it."

"No, we have learned nothing more," the old Squire said gently. "It was a mysterious affair; but I think all three of the colts died suddenly, within a few minutes."

That was all he could say to comfort her, and Mrs. Kennard walked slowly away with her handkerchief at her eyes. It was painful, and I sat there in the wagon feeling like a mean little malefactor.

"Very singular about those colts," the old Squire remarked partly to me, partly to himself, as we drove on. "A strange thing."

Sudden resolution nerved me. I was sick of skulking. "Sir," said I, swallowing hard several times, "I know what killed those colts!"

The old Squire glanced quickly at me, started to speak, but, seeing how greatly agitated I was, kindly refrained from questioning me.

"It was fox pills!" I blurted out. "Willis Murch and Ad and I had a fox bed up there last winter. We never thought of it when the colts were put in. They ate the poison pills."

The old Squire made no comment, and I plunged into further details.

"That accounts for it, then," he said at last.

I had expected him to speak plainly to me about those fox pills, but he merely asked me what I thought of using poison in trapping.

"I never would use it again!" I exclaimed hotly. "I've had enough of it!"

"I am glad you see it so," he remarked. "It is a bad method. You never know what may come of it. Hounds or deer may get it, or sheep, or young cattle, or even children."

We drove on in silence for some minutes. Clearly the old Squire was having me do my own thinking; for he now asked me what I thought should be done next.

"Ad thinks we ought to square it up somehow," I replied.

The old Squire nodded. "I am glad to hear that," he said. "What does Addison think we ought to do?"

"Pay Mr. Cutter for that Percheron colt."

"Yes, and Mrs. Kennard?"

"He thinks we could find another sorrel colt somewhere and make her a present of it."

The old Squire nodded again. "I see. Perhaps we can." Then, after a minute, "And what about letting this be known?"

"Willis is scared," I said. "Addison thinks it would be about as well now to settle up if we can and say nothing."

The old Squire did not reply to that for some moments. I thought he was not so well pleased. "I do not believe that, in the circumstances, Willis need fear being imprisoned," he said finally, "and I see no reason for further concealment. True, several months have passed and people have mostly forgotten it; perhaps not much good would come from publishing the facts abroad. We'll think it over."

After a minute he said, "I'm glad you told me this," and, turning, shook hands with me gravely.

"Ad and I don't want you to think that we expect you to square this up for us!" I exclaimed. "We want to do something to pay the bill ourselves, and to pay you for Lib, too."

The old Squire laughed. "Yes, I see how you feel," he said. "Would you like me to give you and Addison a job on shares this fall or winter, so that you could straighten this out?"

"Yes, sir, we would," said I earnestly. "And make Willis help, too!"

"Yes, yes," the old Squire said and laughed again. "I agree with you that Willis should do his part. Nothing like square dealing, is there, my son?" he went on. "It makes us all feel better, doesn't it?"

And he gave me a brisk little pat on the shoulder that made me feel quite like a man.

How much better I felt after that talk with the old Squire! I felt as blithe as a bird; and when we got home I ran and frisked and whistled all the way to the pasture, where I went to drive home the Jersey herd. The only qualm I felt was that I had acted without Addison's consent; but his first words when I had told him relieved me on that score.

"I'm glad of it!" he said. "We've been in that fox bed long enough. Now let Willis squirm." And when I told him of the old Squire's arrangement for our paying off the debt, he said, "That suits me. But we'll make Willis work!"

We went over to tell Willis that evening. He was, I think, even more relieved than we were; in the weeks of anxiety that he had passed he had determined that nothing would ever induce him to use poison again for trapping animals.

At that time many new telegraph lines were being put up in Maine; and the old Squire had recently accepted a contract for three thousand cedar poles, twenty feet long, at the rate of twenty-five cents a pole. Up in lot "No. 5," near Lurvey's Stream, there was plenty of cedar suitable for the purpose; the poles could be floated down to the point of delivery. The old Squire let us furnish a thousand of those poles, putting in our own labor at cutting and hauling. And in that way we earned the money to pay for the damage done by our fox pills.

Mr. Cutter, the owner of the Percheron, was willing to settle his loss for one hundred dollars; and during the winter, by dint of many inquiries, we heard of another sorrel, a three-year-old, which we purchased for a hundred and fifteen dollars. We took Mr. Kennard into our confidence and with his connivance planned a pleasant surprise for his wife. While Theodora and Ellen, who had accompanied us to the village, were entertaining Mrs. Kennard indoors, the old Squire and Addison and I smuggled the colt into the little stable and put her in the same stall where Sylph had once stood. When all was ready, Mr. Kennard went in and said:

"Louise, Sylph's got back! Come out to the stable!"

Wonderingly Mrs. Kennard followed him out to the stable. For a moment she gazed, astonished; then, of course, she guessed the ruse. "Oh, but it isn't Sylph!" she cried. "It isn't half so pretty!" And out came her pocket handkerchief again.

The old Squire took her gently by the hand. "It's the best we could do," he said. "We hope you will accept her with our best wishes."

Truth to say, Mrs. Kennard's tears were soon dried; and before long the new colt became almost as great a pet as the lost Sylph.

"Don't you ever forget, and don't you ever let me forget, how the old Squire has helped us out of this scrape," Ad said to me that night after we had gone upstairs. "He's an old Christian. If he ever needs a friend in his old age and I fail him, let my name be Ichabod!"