Altogether it was a very wild locality, wholly inclosed by somber forests; and from the top of one of the ledges, which I climbed, I could see no cleared land, far or near, save on the side next to their farms, and that at quite a distance. This ledge, I recollect, had a vein of white quartz running across it, displaying at one point a trace of rose-color; and I remember thinking that some time I would come here and break out specimens of this handsome stone.

At length in response to Ned's calls, we heard a faint ba-a-a, toward the north end of the pasture, and going in that direction, past a number of spruce copses and many other ledges, we came in sight of the flock of sheep, feeding in a hollow near a spring. A great mob of lambs were following their mothers and frisking about the rocks; and there was one black sheep and one black lamb which, at first sight, I thought were dogs or some other animals. "That black sheep is Murches'," Ned said. "She's got two lambs; but that black lamb is in our flock. There's South Down blood in a good many of them. You can tell the South Downs by their black fore legs and smut faces. There's fifteen pairs of twins in our flock and about as many in Murches'. Ca-day, ca-day, ca-day."

Catching sight of us and the salt pail, the flock now came crowding eagerly about us. The ovine odor was very strong. Black flies troubled the poor creatures grievously, and another larger, evil-looking fly was buzzing about their noses.

"We are coming up in a day or two and tar all their noses," said Ned, dealing out the salt in numerous handfuls, throwing it down on smooth spots upon the grass, and running backwards to avoid the onward rush of the sheep.

"Now let's count 'em," he continued. "We always count 'em when we salt 'em. Let's see, can you reckon good? Murches have got thirty-eight sheep and fifty-three lambs, and we've got thirty-three sheep and forty-eight lambs. How many does that make in all?"

After some cogitation, we agreed that there must be seventy-one sheep and a hundred and one lambs, or a hundred and seventy-two all told. That was what there should be; and we now set out to ascertain by counting if all were there.

This was a greater feat than would appear at first thought, the flock was so crowded together and so constantly running about. We made several attempts, but as many times lost the count, or grew confused. At length, we drove the sheep apart, and the salt being eaten by this time, we contrived to enumerate eighty-two on one side and eighty-seven on the other.

"Now how many's that?" said Ned. I could not make but a hundred and sixty-nine from it; but Ned said that he guessed 'twas more. After studying on it awhile, however, he agreed with me; and we then counted the flock again, twice more, in fact, before we were both satisfied that there were but a hundred and sixty-nine present.

"Now that's bad," said Ned.

"What suppose has become of them?" I asked.

"Dogs, maybe," replied Ned, "or else a 'lucivee,' or a bear."

"Perhaps 'twas men," I suggested.

"O no, I don't think that," said Ned. "If 'twas in the fall, I should think it might be, for there are some folks down at the Corners that have been laid in stealing sheep. But let's see whether it's sheep or lambs that's gone, and whose 'tis, whether it's ours or Murches'. Now all our sheep have got two slits in the right ear and a crop off the left; but Murches' have a crop off both ears; and all our lambs have got red paint across the fore shoulders, but Murches' have got red on the rump." This necessitated a new count and a much more difficult one.

"I'll count the ones with slits and crops," said Ned; "and you count the ones with two crops." But we were nearly half an hour establishing the fact that one of the "two crops" was missing.

"It is one of Murches' sheep that's gone," said Ned; "I'm glad it isn't ours." We then counted the lambs and found also that the missing ones were two of the Murches'.

"It's an old sheep with twins," said Ned.

"Isn't she off by herself somewheres?" I asked.

"Not very likely to be unless she's got hung; they always keep together," replied Ned. "But she may have got hung in the brush, or else has tumbled in between big rocks and can't get out. I suppose we ought to look her up if that's so.

"I'll tell you what we will do," continued Ned; "we will walk clean round the pasture, in the first place, keeping where we can see the fence, for she may be hung in it."

Thereupon we set off to walk around the pasture, going along the farther side to the northwest and the southwest first. The fence skirted the thick bushes and woods. Toward the southwest corner there was a long, craggy ledge a little within the pasture fence. It fell off, rough, rocky and almost perpendicular on that side, from a height of fifteen or twenty feet, and about the foot of the crag were many of the low, black spruces, but from the upper side one could walk out on the bare, smooth rocks to the very brink of the ledge. We approached from this upper side, and as we came out on it, to look down into the corner of the pasture, a crow cawed suddenly and sharply, and we saw three crows rise, flapping, off the ground, below the crag.

"Hoh!" Ned exclaimed. "What are those black chaps up to there?"

We stopped and looked down attentively into the partly open plat of pasture, inclosed around on the lower side by the seared, reddish line of the now dried hedge fence.

"Why, Ned, see the wool down there on the ground!" I cried, as a white mass caught my eye.

"Something's killed the sheep there!" replied Ned, in a low tone. "See the head there and the meat and bones strung along. Something's killed her and eaten her half up; and there looks to be part of a lamb farther along by that little fir."

A very strange sensation, partly fear, stole over me, as we stood there looking down upon the torn remains of the sheep and lamb. The place was far off in the woods and the surroundings were wild and somber. There was something uncanny, too, in the way those crows rose up and went flapping away. In less degree, I think Ned experienced similar sensations, for he stood without speaking for a moment, then said, "O it may have been done by a dog, or maybe she died.

"Let's climb down and see what we can see," he continued.

"We can see that the sheep is dead from up here," I replied, for I did not like the idea of going down there very well.

"Come along," said Ned, laughing. "You needn't be afraid."

"I'm not afraid," said I. "But it is a kind of lonesome looking place."

"Yes, 'tis," replied Ned, stopping for a little to look again. "But let's go down and see. They'll ask us all about it, and we've got to find out what we can."

He walked along the top of the ledge, and, coming to a place where we could descend between some large split rocks, began to climb down. I followed after him, a little in the rear. Ned had got down among the small spruces, at the foot of the crag, when he suddenly called back to me that one of the lambs was there. "Poor little chap, he's hid here, under the brush," he continued; and on getting down, I saw the lamb standing far under the thick, dark boughs.

"I never saw a lamb hide in that way before," said Ned. "He's been awful scared by something."

We crept around and tried to catch the lamb; it ran along the foot of the rocks among the evergreens, but did not bleat, nor behave at all as lambs generally do.

"He's got blood on his side there," remarked Ned. "But he may have got that off the old sheep."

After looking at the lamb a moment, Ned started to go down where the carcass of the sheep lay, but I felt a little timid and stood still, near the foot of the rocks.

It was not far to go, not more than a hundred feet, I think, being about half way down to the thick, reddish hedge of recently cut spruce. Ned approached within a few yards and after looking at the fleece and bones a minute, stopped to pick up a wisp of wool, when from right at hand there burst forth the most frightful growl that I ever heard. It broke on the utter stillness of that quiet nook like a thunder peal and it so wrought on my already alert senses that I yelled outright from sudden terror!

For the moment I could not have told from what quarter the terrible sound came, for the high rocks behind me reverberated it. Following instantly upon the growl, however, we heard a cracking of the brush in the thicket below the hedge fence; and next moment there issued through a hole in it a large black animal of terrific aspect, that to my startled eyes looked as large as an ox!

Not that I stopped to estimate its size. I was on the move by the time it had issued from the hole of the hedge fence;—but a boy's eye will take in a good deal at one glance, under such circumstances. It was a steep ascent betwixt the rocks to the top of the ledge; but if I had possessed wings, I could not have got up much more quickly. As I gained the top, I thought of striking off for the upper side of the pasture, and thence running for my life toward the farms; but at the same instant my eye fell on a low-growing oak, a few rods away, the lower limbs of which I thought that I could jump up and seize. I had started for it, but had taken only a bound or two, when I heard Ned say, "Hold on," behind me. I looked back. He had gained the top of the ledge almost as quickly as I had, but had stopped there. "Hold on," he exclaimed in a low voice. I stopped and stood, half breathless and panting, ready to bound away again and half inclined to do so.

Ned was looking down from the ledge and motioned to me with his hand to return. After some hesitation, I tiptoed back to him.

"See him?" he whispered to me. "He's right there behind that little spruce, close beside the sheep. He's looking up here and harking!" The black animal was half hidden by the spruce boughs, yet I could see him, and experienced a curious nervous thrill as I made out its shaggy outlines.

"Isn't it a bear?" I whispered.

"Cracky, yes," whispered Ned. "A big one, too!"

"But won't he chase us?"

"Guess not," replied Ned. "Ye see, 'tis the sheep he felt so mad about. He'd killed the sheep and that lamb last night, I expect, and eaten them part up. And he had only gone down there a little way into the firs behind the fence and was kinder watching till he got hungry again. He saw and heard us come along, but he kept still and didn't say a word till he saw me stoop down to touch it. Then, sir, he just spoke right out in meetin'! Told me to get out and let his meat alone. O, don't I wish I had a good gun, loaded with a ball!"

"Would you dare to fire at him, Ned?" I said.

"Well," replied Ned, doubtfully, looking around and seeing the oak, and then glancing down the rocks, "I dunno, but I believe I would get good aim and let strip at him. If I hit him and hurt him, but didn't kill him, he might come for us, lickety switch. But he couldn't get up here very quick. We should have time to climb that tree."

"I wish we could shoot him!" I whispered, beginning to wax warlike.

"I've a great mind to let a stone go down there," said Ned, looking about. "Let's both get stones and throw at once, and see what he will do. If he starts up here, we'll put for that tree."

This was an extremely exciting proposition, but I was getting bolder. We found each a stone as big as a coffee-cup.

"Now both together," whispered Ned, and we flung them with all our power. We did not hit our mark, but they struck the ground near the spruce and bounced past it, quite closely. The bear growled again, savagely, and started stiffly out from his covert, past the remains of the sheep. We both turned to run, but noticing that the creature had stopped, we pulled up again. The bear saw us and growled repeatedly, yet did not come far past his jealously guarded treasure. He shuffled about, keeping his head drawn down in a peculiar manner, but we could see that his eye was on us. After a few moments, he drew back behind the spruce again. Thereupon we threw more stones; and again the beast rushed out, growling and scratching up the grass in an odd manner; he did not appear inclined to pursue us, however, and we now noticed that there was something clumsy in its gait, like a limp.

"Gracious!" Ned suddenly exclaimed. "That's old 'Three-Legs!' He's come round again!"

"What, the bear that lost his foot in a trap?" I asked, remembering what Ellen and Theodora had told me a few days before.

"Yes, siree!" cried Ned. "He's an awful old sheep-killer! He comes round once in a while. But he's mighty cunning! He's a savage one, too, but he can't run very fast."

"Then let's pelt him!" I exclaimed.

"No, no," said Ned. "We must hurry back home and raise a crew. That bear must be killed, you know. If we don't, he will come round every week and take a sheep all summer."

We therefore set off in haste, to run to the Wilbur farm, where we arrived very hot and out of breath just as the family was sitting down to supper. "Old 'Three-Legs' is in the sheep pasture!" shouted Ned at the door. "Get the gun, pa! I'm going to tell the Murches!"

Mr. Wilbur owned a gun, but it was not in shooting condition. We then ran down the hill to the Murch farm, and there our story created considerable excitement. Ben and Willis at once brought out a double-barrelled gun, which their father proceeded to load, but they lacked bullets and heavy shot. Willis and Ned and I therefore ran to the Edwardses to notify Thomas and his father and procure ammunition. At the Edwardses they had both shot and also a musket which carried balls. This latter weapon was at once charged for bear.

Mr. Edwards, however, advised me to go home and notify the Old Squire and Addison, in order that they, too, might join the hunt, if disposed.

I set off at a run again; but by this time I had become not a little leg-weary; night, too, was at hand. The boys were milking, and I met the Old Squire coming toward the house with two brimming pailfuls. "Old 'Three-Legs' has just killed one of Murches' sheep and a lamb, too!" I shouted.

"Is that so?" said the old gentleman, but the intelligence did not excite him so much as I had expected it would. He looked at me and said, "You look badly heated. You have run too hard."

"But that old bear's killed a sheep!" I exclaimed. "They are all going after him. They sent me to get you and the boys."

By this time Addison and Halstead had risen off their milking stools to hear the tidings, and exhibited signs of interest.

"Did you see the bear, my son?" the Old Squire asked.

"Yes, siree!" I exclaimed, and thereupon I poured forth all the particulars. "They want all of us to load our guns and go with them," I cried expectantly.

"Well," remarked the Old Squire, with what seemed to me a very provoking lack of enthusiasm. "If they are all going, I guess they will not need us. You had better go to the well and wash your face and head in some cold water, then rest a while and have your supper; it has been a very hot day."

"But old Three-Legs!" I exclaimed. "He may get away!"

"Yes, he may," said Gramp, laughing. "I should not wonder if he did.

"I will tell you something about bears, my son," he went on, good-naturedly. "A bear is quite a knowing animal, and sometimes very cunning. This one they call old 'Three-Legs' is remarkably so. I'm very sure that, if we all went over there as quick as we could, and stayed around all night, we shouldn't find him. That bear knew just as well as you did that you had gone to get help and would be back with it; and I shouldn't wonder if by this time he was three miles away—and still going. What that bear did after you and Ned left was to listen awhile, till he made sure you were gone, then stuff himself with as much more of that mutton as he could hold, and leave the place as fast as he could go. He's gone, you may depend upon it;—and he will not come near that place again for a week or two probably. That is bear nature and bear wit. They seem to know some things almost as well as men. They know when they kill sheep that men will make a fuss about it. That bear was lying quiet there, with his ears open for trouble; he wasn't much afraid of two boys, but he knows there are men and guns not far off."

I was really very tired and after hearing this view of the case was not much sorry to rest and have my supper. We learned next day that Thomas and his father, and Ned and the Murches went over to the pasture with their guns, but they failed to find the bear. The Murches set a trap at the place where the sheep had been killed, and kept it there for ten days. A hound was caught in it, but no bear.

I remember that my sleep that night was somewhat disturbed by exciting dreams of hunting. At the breakfast table next morning I told the story of our adventure over again, and described the ugly demonstrations of the bear at such length, that I presently saw grandfather smiling, and detected Addison giving a sly wink to Theodora. This confused me so much that I stopped in haste and was more cautious about my realistic descriptions in future. Halstead began hectoring me that forenoon concerning my adventure, and nicknamed me "the great bear hunter." Much incensed, I retorted by asking him whether he had paid for that seed-corn. Hearing that, Addison, who was near us, cast an inquiring look at Halstead, and the latter hurriedly changed the subject; he was unusually polite to me for several days afterwards.



CHAPTER IX

HOMESICK AGAIN. BLUE, OH, SO BLUE!

The jaunt with Edgar and the excitement about old "Three-Legs" had distracted my thoughts for the time being, but had not cured me of homesickness. Two days later my mother sent me by mail my book of arithmetic, the one I had recently used at school; she thought that I might attend the district school in Maine and need it.

Now there is not usually much in a text-book of arithmetic that excites fond memories in a boy of thirteen. Often the reverse. But I had no sooner taken that well-thumbed book from its wrapping of brown paper, than another pang of homesickness went through me; and this time it was nostalgia in earnest.

If, at this moment, there is anywhere in the United States, or in the whole world, a boy or girl who is homesick, I know how to pity each and all of them. I do not suppose that my pity will do them much good. Nothing does much good. But I know exactly how they feel, and they have my heartiest sympathy.

Whoever ridicules and laughs at any one who is truly homesick must have a hard heart and a shallow mind. It is no laughing matter. Homesickness is something midway between a physical disease and a mental worry. It has a real, physiological cause, and is due to the inability of the brain to adapt itself, without a struggle, to the strangeness of new scenes and new surroundings; and that struggle is often a very painful one.

Homesickness had not fallen upon me at first, there were so many new things to see, so many new cousins and young neighbors to get acquainted with. For a time my attention was wholly taken up with the novelties of the place. The farm, the cattle, the birds, the work which we had to do, everything, in fact, was novel. Perhaps for that very reason, when the mental struggle to really adapt myself to it came, it was the more profound and severe.

That morning I had no sooner unwrapped this old book than the pang began again. I could not swallow a mouthful of breakfast. It really seemed to me that I should die right then and there if I did not get up and start for home.

Blue is no adequate word with which to describe what I suffered. It came upon me with a suddenness, too, which nearly took my breath with it. At the table were the bright, cheery faces of my cousins, and of the Old Squire and Gram; but for the moment, how saddening, poor and dreary everything looked to me! The thought of remaining there, month after month, gave me heart-sink like death.

Kind parent, if you have a boy or girl off at school, or anywhere at a distance, whom you wish to be happy and content, do not write very much to them, and above all things do not go on to tell them of home affairs, home scenes and familiar objects. It is mistaken kindness. It might possibly answer—if a boy—to speak of a woodpile soon to be sawn; or—if a girl—to allude to great heaps of dishes to be washed; but I would not even advise much of that, nor anything else in the least suggestive of home scenes; in fact, write as little as possible.

I remember, as I sat there at table, unable to eat, or even to swallow my coffee, that Cousin Theodora glanced compassionately at me, and Ellen and Addison curiously. They surmised what ailed me, from their own previous experience, but said nothing. The Old Squire and Gram, too, wisely forebore to stir me by foolishly expressed sympathy. How glad I was that they did not speak to me!

The day passed drearily enough, and as evening drew on, still gloomier shadows fell into my mind. I stole away to read my mother's letter again and be alone with my trouble. Billow after billow of the blackest misery broke over me. I went out into the garden, then around to the back side of the west barn; the darkening landscape was not more somber than my heart. How unspeakably dreary the dim, weathered old barn, the shadowy hills and forests looked to me! Not less dreary seemed my whole future. I felt exiled. It appeared to me that I should never know another happy moment, that I never could, by any possibility, enjoy myself again. I sat down on a stone, in the dark, put my head in my hands, and gave myself up to the most somber reflections. Cold despair crept into me at every pore. A fever of tears then filled my eyes. I laid wild plans to escape; I would run away that very night and go home. The distance, as I knew, was about five hundred miles; but I was sure that I could walk twenty miles per day, perhaps thirty. In twenty days I could reach home. I did not think much about food by the way; it did not appear to me that I should want to touch a mouthful of anything eatable till I reached home. If I did so far desire, I fancied that I might gather a few berries by the wayside. Then I began to plan the details of setting off. I would go indoors and put on my other suit of clothes, after the family were asleep; and not to be too mean and cause too much anxiety, I determined to write a few words on a bit of paper and slip it under Theodora's door, advising them all not to worry about me, as I had gone home, "for a time." These latter words I concluded to add, by way of breaking it a little more gently to them, not that I had the slightest intention of ever returning.

As I sat there with my hands over my face, planning, and brewing hot tears, I heard a step in the grass, and looking up, saw a tall, shadowy figure which I knew must be the Old Squire.

"Is that you, 'Edmund?'" he said, as I jumped up off the stone. He still called me that sometimes. "It is a close night, I declare," he continued. "I had about as lief be out here in the cool myself, as in the house abed. But the mosquitoes bite a little, don't they?".

I had neither noticed that the evening was hot, nor yet that there were any mosquitoes; I was quite insensible to ordinary physical influences.

The old gentleman lay down on the grass beside me. "Let's lay and talk a spell," said he. "I never come round back of the barn here, but that I think of the fox I shot when I was a young man. That fox had a 'brush' as big 'round as your leg, the biggest fox-tail I ever saw. He had been coming around the barns for some time; I used to hear him bark, mornings, about four o'clock."

The Old Squire then went on, at length, to tell me how he watched for the fox, and how he loaded the old "United-States-piece" musket for it, and how he finally fired and shot the fox, but that the gun nearly broke his collar-bone, he had loaded it so heavily. He was nigh half an hour telling me all about it, and in spite of myself, I grew somewhat interested.

"Why, how these mosquitoes do bite!" he finally exclaimed, giving one a rousing slap. "Let's go in before they eat us up, and go to bed."

I went in with him and went to bed, but my trouble had now cankered too deeply to be easily calmed. In the blackness of the bedchamber it beset me again. Like other maladies, nostalgia, when once set up, must run its course, I suppose. It never has appeared to me that I slept at all that night, yet perhaps I did. Long before daylight, however, I was again shedding hot tears and laying wild plans. But my thoughts had now taken on an even gloomier and more desperate shade. What was the use of my going home, I thought; my mother did not want me there. What was the use of living in such a hopelessly dreary world! Live there at the Old Squire's I could not, would not; of that I was certain. I never could endure it. The thought of existing there, as I then felt, week after week and month after month, was simply unbearable. Better die at once. I began to think of various cases of suicide of which I had heard, or read—in my happier days: the rope, poison, drowning. The latter I believed to be the easier method of death; and I thought of the Little Sea down where we washed the sheep and had begun to go in swimming on warm days. There was water enough there in the deepest place;—and once in, it would soon be over!

As the hours of the night dragged by, I began to take a morbid pleasure in thinking about it, as if I had fully decided the question. I really believed that I had as good as decided to drown myself; and when at length we were called at five o'clock, I rose to dress in a very unhealthy frame of mind.

"What's the matter with you?" exclaimed Halstead, as we were putting on our shoes.

"Nothing," said I, heavily.

"You look as if you had lost your best friend," said he, with an unsympathetic grin.

"I shall lose something more than that before long," I replied, with a miserable effort at mystery.

"You don't say!" cried he, ironically, and went out with an air of hard indifference, not at all flattering to my self-love.

How poor and undesirable the house, the farm, the whole world, looked to me that morning. I plodded about, assisting to do the early chores; I really had no appetite for my breakfast, and stole away from the table after a few moments. Gram called after me, to know if I were unwell; I did not dare trust myself to reply, lest I should burst forth weeping, and hastening out to the Balm o' Gilead trees, stood looking down the lane a moment, with a dreadful tumult of repressed misery raging within me. My mental malady had reached a crisis; I was wild with anguish. It appeared to me that I never could endure it. One thought only kept its place in my mind—the Little Sea! I stole away down the lane, crossed the road, then went on through the east field and pasture, till I reached the brook.

Not that I now believe there was much likelihood of my drowning myself. Even if I had been wretched enough to jump in, the first spoonful of cold water in my nose would probably have sent me scrambling out, as would have been the case with hundreds who have really drowned themselves, if only they had not jumped into too deep water. But I wanted to do something or other very desperate, what, I hardly knew myself. As I ran, I debated whether I should take off my clothes, or drown with them on; I did not remember reading how suicides of hydropathic tendencies had managed that detail. The boys would find my body Sunday morning when they came down to bathe, I thought. Yet some one else might find me; and it seemed more decent and proper to drown with them on. I walked around the Little Sea and singled out the deepest place in it, where there was four or five feet of water. It looked to be fully sufficient.

There was now nothing to prevent my going ahead with my project; but since I had looked into the water and saw how aqueous it appeared, considered as a place to spend from that morning on till Sunday in, haste did not seem altogether so desirable, and I was not in nearly so great a hurry. I sat down on a stone to think it over once more. It would be unbecoming, I recollected, to take such a step without mental preparation.

Still, I actually did half believe that when I rose from that stone, I should plunge into the pond. I imagine that I sat there for more than half an hour, and very likely should have remained much longer had the Old Squire not made his appearance, glancing curiously over the dam, a few rods below me.

It struck me as a little singular that he should be there so early and so very soon after breakfast. He had an axe on his shoulder, however, and it occurred to me that it might possibly be that he was there to mend the pasture fence. When he saw me sitting there, he smiled broadly, and coming nearer said, "Oh, this isn't nearly so good a brook for fishing as the other one on the west side."

"'Fishing!'" thought I. "How little he knows what brought me here! Can he not see that I haven't a pole?"

"Don't know exactly why," he continued, retrospectively, "but there never were nearly so many trout here as in the west brook. I meant to have given you and Addison a day to go over there before now, but work has been rather pressing ever since you came."

I rose from the stone, thinking—and not wholly sorry to think—that suicide must necessarily be postponed for that day, at least; for I could not, of course, harrow the old gentleman's feelings by plunging into the Little Sea before his very eyes. He seemed so guileless, too, and so wholly unsuspecting of my fell design!

As we walked away, he told me of great trout which he had caught when a boy, particularly of one big three-pound trout which he had captured at a deep hole in the west brook, down near the lake.

My mind was still too much disturbed to enjoy these piscatorial reminiscences, however; and noting this, after a time, Gramp opened another subject with me.

"A man has lately made an offer for my farm and timber lands here," said he. "I do not know that I shall accept it; but I have had some thoughts of selling and moving out West. If I should, I suppose you would have to go back to Philadelphia. If I went West to look for a farm, I should call at Philadelphia on my way. You and I would make the trip there together."

It is astonishing what an effect that last remark of grandfather's produced upon me. The whole world changed from deepest, darkest blue to rose color in one minute; and I said, provisionally, to myself that even if he did not sell so that we could start for a month, I could perhaps endure it.

Observing the cheerier light in my face, probably, the old gentleman laughed good-naturedly. He had not forgotten what it is to be a boy and feel a boy's intense sorrows as well as joys; and he went on to say that a journey to Philadelphia was a mere nothing nowadays. Why, one might start, as for instance, that morning and be at Philadelphia the next morning at eleven o'clock!

But how glad I was that he did not notice that I was homesick! He did not even appear to mistrust such a thing. And as for drowning myself, well, the less said or thought about that now the better.

I walked back to the house with the Old Squire; and I got him to let me carry the axe, for I wanted Addison and Halse to think that Gramp and I had been off mending fence together.

At intervals, however, for a month or more, I continued to be afflicted by transient spasms of homesickness, but none of them were as severe as these first ones, and they gradually ceased altogether.

Dear boys and girls who are homesick, it is astonishing sometimes how quickly the spasm will pass off, and how bright and cheery life will look again a few moments later. So don't jump into deep water without waiting a bit to think it over. It is a hard old world to live in. I don't pretend to tell you that it isn't; yet life has a great many pleasant spots, after all, if only we will have a little patience and courage to wait and look for them. Scores of poor, desperate young people have actually drowned themselves, from one cause or another, who would have scrambled out and lived happily for years afterwards, if only they had not jumped in where the water was so deep! A safe rule in all these cases is never try to commit suicide by drowning till after you have learned to swim.



CHAPTER X

MUG-BREAD, PONES AND JOHNNY-REB TOAST

To this day I recall with what a zest my appetite returned after that last attack of homesickness, and how good the farm food tasted. That day, too, Gram had "mug-bread," and for supper pones made into Johnny-reb toast. But these, perhaps, are unheard-of dishes to many readers.

The pones were simply large, round, thin corn-meal cakes baked in a fritter-spider in a hot oven. I have lately written to Cousin Ellen, who now lives in the far Northwest, to ask her just how they used to make those pones at the old farm. She has replied lightly that for a batch of pones, they merely took a quart of yellow corn-meal, two tablespoonfuls of wheat flour, a teaspoonful of salt and half a teaspoonful of soda, all well stirred to a thin batter in boiling-hot water. This batter was then poured into large fritter-spiders, forming thin sheets, and baked yellow-brown in a hot oven. To make these pones into "Johnny-reb toast," they were basted while still hot with butter, then moistened plentifully with Jersey milk which was half cream, allowed to stand five minutes, then served still warm.

The recipe, I may add, came from Virginia in 1862, being brought home to Maine by one of my uncles, who lived for a time in an Old Dominion family, despite all the asperities of the War. From the same sunny homeland of historic Presidents we obtained the recipe for a marvellously good spider-cake, but that came later, as I shall relate in due course.

As a hungry boy I used sometimes to think that pones and "Johnny-reb toast" were pretty nearly worth the War to us!

Yet neither of these ever came quite up to "mug-bread"—the best flour bread ever made, I still verily believe.

But the making and the baking of it are not easy, and a failure with mug-bread is something awful!

The reader may not know it as mug-bread, for that was a local name, confined largely to our own Maine homestead and vicinity. It has been called milk-yeast bread, patent bread, milk-emptyings bread and salt-rising bread; and it has also been stigmatized by several opprobrious and offensive epithets, bestowed, I am told, by irate housewives who lacked the skill and genius to make it.

We named it "mug-bread" because Gram always started it in an old porcelain mug; a tall, white, lavender-and-gold banded mug, that held more than a quart, but was sadly cracked, and, for safety's sake, was wound just above the handle with fine white silk cord.

That mug was sixty-eight years old, and that silk cord had been on it since 1842. Its familiar kitchen name was "Old Hannah." I suspect that the interstices of this ancient silk string were the lurking-places of that delightful yeast microbe that gave the flavor to the bread. For there was rarely a failure when that mug was used.

About once in four days, generally at night, Gram would take two tablespoonfuls of corn-meal, ten of boiled milk, and half a teaspoonful of salt, mix them well in that mug, and set it on the low mantel-shelf, behind the kitchen stove funnel, where it would keep uniformly warm overnight. She covered in the top of the mug with an old tin coffee-pot lid, which just fitted it.

When we saw "Old Hannah" go up there, we knew that some mug-bread was incubating, and, if all worked well, would be due the following afternoon for supper. For you cannot hurry mug-bread.

The next morning, by breakfast-time, a peep into the mug would show whether the little "eyes" had begun to open in the mixture or not. Here was where housewifely skill came in. Those eyes must be opened just so wide, and there must be just so many of them, or else it was not safe to proceed. It might be better to throw the setting away and start new, or else to let it stand till noon. Gram knew as soon as she had looked at it. If the omens were favorable, a cup of warm water and a variable quantity of carefully warmed flour were added, and a batter made of about the consistency for fritters. This was set up behind the funnel again, to rise till noon.

More flour was then added and the dough carefully worked and set for a third rising. About three o'clock it was put in tins and baked in an even oven.

The favorite loaves with us were "cart-wheels," formed by putting the dough in large, round, shallow tin plates, about a foot in diameter. When baked, the yellow-brown, crackery loaf was only an inch thick. The rule at Gram's table was a "cart-wheel" to a boy, with all the fresh Jersey butter and canned berries or fruit that he wanted with it.

Sometimes, however, the mug would disappear rather suddenly in the morning, and an odor as of sulphureted hydrogen would linger about, till the kitchen windows were raised and the fresh west wind admitted.

That meant that a failure had occurred; the wrong microbe had obtained possession of the mug. In such cases Gram acted promptly and said little. She was always reticent concerning mug-bread. It had unspeakable contingencies.

Ellen and Theodora shared the old lady's reticence. Ellen, in fact, could never be persuaded to eat it, good as it was.

"I know too much about it," she would say. "It isn't nice."

Beyond doubt, when "mug-bread" goes astray at about the second rising, the consequences are depressing.

If its little eyes fail to open and the batter takes on a greasy aspect, with a tendency to crawl and glide about, no time should be lost. Open all the windows at once and send the batter promptly to the swill-barrel. It is useless to dally with it. You will be sorry if you do. When it goes wrong, it is utterly depraved.

I remember an experience which Theodora and Ellen had with mug-bread on one occasion, when Gram was away from home. Aunt Nabbie and Uncle Pascal Mowbray came on from Philadelphia while she and the Old Squire were gone.

Aunt Nabbie was grandmother's sister, and she and Uncle Mowbray had been talking all that season of coming to visit us. But September had been spoken of as the time they were coming.

They changed their minds, however. Uncle Pascal desired to look after some business venture of his in Portland, and decided to come in August. It was a somewhat sudden change of plan, but they sent us a letter the day before they started, thinking that we would get it and meet them at the railway station.

Now, all dear city cousins, aunts, uncles and the rest of you who visit your country relatives, summer or winter, hear me! Do not hold back your letter telling them you are coming till the day before you start.

Nine times out of ten they will not get it. You will get there before the letter does; and the chances are that you will have to provide your own transportation for the six or ten miles from the railway station to the farm, and you will think that distance longer than all the rest of the journey.

Most likely, too, you will find the farmer gone to a Grange meeting; and by the time you have sat round the farmhouse door on your trunk till he gets back at sunset, you will be homesick, and maybe hungry.

Also—for there are two sides to the matter—your country brother and his wife will be troubled about it. So send your letter at least a week ahead.

The first we knew of the coming of Uncle Pascal and Aunt Nabbie, they drove into the yard with a livery team from the village, and an express wagon coming on behind with their trunks.

Besides Uncle and Aunt, there was a smiling, dark-haired youth with them, a grand-nephew of Uncle Mowbray, named Olin Randall, whom we had heard of often as a kind of third or fourth cousin, but had never seen. He had never beheld Maine before, and was regarding everything with curiosity and a little grin of condescension.

That grin of his nearly upset us, particularly Ellen and "Doad," who for a hundred reasons wished to make a very favorable impression on Uncle and Aunt Mowbray and all the family. I nearly forgot to mention that Uncle Mowbray was reputed very fussy and particular about his food.

Our two-story farmhouse was comfortable and big, and we had plenty of everything; but of course it was not altogether like one of the finest houses in Philadelphia. For Uncle Mowbray was a wealthy man, one of those thrifty, prosperous Philadelphia merchants of the era ending with the Civil War. He never let a dollar escape him.

They came just at dusk. We boys were doing the chores. The girls were getting supper. Theodora had resolved to try her hand at a batch of "mug-bread" for the next day, and had set "Old Hannah" up for it.

The unexpected arrival upset us all a good deal, particularly Ellen and Theodora, who had to bear the brunt of grandmother's absence, get tea, see to the spare rooms and do everything else. And then there was Olin, mildly grinning. His presence disturbed the girls worse than everything else. But Aunt Nabbie smoothed away their anxieties, and helped to make all comfortable.

We got through the evening better than had at first seemed likely, and in the morning the girls rose at five and tried to hurry that "mug-bread" along, with other things, so as to have some of it for dinner, for they found that they were short of bread.

Ellen, I believe, thought that they had better not attempt the risky experiment, but should start some hop-yeast bread.

Theodora, however, peeped into the old mug, saw encouraging eyes in it, and resolved to go on. They mixed it up with the necessary warm water and flour and set it carefully back for the second rising.

Perhaps they had a little hotter fire than usual, perhaps they had hurried it a shade too much, or—well, you can "perhaps" anything you like with milk-yeast bread. At all events, it took the wrong turn and began to perfume the kitchen.

If they had not been hard pressed and a little flurried that morning, the girls would probably have thrown it out. Instead, they took it down, saw that it was rising a little and—hoping that it would yet pull through—worked in more flour and soda, and hurried four loaves of it into the oven to bake.

Then it was that the unleavened turpitude of that hostile microbe displayed the full measure of its malignity. A horrible odor presently filled the place. Stale eggs would have been Araby the Blest beside it.

The girls hastily shut the kitchen doors, but doors would not hold it in. It captured the whole house. Aunt Nabbie, in the sitting-room, perceived it and came rustling out to give motherly advice and assistance.

And it chanced that while Theodora was confidentially explaining it to her, the kitchen door leading to the front piazza opened, and in walked Uncle Pascal, with Olin behind him. They had been out in the garden looking at the fruit, and had come back to get Aunt Nabbie to see the bees.

When that awful odor smote them they stopped short. Uncle Mowbray was a fastidious man. He sniffed and turned up his nose.

"Is it sink spouts?" he gasped. "Are the traps out of order?"

"No, no, Pascal!" said Aunt Nabbie, in a low tone, trying to quiet him. "It is only bread."

"Bread!" cried Uncle Mowbray, with a glance of rank suspicion at the two girls. "Bread smelling like that!"

Just then Ellen discovered something white, which appeared to be mysteriously increasing in size, in the shadow on the back side of the kitchen stove. After a glance she caught open the oven door.

It was that mug-bread dough! It had crawled—crawled out of the tins into the oven—crawled down under the oven door to the kitchen floor, where it made a viscous puddle, and was now trying, apparently, to crawl out of sight under the wood-box.

Aunt Nabbie burst out laughing; she could not help it. Then she tried to turn Uncle Mowbray out.

But no, he must stand there and talk about it. He was one of those men who are always peeping round the kitchen, to see if the women are doing things right. But Olin scudded out after one look, and the girls saw him under one of the Balm o' Gilead trees, shaking and laughing as if he would split.

Poor Doad and Nell! That was a dreadful forenoon for them. As youthful housekeepers they felt, themselves disgraced beyond redemption. In three years they had not recovered from it, and would cringe when any one reminded them of Uncle Mowbray and the mug-bread.



CHAPTER XI

THE BIRDS AND BIRD-SONGS AT THE OLD FARM

"Sing away, ye joyous birds, While the sun is o'er us."

Looking back to that first fortnight after my arrival at the Old Squire's, I think what most impressed my youthful mind was the country verdure and the bird-songs. Everything looked so very green, accustomed as my eyes were to the red city bricks, white doorsteps and dusty streets. The universal green of those June days at times well nigh bewildered me.

Astronomers tell us that there are systems of worlds in outer space, presided over by green suns; it was as if I had been transported to such a world. Moreover, the effect was cool and calm and healthful; cities are abnormal places of abode; man originated and during all the early ages of his development, lived in the green, arboreal country, surrounded by rustic scenery and sylvan quiet. The clangor and roar of a great city, particularly the noise by night, is unnatural; nor are the reflected colors from urban structures normal to the eye. Add to these the undue tension to which city life, as a whole, braces the living substance of brain and nerve, and the reason why city populations have to be so constantly recruited from the country is in some degree explained. Children even more than older persons need country surroundings.

Next to the deep novelty of the wide green landscape, came the bird-songs. It was June. The air seemed to me all a-quiver with bird-notes, and I was listening to each and every one. Ah, to my untried, youthful eyes those fresh great hay-fields, whitening with ox-eyed daisies, reddening with sweet-scented clover and streaked golden with vivid yellow butter-cups, over which the song-convulsed bobolinks hovered on arcuate wings!

I had never heard the nesting song of a bobolink before. What a song it is!—the eager zeal, the exultation in it. The overflowing, rollicking joy with which it is poured forth, filled me with such gleeful astonishment, the first time I heard one, and struck such a chord of sympathetic feeling in my heart and so powerfully, that I recollect shouting, "ye-ho!" and racing tumultuously after the rapturous singer.

"What does that bird say?" I cried.

Laughing quietly at my fresh curiosity, the Old Squire told me that the bird was supposed to say,—

"Bob o' Lincoln, take-a-stick-and-give-a-lick, Bob-olink, Kitty-link, Withy-link, Billy-seeble, see, see, see!"

Addison gave a somewhat different interpretation which has now slipped my memory; I deemed the Old Squire's version the more reliable one. While strawberrying in the fields, that summer, I searched three or four times for the nests which I felt sure were close by, in the grass, for the little plain gray wife of the noisy singer sat on the weed-tops, crying,—"Skack! skack!" but I could not find them.

Once, I remember, the following year Theodora and I resolved that we would find the nest of one bold fellow that kept singing close over our heads, as we were gathering strawberries in a grassy swale, in the west field. We set down our dishes and crept over every foot of a tract at least a quarter of an acre in extent, and went over a part of it two or three times. At last, we found it, but not till we had crushed both nest and eggs beneath our crawling knees—a denouement which distressed Theodora so much that she declared she would never search for a bobolink's nest again. "Clumsy monsters that we are," said she; "the poor thing's nest is crushed into the dirt!"

When we came to mow that swale a few days after, Gramp first marvelled, then grumbled repeatedly; for the grass was in a mat. He spoke of it at the dinner table that day, making a covert accusation against Gram, whereupon Theodora and I owned up in the matter, Doad naively adding that we had done it "on the strength of Gram's original permit," but that we had agreed never to do so again. The Old Squire laughed a little grimly and said he wanted it understood, that the permit, alluded to, was not transferable. But the old lady now interposed her opinion, that the permit could be made a moderate use of by others, if she saw fit—and needed strawberries.

A pair of blue-birds built their nest in a box which Addison had nailed to a short pole and set up in the barnyard wall; and every morning, as we milked the cows, we would hear their plaintive notes, repeated over and over to each other as they flew about;—"Deary, cheer up, Deary, cheer up!" as if life needed constant mutual consolation, to be supported. "Old Ummy," the house cat, was much inclined to watch their box and once attempted to climb up to them.

Two pairs of peewees built about the premises, one just inside the south barn cellar, the other under a projecting window-sill at the end of the wagon-house. These two pairs, or younger birds reared there, had built in these same places for seven or eight years. Night and morning as we milked, and at noon also, as we sat grinding scythes at the well, those old peewees would alight on posts, or gables, rub their beaks twice on the dry wood and cry, "Peewee, peewee, peewitic; pewee, peer-a-zitic!" For some not very good reason, I took a boyish dislike to peewees. They are very useful birds, great destroyers of worms, moths and flies, and so far as I know, never do the slightest harm, which can hardly be said of all our feathered favorites.

As we hoed potatoes and corn on those green June days, the song of the little gray ground sparrows was constantly in my ears, although the others seemed not to notice it.

"And what does that one say?" I asked Gramp.

"What one?" the old gentleman asked.

"Why, that bird! It sings all the time," I rejoined. "Don't you hear it?"

He stopped and appeared to listen, at a loss, for a minute, as to what I heard.

"Oh, those sparrows," replied he, at length. "Addison, can you tell him what they say?"

"Yes," replied Ad, laughing, "they say and say it very distinctly, too, 'Charlotte, Charlotte, don't you hear me whistle?' Charlotte is his mate, you know; and the reply to that is 'Philip, Philip's sitting on the thistle.'"

"That is a little different from what they used to tell me when I was a boy," Gramp remarked. "I was told that they say, 'War-link, war-link, christle, christle, christle; high-link, high-link, twiddle, twiddle, twiddle.'"

"Good deal anybody knows what a bird says," Halstead exclaimed, derisively. "They don't say anything that I can make out."

But it seemed to me, after Addison had mentioned it, that the first, or opening note of the song sparrow, was much like, "Charlotte, Charlotte, don't you hear me whistle?" They had several other notes, too, not as easily likened to human language; indeed, these humble little sparrows, when one comes to listen closely to them in all their moods, have a curious variety of short arias.

During my second week at the farm, I found a sparrow's nest in a small bunch of hard-hack, a few rods from the cow-pasture bars, with four eggs, resembling, only a little larger than, speckled garden beans; and I visited it every morning, till the sprawling, skinny little chicks were hatched. But on the third morning the nest was empty; something had taken them. Addison said that it was most likely a crow, but possibly a snake. We often found the nests, while haying in the fields; the scythe generally passed over them without doing any harm, and to save them from the rake, we would put up a stick close beside them. But their enemies are wofully numerous; not half the nests of young are reared. Ants, I think, kill numbers of the nestlings, soon after they are hatched, when they chance to be near an ant-hill.

But in the early mornings and evenings, and before the quickly gathering south rains, the songsters of all others, which made the air vocal, were the great, bold, red-breasted robins, not fewer than nine pairs of which had their capacious nests in the garden, orchard and Balm o' Gilead trees. They always took the greater part of our cherries, till Addison at a considerable expense, some years later, bought mosquito netting to spread over the tree tops; and they also ate strawberries greedily; but we as constantly overlooked their offenses, they sang so royally and came familiarly back to us so early every spring. No one can long find the heart to injure Robin Red-Breast.

I do not think it necessary to qualify, or speak of this our fine bird as the "American robin, or red-breasted thrush," because a different bird is called the robin in England. This our bird is the Robin; and we shall call it so without apology, or explanatory adjectives.

The robin songs in the Balm o' Gileads, just across the yard from our chamber windows, were the matins that often waked us in June, and sounded in our drowsy ears as we lay, still half asleep, reluctant to rise and dress. For however it may be with most boys, I am obliged to confess that both then and later, I was a sleepy-head in the morning; it always seemed to me on waking, particularly in the summer months, that I was not half rested, and that I would give almost anything I possessed for another hour of sleep. As a fact, I now feel sure that I did not get sleep enough, from half past nine in the evening to five in the morning; and I think that most boys and girls of thirteen and fourteen need nine hours of sleep in every twenty-four hours, especially where they are in active exercise or work throughout the day. It is really cruel to drive a boy up when he is so shockingly sleepy! There was always so much going on, that we could not well go to bed till after nine in the evening, although I would sometimes steal away up-stairs as soon as it was dark.

Curiously enough it was when I was but about half awake in the morning, that those robin-songs sounded the most distinctly, and I seemed to hear every note and trill which they uttered.

"Tulip, tulip, tulip; skillit, skillit, Tulip, skillit; fill it, fill it, fill it;"—

followed after a moment or two, perhaps, by a shrill and noisy "Piff! piff! piff!"—as some sudden dissension broke out, or some suspicious cat, or other marauder, came near the nest tree. The crows, always bold in the early morning hours, would come into the Balm o' Gileads after birds' nests, sometimes, before we were astir. I remember that Addison once cut my nap short by firing his gun from the chamber window at a crow that was sneaking into the Balm o' Gileads after young robins. He shot the crow, but my own ear rang for more than two hours, and I was so confused for a time, that I scarcely knew enough to dress myself.

There is no combination of letters which more nearly represents the song notes of the robin than the above, I think, although many attempts have been made to render them into some semblance of human language. Addison always insisted that they said, "Dew-lip, Dew-lip; bill it, bill it, bill it;"—the whole song being an exhortation of the robin to his mate whose name was Dew-lip, to get up and bill it for worms. Halstead had somewheres got hold of a medical rendering of the song, by a waggish doctor who declared that the robins were constantly admonishing him in the line of his profession:—

"Kill 'em, cure 'em; physic, physic."

But the rest of us scouted this partisan interpretation.

The explosive, alarmingly energetic danger cry of, "Piff, piff," which will so suddenly wake the entire vicinity of the nest, is at times modified and given quite a different intonation, as if to express discontent: "Fibb, fibb!" and sometimes even loneliness: "Pheeb, pheeb!"—very mournful.

During a shower, accompanied by wind in heavy wrenching gusts, in the night, that summer, a nest containing four young robins fell from a maple, a few rods down the lane, into the grass beneath. Theodora heard the outcry of the old robins, blended with the thunder and the roar of the rain, in the night, and noticing their mournful notes next morning about the tree, made search and discovered the calamity. Addison and she gathered up the nestlings and putting them in an old berry box, lined with grass and cotton batting, tied the improvised nest to a branch of the maple. For an hour or two the scolding old birds would not go near the thing, but later in the day we saw them, feeding their young in it, quite as if nothing had happened to disturb them.

In the rear of the wagon-house there grew a good-sized mountain ash or round-wood tree which nearly every fall was crowned with the usual great bright-red clusters of bitter berries. Late in October the robins always came for those berries, and sometimes a flock of fifty or sixty would assemble. We often tried to frighten the birds away, for the red clusters are beautiful in winter, but for a long time we never succeeded in saving them. The robins would linger about for a week, or more, rather than leave a single bunch of those berries ungathered. Addison once placed a stuffed cat-skin in the tree, at which the robins scolded vociferously for a day or two from the neighboring shrubs and fence; but they suddenly discovered the deception and got all the remaining berries in the course of a single forenoon. Addison was boasting a little of the success of his ruse when, at dinner, Ellen quietly bade him go look at the tree. The robins had already got every berry and gone, leaving the feline effigy in the bare tree, an object of mirth and ridicule. A scarecrow made of old clothes, stuffed with hay and crowned by an old hat, set up in the tree the following year, served no better purpose. Ellen and Theodora then hung an old tin clothes boiler in the tree, and arranged a jangling bunch of tin ware inside it, with a long line running to the kitchen window, where they could conveniently give it a jerk every few minutes. This device answered well for a day or two, and it was very amusing to see those robins scatter from the tree, when the line was pulled. They were some little time making up their minds concerning it, and would sit on the back fence and rub their beaks on the posts, at intervals, as if making a great effort to comprehend the cause of the "manifestations" inside the boiler. No doubt the more superstitious ones attributed it to "spirits." Skepticism increased, however, and by the second day one unbelieving red fellow refused to budge, till the line was jerked twice, and soon after that they wore the girls out, pulling it, and got the berries as usual. The year after, Addison saved the berries by stretching one of his cherry-tree nets over the round-wood tree, in October. It chanced, however, that the tree failed to produce a crop of berries the next season and died a year or two later;—a circumstance which Gram hinted, mysteriously, might be a "dispensation," on account of our persistent efforts to thwart the robins. It should be taken into account, however, that the mountain-ash is not long-lived, and that this was already an old tree.

In a large maple, down the lane, a preacher-bird sang every day in June and until into August, generally loudest and most continuously, from eleven till two o'clock. On coming to or going from our dinner, we would often hear him: sometimes he sang in the morning and now and then after supper. This bird—it is the red-eyed vireo—has an oddly persistent, pragmatic note, which can hardly be called singing, being more like declamation and somewhat disconnected and disjoint, as if the "preacher" were laying down certain truths and facts and seeking by constant iteration to impress them upon dullards. Betwixt every one of these short sentences, there is a little pause, as if the preacher were waiting for the truth to strike home to his hearers; but if the bird is watched, he will be seen to be picking and hopping about on the branch which serves him as a pulpit, snapping up a bug or a seed here and there. Yet his discourse goes steadily on, by the half hour, or hour, sometimes with a rising inflection, as after a question, sometimes the falling, as having given an irrefutable answer, himself. Once the idea that the bird is preaching has entered a listener's mind, he can never shake it off.

"My hearers—where are you?—You know it—you see it.—Do you hear me?—Do you believe it?" And so on, upon the same insistent and at length tiresome strain.

"Oh, I do wish that preacher bird would stop," Ellen would exclaim at times. "He has 'preached' steadily all the forenoon!"

His place for singing was always about half way from the ground to the top of the maple, and he rarely came out in sight. The female was probably sitting on her nest, hard by. They are trim little olive-tinted birds and often rear two broods, I think, for they remain north till autumn.

Once while Elder Witham was with us, in haying time, Ellen exclaimed, inadvertently, as we were going in to sit down at table one day, "There's that preacher bird again!"

The Elder looked at her a moment and said slowly, "'Preacher-bird, preacher-bird,' what kind of a bird is that, young lady?"

Greatly abashed at her lapse, Ellen hardly knew how to best explain it, but Addison came to her rescue. "There are two of those vireos," he remarked in a perfectly natural, matter-of-fact tone. "One of them, the warbling vireo, they call the 'brigadier' on account of its peculiar note, and the other or red-eyed vireo, the 'preacher,' from its earnest manner of utterance. I don't know," Addison continued, with candid frankness, "that the names are very well chosen, but we have got in the habit of calling them that way."

The Elder listened to this, observing Addison closely, then appeared thoughtful for a moment and said, impressively, "Well, all God's creatures preach, if only we have ears to hear them." Ellen drew a long breath of relief, and after dinner, out on the wood-shed walk, she took Addison by the button and said, "You're a treasure, Ad; ask me for a cooky any time after this."

The brigadier, or warbling vireo, frequently sits on the tops of trees, when singing; while the preacher takes his stand midway from the ground upwards; the brigadier, too, more frequently joins in the great opening overture of all bird voices, at dawn, to usher in the new day, while preacher reserves his notes till the earlier choir has ceased its anthem. Withal the little preacher is much more apt to nest in trees near the habitations of men than his congener, the brigadier, who not unfrequently makes his abode at a distance from buildings, where forests border pastures, or old roads enter woody lands.

Another shrill, small songster of habits quite similar to the brigadier we used sometimes to hear, but rarely saw, on our way over to the "Aunt Hannah lot," an adjunct of the Old Squire's farm, to reach which we crossed a tract of sparse woods. Its notes, prolonged on a very sharp, high key, resembled the words, My fee-fee-fee-fee-fee! each louder and keener than the preceding.

Addison was quite uncertain as to this bird, during the first and second summers we were at the farm. We only saw it once or twice; for its favorite place, while singing, is at the top of some large dense tree; and we were never able to find its nest. Addison at length decided that it was an oven-bird, a surmise which he greatly desired to verify by finding the rest.

Later in life he has often laughed over our ignorance and our fruitless quests at that time.

Among the raspberry and blackberry briars, beside the stone wall on the south side of this same old road, leading to the Aunt Hannah lot, we used to see, occasionally, a deep blue indigo-bird, a very active little fellow, always flitting and hopping about amongst the briars. But we never heard it sing, nor utter any note, save rarely a petulant snip, snip, and never found its nest.

To the south of the same lot there was a tract of mixed wood, sapling pines, maples, a few beeches, and farther down, nearer the brook, white ash and great yellow birches, with swamp maples, osier and alder. Here among the beeches, maples and pines, we at times heard a Theresa-bird. Theodora chanced to know something of this bird; and I remember that the first time we ever went there together, she called out to us to listen to the low, sweet note, which otherwise, in our haste, we should not have noticed. Addison had never heard it then, and his volumes of Audubon did not describe New England birds very clearly; but Theodora said this was a Theresa-bird (which we subsequently found to be the Green Warbler) and that its song was supposed, in Catholic countries, to be a petition to St. Theresa, viz.,—"Hear me, St. Theresa," beginning quite high and sinking to a much lower strain. I have since seen in the naturalist Nuttall's work, that this author compares the note of the Green Warbler to the syllables, te-de-deritsea, repeated slowly and melodiously.

On the north side of the lane, leading from the house down to the road, opposite the maple above alluded to, where the robins had a nest, there stood two elms, quite tall trees, in the uppermost of which, during three summers, a pair of Baltimore orioles built. These orioles had never come there previously; at least, the Old Squire had never seen one, but Gram recognized them the first time one sang, as an old acquaintance of her girlhood days; she called them Golden Robins and was much delighted to hear them. They came on one of the first days of June; and as I had arrived but a few days previously, Gram declared that I "had brought them with me." But the fact is, that the Baltimore oriole moves its habitat slowly northeastward, in the wake of man and his orchards and shade trees; for it is one of those birds which, like the robin, depend on mankind for protection. This pair constructed a hanging nest from a twig of one of the drooping elm branches and reared a brood successfully that season; and throughout that entire month of June, their song, uttered at intervals of their labors, was a daily delight to us all. Next after the wood thrush and the robin, the loud yet sweetly modulated call of the Baltimore oriole is the most pleasing of all our bird notes. Pure and sweet as it is, too, it nearly always startles the hearer, from its regal volume and 5 strength. Gram's version of its song was, Cusick, cusick! So-ho-o-o! Do you know I'm back with you! But the words themselves give no idea whatever of the song, unless uttered with the strange, liquid modulations which characterize it.

During the third season some accident befell the pair, or their nest; they suddenly disappeared and thenceforward we missed their melodious invocations. Gram, in particular, lamented their departure. A pair, perhaps the same pair, afterwards built in a butternut tree near the Edwards' farmhouse; but they never returned to us. To the lover of birds, the oriole in its flight among the trees, like a yellow meteor flashing past, is a sight that instantly rivets the attention, and is as delightfully startling to the eye as its song is to the ear. But I know of no device by means of which they can be attracted to nest in any given locality; their tastes are not well enough known to us; "houses," like those which attract the blue-bird and the martin, possess no charm for the oriole. With the first of June Gram watched, wistfully, for the return of this pair, during a number of successive springs; and for her sake especially, we all hoped they would come back.

I arrived too late the first spring, to hear the woodlands echo to the May-note of the white-throated sparrow. Once only, while going out to get the cows with little Wealthy, the second week after I came, I heard it twice repeated, from the woods along the south side of the pasture, and when I asked my small companion what kind of a bird that was, she roguishly cried, "Oh, that's old Ben Peabody."

"Is that what he says?" I asked, for the name at once struck me as being like the bird's note.

"Yes," cried Wealthy. "He says, 'Old Ben Peabody, Peabody, Peabody,' just as plain as anything; Theodora says so; and so does Nell and all of us, but Addison. Ad thinks he says, 'All day whittling, whittling, whittling.' And Alf Batchelder says,—but I'll not tell what he thinks the bird says."

"What is it?" I queried.

"It's nothing very pretty," quoth Wealthy, running off to get around the cows, thereby evading the question altogether, for she had not as yet grown very well acquainted with me.

But I have perhaps lingered too long with birds and bird-songs. It is a fond subject, however, and scarcely can I forbear to speak of the veeries, the vesper-birds, and "hair-birds" whose nests we so often found in the orchard; the cedar birds or cherry birds which so persistently stripped the wild cherry trees and pear-plum shrubs; the wood thrushes that trilled forth such sad, mellow refrains in the cool, gray border of the wood-lot below the fields, at eventide; the yellow-hammers that tapped on the pasture stumps and cried out boisterously when rain was impending; the wrens that filled and re-filled a bit of hollow aqueduct log on the lane wall, with sticks for a nest and laid thirteen eggs in it; the hundreds of black-birds that built in the reeds down at the great bog, near the head of the lake; the sap-suckers that punctured the trunks of the apple-trees with thousands of tiny holes; the many-voiced blue-jays that came around when the corn was ripening in September and sometimes lingered all winter in the neighborhood.

And of the great pileated woodpeckers, a pair of which occasionally cried loud and long from the five lofty pine stubs in the colt pasture, beyond the Aunt Hannah lot; the yellow-birds that piped, pee-chid-aby, pee-chid-aby, on wavy lines of flight, upon the last days of August, just ere taking wing for warmer climes; the imitative cat-birds that built in the alders along the road across the meadow, whose nests the boys held it lawful to destroy because, forsooth, "they sucked other birds' eggs," a false accusation rendered plausible, perhaps, from their disagreeable feline squalls, and not wholly ingenuous imitations of the songs of the thrush, the veery and the robin.

How well, too, I recall the cuckoos that, night or day, intoned so moodily in the willow copses below the east field fence and suffered from a like unpopular accusation of "laying their eggs in other birds' nests." Also the mated triads of sooty chimney swallows that rumbled nightly in the great brick flues of the farmhouse, and at first almost terrified me, but at length furnished the thalamian refrain that most surely lulled me asleep; the red-headed woodpeckers that with sharp cries and concave stoop of flight moved fitfully, from tree to tree, tapping this one loudly, that one low and dull, and whose nest hole in the dead maple on the hillside was re-occupied year after year, till at last the stub blew down and broke short off at the hole itself; the king-fishers that with the same stooping flight, sprung their sharp rattles along the brooks and lakeside; the martins that feloniously caught the bees, and every season dragged their squalling, screaming young out of their pole-house, then poked them off the platform to fly for themselves, having first, however, cleared the yard of cats.

The militant king birds, too, that built every June on the tops of the small apple-trees in the young orchard, and raged in mid air, overhead, pouring out a wild farago of sharp cries, never so happy as when in full career after crows, hawks, cats or dogs; the moth-catching night-hawks that cried peerk from their wide mouths, high in the sky at nightfall, and dived far aslant on stiff wings, with a long drawn soo-oo-ook; the clucking whip-poor-wills, that chanted from the bare flat pasture rocks; the chickadees that came into the orchard and about the great loose farm woodpile, in February, with their odd little minor refrain of cic-a-da-da-da-da, mere feathery mites of ceaseless activity that somehow did not freeze, at 20 deg. below zero.

In this freezing weather, too, came the white-winged flocks of snow-buntings, that heralded the coming storm and flew away, blending with the whirling snowflakes, uttering queer thin notes that seemed like spirit voices from the upper air: all these and many others, Nature's humble angels, what part and parcel they were of that dear old farm life of ours!

Nor yet have I mentioned the larger game birds, nor the birds of prey; the "hoot-owls" that both in summer and winter, but oftenest in March and October, on still, dark, cloudy evenings, uttered their dismal, deep bass hoot, hoot, hoo-oo-oot, from the depths of the gloomy forest side, beyond the Little Sea; the hen-hawks that cried down chickee-ee to us, from endless mazy circles high over the farm, and occasionally decimated the poultry, or were seen sailing low across the fields with a snake dangling from their claws; the eagles that seldom, but on a few occasions paid a brief visit to the vicinity; the herons that frogged along the boggy shore of the lake and built their nests in the tops of the Foy Brook pines; the wild geese that flew northward in a wide V, early in the spring and again southward in October; the sheldrake and the black ducks which Addison had such success shooting every fall, in the old mill pond, beyond the east wood-lot; the swift-diving loons of the blue Pennesseewassee, that flew heavily across the hills, to several northerly ponds, uttering shaken, hollow cries, or that in the early evening and morning hours, pealed their mellow, alto horns from the calm bosom of the lake; the partridges that "drummed" in the outlying copses and patches of second growth, in April, and led forth their broods in June, subject every autumn to our first excited, early efforts at gunning; and last of all, the flapping, canny, thievish, black crows that like the foxes were always about, and always at loggerheads with the farmers.



CHAPTER XII

TWO VERY EARLY CALLERS—EACH ON BUSINESS

Except on Sunday mornings, breakfast at the farm in summer came at six. The Old Squire himself was often astir at four; and we boys were supposed to get up at five, so as to have milking done and other barn chores off, ready to go into the field from the breakfast table. Gram and the girls also rose at five, to get breakfast, take care of the milk and look after the poultry. Everybody, in fact, rose with the birds in that rural community. But often I was scarcely more than half awake at breakfast; Ellen and Wealthy, too, were in much the same case.

On one of these early mornings when I had been there about three weeks, our drowsiness at the breakfast table was dispelled by the arrival of two early callers—each on business.

Gram was pouring the coffee, when the outer door opened and a tall, sallow, dark-complexioned woman entered, the same whom I had met on the Meadow Brook bridge, while leading Little Dagon. She wore a calico gown and sun-bonnet, and may have been fifty years of age; and she walked in quite as a matter of course, saying, "How do you do, Joseph, how do you do, Ruth?" to the Old Squire and Gram.

"Why, how do you do, Olive?" said Gram, but not in the most cordial of tones. "Will you have some breakfast with us?"

"I have been to breakfast, Ruth," replied this visitor, throwing back her sun-bonnet and thereby displaying a forehead and brow that for height and breadth was truly Websterian. "I came to get my old dress that I left here when I cleaned house for you last spring, and I should also like that dollar that's owing me."

"Olive," rejoined Gram severely, "I do not owe you a dollar."

"Ruth," replied the caller with equal severity, "you do owe me a dollar."

She proceeded, as one quite familiar in the house, to the kitchen closet and took therefrom an old soiled gingham gown.

"Olive," said the Old Squire, "are you quite sure that there is a dollar due you here?"

"Joseph," replied the lofty-browed woman, "do you think I would say so, if I did not know it?"

"No, Olive, I don't think you would," said the Old Squire.

"It's no such thing, Olive," cried Gram, looking somewhat heated. "I always paid you up when you cleaned house for me and when you spun for me."

"Always but that one time, Ruth. Then you did not—into a dollar," replied the sallow woman, positively.

An argument ensued. It appeared that the debated dollar was a matter of three or four years standing. There was little doubt that both were equally honest in their convictions concerning it, pro and con. Still, they were a dollar apart, somehow. Furthermore, it came out, that "Olive" when she felt periodically poor, or out of sorts, was in the habit of calling and dunning Gram for that dollar, much to the old lady's displeasure.

The Old Squire sat uneasily and listened to the talk, with growing disfavor. At last he pulled out his pocketbook. "I will pay you the dollar, Olive," he said, "if only to stop the dispute about it."

"You shan't do it, Joseph!" exclaimed Gram. "There's no dollar due her."

But the Old Squire persisted in handing the woman a dollar.

"I do not care whether it is due or not!" he exclaimed. "I have heard altogether too much of this."

"I thank you, Joseph, for doing me justice of my hard-handed employer," said the tall woman, austerely.

"Now did ever anybody hear the like!" Gram exclaimed, pink from vexation. "Oh, Olive, you—you—you bold thing, to say that of me!"

"There, there!" cried the Old Squire. "Peace, women folks. Remember that you are both Christians and public professors."

Gram sat and fanned herself, fast and hard. Our visitor folded the dress into a bundle and marched slowly and austerely out.

"Olive, I hope your conscience is clear," Gram called after her severely.

"Ruth, I hope your conscience is as clear as mine," the departing one called back in calm tones, from the yard outside.

She left an awkward silence behind her; breakfast had come to a standstill; and I improved the elemental sort of hush, to whisper to Theodora, who had been at the farm a year, and ask who this portentous disturber of the family credit really was.

"Oh, it is only 'Aunt Olive,'" Theodora whispered back. "She comes here to help us every spring and fall."

"Is she our actual aunt?" I asked in some dismay.

"No, she isn't our real, kindred aunt," said Theodora, "but folks call her Aunt Olive. She is a sister to Elder Witham; and they say she can quote more Scripture than the Elder himself.

"And I'm sort of glad that Gramp gave her the dollar," Theodora added, in a still lower whisper. "Maybe Gram did forget to pay her, once."

But Gram was both incensed and humiliated. She resumed the interrupted coffee pouring and handed the Old Squire his cup, with a look of deep reproach.

Partly to change the unpleasant subject, perhaps, he said to us briskly, "Boys, if we have good luck and get our haying work along, so we can, we will all make a trip over to Norridgewock and see Father Rasle's monument.

"Ruth, wouldn't you like to take a good long drive over to Norridgewock, after the grain is in?" he asked in pacificatory tones.

"Joseph!" replied Gram, "you make me smile! You have been talking of driving over to Norridgewock to visit Father Rasle's monument, and of going to Lovewell's Pond, ever since I first knew you! But you never have been, and I haven't a thought that you ever will go!"

"Well, but something has always come up to prevent it, Ruth," Gramp replied hastily.

"Yes, Joseph, and something will come up to prevent it this year, too."

It was at this point that the second early caller had his arrival announced. Little Wealthy, who had stolen out to watch Aunt Olive's departure and then gone to the barn to see to her own small brood of chicks, came running in headlong and cried, "Oh, Gram! Gram! a great big fox has got one of your geese—on his back—and is running away!"

"What!" exclaimed Gram, setting the heavy coffee-pot down again with a roiling bump. "Oh, Lord, what a morning. Where, child, where?"

"Out beyond the west barn!" cried Wealthy; but by this time Addison, Halse and I were out of doors, in pursuit.

Beyond the west barn, there was a little hollow, or swale, where a spring issued; and a few rods below the spring, a dam had been constructed across the swale to form a goose-pond for Gram's flock. It was a muddy, ill-smelling place; but hither the geese would always waddle forth of a summer morning, and spend most of the day, wading and swimming, with occasional loud outcries.

As we turned the corner of the barn, we met the flock—minus one—beating a retreat to the goose-shed. But the fox was not in sight.

"Which way did he go, Wealth?" cried Addison, for Wealthy had run after us, full of her important news.

"Right across the west field," she exclaimed. "He had the old goose on his back, and it was trying to squall, but couldn't."

"Get the gun, Halse!" exclaimed Addison. "No, it isn't loaded! Bother! But come on. The fox cannot run far with one of those heavy geese, without resting. He is probably behind the pasture wall."

We set off at speed across the field and heard Gram calling out to us, "Chase him, boys! Chase the old thief. You may make him drop it."

Away through the grass, laden with dew and "hopper spits," we careered, and came on the trail of the fox where he had brushed off the dew as he ran. But the rogue was not behind the pasture wall.

"Keep on," cried Addison, "he cannot run fast." We crossed the pasture and entered the sugar maple grove between the pasture and the Aunt Hannah Lot. As it chanced, the fox was lurking in the high brakes here, having stopped to rest, no doubt, as Addison had conjectured. We did not come upon him here, however; for warned probably by the noise which we made, the goose-hunter stole out silently on the farther side and ran on across the open fields of the Aunt Hannah Lot. As we emerged from the belt of woodland, we caught sight of him, toiling up a hillside beyond the fields, fifty or sixty rods away.

"It is of no use to chase him any further," said Addison, pulling up. "He will reach the woods in a few minutes more."

By this time we were all three badly out of breath. The fox had the best of the race. We could distinguish plainly the white goose across his back, in contrast to his butter-colored coat and great bushy tail.

"Wouldn't Gram fume to see that!" Halse exclaimed. "Her best old goose is taking its last ride."

"I think I know where that fox is going," remarked Addison. "I was in those woods, gunning, one day last fall, and I came to a fox burrow, in the side of a knoll, among trees. There was no end of yellow dirt, dug out, and there seemed to be two or three holes, leading back into the side-hill. I told the Old Squire about it. He said it was a fox-hole, and that there had been one there for years. When he was a young man, he once saw six foxes playing around that knoll, and, first and last, he trapped a number there."

We went back to our interrupted breakfast. Gram heard our tidings with much vexation. Gramp laughed. "If the foxes got every goose, I shouldn't cry," said he. "Nasty creatures! Worse than a parcel of pigs about the farm."

"But you like to put your head on a soft pillow as well as any one," replied Gram calmly. "If you know of anything that makes better pillows than live geese feathers, I shall be glad to hear about it."

The Old Squire not having any proper substitute to offer, Gram went on to say that she wished some of us possessed the energy (I believe she said spunk) to make an end of that fox; for now that it had achieved the capture of a goose from her flock, it would be quite likely to come back for another, in the course of a day or two.

This appeal stirred our pride, and after we had gone out to hoe corn that forenoon, Addison asked the Old Squire whether he thought it likely we could unearth the fox, if, as we suspected, it had its haunt in the burrow on the hillside of the Aunt Hannah Lot.

"Maybe," replied the Old Squire, "by digging hard enough and long enough. But 'tis no easy job."

Addison did not say anything more for ten or fifteen minutes, when he observed that as Gram seemed a good deal disturbed, he for one would not mind an hour or two of digging, if it would save her geese.

"Oh, I have nothing against her geese, boys," replied the old gentleman with a kind of apologetic laugh. "I like to hear her stand up for them once in a while.

"I wanted to get this corn hoed by to-morrow," he continued. "Let's see, to-morrow is Saturday. We will take the crowbar and some shovels and make a little trip over to that burrow, later this afternoon. Don't say anything about it at dinner; for likely as not we shall not find the fox there."

After we had hoed for some time longer, Addison said, "What if we have Halse run over to Edwardses', right after dinner, and ask Tom to take a bar, or shovel, and go with us. Tom is a good hand at digging,—and that fox may trouble them, too."

The Old Squire laughed. "You are a pretty crafty boy, Addison," said he.

Ad looked a little confused. "I knew Tom would like to go first rate," said he; "and as there may be considerable hard digging before us, I thought it would be all right to have somebody who could take his turn at it."

"Quite right," replied Gramp, still laughing. "Craft is a good thing and often helps along famously. But don't grow too crafty.

"I am quite willing for you to send for Thomas," he added. "I think it is a good idea."

Accordingly, at noon Halse went to the Edwards homestead, bearing an invitation to a fox-digging bee. They, too, were busy with their hoeing, but Mr. Edwards, who was a very good-humored man, gave Thomas permission to join us at two o'clock. When we went out from dinner to our own hoeing, we took along an axe, two spades, a hog-hook to pull out the fox, and a crowbar, also the gun; and after working two hours in the corn-field, we set off across the fields and pastures for the fox burrow, just as Thomas came running across lots to join us.

"Mother's glad to have me go," said he. "She lost a turkey last week; and father says there's a fox over in that burrow, this summer, no mistake. Father gets up at half-past three every morning now, and he says he has heard a fox bark over that way at about sunrise for a fortnight. But we will end his fun for him."

Thomas was such a resolute boy that it was always a treat to hear him talk.

Crossing the pasture, we climbed the hillside of the Aunt Hannah lot, and again entering the maple woods, went on for forty or fifty rods over rather rough ground.

"That's the knoll," said Addison, pointing to a hillock among the trees.

"Yes, that's the place," the Old Squire corroborated.

On the side of the knoll next us as we drew near, there was a large hole, leading downwards and backwards into the bank side. A quantity of yellow earth had been thrown out quite recently, looking as if dogs had tried to dig out the fox. Tom looked into the hole.

"Yes, siree," he exclaimed. "There's a fox lives here; I know by these flies in the mouth of the hole. You'll always see two or three of these flies at a hole where there's a fox or a wood-chuck."

Farther around the knoll there were two other holes, one beside a rock and the other under a birch-tree root, which manifestly led into the same burrow, deep back in the knoll.

"And only look here!" cried Addison. "See these bones and these feathers."

"Oho!" said the Old Squire. "'Tis a female fox with her cubs that has taken up her abode in the old burrow this summer. That accounts for her raids on the turkeys and geese; she's got a young family to look out for."

After some discussion, it was agreed to begin our assault at the hole where the bones and feathers had been brought out; and while Addison and I went to block up the entrance to the other two holes with stones, the Old Squire threw off his coat, and seizing the crowbar, commenced to break down the rooty ground over the hole, while Thomas and Halse cleared it away with their shovels. We worked by turns, or all together, as opportunity offered. It was no light task for a warm June afternoon, and we were soon perspiring freely. Gradually we removed the top of the knoll, following the hole inward, and came to the intersection of this one with another farther around to the west side. There was a considerable cavity here, matted underfoot with feathers and small bones. From this point the burrow crooked around a large rock down in the ground.

Listening now at this opening, we could hear faint sounds farther back in the earth, and an occasional slight sneeze.

"Digging to get away, or get out!" exclaimed Thomas.

While we were resting and listening, a sharp, querulous bark came suddenly to our ears from out in the woods behind us.

"'Tis the old fox!" said Addison. "She's been away. She isn't in the hole. But she has come back in sight, and she don't like the looks of us here." He seized the gun and went cautiously off in the direction of the sound, but could not again catch sight of the fox.

We resumed our digging, and soon broke into a still larger cavity, leading off from which were three passages. Fresh earth was flying back out of one of them.

"We are close hauls on the fox inside!" cried Thomas. "Stand ready with the gun, Ad; he may make a bolt out by us."

The Old Squire plied the crowbar again, and breaking down a part of the bank over the passage, we caught sight of three fox cubs, all making the dirt fly, digging away for dear life, to get farther back. As the bank broke down and the light fell in upon them, they turned for a moment from their labors, and casting a foxy eye up at us, "yapped" sharply and bristled themselves.

"Oh, the little rogues!" cried Addison. "Only look at them! Look at their little paws and their little noses all covered with yellow dirt! There they go at it again, digging!"

"Aren't they cunning!" exclaimed Thomas. "Fox all over, too. Regular little rascals. See the white of those eyes, will you, when they turn them up at us! Isn't that a rogue's eye now?"

"We will catch them and carry them home, and put them in a pen," said Addison. "By next November their skins will be worth something."

"They will make you lots of work, to tend them and get meat for them," said the Old Squire. "Their pelts will not half pay you for your trouble."

These cubs were several weeks old, I suppose, but they were not larger than half-grown kittens.

"It won't answer for you to grab them with your bare hands," the Old Squire warned us. "I did that once, when a boy, and found that a fox cub is sharp-bitten."

They were of rather lighter yellow tint than a full-grown fox, but otherwise much like, although their legs, we thought, were not yet as long in proportion as they would become; nor yet were their tails in full bush.

It was not quite as far across lots to the Edwards farm as it was to the Old Squire's, and at length Addison and Thomas set off to go there for a basket to put the foxes in, and some old thick gloves with which to catch them.

Meantime the rest of us remained hard by, to watch the burrow, lest the cubs should escape. Once, while the boys were gone, we heard the mother fox bark. Halse went after her with the gun; she was evidently lingering about, but he could not catch sight of her.

The boys returned with a bushel basket and an old potato sack, to tie over the top of it. A little more of the bank was then broken down, when Addison, reaching in with his hands, protected by a pair of buckskin gloves, seized first one, then another, of the snapping, snarling little vulpines and popped them into the basket. It was agreed that Thomas should have one of them; and in furtherance of this division of the spoils, Halse and Addison went around by way of the Edwards farm, with Tom and the basket, while the Old Squire and I loaded ourselves with the tools and took the direct route homeward.

Supper was ready and Theodora had been blowing the horn for us, long and loud; in fact, we met her by the corn-field, whither she had at length come in search of us. I hastily told her of the capture, but the Old Squire said, "Don't tell your grandmother till the boys come with the cubs, then we will show them to her."

So we went into the house and leisurely got ready for supper. At length, Addison and Halse came to the kitchen door with their basket; and Gramp said, "Come here, Ruth, and see two little fellows who helped eat your old goose."

Gram came out looking pretty stern at the word goose, and when Ad pulled the bag partly away and showed the two fox cubs, casting up the whites of their roguish eyes at her, she exclaimed harshly, "Ah, you little scamps!"

"But, oh, aren't they cunning! Aren't they pretty!" exclaimed Theodora and Ellen.

"Well, they are sort of pretty," admitted Gram, softening a little as she looked at them. "I suppose they are not to blame for their sinful natures, more than the rest of us."

We then told her of our exploit, digging them out of the burrow. The Old Squire thought that the mother fox would not trouble the farm-yard further, now that her family was disposed of.

After supper, Addison gathered up boards about the premises and built a pen out behind the west barn, in which to inclose the young foxes. As nearly as I can now remember, the pen was about fifteen feet long by perhaps six feet in width, with board sides four feet high. We also covered the top of it with boards upon which we laid stones. A pan for water was set inside the pen, and we gave them, for food, the various odds and ends of meat and other waste from the kitchen. For a day or two we enjoyed watching them very much.

They did not thrive well, but grew poor and mangy; and I may as well go on to relate what became of them. After we had kept them in the pen about a month, a dog, or else a fox, came around one night and dug under the side of the pen, as if making an attempt to get in and attack them. The outsider, apparently, was not successful in breaking in, and probably went away after a time, but it had dug a sufficiently large hole for the two young foxes to escape; they were discovered to be missing in the morning. Addison thought that it might possibly have been the mother fox.

One of these cubs—as we believed—came back to the pen under singular circumstances eight or nine months later. Having no use either for the old boards, or for the ground on which the pen stood, it was not taken away, but remained there throughout the autumn and following winter.

One day in April we heard two hounds baying, and as it proved, they were out hunting on their own account and had started a fox. We heard them from noon till near four in the afternoon, when Ellen, who was in the kitchen at one of the back windows, saw them, and, at a distance of twenty rods or less in advance of them, a small fox, coming at speed across the field, heading toward the west barn.

Addison and I were working up fire-wood in the yard at the time, and Ellen ran out to tell us what she had seen. We now heard the hounds close behind the barn, and getting the gun, ran out there. The fox, hard pressed evidently, had run straight to that old pen and taken refuge in it, through a hole in the top where the covering boards were off. But before we reached the spot, one of the hounds had also got in and shaken the life out of the refugee.

We could not positively identify the fox, yet it was a young fox, and we all thought that it resembled one of the cubs which we had kept in the pen. I am inclined to think that, finding itself in sore straits, it came to the old pen where, though a captive, it had once been safe from dogs which came about the place.



CHAPTER XIII

WE ALL SET OFF TO HAVE OUR PICTURES TAKEN

A few days later—I think it was June 15th—Gram's constant, urgent reminders prevailed, and directly after the noontide meal we all set off for the village, to have our pictures taken. The old lady had never ceased to mourn the fact that there were two of her sons whose photographs had not been taken before they enlisted. This was not so unusual an omission in those days as it would be at present; having one's photograph taken was then a much less common occurrence. Indeed, the photograph proper had hardly begun to be made, at least, not in the rural districts. The ambrotype was still the popular variety of portrait.

Personally, I confess to a lingering liking for the old ambrotype, the likeness taken on a glazed plate, on which the lights are represented in silver, and the shades are produced by a dark background. I like, too, the respectful privacy of the little inclosing case which you opened to gaze on the face of your friend. Best of all, I like its great durability and fadelessness. The name itself is a passport to favor in a picture, from ambrotos, immortal, and tupos, type, or impression: the immortal-type. Your pasteboard photograph so soon grows yellowed, dog-eared and stale! For certain purposes I would be glad to see the dear old ambrotype revived and coming back in fashion. True, you had to squint at it at a certain angle to see what it was; but when you obtained the right view, it was wonderfully lifelike and comforting.

One obstacle and another had delayed the trip for several weeks, but on that sunny June day the word to go was given. With much care and attention to clean faces, and hair, our best clothes were donned, for to have one's picture taken was then one of the great occasions of a youngster's life. There was earnest advice given on all sides in regard to "smiling expressions." Little Wealthy, especially, was exhorted so much in this respect, that she actually shed tears before we started. A "smiling expression" sometimes comes hard. Nor was she alone in her anxiety. I remember being a good deal worried about it, and that I had secretly resolved—since the sitting was said to occupy less than a minute—to draw a long breath, set my teeth together hard, and hold on to my "smiling expression" for that one minute, at least, if I died for it afterwards.