Indeed, the young folks of this later generation will hardly be able to understand what an ordeal it was to sit for an ambrotype, in 1866.

Ambrotypes were the kind of pictures which Gram had in view. Moreover, she had no notion of investing in more than one likeness apiece for each of us. This ambrotype was to be kept in the family archives, for the benefit of generations to come; the idea of having a dozen taken, or even half a dozen, to give away to one's friends, had not at that time entered the minds of country people in that portion of New England.

We had at first intended to start by nine in the morning and arrive by ten or eleven, so as to have the benefit of the midday sun—an important requisite for an ambrotype. But it was eleven o'clock before all were properly ready, and Gram then decided to have our noon meal before setting off. We got off a few minutes past noon. All the doors of the farmhouse were locked, or otherwise fastened, the garden gate closed and the horses harnessed. The Old Squire with Gram led the way in the single wagon, and we six cousins, with Addison driving old "Sol," followed in the express wagon, three on a seat. We were conscious that we presented a curiously holiday appearance and laughed a great deal as we rattled along the road, although secretly each felt not a little anxious.

"Oh, but it's nothing!" Halstead exclaimed over and over. "All you have to do is to sit still a minute; the cammirror is the thing that does the work;"—for he was a little shaky on the pronunciation of the word camera, or the workings of it. To Addison and Theodora's great amusement, he went on to inform the rest of us in a superior tone, that the cammirror took a reflection from a person's face, much as a looking-glass does, and then threw it on a "mess of soft chemical stuff" which the artist had spread on a little pane of glass. "Being soft, the reflection naturally sticks in it," Halse continued. "Then all the fellow has to do is to harden it up—and there you are.

"But he has to be pretty careful, or you come out upside down," Halstead added. "I had a notion of buying one of those cammirrors once, before I came here, and starting in the business. I wish I had now. It is a sight better business than farming. I knew a fellow out at New Orleans that made thirteen dollars in one day, taking pictures."

"I wonder that you didn't get a 'cammirror,' Halse," Addison remarked. "You might have become a rich man in a few years."

"Oh, but it's dreadful unhealthy work," replied Halstead, in an offhand tone. "The chemical stuff they have to mix up gets into the lungs. It smells terribly. There's two kinds. The worst-smelling kind isn't the most unhealthy, though; the other kind you can but just smell at all, but one good whiff of it will about use a man up, if it gets fairly into his lungs. It doesn't answer for the artist fellow to breathe much when he is in the little dark place, where he spreads the chemical stuff on the glass. They generally hold their noses when they are in there."

"If that is true, we had all better be careful how we breathe much this afternoon," Addison observed, feigning a very anxious glance around.

Little Wealthy looked distressed, however, and erelong intimated a desire to ride with Gram in the other wagon. She and Theodora and I rode on the back seat of our wagon; and I heard Theodora whispering to her reassuringly, that Halstead's talk was all nonsense.

On reaching the village we hitched our horses under two of the Congregationalist meeting-house sheds, and then proceeded to the small, low studio, or "saloon," with a large window in the roof, where at that time one Antony Lockett (or else Locke) practised the art of photography. He was a tall, large man of sandy complexion, somewhat slow in his movements and of pleasant manners. Gram opened negotiations with him directly, as to the price of ambrotypes, etc. She was not a little distressed, however, to learn from Mr. Lockett that ambrotypes were somewhat out of fashion, and that a new-fangled thing, called a photograph, represented the highest art and progress of the day. It was expensive, however. Of ambrotypes the artist spoke somewhat apologetically and slightingly. He also talked fluently of "tin-types," a kind of small, inferior likeness on a thin metal plate, without case, or glass. These he offered to make by the dozen at prices which almost shocked us from their cheapness.

As an artist who wished to exercise his vocation to the extent of its possibilities, Mr. Lockett argued adroitly in favor of the new photographs for all of us.

Grandmother was much perplexed. "It appears that times are changing," I heard her say to the Old Squire. "I should say times were changing, Ruth!" he replied rather shortly. "If this man is going to charge six dollars apiece for us all, for photographs, I guess we had better get our horses and go home."

"Of course we cannot pay any such money as that, Joseph," Gram concurred. "We shall have to have ambrotypes, as we set out in the first place. I cannot see any better way. But it's a pity fashion has turned against them."

Ambrotypes being declared for, artist Lockett made his preparations, including several trips into his little dark room, the erection of his camera on its tripod, hanging a little pink sock on a hook upon the wall to look at, and setting out a chair with an iron head-rest. He then said, somewhat impressively, "I am ready. Who will sit first?"

None of us wished for that distinction, and to this day I recall the terrified look in little Wealthy's eye as she sought to make herself invisible behind Theodora's shoulder. The child was really much alarmed, largely from the peculiar odor which pervaded the place, and the stories which Halstead had told on our way down. It was the odor of all ambrotype "saloons" of that date, which can best be described by saying that it resembled what might have been, if the place had long been the haunt of a horde of cats.

"Joseph," said Gram at length, "you had better sit first, you are the oldest."

"I am not so very many months older than you, Ruth," replied the Old Squire, with a twinkle of his eye. "And when I was a young man, it was held to be the proper thing to seat the ladies first."

"Now don't you go to being funny, Joe," replied Gram, fanning herself vigorously. "This is no place for it."

Thus rebuked, and after some hesitation, the old gentleman with a queer expression took his seat in the "chair," and had his iron-gray head adjusted to the round black disks of the head-rest. Gram arranged his front lock with her comb, and said, "Now keep your eye on the little sock, Joseph, and look smilin';"—a superfluous piece of advice, as it proved, for he had already begun grinning awfully.

The artist, who had his head under the black cloth of his camera, now suddenly looked forth and gave different advice. "Not too smilin'. Not so smilin' as that, quite," said he.

But the Old Squire only grinned the more vigorously, showing several teeth.

Gram went around in front by the artist. "Oh, no, Joseph, not near so smilin'!" she exclaimed.

But do their best, they could not get the smile off his face.

"Look more solemn, Joseph," Gram now exhorted him. "You are overdoing it."

But so certain as the artist raised his hand to take off the cap from the camera, the Old Squire's face would begin to pucker again, and the artist was obliged to wait.

We all grew scandalized at his unaccountable levity. Addison sat laughing silently in a chair behind, and Gram at last lost her patience.

"If you were only a little boy, it wouldn't be quite so silly!" she exclaimed. "But an old man, with only a few years more on the earth, to behave so, is all out of character. Think of the shortness of life, Joseph, and the certainty of death."

But still from some nervous perversity, the old gentleman's face drew up in the same inveterate pucker whenever Lockett raised his hand to uncap the camera.

"O Joe, I'm astonished at you! I am for certain!" cried Gram, so vexed and angry that she lost all patience. She rushed to the door and looked out, to control her feelings.

Theodora then drew near the Old Squire's side and whispered, "Think of the War, Grandpa."

The War was then a topic of such terrible sadness for us that the mention of it, ordinarily, was sufficient to unloose the most poignant recollections. To grandfather, as to us all, it had brought a sable cloud of bereavement. But even thoughts of the War did not now long suffice to remove that grin—longer than till the Old Squire saw Lockett's hand raised. Then out jumped the all too "smilin' expression" again.

Gram went out of doors altogether and walked along the sidewalk, in mortification and despite; her feelings were much outraged.

Lockett now essayed to turn the conversation upon a current political topic, namely the nomination of General Grant for the Presidency; and it seemed as if the grin was at last exorcised. Yet when the artist attempted covertly to remove the cap, a hundred puckers gathered about Gramp's eyes again, his chin twitched, and even there were wrinkles on his nose.

With that, Lockett himself walked to the door for a time. Gram now returned, her face very red, and stalking in, surveyed the offender with a look of hard exasperation. "My senses, Joseph, you are the most provoking man I ever set my two eyes on. I do declare you are!"

Lockett returned to his place by the camera, looking somewhat bored. "Well, shall we try again?" said he.

"If he don't keep his face straight now, I'll know the reason!" Gram chimed in.

Yet quite the same when Lockett lifted his hand, after an awful pause, every furrow and pucker reappeared.

"Oh, there!" Gram exclaimed almost in tears, so vexed she had grown. "Take him. Take him, just as he is, the old Chessy-cat!" and again she rushed away to the door and snatched out her pocket handkerchief.

Then Addison, who had sat and laughed till he had laughed himself tired and sober, came to the rescue, with a stroke of genius. Nodding covertly to Lockett, he approached the Old Squire from behind, and in a tone, as intended only for his private ear, murmured, "Say, Gramp, d'ye know this Lockett charges six dollars an hour for his time!"

The old gentleman's face suddenly straightened as his ear caught the words, and a look of dignified indignation and incredulity overspread his countenance, observing which the artist removed the cap and the likeness was taken. What the thoughts of death and War failed to accomplish was done by sudden resentment. After a moment or two, Gramp perceived the ruse which Addison had practised on him, and laughed as he rose from the chair. But Gram would not so much as look at him, and she scarcely spoke to him again that day.

The Old Squire did not at the time condescend to offer any explanation of his "smilin' expression;" but years afterwards, on an occasion when he and I were making a journey together, he told me that he never quite understood, himself, what whimsical freak took possession of his mind that day. To have saved his life—he said—he could not have kept a sober face when Lockett raised his hand to the cap. The ambrotype faithfully reproduced the sudden resentful expression on his countenance; and we always spoke of it as the "six dollars an hour expression."

Grandmother sat next, after Theodora and Ellen had arranged or rather rearranged her somewhat ruffled hair and collar. There was no troublesome smile on her countenance that afternoon! The flush of excitement and anger still tinged her cheeks, and her eye looked a little snappy. Theodora tried to modify the severe expression by saying pleasant things while helping seat her in a good position, but only half succeeded; and the picture which we have of her does not do her entire justice, since it gives an impression of austerity not in keeping with her usual disposition and character.

I think that Addison sat next, and after him Halstead, who assumed a somewhat bumptious air, which was to an extent reflected in his picture.

Theodora had the "smiling expression" naturally, and perhaps added a trifle to it for the occasion. We often said to her afterwards, when looking at the pictures, that her smile was almost as broad as Gramp's irrepressible one. Still, it was a very good likeness of her at fifteen and of the genial, half-amused expression she often wore during those happy years at the farm.

It now came my turn to sit in the chair and have my head put back against the rest. For some reason Addison laughed, and then the others came around in front of me and laughed, too. "Don't he look worried?" cried Halstead. "Get on your 'smiling expression.' Don't stare at that poor little sock so hard, you'll knock it down off the hook! The little sock isn't to blame."

"Smile a little," said the artist gently.

But I had just witnessed what befell Gramp from smiling, and was afraid to risk it. "Oh, now!" whispered Theodora, "you really mustn't look so morose. Think of something pleasant. Think of catching trout."

But it would not come to me. "He can't smile," said Addison. "I'll stump him to smile."

"Oh, but you do look sad!" exclaimed Ellen.

"A regular cast-iron glare," said Halstead.

I grew angry.

"There's going to be a thunder-shower from the looks of his face," Addison remarked. "I'm going to get under cover."

They all took the hint and went away from in front of me. It seemed to me that those iron disks of the head-rest were the only two points on which my entire weight rested. The little pink sock swam up and down; and from somewheres in the rear I heard Halse saying, "He will have a fit in a minute more!"

At that moment Lockett took off the cap. I caught my breath, tried hard to smile just a little and no more, and clenched my fists. Click! the cap was replaced, and Lockett said, "That'll do." I got out of the chair and walked to the door; my ears were singing and both feet had "gone to sleep." The ambrotype subsequently gave evidence that my last effort to smile had materialized to the extent of being faintly visible, like a far-distant nebula on a clear night. The others always hectored me about that "frozen smile."

Ellen sat next and was taken very quickly, while I stood at the door recovering myself; but Wealthy suffered even more than I did, I feel sure. The poor child had stood awestruck and alarmed all the time the others were sitting. What she had seen had by no means tended to reassure her. She actually turned pale when Theodora took her to the chair; her dark eyes looked uncommonly large and wild. The smile which they finally developed on her face was one of fascination rather than pleasure; and when at length the cap was replaced and the artist said, "That'll do," she bounced out of the chair as if made of India-rubber.

We did not get the ambrotypes, in their small, square, black cases, till some weeks subsequently; and I recollect that the entire bill was twelve dollars, also that we all—all except Gram—rode home from the village in very high spirits, as those do who have successfully passed through a perilous ordeal. Gram, indeed, was unable to recover her equanimity till next day.



CHAPTER XIV

"THERE IS A MAN IN ENGLAND, NAMED DARWIN"

It was the following Sunday morning, if I remember aright, that I first heard the name of Charles Darwin and received an intimation as to the now world-famous theory of the origin and descent of mankind. What a singular name Darwin seemed to me, too, the first time I heard it.

The Old Squire was a great reader, for a Maine farmer, who as a rule has little time for that, during the summer season. But he always caught a few minutes for his newspapers at breakfast, or dinner, although we did not then take a daily paper.

The old gentleman had not received a college education, but he had once attended Fryeburg Academy, at the time Daniel Webster taught there, and afterwards had been a student for two terms at Hebron Academy. Even at the age of sixty-nine he retained a somewhat remarkable thirst for information of all kinds. I remember that he would sit for a whole evening, poring so intently in a volume of Chamber's Encyclopaedia as to be hardly aware of what was going on in the room about him. After a manner, too, he kept pretty well posted, not only on events of current history and politics, but of scientific progress.

That spring of 1866, he had privately sent to an acquaintance in Portland to procure for him a copy of The Origin of Species, then a new book, to which he had seen brief allusions in our weekly newspapers, and concerning which he felt much curiosity. He read it all through, carefully, without saying much, if anything, about it to Gram, or any one else. But Elder Witham found out, somehow, that there was such a book in our house, and his animosity against it was much excited.

Before prayers that Sunday morning the Old Squire looked around—though I think he had Addison and Theodora chiefly in mind—and said, "There is a man in England, named Darwin, Charles Darwin, who has written a book, called The Origin of Species, of which a great deal begins to be said. This Darwin is a scholarly man and writes modestly. I see that a great many appear to be adopting his views. He holds that man has risen from certain lower animals, somewhat like the monkeys, or apes, and therefore that we are related by descent to these animals, instead of having been created perfect, as the Bible seems to teach.

"This man Darwin brings forward a great many things in support of his views, some of which seem reasonable. He appears to be a sincere man, and as such ought not to be condemned hastily. I think it is still too soon to form a decided opinion as to this, and that it is safer for us to go on believing as the Scriptures teach.

"I mention this," the Old Squire continued, "Because Elder Witham tells me that he is going to take up Darwin's book in his sermon a week from to-day, to warn people against it. The Elder, who is also very sincere, believes that this Darwin is a dangerous man who is doing vast harm to Christianity. I do not go quite so far as that, myself, although I still hold to the Scriptural account of man's creation. But if Mr. Darwin is as honest a man as he seems and has published what he thinks to be the truth, I do not believe his book will in the end do any harm in the world. But it is always better, in such important matters, not to change our opinions hastily, but to reflect carefully." After a pause Addison spoke. "Elder Witham's sermon against Darwin will not change my mind," said he, very decidedly. "I think Darwin is right. He is a great man. Elder Witham is always down on everything that touches his narrow views of the Bible."

"The Elder is an honest, fearless man," was all the reply the Old Squire made to that. But Gram exclaimed that she hoped none of us would ever read that wicked book about mankind being from monkeys—which somehow made me perversely resolve to read it.

The Old Squire, however, kept The Origin of Species put away in some secret receptacle known only to himself.

That same Sabbath morning, too, the Old Squire read briefly from one of the papers of a terrible war that was raging in South America, between Paraguay on one hand and Brazil and the Argentine Republic on the other. As usual, after reading anything of this kind at table, the old gentleman commented on it and generally made some point clear to us.

"The trouble down there in South America," said he, "comes wholly from an unscrupulous man, named Francisco Lopez, who has contrived to make himself Dictator of Paraguay. Lopez is an imitator of Napoleon Bonaparte. He has an insatiate ambition to conquer all South America and found an empire there, much as Napoleon sought to conquer Europe and establish a great French empire. Napoleon is Lopez' model. He has plunged Paraguay in misery and mourning.

"When I was a boy," the Old Squire added, "I had a great admiration for Napoleon Bonaparte and loved to read of his great battles. Nearly all young people do admire him. But now that I see his motives and his acts more clearly, I regard him as a monster of egotism and brutal ambition."

Halstead had stolen out while the Old Squire was reading to us. We could not find him during the forenoon, but he came in after we sat down at dinner, much as on a former Sunday; this time, too, he looked much heated. Addison and Theodora bent their eyes on their plates, but nothing was said by any one. Halstead ate hurriedly, with covert glances around. He seemed disturbed or excited, and after dinner went out in the garden alone, keeping aloof, but came up to our room late that evening, after I was abed.

At length I fell asleep, but immediately a noise like scratching or squeaking on the window pane, roused me suddenly. The window was on the back side of the house, but there was a driveway beneath it, and any one outside could, with a very long stick, reach up to the glass panes. It had grown dark, but when the noise waked me, I found that Halstead was sitting on the side of the bed, as if listening.

"What was that?" I said, sleepily.

"Oh, nothing," replied Halse. "The wind rattled the window, I guess."

I recollect thinking, that there was no wind that night, and I believe I said so, but I was very sleepy, and although I thought it queer that Halse should be sitting up to hear the wind, I soon fell into a drowse again and probably snored, for my room-mate often accused me of that offense.

I had not fallen soundly asleep, however, when I again heard the tapping at the window. A sly impulse, suggested probably by Halstead's demeanor, prompted me to play 'possum and pretend that I had not waked this time. I even went on breathing hard, on that pretense.

Halstead was still sitting on the bed. He listened for a moment to my counterfeit breathing, then slid easily off and approached the window. It was already raised a little and rested on a New Testament which Gram always kept in our room. Halse gently shoved the window higher and put out his head. The air of the quiet country night was very still, and I heard a hoarse whisper from the ground outside, although I could not distinguish the words.

"Yes," whispered Halstead in reply.

Then the whisper below resumed.

"I don't want to do that," said Halstead.

The whisper outside rejoined, at some length.

"Perhaps," answered Halse.

The other whisper continued.

"When?" asked Halstead.

The whisper replied for some moments.

"By eleven," Halse then said. "Not before."

Then there was a good deal of whispering beneath, and Halstead replied, "Well, I'll be there."

Not long after, he crept back to bed, I meantime continuing my fraudulent hard breathing, although by this time I was very much awake and consumed by curiosity and suspicion. For at least half an hour, Halse tossed and turned about, seeming to be very restless and uneasy; in fact, he was still turning, when I fell asleep in very truth.

When I first waked next morning, I did not recollect this circumstance of the previous evening; in fact, it did not come into my mind till we had gone out to milk the cows. I then began to think it over earnestly and continued doing so throughout the forenoon. At first I had no thought of telling any one what I had heard, for although Halse had recently threatened me, I did not wish to play the spy on him.

But the idea that something wrong was on foot grew very strong within me. The more I pondered the circumstances the more certain I felt of it. At length I concluded to speak of it to Theodora; for some reason my choice of a confidante fell instinctively on her.

We were "cultivating" the corn that forenoon with old Sol, and hoeing it for the second time. Finally, I made an excuse to go to the house for a jug of sweetened water. While preparing it, I found opportunity to call Theodora into the wood-shed, and first exacting a promise of secrecy from her, I told her what had occurred the previous evening.

She seemed surprised at first, then terrified, and I went back to the field with my jug, leaving her greatly disturbed.

When we came in at noon, she motioned me aside in the pantry and said hurriedly, that I must tell Addison and ask him to speak with her after dinner.

Twice during the afternoon we saw Theodora out in sight of the corn-field, and I knew that she was anxiously looking for a word or sign from Addison. At last, towards supper time, taking advantage of a few minutes when Halse had gone to the horse pasture with old Sol, I briefly mentioned the thing to Addison and proffered Theodora's request for an interview.

Addison listened with a frown. "I think I know who that was under the window," said he. "Halse has been running round with him, on the sly, for a month, and they've got some kind of a 'dido' planned out."

"Suppose it is anything bad?" I queried.

"Oh, I don't know," said Ad, impatiently. "Bad enough, I'll warrant you. If it is the fellow I think it is, he is an out-and-out 'tough' and a blackguard. One of those chaps that are hanging round Tibbett's rum shop out at the Corners. You may be sure that a man of that stamp isn't whispering around under windows, for any good."

"Why, you don't suppose they were planning to steal, or rob, do you?" I asked, much startled.

"Who knows," replied Addison, coolly. "Halse is a strange boy. He is just rattle-headed and foolish enough to get coaxed into some scrape that will disgrace him and all the rest of us. I never saw a fellow in my life so lacking in good sense.

"Oh yes, I'll talk with Doad," continued Ad, somewhat impatiently. "Doad is a good girl. She thinks moral suasion and generosity will do everything. But if I had Halse to manage, I would put him under lock and key, every night," said Addison, striking his hoe sharply into the ground.

"And if we only let him alone, I guess he will get there, of his own accord," he added with a fine irony.

I saw quite plainly that, as Theodora had once said to me, Addison had no patience with Halstead and his but too evident weakness of character.

"I don't like to run to the Old Squire with all that I see and hear," Addison went on, in a low tone, for Gramp was hoeing only a few steps behind us, and Halstead was now coming back from the pasture. "For they all think now that I don't like Halse and that I am too hard on him. But they will find out who is in the right about it."

After supper I saw Theodora in earnest conversation with Addison, out in the garden by the bee-house. Doad was a great friend of the bees; if she were wanted and not in the house, we generally looked first for her in the garden, in the vicinity of the bee-house.

Later in the evening, after we had finished milking and were going into the dairy with our pails, Addison said to me that it was best, he thought, to say nothing to the old folks just yet. "Doad wants me to watch to-night and, if Halse gets up to go off anywhere, to stop him and coax him back to his room.

"It isn't a job I like," continued Addison, "but perhaps we had better try it; Doad thinks so.

"So if you can keep awake, till ten or eleven, you had better," Addison went on. "If he gets up to start off, ask him where he is going, and if he really starts, come and call me, and we will go after him. I can dress in a minute."

To this proposal I agreed, and I may add here that at about eleven o'clock we surprised Halse in the act of stealing away to the Corners, but after some parley and a scuffle with him, succeeded in getting him back to bed, and I lodged with Addison.

It was but a short night thenceforward till five o'clock in the morning. Before going down-stairs we peeped into Halse's room, to see if he were there still. He lay soundly asleep. Addison closed the door softly. "Poor noodle," said he, as we got the milk pails. "Let him snooze awhile. I suppose it isn't really his fault that he has got such a head on his shoulders. He is rather to be pitied, after all. He is his own worst enemy.

"I've heard," Ad continued in a low tone, as we opened the barnyard gate, "that Aunt Ysabel, Halse's mother, was a sort of queer, tempery, flighty person."

The Old Squire had got out a little in advance of us and sat milking. "Good morning, boys," said he, looking up cheerily, as we passed. "Another fine day. The whole country looks bright and smiling. Grand year for crops."

"We will not say a word to him about our scrape with Halse last night," Addison remarked to me. "There's no use plaguing him with it. We cost him so much and give him so much trouble, that I am ashamed to let him know of this."

When we took in the milk, Theodora was grinding coffee (and how good it smelled! She had just roasted it in the stove oven). "We got him back all right, with no great difficulty," Addison whispered to her, in passing.

"Oh, I'm so glad," she replied.

Halse had not come down; and pretty soon we heard the Old Squire call him, at which Addison laughed a little as he glanced at me. At breakfast Halstead looked somewhat glum; in fact, he did not look at Addison and me at all, if he could avoid it.

That forenoon we hoed corn again and talked a good deal of the Fourth of July celebration which was to come off at the village the following week.

Toward noon, however, word was sent us that the husband of a cousin of the Old Squire's who resided in the town adjoining, to the eastward, had suddenly died, and that the funeral was to be at two o'clock that afternoon.

No one of the family seemed much disposed to attend it. It appeared that the deceased had not been a highly respected citizen. It was said that he had died from the effects of a fit of intoxication. The liquor which drunkards were able to obtain, by hook or crook, at that period and in spite of the Prohibitory Law, was of a peculiarly deleterious character.

At dinner the Old Squire remarked that he should attend the funeral, and that I could go with him, if I liked, but that the others might be excused. I at once accepted the invitation; almost anything was preferable to hoeing corn in the hot sun.

It was a pleasant ride of eight miles along the county road to the northeastward. We first passed numerous farms, then a "mud pond" and a "clear water pond," following afterwards the valley of a small river between two high, wooded mountains, till we came at last to a saw-mill, grist-mill and a few houses at a place whimsically known as the "city." Here in a little weathered house the last rites and services to the deceased were held. Elder Witham, still in his duster, preached a short discourse during which I felt somewhat distressed to hear him express certain doubts as to the man's future state. The Elder was a thoroughly upright Yankee and Methodist, who tried to preach the truth and the gospel, as he apprehended it; he did not believe that all a person's faults are, or ought to be, forgiven at his death. I remember the following words which he made use of on that occasion, for they appealed to some nascent sense of logic in me, I suppose: "The evil which men do in this life lives on in the world after they die; and even so the just penalty for it continues with them in a future state."

The Old Squire, although ordinarily a kind and reasonable man, yet possessed some of the same severe traits of character, which have descended in the sons of New England, from the days of the Puritans. I remember that he said, as we drove along the road, going homeward: "The death of a drunkard is a shameful end. Such a person can expect other people to mourn only for his folly."

But these sentiments made far less impression upon me then than the conduct of the wife of the dead man. I had somehow supposed that he was an old man; but instead, he was only thirty-four years of age; and his wife was an auburn-haired, strong woman, not more than thirty, unusually handsome in face and form. She was in a state of great excitement, not wholly caused by sorrow. It appeared that there had been a violently bitter quarrel between the pair, the night before the man's death; and so far from having forgiven her husband, even then, the woman exhibited the turbulence of her temper and behaved in an unseemly manner during and after the services. Her outcries gave me a very strange impression and in fact so shocked and terrified me, that to this day I cannot recall the scene without a singular sensation of disquiet. Withal, it was the first funeral which I had ever attended. As a lad I was in not a little doubt on several points, touching the behavior of widows on such occasions; and as we drove homeward, I ventured to ask the Old Squire whether women were often liable to go on at funerals as that one did. For I remember thinking that if this were really the case, I should never under any circumstances whatever, be allured into matrimony.

But the Old Squire at once said, positively, that they did not behave so, and that this woman (her name was Britannia) was an exception to all rules.

My next question upset him, however, for after a few moments of decent inward satisfaction over his reply, I asked him whether Britannia was a Pepperill.

Gramp turned half around on the wagon seat and looked at me in astonishment for an instant; he then burst out in a hearty laugh.

"No, no," said he. "She is no Pepperill, no connection whatever of your grandmother. The shoe is on the other foot. It's on my side this time."

He laughed again as he drove on; and just before we reached home, he told me, and seemed much in earnest that I should understand it, that the Pepperills were a very good family, as much or more so than the average, and that if I had got any different impression from anything I had heard said, it was utterly erroneous.

"You must never mind any of the nonsense I have over to your grandmother when we are at table," he continued. "It's all fun. We don't mean anything. Your grandma is the best woman I ever knew."

I replied that I had thought that was the way of it, myself. As the old gentleman had expressed himself so magnanimously toward the Pepperills, I at once resolved not to say a word to Gram, or any of the others, about this Britannia's behavior. I did not like to have Gramp put at any disadvantage in the family; so the old gentleman and I kept that incident quiet between us for a good many years.



CHAPTER XV

A WET FOURTH OF JULY, WITH A GOOD DEAL OF HUMAN NATURE IN IT

The first days of July were very hot and sultry; the hoeing was finished; haying was at hand. We young folks, however, were now chiefly interested in the Fourth of July celebration at the village, seven miles from the farm, and were laying our plans to go, all the previous day. In fact, the whole family intended to go.

If we were to get the farm chores done, breakfast eaten and reach the village by six o'clock, in time to see the procession of "fantastics" we would have to be astir by three in the morning. Addison proposed to harness old Sol and Nancy to the hay-rack, decorate it with green oak boughs, making a canopy over it, and all ride to town together, taking up six or eight of our neighbors, to swell the party.

Theodora and Ellen hailed this plan with delight, but Gram objected both because of the fact that the hay-rack had no springs, and also upon grounds of decorum.

"Why, people would think we were a part of the 'fantastics,'" the old lady exclaimed. "I will never ride in any such gipsy fashion!"

This vigorous declaration tabled the hay-cart scheme. But as we were milking that evening, Addison obtained the Old Squire's consent to harness Nancy into the horse-cart, and decorate it for us young folks; while our elders drove to the village with old Sol in the beach-wagon. Boughs were accordingly fetched and a canopy made over the cart and by nine we all retired, so as to secure as much sleep as possible before three A. M.

But the Pluvian powers forbade the excursion. The southern sky, indeed, had looked a trifle dark and wet, the previous evening. Raindrops on the roof waked us shortly before three. We hoped it was but a passing shower. At daylight, however, the rain was pouring profusely. Wealthy actually cried; Ellen scolded a little; Halstead made certain irreverent remarks; while Gram sought to inculcate resignation in the abstract.

It proved one of those profuse southerly rains, such as often occur in Maine during the summer season. We milked in the barn and put the cows out to pasture in the midst of the downpour, for it was a warm rain.

"No celebration to-day," remarked Addison; but the Old Squire thought that it would slacken by noon and perhaps clear.

All the morning it rained too hard even to go fishing. Addison went up to his room to read Audubon awhile. Halstead went out to the wagon-house and having appropriated an auger, draw-shave and hammer, took an umbrella and set off for the old cooper shop below the orchard. Seeing me standing in the wood-house door, he said, "You can go down to my shop, if you want to. I wouldn't invite Addison, but I will you."

I ran out to his umbrella, and we went down to the old shop. When we reached the door, Halstead remarked that I need not see the way he opened it; so I stepped around the corner for a moment, till he called to me. I then entered after him and stood around while he set to work on several odd-looking pieces of wheeled gear. Then with his permission, I kindled a little fire in the large old fireplace, and dried my clothes before it.

"I tell ye that's a cute place to roast sweet corn ears," Halstead remarked. "In the fall I have a fire here evenings and roast corn; I did last fall and you and I will this next fall. It's jolly fun, after the nights get cool; I would like to sleep down here, but the old gent wants me to sleep in the house; I made a bunk of shavings and set out to stay one night before my fire, but he came down and knocked at the door about ten o'clock. He said I had better go up to the house.

"The old gent is awful particular about a fellow being out after dark," Halstead continued. "I ain't used, myself, to being bossed round so, and treated as if I was a child that hadn't cut my teeth yet. I've seen something of the world and can take care of number one, anywheres. It ain't as if I was a little green chap. I've lived out among folks, till I came 'way back here. I suppose the old gent and all the rest of them think, that I don't know any more and must be looked after just like one of these little greenhorns round here. It's a great bore to me to be treated that way and I don't like it at all. It makes me mad sometimes. A fellow that has travelled and seen something, wants more liberty."

I could see that he was talking around to lead up to something he wished to tell me, and so said nothing.

"Now the other night," Halstead continued, "all I was going off for was to get some money of a fellow who owes me out at the Corners; I wanted to get it bad, for I wanted to pay you and the girls what I owe you. I knew you wanted it for the Fourth and I wanted to pay it; so I thought I would slip out to the Corners, and see this fellow and get it of him, for he had promised me I should have it that night. I felt ructious that I couldn't go, for of course a fellow wants to pay his honest debts, and it's kinder hard when he can't."

I mentally set this down as one of the things that are important, if true; it was pretty plain to me, however, that Halstead was hedging, and making up a story which he thought suited to my understanding. I did not like to hear him go on, and contrived to change the conversation.

Halstead was in one of his good moods that morning, and as he worked with the draw-shave, he cast knowing, proud glances first at the wheeled contrivance, then at me. I concluded that he wanted me to inquire about it and so asked what it was for.

"A wind-mill," said he. "It will be a buster, too! I'll show 'em a thing or two 'round here. I mean to run a lathe with it here at the shop and do wood turning. I'll turn banisters, rolling-pins, gingerbread creasers and all sorts of things. I can make lots of money off a lathe. I'm going to set the wind-mill up on a tall post at the corner of the shop here, and then have a pulley shaft clean across this whole side of it. Won't it just hum though!"

I grew considerably interested in the proposed wind-mill, as Halse explained it. He really had some ideas of a lathe, run by wind power, and went on for some time telling me of his plans, till Ellen called us to dinner.

It continued to rain till past two o'clock, when the clouds broke away and the sun came forth very hot and bright.

"Shall we go?" was now the question. "Will there be a celebration now the day is so far advanced?"

The Old Squire thought it hardly worth the while to set off, assuredly not in the bough-embowered cart. Gram and the girls therefore decided to give up going altogether, but we three boys at length harnessed old Sol into the express wagon and started; for we hoped to see the fireworks in the evening and perhaps the sack-race and wheelbarrow-race which had been set for afternoon.

The meadow brook was swollen high out its banks and flowed into the grass on both sides, and the wet road was full of puddles through which old Sol splashed prosaically on. There were very few teams on the road. Alfred Batchelder, the two Murch boys and Ned Wilbur overtook us, however, when we had nearly reached the village, all four riding on one seat of an old wagon. We found, too, that Thomas Edwards and Catherine had come to the village, in advance of us. Catherine came out from one of the stores to ask us whether Theodora and Ellen had come; she seemed much disappointed to learn that they had not, and that she was the only girl from our neighborhood who had ventured forth.

Despite the wet, a crowd of three or four hundred persons, mostly boys or young men, had collected in front of the Elm House, where they were popping off firecrackers and playing pranks. Zest was presently lent to these latter efforts, by the continuous explosion of half a bunch of crackers beneath the wagon seat of a young farmer who, with his sister, or some other young lady, was sitting in a wagon on the outskirts of the crowd, looking on. Both of them were smiling broadly. In the rear end of their wagon was a butter firkin and a number of packages. Some rogue lighted the crackers and tossed them directly beneath the wagon seat, and immediately they began to pop off. Their horse gave a bound; smoke and sparks flew, and after a moment the girl jumped clear of the wagon and landed nimbly on her feet two yards away! She looked very wild, indeed, and did not relish the joke; for an urchin in the crowd, attempting to follow it up by covertly dropping a lighted cracker near her feet, was instantly detected and received such a box on the ear as set him howling.

Meantime the youthful farmer had no small ado to quiet his nag. When the animal and the crackers had at length subsided into quiet, he began to look about for the girl. His nerves were not of the highly strung variety; he looked out for his horse first; he was not much excited, and smiled broadly when Angelina came forward to climb into the wagon again, but he was heard to remark in a slightly quickened tone. "By Gaul, 'f I could find out who throwed them firecrackers, I'd lick him, I would, I swan."

He gazed about over the crowd, with an inquiring eye, as one honestly on the lookout for accurate information; and although everybody had laughed uproariously, no one now claimed the honor of having started the fun.

Evidently a mischievous spirit possessed the crowd. In fact, when a great concourse of people has gathered in expectation of a good time, and has been balked of the fun, it is well to be wary and keep aloof. Something is pretty certain to happen, and somebody is likely to be made a victim of the general disappointment. In such a case the most prudent thing is to go quietly home.

While all stood laughing and gaping at young Agricola and his fair companion, another hubbub broke out. A cracker suddenly exploded in the outer pocket of a long linen duster, worn by a tall youth who at that moment had his mouth widely distended with laughter. He clapped his hand to his pocket, when another went off there. With that he whirled around, the lengthy skirts of the "duster" floating out in a circle amidst a wreath of blue powder smoke. Snap-fizz went another and another cracker, the sparks flying and an odor of burnt cloth beginning to pervade the air. The crowd, shouting in fresh glee, speedily drew out from the new victim and formed a ring about him.

"Enoch, you're all afire!" exclaimed one of his acquaintances. "Throw off yer duster." This was sound advice and would probably have been acted upon by "Enoch;" but some one else cried, "Down and roll over."

The adage advising all whose clothes take fire, to roll on the floor, or the ground, has become pretty firmly fixed in the public mind; and hearing it, Enoch at once threw himself down and rolled over and over in the road, to the accompaniment of a tremendous shout. The maneuver did not much improve matters; for a lot of crackers had been dropped into the duster pocket. These continued to pop off, in twos and threes; and the more alarmingly they popped, the more vigorously Enoch rolled! A more laughable spectacle, for the onlookers, can hardly be imagined. The tall fellow's arms and legs flew about in a wonderful manner; the smoke and sparks flew, too, and every time a cracker snapped, Enoch howled.

Somebody at length ran forward with a pailful of water that was set on the tavern piazza, and dashed it over him, and withal the road was still very muddy from the rain. When the water fell over him, he scrambled to his feet; the crackers had snapped themselves out. But oh, sorrows, what a fearfully singed and muddy object was Enoch! His own mother would have looked coldly on him; and the unsympathetic crowd screamed with delight.

But Enoch had arisen in a somber frame of mind; and it was at once apparent that something was going to be done about it, and that somebody must settle the account with him. He cast a rueful glance over his personal remnants, then a wrathy one at the laughter-shaken crowd, took a step forward and giving vent to certain emphatic remarks, declared, "The feller that did that has got to suffer!"

Thereupon a group of five or six boys, among them our Halstead and Alfred Batchelder, not being upheld, perhaps, by the courage of entire innocence, began to slink away and get behind others. In an instant Enoch was after them. They took to their heels around to the rear of the tavern, the crowd shouting, "Catch 'em! Give it to 'em! Go it, Enoch!"

There was a rush to see the denouement. Neither Addison, nor I, witnessed all which took place. The chase had led the principals far around to the rear of a stable and sheds. At length, we saw Halstead and Alfred on the roof of the latter, and heard cries of dismay and distress from others of the runaway party; Enoch was with them, evidently.

Alfred and Halse continued hastily to climb to the ridge-pole of the stable and then walked along on the roof of an ell, till they gained the higher roof of the tavern itself. Presently Enoch came back from the rear and espying the refugees aloft, began to stone them with vigor, till the proprietor came out and ordered all parties to the fracas to desist and leave the premises.

Addison and I now crossed the street and joined Thomas and Kate Edwards, who were standing on the platform of a store opposite, spectators at a distance of what had taken place. After a time Halse came to us, having made a circuit of several buildings from the rear of the Elm House. He had the generally rumpled appearance of a boy who has been roughly handled. Occasionally he nursed and rubbed certain spots upon his person.

"Did he hit ye?" inquired Thomas, good-humoredly.

"Yes, he did," muttered Halse. "The old long-legged loafer! I wish he had all burnt up!"

"Did you put the crackers in his pocket?" asked Catherine, laughing.

"No, I didn't," replied Halse. "But I know who did," he added, with a knowing nod. "And I know who lit the match, too."

"You seem to know quite a good deal about it," commented Catherine.

"He needn't have stoned me!" cried Halse. "He had no proof against me. But I'll pay him out."

"I guess you had better let Enoch alone," said Addison.

Meantime the sun had come out very hot; it was already five o'clock. Kate persuaded Thomas to carry her to visit an acquaintance of theirs, living somewhere on the outskirts of the village. We lingered about for a time, then some one of the crowd of boys proposed going up to the outlet of the lake, above the dam, to go in swimming. The heat rendered this proposal agreeable; and as many as fifty set off together, some intending to go into the water, others to sit in the shade and watch the swimmers. Enoch, minus his duster, with a number of his friends, was in the party, observing which Alfred and Halse kept at a respectful distance in the rear. Ned Wilbur and Willis and Ben Murch went along with Addison and me.

The distance up to the "swimming hole" was near half a mile; there was a pretty bit of white, sandy shore, shelving off from shoal into deep water. In a few minutes, twenty or thirty were splashing, wading and swimming out, some boldly, as good swimmers will, others timidly, or feigning to swim and taking good care not to get into water over their heads.

And all along shore the grass was dotted with small heaps, capped with white, representing each bather's temporarily discarded wearing apparel, beside which were set his holiday shoes or boots.

It is the common, unwritten code among boys on such occasions, that while in the water, each swimmer's clothes are to be held sacred from molestation, even by his sworn enemies; at least, that was the "law," as the writer understood it, in the year 1866. To meddle with another boy's clothes while he was in the water was deemed an outlaw act.

Alfred and Halse, however, who had approached in the rear, and observed Enoch's wardrobe lying unguarded on the shore, determined to redress their grievances by making a descent upon it, while he was in the pond. Ned and I, who were sitting under a large maple a little back from the stream, saw them peering about the heaps of clothes, like a couple of crows plotting larceny from a robin's nest. We had little idea what they were about to do, however, for they walked away, and it was not till ten minutes afterwards that we saw them again, this time with Alfred's horse and wagon, up in the road, a hundred yards or more from the water.

"Why, Alf's going home!" Ned exclaimed. "I came down with him and I must go back with him, unless I walk." "Don't go yet," I said. "You can ride back with us. We are going to stay till evening."

"All right, I will," replied Ned. "I don't like to go with Alf very well; he is always 'sassing' folks on the road.

"But they have stopped up there," Ned added. "Alf's got out and is coming down here. Perhaps it's to call me to go home. He is picking up stones. What suppose he is going to do?"

We watched him curiously. Halse sat in the wagon, holding the reins, but Alf was stealing down to the shore, and he seemed to have a stone as large as one's fist in each hand.

"You don't suppose he is going to stone Enoch and run?" queried Ned, in some excitement. "There'll be high jinks, if he does."

I thought that was the intention, and called out in a low tone to Addison, who was coming out of the water, a few rods off, to come to us. But before he had more than heard me, Alfred slipped down past an alder clump, to the spot where Enoch's clothes lay, and quickly tucking a stone into each of his boots, threw them off into deep water, then snatching up his pile of clothes, ran for the wagon.

They had the trick adroitly planned out, and he was not half a minute executing it. Before an outcry was more than raised and the alarm wafted out to Enoch, or his friends, Alfred and our Halstead were rattling off up the road at a great rate.

But when the fact really dawned upon the crowd of boys, there was a roar of indignant exclamations, and only a very few laughed this time. "After them!" was the first shout. "Catch them!"—and some said, "Drown 'em!"

Not many were in a condition to make pursuit, however. The perpetrators of the outrage easily escaped; they were a mile off, indeed, before the most of the swimmers were dressed.

Poor Enoch was now in bad straits. He and three or four others began diving for his boots, but failed to bring them up.

Addison was much disturbed. He gave Enoch his undershirt, and another boy endowed him with a pair of drawers. With these donations, they got him out of the bushes, and forming a close circle round him, escorted him barefoot and bareheaded to one of the village stores, where he was rigged up—on credit—so that he could go home. There was a great deal of joking, yet the prevalent feeling was one of indignation; and if the two tricksters had been caught that afternoon, they would have fared badly, and probably taken a ride on a rail. Altogether, it had been a bad day for Enoch; but for popular sympathy, he would not only have lost his "duster," but been obliged to scud home under bare poles.

At sunset we bought crackers and cheese for our supper. Ned and the two Murch boys were now of our party, but Thomas and Catherine had gone home. We were but slightly repaid for waiting till evening, however; only six rockets, five Roman candles and two "pin-wheels" were burned in the way of fireworks. It was very soon over, although we had been obliged to wait until a quarter to nine for the exhibition to begin. Boy-like, however, we would not have missed it for a great deal.

Then came the long ride homeward in the dark, for the night proved cloudy; but the events of the day furnished us a great deal to talk of, as old Sol plodded onward,—and there was more to follow.

We had gone about half way home, and were passing a partly wooded tract on the upper or west side of the highway, when Willis suddenly said, "What's that thing, hanging down from that tree over the road?"

"I don't see anything," replied Addison.

"I tell you there is!" muttered Willis, excitedly. "Hold on, Ad. Stop."

Addison pulled up.

"Yes, there is something there," Ned said.

I was sure, too, that I could see something different from the branches and leaves of the tree; there was a reflection as from white cloth, or human skin.

"It looks like a man hanging there," whispered Willis.

"Gracious! You don't suppose it is a man, hung, do ye?" Ned whispered.

The idea startled us.

"Pshaw!" said Addison. "I don't believe it is any such thing. May be something some one has lost in the road, and somebody else has found it and hung it up there, where it will be seen."

"Perhaps," said Willis, doubtfully.

"I'm going to drive along, anyway," continued Addison.

"No, don't. Hold on, Ad. Don't," whispered Ned, for the thing did have a curious appearance.

Addison persisted and slapped old Sol gently with the reins. The rest of us cringed down as low as we could, for we did not like the looks of the object, or the thought of passing close under it. But just as we had got under it, Addison said, "Whoa," and old Sol stopped short.

"Drive on, Ad, drive on," whispered Ned, nervously.

"No," said Addison. "I'm going to see what that is. Take the reins," and he gave them to me. "I can reach it by standing upon the seat."

Addison raised himself slowly, and finding that he could reach the object, began to feel it with his hand.

"Great Scott!" he exclaimed suddenly. "'Tis a man's stocking, on his foot!"

"Ah-h-h!" quavered Ned. "Let's get from under!" He grabbed spasmodically at the reins and gave a shake. Old Sol took a step, and Addison tumbled partly over Willis and Ben, who both gave a howl of nervous apprehension.

"Quit that!" cried Addison, angrily, to me. "Stop, I tell you. You hold that horse."

I pulled old Sol up short and he backed a little, at which Ned jumped out and ran on a few steps; Willis and Ben also slipped out behind.

"Hold still," said Addison to me. "Don't let the horse start and pitch me out."

With that he stood up again and began feeling the object. "'Tis a man's trouser leg, sure—and stocking—but there's something odd inside. Who's got a match?"

Ben had a few matches, with which he had been touching off firecrackers earlier in the day, and ventured up to the back of the wagon. Addison stood up again and struck one, while the rest of us stared as the match burned slowly.

"It is a stuffed man," cried Addison; "a scarecrow, I guess, stuffed with grass. But where have I seen those checkered pants before, to-day?—and, boys, here is a paper, pinned on to them higher up. Back the horse a little."

I backed a step, and Addison, striking another match, read aloud on the piece of paper, "THIS IS ENOCH."

"Oho!" cried Ned. "Alf and Halse did that!"

"Yes, these are Enoch's clothes, sure," said Addison. "There's his hat on a big pine knot for a head, with his pocket handkerchief tied round it for a face, and great daubs of wheel grease for mouth, eyes and nose."

"Well, that's a queer sort of joke!" remarked Willis.

"I'm glad they didn't carry Enoch's clothes clean home with them," said I.

"I was afraid they had," Addison remarked; "and I was thinking whether or not he could make it out as stealing, against them."

"Had we better take them down and send them back to him?" I asked.

"No, sir-ee," said Addison. "We will not meddle with them. Enoch may send the sheriff up here by morning. It would be a pretty go if the clothes were found in our possession. Let them hang right where they are, I say, and let's be going, too, before any one comes along and catches us here!"

We drove on accordingly, and reached home without further adventures. The house was dark; all had retired, except Theodora, who was sitting at her window looking out for us. She came down stairs quietly, lighted a lamp and had set on a lunch for us by the time we came in from the wagon-house. They had gathered three quarts of field strawberries that afternoon and had saved a quart for us. They were the first strawberries of the season. How good they did taste, hungry as we were that night, along with some big slices of Gram's new "mug bread" and butter, and a plentiful swig of lemonade, a pitcherful of which Theodora had also set aside for us.

"Doad!" cried Addison, giving her a pat on the shoulder. "You are the boss girl of this county!"

"Oh, I wanted to hear all the Fourth o' July news," said Theodora. "Now tell me. But don't talk so loud, or you will wake Gramp and Gram."

"The news, well, jingo, I don't know whether we ought to tell it all, or not; what think?" said Addison to me, doubtfully.

"Has Halse got home?" I asked.

"Yes, he came just before supper. He said he rode up with a fellow as far as the forks of the road," replied Theodora.

"Did he say why he left us and came home so early?" asked Addison.

"Yes; he said there was nothing going on, and he had got tired of loafing around."

Addison laughed; so did I.

"But I knew there was something behind it all," Theodora continued. "Now what was it?"

"Nothing—much," replied Addison, evasively.

"Oh, but there was," exclaimed Theodora. "Tell me."

"Nothing but the usual 'circus,' when Halse goes out anywhere," replied Addison wearily, yet still laughing a little.

"But tell me what it was," Theodora urged.

With a certain reluctance which boys always feel, to divulge circumstances that pertain mainly to boys and boys' affairs, we related to her the salient events of the afternoon, for it would have been a bad return for her kindness to us to have refused altogether, and we felt, too, that her motive was something more than mere curiosity.

Theodora was a fun-loving girl by nature; she laughed over the snap-cracker episodes, and laughed, indeed, at the Elm House roof exploit, and even could not help laughing at Alfred and Halse's final trick with Enoch's clothes.

"But that was mean," she kept saying. "What do you suppose he will do? Will he have them arrested?"

"No, I guess not," replied Addison. "I think it will pass as a joke. Enoch will probably get his clothes back, in a day or two, if not his boots."

"But he declared he would give Alf and Halse an awful licking the first time he meets them out anywheres," I said.

"Well, I shouldn't much blame him, I do say, if he did," observed Theodora, laughing again.

"I would if I were he," said Addison. "You see, they begun on Enoch in the first place."

Just then we heard a little creaking noise in the chamber stairway.

"Sh," whispered Theodora. "I believe Halse is there, on the stairs, listening."

"Well, listeners rarely hear much good of themselves," said Addison, loudly enough for him to hear it. We heard still another little creaking noise, this time higher up the stairs, as if he were tiptoeing back to his room.

"I am sorry if he overheard us," Theodora remarked in a low tone, as we got up to go to our rooms.

"I don't care," said Addison. "What could he expect any one to say of a mean thing like that?"

When I entered our room, Halse was in bed, and pretended to snore.

"Oh, that's too thin, Halse," said I. "We heard you on the stairs."

"You are a couple of tell-tales!" he exclaimed, hotly. "To come home and chatter out everything that happened, to the girls!"

There was some little force in the reproach, and I did not at once reply to it. "Tell-tale, tell-tale!" he kept calling out, tauntingly, as I was undressing.

"You just wait till Enoch gets hold of you!" I remarked, beginning to grow irritated.

"I'm not afraid of any of your Enochs!" cried Halse.

"What were you on the top of the Elm House for, then?" I asked, sarcastically. "I wouldn't like to be in your shoes the next time Enoch gets his eye on you."

"If he touches me, I'll fix him!" cried Halstead, wrathfully. "And I'll slap you, too, if you don't keep still," he added, giving me a kick under the bedspread, which I did not quite dare to resent, and so turned over to the wall and fell asleep.

Thus ended our first Fourth of July at the farm.

I must add a word here relative to Enoch's clothes, however. The effigy hung there over the road for two days; but word had been sent to Enoch, who lived in another town, and on the third day he made his appearance for the purpose of reclaiming his garments; but meantime, either that morning or the previous evening, the effigy was stolen, or at least captured and carried off. The latter offense was finally traced to a passing tin-peddler, who, when accused of it, declared that he had found the image lying in the road, and deemed the clothes old togs, fit only for paper rags and not worth advertising; he had therefore put them in his cart and driven on. He was subsequently shown to have sold the suit, not as paper rags; and when threatened with legal proceedings, he settled the matter on Enoch's own terms.

On the first day of the "Cattle Show," or County Fair, that fall, Enoch fell in with Alfred Batchelder, in the rear of the cattle sheds, and, to make use of a phrase common among fighting characters, "wiped up the ground with him"—not over clean ground, either—for a space of several minutes. Our Halstead steered clear of him, however, and so far as I know, never received his just deserts for his share in the transaction,—which may, perhaps, be said to lie in the line of a remark which Elder Witham was fond of making in his quaint sermon against the Universalists. "Justice," quoth the Elder, "certainly does not get done in this brief, imperfect life of ours. Many of the worst wrongs men do us go unredressed in spite of our best efforts to square accounts with them!"

I recollect, also, that as we had unharnessed old Sol in the wagon-house that night and led him out, we noticed a great light in the sky, away to the southward. It shone up high in the heavens, but was pale, as if a long distance off. I asked Addison what he thought it could be, and he said there must be a great fire somewhere in that direction. We thought no more about it at the time; but toward evening next day a rumor reached us, afterwards confirmed, that a great part of the city of Portland had burned, entailing a loss of nearly or quite twenty millions of dollars.

But along with all these distracting incidents of the Fourth of July, there was a bit of seriousness and worry that lingered in a back nook of my mind, connected with that funeral which the Old Squire and I had attended. I felt that there was something, some question concerning it, which I must solve, or settle, before I could feel right again. I had never seen a person lying dead before; I tried not to think about it and in part succeeded, when there were a good many other things going on, yet all the time I knew that it was there in my mind and must be thought about before long. When I was very tired and first shut my eyes, on lying down at night, I would see that man in his coffin so plainly that I would fairly jump in bed, and then have to turn over several times and begin talking with Halstead, somewhat to his annoyance, for without quite understanding it, I suppose, he yet perceived that it was not a genuine conversational effort.

During the days following the Fourth, this impression of death which had entered my mind began to assume more definite limits, and grew pertinent to my own status. I had heard that the average age of man was thirty-three years, and granting that I should reach that age, I could expect to live a little over twenty years more. That was a long time, to be sure, twenty years; but it would pass, and at the end of it I should have to die and look as that man looked, and be buried in the ground. The thought of it caused me to gasp suddenly, and filled me with a sense of terror and despair so awful that I could scarcely restrain myself from crying out. Most young people, I conjecture, pass through a similar mental experience, when the drear fact of death is first realized.

It continued to weigh heavily on my mind; and by way of relief from it, I followed Theodora out into the garden the next Sunday evening, and after quite an effort, opened the subject with her. There was no one else with whom I could have summoned resolution to broach that topic.

"Did you ever see anybody after they were dead?" I asked her.

She did not seem very much surprised at the question, since it was Sabbath eve. "Do you mean their body?" she inquired.

"Yes, their body," I replied.

"I have seen three," she said, at length.

"Didn't it make you feel strange?" I asked. "It did me. It is an awful thing to die and be put down into the ground, with all that earth on one."

"Oh, but they don't know it," said Theodora. "It is only their dead bodies; their spirits are far away."

"Yes," I said, "but I cannot help thinking of their bodies, and that it is them still, only they cannot wake up and speak."

"Oh, no, their spirits are far away," replied my gentle cousin, confidently.

"But that man, the one whose funeral Gramp and I went to, he died intoxicated. Where do you honestly think he is now?" I asked her.

"It's a dreadful thing to think of," replied Theodora, solemnly. "You know the Bible says, no drunkard can go to heaven."

"Then he will be burned forever and ever and ever, won't he?" I said.

"I suppose he will," she said, and taking out her handkerchief, she wiped her eyes sadly.

"Do you think it will be real fire and that it will smart just as it does when we burn our fingers?" I asked her.

"Maybe worse," Theodora replied, again wiping her eyes. "But sometimes I cannot believe that it will be all the time, night and day, year after year. Maybe it is wicked to hope it will not be, but I do want to think that they would stop sometimes. Universalists teach that nobody will be punished at all after they die; but Gram thinks they are not real Christians. Our folks all believe that the wicked will be punished forever, and the Bible does say so, I suppose. Grandmother says that all the great Bible scholars agree that the wicked will be punished."

"What does Ad think?" I asked, at length.

"I don't know. I'm afraid that he doesn't think at all," replied Theodora. "The thing I do not like in Cousin Addison is that he will never take a serious view of these important questions. The time he had the measles, he was very sick one day, and I said that I hoped that his mind was at peace. He looked at me as if he were a little frightened at first, for I suppose he thought that I thought that he was going to die, for I did begin in a sort of clumsy way. His head was swelled nearly as big again as it ought to have been, and he looked very queer about the eyes. 'O Doad!' he exclaimed, 'please do talk of things that you know something about.' But of course he felt peevish, being so sick."

"I suppose he did," said I. "But isn't it awful that everybody's got to die—and no getting away from it?"

"Yes, it does make any one feel dreadfully sad," Theodora assented. "But the good will be better off."

I did not gain much comfort from the conversation, however, and for years thereafter the thought of death filled me with the same choking sense of terror.



CHAPTER XVI

WOOD-CHUCKS IN THE CLOVER—ADDISON'S STRATAGEM

Creameries with ice-chests were as yet unheard of in the rural counties of Maine in 1866. At the old farm, all of the dairy milk was set in pans on the clean, cool cellar bottom. As the warm mornings of midsummer drew on, Gram was usually up by five o'clock, attending to her cream and butter; and about this time, as we issued drowsily forth, in response to the Old Squire's early rap, we were repeatedly startled at hearing a sudden eldritch exclamation which was half scream, at the foot of the bulkhead stairs.

"What's the matter down there, Ruth?" the Old Squire would exclaim.

"Dear me, I've stepped on that hateful toad again!" Gram would reply. "It's always under foot there! Do, Ellen, you get the tongs and carry that toad off again. Carry him away out to the foot of the garden, below the currant bushes. I don't see how he is forever getting back to the foot of those stairs! It gives me such a start, to put my foot on him!"

And Gram would have to sit down for a time, to fan herself and to recover her composure.

"Well, Ruth, I should think it would give the toad a start, too," the Old Squire would comment, dryly.

Meantime Ellen or Addison would proceed to capture the toad—a fine, big brown chunk of a toad—and exile him to the garden. Once Ellen carried him, wriggling in the tongs, around to the back side of the west barn. Ad, too, carried him out into the orchard one night. But by the next day, or the day following, toady would be back at the foot of the bulkhead stairs again. There is no doubt that it was the same toad, and he certainly must have possessed a good sense of locality. We could not for some time imagine how he obtained entrance to the cellar, for he returned to his favorite cool spot on days when the outer bulkhead door was closed. Addison at length decided that he must have got in by way of the cellar drain, on the back side of the house.

It was contrary to all the homely traditions at the farm to kill or maltreat a toad. Not less than seven times was that toad carefully carried away into the garden, or down the lane.

At last Gram's patience was exhausted. Her ire rose. "I'll see if you come back into my cellar again, old fellow," she exclaimed, before breakfast one morning after the recusant batrachian had been transported the night before. This time the old lady seized the tongs herself, and marched out into the yard, holding toady with no gentle pinch on his rotund body.

"Ellen, you bring me a quart of that brine out of the beef barrel," she called back to the kitchen.

Then having put the toad down in the cart road leading out into the fields, she dashed him with brine, and as he hopped away pursued him with further douches.

It is not likely that the brine injured the reptile very much, but for some reason it never came back.

For a long time thereafter the Old Squire was accustomed to touch up Gram's conscience now and then, by making sly allusion to her hard-heartedness and cruelty in "pickling toads." The Old Squire, too, had his bucolic enemies as well as Gram.

Wheet-wh-wh-wh-wh-wheedle! was a note we now began to hear daily about the stone walls and in the fields of new clover.

"Oh, those wood-chucks!" the old gentleman would exclaim. "They are making shocking work over in that new piece. Boys, I'll give you five cents a head for every wood-chuck you will kill off."

Amidst the now rapidly blossoming red clover we could see the fresh earth of numbers of their burrows, and almost every day a new one would be espied beside a rock or stone heap. June is the happy month for wood-chucks, in New England; they riot in the farmer's clover, and tunnel the soft hillsides with their holes. June is the month, too, when mother wood-chuck is leading out her four or five chubby little chucks, teaching them the fear of dogs and man, which constitutes the wisdom of a wood-chuck's life, and giving them their first lesson in that shrill, yet guttural note peculiar to wood-chuckdom, which country boys call "whistling."

It is remarkable how many wood-chucks will not only get a living, but wax fat on an old farm where the farmer himself has difficulty in making year's ends meet. Addison estimated that at one time there were seventy wood-chucks on the Old Squire's homestead, all prosperous and laying by something, metaphorically speaking, for a rainy day.

Despite all the evil that is said of the wood-chuck, too, he does in reality a much smaller amount of damage to man than one would imagine from the outcry against him. Occasionally, it is true, a chuck will begin nibbling at early pease, or beans, and do real, measurable harm, but the injury which he inflicts on the farmer in the hay-fields is generally much exaggerated. In the "south field" that year, there were two acres of red clover, where not less than seven or eight wood-chucks dug new holes and threw out mounds of yellow earth, which in some places crushed down the crop. Then, too, in feeding and running about, they trampled on plats of the thick clover, particularly where it had "lodged" from its own rank growth. There were, in all, five or six square rods of the grass which it was not deemed worth while to attempt to mow at all, and the loss of which was due in part, but not wholly, to the wood-chucks. The hired men scolded about it, and Gramp himself, who had a farmer's natural aversion to wood-chucks, fretted over it. We boys, too, magnified the damage and discussed ingenious plans for exterminating them. But after all, I do not believe that we really got two hundred weight of hay less in the field, in consequence of wood-chucks; and certainly the clover as it stood was not worth sixty cents a hundred. A dollar and twenty cents would probably have made good the entire loss; and I suspect that one-half of the damage from trampling on the clover was done by us boys, in pursuit of the chucks, rather than by the chucks themselves. At least, I still remember running through the grass in a very reckless manner on several occasions.

I am keenly aware that to write anything in defense of the wood-chuck will prove unpopular with farmers and farmers' boys. Still, I venture to ask whether we are not, perhaps, a little too much inclined to deem the earth and everything that grows out of it our own particular property. The wood-chuck is undoubtedly an older resident on this continent than men, certainly a far older resident than white men, who came here less than three hundred years ago. Moreover, he is a quiet, inoffensive resident, never becomes a pauper, never gets intoxicated, nor creates any disturbance, minds his own business, and only "whistles" when astonished or suddenly attacked by man and his dogs. May it not be possible that he is honestly entitled to a few stalks of clover which grow in the country which he and his ancestors had inhabited for centuries before white men knew there was any such place as America?

The writer now owns a farm in Maine, or at least holds a deed of it, given him, for a consideration, by another man who in turn had bought it of a previous incumbent who had seized it from the Indians, wood-chucks, hares, foxes and other original proprietors, without, as I hear, making them any return whatever; who, in fact, ejected them without ceremony. For some years whenever the wood-chucks ate anything that grew on the land, particularly if it were anything which I had sown or planted, I attacked them with guns, traps and dogs and killed them when I could.

But one day it occurred to me that perhaps my deed did not fairly authorize me to behave in just that way towards them, and that I was playing the role of a small, but very cruel, self-conceited tyrant over a conquered species whose blood cried out against me from the ground. I ceased my persecutions and massacres. Twenty or thirty wood-chucks now live on the premises with me, unmolested, for the most part. They take about what they want and dig a hole whenever they want a new one. They are really very peaceable neighbors, and it is rarely that we have a difference of opinion in the matter of garden truck,—for I still draw the line at early pease and beans in the garden.

It is, indeed, quite surprising how little they take, or destroy. I do not believe that in all that time they have done me damages which any two fair-minded referees would allow me five dollars for. I am sure I spent more than that for ammunition, to say nothing of time, traps, dog-food, etc., during the year or two that I was playing the despot and trying to exterminate them. Now that I have rid my mind of the barbarous propensity to kill them, I really enjoy seeing them sitting up by their holes, or peeping at me over the heads of clover.

But a boy naturally likes to use his trap and his gun, especially on any animal, or bird, which his seniors represent to him as an outlaw. When the Old Squire set a bounty of five cents upon wood-chuck scalps, the desire to go on the war-path against the proscribed rodents at once took possession of us. A number of rusty fox-traps and mink-traps were brought forth from the wagon-house chamber, to be set at the entrances of the wood-chucks' holes. We covered the trenchers of the traps carefully over with loose dirt and attached the chain to stakes, driven into the ground a little to one side of the hole. In this way five chucks were trapped in the south field during the week.

Halstead and I were in partnership trapping them, but Addison preferred to rely on the gun. It is next to impossible to kill a wood-chuck with shot so quickly that he will not, after being hit, succeed in running into his hole, and thus defeat the evidence that he is a dead wood-chuck. Addison, however, hit upon a stratagem for shooting them at short range. He could imitate their peculiar "whistle" quite cleverly, and having observed that when one wood-chuck whistles, all the others within hearing are apt to exhibit some little curiosity as to what is going on, he turned the circumstance to account. Going cautiously to a burrow, he would crouch down, and placing the muzzle of the gun so as to shoot into the hole, "whistle," as if some neighboring chuck had come along to prospect the premises. In almost every instance, when there was a chuck in the hole, it would immediately come up in sight, probably to greet, or repel its visitor. The instant it appeared, Addison would fire and nearly always kill the animal; for although often he could not secure it, he would carefully close up the hole with stones and earth, and if, after three days, the chuck did not dig out past the obstruction, he laid claim to the bounty. A roster, which he kept in notches on the garden gate, showed that he had shot fourteen wood-chucks.

I remember that Theodora had something to say several times about our cruelty to the poor creatures; but we justified it on account of the damage which the wood-chucks were alleged to do to the grain, grass and beans.

"Oh, Doad would let the wood-chucks eat up everything we plant!" Halse would say, sarcastically. "'Let them have it,' she would say. 'Don't hurt the poor little things!' That's just like girls. They don't have to plant and hoe, so they are very merciful and tender-hearted. But if they had to plough and work and plant and sow and hoe in the hot sun all day, to raise a crop, they'd sing a different tune when the plaguey wood-chucks came around and ate it up!"

We thought Addison's stratagem a very bright one. That he could "whistle" the chuck out of his hole, and fetch him up to the very muzzle of the gun, was considered remarkably clever. But an incident which occurred a few days later rendered it forever unpopular.

Catherine Edwards had come over to go raspberrying, and Theodora, Ellen and Wealthy set off with her after school for the south field. They had to go around the clover piece, and as they passed it, Kate espied a wood-chuck, which, when it heard them, instead of disappearing in its burrow hard by, ran around in so peculiar a manner that they all stopped to watch it.

"It's crazy," cried Catherine; and at first they were afraid the animal would attack them; it ran to and fro in what seemed an aimless sort of manner. At length, they concluded that it had lost its hole and was trying to find it. They saw that its head was bare of hair in front, and presently decided that the poor creature was blind, for its eyes appeared to be gone, or covered over with an incrustation.

The explanation of its singular appearance and behavior then suddenly occurred to Ellen. "I know!" she cried. "It's one of those wood-chucks that Ad has shot in the face and eyes, as they peep out of their holes when he 'whistles' to them!"

"Oh, the poor, abused thing!" exclaimed Catherine. "I never heard of anything so hatefully cruel!"

The wood-chuck, although so dreadfully wounded and with its eyes destroyed by the powder, had yet, after several days, mustered sufficient strength to come out and feed. But it was totally blind, and once having lost its course, could not find the way back to its burrow, but dashed about in terror amidst the clover. Finally it took refuge beneath some of the lodged grass beside a stone; and meantime those sympathetic girls held an indignation meeting. Their pity for the poor creature knew no bounds, and Ellen was despatched to call us boys to the spot, that the full enormity of our act might be exhibited before our eyes.

We were just finishing hoeing the corn, the second time, that afternoon, and had only a few rows more. With an air of one who has a mission and a duty to perform, Ellen approached where we were at work and said, "We want you to come down to the south field this minute!"

"What for?" asked Addison.

"A good reason," replied Ellen, with an accent of suppressed scorn. "Kate and Doad sent me."

"What is it?" persisted Addison.

"Some of your fine works," said Ellen. "And you just come straight along and see it."

"We won't go unless you tell," replied Halse.

"Oh, you won't!" exclaimed Ellen severely. "Great wood-chuck hunters you are!" At the word wood-chuck we began to feel interested, and at length so far obeyed Ellen's iterated summons as to follow after her to the south field.

"Well, what's wanted?" demanded Addison, addressing himself to Theodora, as we drew near.

"I want you to see just what a cruel boy you are!" she replied. "There's one of the wood-chucks that you pretend to shoot so cutely. Go look at him, right under the clover there by that stone. Look at his poor little eyes all burned out, you cruel fellow!"

Not a little dumbfounded by this blast of indignation, thus suddenly let loose upon us, we drew near and examined the crouching chuck. It was really a rueful spectacle,—the disabled and trembling creature trying in vain to see where its enemies were gathered about it.

"I didn't think you were such a cruel boy!" exclaimed Catherine, sarcastically. "Alf Batchelder might do such a thing. He is hateful enough always. But I didn't think it of you."

"Well, I shot at him," exclaimed Addison. "I thought I had killed him, you know."

"Oh yes, you did think, did you!" cried Catherine. "How would you like to have some one come along to your door or your chamber window, and speak to you to come out; and then when you stepped to the door to see what was wanted, to have them fire powder in your face and burn your eyes out! How would you like that?"