I remember repeating to myself the words of the Senator which began: "You may look for me here soon after the close of the session," in the tone in which he had said them. As of old, I admired and tried to imitate his dignity of speech and bearing.

When I returned from the mill they were gone.

The examination of Amos was set down for Monday and the people of the village were stirred and shaken by wildest rumors regarding the evidence to be adduced. Every day men and women stopped me in the Street to ask what I knew of the murder. I followed the advice of Bishop Perkins and kept my knowledge to myself.

My life went on at the same kindly, merry pace in the home of the schoolmaster. The bandages over his eyes had in no way clouded his spirit.

"Ah, now, I wish that I could see you," he said one evening when we were all laughing at some remark of his. "I love the look of a merry face."

I continued to wear the mysterious clothes of Michael Henry, save at chore time, when I put on the spotted suit of homespun. I observed that it made a great difference with my social standing. I was treated with a greater deference at the school, and Elizabeth Allen invited me to her party, to which, however, I had not the courage to go, having no idea what happened to one at a village party.

I asked a boy in my Latin class to tell me.

"Oh, ye just fly around an' kiss and git kissed till ye feel like a fool."

That settled it for me. Not that I would have failed to enjoy kissing Sally, but we were out, as they used to say, and it would have embarrassed both of us to meet at a party.

Saturday came and, when the chores were done, I went alone to the grain barn in the back lot of the Senator's farm with flail and measure and broom and fork and shovel and sacks and my luncheon, in a push cart, with all of which Mrs. Wright had provided me.

It was a lonely place with woods on three sides of the field and a road on the other. I kept laying down beds of wheat on the barn-floor and beating them out with the flail until the sun was well over the roof when I sat down to eat my luncheon. Then I swept up the grain and winnowed out the chaff and filled one of my sacks. That done, I covered the floor again and the thump of the flail eased my loneliness until in the middle of the afternoon two of my schoolmates came and asked me to go swimming, with them. The river was not forty rods away and a good trail led to the swimming hole. It was a warm bright day and I was hot and thirsty. The thought of cool waters and friendly companionship was too much for me. I went with them.

More ancient than the human form is that joy of the young in the feel of air and water on the naked skin, in the frog-like leap and splash and the monkey-chatter of the swimming hole. There were a number of the "swamp boys" in the water. They lived in cabins on the edges of the near swamp. I stayed with them longer than I intended. I remember saying as I dressed that I should have to work late and go without my supper in order to finish my stent.

It was almost dark when I was putting the last sack of wheat into my cart, in the gloomy barn, and getting ready to go.

A rustling in the straw near where I stood stopped me suddenly. My skin prickled and began to stir on my head and my feet and hands felt numb with a new fear. I heard stealthy footsteps in the darkness. I stood my ground and demanded:

"Who's there?"

I saw a form approaching in the gloom with feet as noiseless as a cat's. I took a step backward and, seeing that it was a woman, stopped.

"It's Kate," the answer came in a hoarse whisper as I recognized her form and staff.

"Run, boy—they have just come out o' the woods. I saw them. They will take you away. Run."

She had picked up the flail and now she put it in my hands and gave me a push toward the door. I ran, and none too quickly, for I had not gone fifty feet from the barn in the stubble when I heard them coming after me, whoever they were. I saw that they were gaining and turned quickly. I had time to raise my flail and bring it down upon the head of the leader, who fell as I had seen a beef fall under the ax. Another man stopped beyond the reach of my flail and, after a second's hesitation, turned and ran away in the darkness.

I could hear or see no other motion in the field. I turned and ran on down the slope toward the village. In a moment I saw some one coming out of the maple grove at the field's end, just ahead, with a lantern.

Then I heard the voice of the schoolmaster saying:

"Is it you, my lad?"

"Yes," I answered, as I came up to him and Mary, in a condition of breathless excitement.

I told them of the curious adventure I had had.

"Come quick," said the schoolmaster. "Let's go back and find the man in the stubble."

I remembered that I had struck the path in my flight just before stopping to swing the flail. The man must have fallen very near it. Soon we found where he had been lying and drops of fresh blood on the stubble.

"Hush," said the schoolmaster.

We listened and heard a wagon rattling at a wild pace down the road toward the river.

"There he goes," said Mr. Hacket. "His companions have carried him away. Ye'd be riding in that wagon now, yerself, my brave lad, if ye hadn't 'a' made a lucky hit with the flail—God bless ye!"

"What would they 'a' done with me?" I asked.

"Oh, I reckon they'd 'a' took ye off, lad, and kep' ye for a year or so until Amos was out o' danger," said Mr. Hacket. "Maybe they'd drowned ye in the river down there an' left yer clothes on the bank to make it look like an honest drowning. The devil knows what they'd 'a' done with ye, laddie buck. We'll have to keep an eye on ye now, every day until the trial is over—sure we will. Come, we'll go up to the barn and see if Kate is there."

Just then we heard the receding wagon go roaring over the bridge on Little River. Mary shuddered with fright. The schoolmaster reassured us by saying:

"Don't be afraid. I brought my gun in case we'd meet a painter. But the danger is past."

He drew a long pistol from his coat pocket and held it in the light of the lantern.

The loaded cart stood in the middle of the barn floor, where I had left it, but old Kate had gone. We closed the barn, drawing the cart along with us. When we came into the edge of the village I began to reflect upon the strange peril out of which I had so luckily escaped. It gave me a heavy sense of responsibility and of the wickedness of men.

I thought, of old Kate and her broken silence. For once I had heard her speak. I could feel my flesh tingle when I thought of her quick words and her hoarse passionate whisper. She must have come into the barn while I was swimming and hidden behind the straw heap in the rear end of it and watched the edge of the woods through the many cracks in the boarding.

I knew, or thought I knew, why she took such care of me. She was in league with the gallows and could not bear to see it cheated of its prey. For some reason she hated the Grimshaws. I had seen the hate in her eyes the day she dogged along behind the old money-lender through the streets of the village when her pointing finger had seemed to say to me: "There, there is the man who has brought me to this. He has put these rags upon my back, this fire in my heart, this wild look in my eyes. Wait and you shall see what I will put upon him."

I knew that old Kate was not the irresponsible, witless creature that people thought her to be. I had begun to think of her with a kind of awe as one gifted above all others. One by one the things she had said of the future seemed to be coming true.

When we had pulled the cart into the stable I tried to shift one of the bags of grain and observed that my hands trembled and that it seemed very heavy.

As we were going into the house the schoolmaster said:

"Now, Mary, you take this lantern and go across the street to the house o' Deacon Binks, the constable. You'll find him asleep by the kitchen stove. Arrest his slumbers, but not rudely, and, when he has come to, tell him that I have news o' the devil."

"This shows the power o' knowledge. Bart," he said to me when we entered the house.

I wondered what he meant and he went on:

"You have knowledge of the shooting that no other man has. You could sell it for any money ye would ask. Only ye can't sell it, now, because it's about an evil thing. But suppose ye knew more than any other man about the law o' contracts, or the science o' bridge building, or the history o' nations or the habits o' bugs or whatever. Then ye become the principal witness in a different kind o' case. Then it's proper to sell yer knowledge for the good o' the world and they'll be as eager to get it as they are what ye know about the shooting. And nobody'll want to kill ye. Every man o' them'll want to keep ye alive. But mind, ye must be the principal witness."

Deacon Binks arrived, a fat man with a big round body and a very wise and serious countenance between side whiskers bending from his temple to his neck and suggesting parentheses of hair, as if his head and its accessories were in the nature of a side issue. He and the schoolmaster went out-of-doors and must have talked together while I was eating a bowl of bread and milk which Mrs. Hacket had brought to me.

When I went to bed, by and by, I heard somebody snoring on the little porch under my window. The first sound that reached my ear at the break of dawn was the snoring of the same sleeper. I dressed and went below and found the constable in his coon-skin overcoat asleep on the porch with a long-barreled gun at his side. While I stood there the schoolmaster came around the corner of the house from the garden. He smiled as he saw the deacon.

"Talk about the placid rest of Egyptian gods!" he exclaimed. "Look at the watchful eye o' Justice. How well she sleeps in this peaceful valley! Sometimes ye can hardly wake her up at all, at all."

He put his hand on the deacon's shoulder and gave him a little shake.

"Awake, ye limb o' the law," he demanded. "Prayer is better than sleep."

The deacon arose and stretched himself and cleared his throat and assumed an air of alertness and said it was a fine morning, which it was not, the sky being overcast and the air dank and chilly. He removed his greatcoat and threw it on the stoop saying:

"Deacon, you lay there. From now on I'm constable and ready for any act that may be necessary to maintain the law. I can be as severe as Napoleon Bonaparte and as cunning as Satan, if I have to be."

I remember that through the morning's work the sleepy deacon and the alert constable contended over the possession of his stout frame.

The constable shouldered the gun and followed me into the pasture where I went to get the cow. I saw now that his intention was to guard me from further attacks. While I was milking, the deacon sat on a bucket in the doorway of the stable and snored until I had finished. He awoke when I loosed the cow and the constable went back to the pasture with me, yawning with his hand over his mouth much of the way. The deacon leaned his elbow on the top of the pen and snored again, lightly, while I mixed the feed for the pigs.

Mr. Hacket met us at the kitchen door, where Deacon Binks said to him:

"If you'll look after the boy to-day, I'll go home and get a little rest."

"God bless yer soul, ye had a busy night," said the schoolmaster with a smile.

He added as he went into the house:

"I never knew a man to rest with more energy and persistence. It was a perfect flood o' rest. It kept me awake until long after midnight."



CHAPTER XII

THE SPIRIT OF MICHAEL HENRY AND OTHERS

That last peril is one of the half-solved mysteries of my life. The following affidavit, secured by an assistant of the district attorney from a young physician in a village above Ballybeen, never a matter of record, heightened its interest for me and my friends.

"Deponent saith that about eleven o'clock on the evening of the, 24th of September (that on which the attack upon me was made) a man unknown to him called at his office and alleged that a friend of the stranger had been injured and was in need of surgical aid. He further alleged that his friend was in trouble and being sought after and that he, the caller, dared not, therefore, reveal the place where his friend had taken refuge. He offered the deponent the sum of ten dollars to submit to the process of blindfolding and of being conducted to I said place for the purpose of giving relief to the injured man. Whereupon the deponent declares that he submitted to said process and was conducted by wagon and trail to a bark shanty at some place in the woods unknown to him where the bandage was removed from his eyes. He declares further that he found there, a strong built, black-bearded man about thirty years of age, and a stranger to him, lying on a bed of boughs in the light of a fire and none other. This man was groaning in great pain from a wound made by some heavy weapon on the side of his head. The flesh of the cheek and ear were swollen and lacerated. Deponent further declares that he administered an opiate and dressed and put a number of stitches in the injured parts and bound them with a bandage soaked in liniment. Then deponent returned to his home, blindfolded as he had left it. He declares that the time consumed in the journey from the shanty to his home was one hour and ten minutes."

It should be said that, in the theory of the district attorney the effort to retire the principal witness, if, indeed, that were the intention of their pursuit of me, originated in the minds of lawless and irresponsible men. I know that there are those who find a joy in creating mysteries and defeating the law, but let it be set down here that I have never concurred in the views of that able officer.

At the examination of Amos Grimshaw my knowledge was committed to the records and ceased to be a source of danger to me. Grimshaw came to the village that day. On my way to the court room I saw him walking slowly, with bent head as I had seen him before, followed by old Kate. She carried her staff in her left hand while the forefinger of her right was pointing him out. Silent as a ghost and as unheeded—one would say—she followed his steps.

I remember when I went on the stand my eyes filled with tears. Amos gave me an appealing look that went to my heart. It was hard for me to tell the truth that day—never has it been so hard. If I had had the riches of Grimshaw himself I would have given them to be relieved. Was there nothing that I could do for Amos?

I observed that old Kate sat on a front seat with her hand to her ear and Grimshaw beside his lawyer at a big table and that when she looked at him her lips moved in a strange unuttered whisper of her spirit. Her face filled with joy as one damning detail after another came out in the evidence.

Aunt Deel and Uncle Peabody came to the village that day and sat in the court room. They had dinner with us at the schoolmaster's, but I had little chance to talk with them. Aunt Deel went up to my room with me and slyly gave me some fresh cookies wrapped in a piece of newspaper which she carried in a little basket bought from the Indians.

"Here's somethin' else," she said. "I was keepin' 'em for Chris'mas—ayes!—but it's so cold I guess ye better have 'em now—ayes!"

Then she gave me a pair of mittens with a red fringe around the wristbands, and two pairs of socks.

I remember that my uncle laughed at the jests of Mr. Hacket but said little and was not, I thought, in good spirits. They went home before the examination ended.

The facts hereinbefore alleged, and others, were proven, for the tracks fitted the shoes of Amos. The young man was held and presently indicted. The time of his trial was not determined.

I received much attention from young and old in the village after that, for I found soon that I had acquired a reputation for bravery, of the slender foundation for which the reader is well aware. I was invited to many parties, but had not much heart for them and went only to one at the home of Nettie Barrows. Sally was there. She came to me as if nothing had interrupted our friendship and asked if I would play Hunt the Squirrel with them. Of course I was glad to make this treaty of peace, which was sealed with many kisses as we played together in those lively games of the old time. I remember that I could think of nothing in this world with which to compare her beauty. I asked if I could walk home with her and she said that she was engaged, and while she was as amiable as ever I came to know that night that a kind of wall had risen between us.

I wrote a good hand those days and the leading merchant of the village engaged me to post his books every Saturday at ten cents an hour. Thenceforward until Christmas I gave my free days to that task. I estimated the sum that I should earn and planned to divide it in equal parts and proudly present it to my aunt and uncle on Christmas day.

One Saturday while I was at work on the big ledger of the merchant I ran upon this item:

October 3. S. Wright—To one suit of clothes for Michael Henry from measures furnished by S. Robinson $14.30 Shirts to match 1.70

I knew then the history of the suit of clothes which I had worn since that rainy October night, for I remembered that Sam Robinson, the tailor, had measured me at our house and made up the cloth of Aunt Deel's weaving.

I observed, also, that numerous articles—a load of wood, two sacks of flour, three pairs of boots, one coat, ten pounds of salt pork and four bushels of potatoes—all for "Michael Henry" had been charged to Silas Wright.

So by the merest chance I learned that the invisible "Michael Henry" was the almoner of the modest statesman and really the spirit of Silas Wright feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and warming the cold house, in the absence of its owner. It was the heart of Wright joined to that of the schoolmaster, which sat in the green chair.

I fear that my work suffered a moment's interruption, for just then I began to know the great heart of the Senator. Its warmth was in the clothing that covered my back, its delicacy in the ignorance of those who had shared its benefactions.

I count this one of the great events of my youth. But there was a greater one, although it seemed not so at the time of it. A traveler on the road to Ballybeen had dropped his pocketbook containing a large amount of money—two thousand seven hundred dollars was the sum, if I remember rightly. He was a man who, being justly suspicious of the banks, had withdrawn his money. Posters announced the loss and the offer of a large reward. The village was profoundly stirred by them. Searching parties went up the road stirring its dust and groping in its grass and briers for the great prize which was supposed to be lying there. It was said, however, that the quest had been unsuccessful. So the lost pocketbook became a treasured mystery of the village and of all the hills and valleys toward Ballybeen—a topic of old wives and gabbing husbands at the fireside for unnumbered years.

By and by the fall term of school ended. Uncle Peabody came down to get me the day before Christmas. I had enjoyed my work and my life at the Hackets', on the whole, but I was glad to be going home again. My uncle was in high spirits and there were many packages in the sleigh.

"A merry Christmas to ye both an' may the Lord love ye!" said Mr. Hacket as he bade us good-by. "Every day our thoughts will be going up the hills to your house."

As he was tucking the blankets around my feet old Nick Tubbs came zigzagging up the road from the tavern.

"What stimulation travels with that man!" said the schoolmaster. "He might be worse, God knows. Reeling minds are worse than reeling bodies. Some men are born drunk like our friend Colonel Hand and that kind is beyond reformation."

The bells rang merrily as we hurried through the swamp in the hard snow paths.

"We're goin' to move," said my uncle presently. "We've agreed to get out by the middle o' May."

"How does that happen?" I asked.

"I settled with Grimshaw and agreed to go. If it hadn't 'a' been for Wright and Baldwin we wouldn't 'a' got a cent. They threatened to bid against him at the sale. So he settled. We're goin' to have a new home. We've bought a hundred an' fifty acres from Abe Leonard. Goin' to build a new house in the spring. It will be nearer the village."

He playfully nudged my ribs with his elbow.

"We've had a little good luck, Bart," he went on. "I'll tell ye what it is if you won't say anything about it."

I promised.

"I dunno as it would matter much," he continued, "but I don't want to do any braggin'. It ain't anybody's business but ours, anyway. An old uncle over in Vermont died three weeks ago and left us thirty-eight hundred dollars. It was old Uncle Ezra Baynes o' Hinesburg. Died without a chick or child. Your aunt and me slipped down to Potsdam an' took the stage an' went over an' got the money. It was more money than I ever see before in my life. We put it in the bank in Potsdam to keep it out o' Grimshaw's hands. I wouldn't trust that man as fur as you could throw a bull by the tail."

It was a cold clear night and when we reached home the new stove was snapping with the heat in its fire-box and the pudding puffing in the pot and old Shep dreaming in the chimney corner. Aunt Deel gave me a hug at the door. Shep barked and leaped to my shoulders.

"Why, Bart! You're growin' like a weed—ain't ye?—ayes ye be," my aunt said as she stood and looked at me. "Set right down here an' warm ye—ayes!—I've done all the chores—ayes!"

How warm and comfortable was the dear old room with those beloved faces in it. I wonder if paradise itself can seem more pleasant to me. I have had the best food this world can provide in my time, but never anything that I ate with a keener relish than the pudding and milk and bread and butter and cheese and pumpkin pie which Aunt Deel gave us that night.

Supper over, I wiped the dishes for my aunt while Uncle Peabody went out to feed and water the horses. Then we sat down in the genial warmth while I told the story of my life in "the busy town," as they called it. What pride and attention they gave me then!

Three days before they had heard of my adventure with the flail, as to which Mr. Hacket, the district attorney and myself had maintained the strictest reticence. It seemed that the deacon had blabbed, as they used to say, regarding his own brave part in the subsequent proceedings.

My fine clothes and the story of how I had come by them taxed my ingenuity somewhat, although not improperly. I had to be careful not to let them know that I had been ashamed of the home-made suit. They, somehow, felt the truth about it and a little silence followed the story. Then Aunt Deel drew her chair near me and touched my hair very gently and looked into my face without speaking.

"Ayes! I know," she said presently, in a kind of caressing tone, with a touch of sadness in it. "They ain't used to coarse homespun stuff down there in the village. They made fun o' ye—didn't they, Bart?"

"I don't care about that," I assured them. "'The mind's the measure of the man,'" I quoted, remembering the lines the Senator had repeated to me.

"That's sound!" Uncle Peabody exclaimed with enthusiasm.

Aunt Deel took my hand in hers and surveyed it thoughtfully for a moment without speaking.

"You ain't goin' to have to suffer that way no more," she said in a low tone.

I rose and went to the parlor door.

"Ye mustn't go in there," she warned me.

Delightful suspicions came out of the warning and their smiles.

"We're goin' to be more comf'table—ayes," said Aunt Deel as I resumed my chair. "Yer uncle thought we better go west, but I couldn't bear to go off so fur an' leave mother an' father an' sister Susan an' all the folks we loved layin' here in the ground alone—I want to lay down with 'em by an' by an' wait for the sound o' the trumpet—ayes!—mebbe it'll be for thousands o' years—ayes!"

"You don't suppose their souls are a-sleepin' there—do ye?" my uncle asked.

"That's what the Bible says," Aunt Deel answered.

"Wal the Bible—?" Uncle Peabody stopped. What was in his mind we may only imagine.

To our astonishment the clock struck twelve.

"Hurrah! It's merry Christmas!" said Uncle Peabody as he jumped to his feet and began to sing of the little Lord Jesus.

We joined him while he stood beating time with his right hand after the fashion of a singing master.

"Off with yer boots, friend!" he exclaimed when the stanza was finished. "We don't have to set up and watch like the shepherds."

We drew our boots on the chair round with hands clasped over the knee—how familiar is the process, and yet I haven't seen it in more than half a century! I lighted a candle and scampered up-stairs in my stocking feet, Uncle Peabody following close and slapping my thigh as if my pace were not fast enough for him. In the midst of our skylarking the candle tumbled to the floor and I had to go back to the stove and relight it.

How good it seemed to be back in the old room under the shingles! The heat of the stove-pipe had warmed its hospitality.

"It's been kind o' lonesome here," said Uncle Peabody as he opened the window. "I always let the wind come in to keep me company—it gits so warm."

I lay down between flannel sheets on the old feather bed. What a stage of dreams and slumbers it had been, for it was now serving the third generation of Bayneses! The old popple tree had thrown off its tinkling cymbals and now the winter wind hissed and whistled in its stark branches. Then the deep, sweet sleep of youth from which it is a joy and a regret to come back to the world again. I wish that I could know it once more.

"Ye can't look at yer stockin' yit," said Aunt Deel when I came down-stairs about eight o'clock, having slept through chore time. I remember it was the delicious aroma of frying ham and buckwheat cakes which awoke me, and who wouldn't rise and shake off the cloak of slumber on a bright, cold winter morning with such provocation?

"This ain't no common Chris'mas—I tell ye," Aunt Deel went on. "Santa Claus won't git here short o' noon I wouldn't wonder—ayes!"

"By thunder!" exclaimed Uncle Peabody as he sat down at the table. "This is goin' to be a day o' pure fun—genuwine an' uncommon. Take some griddlers," he added as three or four of them fell on my plate. "Put on plenty o' ham gravy an' molasses. This ain't no Jackman tavern. I got hold o' somethin' down there that tasted so I had to swaller twice on it."

About eleven o'clock Uncle Hiram and Aunt Eliza and their five children arrived with loud and merry greetings. Then came other aunts and uncles and cousins. With what noisy good cheer the men entered the house after they had put up their horses! I remember how they laid their hard, heavy hands on my head and shook it a little as they spoke of my "stretchin' up" or gave me a playful slap on the shoulder—an ancient token of good will—the first form of the accolade, I fancy. What joyful good humor there was in those simple men and women!—enough to temper the woes of a city if it could have been applied to their relief. They stood thick around the stove warming themselves and taking off its griddles and opening its doors and surveying it inside and out with much curiosity.

Suddenly Uncle Hiram tried to put Uncle Jabez in the wood-box while the others laughed noisily. I remember that my aunts rallied me on my supposed liking for "that Dunkelberg girl."

"Now for the Chris'mas tree," said Uncle Peabody as he led the way into our best room, where a fire was burning in the old Franklin grate. "Come on, boys an' girls."

What a wonderful sight was the Christmas tree—the first we had had in our house—a fine spreading balsam loaded with presents! Uncle Hiram jumped into the air and clapped his feet together and shouted: "Hold me, somebody, or I'll grab the hull tree an' run away with it."

Uncle Jabez held one foot in both hands before him and joyfully hopped around the tree.

These relatives had brought their family gifts, some days before, to be hung on its branches. The thing that caught my eye was a big silver watch hanging by a long golden chain to one of the boughs. Uncle Peabody took it down and held it aloft by the chain, so that none should miss the sight, saying:

"From Santa Claus for Bart!"

A murmur of admiration ran through the company which gathered around me as I held the treasure in my trembling hands.

"This is for Bart, too," Uncle Peabody shouted as he took down a bolt of soft blue cloth and laid it in my arms. "Now there's somethin' that's jest about as slick as a kitten's ear. Feel of it. It's for a suit o' clothes. Come all the way from Burlington."

"Good land o' Goshen! Don't be in such a hurry," said Aunt Deel.

"Sorry, but the stage can't wait for nobody at all—it's due to leave right off," Uncle Peabody remarked as he laid a stuffed stocking on top of the cloth and gave me a playful slap and shouted: "Get-ap, there. You've got yer load."

I moved out of the way in a hurricane of merriment. It was his one great day of pride and vanity. He did not try to conceal them.

The other presents floated for a moment in this irresistible tide of laughing good will and found their owners. I have never forgotten how Uncle Jabez chased Aunt Minerva around the house with a wooden snake cunningly carved and colored. I observed there were many things on the tree which had not been taken down when we younger ones gathered up our wealth and repaired to Aunt Deel's room to feast our eyes upon it and compare our good fortune.

The women and the big girls rolled up their sleeves and went to work with Aunt Deel preparing the dinner. The great turkey and the chicken pie were made ready and put in the oven and the potatoes and the onions and the winter squash were soon boiling in their pots on the stove-top. Meanwhile the children were playing in my aunt's bedroom and Uncle Hiram and Uncle Jabez were pulling sticks in a corner while the other men sat tipped against the wall watching and making playful comments—all save my Uncle Peabody, who was trying to touch his head to the floor and then straighten up with the aid of the broomstick.

By and by I sat on top of the wood with which I had just filled the big wood-box and very conscious of the shining chain on my breast. Suddenly the giant, Rodney Barnes, jumped out of his chair and, embracing the wood-box, lifted it and the wood and me in his great arms and danced lightly around a group of the ladies with his burden and set it down in its place again very gently. What a hero he became in my eyes after that!

"If ye should go off some day an' come back an' find yer house missin' ye may know that Rodney Barnes has been here," said Uncle Hiram. "A man as stout as Rodney is about as dangerous as a fire."

Then what Falstaffian peals of laughter!

In the midst of it Aunt Deel opened the front door and old Kate, the Silent Woman, entered. To my surprise, she wore a decent-looking dress of gray homespun cloth and a white cloud looped over her head and ears and tied around her neck and a good pair of boots.

"Merry Chris'mas!" we all shouted.

She smiled and nodded her head and sat down in the chair which Uncle Peabody had placed for her at the stove side. Aunt Deel took the cloud off her head while Kate drew her mittens—newly knitted of the best yarn. Then my aunt brought some stockings and a shawl from the tree and laid them on the lap of old Kate. What a silence fell upon us as we saw tears coursing down the cheeks of this lonely old woman of the countryside!—tears of joy, doubtless, for God knows how long it had been since the poor, abandoned soul had seen a merry Christmas and shared its kindness. I did not fail to observe how clean her face and hands looked! She was greatly changed.

She took my hand as I went to her side and tenderly caressed it. A gentler smile came to her face than ever I had seen upon it. The old stern look returned for a moment as she held one finger aloft in a gesture which only I and my Aunt Deel understood. We knew it signalized a peril and a mystery. That I should have to meet it, somewhere up the hidden pathway, I had no doubt whatever.

"Dinner's ready!" exclaimed the cheerful voice of Aunt Deel.

Then what a stirring of chairs and feet as we sat down at the table. Old Kate sat by the side of my aunt and we were all surprised at her good manners.

Uncle Jabez—a member of the white church—prayed for a moment as we sat with bowed heads. I have never forgotten his simple eloquence as he prayed for the poor and for him who was sitting in the shadow of death (I knew that he referred to Amos Grimshaw and whispered amen) and for our forgiveness.

We jested and laughed and drank cider and reviewed the year's history and ate as only they may eat who have big bones and muscles and the vitality of oxen. I never taste the flavor of sage and currant jelly or hear a hearty laugh without thinking of those holiday dinners in the old log house on Rattleroad.

Some of the men and two of the women filled their pipes and smoked while the dishes were being picked up and washed. By and by the men and the big boys went with us down to the brook where we chopped holes in the ice to give the sheep and the cattle a chance to drink. Then they looked at the horses.

"Peabody you mus' be gittin' rich," said Hiram Bentley.

"No I ain't. I've had to give up here, but a little windfall come to us t'other day from an old uncle in Vermont. It ain't nothin' to brag of, but it'll give us a start an' we thought that while we had the money we'd do somethin' that we've been wantin' to do for years an' years—give a Chris'mas—an' we've done it. The money'll go some way an' we may never have another chance. Bart is a good boy an' we made up our minds he'd enjoy it better now than he ever would ag'in."

That Christmas brought me nothing better than those words, the memory of which is one of the tallest towers in that long avenue of my past down which I have been looking these many days. About all you can do for a boy, worth while, is to give him something good to remember.

The day had turned dark. The temperature had risen and the air was dank and chilly. The men began to hitch up their horses.

"Kind o' thawin' a little," said Uncle Hiram as he got into his sleigh and drove up to the door. "Come on, there. Stop yer cacklin' an' git into this sleigh," he shouted in great good humor to the women and children who stood on the porch. "It'll be snowin' like sixty 'fore we git home."

So, one by one, the sleighloads left us with cheery good-bys and a grinding of runners and a jingling of bells. When the last had gone Uncle Peabody and I went into the house. Aunt Deel sat by the stove, old Kate by the window looking out at the falling dusk. How still the house seemed!

"There's one thing I forgot," I said as I proudly took out of my wallet the six one-dollar bills which I had earned by working Saturdays and handed three of them to my aunt and three to my uncle, saying:

"That is my Christmas present to you. I earned it myself."

I remember so well their astonishment and the trembling of their hands and the look of their faces.

"It's grand—ayes!" Aunt Deel said in a low tone.

She rose in a moment and beckoned to me and my uncle. We followed her through the open door to the other room.

"I'll tell ye what I'd do," she whispered. "I'd give 'em to ol' Kate—ayes! She's goin' to stay with us till to-morrow."

"Good idee!" said Uncle Peabody.

So I took the money out of their hands and went in and gave it to the Silent Woman.

"That's your present from me," I said.

How can I forget how she held my arm against her with that loving, familiar, rocking motion of a woman who is soothing a baby at her breast and kissed my coat sleeve? She released my arm and, turning to the window, leaned her head upon its sill and shook with sobs. The dusk had thickened. As I returned to my seat by the stove I could dimly see her form against the light of the window. We sat in silence for a little while.

Aunt Deel broke it by singing in a low tone as she rocked:

"My days are passing swiftly by And I—a pilgrim stranger— Would not detain them as they fly, These days of toil and danger."

Uncle Peabody rose and got a candle and lighted it at the hearth.

"Wal, Bart, we'll do the chores, an' then I warn ye that we're goin' to have some fun," he said as he got his lantern. "There's goin' to be some Ol' Sledge played here this evenin' an' I wouldn't wonder if Kate could beat us all."

I held the lantern while Uncle Peabody fed the sheep and the two cows and milked—a slight chore these winter days.

"There's nothing so cold on earth as a fork stale on a winter night," he remarked as he was pitching the hay. "Wish I'd brought my mittens."

"You and I are to go off to bed purty early," he said as we were going back to the house. "Yer Aunt Deel wants to see Kate alone and git her to talk if she can."

Kate played with us, smiling now and then at my uncle's merry ways and words, but never speaking. It was poor fun, for the cards seemed to take her away from us into other scenes so that she had to be reminded of her turn to play.

"I dunno but she'll swing back into this world ag'in," said Uncle Peabody when we had gone up to our little room. "I guess all she needs is to be treated like a human bein'. Yer Aunt Deel an' I couldn't git over thinkin' o' what she done for you that night in the ol' barn. So I took some o' yer aunt's good clothes to her an' a pair o' boots an' asked her to come to Chris'mas. She lives in a little room over the blacksmith shop down to Butterfield's mill. I told her I'd come after her with the cutter but she shook her head. I knew she'd rather walk."

He was yawning as he spoke and soon we were both asleep under the shingles.



CHAPTER XIII

THE THING AND OTHER THINGS

I returned to Mr. Hacket's house late in the afternoon of New Year's day. The schoolmaster was lying on a big lounge in a corner of their front room with the children about him. The dusk was falling.

"Welcome, my laddie buck!" he exclaimed as I entered. "We're telling stories o' the old year an' you're just in time for the last o' them. Sit down, lad, and God give ye patience! It'll soon be over."

Little John led me into the group and the schoolmaster began:—Let us call this bit of a story: The Guide to Paradise.

"One day in early June I was lyin' under the big apple tree in the garden—sure I was. It was all white and sweet with the blossoms like a bride in her veil—an' I heard the hum o' the bee's wing an' odors o' the upper world come down to me. I was lookin' at the little bird house that we had hung in the tree-top. Of a sudden I saw a tiny bit o' a 'warf—no longer than the thumb o' Mary—God love her!—on its wee porch an' lookin' down at me.

"'Good luck to ye!' says I. 'Who are you?'

"'Who do ye think I am?' says he.

"'Nobody,' says I.

"'That's just who I am,' says he, 'I'm Nobody from Nowhere—God save you from the like.'

"'Glad to see ye,' says I.

"'Glad to be seen,' says he. 'There's a mighty few people can see me.'

"'Looks to me as if ye were tellin' the truth,' says I.

"'Nobody is the only one that always tells the truth—God help ye,' says he. 'And here's a big chunk o' it. Not one in a thousand ever gets the feet o' his mind in the land o' Nowhere—better luck to them!'

"'Where is it?' says I.

"'Up above the earth where the great God keeps His fiddle,' says he.

"'What fiddle?' says I.

"'The fiddle o' silence,' says he. 'Sure, I'm playin' it now. It has long strings o' gold that reach 'way out across the land o' Nowhere—ye call 'em stars. The winds and the birds play on it. Sure, the birds are my hens.'

"He clapped his little hands and down came a robin and sat beside him. Nobody rumpled up the feathers on her back and she queed like she was goin' to peck me—the hussy!

"'She's my watch hen,' says Nobody. 'Guards the house and lays eggs for me—the darlin'! Sure, I've a wonderful farm up here in the air—millions o' acres, and the flowers and the tops o' the trees and the gold mines o' the sky are in it. The flowers are my cattle and the bees are my hired men. Do ye see 'em milkin' this big herd o' apple-blossoms? My hired men carry their milk away to the hollow trees and churn it into honey. There's towers and towers of it in the land o' Nowhere. If it wasn't for Nowhere your country would be as dark as a pocket and as dry as dust—sure it would. Somewhere must be next to Nowhere—or it wouldn't be anywhere, I'm thinkin'. All the light and rain and beauty o' the world come out o' Nowhere—don't they? We have the widest ocean up here with wonderful ships. I call it God's ferry. Ye see, Nowhere is not to be looked down upon just because ye don't find it in Mary's geography. There's lots o' things ye don't know, man. I'm one o' them. What do ye think o' me?'

"'Sure, I like ye,' says I.

"'Lucky man!' says he. 'Everybody must learn to like me an' play with me as the children do. I can get along with the little folks, but it's hard to teach men how to play with me—God pity them! They forget how to believe. I am the guide to paradise and unless ye become as a little child I can not lead ye.'

"He ran to the edge o' the tree roof and took hold o' the end of a long spider's rope hangin' down in the air. In a jiffy he swung clear o' the tree and climbed, hand over hand, until he had gone awa-a-a-a-y out o' sight in the sky."

* * * * *

"Couldn't anybody do that?" said little John.

"I didn't say they could—did I? ye unbeliever!" said the schoolmaster as he rose and led us in to the supper table. "I said Nobody did it."

We got him to tell this little tale over and over again in the days that followed, and many times since then that impersonal and mysterious guide of the schoolmaster's fancy has led me to paradise.

After supper he got out his boxing-gloves and gave me a lesson in the art of self-defense, in which, I was soon to learn, he was highly accomplished, for we had a few rounds together every day after that. He keenly enjoyed this form of exercise and I soon began to. My capacity for taking punishment without flinching grew apace and before long I got the knack of countering and that pleased him more even than my work in school, I have sometimes thought.

"God bless ye, boy!" he exclaimed one day after I had landed heavily on his cheek, "ye've a nice way o' sneakin' in with yer right. I've a notion ye may find it useful some day."

I wondered a little why he should say that, and while I was wondering he felled me with a stinging blow on my nose.

"Ah, my lad—there's the best thing I have seen ye do—get up an' come back with no mad in ye," he said as he gave me his hand.

One day the schoolmaster called the older boys to the front seats in his room and I among them.

"Now, boys, I'm going to ask ye what ye want to do in the world," he said. "Don't be afraid to tell me what ye may never have told before and I'll do what I can to help ye."

He asked each one to make confession and a most remarkable exhibit of young ambition was the result. I remember that most of us wanted to be statesmen—a fact due probably to the shining example of Silas Wright. Then he said that on a certain evening he would try "to show us the way over the mountains."

For some months I had been studying a book just published, entitled, Stenographic Sound-Hand and had learned its alphabet and practised the use of it. That evening I took down the remarks of Mr. Hacket in sound-hand.

The academy chapel was crowded with the older boys and girls and the town folk. The master never clipped his words in school as he was wont to do when talking familiarly with the children.

"Since the leaves fell our little village has occupied the center of the stage before an audience of millions in the great theater of congress. Our leading citizen—the chief actor—has been crowned with immortal fame. We who watched the play were thrilled by the query: Will Uncle Sam yield to temptation or cling to honor? He has chosen the latter course and we may still hear the applause in distant galleries beyond the sea. He has decided that the public revenues must be paid in honest money.

"My friend and classmate, George Bancroft, the historian, has written this letter to me out of a full heart:

"'Your fellow townsman, Silas Wright, is now the largest figure in Washington. We were all worried by the resolution of Henry Clay until it began to crumble under the irresistible attack of Mr. Wright. On the 16th he submitted a report upon it which for lucid and accurate statements presented in the most unpretending manner, won universal admiration and will be remembered alike for its intrinsic excellence and for having achieved one of the most memorable victories ever gained in the United States Senate. After a long debate Clay himself, compelled by the irresistible force of argument in the report of Mr. Wright, was obliged to retire from his position, his resolution having been rejected by a vote of 44 to 1.'"

With what pride and joy I heard of this great thing that my friend had accomplished! The schoolmaster went on:

"It is a very good and proper thing, my boys, that you should be inspired by the example of the great man, whose home is here among us and whose beloved face is as familiar as my own, to try your talents in the service of the state. There are certain things that I would have you remember.

"First—Know your subject-inside and outside and round about and from beginning to end.

"Second—Know the opinions of wise men and your own regarding it.

"Third—Be modest in the use of your own opinions and above all be honest.

"Fourth—Remember that it is your subject and not yourself that is of prime importance. You will be tempted to think that you are the great part of the business. My young friends, it will not be true. It can not be true. It is not you but the thing you stand for that is important.

"Fifth—The good of all the people must be the thing you stand for—the United States of America.

"Now I wish you to observe how our great fellow townsman keeps his subject to the fore and himself in the background.

"It was in 1834 that he addressed the Senate regarding the deposits of public money. He rose to voice the wishes of the people of this state. If he had seemed to be expressing his own opinions he would have missed his great point. Now mark how he cast himself aside when he began:

"'I must not be understood as, for one moment, entertaining the vain impression that opinions and views pronounced by me, here or elsewhere, will acquire any importance because they are my opinions and views. I know well, sir, that my name carries not with it authority anywhere, but I know, also, that so far as I may entertain and shall express opinions which are, or which shall be found, in accord with the enlightened public opinion of this country, so far they will be sustained and no further.'

"Then by overwhelming proof he set forth the opinion of our people on the subject in hand. Studiously the Senator has hidden himself in his task and avoided in every possible way attracting attention from his purposes to his personality.

"Invitations to accept public dinners as a compliment to himself have received from him this kind of reply:

"'A proper attention to the duties, on the discharge of which you so kindly desire to compliment me requires that I should decline your invitation.'"

All this was new to me, although much more was said touching his love for simple folk regarding which I needed no instruction. Altogether, it helped me to feel the deep foundations on which my friend, the Senator, had been building in his public life.

Going out with the crowd that evening, I met Sally and Mr. and Mrs. Dunkelberg. The latter did not speak to me and when I asked Sally if I could walk home with her she answered curtly, "No, thank you."

In following the schoolmaster I have got a bit ahead of my history. Soon after the opening of the new year—ten days or so later it may have been—I had begun to feel myself encompassed by a new and subtle force. It was a thing as intangible as heat but as real as fire and more terrible, it seemed to me. I felt it first in the attitude of my play fellows. They denied me the confidence and intimacy which I had enjoyed before. They whispered together in my presence. In all this I had not failed to observe that Henry Wills had taken a leading part. The invisible, inaudible, mysterious thing wrought a great change in me. It followed me through the day and lay down with me at night. I wondered what I had done. I carefully surveyed my clothes. They looked all right to me. My character was certainly no worse than it had been. How it preyed upon my peace and rest and happiness—that mysterious hidden thing!

One day Uncle Peabody came down to see me and I walked through the village with him. We met Mr. Dunkelberg, who merely nodded and hurried along. Mr. Bridges, the merchant, did not greet him warmly and chat with him as he had been wont to do. I saw that The Thing—as I had come to think of it—was following him also. How it darkened his face! Even now I can feel the aching of the deep, bloodless wounds of that day. I could bear it better alone. We were trying to hide our pain from each other when we said good-by. How quickly my uncle turned away and walked toward the sheds! He came rarely to the village of Canton after that.

I was going home at noon one day and while passing a crowd of boys I was shoved rudely into the fence. Turning, I saw Henry Wills and my fist flashed to his face. He fell backward and rising called me a thief and the son of a thief. He had not finished the words when I was upon him. The others formed a ring around us and we began a savage battle. One of Wills' friends tried to trip me. In the midst of it I saw the schoolmaster just outside the ring. He seized a boy by the collar.

"There'll be no more interference," said he. "It's goin' to be a fair fight."

I had felt another unfriendly foot but had not seen its owner. We fought up and down, with lips and noses bleeding. At last the time had come when I was quicker and stronger than he. Soon Henry Wills lay on the ground before me with no disposition to go on with the fight. I helped him up and he turned away from me. Some of the boys began to jeer him.

"He's a gentleman compared with the rest o' you," I said. "He had courage enough to say what he thought. There's not another one o' you would dare do it—not a one o' you."

Then said the schoolmaster:

"If there's any more o' you boys that has any such opinion o' Bart Baynes let him be man enough to step up an' say it now. If he don't he ought to be man enough to change his mind on the spot."

A number of the boys and certain of the townsfolk who had gathered about us clapped their hands. For a long time thereafter I wondered why Henry had called me a thief. I concluded that it was because "thief" was the meanest word he could think of in his anger. However that might be, The Thing forsook me. I felt no more its cold, mysterious shadow between me and my school fellows. It had stepped out of my path into that of Henry Wills. His popularity waned and a lucky circumstance it was for him. From that day he began to take to his books and to improve his standing in the school.

I observed that he did not go about with Sally as he had done. I had had no word with her since the night of Mr. Hacket's lecture save the briefest greeting as we passed each other in the street. Those fine winter days I used to see her riding a chestnut pony with a long silver mane that flowed back to her yellow curls in his lope. I loved the look of her as she went by me in the saddle and a longing came into my heart that she should think well of me. I made an odd resolve. It was this: I would make it impossible for her to think ill of me.

I went home one Saturday, having thought much of my aunt and uncle since The Thing had descended upon us. I found them well and as cheerful as ever. For fear of disturbing their peace I said nothing of my fight with Wills or the cause of it. Uncle Peabody had cut the timber for our new house and hauled it to the mill. I returned to school in a better mind about them.

May had returned—a warm bright May. The roads were dry. The thorn trees had thatched their shapely roofs with vivid green. The maple leaves were bigger than a squirrel's foot, which meant as well, I knew, that the trout were jumping. The robins had returned. I had entered my seventeenth year and the work of the term was finished.



Having nothing to do one afternoon, I walked out on the road toward Ogdensburg for a look at the woods and fields. Soon I thought that I heard the sound of galloping hoofs behind me. Turning, I saw nothing, but imagined Sally coming and pulling up at my side. I wondered what I should say if she were really to come.

"Sally!" I exclaimed. "I have been looking at the violets and the green fields and back there I saw a thorn tree turning white, but I have seen no fairer thing than you."

They surprised me a little—those fine words that came so easily. What a school of talk was the house I lived in those days!

"I guess I'm getting Mr. Hacket's gift o' gab," I said to myself.

Again I heard the sound of galloping hoofs and as I looked back I saw Sally rounding the turn by the river and coming toward me at full speed, the mane of her pony flying back to her face. She pulled up beside me just as I had imagined she would do.

"Bart, I hate somebody terribly," said she.

"Whom?"

"A man who is coming to our house on the stage to-day. Granny Barnes is trying to get up a match between us. Father says he is rich and hopes he will want to marry me. I got mad about it. He is four years older than I am. Isn't that awful? I am going to be just as mean and hateful to him as I can."

"I guess they're only fooling you," I said.

"No, they mean it. I have heard them talking it over."

"He can not marry you."

"Why?"

It seemed to me that the time had come for me to speak out, and with burning cheeks I said:

"Because I think that God has married you to me already. Do you remember when we kissed each other by the wheat-field one day last summer?"

"Yes." She was looking down at the mane of her pony and her cheeks were red and her voice reminded me of the echoes that fill the cavern of a violin when a string is touched.

"Seems to me we were married that day. Seems so, every time I think of it, God asked me all the questions an' I answered yes to 'em. Do ye remember after we had kissed each other how that little bird sang?"

"Yes."

We had faced about and were walking back toward Canton, I close by the pony's side.

"May I kiss you again?"

She stopped the pony and leaned toward me and our lips met in a kiss the thought of which makes me lay down my pen and bow my head a moment while I think with reverence of that pure, sweet spring of memory in whose waters I love to wash my spirit.

We walked on and a song sparrow followed us perching on the fence-rails and blessing us with his song.

"I guess God has married us again," I declared.

"I knew that you were walking on this road and I had to see you," said she. "People have been saying such terrible things."

"What?"

"They say your uncle found the pocketbook that was lost and kept the money. They say he was the first man that went up the road after it was lost."

Now The Thing stood uncovered before me in all its ugliness—The Thing born not of hate but of the mere love of excitement in people wearied by the dull routine and the reliable, plodding respectability of that countryside. The crime of Amos had been a great help in its way but as a topic it was worn out and would remain so until court convened.

"It's a lie—my uncle never saw the pocketbook. Some money was left to him by a relative in Vermont. That's how it happened that he bought a farm instead of going to the poorhouse when Grimshaw put the screws on him."

"I knew that your uncle didn't do it," she went on. "Father and mother couldn't tell you. So I had to."

"Why couldn't your father and mother tell me?"

"They didn't dare. Mr. Grimshaw made them promise that they would not speak to you or to any of your family. I heard them say that you and your uncle did right. Father told mother that he never knew a man so honest as your Uncle Peabody."

We went on in silence for a moment.

"I guess you know now why I couldn't let you go home with me that night," she remarked.

"Yes, and I think I know why you wouldn't have anything more to do with Henry Wills."

"I hate him. He said such horrid things about you and your uncle."

In a moment she asked: "What time is it?"

I looked at my new watch and answered: "It wants ten minutes of five."

"The stage is in long ago. They will be coming up this road to meet me. Father was going to take him for a walk before supper."

Just then we came upon the Silent Woman sitting among the dandelions by the roadside. She held a cup in her hand with some honey on its bottom and covered with a piece of glass.

"She is hunting bees," I said as we stopped beside her.

She rose and patted my shoulder with a smile and threw a kiss to Sally. Suddenly her face grew stern. She pointed toward the village and then at Sally. Up went her arm high above her head with one finger extended in that ominous gesture so familiar to me.

"She means that there is some danger ahead of you," I said.

The Silent Woman picked a long blade of grass and tipped its end in the honey at the bottom of the cup. She came close to Sally with the blade of grass between her thumb and finger.

"She is fixing a charm," I said.

She smiled and nodded as she put a drop of honey on Sally's upper lip.

She held up her hands while her lips moved as if she were blessing us.

"I suppose it will not save me if I brush it off," said Sally.

We went on and in a moment a bee lighted on the honey. Nervously she struck at it and then cried out with pain.

"The bee has stung you," I said.

She covered her face with her handkerchief and made no answer.

"Wait a minute—I'll get some clay," I said as I ran to the river bank.

I found some clay and moistened it with the water and returned.

"There, look at me!" she groaned. "The bee hit my nose."

She uncovered her face, now deformed almost beyond recognition, her nose having swollen to one of great size and redness.

"You look like Rodney Barnes," I said with a laugh as I applied the clay to her afflicted nose.

"And I feel like the old boy. I think my nose is trying to jump off and run away."

The clay having been well applied she began surveying herself with a little hand mirror which she had carried in the pocket of her riding coat.

"What a fright I am!" she mused.

"But you are the best girl in the world."

"Don't waste your pretty talk on me now. I can't enjoy it—my nose aches so. I'd rather you'd tell me when—when it is easier for you to say it."

"We don't see each other very often."

"If you will come out on this road next Saturday afternoon I will ride until I find you and then we can have another talk."

"All right. I'll be here at four-thirty and I'll be thinking about it every day until then."

"My nose feels better now," she said presently and added: "You might tell me a little more if you want to."

"I love you even when you have ceased to be beautiful," I said with the ardor of the young.

"That is grand! You know old age will sting us by and by, Bart," she answered with a sigh and in a tone of womanly wisdom.

We were nearing the village. She wiped the mud from her prodigious nose and I wet her handkerchief in a pool of water and helped her to wash it. Soon we saw two men approaching us in the road. In a moment I observed that one was Mr. Horace Dunkelberg; the other a stranger and a remarkably handsome young man he was, about twenty-two years of age and dressed in the height of fashion. I remember so well his tall, athletic figure, his gray eyes, his small dark mustache and his admirable manners. Both were appalled at the look of Sally.

"Why, girl, what has happened to you?" her father asked.

Then I saw what a playful soul was Sally's. The girl was a born actress.

"Been riding in the country," said she. "Is this Mr. Latour?"

"This is Mr. Latour, Sally," said her father.

They shook hands.

"I am glad to see you," said the stranger.

"They say I am worth seeing," said Sally. "This is my friend, Mr. Baynes. When you are tired of seeing me, look at him."

I shook the hand he offered me.

"Of course, we can't all be good looking," Sally remarked with a sigh, as if her misfortune were permanent.

Mr. Horace Dunkelberg and I laughed heartily—for I had told him in a whisper what had happened to Sally—while Mr. Latour looked a little embarrassed.

"My face is not beautiful, but they say that I have a good heart," Sally assured the stranger.

They started on. I excused myself and took a trail through the woods to another road. Just there, with Sally waving her hand to me as I stood for a moment in the edge of the woods, the curtain falls on this highly romantic period of my life.

Uncle Peabody came for me that evening. It was about the middle of the next week that I received this letter from Sally:

"DEAR BART—Mr. Latour gave up and drove to Potsdam in the evening. Said he had to meet Mr. Parish. I think that he had seen enough of me. I began to hope he would stay—he was so good looking, but mother is very glad that he went, and so am I, for our minister told us that he is one of the wickedest young men in the state. He is very rich and very bad, they say. I wonder if old Kate knew about him. Her charm worked well anyway—didn't it? My nose was all right in the morning. Sorry that I can't meet you Saturday. Mother and I are packing up to go away for the summer. Don't forget me. I shall be thinking every day of those lovely things you said to me. I don't know what they will try to do with me, and I don't care. I really think as you do, Bart, that God has married us to each other.

"Yours forever, SALLY DUNKELBERG."

How often I read those words—so like all the careless words of the young!



CHAPTER XIV

THE BOLT FALLS

Three times that winter I had seen Benjamin Grimshaw followed by the Silent Woman clothed in rags and pointing with her finger. Mr. Hacket said that she probably watched for him out of her little window above the blacksmith shop that overlooked the south road. When he came to town she followed. I always greeted the woman when I passed her, but when she was on the trail of the money-lender she seemed unaware of my presence, so intent was she on the strange task she had set herself. If he were not in sight she smiled when passing me, but neither spoke nor nodded.

Grimshaw had gone about his business as usual when I saw him last, but I had noted a look of the worried rat in his face. He had seemed to be under extreme irritation. He scolded every man who spoke to him. The notion came to me that her finger was getting down to the quick.

The trial of Amos came on. He had had "blood on his feet," as they used to say, all the way from Lickitysplit to Lewis County in his flight, having attacked and slightly wounded two men with a bowie knife who had tried to detain him at Rainy Lake. He had also shot at an officer in the vicinity of Lowville, where his arrest was effected. He had been identified by all these men, and so his character as a desperate man had been established. This in connection with the scar on his face and the tracks, which the boots of Amos fitted, and the broken gun stock convinced the jury of his guilt.

The most interesting bit of testimony which came out at the trial was this passage from a yellow paper-covered tale which had been discovered hidden in the haymow of the Grimshaw barn:

"Lightfoot waited in the bushes with his trusty rifle in hand. When the two unsuspecting travelers reached a point nearly opposite him he raised his rifle and glanced over its shining barrel and saw that the flight of his bullet would cut the throats of both his persecutors. He pulled the trigger and the bullet sped to its mark. Both men plunged to the ground as if they had been smitten by a thunderbolt. Lightfoot leaped from cover and seized the rearing horses, and mounting one of them while he led the other, headed them down the trail, and in no great hurry, for he knew that the lake was between him and Blodgett and that the latter's boat was in no condition to hold water."

It was the swift and deadly execution of Lightfoot which Amos had been imitating, as he presently confessed.

I knew then the power of words—even foolish words—over the minds of the young when they are printed and spread abroad.

I remember well the look of the venerable Judge Cady as he pronounced the sentence of death upon Amos Grimshaw. A ray of sunlight slanting through a window in the late afternoon fell upon his gracious countenance, shining also, with the softer light of his spirit. Slowly, solemnly, kindly, he spoke the words of doom. It was his way of saying them that first made me feel the dignity and majesty of the law. The kind and fatherly tone of his voice put me in mind of that Supremest Court which is above all question and which was swiftly to enter judgment in this matter and in others related to it.

Slowly the crowd moved out of the court room. Benjamin Grimshaw rose and calmly whispered to his lawyer. He had not spoken to his son or seemed to notice him since the trial had begun, nor did he now. Many had shed tears that day, but not he. Mr. Grimshaw never showed but one emotion—that of anger. He was angry now. His face was hard and stern. He muttered as he walked out of the court room, his cane briskly beating the floor. I and others followed him, moved by differing motives. I was sorry for him and if I had dared I should have told him that. I was amazed to see how sturdily he stood under this blow—like a mighty oak in a storm. The look of him thrilled me—it suggested that something was going to happen.

The Silent Woman—as ragged as ever—was waiting on the steps. Out went her bony finger as he came down. He turned and struck at her with his cane and shouted in a shrill voice that rang out like a trumpet in his frenzy:

"Go 'way from me. Take her away, somebody. I can't stan' it. She's killin' me. Take her away. Take her away. Take her away."

His face turned purple and then white. He reeled and fell headlong, like a tree severed from its roots, and lay still on the hard, stone pavement. It seemed as if snow were falling on his face—it grew so white. The Silent Woman stood as still as he, pointing at him with her finger, her look unchanged. People came running toward us. I lifted the head of Mr. Grimshaw and laid it on my knee. It felt like the head of the stranger in Rattleroad. Old Kate bent over and looked at the eyelids of the man, which fluttered faintly and were still.

"Dead!" she muttered.

Then, as if her work were finished, she turned and made her way through the crowd and walked slowly down the street. Men stood aside to let her pass, as if they felt the power of her spirit and feared the touch of her garments.

Two or three men had run to the house of the nearest doctor. The crowd thickened. As I sat looking down at the dead face in my lap, a lawyer who had come out of the court room pressed near me and bent over and looked at the set eyes of Benjamin Grimshaw and said:

"She floored him at last. I knew she would. He tried not to see her, but I tell ye that bony old finger of hers burnt a hole in him. He couldn't stand it. I knew he'd blow up some day under the strain. She got him at last."

"Who got him?" another asked.

"Rovin' Kate. She killed him pointing her finger at him—so."

"She's got an evil eye. Everybody's afraid o' the crazy ol' Trollope!"

"Nonsense! She isn't half as crazy as the most of us," said the lawyer. "In my opinion she had a good reason for pointing her finger at that man. She came from the same town he did over in Vermont. Ye don't know what happened there."

The doctor arrived. The crowds made way for him. He knelt beside the still figure and made the tests. He rose and shook his head, saying:

"It's all over. Let one o' these boys go down and bring the undertaker."

Benjamin Grimshaw, the richest man in the township, was dead, and I have yet to hear of any mourners.

Three days later I saw his body lowered into its grave. The little, broken-spirited wife stood there with the same sad smile on her face that I had noted when I first saw her in the hills. Rovin' Kate was there in the clothes she had worn Christmas day. She was greatly changed. Her hair was neatly combed. The wild look had left her eyes. She was like one whose back is relieved of a heavy burden. Her lips moved as she scattered little red squares of paper into the grave. I suppose they thought it a crazy whim of hers—they who saw her do it. I thought that I understood the curious bit of symbolism and so did the schoolmaster, who stood beside me. Doubtless the pieces of paper numbered her curses.

"The scarlet sins of his youth are lying down with him in the dust," Hacket whispered as we walked away together.

END OF BOOK TWO



BOOK THREE

Which is the Story of the Chosen Ways



CHAPTER XV

UNCLE PEABODY'S WAY AND MINE

I am old and love my ease and sometimes dare to think that I have earned it. Why do I impose upon myself the task of writing down these memories, searching them and many notes and records with great care so that in every voice and deed the time shall speak? My first care has been that neither vanity nor pride should mar a word of all these I have written or shall write. So I keep my name from you, dear reader, for there is nothing you can give me that I want. I have learned my lesson in that distant time and, having learned it, give you the things I stand for and keep myself under a mask. These things urge me to my task. I do it that I may give to you—my countrymen—the best fruitage of the great garden of my youth and save it from the cold storage of unknowing history.

It is a bad thing to be under a heavy obligation to one's self of which, thank God, I am now acquitted. I have known men who were their own worst creditors. Everything they earned went swiftly to satisfy the demands of Vanity or Pride or Appetite. I have seen them literally put out of house and home, thrown neck and crop into the street, as it were, by one or the other of these heartless creditors—each a grasping usurer with unjust claims.

I remember that Rodney Barnes called for my chest and me that fine morning in early June when I was to go back to the hills, my year's work in school being ended. I elected to walk, and the schoolmaster went with me five miles or more across the flats to the slope of the high country. I felt very wise with that year's learning in my head. Doubtless the best of it had come not in school. It had taken me close to the great stage and in a way lifted the curtain. I was most attentive, knowing that presently I should get my part.

"I've been thinking, Bart, o' your work in the last year," said the schoolmaster as we walked. "Ye have studied six books and one—God help ye! An' I think ye have got more out o' the one than ye have out o' the six."

In a moment of silence that followed I counted the books on my fingers: Latin, Arithmetic, Algebra, Grammar, Geography, History. What was this one book he referred to?

"It's God's book o' life, boy, an' I should say ye'd done very well in it."

After a little he asked: "Have ye ever heard of a man who had the Grimshaws?"

I shook my head as I looked at him, not knowing just what he was driving at.

"Sure, it's a serious illness an' it has two phases. First there's the Grimshaw o' greed—swinish, heartless greed—the other is the Grimshaw o' vanity—the strutter, with sword at belt, who would have men bow or flee before him."

That is all he said of that seventh book and it was enough.

"Soon the Senator will be coming," he remarked presently. "I have a long letter from him and he asks about you and your aunt and uncle. I think that he is fond o' you, boy."

"I wish you would let me know when he comes," I said.

"I am sure he will let you know, and, by the way, I have heard from another friend o' yours, my lad. Ye're a lucky one to have so many friends—sure ye are. Here, I'll show ye the letter. There's no reason why I shouldn't. Ye will know its writer, probably. I do not."

So saying he handed me this letter:

"CANTERBURY, VT., June 1.

"DEAR SIR—I am interested in the boy Barton Baynes. Good words about him have been flying around like pigeons. When school is out I would like to hear from you, what is the record? What do you think of the soul in him? What kind of work is best for it? If you will let me maybe I can help the plans of God a little. That is my business and yours. Thanking you for reading this, I am, as ever,

"God's humble servant, KATE FULLERTON."

"Why, this is the writing of the Silent Woman," I said before I had read the letter half through.

"Rovin' Kate?"

"Roving Kate; I never knew her other name, but I saw her handwriting long ago."

"But look—this is a neatly written, well-worded letter an' the sheet is as white and clean as the new snow. Uncanny woman! They say she carries the power o' God in her right hand. So do all the wronged. I tell ye, lad, there's only one thing in the world that's sacred."

I turned to him with a look of inquiry and asked:

"What is it?"

"The one and only miracle we know-the gate o' birth through which comes human life and the lips commanding our love and speaking the wisdom of childhood. Show me how a man treats women an' I'll tell ye what he amounts to. There's the test that shows whether he's a man or a spaniel dog."

There was a little moment of silence then—how well I remember it! The schoolmaster broke the silence by adding:

"Well ye know, lad, I think the greatest thing that Jesus Christ did was showing to a wicked world the sanctity o' motherhood."

That, I think, was the last lesson in the school year. Just beyond us I could see the slant of Bowman's Hill. What an amount of pains they gave those days to the building of character! It will seem curious and perhaps even wearisome now, but it must show here if I am to hold the mirror up to the time.

"I wonder why Kate is asking about me," I said.

"Never mind the reason. She is your friend and let us thank God for it. Think how she came to yer help in the old barn an' say a thousand prayers, my lad. I shall write to her to-day, and what shall I say as to the work?"

"Well, I've been consulting the compass," I answered thoughtfully, as I looked down at the yielding sand under my feet. "I think that I want to be a lawyer."

"Good! I would have guessed it. I suppose your week in the court room with the fine old judge and the lawyers settled that for ye."

"I think that it did."

"Well, the Senator is a lawyer, God prosper him, an' he has shown us that the chief business o' the lawyer is to keep men out o' the law."

Having come to the first flight of the uplands, he left me with many a kind word—how much they mean to a boy who is choosing his way with a growing sense of loneliness!

I reached the warm welcome of our little home just in time for dinner. They were expecting me and it was a regular company dinner—chicken pie and strawberry shortcake.

"I wallered in the grass all the forenoon tryin' to git enough berries for this celebration—ayes!—they ain't many of 'em turned yit," said Aunt Deel. "No, sir—nothin' but pure cream on this cake. I ain't a goin' to count the expense."

Uncle Peabody danced around the table and sang a stanza of the old ballad, which I have forgotten, but which begins:

Come, Philander, let us be a-marchin'.

How well I remember that hour with the doors open and the sun shining brightly on the blossoming fields and the joy of man and bird and beast in the return of summer and the talk about the late visit of Alma Jones and Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln!

While we were eating I told them about the letter of old Kate.

"Fullerton!" Aunt Deel exclaimed. "Are ye sure that was the name, Bart?"

"Yes."

"Goodness gracious sakes alive!"

She and Uncle Peabody gave each other looks of surprised inquiry.

"Do you know anybody by that name?" I asked.

"We used to," said Aunt Deel as she resumed her eating. "Can't be she's one o' the Sam Fullertons, can it?"

"Oh, prob'ly not," said Uncle Peabody. "Back east they's more Fullertons than ye could shake a stick at. Say, I see the biggest bear this mornin' that I ever see in all the born days o' my life.

"It was dark. I'd come out o' the fifty-mile woods an' down along the edge o' the ma'sh an' up into the bushes on the lower side o' the pastur. All to once I heerd somethin'! I stopped an' peeked through the bushes—couldn't see much—so dark. Then the ol' bear riz up on her hind legs clus to me. We didn't like the looks o' one 'nother an' begun to edge off very careful.

"Seems so I kind o' said to the ol' bear: 'Excuse me.'

"Seems so the ol' bear kind o' answered: 'Sart'nly.'

"I got down to a little run, near by, steppin' as soft as a cat. I could just see a white stun on the side o' it. I lifted my foot to step on the stun an' jump acrost. B-r-r-r-r! The stun jumped up an' scampered through the bushes. Then I was scairt. Goshtalmighty! I lost confidence in everything. Seemed so all the bushes turned into bears. Jeerusalem, how I run! When I got to the barn I was purty nigh used up."

"How did it happen that the stone jumped?" I asked.

"Oh, I guess 't was a rabbit," said Uncle Peabody.

Thus Uncle Peabody led us off into the trail of the bear and the problem of Kate and the Sam Fullertons concerned us no more at that time.

A week later we had our raising. Uncle Peabody did not want a public raising, but Aunt Deel had had her way. We had hewed and mortised and bored the timbers for our new home. The neighbors came with pikes and helped to raise and stay and cover them. A great amount of human kindness went into the beams and rafters of that home and of others like it. I knew that The Thing was still alive in the neighborhood, but even that could not paralyze the helpful hands of those people. Indeed, what was said of my Uncle Peabody was nothing more or less than a kind of conversational firewood. I can not think that any one really believed it.

We had a cheerful day. A barrel of hard cider had been set up in the dooryard, and I remember that some drank it too freely. The he-o-hee of the men as they lifted on the pikes and the sound of the hammer and beetle rang in the air from morning until night. Mrs. Rodney Barnes and Mrs. Dorothy came to help Aunt Deel with the cooking and a great dinner was served on an improvised table in the dooryard, where the stove was set up. The shingles and sheathes and clapboards were on before the day ended.

When they were about to go the men filled their cups and drank to Aunt Deel.

I knew, or thought I knew, why they had not mentioned my Uncle Peabody, and was very thoughtful about it. Suddenly the giant Rodney Barnes strode up to the barrel. I remember the lion-like dignity of his face as he turned and said:

"Now, boys, come up here an' stand right before me, every one o' you."

He ranged them in a circle around the barrel. He stood at the spigot and filled every cup. Then he raised his own and said:

"I want ye to drink to Peabody Baynes—one o' the squarest men that ever stood in cowhide."

They drank the toast—not one of them would have dared refuse.

"Now three cheers for the new home and every one that lives in it," he demanded.

They cheered lustily and went away.

Uncle Peabody and I put in the floors and stairway and partitions. More than once in the days we were working together I tried to tell him what Sally had told me, but my courage failed.

We moved our furniture. I remember that Uncle Peabody called it "the houseltree." We had greased paper on the windows for a time after we moved until the sash came. Aunt Deel had made rag carpets for the parlor and the bedroom which opened off it. Our windows looked down into the great valley of the St. Lawrence, stretching northward thirty miles or more from our hilltop. A beautiful grove of sugar maples stood within a stone's throw of the back door.

What a rustic charm in the long slant of the green hill below us with its gray, mossy boulders and lovely thorn trees! It was, I think, a brighter, pleasanter home than that we had left. It was built on the cellar of one burned a few years before. The old barn was still there and a little repairing had made it do.

The day came, shortly, when I had to speak out, and I took the straight way of my duty as the needle of the compass pointed. It was the end of a summer day and we had watched the dusk fill the valley and come creeping up the slant, sinking the boulders and thorn tops in its flood, one by one. As we sat looking out of the open door that evening I told them what Sally had told me of the evil report which had traveled through the two towns. Uncle Peabody sat silent and perfectly motionless for a moment, looking out into the dusk.

"W'y, of all things! Ain't that an awful burnin' shame-ayes!" said Aunt Deel as she covered her face with her hand.

"Damn, little souled, narrer contracted—" Uncle Peabody, speaking in a low, sad tone, but with deep feeling, cut off this highly promising opinion before it was half expressed, and rose and went to the water pail and drank.

"As long as we're honest we don't care what they say," he remarked as he returned to his chair.

"If they won't believe us we ought to show 'em the papers—ayes," said Aunt Deel.

"Thunder an' Jehu! I wouldn't go 'round the town tryin' to prove that I ain't a thief," said Uncle Peabody. "It wouldn't make no differ'nce. They've got to have somethin' to play with. If they want to use my name for a bean bag let 'em as long as they do it when I ain't lookin'. I wouldn't wonder if they got sore hands by an' by."

I never heard him speak of it again. Indeed, although I knew the topic was often in our thoughts it was never mentioned in our home but once after that, to my knowledge.

We sat for a long time thinking as the night came on. By and by Uncle Peabody began the hymn in which we joined:

"Oh, keep my heart from sadness, God; Let not its sorrows stay, Nor shadows of the night erase The glories of the day."

"Say—by thunder!—we don't have to set in the shadows. Le's fill the room with the glory of the day," said Uncle Peabody as he lighted the candles. "It ain't a good idee to go slidin' down hill in the summer-time an' in the dark, too. Le's have a game o' cards."

I remember that we had three merry games and went to bed. All outward signs of our trouble had vanished in the glow of the candles.

Next day I rode to the post-office and found there a book addressed to me in the handwriting of old Kate. It was David Hoffman's Course of Legal Study. She had written on its fly-leaf:

"To Barton Baynes, from a friend."

"That woman 'pears to like you purty thorough," said Uncle Peabody.

"Well, let her if she wants to—poor thing!" Aunt Deel answered. "A woman has got to have somebody to like—ayes!—or I dunno how she'd live—I declare I don't—ayes!"

"I like her, too," I said. "She's been a good friend to me."

"She has, sart'n," my uncle agreed.

We began reading the book that evening in the candle-light and soon finished it. I was thrilled by the ideal of human service with which the calling of the lawyer was therein lifted up and illuminated. After that I had no doubt of my way.

That week a letter came to me from the Senator, announcing the day of Mrs. Wright's arrival in Canton and asking me to meet and assist her in getting the house to rights. I did so. She was a pleasant-faced, amiable woman and a most enterprising house cleaner. I remember that my first task was mending the wheelbarrow.

"I don't know what Silas would do if he were to get home and find his wheelbarrow broken," said she. "It is almost an inseparable companion of his."

The schoolmaster and his family were fishing and camping upon the river, and so I lived at the Senator's house with Mrs. Wright and her mother until he arrived. What a wonderful house it was, in my view! I was awed by its size and splendor, its soft carpets and shiny brass and mahogany. Yet it was very simple.

I hoed the garden and cleaned its paths and mowed the dooryard and did some painting in the house. I remember that Mrs. Ebenezer Binks—wife of the deacon and the constable—came in while I was at the latter task early one morning to see if there were anything she could do.

She immediately sat down and talked constantly until noon of her family and especially of the heartlessness and general misconduct of her son and daughter-in-law because they had refused to let her apply the name of Divine Submission to the baby. It had been a hard blow to Mrs. Binks, because this was the one and only favor which she had ever asked of them. She reviewed the history of the Binkses from Ebenezer—the First—down to that present day. There had been three Divine Submissions in the family and they had made the name of Binks known wherever people knew anything. When Mrs. Wright left the room Mrs. Binks directed her conversation at me, and when Mrs. Wright returned I only got the spray of it. By dinner time we were drenched in a way of speaking and Mrs. Binks left, assuring us that she would return later and do anything in her power.

"My stars!" Mrs. Wright exclaimed. "If you see her coming lock the door and go and hide in a closet until she goes away. Mrs. Binks always brings her ancestors with her and they fill the house so that there's no room for anybody else."

When the day's work was ended Mrs. Wright exclaimed:

"Thank goodness! the Binkses have not returned."

We always referred to Mrs. Binks as the Binkses after that.

Mrs. Jenison, a friend of the Wrights, came in that afternoon and told us of the visit of young Latour to Canton and of the great relief of the decent people at his speedy departure.

"I wonder what brought him here," said Mrs. Wright.

"It seems that he had heard of the beauty of Sally Dunkelberg. But a bee had stung her nose just before he came and she was a sight to behold."

The ladies laughed.

"It's lucky," said Mrs. Wright. "Doesn't Horace Dunkelberg know about him?"

"I suppose he does, but the man is money crazy."

I couldn't help hearing it, for I was working in the room in which they talked. Well, really, it doesn't matter much now. They are all gone.

"Who is young Latour?" I asked when Mrs. Jenison had left us.

"A rake and dissolute young man whose father is very rich and lives in a great mansion over in Jefferson County," Mrs. Wright answered.

I wondered then if there had been a purpose in that drop of honey from the cup of the Silent Woman.

I remember that the Senator, who returned to Canton that evening on the Watertown stage, laughed heartily when, as we were sitting by the fireside, Mrs. Wright told of the call of the Binkses.

"The good lady enjoys a singular plurality," he remarked.

"She enjoys it better than we do," said Mrs. Wright.

The Senator had greeted me with a fatherly warmth. Again I felt that strong appeal to my eye in his broadcloth and fine linen and beaver hat and in the splendid dignity and courtesy of his manners.

"I've had good reports of you, Bart, and I'm very glad to see you," he said.

"I believe your own marks have been excellent in the last year," I ventured.

"Poorer than I could wish. The teacher has been very kind to me," he laughed. "What have you been studying?"

"Latin (I always mentioned the Latin first), Algebra, Arithmetic, Grammar, Geography and History."

"Including the history of the Binkses," he laughed.

There was never a note of humor in his speeches, but he was playful in his talk at times, especially when trusted friends were with him.

"She is a very excellent woman, after all," he added.

He asked about my aunt and uncle and I told him of all that had befallen us, save the one thing of which I had spoken only with them and Sally.

"I shall go up to see them soon," he said.

The people of the little village had learned that he preferred to be let alone when he had just returned over the long, wearisome way from the scene of his labors. So we had the evening to ourselves.

I remember my keen interest in his account of riding from Albany to Utica on the new railroads. He spoke with enthusiasm of the smoothness and swiftness of the journey.

"With no mishap they now make it in about a half a day," he said, as we listened with wonder. "It is like riding in a house with a good deal of smoke coming out of the chimney and in at the windows. You sit on a comfortable bench with a back and a foot-rest in front and look out of the window and ride. But I tremble sometimes to think of what might happen with all that weight and speed.

"We had a little mishap after leaving Ballston Spa. The locomotive engine broke down and the train stopped. The passengers poured out like bees. We put our hands and shoulders on the train and pushed it backwards about a third of a mile to a passing station. There the engine got out of our way and after an hour's wait a horse was hitched to the train. With the help of the men he started it. At the next town our horse was reinforced by two others. They hauled us to the engine station four miles beyond, where another locomotive engine was attached to the train, and we went on by steam and at a fearful rate of speed."

Mrs. Wright, being weary after the day's work, went to bed early and, at his request, I sat with the Senator by the fire for an hour or so. I have always thought it a lucky circumstance, for he asked me to tell of my plans and gave me advice and encouragement which have had a marked effect upon my career.

I remember telling him that I wished to be a lawyer and my reasons for it. He told me that a lawyer was either a pest or a servant of justice and that his chief aim should be the promotion of peace and good will in his community. He promised to try and arrange for my accommodation in his office in the autumn and meanwhile to lend me some books to read while I was at home.

"Before we go to bed let us have a settlement," said the Senator. "Will you kindly sit down at the table there and make up a statement of all the time you have given me?"

I made out the statement very neatly and carefully and put it in his hands.

"That is well done," said he. "I shall wish you to stay until the day after to-morrow, if you will. So you will please add another day."

I amended the statement and he paid me the handsome sum of seven dollars. I remember that after I went to my room that night I stitched up the opening in my jacket pocket, which contained my wealth, with the needle and thread which Aunt Deel had put in my bundle, and slept with the jacket under my mattress.

The Senator and I were up at five o'clock and at work in the garden. What a contrast to see him spading in his old farm suit! Mrs. Wright cooked our breakfast and called us in at six.