The sun had just risen over the distant tree-tops and the dew in the meadow grass glowed like a net of silver and the air was chilly. The chores were done. Aunt Deel appeared in the open door as I was wiping my face and hands and said in her genial, company voice:

"Breakfast is ready."

Aunt Deel never shortened her words when company was there. Her respect was always properly divided between her guest and the English language.

How delicious were the ham, smoked in our own barrels, and the eggs fried in its fat and the baked potatoes and milk gravy and the buckwheat cakes and maple syrup, and how we ate of them! Two big pack baskets stood by the window filled with provisions and blankets, and the black bottom of Uncle Peabody's spider was on the top of one of them, with its handle reaching down into the depths of the basket. The musket and the powder horn had been taken down from the wall and the former leaned on the window-sill.

"If we see a deer we ain't goin' to let him bite us," said Uncle Peabody.

Aunt Deel kept nudging me under the table and giving me sharp looks to remind me of my manners, for now it seemed as if a time had come when eating was a necessary evil to be got through with as soon as possible. Even Uncle Peabody tapped his cup lightly with his teaspoon, a familiar signal of his by which he indicated that I was to put on the brakes.

To Aunt Deel men-folks were a careless, irresponsible and mischievous lot who had to be looked after all the time or there was no telling what would happen to them. She slipped some extra pairs of socks and a bottle of turpentine into the pack basket and told us what we were to do if we got wet feet or sore throats or stomach ache.

Aunt Deel kissed me lightly on the cheek with a look that seemed to say, "There, I've done it at last," and gave me a little poke with her hand (I remember thinking what an extravagant display of affection it was) and many cautions before I got into the wagon with Mr. Wright, and my uncle. We drove up the hills and I heard little that the men said for my thoughts were busy. We arrived at the cabin of Bill Seaver that stood on the river bank just above Rainbow Falls. Bill stood in his dooryard and greeted us with a loud "Hello, there!"

"Want to go fishin'?" Uncle Peabody called.

"You bet I do. Gosh! I ain't had no fun since I went to Joe Brown's funeral an' that day I enjoyed myself—damned if I didn't! Want to go up the river?"

"We thought we'd go up to your camp and fish a day or two."

"All right! We'll hitch in the hosses. My wife'll take care of 'em 'til we git back. Say it looks as fishy as hell, don't it?"

"This is Mr. Silas Wright—the Comptroller," said Uncle Peabody.

"It is! Gosh almighty! I ought to have knowed it," said Bill Seaver, his tone and manner having changed like magic to those of awed respect. "I see ye in court one day years ago. If I'd knowed 'twas you I wouldn't 'a' swore as I did." The men began laughing and then he added: "Damned if I would!"

"It won't hurt me any—the boy is the one," said Mr. Wright as he took my hand and strolled up the river bank with me. I rather feared and dreaded those big roaring men like Bill Seaver.

The horses were hitched in and the canoes washed out. Then we all turned to and dug some angle-worms. The poles were brought—lines, hooks and sinkers were made ready and in an hour or so we were on our way up the river, Mr. Wright and I and Uncle Peabody being in one of the canoes, the latter working the paddle.

I remember how, as we went along, Mr. Wright explained the fundamental theory of his politics. I gave strict attention because of my pride in the fact that he included me in the illustration of his point. This in substance is what he said, for I can not pretend to quote his words with precision although I think they vary little from his own, for here before me is the composition entitled "The Comptroller," which I wrote two years later and read at a lyceum in the district schoolhouse.

"We are a fishing party. There are four of us who have come together with one purpose—that of catching fish and having a good time. We have elected Bill guide because he knows the river and the woods and the fish better than we do. It's Bill's duty to give us the benefit of his knowledge, and to take us to and from camp and out of the woods at our pleasure and contribute in all reasonable ways to our comfort. He is the servant of his party. Now if Bill, having approved our aim and accepted the job from us, were to try to force a new aim upon the party and insist that we should all join him in the sport of catching butterflies, we would soon break up. If we could agree on the butterfly program that would be one thing, but if we held to our plan and Bill stood out, he would be a traitor to his party and a fellow of very bad manners. As long as the aims of my party are, in the main, right, I believe its commands are sacred. Always in our country the will of the greatest number ought to prevail—right or wrong. It has a right even to make mistakes, for through them it should learn wisdom and gradually adjust itself to the will of its greatest leaders."

It is remarkable that the great commoner should have made himself understood by a boy of eight, but in so doing he exemplified the gift that raised him above all the men I have met—that of throwing light into dark places so that all could see the truth that was hidden there.

Now and then we came to noisy water hills slanting far back through rocky timbered gorges, or little foamy stairways in the river leading up to higher levels. The men carried the canoes around these places while I followed gathering wild flowers and watching the red-winged black birds that flew above us calling hoarsely across the open spaces. Now and then, a roaring veering cloud of pigeons passed in the upper air. The breath of the river was sweet with the fragrance of pine and balsam.

We were going around a bend when we heard the voice of Bill shouting just above us. He had run the bow of his canoe on a gravel beach just below a little waterfall and a great trout was flopping and tumbling about in the grass beside him.

"Yip!" he shouted as he held up the radiant, struggling fish that reached from his chin to his belt. "I tell ye boys they're goin' to be sassy as the devil. Jump out an' go to work here."

With what emotions I leaped out upon the gravel and watched the fishing! A new expression came into the faces of the men. Their mouths opened. There was a curious squint in their eyes. Their hands trembled as they baited their hooks. The song of the river, tumbling down a rocky slant, filled the air. I saw the first bite. How the pole bent! How the line hissed as it went rushing through the water out among the spinning bubbles! What a splash as the big fish in his coat of many colors broke through the ripples and rose aloft and fell at my feet throwing a spray all over me as he came down! That was the way they fished in those days. They angled with a stout pole of seasoned tamarack and no reel, and catching a fish was like breaking a colt to halter.

While he was fishing Mr. Wright slipped off the rock he stood on and sank shoulder deep in the water. I ran and held out my hand crying loudly. Uncle Peabody helped him ashore with his pole. Tears were flowing down my cheeks while I stood sobbing in a kind of juvenile hysterics.

"What's the matter?" Uncle Peabody demanded.

"I was 'fraid—Mr. Wright—was goin' to be drownded," I managed to say.

The Comptroller shook his arms and came and knelt by my side and kissed me.

"God bless the dear boy!" he exclaimed. "It's a long time since any one cried for me. I love you, Bart."

When Bill swore after that the Comptroller raised his hand and shook his head and uttered a protesting hiss.

We got a dozen trout before we resumed our journey and reached camp soon after one o'clock very hungry. It was a rude bark lean-to, and we soon made a roaring fire in front of it. What a dinner we had! the bacon and the fish fried in its fat and the boiled potatoes and the flapjacks and maple sugar! All through my long life I have sought in vain for a dinner like it. I helped with the washing of the dishes and, that done, Bill made a back for his fire of green beech logs, placed one upon the other and held in place by stakes driven in the ground. By and by Mr. Wright asked me if I would like to walk over to Alder Brook with him.

"The fish are smaller there and I guess you could catch 'em," said he.

The invitation filled me with joy and we set out together through the thick woods. The leaves were just come and their vivid, glossy green sprinkled out in the foliage of the little beeches and the woods smelt of new things. The trail was overgrown and great trees had fallen into it and we had to pick our way around them. The Comptroller carried me on his back over the wet places and we found the brook at last and he baited my hook while I caught our basket nearly full of little trout. Coming back we lost the trail and presently the Comptroller stopped and said:

"Bart, I'm 'fraid we're going wrong. Let's sit down here and take a look at the compass."

He took out his compass and I stood by his knee and watched the quivering needle.

"Yes, sir," he went on. "We just turned around up there on the hill and started for Alder Brook again."

As we went on he added: "When you're in doubt look at the compass. It always knows its way."

"How does it know?" I asked.

"It couldn't tell ye how and I couldn't. There are lots o' things in the world that nobody can understand."

The needle now pointed toward its favorite star.

"My uncle says that everything and everybody has compasses in 'em to show 'em the way to go," I remarked thoughtfully.

"He's right," said the Comptroller. "I'm glad you told me for I'd never thought of it. Every man has a compass in his heart to tell which way is right. I shall always remember that, partner."

He gave me a little hug as we sat together and I wondered what a partner might be, for the word was new to me.

"What's partner?" I asked.

"Somebody you like to have with you."

Always when we were together after that hour the great man called me "partner."

We neared camp in the last light of the day. Mr. Wright stopped to clean our fish at a little murmuring brook and I ran on ahead for I could hear the crackling of the camp-fire and the voice of Bill Seaver. I thought in whispers what I should say to my Uncle Peabody and they were brave words. I was close upon the rear of the camp when I checked my eager pace and approached on tiptoe. I was going to surprise and frighten my uncle and then embrace him. Suddenly my heart stood still, for I heard him saying words fit only for the tongue of a Dug Draper or a Charley Boyce—the meanest boy in school—low, wicked words which Uncle Peabody himself had taught me to fear and despise. My Uncle Peabody! Once I heard a man telling of a doomful hour in which his fortune won by years of hard work, broke and vanished like a bubble. The dismay he spoke of reminded me of my own that day. My Aunt Deel had told me that the devil used bad words to tempt his victims into a lake of fire where they sizzled and smoked and yelled forever and felt worse, every minute, than one sitting on a hot griddle. To save me from such a fate my uncle had nearly blistered me with his slipper. How was I to save him? I stood still for a moment of confusion and anxiety, with my hand over my mouth, while a strange sickness came upon me. A great cold wave had swept in off the uncharted seas and flooded my little beach, and covered it with wreckage. What was I to do? I knew that I couldn't punish him. I couldn't bear to speak to him even, so I turned and walked slowly away.

My dear, careless old uncle was in great danger. As I think of it now, what a whited sepulchre he had become in a moment! Had I better consult Mr. Wright? No. My pride in my uncle and my love for him would not permit it. I must bear my burden alone until I could tell Aunt Deel. She would know what to do. Mr. Wright came along and found me sitting in deep dejection on a bed of vivid, green moss by an old stump at the trail-side.

"What ye doing here?" he asked in surprise.

"Nothing," I answered gravely.

The Comptroller must have observed the sorrow in my face, for he asked:

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing," I lied, and then my conscience caught up with my tongue and I added: "It's a secret."

Fearing that my uncle would disgrace himself in the hearing of Mr. Wright, I said something—I do not remember what, save that it related to the weather—in a loud voice by way of warning.

They noticed the downcast look of me when we entered camp.

"Why, Bub, you look tired," said Uncle Peabody as he gave me that familiar hug of his.

I did not greet him with the cheerful warmth which had characterized our meetings, and seeing the disappointment in his look I kissed him rather flippantly.

"Lay down on this old sheep skin and take a nap," said he. "It's warm in here."

He spread the sheep skin on the balsam boughs back under the lean-to and I lay down upon it and felt the glow of the fire and heard the talk of the men but gave no heed to it. I turned my face away from them and lay as if asleep, but with a mind suddenly estranged and very busy.

Now I know what I knew not then, that my soul was breaking camp on the edge of the world and getting ready to move over the line. Still no suspicion of the truth reached me that since I came to live with him my uncle had been bitting and breaking his tongue. It occurred to me that Bill Seaver, whom I secretly despised, had spoilt him and that I had done wrong in leaving him all the afternoon defenseless in bad company.

I wondered if he were beyond hope or if he would have to fry and smoke and yell forever. But I had hope. My faith in Aunt Deel as a corrector and punisher was very great. She would know what to do. I heard the men talking in low voices as they cooked the supper and the frying of the fish and bacon. It had grown dark. Uncle Peabody came and leaned over me with a lighted candle and touched my face with his hand. I lay still with closed eyes. He left me and I heard him say to the others:

"He's asleep and his cheeks are wet. Looks as if he'd been cryin' all to himself there. I guess he got too tired."

Then Mr. Wright said: "Something happened to the boy this afternoon. I don't know what. I stopped at the brook to clean the fish and he ran on toward the camp to surprise you. I came along soon and found him sitting alone by the trail out there. He looked as if he hadn't a friend in the world. I asked him what was the matter and he said it was a secret."

"Say, by—" Uncle Peabody paused. "He must a stole up here and heard me tellin' that—" he paused again and went on: "Say, I wouldn't 'a' had him hear that for a thousan' dollars. I don't know how to behave myself when I get in the woods. If you're goin' to travel with a boy like that you've got to be good all the time—ye can't take no rest or vacation at all whatever."

"You've got to be sound through and through or they'll find it out," said the Comptroller. "You can't fool 'em long."

"He's got a purty keen edge on him," said Bill Seaver.

"On the whole I think he's the most interesting child I ever saw," said Mr. Wright.

I knew that these words were compliments but their meaning was not quite clear to me. The words, however, impressed and pleased me deeply and I recalled them often after that night. I immediately regretted them, for I was hungry and wanted to get up and eat some supper but had to lie a while longer now so they would not know that my ears had been open. Nothing more was said and I lay and listened to the wind in the tree-tops and the crackling of the fire, and suddenly the day ended.

I felt the gentle hand of Uncle Peabody on my face and I heard him speak my name very tenderly. I opened my eyes. The sun was shining. It was a new day. Bill Seaver had begun to cook the breakfast. I felt better and ran down to the landing and washed. My uncle's face had a serious look in it. So had Mr. Wright's. I was happy but dimly conscious of a change.

I remember how Bill beat the venison steak, which he had brought in his pack basket, with the head of his ax, adding a strip of bacon and a pinch of salt, now and then, until the whole was a thick mass of pulp which he broiled over the hot coals. I remember, too, how delicious it was.

We ate and packed and got into the boats and fished along down the river. At Seaver's we hitched up our team and headed homeward. When we drove into the dooryard Aunt Deel came and helped me out of the buggy and kissed my cheek and said she had been "terrible lonesome." Mr. Wright changed his clothes and hurried away across country with his share of the fish on his way to Canton.

"Well, I want to know!—ayes! ain't they beautiful! ayes!" Aunt Deel exclaimed as Uncle Peabody spread the trout in rows on the wash-stand by the back door.

"I've got to tell you something," I said.

"What is it?" she asked.

"I heard him say naughty words."

"What words?"

"I—I can't say 'em. They're wicked. I'm—I'm 'fraid he's goin' to be burnt up," I stammered.

"It's so. I said 'em," my uncle confessed.

Aunt Deel turned to me and said: "Bart, you go right down to the barn and bring me a strap—ayes!—you bring me a strap—right away."

I walked slowly toward the barn. For the moment, I was sorry that I had told on my uncle. Scalding tears began to flow down my cheeks. I sat on the steps to the hay loft for a moment to collect my thoughts.

Then I heard Aunt Deel call to me: "Hurry up, Bart."

I rose and picked out the smallest strap I could find and walked slowly back to the house. I said, in a trembling voice, as I approached them, "I—I don't think he meant it."

"He'll have to be punished—just the same—ayes—he will."

We went into the house together, I sniffling, but curious to see what was going to happen. Uncle Peabody, by prearrangement, as I know now, lay face downward on the sofa, and Aunt Deel began to apply the strap. It was more than I could bear, and I threw myself between my beloved friend and the strap and pleaded with loud cries for his forgiveness.

Uncle Peabody rose and walked out of the house without a word and with a sterner look in his face than I had ever seen there. I searched for him as soon as my excitement had passed, but in vain. I went out back of the cow barn and looked away down across the stumpy flats. Neither he nor Shep were in sight. All that lonely afternoon I watched for him. The sun fell warm but my day was dark. Aunt Deel found me in tears sitting on the steps of the cheese house and got her Indian book out of her trunk and, after she had cautioned me to be very careful of it, let me sit down with it by myself alone, and look at the pictures.

I had looked forward to the time when I could be trusted to sit alone with the Indian book. In my excitement over the picture of a red man tomahawking a child I turned a page so swiftly that I put a long tear in it. My pleasure was gone. I carefully joined the torn edges and closed the book and put it on the table and ran and hid behind the barn.

By and by I saw Uncle Peabody coming down the lane with the cows, an ax on his shoulder. I ran to meet him with a joy in my heart as great as any I have ever known. He greeted me with a cheerful word and leaned over me and held me close against his legs and looked into my eyes and asked:

"Are you willin' to kiss me?"

I kissed him and then he said:

"If ye ever hear me talk like that ag'in, I'll let the stoutest man in Ballybeen hit me with his ax."

I was not feeling well and went to bed right after supper. As I was undressing I heard Aunt Deel exclaim: "My heavens! See what that boy has done to my Indian book—ayes! Ain't that awful!—ayes!"

"Pretend ye ain't noticed it," said Uncle Peabody. "He's had trouble enough for one day."

A deep silence followed in which I knew that Aunt Deel was probably wiping tears from her eyes. I went to bed feeling better.

Next day the stage, on its way to Ballybeen, came to our house and left a box and a letter from Mr. Wright, addressed to my uncle, which read:

"DEAR SIR—I send herewith a box of books and magazines in the hope that you or Miss Baynes will read them aloud to my little partner and in doing so get some enjoyment and profit for yourselves.

"Yours respectfully, S. WRIGHT, JR.

"P.S.—When the contents of the box has duly risen into your minds, will you kindly see that it does a like service to your neighbors in School District No. 7? S.W., JR."

"I guess Bart has made a friend o' this great man—sartin ayes!" said Aunt Deel. "I wonder who'll be the next one."



CHAPTER V

IN THE LIGHT OF THE CANDLES

I remember that I tried to walk and talk like Silas Wright after that day. He had a way of twisting little locks of his hair between his thumb and finger when he sat thinking. I practised that trick of his when I was alone and unobserved.

One day I was walking up and down, as I had seen Mr. Wright do, and talking to my friend "Baynes," when Aunt Deel called to me that I should bring the candle molds from the shed. I was keeper of the molds and greatly enjoyed the candle-making. First we strung the wicks on slender wooden rods—split and whittled by Uncle Peabody and me as we sat down by the stove in the evening. Then the wicks were let down into tin molds, each of which ended in a little inverted cone with a hole through its point. We carefully worked the wick ends through these perforations and drew them tight. When the mold was ready we poured in the melted tallow, which hardened in a few minutes. Later, by pulling the wooden rods, we loosened the candles and drew them out of the molds. They were as smooth and white as polished alabaster. With shears we trimmed the wick ends. The iron candlesticks were filled and cleaned of drippings and set on the little corner shelf above the sink.

When night fell again and the slender white shaft, rising above its base of iron, was crowned with yellow flame, I can think of nothing more beautiful in color, shape and symbolism. It was the torch of liberty and learning in the new world—a light-house on the shore of the great deep.

The work of the day ended, the candles were grouped near the edge of the table and my aunt's armchair was placed beside them. Then I sat on Uncle Peabody's lap by the fire or, as time went on, in my small chair beside him, while Aunt Deel adjusted her spectacles and began to read.

At last those of wearied bones and muscles had sat down to look abroad with the mind's eye. Their reason began to concern itself with problems beyond the narrow limits of the house and farm; their imaginations took the wings of the poet and rose above all their humble tasks.

I recall how, when the candles were lighted, storyteller, statesman, explorer, poet and preacher came from the far ends of the earth and poured their souls into ours. It was a dim light—that of the candles—but even to-day it shines through the long alley of these many years upon my pathway. I see now what I saw not then in the candle-light, a race marching out of darkness, ignorance and poverty with our little party in the caravan. Crowding on, they widened the narrow way of their stern religion.

At first we had only The Horse Farrier, The Cattle Book, The Story of the Indian Wars—a book which had been presented to Aunt Deel by her grandmother, and which in its shroud of white linen lay buried in her trunk most of the time for fear harm would come to it, as it did, indeed, when in a moment of generosity she had loaned it to me. The Bible and the St. Lawrence Republican were always with us.

Many a night, when a speech of Daniel Webster or Henry Clay or Dewitt Clinton had pushed me to the edge of unconsciousness, while I resisted by counting the steel links in the watch chain of Uncle Peabody—my rosary in every time of trouble—I had been bowled over the brink by some account of horse colic and its remedy, or of the proper treatment of hoof disease in sheep. I suffered keenly from the horse colic and like troubles and from the many hopes and perils of democracy in my childhood. I found the Bible, however, the most joyless book of all, Samson being, as I thought, the only man in it who amounted to much. A shadow lay across its pages which came, I think, from the awful solemnity of my aunt when she opened them. It reminded me of a dark rainy day made fearful by thunder and lightning. It was not the cheerful thing, illumined by the immortal faith of man which, since then, I have found it to be. The box of books changed the whole current of our lives.

I remember vividly that evening when we took out the books and tenderly felt their covers and read their titles. There were Cruikshanks' Comic Almanac and Hood's Comic Annual; tales by Washington Irving and James K. Paulding and Nathaniel Hawthorne and Miss Mitford and Miss Austin; the poems of John Milton and Felicia Hemans. Of the treasures in the box I have now; in my possession: A life of Washington, The Life and Writings of Doctor Duckworth, The Stolen Child, by "John Galt, Esq."; Rosine Laval, by "Mr. Smith"; Sermons and Essays, by William Ellery Channing. We found in the box, also, thirty numbers of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review and sundry copies of the New York Mirror.

"Ayes! I declare! What do you think o' this, Peabody Baynes!" Aunt Deel exclaimed as she sat turning the pages of a novel. "Ye know Aunt Minervy used to say that a novel was a fast horse on the road to perdition—ayes!"

"Well she wasn't—" Uncle Peabody began and stopped suddenly. What he meant to say about her will never be definitely known. In half a moment he added:

"I guess if Sue Wright recommends 'em they won't hurt us any."

"Ayes! I ain't afraid—we'll wade into 'em," she answered recklessly. "Ayes! we'll see what they're about."

Aunt Deel began with The Stolen Child. She read slowly and often paused for comment or explanation or laughter or to touch the corner of an eye with a corner of her handkerchief in moments when we were all deeply moved by the misfortunes of our favorite characters, which were acute and numerous. Often she stopped to spell out phrases of French or Latin, whereupon Uncle Peabody would exclaim:

"Call it 'snags' and go on."

The "snags" were numerous in certain of the books we read, in which case Uncle Peabody would exclaim:

"Say, that's purty rough plowin'. Mebbe you better move into another field."

How often I have heard Aunt Deel reading when the effect was like this:

"The Duchess exclaimed with an accent which betrayed the fact that she had been reared in the French Capital: 'Snags!' Whereupon Sir Roger rejoined in French equally patrician: 'Snags!"

Those days certain authors felt it necessary to prove that their education had not been neglected or forgotten. Their way was strewn with fragments of classic lore intended to awe and mystify the reader, while evidences of correct religious sentiment were dropped, here and there, to reassure him. The newspapers and magazines of the time, like certain of its books, were salted with little advertisements of religion, and virtue and honesty and thrift.

In those magazines we read of the great West—"the poor man's paradise"—"the stoneless land of plenty"; of its delightful climate, of the ease with which the farmer prospered on its rich soil. Uncle Peabody spoke playfully of going West, after that, but Aunt Deel made no answer and concealed her opinion on that subject for a long time. As for myself, the reading had deepened my interest in east and west and north and south and in the skies above them. How mysterious and inviting they had become!

One evening a neighbor had brought the Republican from the post-office. I opened it and read aloud these words, in large type at the top of the page:

Silas Wright Elected to the U.S. Senate.

"Well I want to know!" Uncle Peabody exclaimed. "That would make me forgit it if I was goin' to be hung. Go on and read what it says."

I read of the choosing of our friend for the seat made vacant by the resignation of William L. Marcy, who had been elected governor, and the part which most impressed us were these words from a letter of Mr. Wright to Azariah Flagg of Albany, written when the former was asked to accept the place:

"I am too young and too poor for such an elevation. I have not had the experience in that great theater of politics to qualify me for a place so exalted and responsible. I prefer therefore the humbler position which I now occupy."

"That's his way," said Uncle Peabody. "They had hard work to convince him that he knew enough to be Surrogate."

"Big men have little conceit—ayes!" said Aunt Deel with a significant glance at me.

The candles had burned low and I was watching the shroud of one of them when there came a rap at the door. It was unusual for any one to come to our door in the evening and we were a bit startled. Uncle Peabody opened it and old Kate entered without speaking and nodded to my aunt and uncle and sat down by the fire. Vividly I remembered the day of the fortune-telling. The same gentle smile lighted her face as she looked at me. She held up her hand with four fingers spread above it.

"Ayes," said Aunt Deel, "there are four perils."

My aunt rose and went into the but'ry while I sat staring at the ragged old woman. Her hair was white now and partly covered by a worn and faded bonnet. Forbidding as she was I did not miss the sweetness in her smile and her blue eyes when she looked at me. Aunt Deel came with a plate of doughnuts and bread and butter and head cheese and said in a voice full of pity:

"Poor ol' Kate—ayes! Here's somethin' for ye—ayes!"

She turned to, my uncle and said:

"Peabody Baynes, what'll we do—I'd like to know—ayes! She can't rove all night."

"I'll git some blankets an' make a bed for her, good 'nough for anybody, out in the hired man's room over the shed," said my uncle.

He brought the lantern—a little tower of perforated tin—and put a lighted candle inside of it. Then he beckoned to the stranger, who followed him out of the front door with the plate of food in her hands.

"Well I declare! It's a long time since she went up this road—ayes!" said Aunt Deel, yawning as she resumed her chair.

"Who is ol' Kate?" I asked.

"Oh, just a poor ol' crazy woman—wanders all 'round—ayes!"

"What made her crazy?"

"Oh, I guess somebody misused and deceived her when she was young—ayes! It's an awful wicked thing to do. Come, Bart—go right up to bed now. It's high time—ayes!"

"I want to wait 'til Uncle Peabody comes back," said I.

"Why?"

"I—I'm afraid she'll do somethin' to him."

"Nonsense! Ol' Kate is just as harmless as a kitten. You take your candle and go right up to bed—this minute—ayes!"

I went up-stairs with the candle and undressed very slowly and thoughtfully while I listened for the footsteps of my uncle. I did not get into bed until I heard him come in and blow out his lantern and start up the stairway. As he undressed he told me how for many years the strange woman had been roving in the roads "up hill and down dale, thousands an' thousands o' miles," and never reaching the end of her journey.

In a moment we heard a low wail above the sound of the breeze that shook the leaves of the old "popple" tree above our roof.

"What's that?" I whispered.

"I guess it's ol' Kate ravin'," said Uncle Peabody.

It touched my heart and I lay listening for a time but heard only the loud whisper of the popple leaves.



CHAPTER VI

THE GREAT STRANGER

Some strangers came along the road those days—hunters, peddlers and the like—and their coming filled me with a joy which mostly went away with them, I regret to say. None of these, however, appealed to my imagination as did old Kate. But there was one stranger greater than she—greater, indeed, than any other who came into Rattleroad. He came rarely and would not be long detained. How curiously we looked at him, knowing his fame and power! This great stranger was Money.

I shall never forget the day that my uncle showed me a dollar bill and a little shiny, gold coin and three pieces of silver, nor can I forget how carefully he watched them while they lay in my hands and presently put them back into his wallet. That was long before the time of which I am writing. I remember hearing him say, one day of that year, when I asked him to take us to the Caravan of Wild Beasts which was coming to the village:

"I'm sorry, but it's been a hundred Sundays since I had a dollar in my wallet for more than ten minutes."

I have his old account book for the years of 1837 and 1838. Here are some of the entries:

"Balanced accounts with J. Dorothy and gave him my note for $2.15, to be paid in salts January 1, 1838. Sold ten bushels of wheat to E. Miner at 90 cents, to be paid in goods.

"Sold two sheep to Flavius Curtis and took his note for $6, payable in boots on or before March the first."

Only one entry in more than a hundred mentions money, and this was the sum of eleven cents received in balance from a neighbor.

So it will be seen that a spirit of mutual accommodation served to help us over the rough going. Mr. Grimshaw, however, demanded his pay in cash and that I find was, mainly, the habit of the money-lenders.

We were poor but our poverty was not like that of these days in which I am writing. It was proud and cleanly and well-fed. We had in us the best blood of the Puritans. Our fathers had seen heroic service in the wars and we knew it.

There were no farmer-folk who thought more of the virtue of cleanliness. On this subject my aunt was a deep and tireless thinker. She kept a watchful eye upon us. In her view men-folks were like floors, furniture and dishes. They were in the nature of a responsibility—a tax upon women as it were. Every day she reminded me of the duty of keeping my body clean. Its members had often suffered the tyranny of the soaped hand at the side of the rain barrel. I suppose that all the waters of this world have gone up in the sky and come down again since those far days, but even now the thought of my aunt brings back the odor of soft soap and rain barrels.

She did her best, also, to keep our minds in a cleanly state of preservation—a work in which the teacher rendered important service. He was a young man from Canton.

One day when I had been kept after hours for swearing in a fight and then denying it, he told me that there was no reason why I shouldn't be a great man if I stuck to my books and kept my heart clean. I heard with alarm that there was another part of me to be kept clean. How was it to be done?

"Well, just make up your mind that you'll never lie, whatever else you do," he said. "You can't do anything bad or mean unless you intend to cover it up with lies."

What a simple rule was this of the teacher!—and yet—well the very next thing he said was:

"Where did you hear all that swearing?"

How could I answer his question truthfully? I was old enough to know that the truth would disgrace my Uncle Peabody. I could not tell the truth, therefore, and I didn't. I put it all on Dug Draper, although his swearing had long been a dim, indefinite and useless memory.

As a penalty I had to copy two maxims of Washington five times in my writing-book. In doing so I put them on the wall of my memory where I have seen them every day of my life and from which I read as I write.

"Speak no evil of the absent for it is unjust."

"Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience."

The boys in the school were a sturdy big-boned lot with arms and legs like the springing bow. Full-lunged, great-throated fellows, they grew to be, calling the sheep and cattle in the land of far-reaching pastures. There was an undersized boy three years older who often picked on me and with whom I would have no peaceful commerce.

I copy from an old memorandum book a statement of my daily routine just as I put it down one of those days:

"My hardest choar is to get up after uncle calls me. I scramble down stairs and pick up my boots and socks and put them on. Then I go into the setting room and put on my jacket. I get some brand for the sheep. Then I put on my cap and mittens and go out and feed the sheep. Then I get my breakfast. Then I put on my frock, cap, mittens and fetch in my wood. Then I feed the horses their oats. Then I lay away my old clothes until night. I put on my best coat and mittens and tippet and start for school. By the time I get to Joe's my toes are cold and I stop and warm them. When I get to school I warm me at the stove. Then I go to my seat and study my reader, then I take out my arithmetic, then my spelling book, then comes the hardest study that ever landed on Plymouth Rock. It is called geography. After the spelling lesson comes noon. The teacher plays with me cos the other boys are so big. I am glad when I go home. Then I do my choars again, and hear my aunt read until bedtime."

There were girls in the school, but none like Sally. They whispered together with shy glances in our direction, as if they knew funny secrets about us, and would then break into noisy jeers. They did not interest me, and probably because I had seen the lightness and grace and beauty of Sally Dunkelberg and tasted the sweetness of her fancies.

There were the singing and spelling schools and the lyceums, but those nights were few and far between. Not more than four or five in the whole winter were we out of the joyful candle-light of our own home. Even then our hands were busy making lighters or splint brooms, or paring and quartering and stringing the apples or cracking butternuts while Aunt Deel read.

After the sheep came we kept only two cows. The absence of cattle was a help to the general problem of cleanliness. The sheep were out in the fields and I kept away from them for fear the rams would butt me. I remember little of the sheep save the washing and shearing and the lambs which Uncle Peabody brought to our fireside to be warmed on cold mornings of the early spring. I remember asking where the lambs came from when I was a small boy, and that Uncle Peabody said they came from "over the river"—a place regarding which his merry ignorance provoked me. In the spring they were driven to the deep hole and dragged, one by one, into the cold water to have their fleeces washed. When the weather had warmed men came to shear them and their oily white fleeces were clipped close to the skin and each taken off in one piece like a coat and rolled up and put on the wool pile.

I was twelve years old when I began to be the reader for our little family. Aunt Deel had long complained that she couldn't keep up with her knitting and read so much. We had not seen Mr. Wright for nearly two years, but he had sent us the novels of Sir Walter Scott and I had led them heart deep into the creed battles of Old Mortality.

Then came the evil days of 1837, when the story of our lives began to quicken its pace and excite our interest in its coming chapters. It gave us enough to think of, God knows.

Wild speculations in land and the American paper-money system had brought us into rough going. The banks of the city of New York had suspended payment of their notes. They could no longer meet their engagements. As usual, the burden fell heaviest on the poor. It was hard to get money even for black salts.

Uncle Peabody had been silent and depressed for a month or more. He had signed a note for Rodney Barnes, a cousin, long before and was afraid that he would have to pay it. I didn't know what a note was and I remember that one night, when I lay thinking about it, I decided that it must be something in the nature of horse colic. My uncle told me that a note was a trouble which attacked the brain instead of the stomach. I was with Uncle Peabody so much that I shared his feeling but never ventured to speak of it or its cause. He didn't like to be talked to when he felt badly. At such times he used to say that he had the brain colic. He told me that notes had an effect on the brain like that of green apples on the stomach.

One autumn day in Canton Uncle Peabody traded three sheep and twenty bushels of wheat for a cook stove and brought it home in the big wagon. Rodney Barnes came with him to help set up the stove. He was a big giant of a man with the longest nose in the township. I had often wondered how any one would solve the problem of kissing Mr. Barnes in the immediate region of his nose, the same being in the nature of a defense.

I remember that I regarded it with a kind of awe because I had been forbidden to speak of it. The command invested Mr. Barnes' nose with a kind of sanctity. Indeed it became one of the treasures of my imagination.

That evening I was chiefly interested in the stove. What a joy it was to me with its damper and griddles and high oven and the shiny edge on its hearth! It rivaled, in its novelty and charm, any tin peddler's cart that ever came to our door. John Axtell and his wife, who had seen it pass their house, hurried over for a look at it. Every hand was on the stove as we tenderly carried it into the house, piece by piece, and set it up. Then they cut a hole in the upper floor and the stone chimney and fitted the pipe. How keenly we watched the building of the fire! How quickly it roared and began to heat the room!

When the Axtells had gone away Aunt Deel said:

"It's grand! It is sartin—but I'm 'fraid we can't afford it—ayes I be!"

"We can't afford to freeze any longer. I made up my mind that we couldn't go through another winter as we have," was my uncle's answer.

"How much did it cost?" she asked.

"Not much differ'nt from thirty-four dollars in sheep and grain," he answered.

Rodney Barnes stayed to supper and spent a part of the evening with us.

Like other settlers there, Mr. Barnes was a cheerful optimist. Everything looked good to him until it turned out badly. He stood over the stove with a stick of wood and made gestures with it as he told how he had come from Vermont with a team and a pair of oxen and some bedding and furniture and seven hundred dollars in money. He flung the stick of wood into the box with a loud thump as he told how he had bought his farm of Benjamin Grimshaw at a price which doubled its value. True it was the price which other men had paid in the neighborhood, but they had all paid too much. Grimshaw had established the price and called it fair. He had taken Mr. Barnes to two or three of the settlers on the hills above Lickitysplit.

"Tell this man what you think about the kind o' land we got here," Grimshaw had demanded.

The tenant recommended it. He had to. They were all afraid of Grimshaw. Mr. Barnes picked up a flat iron and felt its bottom and waved it in the air as he alleged that it was a rocky, stumpy, rooty, God-forsaken region far from church or market or school on a rough road almost impassable for a third of the year. Desperate economy and hard work had kept his nose to the grindstone but, thank God, he had nose enough left.

Now and then Grimshaw (and others like him) loaned money to people, but he always had some worthless hay or a broken-down horse which you had to buy before you could get the money.

Mr. Barnes put down the flat iron and picked up the poker and tried its strength on his knee as he told how he had heard that it was a growing country near the great water highway of the St. Lawrence. Prosperous towns were building up in it. There were going to be great cities in Northern New York. What they called a railroad was coming. There were rich stores of lead and iron in the rocks. Mr. Barnes had bought two hundred acres at ten dollars an acre. He had to pay a fee of five per cent. to Grimshaw's lawyer for the survey and the papers. This left him owing fourteen hundred dollars on his farm—much more than it was worth. One hundred acres of the land had been roughly cleared by Grimshaw and a former tenant. The latter had toiled and struggled and paid tribute and given up.

Our cousin twisted the poker in his great hands until it squeaked as he stood before my uncle and said:

"My wife and I have chopped and burnt and pried and hauled rocks an' shoveled dung an' milked an' churned until we are worn out. For almost twenty years we've been workin' days an' nights an' Sundays. My mortgage was over-due, I owed six hundred dollars on it. I thought it all over one day an' went up to Grimshaw's an' took him by the back of the neck and shook him. He said he would drive me out o' the country. He gave me six months to pay up. I had to pay or lose the land. I got the money on the note that you signed over in Potsdam. Nobody in Canton would 'a' dared to lend it to me."

The poker broke and he threw the pieces under the stove.

"Why?" my uncle asked.

Mr. Barnes got hold of another stick of wood and went on.

"'Fraid o' Grimshaw. He didn't want me to be able to pay it. The place is worth more than six hundred dollars now—that's the reason. I intended to cut some timber an' haul it to the village this winter so I could pay a part o' the note an' git more time as I told ye, but the roads have been so bad I couldn't do any haulin'."

My uncle went and took a drink at the water pail. I saw by his face that he was unusually wrought up.

"My heavens an' earth!" he exclaimed as he sat down again.

"It's the brain colic," I said to myself as I looked at him.

Mr. Barnes seemed to have it also.

"Too much note," I whispered.

"I'm awful sorry, but I've done everything I could," said Mr. Barnes.

"Ain't there somebody that'll take another mortgage?—it ought to be safe now," my uncle suggested.

"Money is so tight it can't be done. The bank has got all the money an' Grimshaw owns the bank. I've tried and tried, but I'll make you safe. I'll give you a mortgage until I can turn 'round."

So I saw how Rodney Barnes, like other settlers in Lickitysplit, had gone into bondage to the landlord.

"How much do you owe on this place?" Barnes asked.

"Seven hundred an' fifty dollars," said my uncle.

"Is it due?"

"It's been due a year an' if I have to pay that note I'll be short my interest."

"God o' Israel! I'm scairt," said Barnes.

Down crashed the stick of wood into the box.

"What about?"

Mr. Barnes tackled a nail that stuck out of the woodwork and tried to pull it between his thumb and finger while I watched the process with growing interest.

"It would be like him to put the screws on you now," he grunted, pulling at the nail. "You've got between him an' his prey. You've taken the mouse away from the cat."

I remember the little panic that fell on us then. I could see tears in the eyes of Aunt Deel as she sat with her head leaning wearily on her hand.

"If he does I'll do all I can," said Barnes, "whatever I've got will be yours."

The nail came out of the wall.

"I had enough saved to pay off the mortgage," my uncle answered. "I suppose it'll have to go for the note."

Mr. Barnes' head was up among the dried apples on the ceiling. A movement of his hand broke a string of them. Then he dropped his huge bulk into a chair which crashed to the floor beneath him. He rose blushing and said:

"I guess I better go or I'll break everything you've got here. I kind o' feel that way."

Rodney Barnes left us.

I remember how Uncle Peabody stood in the middle of the floor and whistled the merriest tune he knew.

"Stand right up here," he called in his most cheerful tone. "Stand right up here before me, both o' ye."

I got Aunt Deel by the hand and led her toward my uncle. We stood facing him. "Stand straighter," he demanded. "Now, altogether. One, two, three, ready, sing."

He beat time with his hand in imitation of the singing master at the schoolhouse and we joined him in singing an old tune which began: "O keep my heart from sadness, God."

This irresistible spirit of the man bridged a bad hour and got us off to bed in fairly good condition.

A few days later the note came due and its owner insisted upon full payment. There was such a clamor for money those days! I remember that my aunt had sixty dollars which she had saved, little by little, by selling eggs and chickens. She had planned to use it to buy a tombstone for her mother and father—a long-cherished ambition. My uncle needed the most of it to help pay the note. We drove to Potsdam on that sad errand and what a time we had getting there and back in deep mud and sand and jolting over corduroys!

"Bart," my uncle said the next evening, as I took down the book to read. "I guess we'd better talk things over a little to-night. These are hard times. If we can find anybody with money enough to buy 'em I dunno but we better sell the sheep."

"If you hadn't been a fool," my aunt exclaimed with a look of great distress—"ayes! if you hadn't been a fool."

"I'm just what I be an' I ain't so big a fool that I need to be reminded of it," said my uncle.

"I'll stay at home an' work," I proposed bravely.

"You ain't old enough for that," sighed Aunt Deel.

"I want to keep you in school," said Uncle Peabody, who sat making a splint broom.

While we were talking in walked Benjamin Grimshaw—the rich man of the hills. He didn't stop to knock but walked right in as if the house were his own. It was common gossip that he held a mortgage on every acre of the countryside. I had never liked him, for he was a stern-eyed man who was always scolding somebody, and I had not forgotten what his son had said of him.

"Good night!" he exclaimed curtly, as he sat down and set his cane between his feet and rested his hands upon it. He spoke hoarsely and I remember the curious notion came to me that he looked like our old ram. The stern and rugged face of Mr. Grimshaw and the rusty gray of his homespun and the hoarseness of his tone had suggested this thought to me. The long silvered tufts above his keen, gray eyes moved a little as he looked at my uncle. There were deep lines upon his cheeks and chin and forehead. He wore a thin, gray beard under his chin. His mouth was shut tight in a long line curving downward a little at the ends. My uncle used to say that his mouth was made to keep his thoughts from leaking and going to waste. He had a big body, a big chin, a big mouth, a big nose and big ears and hands. His eyes lay small in this setting of bigness.

"Why, Mr. Grimshaw, it's years since you've been in our house—ayes!" said Aunt Deel.

"I suppose it is," he answered rather sharply. "I don't have much time to get around. I have to work. There's some people seem to be able to git along without it."

He drew in his breath quickly and with a hissing sound after every sentence.

"How are your folks?" my aunt asked.

"So's to eat their allowance—there's never any trouble about that," said Mr. Grimshaw. "I see you've got one o' these newfangled stoves," he added as he looked it over. "Huh! Rich folks can have anything they want."

Uncle Peabody had sat splintering the long stick of yellow birch. I observed that the jackknife trembled in his hand. His tone had a touch of unnaturalness, proceeding no doubt from his fear of the man before him, as he said:

"When I bought that stove I felt richer than I do now. I had almost enough to settle with you up to date, but I signed a note for a friend and had to pay it."

"Ayuh! I suppose so," Grimshaw answered in a tone of bitter irony which cut me like a knife-blade, young as I was. "What business have you signin' notes an' givin' away money which ain't yours to give—I'd like to know? What business have you actin' like a rich man when you can't pay yer honest debts? I'd like to know that, too?"

"If I've ever acted like a rich man it's been when I wa'n't lookin'," said Uncle Peabody.

"What business have you got enlargin' yer family—takin' another mouth to feed and another body to spin for? That costs money. I ain't no objection if a man can afford it, but the money it costs ain't yours to give. It looks as if it belonged to me. You spend yer nights readin' books when ye ought to be to work an' you've scattered that kind o' foolishness all over the neighborhood. I want to tell you one thing, Baynes, you've got to pay up or git out o' here."

He raised his cane and shook it in the air as he spoke.

"Oh, I ain't no doubt o' that," said Uncle Peabody. "You'll have to have yer money—that's sure; an' you will have it if I live, every cent of it. This boy is goin' to be a great help to me—you don't know what a good boy he is and what a comfort he's been to us!"

I had understood that reference to me in Mr. Grimshaw's complaint and these words of my beloved uncle uncovered my emotions so that I put my elbow on the wood-box and leaned my head upon it and sobbed.

"I tell ye I'd rather have that boy than all the money you've got, Mr. Grimshaw," Uncle Peabody added.

My aunt came and patted my shoulder and said: "Sh—sh—sh! Don't you care, Bart! You're just the same as if you was our own boy—ayes!—you be."

"I ain't goin' to be hard on ye, Baynes," said Mr. Grimshaw as he rose from his chair; "I'll give ye three months to see what you can do. I wouldn't wonder if the boy would turn out all right. He's big an' cordy of his age an' a purty likely boy they tell me. He'd 'a' been all right at the county house until he was old enough to earn his livin', but you was too proud for that—wasn't ye? I don't mind pride unless it keeps a man from payin' his honest debts. You ought to have better sense."

"An' you ought to keep yer breath to cool yer porridge," said Uncle Peabody.

Mr. Grimshaw opened the door and stood for a moment looking at us and added in a milder tone: "You've got one o' the best farms in this town an' if ye work hard an' use common sense ye ought to be out o' debt in five years—mebbe less."

He closed the door and went away.

Neither of us moved or spoke as we listened to his footsteps on the gravel path that went down to the road and to the sound of his buggy as he drove away. Then Uncle Peabody broke the silence by saying:

"He's the dam'dest—"

He stopped, set the half-splintered stick aside, closed his jackknife and went to the water-pail to cool his emotions with a drink.

Aunt Deel took up the subject where he had dropped it, as if no half-expressed sentiment would satisfy her, saying:

"—old skinflint that ever lived in this world, ayes! I ain't goin' to hold down my opinion o' that man no longer, ayes! I can't. It's too powerful—ayes!"

Having recovered my composure I repeated that I should like to give up school and stay at home and work.

Aunt Deel interrupted me by saying:

"I have an idee that Sile Wright will help us—ayes! He's comin' home an' you better go down an' see him—ayes! Hadn't ye?"

"Bart an' I'll go down to-morrer," said Uncle Peabody.

I remember well our silent going to bed that night and how I lay thinking and praying that I might grow fast and soon be able to take the test of manhood—that of standing in a half-bushel measure and shouldering two bushels of corn. By and by a wind began to shake the popple leaves above us and the sound soothed me like the whispered "hush-sh" of a gentle mother.

We dressed with unusual care in the morning. After the chores were done and we had had our breakfast we went up-stairs to get ready.

Aunt Deel called at the bottom of the stairs in a generous tone:

"Peabody, if I was you I'd put on them butternut trousers—ayes! an' yer new shirt an' hat an' necktie, but you must be awful careful of 'em—ayes."

The hat and shirt and necktie had been stored in the clothes press for more than a year but they were nevertheless "new" to Aunt Deel. Poor soul! She felt the importance of the day and its duties. It was that ancient, Yankee dread of the poorhouse that filled her heart I suppose. Yet I wonder, often, why she wished us to be so proudly adorned for such a crisis.

Some fourteen months before that day my uncle had taken me to Potsdam and traded grain and salts for what he called a "rip roarin' fine suit o' clothes" with boots and cap and shirt and collar and necktie to match, I having earned them by sawing and cording wood at three shillings a cord. How often we looked back to those better days! The clothes had been too big for me and I had had to wait until my growth had taken up the "slack" in my coat and trousers before I could venture out of the neighborhood. I had tried them on every week or so for a long time. Now my stature filled them handsomely and they filled me with a pride and satisfaction which I had never known before. The collar was too tight, so that Aunt Deel had to sew one end of it to the neckband, but my tie covered the sewing.

Since that dreadful day of the petticoat trousers my wonder had been regarding all integuments, what Sally Dunkelberg would say to them. At last I could start for Canton with a strong and capable feeling. If I chanced to meet Sally Dunkelberg I need not hide my head for shame as I had done that memorable Sunday.

"Now may the Lord help ye to be careful—awful, terrible careful o' them clothes every minute o' this day," Aunt Deel cautioned as she looked at me. "Don't git no horse sweat nor wagon grease on 'em."

To Aunt Deel wagon grease was the worst enemy of a happy and respectable home.

We hitched our team to the grasshopper spring wagon and set out on our journey. It was a warm, hazy Indian-summer day in November. My uncle looked very stiff and sober in his "new" clothes. Such breathless excitement as that I felt when we were riding down the hills and could see the distant spires of Canton, I have never known since that day. As we passed "the mill" we saw the Silent Woman looking out of the little window of her room above the blacksmith shop—a low, weather-stained, frame building, hard by the main road, with a narrow hanging stair on the side of it.

"She keeps watch by the winder when she ain't travelin'," said Uncle Peabody. "Knows all that's goin' on—that woman—knows who goes to the village an' how long they stay. When Grimshaw goes by they say she hustles off down the road in her rags. She looks like a sick dog herself, but I've heard that she keeps that room o' hers just as neat as a pin."

Near the village we passed a smart-looking buggy drawn by a spry-footed horse in shiny harness. Then I noticed with a pang that our wagon was covered with dry mud and that our horses were rather bony and our harnesses a kind of lead color. So I was in an humble state of mind when we entered the village. Uncle Peabody had had little to say and I had kept still knowing that he sat in the shadow of a great problem.

There was a crowd of men and women in front of Mr. Wright's office and through its open door I saw many of his fellow townsmen. We waited at the door for a few minutes. I crowded in while Uncle Peabody stood talking with a villager. The Senator caught sight of me and came to my side and put his hand on my head and said:

"Hello, Bart! How you've grown! and how handsome you look! Where's your uncle?"

"He's there by the door," I answered.

"Well, le's go and see him."

Then I followed him out of the office.

Mr. Wright was stouter and grayer and grander than when I had seen him last. He was dressed in black broadcloth and wore a big beaver hat and high collar and his hair was almost white. I remember vividly his clear, kindly, gray eyes and ruddy cheeks.

"Baynes, I'm glad to see you," he said heartily. "Did ye bring me any jerked meat?"

"Didn't think of it," said Uncle Peabody. "But I've got a nice young doe all jerked an' if you're fond o' jerk I'll bring ye down some to-morrer."

"I'd like to take some to Washington but I wouldn't have you bring it so far."

"I'd like to bring it—I want a chance to talk with ye for half an hour or such a matter," said my uncle. "I've got a little trouble on my hands."

"There's a lot of trouble here," said the Senator. "I've got to settle a quarrel between two neighbors and visit a sick friend and make a short address to the Northern New York Conference at the Methodist Church and look over a piece of land that I'm intending to buy, and discuss the plans for my new house with the carpenter. I expect to get through about six o'clock and right after supper I could ride up to your place with you and walk back early in the morning. We could talk things over on the way up."

"That's first rate," said my uncle. "The chores ain't much these days an' I guess my sister can git along with 'em."

The Senator took us into his office and introduced us to the leading men of the county. There were: Minot Jenison, Gurdon Smith, Ephraim Butterfield, Lemuel Buck, Baron S. Doty, Richard N. Harrison, John L. Russell, Silas Baldwin, Calvin Hurlbut, Doctor Olin, Thomas H. Conkey and Preston King. These were names with which, the Republican had already made us familiar.

"Here," said the Senator as he put his hand on my head, "is a coming man in the Democratic party."

The great men laughed at my blushes and we came away with a deep sense of pride in us. At last I felt equal to the ordeal of meeting the Dunkelbergs. My uncle must have shared my feeling for, to my delight, he went straight to the basement store above which was the modest sign: "H. Dunkelberg, Produce." I trembled as we walked down the steps and opened the door. I saw the big gold watch chain, the handsome clothes, the mustache and side whiskers and the large silver ring approaching us, but I was not as scared as I expected to be. My eyes were more accustomed to splendor.

"Well I swan!" said the merchant in the treble voice which I remembered so well. "This is Bart and Peabody! How are you?"

"Pretty well," I answered, my uncle being too slow of speech to suit my sense of propriety. "How is Sally?"

The two men laughed heartily much to my embarrassment.

"He's getting right down to business," said my uncle.

"That's right," said Mr. Dunkelberg. "Why, Bart, she's spry as a cricket and pretty as a picture. Come up to dinner with me and see for yourself."

Uncle Peabody hesitated, whereupon I gave him a furtive nod and he said "All right," and then I had a delicious feeling of excitement. I had hard work to control my impatience while they talked. I walked on some butter tubs in the back room and spun around on a whirling stool that stood in front of a high desk and succeeded in the difficult feat of tipping over a bottle of ink without getting any on myself. I covered the multitude of my sins on the desk with a newspaper and sat down quietly in a chair.

By and by I asked, "Are you 'most ready to go?"

"Yes—come on—it's after twelve o'clock," said Mr. Dunkelberg. "Sally will be back from school now."

My conscience got the better of me and I confessed about the ink bottle and was forgiven.

So we walked to the big house of the Dunkelbergs and I could hear my heart beating when we turned in at the gate—the golden gate of my youth it must have been, for after I had passed it I thought no more as a child. That rude push which Mr. Grimshaw gave me had hurried the passing.

I was a little surprised at my own dignity when Sally opened the door to welcome us. My uncle told Aunt Deel that I acted and spoke like Silas Wright, "so nice and proper." Sally was different, too—less playful and more beautiful with long yellow curls covering her shoulders.

"How nice you look!" she said as she took my arm and led me into her playroom.

"These are my new clothes," I boasted. "They are very expensive and I have to be careful of them."

I remember not much that we said or did but I could never forget how she played for me on a great shiny piano—I had never seen one before—and made me feel very humble with music more to my liking than any I have heard since—crude and simple as it was—while her pretty fingers ran up and down the keyboard.

O magic ear of youth! I wonder how it would sound to me now—the rollicking lilt of Barney Leave the Girls Alone—even if a sweet maid flung its banter at me with flashing fingers and well-fashioned lips.

I behaved myself with great care at the table—I remember that—and, after dinner, we played in the dooryard and the stable, I with a great fear of tearing my new clothes. I stopped and cautioned her more than once: "Be careful! For gracious sake! be careful o' my new suit!"

As we were leaving late in the afternoon she said:

"I wish you would come here to school."

"I suppose he will sometime," said Uncle Peabody.

A new hope entered my breast, that moment, and began to grow there.

"Aren't you going to kiss her?" said Mr. Dunkelberg with a smile.

I saw the color in her cheeks deepen as she turned with a smile and walked away two or three steps while the grown people laughed, and stood with her back turned looking in at the window.

"You're looking the wrong way for the scenery," said Mr. Dunkelberg.

She turned and walked toward me with a look Of resolution in her pretty face and said:

"I'm not afraid of him."

We kissed each other and, again, that well-remembered touch of her hair upon my face! But the feel of her warm lips upon my own—that was so different and so sweet to remember in the lonely days that followed! Fast flows the river to the sea when youth is sailing on it. They had shoved me out of the quiet cove into the swift current—those dear, kindly, thoughtless people! Sally ran away into the house as their laughter continued and my uncle and I walked down the street. How happy I was!

We went to the Methodist Church where Mr. Wright was speaking but we couldn't get in. There were many standing at the door who had come too late. We could hear his voice and I remember that he seemed to be talking to the people just as I had heard him talk to my aunt and uncle, sitting by our fireside, only louder. We were tired and went down to the tavern and waited for him on its great porch. We passed a number of boys playing three-old-cat in the school yard. How I longed to be among them!

I observed with satisfaction that the village boys did not make fun of me when I passed them as they did when I wore the petticoat trousers. Mr. and Mrs. Wright came along with the crowd, by and by, and Colonel Medad Moody. We had supper with them at the tavern and started away in the dark with the Senator on the seat with us. He and my uncle began to talk about the tightness of money and the banking laws and I remember a remark of my uncle, for there was that in his tone which I could never forget:

"We poor people are trusting you to look out for us—we poor people are trusting you to see that we get treated fair. We're havin' a hard time."

This touched me a little and I was keen to hear the Senator's answer. I remember so well the sacred spirit of democracy in his words. Long afterward I asked him to refresh my memory of them and so I am able to quote him as he would wish.

"I know it," he answered. "I lie awake nights thinking about it. I am poor myself, almost as poor as my father before me. I have found it difficult to keep my poverty these late years but I have not failed. I'm about as poor as you are, I guess. I could enjoy riches, but I want to be poor so I may not forget what is due to the people among whom I was born—you who live in small houses and rack your bones with toil. I am one of you, although I am racking my brain instead of my bones in our common interest. There are so many who would crowd us down we must stand together and be watchful or we shall be reduced to an overburdened, slavish peasantry, pitied and despised. Our danger will increase as wealth accumulates and the cities grow. I am for the average man—like myself. They've lifted me out of the crowd to an elevation which I do not deserve. I have more reputation than I dare promise to keep. It frightens me. I am like a child clinging to its father's hand in a place of peril. So I cling to the crowd. It is my father. I know its needs and wrongs and troubles. I had other things to do to-night. There were people who wished to discuss their political plans and ambitions with me. But I thought I would rather go with you and learn about your troubles. What are they?"

My uncle told him about the note and the visit of Mr. Grimshaw and of his threats and upbraidings.

"Did he say that in Bart's hearing?" asked the Senator.

"Ayes!—right out plain."

"Too bad! I'm going to tell you frankly, Baynes, that the best thing I know about you is your conduct toward this boy. I like it. The next best thing is the fact that you signed the note. It was bad business but it was good Christian conduct to help your friend. Don't regret it. You were poor and of an age when the boy's pranks were troublesome to both of you, but you took him in. I'll lend you the interest and try to get another holder for the mortgage on one condition. You must let me attend to Bart's schooling. I want to be the boss about that. We have a great schoolmaster in Canton and when Bart is a little older I want him to go there to school. I'll try to find him a place where he can work for his board."

"We'll miss Bart but we'll be tickled to death—there's no two ways about that," said Uncle Peabody.

I had been getting sleepy, but this woke me up. I no longer heard the monotonous creak of harness and whiffletrees and the rumble of wheels; I saw no longer the stars and the darkness of the night. My mind had scampered off into the future. I was playing with Sally or with the boys in the school yard.

The Senator tested my arithmetic and grammar and geography as we rode along in the darkness and said by and by:

"You'll have to work hard, Bart. You'll have to take your book into the field as I did. After every row of corn I learned a rule of syntax or arithmetic or a fact in geography while I rested, and my thought and memory took hold of it as I plied the hoe. I don't want you to stop the reading, but from now on you must spend half of every evening on your lessons."

We got home at half past eight and found my aunt greatly worried. She had done the chores and been standing in her hood and shawl on the porch listening for the sound of the wagon. She had kept our suppers warm but I was the only hungry one.

As I was going to bed the Senator called me to him and said:

"I shall be gone when you are up in the morning. It may be a long time before I see you; I shall leave something for you in a sealed envelope with your name on it. You are not to open the envelope until you go away to school. I know how you will feel that first day. When night falls you will think of your aunt and uncle and be very lonely. When you go to your room for the night I want you to sit down all by yourself and open the envelope and read what I shall write. They will be, I think, the most impressive words ever written. You will think them over but you will not understand them for a long time. Ask every wise man you meet to explain them to you, for all your happiness will depend upon your understanding of these few words in the envelope."

In the morning Aunt Deel put it in my hands.

"I wonder what in the world he wrote there—ayes!" said she. "We must keep it careful—ayes!—I'll put it in my trunk an' give it to ye when ye go to Canton to school."

"Has Mr. Wright gone?" I asked rather sadly.

"Ayes! Land o' mercy! He went away long before daylight with a lot o' jerked meat in a pack basket—ayes! Yer uncle is goin' down to the village to see 'bout the mortgage this afternoon, ayes!"

It was a Saturday and I spent its hours cording wood in the shed, pausing now and then for a look into my grammar. It was a happy day, for the growing cords expressed in a satisfactory manner my new sense of obligation to those I loved. Imaginary conversations came into my brain as I worked and were rehearsed in whispers.

"Why, Bart, you're a grand worker," my uncle would say in my fancy. "You're as good as a hired man."

"Oh, that's nothing," I would answer modestly. "I want to be useful so you won't be sorry you took me and I'm going to study just as Mr. Wright did and be a great man if I can and help the poor people. I'm going to be a better scholar than Sally Dunkelberg, too."

What a day it was!—the first of many like it. I never think of those days without saying to myself: "What a God's blessing a man like Silas Wright can be in the community in which his heart and soul are as an open book!"

As the evening came on I took a long look at my cords. The shed was nearly half full of them. Four rules of syntax, also, had been carefully stored away in my brain. I said them over as I hurried down into the pasture with old Shep and brought in the cows. I got through milking just as Uncle Peabody came. I saw with joy that his face was cheerful.

"Yip!" he shouted as he stopped his team at the barn door where Aunt Deel and I were standing. "We ain't got much to worry about now. I've got the interest money right here in my pocket."

We unhitched and went in to supper. I was hoping that Aunt Deel would speak of my work but she seemed not to think of it.

"Had a grand day!" said Uncle Peabody, as he sat down at the table and began to tell what Mr. Wright and Mr. Dunkelberg had said to him.

I, too, had had a grand day and probably my elation was greater than his. I tarried at the looking-glass hoping that Aunt Deel would give me a chance modestly to show my uncle what I had done. But the talk about interest and mortgages continued. I went to my uncle and tried to whisper in his ear a hint that he had better go and look into the wood-shed. He stopped me before I had begun by saying:

"Don't bother me now, Bub. I'll git that candy for ye the next time I go to the village."

Candy! I was thinking of no such trivial matter as candy. He couldn't know how the idea shocked me in the exalted state of mind into which I had risen. He didn't know then of the spiritual change in me and how generous and great I was feeling and how sublime and beautiful was the new way in which I had set my feet.

I went out on the porch and stood looking down with a sad countenance. Aunt Deel followed me.

"W'y, Bart!" she exclaimed, "you're too tired to eat—ayes! Be ye sick?"

I shook my head.

"Peabody," she called, "this boy has worked like a beaver every minute since you left—ayes he has! I never see anything to beat it—never! I want you to come right out into the wood-shed an' see what he's done—this minute—ayes!"

I followed them into the shed.

"W'y of all things!" my uncle exclaimed. "He's worked like a nailer, ain't he?"

There were tears in his eyes when he took my hand in his rough palm and squeezed it and said:

"Sometimes I wish ye was little ag'in so I could take ye up in my arms an' kiss ye just as I used to. Horace Dunkelberg says that you're the best-lookin' boy he ever see."

"Stop!" Aunt Deel exclaimed with a playful tap on his shoulder. "W'y! ye mustn't go on like that."

"I'm tellin' just what he said," my uncle answered.

"I guess he only meant that Bart looked clean an' decent—that's all—ayes! He didn't mean that Bart was purty. Land sakes!—no."

I observed the note of warning in the look she gave my uncle.

"No, I suppose not," he answered, as he turned away with a smile and brushed one of his eyes with a rough finger.

I repeated the rules I had learned as we went to the table.

"I'm goin' to be like Silas Wright if I can," I added.

"That's the idee!" said Uncle Peabody. "You keep on as you've started an' everybody'll milk into your pail."

I kept on—not with the vigor of that first day with its new inspiration—but with growing strength and effectiveness. Nights and mornings and Saturdays I worked with a will and my book in my pocket or at the side of the field and was, I know, a help of some value on the farm. My scholarship improved rapidly and that year I went about as far as I could hope to go in the little school at Leonard's Corners.

"I wouldn't wonder if ol' Kate was right about our boy," said Aunt Deel one day when she saw me with my book in the field.

I began to know then that ol' Kate had somehow been at work in my soul—subconsciously as I would now put it. I was trying to put truth into the prophecy. As I look at the whole matter these days I can see that Mr. Grimshaw himself was a help no less important to me, for it was a sharp spur with which he continued to prod us.



CHAPTER VII

MY SECOND PERIL

We always thank God for men like Purvis: we never thank them. They are without honor in their own time, but how they brighten the pages of memory! How they stimulated the cheerfulness of the old countryside and broke up its natural reticence!

Mr. Franklin Purvis was our hired man—an undersized bachelor. He had a Roman nose, a face so slim that it would command interest and attention in any company, and a serious look enhanced by a bristling mustache and a retreating chin. At first and on account of his size I had no very high opinion of Mr. Purvis. That first evening after his arrival I sat with him on the porch surveying him inside and out.

"You don't look very stout," I said.

"I ain't as big as some, but I'm all gristle from my head to my heels, inside an' out," he answered.

I surveyed him again as he sat looking at the ledges. He was not more than a head taller than I, but if he were "all gristle" he might be entitled to respect and I was glad to learn of his hidden resources—glad and a bit apprehensive as they began to develop.

"I'm as full o' gristle as a goose's leg," he went on. "God never made a man who could do more damage when he lets go of himself an' do it faster. There ain't no use o' talkin'."

There being no use of talking, our new hired man continued to talk while I listened with breathless interest and growing respect. He took a chew of tobacco and squinted his eyes and seemed to be studying the wooded rock ledges across the road as he went on:

"You'll find me wide awake, I guess. I ain't afraid o' anythin' but lightnin'—no, sir!—an' I can hurt hard an' do it rapid when I begin, but I can be jest as harmless as a kitten. There ain't no man that can be more harmlesser when he wants to be an' there's any decent chance for it—none whatsomever! No, sir! I'd rather be harmless than not—a good deal."

This relieved, and was no doubt calculated to relieve, a feeling of insecurity which his talk had inspired. He blew out his breath and shifted his quid as he sat with his elbows resting on his knees and took another look at the ledges as if considering how much of his strength would be required to move them.

"Have you ever hurt anybody?" I asked.

"Several," he answered.

"Did you kill 'em?"

"No, I never let myself go too fur. Bein' so stout, I have to be kind o' careful."

After a moment's pause he went on:

"A man threatened to lick me up to Seaver's t'other day. You couldn't blame him. He didn't know me from a side o' sole leather. He just thought I was one o' them common, every-day cusses that folks use to limber up on. But he see his mistake in time. I tell ye God was good to him when he kept him away from me."

Aunt Deel called us to supper.

"Le's go in an' squench our hunger," Mr. Purvis proposed as he rose and shut his jackknife.

I was very much impressed and called him "Mr. Purvis" after that. I enjoyed and believed many tales of adventure in which he had been the hero as we worked together in the field or stable. I told them to my aunt and uncle one evening, whereupon the latter said:

"He's a good man to work, but Jerusalem—!"

He stopped. He always stopped at the brink of every such precipice. I had never heard him finish an uncomplimentary sentence.

I began to have doubts regarding the greatness of our hired man. I still called him "Mr. Purvis," but all my fear of him had vanished.

One day Mr. Grimshaw came out in the field to see my uncle. They walked away to the shade of a tree while "Mr. Purvis" and I went on with the hoeing. I could hear the harsh voice of the money-lender speaking in loud and angry tones and presently he went away.

"What's the rip?" I asked as my uncle returned looking very sober.

"We won't talk about it now," he answered.

That look and the fears it inspired ruined my day which had begun with eager plans for doing and learning. In the candle-light of the evening Uncle Peabody said:

"Grimshaw has demanded his mortgage money an' he wants it in gold coin. We'll have to git it some way, I dunno how."

"W'y of all things!" my aunt exclaimed. "How are we goin' to git all that money—these hard times?—ayes! I'd like to know?"

"Well, I can't tell ye," said Uncle Peabody. "I guess he can't forgive us for savin' Rodney Barnes."

"What did he say?" I asked.

"Why, he says we hadn't no business to hire a man to help us. He says you an' me ought to do all the work here. He thinks I ought to took you out o' school long ago."

"I can stay out o' school and keep on with my lessons," I said.

"Not an' please him. He was mad when he see ye with a book in yer hand out there in the corn-field."

What were we to do now? I spent the first sad night of my life undoing the plans which had been so dear to me but not so dear as my aunt and uncle. I decided to give all my life and strength to the saving of the farm. I would still try to be great, but not as great as the Senator. Purvis stayed with us through the summer and fall.

After the crops were in we cut and burned great heaps of timber and made black salts of the ashes by leaching water through them and boiling down the lye. We could sell the salts at three dollars and a half a hundred pounds. The three of us working with a team could produce from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and forty pounds a week. Yet we thought it paid—there in Lickitysplit. All over the hills men and women were turning their efforts and strength into these slender streams of money forever flowing toward the mortgagee.

Mr. Dunkelberg had seen Benjamin Grimshaw and got him to give us a brief extension. They had let me stay out of school to work. I was nearly thirteen years old and rather strong and capable. I think that I got along in my books about as well as I could have done in our little school.

One day in December of that year, I had my first trial in the full responsibility of man's work. I was allowed to load and harness and hitch up and go to mill without assistance. My uncle and Purvis were busy with the chopping and we were out of flour and meal. It took a lot of them to keep the axes going. So I filled two sacks with corn and two with wheat and put them into the box wagon, for the ground was bare, and hitched up my horses and set out. Aunt Deel took a careful look at the main hitches and gave me many a caution before I drove away. She said it was a shame that I had to be "Grimshawed" into a man's work at my age. But I was elated by my feeling of responsibility. I knew how to handle horses and had driven at the drag and plow and once, alone, to the post-office, but this was my first long trip without company. I had taken my ax and a chain, for one found a tree in the road now and then those days, and had to trim and cut and haul it aside. It was a drive of six miles to the nearest mill, over a bad road. I sat on two cleated boards placed across the box, with a blanket over me and my new overcoat and mittens on, and was very comfortable and happy.

I had taken a little of my uncle's chewing tobacco out of its paper that lay on a shelf in the cellarway, for I had observed that my uncle generally chewed when he was riding. I tried a little of it and was very sick for a few minutes.

Having recovered, I sang all the songs I knew, which were not many, and repeated the names of the presidents and divided the world into its parts and recited the principal rivers with all the sources and emptyings of the latter and the boundaries of the states and the names and locations of their capitals. It amused me in the midst of my loneliness to keep my tongue busy and I exhausted all my knowledge, which included a number of declamations from the speeches of Otis, Henry and Webster, in the effort. Before the journey was half over I had taken a complete inventory of my mental effects. I repeat that it was amusement—of the only kind available—and not work to me.

I reached the mill safely and before the grain was ground the earth and the sky above it were white with snow driving down in a cold, stiff wind out of the northwest. I loaded my grists and covered them with a blanket and hurried away. The snow came so fast that it almost blinded me. There were times when I could scarcely see the road or the horses. The wind came colder and soon it was hard work to hold the reins and keep my hands from freezing.

Suddenly the wheels began jumping over rocks. The horses were in the ditch. I knew what was the matter, for my eyes had been filling with snow and I had had to brush them often. Of course the team had suffered in a like manner. Before I could stop I heard the crack of a felly and a front wheel dropped to its hub. I checked the horses and jumped out and went to their heads and cleared their eyes. The snow was up to my knees then.

It seemed as if all the clouds in the sky were falling to the ground and stacking into a great, fleecy cover as dry as chaff.

We were there where the road drops into a rocky hollow near the edge of Butterfield's woods. They used to call it Moosewood Hill because of the abundance of moosewood around the foot of it. How the thought of that broken wheel smote me! It was our only heavy wagon, and we having to pay the mortgage. What would my uncle say? The query brought tears to my eyes.

I unhitched and led my horses up into the cover of the pines. How grateful it seemed, for the wind was slack below but howling in the tree-tops! I knew that I was four miles from home and knew, not how I was to get there. Chilled to the bone, I gathered some pitch pine and soon had a fire going with my flint and tinder. I knew that I could mount one of the horses and lead the other and reach home probably. But there was the grist. We needed that; I knew that we should have to go hungry without the grist. It would get wet from above and below if I tried to carry it on the back of a horse. I warmed myself by the fire and hitched my team near it so as to thaw the frost out of their forelocks and eyebrows. I felt in my coat pockets and found a handful of nails—everybody carried nails in one pocket those days—and I remember that my uncle's pockets were a museum of bolts and nuts and screws and washers.

The idea occurred to me that I would make a kind of sled which was called a jumper.

So I got my ax out of the wagon and soon found a couple of small trees with the right crook for the forward end of a runner and cut them and hewed their bottoms as smoothly as I could. Then I made notches in them near the top of their crooks and fitted a stout stick into the notches and secured it with nails driven by the ax-head. Thus I got a hold for my evener. That done, I chopped and hewed an arch to cross the middle of the runners and hold them apart and used all my nails to secure and brace it. I got the two boards which were fastened together and constituted my wagon seat and laid them over the arch and front brace. How to make them fast was my worst problem. I succeeded in splitting a green stick to hold the bolt of the evener just under its head while I heated its lower end in the fire and kept its head cool with snow. With this I burnt a hole in the end of each board and fastened them to the front brace with withes of moosewood.

It was late in the day and there was no time for the slow process of burning more holes, so I notched the other ends of the boards and lashed them to the rear brace with a length of my reins. Then I retempered my bolt and brought up the grist and chain and fastened the latter between the boards in the middle of the front brace, hitched my team to the chain and set out again, sitting on the bags.

It was, of course, a difficult journey, for my jumper was narrow. The snow heaped up beneath me and now and then I and my load were rolled off the jumper. When the drifts were more than leg deep I let down the fence and got around them by going into the fields. Often I stopped to clear the eyes of the horses—a slow task to be done with the bare hand—or to fling my palms against my shoulders and thus warm myself a little.

It was pitch dark and the horses wading to their bellies and the snow coming faster when we turned into Rattleroad. I should not have known the turn when we came to it, but a horse knows more than a man in the dark. Soon I heard a loud halloo and knew that it was the voice of Uncle Peabody. He had started out to meet me in the storm and Shep was with him.

"Thank God I've found ye!" he shouted. "I'm blind and tired out and I couldn't keep a lantern goin' to save me. Are ye froze?"

"I'm all right, but these horses are awful tired. Had to let 'em rest every few minutes."

I told him about the wagon—and how it relieved me to hear him say:

"As long as you're all right, boy, I ain't goin' to worry 'bout the ol' wagon—not a bit. Where'd ye git yer jumper?"

"Made it with the ax and some nails," I answered.

I didn't hear what he said about it for the horses were wallowing and we had to stop and paw and kick the snow from beneath them as best we could before it was possible to back out of our trouble. Soon we found an entrance to the fields—our own fields not far from the house—where Uncle Peabody walked ahead and picked out the best wading. After we got to the barn door at last he went to the house and lighted his lantern and came back with it wrapped in a blanket and Aunt Deel came with him.