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Darrel of the Blessed Isles

by Irving Bacheller · English · Gutenberg #12102 · 399,999 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Darrel of the Blessed Isles

Author: Irving Bacheller


        
Release date: April 1, 2004 [eBook #12102]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DARREL OF THE BLESSED ISLES ***

DARREL OF THE BLESSED ISLES


BY

IRVING BACHELLER



AUTHOR OF

EBEN HOLDEN
D'RI AND I
CANDLE-LIGHT, Etc.


ILLUSTRATED BY
ARTHUR I. KELLER


1903



To the Memory of my Father




PREFACE

The author has tried to give some history of that uphill road,
traversing the rough back country, through which men of power came
once into the main highways, dusty, timid, foot-sore, and curiously
old-fashioned.  Now is the up grade eased by scholarships; young
men labour with the football instead of the buck-saw, and wear high
collars, and travel on a Pullman car, and dally with slang and
cigarettes in the smoking-room.   Altogether it is a new Republic,
and only those unborn shall know if it be greater.

The man of learning and odd character and humble life was quite
familiar once, and not only in Hillsborough.  Often he was born out
of time, loving ideals of history and too severe with realities
around him.  In Darrel it is sought to portray a force held in
fetters and covered with obscurity, yet strong to make its way and
widely felt.  His troubles granted, one may easily concede his
character, and his troubles are, mainly, no fanciful invention.
There is good warrant for them in the court record of a certain
case, together with the inference of a great lawyer who lived a
time in its odd mystery.  The author, it should be added, has given
success to a life that ended in failure.   He cares not if that
success be unusual should any one be moved to think it within his
reach.

A man of rugged virtues and good fame once said: "The forces that
have made me?  Well, first my mother, second my poverty, third
Felix Holt.  That masterful son of George Eliot became an ideal of
my youth, and unconsciously I began to live his life."

It is well that the boy in the book was nobler than any who lived
in Treby Magna.

As to "the men of the dark," they have long afflicted a man living
and well known to the author of this tale, who now commits it to
the world hoping only that these poor children of his brain may
deserve kindness if not approval.

  NEW YORK CITY,
  March, 1903.




CONTENTS

PRELUDE

CHAPTER
     I.  The Story of the Little Red Sleigh
    II.  The Crystal City and the Traveller
   III.  The Clock Tinker
    IV.  The Uphill Road
     V.  At the Sign o' the Dial
    VI.  A Certain Rich Man
   VII.  Darrel of the Blessed Isles
  VIII.  Dust of Diamonds in the Hour-glass
    IX.  Drove and Drovers
     X.  An Odd Meeting
    XI.  The Old Rag Doll
   XII.  The Santa Claus of Cedar Hill
  XIII.  A Christmas Adventure
   XIV.  A Day at the Linley Schoolhouse
    XV.  The Tinker at Linley School
   XVI.  A Rustic Museum
  XVII.  An Event in the Rustic Museum
 XVIII.  A Day of Difficulties
   XIX.  Amusement and Learning
    XX.  At the Theatre of the Woods
   XXI.  Robin's Inn
  XXII.  Comedies of Field and Dooryard
 XXIII.  A New Problem
  XXIV.  Beginning the Book of Trouble
   XXV.  The Spider Snares
  XXVI.  The Coming of the Cars
 XXVII.  The Rare and Costly Cup
XXVIII.  Darrel at Robin's Inn
  XXIX.  Again the Uphill Road
   XXX.  Evidence
  XXXI.  A Man Greater than his Trouble
 XXXII.  The Return of Thurst Tilly
XXXIII.  The White Guard
 XXXIV.  More Evidence
  XXXV.  At the Sign of the Golden Spool
 XXXVI.  The Law's Approval
XXXVII.  The Return of Santa Claus




DARREL OF THE BLESSED ISLES

Prelude

Yonder up in the hills are men and women, white-haired, who love to
tell of that time when the woods came to the door-step and God's
cattle fed on the growing corn.  Where, long ago, they sowed their
youth and strength, they see their sons reaping, but now, bent with
age, they have ceased to gather save in the far fields of memory.
Every day they go down the long, well-trodden path and come back
with hearts full.  They are as children plucking the meadows of
June.  Sit with them awhile, and they will gather for you the
unfading flowers of joy and love--good sir! the world is full of
them.  And should they mention Trove or a certain clock tinker that
travelled from door to door in the olden time, send your horse to
the stable and God-speed them!--it is a long tale, and you may
listen far into the night.

"See the big pines there in the dale yonder?" some one will ask.
"Well, Theron Allen lived there, an' across the pond, that's where
the moss trail came out and where you see the cow-path--that's near
the track of the little red sleigh."

Then--the tale and its odd procession coming out of the far past.




I

The Story of the Little Red Sleigh


It was in 1835, about mid-winter, when Brier Dale was a narrow
clearing, and the horizon well up in the sky and to anywhere a
day's journey.

Down by the shore of the pond, there, Allen built his house.
To-day, under thickets of tansy, one may see the rotting logs, and
there are hollyhocks and catnip in the old garden.  He was from
Middlebury, they say, and came west--he and his wife--in '29.  From
the top of the hill above Allen's, of a clear day, one could look
far across the tree-tops, over distant settlements that were as
blue patches in the green canopy of the forest, over hill and dale
to the smoky chasm of the St. Lawrence thirty miles north.  The
Allens had not a child; they settled with no thought of school or
neighbour.  They brought a cow with them and a big collie whose
back had been scarred by a lynx.  He was good company and a brave
hunter, this dog; and one day--it was February, four years after
their coming, and the snow lay deep--he left the dale and not even
a track behind him.  Far and wide they went searching, but saw no
sign of him.  Near a month later, one night, past twelve o'clock,
they heard his bark in the distance.  Allen rose and lit a candle
and opened the door.  They could hear him plainer, and now, mingled
with his barking, a faint tinkle of bells.

It had begun to thaw, and a cold rain was drumming on roof and
window.

"He's crossing the pond," said Allen, as he listened.  "He's
dragging some heavy thing over the ice."

Soon he leaped in at the door, the little red sleigh bouncing after
him.  The dog was in shafts and harness.  Over the sleigh was a
tiny cover of sail-cloth shaped like that of a prairie schooner.
Bouncing over the door-step had waked its traveller, and there was
a loud voice of complaint in the little cavern of sail-cloth.
Peering in, they saw only the long fur of a gray wolf.  Beneath it
a very small boy lay struggling with straps that held him down.
Allen loosed them and took him out of the sleigh, a ragged but
handsome youngster with red cheeks and blue eyes and light, curly
hair.  He was near four years of age then, but big and strong as
any boy of five.  He stood rubbing his eyes a minute, and the dog
came over and licked his face, showing fondness acquired they knew
not where.  Mrs. Allen took the boy in her lap and petted him, but
he was afraid--like a wild fawn that has just been captured--and
broke away and took refuge under the bed.  A long time she sat by
her bedside with the candle, showing him trinkets and trying to
coax him out.  He ceased to cry when she held before him a big,
shiny locket of silver, and soon his little hand came out to grasp
it.  Presently she began to reach his confidence with sugar.  There
was a moment of silence, then strange words came out of his
hiding-place.  "Anah jouhan" was all they could make of them, and
they remembered always that odd combination of sounds.  They gave
him food, which he ate with eager haste.  Then a moment of silence
and an imperative call for more in some strange tongue.  When at
last he came out of his hiding-place, he fled from the woman.  This
time he sought refuge between the knees of Allen, where soon his
fear gave way to curiosity, and he began to feel her face and gown.
By and by he fell asleep.

They searched the sleigh and shook out the robe and blanket,
finding only a pair of warm bricks.

A Frenchman worked for the Allens that winter, and the name, Trove,
was of his invention.

And so came Sidney Trove, his mind in strange fetters, travelling
out of the land of mystery, in a winter night, to Brier Dale.




II

The Crystal City and the Traveller

The wind, veering, came bitter cold; the rain hardened to hail; the
clouds, changed to brittle nets of frost, and shaken to shreds by
the rough wind, fell hissing in a scatter of snow.  Next morning
when Allen opened his door the wind was gone, the sky clear.  Brier
Pond, lately covered with clear ice, lay under a blanket of snow.
He hurried across the pond, his dog following.  Near the far shore
was a bare spot on the ice cut by one of the sleigh-runners.  Up in
the woods, opposite, was the Moss Trail.  Sunlight fell on the
hills above him.  He halted, looking up at the tree-tops.  Twig,
branch, and trunk glowed with the fire of diamonds through a lacy
necking of hoar frost.  Every tree had put on a jacket of ice and
become as a fountain of prismatic hues.  Here and there a dead pine
rose like a spire of crystal; domes of deep-coloured glass and
towers of jasper were as the landmarks of a city.  Allen climbed
the shore, walking slowly.  He could see no track of sleigh or dog
or any living thing.  A frosted, icy tangle of branches arched the
trail--a gateway of this great, crystal city of the woods.  He
entered, listening as he walked.  Branches of hazel and dogwood
were like jets of water breaking into clear, halted drops and foamy
spray above him.  He went on, looking up at this long sky-window of
the woods.  In the deep silence he could hear his heart beating.

"Sport," .said he to the dog, "show me the way;" but the dog only
wagged his tail.

Allen returned to the house.

"Wife," said he, "look at the woods yonder.  They are like the city
of holy promise.  'Behold I will lay thy stones with fair colours
and thy foundations with sapphires, and I will make thy windows of
agate.'"

"Did you find the track of the little sleigh?" said she.

"No," he answered, "nor will any man, for all paths are hidden."

"Theron--may we keep the boy?" she inquired.

"I think it is the will of God," said Allen.

The boy grew and throve in mind and body.  For a time he prattled
in a language none who saw him were able to comprehend.  But he
learned English quickly and soon forgot the jargon of his babyhood.
The shadows of mystery that fell over his coming lengthened far
into his life and were deepened by others that fell across them.
Before he could have told the story, all memory of whom he left or
whence he came had been swept away.  It was a house of riddles
where Allen dwelt--a rude thing of logs and ladders and a low roof
and two rooms.  Yet one ladder led high to glories no pen may
describe.  The Allens, with this rude shelter, found delight in
dreams of an eternal home whose splendour and luxury would have
made them miserable here below.  What a riddle was this!  And then,
as to the boy Sid, there was the riddle of his coming, and again
that of his character, which latter was, indeed, not easy to solve.
There were few books and no learning in that home.  For three
winters Trove tramped a trail to the schoolhouse two miles away,
and had no further schooling until he was a big, blond boy of
fifteen, with red cheeks, and eyes large, blue, and discerning, and
hands hardened to the axe helve.  He had then discovered the beauty
of the woods and begun to study the wild folk that live in holes
and thickets.  He had a fine face.  You would have called him
handsome, but not they among whom he lived.  With them handsome was
as handsome did, and the face of a man, if it were cleanly, was
never a proper cause of blame or compliment.  But there was that in
his soul, which even now had waked the mother's wonder and set
forth a riddle none were able to solve.




III

The Clock Tinker

The harvesting was over in Brier Dale.  It was near dinner-time,
and Allen, Trove, and the two hired men were trying feats in the
dooryard.  Trove, then a boy of fifteen, had outdone them all at
the jumping.  A stranger came along, riding a big mare with a young
filly at her side.  He was a tall, spare man, past middle age, with
a red, smooth-shaven face and long, gray hair that fell to his
rolling collar.  He turned in at the gate.  A little beyond it his
mare halted for a mouthful of grass.  The stranger unslung a strap
that held a satchel to his side and hung it on the pommel.

"Go and ask what we can do for him," Allen whispered to the boy.

Trove went down the drive, looking up at him curiously.

"What can I do for you?" he inquired.

"Give me thy youth," said the stranger, quickly, his gray eyes
twinkling under silvered brows.

The boy, now smiling, made no answer.

"No?" said the man, as he came on slowly.  "Well, then, were thy
wit as good as thy legs it would be o' some use to me."

The words were spoken with dignity in a deep, kindly tone.  They
were also faintly salted with Irish brogue.

He approached the men, all eyes fixed upon him with a look of
inquiry.

"Have ye ever seen a drunken sailor on a mast?" he inquired of
Allen,

"No."

"Well, sor," said the stranger, dismounting slowly, "I am not that.
Let me consider--have ye ever seen a cocoanut on a plum tree?"

"I believe not," said Allen, laughing.

"Well, sor, that is more like me.  'Tis long since I rode a horse,
an' am out o' place in the saddle."

He stood erect with dignity, a smile deepening the many lines in
his face.

"Can I do anything for you?" Allen asked.

"Ay--cure me o' poverty--have ye any clocks to mend?"

"Clocks! Are you a tinker?" said Allen.

"I am, sor, an' at thy service.  Could beauty, me lord, have better
commerce than with honesty?"

They all surveyed him with curiosity and amusement as he tied the
mare.

All had begun to laugh.  His words came rapidly on a quick
undercurrent of good nature.  A clock sounded the stroke of midday.

"What, ho! The clock," said he, looking at his watch.  "Thy time
hath a lagging foot, Marry, were I that slow, sor, I'd never get to
Heaven."

"Mother," said Allen, going to the doorstep, "here is a tinker, and
he says the clock is slow."

"It seems to be out of order." said his wife, coming to the step.

"Seems, madam, nay, it is," said the stranger.  "Did ye mind the
stroke of it?"

"No," said she.

"Marry, 'twas like the call of a dying man."

Allen thought a moment as he whittled.

"Had I such a stroke on me I'd--I'd think I was parralyzed," the
stranger added.

"You'd better fix it then," said Allen.

"Thou art wise, good man," said the stranger.  "Mind the two hands
on the clock an' keep them to their pace or they'll beckon thee to
poverty."

The clock was brought to the door-step and all gathered about him
as he went to work.

"Ye know a power o' scripter," said one of the hired men.

"Scripter," said the tinker, laughing.  "I do, sor, an' much of it
according to the good Saint William.  Have ye never read
Shakespeare?"

None who sat before him knew anything of the immortal bard.

"He writ a book 'bout Dan'l Boone an' the Injuns," a hired man
ventured.

"'Angels an' ministers o' grace defend us!'" the tinker exclaimed,

Trove laughed.

"I'll give ye a riddle," said the tinker, turning to him.

"How is it the clock can keep a sober face?"

"It has no ears," Trove answered.

"Right," said the old tinker, smiling.  "Thou art a knowing youth.
Read Shakespeare, boy--a little of him three times a day for the
mind's sake.  I've travelled far in lonely places and needed no
other company."

"Ever in India?" Trove inquired.  He had been reading of that far
land.

"I was, sor," the stranger continued, rubbing a wheel.  "I was five
years in India, sor, an' part o' the time fighting as hard as ever
a man could fight."

"Fighting!" said Trove, much interested.

"I was, sor," he asserted, oiling a pinion of the old clock.

"On which side?"

"Inside an' outside."

"With natives?"

"I did, sor; three kinds o' them,--fever, fleas, an' the divvle."

"Give us some more Shakespeare," said the boy, smiling.

The tinker rubbed his spectacles thoughtfully, and, as he resumed
his work, a sounding flood of tragic utterance came out of him--the
great soliloquies of Hamlet and Macbeth and Richard III and Lear
and Antony, all said with spirit and appreciation.  The job
finished, they bade him put up for dinner.

"A fine colt!" said Allen, as they were on their way to the stable.

"It is, sor," said the tinker, "a most excellent breed o' horses."

"Where from?"

"The grandsire from the desert of Arabia, where Allah created the
horse out o' the south wind.  See the slender flanks of the
Barbary?  See her eye?"

He seemed to talk in that odd strain for the mere joy of it, and
there was in his voice the God-given vanity of bird or poet.

He had caught the filly by her little plume and stood patting her
forehead.

"A wonderful thing, sor, is the horse's eye," he continued.  "A
glance! an' they know if ye be kind or cruel.  Sweet Phyllis!  Her
eyelids are as bows; her lashes like the beard o' the corn.  Have
ye ever heard the three prayers o' the horse?"

"No," said Allen.

"Well, three times a day, sor, he prays, so they say, in the
desert.  In the morning he thinks a prayer like this, 'O Allah!
make me beloved o' me master.'  At noon, 'Do well by me master that
he may do well by me.'  At even, 'O Allah! grant, at last, I may
bear me master into Paradise.'

"An' the Arab, sor, he looks for a hard ride an' many jumps in the
last journey, an' is kind to him all the days of his life, sor, so
he may be able to make it."

For a moment he led her up and down at a quick trot, her dainty
feet touching the earth lightly as a fawn's.

"Thou'rt made for the hot leagues o' the great sand sea," said he,
patting her head.  "Ah! thy neck shall be as the bowsprit; thy dust
as the flying spray."

"In one thing you are like Isaiah," said Allen, as he whittled.
"The Lord God hath given thee the tongue of the learned."

"An' if he grant me the power to speak a word in season to him that
is weary, I shall be content," said the tinker.

Dinner over, they came out of doors.  The stranger stood filling
his pipe.  Something in his talk and manner had gone deep into the
soul of the boy, who now whispered a moment with his father.

"Would you sell the filly?" said Allen.  "My boy would like to own
her."

"What, ho, the boy! the beautiful boy!  An' would ye love her,
boy?" the tinker asked.

"Yes, sir," the boy answered quickly,

"An' put a ribbon in her forelock, an' a coat o' silk on her back,
an', mind ye, a man o' kindness in the saddle?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then take thy horse, an' Allah grant thou be successful on her as
many times as there be hairs in her skin."

"And the price?" said Allen.

"Name it, an' I'll call thee just."

The business over, the tinker called to Trove, who had led the
filly to her stall,--

"You, there, strike the tents.  Bring me the mare.  This very day
she may bear me to forgiveness."

Trove brought the mare.

"Remember," said the old man, turning as he rode away, "in the day
o' the last judgment God 'll mind the look o' thy horse."

He rode on a few steps and halted, turning in the saddle.

"Thou, too, Phyllis," he called.  "God 'll mind the look o' thy
master; see that ye bring him safe."

The little filly began to rear and call, the mother to answer.  For
days she called and trembled, with wet eyes, listening for the
voice that still answered, though out of hearing, far over the
hills.  And Trove, too, was lonely, and there was a kind of longing
in his heart for the music in that voice of the stranger.




IV

The Uphill Road

For Trove it was a day of sowing.  The strange old tinker had
filled his heart with a new joy and a new desire.  Next morning he
got a ride to Hillsborough--fourteen miles--and came back, reading,
as he walked, a small, green book, its thin pages covered thick
with execrably fine printing, its title "The Works of Shakespeare."
He read the book industriously and with keen pleasure.  Allen
complained, shortly, that Shakespeare and the filly had interfered
with the potatoes and the corn.

The filly ceased to take food and sickened for a time after the dam
left her.  Trove lay in the stall nights and gave her milk
sweetened to her liking.  She grew strong and playful, and forgot
her sorrow, and began to follow him like a dog on his errands up
and down the farm.  Trove went to school in the autumn--"Select
school," it was called.  A two-mile journey it was, by trail, but a
full three by the wagon road.  He learned only a poor lesson the
first day, for, on coming in sight of the schoolhouse, he heard a
rush of feet behind him and saw his filly charging down the trail.
He had to go back with her and lose the day, a thought dreadful to
him, for now hope was high, and school days few and precious.  At
first he was angry.  Then he sat among the ferns, covering his face
and sobbing with sore resentment.  The little filly stood over him
and rubbed her silky muzzle on his neck, and kicked up her heels in
play as he pushed her back.  Next morning he put her behind a
fence, but she went over it with the ease of a wild deer and came
bounding after him.  When, at last, she was shut in the box-stall
he could hear her calling, half a mile away, and it made his heart
sore.  Soon after, a moose treed him on the trail and held him
there for quite half a day.  Later he had to help thrash and was
laid up with the measles.  Then came rain and flooded flats that
turned him off the trail.  Years after he used to say that work and
weather, and sickness and distance, and even the beasts of the
field and wood, resisted him in the way of learning.

He went to school at Hillsborough that winter.  His time, which
Allen gave him in the summer, had yielded some forty-five dollars.
He hired a room at thirty-five cents a week.  Mary Allen bought him
a small stove and sent to him, in the sleigh, dishes, a kettle,
chair, bed, pillow, and quilt, and a supply of candles.

She surveyed him proudly, as he was going away that morning in
December,

"Folks may call ye han'some," she said.  "They'd like to make fool
of ye, but you go on 'bout yer business an' act as if ye didn't
hear."

He had a figure awkward, as yet, but fast shaping to comeliness.
Long, light hair covered the tops of his ears and fell to his
collar.  His ruddy cheeks were a bit paler that morning; the curve
in his lips a little drawn; his blue eyes had begun to fill and the
dimple in his chin to quiver, slightly, as he kissed her who had
been as a mother to him.  But he went away laughing.

Many have seen the record in his diary of those lank and busy days.
The Saturday of his first week at school he wrote as follows:--


"Father brought me a small load of wood and a sack of potatoes
yesterday, so, after this, I shall be able to live cheaper.  My
expenses this week have been as follows:--

  Rent                     35 cents
  Corn meal                14   "
  Milk                     20   "
  Bread                     8   "
  Beef bone                 5   "
  Honey                     5   "
  Four potatoes, about      1   "
                           --
                           88 cents.

"Two boys who have a room on the same floor got through the week
for 75 cents apiece, but they are both undersized and don't eat as
hearty.  This week I was tempted by the sight of honey and was fool
enough to buy a little which I didn't need.  I have some meal left
and hope next week to get through for 80 cents.  I wish I could
have a decent necktie, but conscience doth make cowards of us all.
I have committed half the first act of 'Julius Caesar.'"


And yet, with pudding and milk and beef bone and four potatoes and
"Julius Caesar" the boy was cheerful.

"Don't like meat any more--it's mostly poor stuff anyway," he said
to his father, who had come to see him.

"Sorry--I brought down a piece o' venison," said Allen.

"Well, there's two kinds o' meat," said the boy; "what ye can have,
that's good, an' what ye can't have, that ain't worth havin'."

He got a job in the mill for every Saturday at 75 cents a day, and
soon thereafter was able to have a necktie and a pair of fine
boots, and a barber, now and then, to control the length of his
hair.

Trove burnt the candles freely and was able but never brilliant in
his work that year, owing, as all who knew him agreed, to great
modesty and small confidence.  He was a kindly, big-hearted fellow,
and had wit and a knowledge of animals and of woodcraft that made
him excellent company.  That schoolboy diary has been of great
service to all with a wish to understand him.  On a faded leaf in
the old book one may read as follows:--


"I have received letters in the handwriting of girls, unsigned.
They think they are in love with me and say foolish things.  I know
what they're up to.  They're the kind my mother spoke of--the kind
that set their traps for a fool, and when he's caught they use him
for a thing to laugh at.  They're not going to catch me.

"Expenses for seven days have been $1.14.  Clint McCormick spent 60
cents to take his girl to a show and I had to help him through the
week.  I told him he ought to love Caesar less and Rome more."


Then follows the odd entry without which it is doubtful if the
history of Sidney Trove could ever have been written.  At least
only a guess would have been possible, where now is certainty.  And
here is the entry:--


"Since leaving home the men of the dark have been very troublesome.
They wake me about every other night and sometimes I wonder what
they mean."


Now an odd thing had developed in the mystery of the boy.  Even
before he could distinguish between reality and its shadow that we
see in dreams, he used often to start up with a loud cry of fear in
the night.  When a small boy he used to explain it briefly by
saying, "the men in the dark."  Later he used to say, "the men
outdoors in the dark."  At ten years of age he went off on a three
days' journey with the Allens.  They put up in a tavern that had
many rooms and stairways and large windows.  It was a while after
his return of an evening, before candle-light, when a gray curtain
of dusk had dimmed the windows, that he first told the story, soon
oft repeated and familiar, of "the men in the dark"--at least he
went as far as he knew.

"I dream," he was wont to say in after life, "that I am listening
in the still night alone--I am always alone.  I hear a sound in the
silence, of what I cannot be sure.  I discover then, or seem to,
that I stand in a dark room and tremble, with great fear, of what I
do not know.  I walk along softly in bare feet--I am so fearful of
making a noise.  I am feeling, feeling, my hands out in the dark.
Presently they touch a wall and I follow it and then I discover
that I am going downstairs.  It is a long journey.  At last I am in
a room where I can see windows, and, beyond, the dim light of the
moon.  Now I seem to be wrapped in fearful silence.  Stealthily I
go near the door.  Its upper half is glass, and beyond it I can see
the dark forms of men.  One is peering through with face upon the
pane; I know the other is trying the lock, but I hear no sound.  I
am in a silence like that of the grave.  I try to speak.  My lips
move, but, try as I may, no sound comes out of them.  A sharp
terror is pricking into me, and I flinch as if it were a
knife-blade.  Well, sir, that is a thing I cannot understand.  You
know me--I am not a coward.  If I were really in a like scene fear
would be the least of my emotions; but in the dream I tremble and
am afraid.  Slowly, silently, the door opens, the men of the dark
enter, wall and windows begin to reel.  I hear a quick, loud cry,
rending the silence and falling into a roar like that of flooding
waters.  Then I wake, and my dream is ended--for that night."

Now men have had more thrilling and remarkable dreams, but that of
the boy Trove was as a link in a chain, lengthening with his life,
and ever binding him to some event far beyond the reach of his
memory.




V

At the Sign o' the Dial

It was Sunday and a clear, frosty morning of midwinter.  Trove had
risen early and was walking out on a long pike that divided the
village of Hillsborough and cut the waste of snow, winding over
hills and dipping into valleys, from Lake Champlain to Lake
Ontario.  The air was cold but full of magic sun-fire.  All things
were aglow--the frosty roadway, the white fields, the hoary forest,
and the mind of the beholder.  Trove halted, looking off at the far
hills.  Then he heard a step behind him and, as he turned, saw a
tall man approaching at a quick pace.  The latter had no overcoat.
A knit muffler covered his throat, and a satchel hung from a strap
on his shoulder.

"What ho, boy!" said he, shivering.  "'I'll follow thee a month,
devise with thee where thou shalt rest, that thou may'st hear of
us, an' we o' thee.'  What o' thy people an' the filly?"

"All well," said Trove, who was delighted to see the clock tinker,
of whom he had thought often.  "And what of you?"

"Like an old clock, sor--a weak spring an' a bit slow.  But, praise
God!  I've yet a merry gong in me.   An' what think you, sor, I've
travelled sixty miles an' tinkered forty clocks in the week gone."

"I think you yourself will need tinkering."

"Ah, but I thank the good God, here is me home," the old man
remarked wearily.

"I'm going to school here," said Trove, "and hope I may see you
often."

"Indeed, boy, we'll have many a blessed hour," said the tinker.
"Come to me shop; we'll talk, meditate, explore, an' I'll see what
o'clock it is in thy country."

They were now in the village, and, halfway down its main
thoroughfare, went up a street of gloom and narrowness between
dingy workshops.  At one of them, shaky, and gray with the stain of
years, they halted.  The two lower windows in front were dim with
dirt and cobwebs.  A board above them was the rude sign of Sam
Bassett, carpenter.  On the side of the old shop was a flight of
sagging, rickety stairs.  At the height of a man's head an old
brass dial was nailed to the gray boards.  Roughly lettered in
lampblack beneath it were the words, "Clocks Mended."  They climbed
the shaky stairs to a landing, supported by long braces, and
whereon was a broad door, with latch and keyhole in its weathered
timber.

"All bow at this door," said the old tinker, as he put his long
iron key in the lock.  "It's respect for their own heads, not for
mine," he continued, his hand on the eaves that overhung below the
level of the door-top.

They entered a loft, open to the peak and shingles, with a window
in each end.  Clocks, dials, pendulums, and tiny cog-wheels of wood
and brass were on a long bench by the street window.  Thereon,
also, were a vice and tools.  The room was cleanly, with a crude
homelikeness about it.  Chromos and illustrated papers had been
pasted on the rough, board walls.

"On me life, it is cold," said the tinker, opening a small stove
and beginning to whittle shavings, "'Cold as a dead man's nose.'
Be seated, an' try--try to be happy."

There was an old rocker and two small chairs in the room.

"I do not feel the cold," said Trove, taking one of them.

"Belike, good youth, thou hast the rose of summer in thy cheeks,"
said the old man.

"And no need of an overcoat," the boy answered, removing the one he
wore and passing it to the tinker.  "I wish you to keep it, sir."

"Wherefore, boy?  'Twould best serve me on thy back."

"Please take it," said Trove.  "I cannot bear to think of you
shivering in the cold.  Take it, and make me happy."

"Well, if it keep me warm, an' thee happy, it will be a wonderful
coat," said the old man, wiping his gray eyes.

Then he rose and filled the stove with wood and sat down, peering
at Trove between the upper rim of his spectacles and the feathery
arches of silvered hair upon his brows.

"Thy coat hath warmed me heart already--thanks to the good God!"
said he, fervently.  "Why so kind?"

"If I am kind, it is because I must be," said the boy.  "Who were
my father and mother, I never knew.  If I meet a man who is in
need, I say to myself, 'He may be my father or my brother, I must
be good to him;' and if it is a woman, I cannot help thinking that,
maybe, she is my mother or my sister.  So I should have to be kind
to all the people in the world if I were to meet them."

"Noble suspicion! by the faith o' me fathers!" said the old man,
thoughtfully, rubbing his long nose.  "An' have ye thought further
in the matter?  Have ye seen whither it goes?"

"I fear not."

"Well, sor, under the ancient law, ye reap as ye have sown, but
more abundantly.  I gave me coat to one that needed it more, an' by
the goodness o' God I have reaped another an' two friends.  Hold to
thy course, boy, thou shalt have friends an' know their value.  An'
then thou shalt say, 'I'll be kind to this man because he may be a
friend;' an' love shall increase in thee, an' around thee, an'
bring happiness.  Ah, boy! in the business o' the soul, men pay
thee better than they owe.  Kindness shall bring friendship, an'
friendship shall bring love, an' love shall bring happiness, an'
that, sor, that is the approval o' God.  What speculation hath such
profit?  Hast thou learned to think?"

"I hope I have," said the boy.

"Prithee--think a thought for me.  What is the first law o' life?"

There was a moment of silence.

"Thy pardon, boy," said the venerable tinker, filling a clay pipe
and stretching himself on a lounge.  "Thou art not long out o' thy
clouts.  It is, 'Thou shalt learn to think an' obey.' Consider how
man and beast are bound by it.  Very well--think thy way up.  Hast
thou any fear?"

The old man was feeling his gray hair, thoughtfully.

"Only the fear o' God," said the boy, after a moment of hesitation.

"Well, on me word, I am full sorry," said the tinker.  "Though mind
ye, boy, fear is an excellent good thing, an' has done a work in
the world.  But, hear me, a man had two horses the same age, size,
shape, an' colour, an' one went for fear o' the whip, an' the other
went as well without a whip in the wagon.  Now, tell me, which was
the better horse?"

"The one that needed no whip."

"Very well!" said the old man, with emphasis.  "A man had two sons,
an' one obeyed him for fear o' the whip, an' the other, because he
loved his father, an' could not bear to grieve him.  Tell me again,
boy, which was the better son?"

"The one that loved him," said the boy.

"Very well! very well!" said the old man, loudly.  "A man had two
neighbours, an' one stole not his sheep for fear o' the law, an'
the other, sor, he stole them not, because he loved his neighbour.
Now which was the better man?"

"The man that loved him."

"Very well! very well! and again very well!" said the tinker,
louder than before.  "There were two kings, an' one was feared, an'
the other, he was beloved; which was the better king?"

"The one that was beloved."

"Very well! and three times again very well!" said the old man,
warmly.  "An' the good God is he not greater an' more to be loved
than all kings?  Fear, boy, that is the whip o' destiny driving the
dumb herd.  To all that fear I say 'tis well, have fear, but pray
that love may conquer it.  To all that love I say, fear only lest
ye lose the great treasure.  Love is the best thing, an' with too
much fear it sickens.  Always keep it with thee--a little is a
goodly property an' its revenoo is happiness.  Therefore, be happy,
boy--try ever to be happy."

There was a moment of silence broken by the sound of a church bell.

"To thy prayers," said the clock tinker, rising, "an' I'll to mine.
Dine with me at five, good youth, an' all me retinoo--maids,
warders, grooms, attendants--shall be at thy service."

"I'll be glad to come," said the boy, smiling at his odd host.

"An' see thou hast hunger."

"Good morning, Mr. ---- ?" the boy hesitated.

"Darrel--Roderick Darrel--" said the old man, "that's me name, sor,
an' ye'll find me here at the Sign o' the Dial."

A wind came shrieking over the hills, and long before evening the
little town lay dusky in a scud of snow mist.  The old stairs were
quivering in the storm as Trove climbed them.

"Welcome, good youth," said the clock tinker, shaking the boy's
hand as he came in.  "Ho there! me servitors.  Let the feast be
spread," he called in a loud voice, stepping quickly to the stove
that held an upper deck of wood, whereon were dishes.  "Right Hand
bring the meat an' Left Hand the potatoes an' Quick Foot give us
thy help here."

He suited his action to the words, placing a platter of ham and
eggs in the centre of a small table and surrounding it with hot
roast potatoes, a pot of tea, new biscuit, and a plate of honey.

"Ho!  Wit an' Happiness, attend upon us here," said he, making
ready to sit down.

Then, as if he had forgotten something, he hurried to the door and
opened it.

"Care, thou skeleton, go hence, and thou, Poverty, go also, and see
thou return not before cock-crow," said he, imperatively.

"You have many servants," said Trove.

"An' how may one have a castle without servants?  Forsooth, boy,
horses an' hounds, an' lords an' ladies have to be attended to.
But the retinoo is that run down ye'd think me home a hospital.
Wit is a creeping dotard, and Happiness he is in poor health an'
can barely drag himself to me table, an' Hope is a tippler, an'
Right Hand is getting the palsy.  Alack! me best servant left me a
long time ago."

"And who was he?"

"Youth! lovely, beautiful Youth! but let us be happy.  I would not
have him back--foolish, inconstant Youth! dreaming dreams an'
seeing visions.  God love ye, boy! what is thy dream?"

This rallying style of talk, in which the clock tinker indulged so
freely, afforded his young friend no little amusement.  His tongue
had long obeyed the lilt of classic diction; his thought came easy
in Elizabethan phrase.  The slight Celtic brogue served to enhance
the piquancy of his talk.  Moreover he was really a man of wit and
imagination.

"Once," said the boy, after a little hesitation, "I thought I
should try to be a statesman, but now I am sure I would rather
write books."

"An' what kind o' books, pray?"

"Tales."

"An' thy merchandise be truth, capital!" exclaimed the tinker.
"Hast thou an ear for tales?"

"I'm very fond of them."

"Marry, I'll tell thee a true tale, not for thy ear only but for
thy soul, an' some day, boy, 'twill give thee occupation for thy
wits."

"I'd love to hear it," said the boy.

The pendulums were ever swinging like the legs of a procession
trooping through the loft, some with quick steps, some with slow.
Now came a sound as of drums beating.  It was for the hour of
eight, and when it stopped the tinker began.

"Once upon a time," said he, as they rose from the table and the
old man went for his pipe, "'twas long ago, an' I had then the rose
o' youth upon me, a man was tempted o' the devil an' stole money--a
large sum--an' made off with it.  These hands o' mine used to serve
him those days, an' I remember he was a man comely an' well set up,
an', I think, he had honour an' a good heart in him."

The old man paused.

"I should not think it possible," said Trove, who was at the age of
certainty in his opinions and had long been trained to the
uncompromising thought of the Puritan.  "A man who steals can have
no honour in him."

"Ho!  Charity," said the clock tinker, turning as if to address one
behind him.  "Sweet Charity! attend upon this boy.  Mayhap, sor,"
he continued meekly.  "God hath blessed me with little knowledge o'
what is possible.  But I speak of a time before guilt had sored
him.  He was officer of a great bank--let us say--in Boston.  Some
thought him rich, but he lived high an' princely, an' I take it,
sor, his income was no greater than his needs.  It was a proud race
he belonged to--grand people they were, all o' them--with houses
an' lands an' many servants.  His wife was dead, sor, an' he'd one
child--a little lad o' two years, an' beautiful.  One day the boy
went out with his nurse, an' where further nobody knew.  He never
came back.  Up an' down, over an' across they looked for him, night
an' day, but were no wiser, A month went by an' not a sight or sign
o' him, an' their hope failed.  One day the father he got a
note,--I remember reading it in the papers, sor,--an' it was a call
for ransom money--one hundred thousand dollars."

"Kidnapped!" Trove exclaimed with much interest.

"He was, sor," the clock tinker resumed.  "The father he was up to
his neck in trouble, then, for he was unable to raise the money.
He had quarrelled with an older brother whose help would have been
sufficient.  Well, God save us all! 'twas the old story o' pride
an' bitterness.  He sought no help o' him.  A year an' a half
passes an' a gusty night o' midwinter the bank burns.  Books,
papers, everything is destroyed.  Now the poor man has lost his
occupation.  A week more an' his good name is gone; a month an'
he's homeless.  A whisper goes down the long path o' gossip.  Was
he a thief an' had he burned the record of his crime?  The scene
changes, an' let me count the swift, relentless years."

The old man paused a moment, looking up thoughtfully.

"Well, say ten or mayhap a dozen passed--or more or less it matters
little.  Boy an' man, where were they?  O the sad world, sor!  To
all that knew them they were as people buried in their graves.
Think o' this drowning in the flood o' years--the stately ships
sunk an' rotting in oblivion; some word of it, sor, may well go
into thy book."

The tinker paused a moment, lighting his pipe, and after a puff or
two went on with the tale.

"It is a winter day in a great city--there are buildings an' crowds
an' busy streets an' sleet'in the bitter wind.  I am there,--an' me
path is one o' many crossing each other like--well, sor, like lines
on a slate, if thou were to make ten thousand o' them an' both eyes
shut.  I am walking slowly, an' lo! there is the banker.  I meet
him face to face--an ill-clad, haggard, cold, forgotten creature.
I speak to him.

"'The blessed Lord have mercy on thee,' I said.

"'For meeting thee?' said the poor man.  'What is thy name?'

"'Roderick Darrel.'

"'An' I,' said he, sadly, 'am one o' the lost in hell.  Art thou
the devil?'

"'Nay, this hand o' mine hath opened thy door an' blacked thy boots
for thee often,' said I.  'Dost thou not remember?'

"'Dimly--it was a long time ago,' he answered.

"We said more, sor, but that is no part o' the story.  Very well!
I went with him to his lodgings,--a little cold room in a
garret,--an' there alone with me he gave account of himself.  He
had shovelled, an' dug, an' lifted, an' run errands until his
strength was low an' the weight of his hand a burden.  What hope
for him--what way to earn a living!

"'Have courage, man,' I said to him.  'Thou shalt learn to mend
clocks.  It's light an' decent work, an' one may live by it an' see
much o' the world.'

"There was an old clock, sor, in a heap o' rubbish that lay in a
corner.  I took it apart, and soon he saw the office of each wheel
an' pinion an' the infirmity that stopped them an' the surgery to
make them sound.  I tarried long in the great city, an' every
evening we were together in the little room.  I bought him a kit o'
tools an' some brass, an' we would shatter the clockworks an' build
them up again until he had skill, sor, to make or mend.

"'Me good friend,' said he, one evening after we had been a long
time at work, 'I wish thou could'st teach me how to mend a broken
life.  For God's sake, help me!  I am fainting under a great
burden.'

"'What can I do?' said I to him.

"Then, sor, he went over his story with me from beginning to end.
It was an impressive, a sacred confidence.  Ah, boy, it would be
dishonour to tell thee his name, but his story, that I may tell
thee, changing the detail, so it may never add a straw to his
burden.  I shall quote him in substance only, an' follow the long
habit o' me own tongue.

"'Well, ye remember how me son was taken,' said he.  'I could not
raise the ransom, try as I would.  Now, large sums were in me
keeping an' I fell.  I remember that day.  Ah! man, the devil
seemed to whisper to me.  But, God forgive! it was for love that I
fell.  Little by little I began to take the money I must have an'
cover its absence.   I said to meself, some time I'll pay it
back--that ancient sophistry o' the devil.  When me thieving had
gone far, an' near its goal, the bank burned.  As God's me witness
I'd no hand in that.  I weighed the chances an' expected to go to
prison--well, say for ten years, at least.  I must suffer in order
to save the boy, an' was ready for the sacrifice.  Free again, I
would help him to return the money.  That burning o' the records
shut off the prison, but opened the fire o' hell upon me.  Half a
year had gone by, an' not a word from the kidnappers.  I took a
note to the place appointed,--a hollow log in the woods, a bit east
of a certain bridge on the public highway twenty miles out o' the
city,--but no answer,--not a word,--not a line up to this moment.
They must have relinquished hope an' put the boy to death.

"'In that old trunk there under the bed is a dusty, moulding,
cursed heap o' money done up in brown paper an' tied with a string.
It is a hundred thousand dollars, an' the price o' me soul.'

"'An' thou in rags an' a garret,' said I.

"'An' I in rags an' hell,' said he, sor, looking down at himself.

"He drew out the trunk an' showed me the money, stacks of it,
dirty, an' stinking o' damp mould.

"'There it is,' said he, 'every dollar I stole is there.  I brought
it with me an' over these hundreds o' miles I could hear the tongue
o' gossip.  Every night as I lay down I could hear the whispering
of all the people I ever knew.  I could see them shake their heads.
Then came this locket o' gold.'

"A beautiful, shiny thing it was, an' he took out of it a little
strand o' white hair an' read these words cut in the gleaming
case:--

  "'Here are silver an' gold,
  The one for a day o' remembrance between thee an' dishonour,
  The other for a day o' plenty between thee an' want.'

"It was an odd thought an' worth keeping, an' often I have repeated
the words.  The silvered hair, that was for remembrance; an' the
gold he might sell and turn it into a day o' plenty.

"'In the locket was a letter,' said the poor man.  'Here it is,'
an' he held it in the light o' the candle.  'See, it is signed
"mother."'

"An' he read from the letter words o' sorrow an' bitter shame, an'
firm confidence in his honour,

"'It ground me to the very dust,' he went on.  'I put the money in
that bundle, every dollar.  I could not return it, an' so confirm
the disgrace o' her an' all the rest.  I could not use it, for if I
lived in comfort they would ask--all o' them--whence came his
money?  For their sake I must walk in poverty all me days.  An' I
went to work at heavy toil, sor, as became a poor man.  As God's me
judge I felt a pride in rags an' the horny hand.'"

The tinker paused a moment in which all the pendulums seemed to
quicken pace, tick lapping upon tick, as if trying to get ahead of
each other.

"Think of it, boy," Darrel continued.  "A pride in rags an'
poverty.  Bring that into thy book an' let thy best thinking bear
upon it.  Show us how patch an' tatter were for the poor man as
badges of honour an' success.

"'I thought to burn the money,' me host went on.  'But no, that
would have robbed me o' one great possibility--that o' restoring
it.  Some time, when they were dead, maybe, an' I could suffer
alone, I would restore it, or, at least, I might see a way to turn
it into good works.  So I could not be quit o' the money.  Day an'
night these slow an' heavy years it has been me companion, cursing
an' accusing me.

"'I lie here o' nights thinking.  In that heap o' money I seem to
hear the sighs an' sobs o' the poor people that toiled to earn it.
I feel their sweat upon me, an' God! this heart o' mine is crowded
to bursting with the despair o' hundreds.  An', betimes, I hear the
cry o' murder in the cursed heap as if there were some had blood
upon it.  An' then I dream it has caught fire beneath me an' I am
burning raw in the flame.'"

The tinker paused again, crossing the room and watching the swing
of a pendulum.

"Boy, boy," said he, returning to his chair, "think' o' that
complaining, immovable heap lying there like the blood of a murder.
An' thy reader must feel the toil an' sweat an' misery an' despair
that is in a great sum, an' how it all presses on the heart o' him
that gets it wrongfully.

"'Well, sor,' the poor fellow continued, 'now an' then I met those
had known me, an' reports o' me poverty went home.  An' those dear
to me sent money, the sight o' which filled me with a mighty
sickness, an' I sent it back to them.  Long ago, thank God! they
ceased to think me a thief, but only crazy.  Tell me, man, what
shall I do with the money?  There be those living I have to
consider, an' those dead, an' those unborn.'

"'Hide it,' said I, 'an' go to thy work an' God give thee counsel.'"

Man and boy rose from the table and drew up to the little stove.

"Now, boy," said the clock tinker, leaning toward him with knitted
brows, "consider this poor thief who suffered so for his friends.
Think o' these good words, 'Greater love hath no man than this,
that he lay down his life for his friends.'  If thou should'st ever
write of it, thy problem will be to reckon the good an' evil, an'
give each a careful estimate an' him his proper rank!"

"What a sad tale!" said the boy, thoughtfully.  "It's terrible to
think he may be my father."

"I'd have no worry o' that, sor," said the clock tinker.  "There be
ten thousand--ay, more--who know not their fathers.  An', moreover,
'twas long, long ago."

"Please tell me when was the boy taken," said Trove.

"Time, or name, or place, I cannot tell thee, lest I betray him,"
said the old man, "Neither is necessary to thy tale.  Keep it with
thee a while; thou art young yet an' close inshore.  Wait until ye
sound the further deep.  Then, sor, write, if God give thee power,
and think chiefly o' them in peril an' about to dash their feet
upon the stones."

For a moment the clocks' ticking was like the voice of many ripples
washing the shore of the Infinite.  A new life had begun for Trove,
and they were cutting it into seconds.  He looked up at them and
rose quickly and stood a moment, his thumb on the door-latch.
Outside they could hear the rush and scatter of the snow.

"Poor youth!" said the old man.  "Thou hast no coat--take mine.
Take it, I say.  It will give thee comfort an' me happiness."

He would hear no refusal, and again the coat changed owners, giving
happiness to the old and comfort to the new.

Then Trove went down the rickety stairs and away in the darkness.




VI

A Certain Rick Man

Riley Brooke had a tongue for gossip, an ear for evil report, an
eye for rascals.  Every day new suspicions took root in him, while
others grew and came to great size and were as hard to conceal as
pumpkins.  He had meanness enough to equip all he knew, and gave it
with a lavish tongue.  In his opinion Hillsborough came within one
of having as many rascals in it as there were people.  He had tried
to bring them severally to justice by vain appeals to the law,
having sued for every cause in the books, but chiefly for trespass
and damages, real and exemplary.  He was a money-lender, shaving
notes or taking them for larger sums than he lent, with chattel
mortgages for security.  Foreclosure and sale were a perennial
source of profit to him.  He was tall and well past middle age,
with a short, gray beard, a look of severity, a stoop in his
shoulders, and a third wife whom nobody, within the knowledge of
the townfolk, had ever seen.  If he had no other to gossip with, he
provided imaginary company and talked to his own ears.  He thought
himself a most powerful and agile man, boasting often that he still
kept the vigour of his youth.  On his errands in the village he
often broke into an awkward gallop, like a child at play.  When he
slackened pace it was to shake his head solemnly, as if something
had reminded him of the wickedness of the world.

"If I dared tell all I knew," he would whisper suggestively, and
then proceed to tell much more than he could possibly have known.
Any one of many may have started his tongue, but the shortcomings
of one Ezekiel Swackhammer were for him an ever present help and
provocation.  If there were nothing new to talk about, there was
always Swackhammer.  Poor Swackhammer had done everything he ought
not to have done.  The good God himself was the only being that had
the approval of old Riley Brooke.  It was curious--that turning of
his tongue from the slander of men to the praise of God.  And of
the goodness of the Almighty he was quite as sure as of the badness
of men.  Assurance of his own salvation had come to him one day
when he was shearing sheep, and when, as he related often, finding
himself on his knees to shear, he remained to pray.  Sundays and
every Wednesday evening he wore a stove-pipe hat and a long frock
coat of antique and rusty aspect.  On his way to church--with
hospitality even for the like of him, thank God!--he walked slowly
with head bent until, remembering his great agility and strength,
he began to run, giving a varied exhibition of skips and jumps
terminating in a sort of gallop.  Once in the sacred house he
looked to right and left accusingly, and aloft with encouraging
applause.  His God was one of wrath, vengeance, and destruction;
his hell the destination of his enemies.  They who resented the
screw of his avarice, and pulled their thumbs away; they who
treated him with contempt, and whose faults, compared to his own,
were as a mound to a mountain--they were all to burn with
everlasting fire, while he, on account of that happy thought the
day of the sheep-shearing, was to sit forever with the angels in
heaven.

"Ye're going t' heaven, I hear," said Darrel, who had repaired a
clock for him, and heard complaint of his small fee.

"I am," was the spirited reply.

"God speed ye!" said the tinker, as he went away.

In such disfavour was the poor man, that all would have been glad
to have him go anywhere, so he left Hillsborough.

One day in the Christmas holidays, a boy came to the door of Riley
Brooke, with a buck-saw on his arm.

"I'm looking for work," said the boy, "and I'd be glad of the
chance to saw your wood."

"How much a cord?" was the loud inquiry.

"Forty cents."

"Too much," said Brooke.  "How much a day?"

"Six shillings."

"Too much," said the old man, snappishly.  "I used to git six
dollars a month, when I was your age, an' rise at four o'clock in
the mornin' an' work till bedtime.   You boys now-days are a lazy
good-fer-nothin' lot.  What's yer name?"

"Sidney Trove."

"Don't want ye."

"Well, mister," said the boy, who was much in need of money, "I'll
saw your wood for anything you've a mind to give me."

"I'll give ye fifty cents a day," said the old man.

Trove hesitated.  The sum was barely half what he could earn, but
he had given his promise, and fell to.  Riley Brooke spent half the
day watching and urging him to faster work.  More than once the boy
was near quitting, but kept his good nature and a strong pace.
When, at last, Brooke went away, Trove heard a sly movement of the
blinds, and knew that other eyes were on the watch.  He spent three
days at the job--laming, wearisome days, after so long an absence
from heavy toil.

"Wal, I suppose y& want money," Brooke snapped, as the boy came to
the door.  "How much?"

"One dollar and a half."

"Too much, too much; I won't pay it."

"That was the sum agreed upon."

"Don't care, ye hain't earned no dollar 'n a half.  Here, take that
an' clear out;" having said which, Brooke tossed some money at the
boy and slammed the door in his face.  Trove counted the money--it
was a dollar and a quarter.  He was sorely tempted to open the door
and fling it back at him, but wisely kept his patience and walked
away.  It was the day before Christmas.  Trove had planned to walk
home that evening, but a storm had come, drifting the snow deep,
and he had to forego the visit.  After supper he went to the Sign
of the Dial.  The tinker was at home in his odd little shop and
gave him a hearty welcome.  Trove sat by the fire, and told of the
sawing for Riley Brooke.

"God rest him!" said the tinker, thoughtfully puffing his pipe.
"What would happen, think ye, if a man like him were let into
heaven?"

"I cannot imagine," said the boy.

"Well, for one thing," said the tinker, "he'd begin to look for
chattels, an' I do fear me there'd soon be many without harps."

"What is one to do with a man like that?" Trove inquired.

"Only this," said the tinker; "put him in thy book.  He'll make
good history.  But, sor, for company he's damnably poor."

"It's a new way to use men," said Trove.

"Nay, an old way--a very old way.  Often God makes an example o'
rare malevolence an' seems to say, 'Look, despise, and be anything
but this.'  Like Judas and Herod he is an excellent figure in a
book.  Put him in thine, boy."

"And credit him with full payment?" the boy asked.

"Long ago, praise God, there was a great teacher," said the old
man.  "It is a day to think of Him.  Return good for evil--those
were His words.  We've never tried it, an' I'd like to see how it
may work.  The trial would be amusing if it bore no better fruit."

"What do you propose?"

"Well, say we take him a gift with our best wishes," said the
tinker.

"If I can afford it," the boy replied.

The tinker answered quickly: "Oh, I've always a little for a
Christmas, an' I'll buy the gifts.  Ah, boy, let's away for the
gifts.  We'll--we'll punish him with kindness."

They went together and bought a pair of mittens and a warm muffler
for Riley Brooke and walked to his door with them and rapped upon
it.  Brooke came to the door with a candle.

"What d'ye want?" he demanded.

"To wish you Merry Christmas and present you gifts," said Trove.

The old man raised his candle, surveying them with surprise and
curiosity.

"What gifts?" he inquired in a milder tone.

"Well," said the boy, "we've brought you mittens and a muffler."

"Ha! ha! Yer consciences have smote ye," said Brooke, "Glory to God
who brings the sinner to repentance!"

"And fills the bitter cup o' the ungrateful," said the tinker.  And
they went away.

"I'd like to bring one other gift," said Darrel.

"What's that?"

"God forgive me!  A rope to hang him.  But mind thee, boy, we are
trying the law o' the great teacher, and let us see if we can learn
to love this man."

"Love Riley Brooke?" said Trove, doubtfully.

"A great achievement, I grant thee," said the tinker.  "For if we
can love him, we shall be able to love anybody.  Let us try and see
what comes of it."

A man was waiting for Darrel at the foot of the old stairs--a tall
man, poorly dressed, whom Trove had not seen before, and whom, now,
he was not able to see clearly in the darkness.

"The mare is ready," said Darrel.  "Tis a dark night."

He to whom the tinker had spoken made no answer.

"Good night," said the tinker, turning.  "A Merry Christmas to
thee, boy, an' peace an' plenty."

"I have peace, and you have given me plenty to think about," said
Trove.

On his way home the boy thought of the stranger at the stairs,
wondering if he were the other tinker of whom Darrel had told him.
At his lodging he found a new pair of boots with only the Christmas
greeting on a card.

"Well," said Trove, already merrier than most of far better
fortune, "he must have been somebody that knew my needs."




VII

Darrel of the Blessed Isles

The clock tinker was off in the snow paths every other week.  In
more than a hundred homes, scattered far along road lines of the
great valley, he set the pace of the pendulums.  Every winter the
mare was rented for easy driving and Darrel made his journeys
afoot.  Twice a day Trove passed the little shop, and if there were
a chalk mark on the dial, he bounded upstairs to greet his friend.
Sometimes he brought another boy into the rare atmosphere of the
clock shop--one, mayhap, who needed some counsel of the wise old
man.

Spring had come again.  Every day sowers walked the hills and
valleys around Hillsborough, their hands swinging with a godlike
gesture that summoned the dead to rise; everywhere was the odour of
broken field or garden.  Night had come again, after a day of magic
sunlight, and soon after eight o'clock Trove was at the door of the
tinker with a schoolmate.

"How are you?" said Trove, as Darrel opened the door.

"Better for the sight o' you," said the old man, promptly.  "Enter
Sidney Trove and another young gentleman."

The boys took the two chairs offered them in silence.

"Kind sor," the tinker added, turning to Trove, "thou hast thy cue;
give us the lines."

"Pardon me," said the boy.  "Mr. Darrel, my friend Richard Kent."

"Of the Academy?" said Darrel, as he held to the hand of Kent.

"Of the Academy," said Trove.

"An', I make no doubt, o' good hope," the tinker added.  "Let me
stop one o' the clocks--so I may not forget the hour o' meeting a
new friend."

Darrel crossed the room and stopped a pendulum.

"He would like to join this night-school of ours," Trove answered.

"Would he?" said the tinker.  "Well, it is one o' hard lessons.
When ye come t' multiply love by experience, an' subtract vanity
an' add peace, an' square the remainder, an' then divide by the
number o' days in thy life--it is a pretty problem, an' the result
may be much or little, an' ye reach it--"

He paused a moment, thoughtfully puffing the smoke.

"Not in this term o' school," he added impressively.

All were silent a little time.

"Where have you been?" Trove inquired presently.

"Home," said the old man.

There was a puzzled look on Trove's face.

"Home?" he repeated with a voice of inquiry.

"I have, sor," the clock tinker went on.  "This poor shelter is not
me home--it's only for a night now an' then.  I've a grand house
an' many servants an' a garden, sor, where there be flowers--lovely
flowers--an' sunlight an' noble music.  Believe me, boy, 'tis
enough to make one think o' heaven."

"I did not know of it," said Trove.

"Know ye not there is a country in easy reach of us, with fair
fields an' proud cities an' many people an' all delights, boy, all
delights?  There I hope thou shalt found a city thyself an' build
it well so nothing shall overthrow it--fire, nor flood, nor the
slow siege o' years."

"Where?" Trove inquired eagerly.

"In the Blessed Isles, boy, in the Blessed Isles.  Imagine the
infinite sea o' time that is behind us.  Stand high an' look back
over its dead level.  King an' empire an' all their striving
multitudes are sunk in the mighty deep.  But thou shalt see rising
out of it the Blessed Isles of imagination.  Green--forever green
are they--and scattered far into the dim distance.  Look! there is
the city o' Shakespeare--Norman towers and battlements and Gothic
arches looming above the sea.  Go there an' look at the people as
they come an' go.  Mingle with them an' find good
company--merry-hearted folk a-plenty, an' God knows I love the
merry-hearted!  Talk with them, an' they will teach thee wisdom.
Hard by is the Isle o' Milton, an' beyond are many--it would take
thee years to visit them.  Ah, sor, half me time I live in the
Blessed Isles.  What is thy affliction, boy?"

He turned to Kent--a boy whose hard luck was proverbial, and whose
left arm was in a sling.

"Broke it wrestling," said the boy.

"Kent has bad luck," said Trove.  "Last year he broke his leg."

"Obey the law, or thou shalt break the bone o' thy neck," said
Darrel, quickly.

"I do obey the law," said Trent.

"Ay--the written law," said the clock tinker, "an' small credit to
thee.  But the law o' thine own discovery,--the law that is for
thyself an' no other,--hast thou ne'er thought of it?  Ill luck is
the penalty o' law-breaking.  Therefore study the law that is for
thyself.  Already I have discovered one for thee, an' it is, 'I
have not limberness enough in me bones, so I must put them in no
unnecessary peril.'  Listen, I'll read thee me own code."

The clock tinker rose and got his Shakespeare, ragged from long
use, and read from a fly-leaf, his code of private law, to wit:--

"Walk at least four miles a day.

"Eat no pork and be at peace with thy liver.

"Measure thy words and cure a habit of exaggeration.

"Thine eyes are faulty--therefore, going up or down, look well to
thy steps.

"Beware of ardent spirits, for the curse that is in thy blood.  It
will turn thy heart to stone.

"In giving, remember Darrel.

"Bandy no words with any man.

"Play at no game of chance.

"Think o' these things an' forget thyself."

"Now there is the law that is for me alone," Darrel continued,
looking up at the boys.  "Others may eat pork or taste the red cup,
or dally with hazards an' suffer no great harm--not I.  Good
youths, remember, ill luck is for him only that is ignorant,
neglectful, or defiant o' private law."

"But suppose your house fall upon you," Trove suggested.

"I speak not o' common perils," said the tinker.  "But
enough--let's up with the sail.  Heave ho! an' away for the Blessed
Isles.  Which shall it be?"

He turned to a rude shelf, whereon were books,--near a score,--some
worn to rags.

"What if it be yon fair Isle o' Milton?" he inquired, lifting an
old volume.

"Let's to the Isle o' Milton," Trove answered.

"Well, go to one o' the clocks there, an' set it back," said the
tinker.

"How much?" Trove inquired with a puzzled look.

"Well, a matter o' two hundred years," said Darrel, who was now
turning the leaves.  "List ye, boy, we're up to the shore an' hard
by the city gates.  How sweet the air o' this enchanted isle!

  "'And west winds with musky wing
  Down the cedarn alleys fling
  Nard and cassia's balmy smells.'"

He quoted thoughtfully, turning the leaves.  Then he read the
shorter poems,--a score of them,--his voice sounding the noble
music of the lines.  It was revelation for those raw youths and led
them high.  They forgot the passing of the hours and till near
midnight were as those gone to a strange country.  And they long
remembered that night with Darrel of the Blessed Isles.




VIII

Dust of Diamonds in the Hour-glass

The axe of Theron Allen had opened the doors of the wilderness.
One by one the great trees fell thundering and were devoured by
fire.  Now sheep and cattle were grazing on the bare hills.  Around
the house he left a thicket of fir trees that howled ever as the
wind blew, as if "because the mighty were spoiled."   Neighbours
had come near; every summer great rugs of grain, vari-hued, lay
over hill and dale.

Allen bad prospered, and begun to speculate in cattle.  Every year
late in April he went to Canada for a drove and sent them south--a
great caravan that filled the road for half a mile or more,
tramping wearily under a cloud of dust.  He sold a few here and
there, as the drove went on--a far journey, often, to the sale of
the last lot.

The drove came along one morning about the middle of May, 1847.
Trove met them at the four corners on Caraway Pike.  Then about
sixteen years of age, he made his first long journey into the world
with Allen's drove.  He had his time that summer and fifty cents
for driving.  It was an odd business, and for the boy full of new
things.

A man went ahead in a buckboard wagon that bore provisions.  One
worked in the middle and two behind.  Trove was at the heels of the
first section.  It was easy work after the cattle got used to the
road and a bit leg weary.  They stopped them for water at the
creeks and rivers; slowed them down to browse or graze awhile at
noontime; and when the sun was low, if they were yet in a land of
fences, he of the horse and wagon hurried on to get pasturage for
the night.

That first day some of the leaders had begun to wander and make
trouble.  For that reason Trove was walking beside the buckboard in
front of the drove.

"We'll stop to-night on Cedar Hill," said the boss, about
mid-afternoon.  "Martha Vaughn has got the best pasture and the
prettiest girl in this part o' the country.  If you don't fall in
love with that girl, you ought t' be licked."

Now Trove had no very high opinion of girls.  Up there in Brier
Dale he had seen little of them.  At the red schoolhouse, even,
they were few and far from his ideal.  And they were a foolish lot
there in Hillsborough, it seemed to him--all save two or three who
were, he owned, very sweet and beautiful; but he had seen how they
tempted other boys to extravagance, and was content with a sly
glance at them now and then.

"I don't ever expect to fall in love," said Trove, confidently.

"Wal, love is a thing that always takes ye by surprise," the other
answered.  "Mrs. Vaughn is a widow, an' we generally stop there the
first day out.  She's a poor woman, an' it gives her a lift."

They came shortly to the little weather-stained house of the widow.
As they approached, a girl, with arms bare to the elbow, stood
looking at them, her hand shading her eyes.

"Co' boss!  Co' boss!  Co' boss!" she was calling, in a sweet,
girlish treble.

Trove came up to the gate, and presently her big, dark eyes were
looking into his own.  That very moment he trembled before them as
a reed shaken by the wind.  Long after then, he said that something
in her voice had first appealed to him.  Her soft eyes were,
indeed, of those that quicken the hearts of men.  It is doubtful if
there were, in all the world, a lovelier thing than that wild
flower of girlhood up there in the hills.  She was no dream of
romance, dear reader.  In one of the public buildings of a certain
capital her portrait has been hanging these forty years, and wins,
from all who pass it, the homage of a long look.  But Trove said,
often, that she was never quite so lovely as that day she stood
calling the cows--her shapely, brown face aglow with the light of
youth, her dark hair curling on either side as it fell to her
shoulders.

"Good day," said he, a little embarrassed.

"Good day," said she, coolly, turning toward the house.

Trove was now in the midst of the cattle.  Suddenly a dog rushed
upon them, and they took fright.  For a moment the boy was in
danger of being trampled, but leaped quickly to the backs of the
cows and rode to safety.  After supper the men sat talking in the
stable door, beyond which, on the hay, they were to sleep that
night.  But Trove stood a long time with the girl, whose name was
Polly, at the little gate of the widow.

They seemed to meet there by accident.  For a moment they were
afraid of each other.  After a little hesitation Polly picked a
sprig of lilac.  He could see a tremble in her hand as she gave it
to him, and he felt his own blushes.

"Couldn't you say something?" she whispered with a smile.

"I--I've been trying to think of something," he stammered.

"Anything would do," said the girl, laughing, as she retreated a
step or two and stood with an elbow leaning on the board fence.
She had on her best gown.

It was a curious interview, the words of small account, the
silences full of that power which has been the very light of the
world.  If there were only some way of reporting what followed the
petty words,--swift arrows of the eye, lips trembling with the
peril of unuttered thought, faces lighting with sweet discovery or
darkening with doubt,--well, the author would have better
confidence.

Their glances met--the boy hesitated.

"I--don't think you look quite as lovely in that dress," he
ventured.

A shadow of disappointment came into her face, and she turned away.
The boy was embarrassed.  He had taken a misstep.  She turned
impatiently and gave him a glance from head to foot.

"But you're lovely enough now," he ventured again.

There was a quick movement of her lips, a flicker of contempt in
her eyes.  It seemed an age before she answered him.

"Flatterer!" said she, presently, looking down and jabbing the
fence top with a pin.  "I suppose you think I'm very homely."

"I always mean what I say."

"Then you'd better be careful--you might spoil me."  She smiled
faintly, turning her face away.

"How so?"

"Don't you know," said she, seriously, "that when a girl thinks
she's beautiful she's spoiled?"

Their blushes had begun to fade; their words to come easier.

"Guess I'm spoilt, too," said the boy, looking away thoughtfully.
"I don't know what to say--but sometime, maybe, you will know me
better and believe me."  He spoke with some dignity.

"I know who you are," the girl answered, coming nearer and looking
into his eyes.  "You're the boy that came out of the woods in a
little red sleigh."

"How did you know?" Trove inquired; for he was not aware that any
outside his own home knew it.

"A man told us that came with the cattle last year.  And he said
you must belong to very grand folks."

"And how did he know that?"

"By your looks."

"By my looks?"

"Yes, I--I suppose he thought you didn't look like other boys
around here." She was now plying the pin very attentively.

"I must be a very curious-looking boy."

"Oh, not very," said she, looking at him thoughtfully.  "I--I--well
I shall not tell you what I think," She spoke decisively.

She had begun to blush again.

Their eyes met, and they both looked away, smiling.  Then a moment
of silence.

"Don't you like brown?" She was now looking down at her dress, with
a little show of trouble in her eyes.

"I liked the brown of your arms," he answered.

The pin stopped; there was a puzzled look in her face.

"I'm afraid it's a very homely dress, anyway," said she, looking
down upon it, as she moved her foot impatiently.

Her mother came out of doors.  "Polly," said she, "you'd better go
over to the post-office."

"May I go with her?" Trove inquired.

"Ask Polly," said the widow Vaughn, laughing.

"May I?" he asked.

Polly turned away smiling.  "If you care to," said she, in a low
voice.

"You must hurry and not be after dark," said the widow.

They went away, but only the moments hurried.  They that read here,
though their heads be gray and their hearts heavy, will understand;
for they will remember some little space of time, with seconds
flashing as they went, like dust of diamonds in the hour-glass.

"Don't you remember how you came in the little red sleigh?" she
asked presently.

"No."

"I think it's very grand," said she.  "It's so much like a story."

"Do you read stories?"

"All I can get.  I've been reading 'Greytower.'"

"I read it last winter," said the boy.  "What did you like best in
it?"

"I'm ashamed to tell you," said she, with a quick glance at him.

"Please tell me."

"Oh, the love scenes, of course," said she, looking down with a
sigh, and a little hesitation.

"He was a fine lover."

"I've something in my eye," said she, stopping.

"Perhaps I can get it," said he; "let me try."

"I'm afraid you'll hurt me," said she, looking up with a smile.

"I'll be careful."

He lifted her face a little, his fingers beneath her pretty chin.
Then, taking her long, dark lashes between thumb and finger, he
opened the lids.

"You are hurting," said she, soberly; and now the lashes were
trying to pull free.

"I can see it," said he.

"It must be a bear--you look so frightened."

"It's nothing to be afraid of," said the boy.

"Well, your hands tremble," said she, laughing.

"There," he answered, removing a speck of dust with his
handkerchief.

"It is gone now, thank you," said Polly, winking.

She stood close to him, and as she spoke her lips trembled.  He
could delay no longer with a subject knocking at the gate of speech.

"Do you believe in love at first sight?" he asked.

She turned, looking up at him seriously.  Her lips parted in a
smile that showed her white teeth.  Then her glance fell.  "I shall
not tell you that," said she, in a half whisper.

"I hope we shall meet again," he said,

"Do you?" said she, glancing up at him shyly.

"Yes."

"Well, if I were you and wanted to see a girl,--I'd--I'd come and
see her."

"What if you didn't know whether she was willing or not?" he asked.

"I'd take my chances," said she, soberly.

There were pauses in which their souls went far beyond their words
and seemed to embrace each other fondly with arms of the spirit
invisible and resistless.  And whatever was to come, in that hour
the great priest of Love in the white robe of innocence had made
them one.  The air about them was full of strange delight, They
were in deep dusk as they neared the house.  For one moment of
long-remembered joy she let him put his arm about her waist, but
when he kissed her cheek she drew herself away.

They walked a little time in silence.

"I am no flirt," she whispered presently.  Neither spoke for a
moment.

Then she seemed to feel and pity his emotion.  Something slowed the
feet of both.

"There," she whispered; "you may kiss my hand if you care to."

He kissed the pretty hand that was offered to him, and her whisper
seemed to ring in the dusky silence like the dying rhythm of a bell.




IX

Drove and Drovers

A little after daybreak they went on with the cows.   For half a
mile or more until the little house had sunk below the hill crest
Trove was looking backward.  Now and ever after he was to think and
tarry also in the road of life and look behind him for the golden
towers of memory.  The drovers saw a change in Trove and flung at
him with their stock of rusty, ancestral witticisms.  But Thurst
Tilly had a way of saying and doing quite his own,

"Never see any one knocked so flat as you was," said he.  "Ye
didn't know enough t' keep ahead o' the cattle.  I declare I
thought they'd trample ye 'fore ye could git yer eye unsot."

Trove made no answer.

"That air gal had a mighty power in her eye," Thurst went on.
"When I see her totin' you off las' night I says t' the boys, says
I, 'Sid is goin' t' git stepped on.  He ain't never goin' t' be the
same boy ag'in.'"

The boy held his peace, and for days neither ridicule nor
excitement--save only for the time they lasted--were able to bring
him out of his dream.

That night they came to wild country, where men and cattle lay down
to rest by the roadway--a thing Trove enjoyed.  In the wagon were
bread and butter and boiled eggs and tea and doughnuts and cake and
dried herring.  The men built fires and made tea and ate their
suppers, and sang, as the night fell, those olden ballads of the
frontier--"Barbara Allen," "Bonaparte's Dream," or the "Drover's
Daughter."

For days they were driving in the wild country.  At bedtime each
wound himself in a blanket and lay down to rest, beneath a rude
lean-to if it were raining, but mostly under the stars.  On this
journey Trove got his habit of sleeping, out-of-doors in fair
weather.  After it, save in midwinter, walls seemed to weary and
roofs to smother him.  The drove began to low at daybreak, and soon
they were all cropping the grass or browsing in the briers.  Then
the milking, and breakfast over a camp fire, and soon after sunrise
they were all tramping in the road again.

It was a pleasant journey--the waysides glowing with the blue of
violets, the green of tender grass, the thick-sown, starry gold of
dandelions.  Wild fowl crossed the sky in wedge and battalion,
their videttes out, their lines now firm, now wheeling in a long
curve to take the path of the wind.  Every thicket was a fount of
song that fell to silence when darkness came and the low chant of
the marshes.

When they came into settled country below the big woods they began
selling.  At length the drove was reduced to one section; Trove
following with the helper named Thurston Tilly, familiarly known as
"Thurst."

He was a tall, heavy, good-natured man, distinguished for fat,
happiness, and singular aptitudes.  He had lifted a barrel of salt
by the chimes and put it on a wagon; once he had eaten two mince
pies at a meal; again he had put his heel six inches above his head
on a barn door, and, any time, he could wiggle one ear or both or
whistle on his thumb.  At every lodging place he had left a feeling
of dread and relief as well as a perennial topic of conversation.
At every inn he added something to his stock of fat and happiness.
Then, often, he seemed to be overloaded with the latter and would
sit and shake his head and roar with laughter, now and then giving
out a wild yell.  He had a story of which no one had ever heard the
finish.  He began it often, but, somehow, never got to the end.  He
always clung to the lapel of his hearer's coat as if in fear of
losing him, and never tried his tale but once on the same pair of
ears.  Having got his inspiration he went in quest of his hearer,
and having hitched him, as it were, by laying hold of his elbow or
coat collar, began the tale.  It was like pouring molasses on a
level place--it moved slowly and spread and got nowhere in
particular.  At first his manner was slow, dignified, and
confidential, changing to fit his emotion.  He whispered, he
shouted, he laughed, he looked sorrowful, he nudged the stranger in
his abdomen, he glared upon him, eye close to eye, he shook him by
the shoulder, and slowly wore him out.  Some endured long and were
patient, but soon or late all began to back and dodge, and finally
broke away, and seeing the hand of the narrator reach for them,
dodged quickly and, being pursued, ran.  Often this odd chase took
them around trees and stumps and buildings, the stranger escaping,
frequently, through some friendly door which he could lock or hold
fast.  Then Thurst, knocking loudly, gave out a wild yell or two,
peered in at the nearest window, and came at last to his chair,
sorrowful and much out of breath, his tale unfinished.  There was
in the man a saving element of good nature, and no one ever got
angry with him.  At each new attempt be showed a grimmer
determination to finish, but even there, in a land of strong and
patient men, not one, they used to say, had ever the endurance to
hear the end of that unfinished tale.

It was not easy to dispose of cattle in the southern counties that
year, but they found a better market as they bore west, and were
across the border of Ohio when the last of the drove were sold.
That done, Trove and Thurst Tilly took the main road to Cleveland,
whence they were to return home by steamboat.

It led them into woods and by stumpy fields and pine-odoured
hamlets.  The first day of their walk was rainy, and they went up a
toteway into thick timber and built a fire and kept dry and warm
until the rain ceased.  That evening they fell in with emigrants on
their way to the far west.

The latter were camped on the edge of a wood, near the roadway, and
cooking supper as the two came along.  Being far from a town, Trove
and Tilly were glad to accept the hospitality of the travellers.

They had come to the great highway of travel from east to west.
Every day it was cut by wagons of the mover overloaded with Lares
and Penates, with old and young, enduring hardships and the loss of
home and old acquaintance for hope of better fortune.

A man and wife and three boys were the party, travelling with two
wagons.  They were bound for Iowa and, being heavy loaded, were
having a hard time.  All sat on a heap of boughs in the firelight
after supper.

"It's a long, long road to Iowa, father," said the woman.

"It'll soon be over," said he, with a tone of encouragement.

"I've been thinking all day of the lilacs and the old house," said
she.

They looked in silence at the fire a moment.

"We're a bit homesick," said the man, turning to Trove, "an' no
wonder.  It's been hard travelling, an' we've broke down every few
miles.  But we'll have better luck the rest o' the journey."

Evidently his cheerful courage had been all that kept them going.

"Lost all we had in the great fire of '35," said he, thoughtfully.
"I went to bed a rich man, but when I rose in the morning I had not
enough to pay a week's board.  Everything had been swept away."

"A merchant?" Trove inquired.

"A partner in the great Star Mill on East River," said the man.  "I
could have got a fortune for my share--at least a hundred thousand
dollars--and I had worked hard for it."

"And were you not able to succeed again?"

"No," said the traveller, sadly, shaking his head.  "If some time
you have to lose all you possess.  God grant you still have youth
and a strong arm.  I tried--that is all--I tried."

The boy looked up at him, his heart touched.  The man was near
sixty years of age; his face had deep lines in it; his voice the
dull ring of loss, and failure, and small hope.  The woman covered
her face and began to sob.

"There, mother," said the man, touching her head; "we'd better
forget.  I'll never speak of that again--never.  We're going to
seek our fortune.  Away in the great west we'll seek our fortune."

His effort to be cheerful was perhaps the richest colour of that
odd scene there in the still woods and the firelight.

"We're going to take a farm in the most beautiful country in the
world.  It's easy to make money there."

"If you've no objection I'd like to go with you," said Thurst
Tilly.  "I'm a good farmer."

"Can you drive a team?" said the man.

"Drove horses all my life," said Thurst; whereupon they made a
bargain.

Trove and Tilly went away to the brook for water while the
travellers went to bed in their big, covered wagon.  Trove lay down
with his blanket on the boughs, reading over the indelible record
of that day.  And he said, often, as he thought of it, years after,
that the saddest thing in all the world is a man of broken courage.




X

An Odd Meeting

They were up betimes in the morning, and Trove ate hastily from his
own store and bade them all good-by and made off, for he had yet a
long road to travel.

That day Trove fell in with a great, awkward country boy, slouching
along the road on his way to Cleveland.  He was an odd figure, with
thick hair of the shade of tow that burst out from under a slouch
hat and muffled his neck behind; his coat was thread-bare and a bit
too large; his trousers of satinet fell loosely far enough to break
joints with each bootleg; the dusty cowhide gave his feet a lonely
and arid look.  He carried a bundle tied to a stick that lay on his
left shoulder.  They met near a corner, nodded, and walked on a
while together in silence.  For a little time they surveyed each
other curiously.  Then each began to quicken the pace.

"Maybe you think you can walk the fastest," said he of the long
hair.

They were going a hot pace, their free arms flying.  Trove bent to
his work stubbornly.  They both began to tire and slow up.  The big
boy looked across at the other and laughed loudly.

"Wouldn't give up if ye broke a leg, would ye?" said he.

"Not if I could swing it," said Trove.

"Goin' t' Cleveland?"

"Yes; are you?"

"Yes.  I'm goin' t' be a sailor," said the strange boy.

"Goin' off on the ocean?" Trove inquired with deep interest.

"Yes; 'round the world, maybe.  Then I'll come back an' go t'
school--if I don't git wrecked like Robi'son Crusoe."

"My stars!" said Trove, with a look of awe.

"Like t' go?" the other inquired.

"Guess I would!"

"Better stay t' home; it's a hard life." This with an air of
parental wisdom.

"I've read 'Robi'son Crusoe,'" said Trove, as if it were some
excuse.

"So 've I; an' Grimshaw's 'Napoleon,' an' Weems's 'Life o' Marion,'
an' 'The Pirates' Book,' an' the Bible."

"I've got half through the Bible," said Trove.

"Who slew Absolum?" the other inquired doubtfully.

Trove remembered the circumstances, but couldn't recall the name.

They sat down to rest and eat luncheon.

"You going to be a statesman?" Trove inquired.

"No; once I thought I'd try t' go t' Congress, but I guess I'd
rather go t' sea.  What you goin' t' be?"

"I shall try to be an author," said Trove.

"Why, if I was you, I'd go into politics," said the other.  "Ye
might be President some day, no telling.  Do ye know how t' chop er
hoe er swing a scythe?"

"Yes."

"Wal, then, if ye don't ever git t' be President, ye won't have t'
starve.  I saw an author one day."

"You did?"

"He was an awful-lookin' cuss," said the other, with a nod of
affirmation.

The strange boy took another bite of bread and butter.

"Wrote dime novels an' drank whisky an' wore a bearskin vest," he
added presently.

"Do you know the Declaration of Independence?"

"No."

"I do," said the strange boy, and gave it word for word.

They chatted and tried tricks and spent a happy hour there by the
roadside.  It was an hour of pure democracy--neither knew even the
name of the other so far.

They got to Cleveland late in the afternoon.

"Now keep yer hand on yer wallet," said the strange boy, as they
were coming into the city.  "I've got three dollars an'
seventy-five cents in mine, an' I don't propose t' have it took
away from me."

Trove went to a tavern, the other to stay with friends.  Near noon
next day both boys met on the wharf, where Trove was to board a
steamboat.

"Got a job?" Trove inquired.

"No," said the other, with a look of dejection.  "I tried, an' they
cursed an' damned me awful.  I got away as quick as I could.  Dunno
but I'll have t' go back an' try t' be a statesman er something o'
that kind.  Guess it's easier than goin' t' sea.  Give me yer name
an' address, an' maybe I'll write ye a letter."

Trove complied.

"Please give me yours," said he.

"It's James Abram Garfield, Orange, O.," said the other.

Then they spoke a long good-by.




XI

The Old Rag Doll

The second week of September Trove went down the hills again to
school, with food and furniture beside him in the great wagon.  He
had not been happy since he got home.  Word of that evening with
the pretty "Vaughn girl" had come to the ears of Allen.

"You're too young for that, boy," said he, the day Trove came.
"You must promise me one thing--that you'll keep away from her
until you are eighteen."

In every conviction Allen was like the hills about him--there were
small changes on the surface, but underneath they were ever the
same rock-boned, firm, unmoving hills.

"But I'm in love with her," said the boy, with dignity. "It is more
than I can bear.  I tell you, sir, that I regard the young lady
with--with deep affection."  He had often a dignity of phrase and
manner beyond his years.

"Then it will last," said Allen.  "You're only a boy, and for a
while I know what is best for you."

Trove had to promise, and, as that keen edge of his feeling wore
away, doubted no more the wisdom of his father.  He wrote Polly a
letter, quaint with boyish chivalry and frankness--one of a package
that has lain these many years in old ribbons and the scent of
lavender.

He went to the Sign of the Dial as soon as he got to Hillsborough
that day.  Darrel was at home, and a happy time it was, wherein
each gave account of the summer.  A stranger sat working at the
small bench.  Darrel gave him no heed, chatting as if they were
quite alone.

"And what is the news in Hillsborough?" said Trove, his part of the
story finished.

"Have ye not heard?" said Darrel, in a whisper.  "Parson Hammond
hath swapped horses."

Trove began to laugh.

"Nay, that is not all," said the tinker, his pipe in hand.  "Deacon
Swackhammer hath smitten the head o' Brooke.  Oh, sor, 'twas a
comedy.   Brooke gave him an ill-sounding word.  Swackhammer
removed his coat an' flung it down.  'Deacon, lie there,' said he.
Then each began, as it were, to bruise the head o' the serpent.
Brooke--poor man!--he got the worst of it.  An' sad to tell! his
wife died the very next day."

"Of what?" Trove inquired,

"Marry, I do not know; it may have been joy," said the tinker,
lighting his pipe.  "Ah, sor, Brooke is tough.  He smites the
helping hand an' sickens the heart o' kindness.  I offered him help
an' sympathy, an' he made it all bitter with suspicion o' me.  I
turned away, an' said I to meself, 'Darrel, thy head is soft--a
babe could brain thee with a lady's fan.'"

Darrel puffed his pipe in silence a little time.

"Every one hates Brooke," said Trove.

"Once," said Darrel, presently, "a young painter met a small animal
with a striped back, in the woods.  They exchanged compliments an'
suddenly the painter ran, shaking his head.  As he came near his
own people, they all began to flee before him.  He followed them
for days, an' every animal in the woods ran as he came near.  By
an' by he stopped to rest.  Then he looked down at himself an'
spat, sneeringly.  When, after weeks o' travel, he was at length
admitted to the company of his kind, they sat in judgment on him.

"'Tell us,' said one, 'what evil hath befallen thee?'

"'Alas!' said the poor cat, 'I met a little creature with a striped
back.'

"'A little creature! an' thee so put about?' said another, with
great contempt.

"'Ay; but he hath a mighty talent,' said the sad painter.  'Let him
but stand before thee, an' he hath spoiled the earth, an' its
people, an' thou would'st even flee from thyself.  But in fleeing
thou shalt think thyself on the way to hell.'"

For a moment Darrel shook with silent laughter.  Then he rose and
put his pipe on the shelf.

"Well, I'd another chance to try the good law on him," said Darrel,
presently.  "In July he fell sick o' fever, an' I delayed me trip
to nurse him.  At length, when he was nearly well, an' I had come
to his home one evening, the widow Glover met me at his door.

"'If ye expect money fer comin' here, ye better go on 'bout yer
business,' Brooke shouted from the bedroom.  'I don't need ye any
more, an' I'll send ye a bushel o' potatoes by 'n by.  Good day.'

"Not a word o' thanks!" the tinker exclaimed.  "Wrath o' God!  I
fear there is but one thing would soften him."

"And what is that?"

"A club," said Darrel.  "But God forgive me!  I must put away
anger.  Soon it went about that Brooke was to marry the widow.  All
were delighted, for each party would be in the nature of a
punishment.  God's justice!  they did deserve each other."

Darrel shook with happiness, and relighted his pipe.

"Mayhap ye've seen the dear lady," Darrel went on.  "She is large,
bony, quarrelsome--a weaver of some fifty years--neither amiable
nor fair to look upon.  Every one knows her--a survivor o' two
husbands an' many a battle o' high words.

"'Is it a case o' foreclosure, Brooke?' says I to him one day in
the road.

"'No, sor,' he snaps out; 'I had a little mortgage on her
furniture, but I'm going t' marry her for a helpmeet.  She is a
great worker an' neat an' savin'.'

"'An' headstrong,' says I. 'Ye must have patience with her.'

"'I can manage her,' said Brooke.   'The first morning after we are
married I always say to my wife, "Here's the breeches; now if ye
want 'em, take 'em, an' I'll put on the dress."'

"He looked wise, then, as if 'twere a great argument.

"'Always?' says I.  'God bless thee, 'tis an odd habit.'

"Well, the boast o' Brooke went from one to another an' at last to
the widow's ear.  They say a look o' firmness an' resolution came
into her face, an' late in August they were married of an evening
at the home o' Brooke.  Well, about then, I had been having
trouble."

"Trouble?" said Trove.

"It was another's trouble--that of a client o' mine, a poor woman
out in the country.  Brooke had a mortgage on her cattle, an' she
could not pay, an' I undertook to help her.  I had some money due
me, but was unable to put me hand on it.  That day before the
wedding I went to the old sinner.

"'Brooke, I came to see about the Martha Vaughn mortgage,' says I."

"Martha Vaughn!" said Trove, turning quickly.

"Yes, one o' God's people," said the tinker.

"Ye may have seen her?"

"I have seen her," said Trove.

"'At ten o'clock to-morrow I shall foreclose,' says Brooke, waving
his fist.

"'Give her a little time--till the day after to-morrow,--man, it is
not much to ask,' says I.

"'Not an hour,' says he; an' I came away."

Darrel rose and put on his glasses and brought a newspaper and gave
it to the boy.

"Read that," said he, his finger on the story, "an' see what came
of it."

The article was entitled "A Rag Doll--The Story of a Money-lender
whose Name, let us say, is Brown."

After some account of the marriage and of bride and groom, the
story went on as follows:--


"At midnight the charivari was heard--a noisy beating of pans and
pots in the door-yard of the unhappy groom, who flung sticks of
wood from the window, and who finally dispersed the crowd with an
old shotgun.  Bright and early next day came the milkman--a veteran
of the war of 1812--who, agreeably with his custom, sounded the
call of boots and saddles on his battered bugle at Brown's door.
But none came to open it.   The noon hour passed with no sign of
life in the old house.

"'Suthin' hes happened over there,' said his nearest neighbour,
peering out of the window.  'Mebbe they've fit an' disabled each
other.'

"'You'd better go an' rap on the door,' said his wife.

"He started, halting at his gate and looking over at the house of
mystery.  While he stood there, the door of the money-lender opened
a little, and a head came out beckoning for help.  He hurried to
the door, that swung open as he came near it.

"'Heavens!' said he,  'What is the matter?'

"Brown stood behind the door, in a gown of figured calico, his feet
bare, his shock of gray hair dishevelled.  The gown was a poor fit,
stopping just below the knees.

"'That woman!' he gasped, sinking into a chair and making an angry
gesture with his fist.  'That woman has got every pair o' breeches
in the house.'

"His wife appeared in the rusty, familiar garments of the
money-lender.

"'He tried to humble me this morning,' said she, 'an' I humbled
him.  He began to order me around, an' I told him I wouldn't hev
it.  "Then," says he, "you better put on the breeches an' I'll put
on the dress."  "Very well," says I, and grabbed the breeches, an'
give him the dress.   I know ye, Brown; ye'll never abuse me.'

"'I'll get a divorce--I'll have the law on ye,' said the old man,
angrily, as he walked the floor in his gown of calico.

"'Go on,' said she.  'Go to the lawyer now.'

"'Will ye git me a pair o' breeches?'

"'No; I took yer offer, an' ye can't have 'em 'til ye've done the
work that goes with the dress.  Come, now, I want my dinner.'

"'I can't find a stitch in the house,' said he, turning to his
neighbour.  'I wish ye'd bring me some clothes.'

"The caller made no reply, but came away smiling, and told of
Brown's dilemma.

"'It's good for him,' said the neighbour's wife.  'Don't ye take
him any clothes.  He's bullied three wives to death, an' now I'm
glad he's got a wife that can bully him.'

"Brown waited long, but no help arrived.  The wife was firm and he
very hungry.  She called him 'wife'--a title not calculated to
soothe a man of his agility and vigour.  He galloped across the
room at her, yelling as he brandished a poker.  She quickly took it
away and drove him into a corner.  He had taken up the poker and
now seemed likely to perish by it.  Then, going to the stove with
this odd weapon, she stuck its end in the fire, and Brown had no
sooner flung a wash-basin across the room at her head than she ran
after him with the hot poker.  Then, calling for help, he ran
around the stove and out of doors like a wild man, his dress of
calico and his long hair flying in the breeze.  Pedestrians halted,
men and women came out of their homes.  The bare feet of the
money-lender were flying with great energy.

"'She's druv him crazy,' a man shouted.

"'An' knocked the socks off him,' said another.

"'Must have been tryin' t' make him into a rag doll,' was the
comment of a third.

"'Brown, if yer goin' t' be a womern,' said one, as they surrounded
him, 'ye'd ought to put on a longer dress.  Yer enough t' scare a
hoss.'

"Brown was inarticulate with anger.

"A number of men judging him insane, seized and returned him to his
punishment.  They heard the unhappy story with loud laughter.

"'You'd better give up an' go to the kitchen.  Brown,' said one of
them; and there are those who maintain that he got the dinner
before he got the trousers."


"Well, God be praised!" said Darrel, when Trove had finished
reading the story; "Brooke was unable to foreclose that day, an'
the next was Sunday, an' bright an' early on Monday morning I paid
the debt."

"Mrs.  Vaughn has a daughter," said Trove, blushing.

"Ay; an' she hath a pretty redness in her lip," said Darrel,
quickly, "an' a merry flash in her eye.  Thou hast yet far to go,
boy.  Look not upon her now, or she will trip thee.  By an' by,
boy, by an' by."

There was an odd trait in Darrel.  In familiar talk he often made
use of "ye"--a shortened you--in speaking to those of old
acquaintance.  But when there was man or topic to rouse him into
higher dignity it was more often "thee" or "thou" with him.  Trove
made no answer and shortly went away.

In certain court records one may read of the celebrated suit for
divorce which enlivened the winter of that year in the north
country.  It is enough to quote the ringing words of one Colonel
Jenkins, who addressed the judge as follows:--


"Picture to yourself, sir, this venerable man, waking from his
dream of happiness to be robbed of his trousers--the very insignia
of his manhood.  Picture him, sir, sitting in calico and despair,
mingled with hunger and humiliation.  Think of him being addressed
as 'wife.'  Being called 'wife,' sir, by this woman he had taken to
his heart and home.  That, your Honour, was ingratitude sharper
than a serpent's tooth.  Picture him driven from his fireside in
skirts,--the very drapery of humiliation,--skirts, your Honour,
that came barely to the knees and left his nether limbs exposed to
the autumnal breeze and the ridicule of the unthinking.  Sir, it is
for you to say how far the widow may go in her oppression.  If such
conduct is permitted, in God's name, who is safe?"

"May it please your Honour," said the opposing lawyer, "having
looked upon these pictures of the learned counsel, it is for you to
judge whether you ever saw any that gave you greater joy.  They are
above all art, your Honour.  In the galleries of memory there are
none like them--none so charming, so delightful.  If I were to die
to-morrow, sir, I should thank God that my last hour came not until
I had seen these pictures of Colonel Jenkins; and it may be sir,
that my happiness would even delay the hand of death.  My only
regret is that mine is the great misfortune of having failed to
witness the event they portray.  Sir, you have a great
responsibility, for you have to judge whether human law may
interfere with the working of divine justice.  It was the decree of
fate, your Honour, following his own word and action, that this man
should become as a rag doll in the hands of a termagant.  I submit
to you that Providence, in the memory of the living, has done no
better job."


A tumult of applause stopped him, and he sat down.

Brooke was defeated promptly, and known ever after as "The Old Rag
Doll."




XII

The Santa Claus of Cedar Hill

Christmas Eve had come and the year of 1850.  For two weeks snow
had rushed over the creaking gable of the forest above Martha
Vaughn's, to pile in drifts or go hissing down the long hillside.
A freezing blast had driven it to the roots of the stubble and sown
it deep and rolled it into ridges and whirled it into heaps and
mounds, or flung it far in long waves that seemed to plunge, as if
part of a white sea, and break over fence and roof and chimney in
their downrush.  Candle and firelight filtered through frosty panes
and glowed, dimly, under dark fathoms of the snow sheet now flying
full of voices.  Mrs. Vaughn opened her door a moment to peer out.
A great horned owl flashed across the light beam with a snap and
rustle of wings and a cry "oo-oo-oo," lonely, like that, as if it
were the spirit of darkness and the cold wind.  Mrs. Vaughn
started, turning quickly and closing the door.

"Ugh! what a sound," said Polly.  "It reminds me of a ghost story."

"Well," said the widow, "that thing belongs to the only family o'
real ghosts in the world."

"What was it?" said a small boy.  There were Polly and three
children about the fireplace.

"An air cat," said she, shivering, her back to the fire.  "They go
'round at night in a great sheet o' feathers an' rustle it, an' I
declare they do cry lonesome.  Got terrible claws, too!"

"Ever hurt folks?" one of the boys inquired.

"No; but they're just like some kinds o' people--ye want to let 'em
alone.  Any one that'll shake hands with an owl would be fool
enough to eat fish-hooks.  They're not made for friendship--those
owls."

"What are they made for?" another voice inquired.

"Just to kill," said she, patting a boy's head tenderly.  "They're
Death flying round at night--the angel o' Death for rats an'
rabbits an' birds an' other little creatures.  Once,--oh, many
years ago,--it seemed so everything was made to kill.  Men were
like beasts o' prey, most of 'em; an' they're not all gone yet.
Went around day an' night killing.  I declare they must have had
claws.  Then came the Prince o' Peace."

"What did he do to 'em, mother?" said Paul--a boy of seven.

"Well, he began to cut their claws for one thing," said the mother.
"Taught 'em to love an' not to kill.  Shall I read you the
story--how he came in a manger?"

"B'lieve I'd rather hear about Injuns," said the boy.

"We shall hear about them too," the mother added.  "They're like
folks o' the olden time.  They make a terrible fuss; but they've
got to hold still an' have their claws cut."

Presently she sat down by a table, where there were candles, and
began reading aloud from a county paper.  She read anecdotes of
men, remarkable for their success and piety, and an account of
Indian fighting, interrupted, as a red man lifted his tomahawk to
slay, by the rattle of an arrow on the buttery door.

It was off the cross-gun of young Paul.  He had seen everything in
the story and had taken aim at the said Indian just in the nick of
time.

She read, also, the old sweet story of the coming of the Christ
Child.

"Some say it was a night like this," said she, as the story ended.

Paul had listened, his thin, sober face glowing.

"I'll bet Santa Claus was good to him," said he.  "Brought him
sleds an' candy an' nuts an' raisins an' new boots an' everything."

"Why do you think so?" asked his mother, who was now reading
intently.

"'Cos he was a good boy.  He wouldn't cry if he had to fill the
wood box; would he, mother?"

That query held a hidden rebuke for his brother Tom.

"I do not know, but I do not think he was ever saucy or spoke a bad
word."

"Huh!" said Tom, reflectively; "then I guess he never had no
mustard plaster put on him."

The widow bade him hush.

"Er never had nuthin' done to him, neither," the boy continued,
rocking vigorously in his little chair.

"Mustn't speak so of Christ," the mother added.

"Wal," said Paul, rising, "I guess I'll hang up my stockin's."

"One'll do, Paul," said his sister Polly, with a knowing air.

"No, 'twon't," the boy insisted.  "They ain't half 's big as yours.
I'm goin' t' try it, anyway, an' see what he'll do to 'em."

He drew off his stockings and pinned them carefully to the braces
on the back of a chair.

"Well, my son," said Mrs. Vaughn, looking over the top of her
paper, "it's bad weather; Santa Claus may not be able to get here."

"Oh, yes, he can," said the boy, confidently, but with a little
quiver of alarm in his voice.  "I'm sure he'll come.  He has a team
of reindeers.  'An' the deeper the snow the faster they go.'"

Soon the others bared their feet and hung their stockings on four
chairs in a row beside the first.

Then they all got on the bed in the corner and pulled a quilt over
them to wait for Santa Claus.  The mother went on with her reading
as they chattered.

Sleep hushed them presently.  But for the crackling of the fire,
and the push and whistle of the wind, that room had become as a
peaceful, silent cave under the storm.

The widow rose stealthily and opened a bureau drawer.  The row of
limp stockings began to look cheerful and animated.  Little
packages fell to their toes, and the shortest began to reach for
the floor.  But while they were fat in the foot they were still
very lean in the leg.

Her apron empty, Mrs. Vaughn took her knitting to the fire, and
before she began to ply the needles, looked thoughtfully at her
hands.  They had been soft and shapely before the days of toil.  A
frail but comely woman she was, with pale face, and dark eyes, and
hair prematurely white.

She had come west--a girl of nineteen--with her young husband, full
of high hopes.  That was twenty-one years ago, and the new land had
poorly kept its promise.

And the children--"How many have you?" a caller had once inquired.
"Listen," said she, "hear 'em, an' you'd say there were fifteen,
but count 'em an' they're only four."

The low, weathered house and sixty acres were mortgaged.  Even the
wilderness had not wholly signed off its claim.  Every year it
exacted tribute, the foxes taking a share of her poultry, and the
wild deer feeding on her grain.

A little beggar of a dog, that now lay in the firelight, had
offered himself one day, with cheerful confidence, and been
accepted.  Small, affectionate, cowardly, irresponsible, and
yellow, he was in the nature of a luxury, as the widow had once
said.  He had a slim nose, no longer than a man's thumb, and ever
busy.  He was a most prudent animal, and the first day found a
small opening in the foundation of the barn through which he betook
himself always at any sign of danger.  He soon buried his bones
there, and was ready for a siege if, perchance, it came.   One blow
or even a harsh word sent him to his refuge in hot haste.  He had
learned early that the ways of hired men were full of violence and
peril.  Hospitality and affection had won his confidence but never
deprived him of his caution.

Presently there came a heavy step and a quick pull at the
latch-string.  An odd figure entered in a swirl of snow--a real
Santa Claus, the mystery and blessing of Cedar Hill.  For five
years, every Christmas Eve, in good or bad weather, he had come to
four little houses on the Hill, where, indeed, his coming had been
as a Godsend.  Whence he came and who he might be none had been
able to guess.  He never spoke in his official capacity, and no
citizen of Faraway had such a beard or figure as this man.  Now his
fur coat, his beard, and eyebrows were hoary with snow and frost.
Icicles hung from his mustache around the short clay pipe of
tradition.  He lowered a great sack and brushed the snow off it.
He had borne it high on his back, with a strap at each shoulder.

The sack was now about half full of things.  He took out three big
bundles and laid them on the table.  They were evidently for the
widow herself, who quickly stepped to the bedside.

"Come, children," she whispered, rousing them; "here is Santa
Claus."

They scrambled down, rubbing their eyes.  Polly took the hands of
the two small boys and led them near him.  Paul drew his hand away
and stood spellbound, eyes and mouth open.  He watched every motion
of the good Saint, who had come to that chair that held the little
stockings.  Santa Claus put a pair of boots on it.  They were
copper-toed, with gorgeous front pieces of red morocco at the top
of the leg.  Then, as if he had some relish of a joke, he took them
up, looked them over thoughtfully, and put them in the sack again,
whereupon the boy Paul burst into tears.  Old Santa Claus, shaking
with silent laughter, replaced them in the chair quickly,

As if to lighten the boy's heart he opened a box and took out a
mouth-organ.  He held it so the light sparkled on its shiny side.
Then he put his pipe in his pocket and began to dance and play
lively music.  Step and tune quickened.  The bulky figure was
flying up and down above a great clatter of big boots, his head
wagging to keep time.  The oldest children were laughing, and the
boy Paul, he began to smile in the midst of a great sob that shook
him to the toes.  The player stopped suddenly, stuffed the
instrument in a stocking, and went on with his work.  Presently he
uncovered a stick of candy long as a man's arm.  There were spiral
stripes of red from end to end of it.  He used it for a fiddle-bow,
whistling with terrific energy and sawing the air.  Then he put
shawls and tippets and boots and various little packages on the
other chairs.

At last he drew out of the sack a sheet of pasteboard, with string
attached, and hung it on the wall.  It bore the simple message,
rudely lettered in black, as follows:--

  "Mery Crismus.  And Children i have the
  honnor to remane, Yours Respec'fully
    SANDY CLAUS."

His work done, he swung the pack to his shoulders and made off as
they all broke the silence with a hearty "Thank you, Santa Claus!"

They listened a moment, as he went away with a loud and merry laugh
sounding above the roar of the wind.  It was the voice of a big and
gentle heart, but gave no other clew.  In a moment cries of
delight, and a rustle of wrappings, filled the room.  As on wings
of the bitter wind, joy and good fortune had come to them, and, in
that little house, had drifted deep as the snow without.

The children went to their beds with slow feet and quick pulses.
Paul begged for the sacred privilege of wearing his new boots to
bed, but compromised on having them beside his pillow.  The boys
went to sleep at last, with all their treasures heaped about them.
Tom shortly rolled upon the little jumping-jack, that broke away
and butted him in the face with a loud squawk.  It roused the boy,
who promptly set up a defence in which the stuffed hen lost her
tail-feathers and the jumping-jack was violently put out of bed.
When the mother came to see what had happened, order had been
restored--the boys were both sleeping.

It was an odd little room under bare shingles above stairs.  Great
chests, filled with relics of another time and country, sat against
the walls.  Here and there a bunch of herbs or a few ears of corn,
their husks braided, hung on the bare rafters.  The aroma of the
summer fields--of peppermint, catnip, and lobelia--haunted it.
Chimney and stovepipe tempered the cold.  A crack in the gable end
let in a sift of snow that had been heaping up a lonely little
drift on the bare floor.  The widow covered the boys tenderly and
took their treasures off the bed, all save the little wooden
monkey, which, as if frightened by the melee, had hidden far under
the clothes.  She went below stairs to the fire, which every cold
day was well fed until after midnight, and began to enjoy the sight
of her own gifts.  They were a haunch of venison, a sack of flour,
a shawl, and mittens.  A small package had fallen to the floor.  It
was neatly bound with wrappings of blue paper.  Under the last
layer was a little box, the words "For Polly" on its cover.  It
held a locket of wrought gold that outshone the light of the
candles.  She touched a spring, and the case opened.  Inside was a
lock of hair, white as her own.  There were three lines cut in the
glowing metal, and she read them over and over again:--

  "Here are silver and gold,
  The one for a day of remembrance between thee and dishonour,
  The other for a day of plenty between thee and want."

She went to her bed, presently, where the girl lay sleeping, and,
lifting dark masses of her hair, kissed a ruddy cheek.  Then the
widow stood a moment, wiping her eyes.




XIII

A Christmas Adventure

Long before daylight one could hear the slowing of the wind.  Its
caravan now reaching eastward to mid-ocean was nearly passed.
Scattered gusts hurried on like weary and belated followers.  Then,
suddenly, came a silence in which one might have heard the dust of
their feet falling, their shouts receding in the far woodland.  The
sun rose in a clear sky above the patched and ragged canopy of the
woods--a weary multitude now resting in the still air.

The children were up looking for tracks of reindeer and breaking
paths in the snow.  Sunlight glimmered in far-flung jewels of the
Frost King.  They lay deep, clinking as the foot sank in them.  At
the Vaughn home it was an eventful day.  Santa Claus--well, he is
the great Captain that leads us to the farther gate of childhood
and surrenders the golden key.  Many ways are beyond the gate, some
steep and thorny; and some who pass it turn back with bleeding feet
and wet eyes, but the gate opens not again for any that have
passed.  Tom had got the key and begun to try it.  Santa Claus had
winked at him with a snaring eye, like that of his aunt when she
had sugar in her pocket, and Tom thought it very foolish.  The boy
had even felt of his greatcoat and got a good look at his boots and
trousers.  Moreover, when he put his pipe away, Tom saw him take a
chew of tobacco--an abhorrent thing if he were to believe his
mother.

"Mother," said he, "I never knew Santa Claus chewed tobacco."

"Well, mebbe he was Santa Claus's hired man," said she.

"Might 'a' had the toothache," Paul suggested, for Lew Allen, who
worked for them in the summer time, had an habitual toothache,
relieved many times a day by chewing tobacco.

Tom sat looking into the fire a moment.

Then he spoke of a matter Paul and he had discussed secretly.

"Joe Bellus he tol' me Santa Claus was only somebody rigged up t'
fool folks, an' hadn't no reindeers at all."

The mother turned away, her wits groping for an answer.

"Hadn't ought 'a' told mother, Tom," said Paul, with a little
quiver of reproach and pity.  "'Tain't so, anyway--we know 'tain't
so."

He was looking into his mother's face.

"Tain't so," Paul repeated with unshaken confidence.

"Mus'n't believe all ye hear," said the widow, who now turned to
the doubting Thomas.

And that very moment Tom was come to the last gate of childhood,
whereon are the black and necessary words, "Mus'n't believe all ye
hear."

The boys in their new boots were on the track of a painter.  They
treed him, presently, at the foot of the stairs.

"How'll we kill him?" one of them inquired.

"Just walk around the tree once," said the mother, "an' you'll
scare him to death.  Why don't ye grease your boots?"

"'Fraid it'll take the screak out of 'em," said Paul, looking down
thoughtfully at his own pair.

"Well," said she, "you'll have me treed if you keep on.  No hunter
would have boots like that.  A loud foot makes a still gun."

That was her unfailing method of control--the appeal to
intelligence.  Polly sat singing, thoughtfully, the locket in her
hand.  She had kissed the sacred thing and hung it by a ribbon to
her neck and bathed her eyes in the golden light of it and begun to
feel the subtle pathos in its odd message.  She was thinking of the
handsome boy who came along that far May-day with the drove, and
who lately had returned to be her teacher at Linley School.  Now,
he had so much dignity and learning, she liked him not half so well
and felt he had no longer any care for her.  She blushed to think
how she had wept over his letter and kissed it every day for weeks.
Her dream was interrupted, presently, by the call of her brother
Tom.  Having cut the frost on a window-pane, he stood peering out.
A man was approaching in the near field.  His figure showed to the
boot-top, mounting hills of snow, and sank out of sight in the deep
hollows.  It looked as if he were walking on a rough sea.  In a
moment he came striding over the dooryard fence on a pair of
snowshoes.

"It's Mr. Trove, the teacher," said Polly, who quickly began to
shake her curls.

As the door swung open all greeted the young man.  Loosening his
snow-shoes, he flung them on the step and came in, a foxtail
dangling from his fur cap.

He shook hands with Polly and her mother, and lifted Paul to the
ceiling.  "Hello, young man!" said he.  "If one is four, how many
are two?"

"If you're speaking of new boots," said the widow, "one is at least
fifteen."

The school teacher made no reply, but stood a moment looking down
at the boy.

"It's a cold day," said Polly.

"I like it," said the teacher, lifting his broad shoulders and
smiting them with his hands.  "God has been house cleaning.  The
dome of the sky is all swept and dusted.  There isn't a cobweb
anywhere.  Santa Claus come?"

"Yes," said the younger children, who made a rush for their gifts
and laid them on chairs before him.

"Grand old chap!" said he, staring thoughtfully at the flannel cat
in his hands.  "Any idea who it is?"

"Can't make out," said Mrs. Vaughn; "very singular man."

"Generous, too," the teacher added.  "That's the best cat I ever
saw, Tom.  If I had my way, the cats would all be made of flannel.
Miss Polly, what did you get?"

"This," said Polly, handing him the locket.

"Beautiful!" said he, turning it in his hand.  "Anything inside?"

Polly showed him how to open it.  He sat a moment or more looking
at the graven gold.

"Strange!" said he, presently, surveying the wrought cases,

Mrs. Vaughn was now at his elbow.

"Strange?" she inquired.

"Well, long ago," said he, "I heard of one like it.  Some time it
may solve the mystery of your Santa Claus."

An ear of the teacher had begun to swell and redden.

"Should have pulled my cap down," said he, as the widow spoke of
it.  "Frost-bitten years ago, and if I'm out long in the cold, I
begin to feel it."

"Must be very painful," said Polly, as indeed it was.

"No," said he, with a little squint as he touched the aching
member.  "It's good--I rather like it.  I wouldn't take anything
for that ear.  It--it--" He hesitated, as if trying to recall the
advantages of a chilled ear.  "Well, I shouldn't know I had any
ears if it weren't for that one.  Come, Paul, put on your cap an'
mittens.  We'll take a sack and get some green boughs for your
mother."

He put on snow-shoes, wrapped the boy snugly in a shawl, and,
seating him on a snowboat, made off, hauling it with a rope over
white banks and hollows toward the big timber.  The dog, Bony, came
along with them, wallowing to his ears and barking merrily.  Since
morning the sun had begun to warm the air, and a light breeze had
risen.  The boy sat bracing on a rope fastened before and looped
around him.  As they went along he was oversown with sparkling
crystals.  They made his cheeks tingle, and almost took his breath
as he went plunging into steep hollows.  Often he tipped over and
sank in the white deep.  Then Trove hauled him out, brushed him a
little, and set him back on the boat again.  Snow lay deep and
level in the woods--a big, white carpet, seamed with tiny tracks
and figured with light and shadow.  Trove stopped a moment, looking
up at the forest roof.  They could hear a baying of hounds in the
far valley.  Down the dingle near them a dead leaf was drumming on
a bough--a clock of the wood telling the flight of seconds.  Above,
they could hear the low creak of brace and rafter and great waves
of the upper deep sweeping over and breaking with a loud wash on
reefs of evergreen.  The little people of this odd winter land had
begun to make roads from tree to tree and from thicket to thicket.
A partridge had broken out of her cave, and they followed the track
of her snow-shoes down the side-hill to a little brook.  Under its
ice roof they could hear the tinkling water.  Above them the brook
fell from a rock shelf, narrow and high as a man's head.  The fall
was muted to a low murmur under its vault of ice.

"Come, Paul," said Trove, as he lifted the small boy; "here's a
castle of King Frost.  There are thousands in his family, and he's
many castles.  Building new ones every day somewhere.  Goes north
in the spring, and when he moves out they begin to rot and tumble."

He cleared a space for the boy to stand upon.  Then he brushed away
the snow blanket flung loosely over the vault of ice.  A wonderful
bit of masonry stood exposed.  Near its centre were two columns,
large and rugose, each tapering to a capital and cornice.  Between
them was a deep lattice of crystal.  Some bars were clear, some
yellow as amber, and all were powdered over with snow, ivory-white.
Under its upper part they could see a grille of frostwork,
close-wrought, glistening, and white.  It was the inner gate of the
castle, and each ray of light, before entering, had to pay a toll
of its warmth.  On either side was a rough wall of ice, with here
and there a barred window.  The snow cleared away, they could hear
the song of falling water.  The teacher put his ear to the ice
wall.  Then he called the boy.

"Listen," said he; "it's the castle bell." Indeed, the whole
structure rang like a bell, if one put his ear down to hear it.

"See!" said he, presently, stirring a heap of tiny crystals in his
palm.  "Here are the bricks he builds with, and the water of the
brook is his mortar."

Near the bank was an opening partly covered with snow.  It led to a
cavern behind the ice curtain under the rock floor of the brook
above.

The teacher took off his snow-shoes.  In a moment they had crawled
through and were crouching on a frosty bed of pebbles.  A warm glow
lit the long curtain of ice.  Beams of sunlight fell through
windows oddly mullioned with icicles and filtered in at the lattice
of crystal.  They jewelled the grille of frostwork and flung a
sprinkle of gold on the falling water.  The breath of the
waterfall, rising out of bubbles, filled its castle with the very
wine of life.  The narrow hall rang with its music.

"See the splendour of a king's home," said the teacher, his eyes
brimming.

The boy, young as he was, had seen and felt the beauty and mystery
of the place, and never forgot it.

"See how it sifts the sunlight to take the warmth out of it," the
teacher continued.  "Warmth is poison to the King, and every ray of
light is twisted and turned upside down to see if he has any in his
pocket."

They could now hear a loud baying on the hill above.

As they turned to listen, a young fox leaped in at the hole and, as
he saw them, checked a foot in the air.  He was panting, his tongue
out, and blood was dripping from his long fur at the shoulder.  He
turned, stilling his breath a little as the hounds came near.  Then
he trembled,--a pitiful sight,--for he was near spent and between
two perils.

"Come--poor fellow!" said the teacher, stroking him gently.

The fox ran aside, shaking with fear, his foot lifted appealingly.
With a quick movement the teacher caught him by the nape of his
neck and thrust him into the sack.  The leader now had his nose in
the hole.

"Back there!" Trove shouted, kicking at him.

In a moment he had rolled a heavy stone to the hole and made it too
small for the hounds to enter.    Half a dozen of them were now
baying outside.

"We'll give him air," said the teacher, as he cut a hole in the
sack and tied it.  "Don't know how we'll get him out of here alive.
They'd be all over me like a pack of wolves."

He stood a moment thinking.  Bony had wriggled away from Paul and
begun to bark loudly.

"I've an idea," said the teacher, as he cut the foxtail from his
cap.  Then he rubbed it in the blood and spittle of the fox and
tied it to the stub tail of Bony.  The dog's four feet were scented
in the same manner.  The smell of them irked him sorely.  His hair
rose, and his head fell with a sense of injury.  He made a rush at
his new tail and was rudely stopped.

"He's fresh, and they'll not be able to catch him," said the young
man, as Paul protested.  "Wouldn't hurt anything but the tail if
they did."

Then breaking the ice curtain, as far from the hole as possible, he
gave Bony a spank and flung him out on the snow above with a loud
"go home."  The pack saw him and scrambled up the bank in full cry.
He had turned for a glance at his new tail, but seeing the pack
rush at him started up the hillside with a yelp of fear and the
energy of a wildcat.  When the two came out of the cavern they saw
him leaping like a rabbit in the snow, his hair on end, his brush
flying, and the hounds in full pursuit.

"My stars!  See that dog run," said the teacher, laughing, as he
put on his snow-shoes.  "He don't intend to be caught with such a
tail and smell on him."

He put the sack over his shoulder.

"All aboard, Paul," said he; "now we can go home in peace."

Coming down out of the woods, they saw a pack of hounds digging at
one side of the stable.  Bony had gone to his refuge under the barn
floor.

As he entered, one of them had evidently caught hold of his new
tail, and the pack had torn it in shreds.  Two hunters came along
shortly, and, after a talk with the teacher, took their dogs away.
But for three days Bony came not forth and was seen no more of men,
save only when he crept to the hole for a lap of water and to seize
a doughnut from the hand of Paul, whereupon he retired promptly.

"He ain't going to take any chances," said the widow, laughing.

When at last he came forth, it was with a soft step and new
resolutions.  And a while later, when Trove heard Darrel say that
caution was the only friend of weakness, he understood him
perfectly.

"Not every brush has a fox on it," said the widow, and the words
went from lip to lip until they were a maxim of those country-folk.

And Trove was to think of it when he himself was like the poor dog
that wore a fox's tail.




XIV

A Day at the Linley Schoolhouse

A remarkable figure was young Sidney Trove, the new teacher in
District No. 1.  He was nearing nineteen years of age that winter.

"I like that," he said to the trustee, who had been telling him of
the unruly boys--great, hulking fellows that made trouble every
winter term.  "Trouble--it's a grand thing I--but I'm not selfish,
and if I find any, I'll agree to divide it with the boys.  I don't
know but I'll be generous and let them have the most of it.  If
they put me out of the schoolhouse, I'll have learned something."

The trustee looked at the six feet and two inches of bone and
muscle that sat lounging in a chair--looked from end to end of it.

"What's that?" he inquired, smiling.

"That I've no business there," said young Mr. Trove.

"I guess you'll dew," said the trustee.  "Make 'em toe the line;
that's all I got t' say."

"And all I've got to do is my best--I don't promise any more," the
other answered modestly, as he rose to leave.

Linley School was at the four corners in Pleasant Valley,--a low,
frame structure, small and weathered gray.  Windows, with no shade,
or shutter, were set, two on a side, in perfect apposition.  A
passing traveller could see through them to the rocky pasture
beyond.  Who came there for knowledge, though a fool, was dubbed a
"scholar."  It was a word sharply etched in the dialect of that
region.  If one were to say _skollur-r-r_, he might come near it.
Every winter morning the scholar entered a little vestibule which
was part of the woodshed.  He passed an ash barrel and the odour of
drying wood, hung cap and coat On a peg in the closet, lifted the
latch of a pine door, and came into the schoolroom.  If before
nine, it would be noisy with shout and laughter, the buzz of
tongues, the tread of running feet.  Big girls, in neat aprons,
would be gossiping at the stove hearth; small boys would be chasing
each other up and down aisles and leaping the whittled desks of
pine; little girls, in checked flannel, or homespun, would be
circling in a song play; big boys would be trying feats of strength
that ended in loud laughter.  So it was, the first morning of that
winter term in 1850.  A tall youth stood by the window.  Suddenly
he gave a loud "sh--h--h!" Running feet fell silently and halted;
words begun with a shout ended in a whisper.  A boy making
caricatures at the blackboard dropped his chalk, that now fell
noisily.  A whisper, heavy with awe and expectation, flew hissing
from lip to lip--"The teacher!"  There came a tramping in the
vestibule, the door-latch jumped with a loud rattle, and in came
Sidney Trove.  All eyes were turned upon him.  A look of rectitude,
dovelike and too good to be true, came over many faces.

"Good morning!" said the young man, removing his cap, coat, and
overshoes.  Some nodded, dumb with timidity.  Only a few little
ones had the bravery to speak up, as they gave back the words in a
tone that would have fitted a golden text.  He came to the roaring
stove and stood a moment, warming his hands.  A group of the big
boys were in a corner whispering.  Two were sturdy and quite six
feet tall,--the Beach boys.

"Big as a bull moose," one whispered,

"An' stouter," said another.

The teacher took a pencil from his pocket and tapped the desk.

"Please take your seats," said he.

All obeyed.  Then he went around with the roll and took their
names, of which there were thirty-four.

"I believe I know your name," said Trove, smiling, as he came to
Polly Vaughn.

"I believe you do," said she, glancing up at him, with half a smile
and a little move in her lips that seemed to ask, "How could you
forget me?"

Then the teacher, knowing the peril of her eyes, became very
dignified as he glanced over the books she had brought to school.
He knew it was going to be a hard day.  For a little, he wondered
if he had not been foolish, after all, in trying a job so difficult
and so perilous.  If he should be thrown out of school, he felt
sure it would ruin him--he could never look Polly in the face
again.  As he turned to begin the work of teaching, it seemed to
him a case of do or die, and he felt the strength of an ox in his
heavy muscles.

The big boys had settled themselves in a back corner side by
side--a situation too favourable for mischief.  He asked them to
take other seats.  They complied sullenly and with hesitation.  He
looked over books, organized the school in classes, and started one
of them on its way.  It was the primer class, including a half
dozen very small boys and girls.  They shouted each word in the
reading lesson, laboured in silence with another, and gave voice
again with unabated energy.  In their pursuit of learning they
bayed like hounds.  Their work began upon this ancient and
informing legend, written to indicate the shout and skip of the
youthful student:--

The--sun--is--up--and--it--is--day--day?--day.

"You're afraid," the teacher began after a little.  "Come up here
close to me."

They came to his chair and stood about him.  Some were confident,
others hung back suspicious and untamed.

"We're going to be friends," said he, in a low, gentle voice.  He
took from his pocket a lot of cards and gave one to each.

"Here's a story," he continued.  "See--I put it in plain print for
you with pen and ink.  It's all about a bear and a boy, and is in
ten parts.  Here's the first chapter.  Take it home with you
to-night--"

He stopped suddenly.  He had turned in his chair and could see none
of the boys.  He did not move, but slowly took off a pair of
glasses he had been wearing.

"Joe Beach," said he, coolly, "come out here on the floor."

There was a moment of dead silence.  That big youth--the terror of
Linley School--was now red and dumb with amazement.  His deviltry
had begun, but how had the teacher seen it with his back turned?

"I'll think it over," said the boy, sullenly.

The teacher laid down his book, calmly, walked to the seat of the
young rebel, took him by the collar and the back of the neck, tore
him out of the place where his hands and feet were clinging like
the roots of a tree, dragged him roughly to the aisle and over the
floor space, taking part of the seat along, and stood him to the
wall with a bang that shook the windows.  There was no halting--it
was all over in half a minute.

"You'll please remain there," said he, coolly, "until I tell you to
sit down."

He turned his back on the bully, walked slowly to his chair, and
opened his book again.

"Take it home with you to-night," said he, continuing his talk to
the primer class.  "Spell it over, so you won't have to stop long
between words.  All who read it well to-morrow will get another
chapter."

They began to study at home.  Wonder grew, and pleasure came with
labour as the tale went on.

He dismissed the primer readers, calling the first class in
geography.  As they took their places he repaired the broken seat,
a part of which had been torn off the nails.  The fallen rebel
stood leaning, his back to the school.  He had expected help, but
the reserve force had failed him.

"Joe Beach--you may take your seat," said the teacher, in a kind of
parenthetical tone.

"Geography starts at home," he continued, beginning the recitation.
"Who can tell me where is the Linley schoolhouse?"

A dozen hands went up.

"You tell," said he to one.

"It's here," was the answer.

"Where's here?"

A boy looked thoughtful.

"Nex' t' Joe Linley's cow-pastur'," he ventured presently,

"Will you tell us?" the teacher asked, looking at a bright-eyed
girl.

"In Faraway, New York," said she, glibly.

"Tom Linley, I'll take that," said the teacher, in a lazy tone.  He
was looking down at his book.  Where he sat, facing the class, he
could see none of the boys without turning.  But he had not turned.
To the wonder of all, up he spoke as Tom Linley was handing a slip
of paper to Joe Beach.  There was a little pause.  The young man
hesitated, rose, and walked nervously down the aisle.

"Thank you," said the teacher, as he took the message and flung it
on the fire, unread.  "Faraway, New York;" he continued on his way
to the blackboard as if nothing had happened.

He drew a circle, indicating the four points of the compass on it.
Then he mapped the town of Faraway and others, east, west, north,
and south of it.  So he made a map of the county and bade them copy
it.  Around the county in succeeding lessons he built a map of the
state.  Others in the middle group were added, the structure
growing, day by day, until they had mapped the hemisphere.

At the Linley schoolhouse something had happened.  Cunning no
sooner showed its head than it was bruised like a serpent, brawny
muscles had been easily outdone, boldness had grown timid, conceit
had begun to ebb.  A serious look had settled upon all faces.
Every scholar had learned one thing, learned it well and
quickly--it was to be no playroom.

There was a recess of one hour at noon.  All went for their dinner
pails and sat quietly, eating bread and butter followed by
doughnuts, apples, and pie.

The young men had walked to the road.  Nothing had been said.  They
drew near each other.  Tom Linley looked up at Joe Beach.  In his
face one might have seen a cloud of sympathy that had its silver
lining of amusement.

"Powerful?" Tom inquired, soberly.

"What?" said Joe.

"Powerful?" Tom repeated.

"Powerful! Jiminy crimps!" said Joe, significantly.

"Why didn't ye kick him?"

"Kick him?"

"Yes."

"Kick _him_?

"Kick _him_."

"Huh! dunno," said Joe, with a look of sadness turning into
contempt.

"Scairt?" the other inquired.

"Scairt?  Na--a--w," said Joe, scornfully.

"What was ye, then?"

"Parr'lyzed--seems so."

There was an outbreak of laughter.

"You was goin' t' help," said Joe, addressing Tom Linley.

A moment of silence followed.

"_You_ was goin' t' help," the fallen bully repeated, with large
emphasis on the pronoun.

"Help?" Tom inquired, sparring for wind as it were.

"Yes, help."

"You was licked 'fore I had time."

"Didn't dast--that's what's the matter--didn't dast," said big Joe,
with a tone of irreparable injury.

"Wouldn't 'a' been nigh ye fer a millyun dollars," said Tom,
soberly.

"Why not?"

"'Twant safe; that's why."

"'Fraid o' him! ye coward!"

"No; 'fraid o' you."

"Why?"

"'Cos if one o' yer feet had hit a feller when ye come up ag'in
that wall," Tom answered slowly, "there wouldn't 'a' been nuthin'
left uv him."

All laughed loudly.

Then there was another silence.  Joe broke it after a moment of
deep thought.

"Like t' know how he seen me," said he.

"'Tis cur'us," said another.

"Guess he's one o' them preformers like they have at the circus--"
was the opinion of Sam Beach.  "See one take a pig out o' his hat
las' summer."

"'Tain't fair 'n' square," said Tom Linley; "not jest eggzac'ly."

"Gosh!  B'lieve I'll run away," said Joe, after a pause.  "Ain' no
fun here for me."

"Better not," said Archer Town; "not if ye know when yer well off."

"Why not?"

"Wal, he'd see ye wherever ye was an' do suthin' to ye," said
Archer.  "Prob'ly he's heard all we been sayin' here."

"Wal, I ain't said nuthin' I'm 'shamed of," said Sam Beach,
thoughtfully.

A bell rang, and all hurried to the schoolhouse.  The afternoon was
uneventful.  Those rough-edged, brawny fellows had become serious.
Hope had died in their breasts, and now they looked as if they had
come to its funeral.  They began to examine their books as one
looks at a bitter draught before drinking it.  In every subject the
teacher took a new way not likely to be hard upon tender feet.  For
each lesson he had a method of his own.  He angled for the interest
of the class and caught it.  With some a term of school had been as
a long sickness, lengthened by the medicine of books and the
surgery of the beech rod.  They had resented it with ingenious
deviltry.   The confusion of the teacher and some incidental fun
were its only compensations.  The young man gave his best thought
to the correction of this mental attitude.  Four o'clock came at
last--the work of the day was over.  Weary with its tension all sat
waiting the teacher's word.  For a little he stood facing them.

"Tom Linley and Joe Beach," said he, in a low voice, "will you wait
a moment after the others have gone?  School's dismissed."

There was a rush of feet and a rattle of dinner pails.  All were
eager to get home with the story of that day--save the two it had
brought to shame.  They sat quietly as the others went away.  A
deep silence fell in that little room.  Of a sudden it had become a
lonely place.

The teacher damped the fire and put on his overshoes.

"Boys," said he, drawing a big silver watch, "hear that watch
ticking.  It tells the flight of seconds.  You are--eighteen, did
you say?  They turn boys into oxen here in this country; just a
thing of bone and muscle, living to sweat and lift and groan.
Maybe I can save you, but there's not a minute to lose.  With you
it all depends on this term of school.  When it's done you'll
either be ox or driver.  Play checkers?"

Tom nodded.

"I'll come over some evening, and we'll have a game.  Good night!"




XV

The Tinker at Linley School

Every seat was filled at the Linley School next morning.  The
tinker had come to see Trove and sat behind the big desk as work
began.

"There are two kinds of people," said the teacher, after all were
seated--"those that command--those that obey.  No man is fit to
command until he has learned to obey--he will not know how.  The
one great thing life has to teach you is--obey.  There was a young
bear once that was bound to go his own way.  The old bear told him
it wouldn't do to jump over a precipice, but, somehow, he couldn't
believe it and jumped.  'Twas the last thing he ever did.  It's
often so with the young.  Their own way is apt to be rather steep
and to end suddenly.  There are laws everywhere,--we couldn't live
without them,--laws of nature, God, and man.  Until we learn the
law and how to obey it, we must go carefully and take the advice of
older heads.  We couldn't run a school without laws in it--laws
that I must obey as well as you.  I must teach, and you must learn.
The two first laws of the school are teach and learn--you must help
me to obey mine; I must help you to obey yours.  And we'll have as
much fun as possible, but we must obey."

Then Trove invited Darrel to address the school.

"Dear children," the tinker began with a smile, "I mind ye're all
looking me in the face, an' I do greatly fear ye.  I fear I may say
something ye will remember, an' again I fear I may not.  For when I
speak to the young--ah! then it seems to me God listens.  I heard
the teacher speaking o' the law of obedience.  Which o' ye can tell
me who is the great master--the one ye must never disobey?"

"Yer father," said one of the boys.

"Nay, me bright lad, one o' these days ye may lose father an'
mother an' teacher an' friend.  Let me tell a story, an' then,
mayhap, ye'll know the great master.  Once upon a time there was a
young cub who thought his life a burden because he had to mind his
mother.  By an' by a bullet killed her, an' he was left alone.  He
wandered away, not knowing' what to do, and came near the land o'
men.  Soon he met an old bear.

"'Foolish cub!  Why go ye to the land o' men?' said the old bear.
'Thy legs are not as long as me tail.  Go home an' obey thy mother.'

"'But I've none to obey,' said the young bear; an' before he could
turn, a ball came whizzing over a dingle an' ripped into his ham.
The old bear had scented danger an' was already out o' the way.
The cub made off limping, an' none too quickly.  They followed him
all day, an' when night came he was the most weary an' bedraggled
bear in the woods.  But he stopped the blood an' went away on a dry
track in the morning.  He came to a patch o' huckleberries that day
and began to help himself.  Then quick an' hard he got a cuff on
the head that tore off an ear and knocked him into the bushes.
When he rose there stood the old bear.  "'Ah, me young cub,' said
he, 'ye'll have a master now.'

"'An' no more need o' him,' said the young bear, shaking his bloody
head.

"'Nay, ye will prosper,' said the old bear.  'There are two ways o'
learning,--by hearsay an' by knocks.  Much ye may learn by knocks,
but they are painful.  There be two things every one has to
learn,--respect for himself; respect for others.  Ye'll know,
hereafter, in the land o' men a bear has to keep his nose up an'
his ears open--because men hurt.  Ye'll know better, also, than to
feed on the ground of another bear--because he hurts.  Now, were I
a cub an' had none to obey, I'd obey meself.  Ye know what's right,
do it; ye know what's wrong, do it not.'

"'One thing is sure,' said the young bear, as he limped away; 'if I
live, there'll not be a bear in the woods that'll take any better
care of himself.'

"Now the old bear knew what he was talking about.  He was, I
maintain, a wise an' remarkable bear.  We learn to obey others, so
that by an' by we may know how to obey ourselves.  The great master
of each man is himself.  By words or by knocks ye will learn what
is right, and ye must do it.  Dear children, ye must soon be yer
own masters.  There be many cruel folk in the world, but ye have
only one to fear--yerself.  Ah! ye shall find him a hard man, for,
if he be much offended, he will make ye drink o' the cup o' fire.
Learn to obey yerselves, an' God help ye."

Thereafter, many began to look into their own hearts for that
fearful master, and some discovered him.




XVI

A Rustic Museum

That first week Sidney Trove went to board at the home of "the two
old maids," a stone house on Jericho Road, with a front door
rusting on idle hinges and blinds ever drawn.  It was a hundred
feet or more from the highway, and in summer there were flowers
along the path from its little gate and vines climbing to the upper
windows.  In winter its garden was buried deep under the snow.  One
family--the Vaughns--came once in awhile to see "the two old
maids."  Few others ever saw them save from afar.  A dressmaker
came once a year and made gowns for them, that were carefully hung
in closets but never worn.  To many of their neighbours they were
as dead as if they had been long in their graves.  Tales of their
economy, of their odd habits, of their past, went over hill and
dale to far places.  They had never boarded the teacher and were
put in a panic when the trustee came to speak of it.

"He's a grand young man," said he; "good company--and you'll enjoy
it."

They looked soberly at each other.  According to tradition, one was
fifty-four the other fifty-five years of age.  An exclamation broke
from the lips of one.  It sounded like the letter _y_ whispered
quickly.

"Y!" the other answered.

"It might make a match," said Mr. Blount, the trustee, smiling.

"Y!  Samuel Blount!" said the younger one, coming near and smiting
him playfully on the elbow.  "You stop!"

Miss Letitia began laughing silently.  They never laughed aloud.

"If he didn't murder us," said Miss S'mantha, doubtfully.

"Nonsense," said the trustee; "I'll answer for him."

"Can't tell what men'll do," she persisted weakly.  "When I was in
Albany with Alma Haskins, a man came 'long an' tried t' pass the
time o' day with us.  We jes' looked t'other way an' didn't preten'
t' hear him.  It's awful t' think what might 'a' happened."

She wiped invisible tears with an embroidered handkerchief.  The
dear lady had spent a good part of her life thinking of that narrow
escape.

"If he wa'n't too partic'lar," said Miss Letitia, who had been
laughing at this maiden fear of her sister.

"If he would mind his business, we--we might take him for one
week," said Miss S'mantha.  She glanced inquiringly at her sister.

Letitia and S'mantha Tower, "the two old maids," had but one near
relative--Ezra Tower, a brother of the same neighbourhood.

There were two kinds of people in Faraway,--those that Ezra Tower
spoke to and those he didn't.  The latter were of the majority.  As
a forswearer of communication he was unrivalled.  His imagination
was a very slaughter-house, in which all who crossed him were
slain.  If they were passing, he looked the other way and never
even saw them again.  Since the probate of his father's will both
sisters were of the number never spoken to.  He was a thin, tall,
sullen, dry, and dusty man.  Dressed for church of a Sunday, he
looked as if he had been stored a year in some neglected cellar.
His broadcloth had a dingy aspect, his hair and beard and eyebrows
the hue of a cobweb.  He had a voice slow and rusty, a look arid
and unfruitful.  Indeed, it seemed as if the fires of hate and envy
had burned him out.

The two old maids, feeling the disgrace of it and fearing more,
ceased to visit their neighbours or even to pass their own gate.
Poor Miss S'mantha fell into the deadly mire of hypochondria.  She
often thought herself very ill and sent abroad for every medicine
advertised in the county paper.  She had ever a faint look and a
thin, sickly voice.  She had the man-fear,--a deep distrust of
men,--never ceasing to be on her guard.  In girlhood, she had been
to Albany, Its splendour and the reckless conduct of one Alma
Haskins, companion of her travels, had been ever since a day-long
perennial topic of her conversation.  Miss Letitia was more
amiable.  She had a playful, cheery heart in her, a mincing and
precise manner, and a sweet voice.  What with the cleaning,
dusting, and preserving, they were ever busy.  A fly, driven hither
and thither, fell of exhaustion if not disabled with a broom.  They
were two weeks getting ready for the teacher.  When, at last, he
came that afternoon, supper was ready and they were nearly worn out.

"Here he is!" one whispered suddenly from a window.  Then, with a
last poke at her hair, Miss Letitia admitted the teacher.  They
spoke their greeting in a half whisper and stood near, waiting
timidly for his coat and cap.

"No, thank you," said he, taking them to a nail.  "I can do my own
hanging, as the man said when he committed suicide."

Miss S'mantha looked suspicious and walked to the other side of the
stove.  Impressed by the silence of the room, much exaggerated by
the ticking of the clock, Sidney Trove sat a moment looking around
him.   Daylight had begun to grow dim.  The table, with its cover
of white linen, was a thing to give one joy.  A ruby tower of
jelly, a snowy summit of frosted cake, a red pond of preserved
berries, a mound of chicken pie, and a corduroy marsh of mince,
steaming volcanoes of new biscuit, and a great heap of apple
fritters, lay in a setting of blue china.  They stood a moment by
the stove,--the two sisters,--both trembling in this unusual
publicity.  Miss Letitia had her hand upon the teapot.

"Our tea is ready," said she, presently, advancing to the table.
She spoke in a low, gentle tone.

"This is grand!" said he, sitting down with them.  "I tell you,
we'll have fun before I leave here."

They looked up at him and then at each other, Letitia laughing
silently, S'mantha suspicious.  For many years fun had been a thing
far from their thought.

"Play checkers?" he inquired.

"Afraid we couldn't," said Miss Letitia, answering for both.

"Old Sledge?"

She shook her head, smiling.

"I don't wish to lead you into recklessness," the teacher remarked,
"but I'm sure you wouldn't mind being happy."

Miss S'mantha had a startled look.

"In--in a--proper way," he added.  "Let's be joyful.  Perhaps we
could play 'I spy.'"

"Y!" they both exclaimed, laughing silently.

"Never ate chicken pie like that," he added in all sincerity.  "If
I were a poet, I'd indite an ode 'written after eating some of the
excellent chicken pie of the Misses Tower.' I'm going to have some
like it on my farm."

In reaching to help himself he touched the teapot, withdrawing his
hand quickly.

"Burn ye?" said Miss S'mantha.

"Yes; but I like it!" said he, a bit embarrassed.  "I often go
and--and put my hand on a hot teapot if I'm having too much fun."

They looked up at him, puzzled.

"Ever slide down hill?" he inquired, looking from one to the other,
after a bit of silence.

"Oh, not since we were little!" said Miss Letitia, holding her
biscuit daintily, after taking a bite none too big for a bird to
manage.

"Good fun!" said be.  "Whisk you back to childhood in a jiffy.
Folks ought to slide down hill more'n they do.  It isn't a good
idea to be always climbing."

"'Fraid we couldn't stan' it," said Miss S'mantha, tentatively.
Under all her man-fear and suspicion lay a furtive recklessness.

"Y, no!" the other whispered, laughing silently.

The pervading silence of that house came flooding in between
sentences.  For a moment Trove could hear only the gurgle of
pouring tea and the faint rattle of china softly handled.  When he
felt as if the silence were drowning him, he began again:--

"Life is nothing but a school.  I'm a teacher, and I deal in rules.
If you want to kill misery, load your gun with pleasure."

"Do you know of anything for indigestion?" said Miss S'mantha,
charging her sickly voice with a firmness calculated to discourage
any undue familiarity.

"Just the thing--a sure cure!" said he, emphatically.

"Come high?" she inquired.

"No, it's cheap and plenty."

"Where do you send?"

"Oh!" said he; "you will have to go after it."

"What is it called ?"

"Fun," said the teacher, quickly; "and the place to find it is out
of doors.  It grows everywhere on my farm.  I'd rather have a pair
of skates than all the medicine this side of China."

She set down her teacup and looked up at him.  She was beginning to
think him a fairly safe and well-behaved man, although she would
have been more comfortable if he had been shut in a cage.

"If I had a pair o' skates," said she, faintly, with a look of
inquiry at her sister, "I dunno but I'd try 'em."

Miss Letitia began to laugh silently.

"I'd begin with overshoes," said the teacher, "A pair of overshoes
and a walk on the crust every morning before breakfast; increase
the dose gradually."

The two old maids were now more at ease with their guest.  His
kindly manner and plentiful good spirits had begun to warm and
cheer them.  Miss S'mantha even cherished a secret resolve to slide
if the chance came.

After tea Sidney Trove, against their protest, began to help with
the dishes.  Miss S'mantha prudently managed to keep the stove
between him and her.  A fire and candles were burning in the
parlour.  He asked permission, however, to stay where he could talk
with them.  Tunk Hosely, the man of all work, came in for his
supper.  He was an odd character.  Some, with a finger on their
foreheads, confided the opinion that he was "a little off."  All
agreed he was no fool--in a tone that left it open to argument.  He
had a small figure and a big squint.  His perpetual squint and
bristly, short beard were a great injustice to him.  They gave him
a look severer than he deserved.  A limp and leaning shoulder
complete the inventory of external traits.  Having eaten, he set a
candle in the old barn lantern.

"Wal, mister," said he, when all was ready, "come out an' look at
my hoss."

The teacher went with him out under a sky bright with stars to the
chill and gloomy stable.

"Look at me," said Tunk, holding up the lantern as he turned about.
"Gosh all fish-hooks!  I'm a wreck."

"What's the matter?" Sidney Trove inquired.

"All sunk in--right here," Tunk answered impressively, his hand to
his chest.

"How did it happen?"

"Kicked by a boss; that's how it happened," was the significant
answer.  "Lord! I'm all shucked over t' one side--can't ye see it?"

"A list t' sta'b'rd--that's what they call it, I believe," said the
teacher.

"See how I limp," Tunk went on, striding to show his pace.  "Ain't
it awful!"

"How did that happen?"

"Sprung my ex!" he answered, turning quickly with a significant
look.  "Thrown from a sulky in a hoss race an' sprung my ex.  Lord!
can't ye see it?"

The teacher nodded, not knowing quite how to take him.

"Had my knee unsot, too," he went on, lifting his knee as he turned
the light upon it.  "Jes' put yer finger there," said he,
indicating a slight protuberance.  "Lord! it's big as a bog spavin."

He had planned to provoke a query, and it came.

"How did you get it?"

"Kicked ag'in," said Tunk, sadly.  "Heavens!  I've had my share o'
bangin'.  Can't conquer a skittish hoss without sufferin' some--not
allwus.  Now, here's a boss," he added, as they walked to a stall.
"He ain't much t' look at, but--"

He paused a moment as he neared the horse--a white and ancient
palfrey.  He stood thoughtfully on "cocked ankles," every leg in a
bandage, tail and mane braided,

"Get ap, Prince," Tunk shouted, as he gave him a slap.  Prince
moved aside, betraying evidence of age and infirmity.

"But--" Tunk repeated with emphasis.

"Ugly?" the teacher queried.

"Ugly!" said Tunk, as if the word were all too feeble for the fact
in hand.  "Reg'lar hell on wheels!--that's what he is.  Look out!
don't git too nigh him.  He ain't no conscience--that hoss ain't."

"Is he fast?"

"Greased lightnin'!" said Tunk, shaking his head.  "Won
twenty-seven races."

"You're a good deal of a horseman, I take it." said the teacher.

"Wal, some," said he, expectorating thoughtfully.  "But I don't
have no chance here.  What d'ye 'spect of a man livin,' with them
ol' maids ?"

He seemed to have more contempt than his words would carry.

"Every night they lock me upstairs," he continued with a look of
injury; "they ain't fit fer nobody t' live with.  Ain't got no hoss
but that dummed ol' plug."

He had forgotten his enthusiasm of the preceding moment.  His
intellect was a museum of freaks.  Therein, Vanity was the
prodigious fat man, Memory the dwarf, and Veracity the living
skeleton.  When Vanity rose to show himself, the others left the
stage.

Tunk's face had become suddenly thoughtful and morose.  In truth,
he was an arrant and amusing humbug.  It has been said that
children are all given to lying in some degree, but seeing the
folly of it in good time, if, indeed, they are not convinced of its
wickedness, train tongue and feeling into the way of truth.  The
respect for truth that is the beginning of wisdom had not come to
Tunk.  He continued to lie with the cheerful inconsistency of a
child.  The' hero of his youth had been a certain driver of
trotting horses, who had a limp and a leaning shoulder.  In Tunk,
the limp and the leaning shoulder were an attainment that had come
of no sudden wrench.  Such is the power of example, he admired,
then imitated, and at last acquired them.  One cannot help thinking
what graces of character and person a like persistency would have
brought to him.  But Tunk had equipped himself with horsey heroism,
adorning it to his own fancy.  He had never been kicked, he had
never driven a race or been hurled from a sulky at full speed.
Prince, that ancient palfrey, was the most harmless of all
creatures, and would long since have been put out of misery but for
the tender consideration of his owners.  And Tunk--well, they used
to say of him, that if he had been truthful, he couldn't have been
alive.

"Sometime," Trove thought, "his folly may bring confusion upon wise
heads."




XVII

An Event in the Rustic Museum

Sidney Trove sat talking a while with Miss Letitia.  Miss S'mantha,
unable longer to bear the unusual strain of danger and publicity,
went away to bed soon after supper.  Tunk Hosely came in with a
candle about nine.

"Wal, mister," said he, "you ready t' go t' bed?"

"I am," said Trove, and followed him to the cold hospitality of the
spare room, a place of peril but beautifully clean.  There was a
neat rag carpet on the floor, immaculate tidies on the bureau and
wash table, and a spotless quilt of patchwork on the bed.  But,
like the dungeon of mediaeval times, it was a place for sighs and
reflection, not for rest.  Half an inch of frost on every
window-pane glistened in the dim light of the candle.

"As soon as they unlock my door, I'll come an' let ye out in the
mornin'," Tunk whispered.

"Are they going to lock me in?"

"Wouldn't wonder," said Tunk, soberly.

"What can ye 'spect from a couple o' dummed ol' maids like them?"

There was a note of long suffering in his half-whispered tone,

"Good night, mister," said he, with a look of dejection.  "Orter
have a nightcap, er ye'll git hoar-frost on yer hair."

Trove was all a-shiver in the time it took him to undress, and his
breath came out of him in spreading shafts of steam.  Sheets of
flannel and not less than half a dozen quilts and comfortables made
a cover, under which the heat of his own blood warmed his body.  He
became uncomfortably aware of the presence of his head and face,
however.  He could hear stealthy movements beyond the door, and
knew they were barricading it with furniture.  Long before daylight
a hurried removal of the barricade awoke him.  Then he heard a rap
at the door, and the excited voice of Tunk.

"Say, mister! come here quick," it called.

Sidney Trove leaped out of bed and into his trousers.  He hurried
through the dark parlour, feeling his way around a clump of chairs
and stumbling over a sofa.  The two old maids were at the kitchen
door, both dressed, one holding a lighted candle.  Tunk Hosely
stood by the door, buttoning suspenders with one hand and holding a
musket in the other.   They were shivering and pale.  The room was
now cold.

"Hear that!" Tunk whispered, turning to the teacher.

They all listened, hearing a low, weird cry outside the door.

"Soun's t' me like a raccoon," Miss S'mantha whispered thoughtfully.

"Or a lamb," said Miss Letitia.

"Er a painter," Tunk ventured, his ear turning to catch the sound.

"Let's open the door," said Sidney Trove, advancing.

"Not me," said Tunk, firmly, raising his gun.

Trove had not time to act before they heard a cry for help on the
doorstep.  It was the voice of a young girl.  He opened the door,
and there stood Mary Leblanc--a scholar of Linley School and the
daughter of a poor Frenchman.   She came in lugging a baby wrapped
in a big shawl, and both crying.

"Oh, Miss Tower," said she; "pa has come out o' the woods drunk an'
has threatened to kill the baby.  Ma wants to know if you'll keep
it here to-night."

The two old maids wrung their hands with astonishment and only said
"y!"

"Of course we'll keep it," said Trove, as he took the baby,

"I must hurry back," said the girl, now turning with a look of
relief.

Tunk shied off and began to build a fire; Miss S'mantha sat down
weeping, the girl ran away in the darkness, and Trove put the baby
in Miss Letitia's arms.

"I'll run over to Leblanc's cabin," said he, getting his cap and
coat.  "They're having trouble over there."

He left them and hurried off on his way to the little cabin.

Loud cries of the baby rang in that abode of silence.   It began to
kick and squirm with determined energy.  Poor Miss Letitia had the
very look of panic in her face.  She clung to the fierce little
creature, not knowing what to do.  Miss S'mantha lay back in a fit
of hysterics.  Tunk advanced bravely, with brows knit, and stood
looking down at the baby.

"Lord! this is awful!" said he.  Then a thought struck him.  "I'll
git some milk," he shouted, running into the buttery.

The baby thrust the cup away, and it fell noisily, the milk
streaming over a new rag carpet.

"It's sick; I'm sure it's sick," said Miss Letitia, her voice
trembling.  "S'mantha, can't you do something?"

Miss S'mantha calmed herself a little and drew near.

"Jes' like a wil'cat," said Tunk, thoughtfully.  "Powerful, too,"
he added, with an effort to control one of the kicking legs.

"What shall we do?" said Miss Letitia.

"My sister had a baby once," said Tunk, approaching it doubtfully
but with a studious look.

He made a few passes with his hand in front of the baby's face.
Then he gave it a little poke in the ribs, tentatively.  The effect
was like adding insult to injury.

"If 'twas mine," said Tunk, "which I'm glad it ain't--I'd rub a
little o' that hoss liniment on his stummick,"

The two old maids took the baby into their bedroom.  It was an hour
later when Trove came back.  Tunk sat alone by the kitchen fire.
There was yet a loud wail in the bedroom.

"What's the news?" said Tunk, who met him at the door.

"Drunk, that's all," said Trove.  "I took this bottle, sling-shot,
and bar of iron away from him.  The woman thought I had better
bring them with me and put them out of his way."

He laid them on the floor in a corner.

"I got him into bed," he continued, "and then hid the axe and came
away.  I guess they're all right now.  When I left he had begun to
snore."

"Wal,--we ain't all right," said Tunk, pointing to the room.  "If
you can conquer that thing, you'll do well.  Poor Miss Teeshy!" he
added, shaking his head.

"What's the matter with her?" Trove inquired.

"Kicked in the stummick 'til she dunno where she is," said Tunk,
gloomily.

He pulled off his boots.

"If she don't go lame t'morrer, I'll miss my guess," he added.
"She looks a good deal like Deacon Haskins after he had milked the
brindle cow."

He leaned back, one foot upon the stove-hearth.  Shrill cries rang
in the old house.

"'Druther 'twould hev been a painter," said Tunk, sighing.

"Why so?"

"More used to 'em," said Tunk, sadly.

They listened a while longer without speaking.

"Ye can't drive it, ner coax it, ner scare it away, ner do nuthin'
to it," said Tunk, presently.

He rose and picked up the things Trove had brought with him.  "I'll
take these to the barn," said he; "they'd have a fit--if they was
t' see 'em.  What be they?"

"I do not know what they are," said Trove.

"Wal!" said Tunk.  "They're queer folks--them Frenchmen.  This
looks like an iron bar broke in two in the middle."

He got his lantern, picked up the bottle, the sling-shot, and the
iron, and went away to the barn.

Trove went to the bedroom door and rapped, and was admitted.  He
went to work with the baby, and soon, to his joy, it lay asleep on
the bed.  Then he left the room on tiptoe, and a bit weary.

"A very full day!" he said to himself.

"Teacher, counsellor, martyr, constable, nurse--I wonder what next!"

And as he went to his room, he heard Miss S'mantha say to her
sister, "I'm thankful it's not a boy, anyway."




XVIII

A Day of Difficulties

All were in their seats and the teacher had called a class.  Carlt
Homer came in.

"You're ten minutes late," said the teacher.

"I have fifteen cows to milk," the boy answered.

"Where do you live?"

"'Bout a mile from here, on the Beach Plains."

"What time do you begin milking?"

"'Bout seven o'clock."

"I'll go to-morrow morning and help you," said the teacher.  "We
must be on time--that's a necessary law of the school."

At a quarter before seven in the morning, Sidney Trove presented
himself at the Homers'.  He had come to help with the milking, but
found there were only five cows to milk.

"Too bad your father lost so many cows--all in a day," said he.
"It's a great pity.  Did you lose anything?"

"No, sir."

"Have you felt to see?"

The boy put his hand in his pocket.

"Not there--it's an inside pocket, way inside o' you.  It's where
you keep your honour and pride."

"Wal," said the boy, his tears starting, "I'm 'fraid I have."

"Enough said--good morning," the teacher answered as he went away.

One morning a few days later the teacher opened his school with
more remarks.

"The other day," said he, "I spoke of a thing it was very necessary
for us to learn.  What was it?"

"To obey," said a youngster.

"Obey what?" the teacher inquired.

"Law," somebody ventured.

"Correct; we're studying law--every one of us--the laws of grammar,
of arithmetic, of reading, and so on.  We are learning to obey
them.  Now I am going to ask you what is the greatest law in the
world?"

There was a moment of silence.  Then the teacher wrote these words
in large letters on the blackboard; "Thou shalt not lie."

"There is the law of laws," said the teacher, solemnly.  "Better
never have been born than not learn to obey it.  If you always tell
the truth, you needn't worry about any other law.  Words are like
money--some are genuine, some are counterfeit.  If a man had a bag
of counterfeit money and kept passing it, in a little while nobody
would take his money.  I knew a man who said he killed four bears
at one shot.   There's some that see too much when they're looking
over their own gun-barrels.  Don't be one of that kind.  Don't ever
kill too many bears at a shot."

After that, in the Linley district, a man who lied was said to be
killing too many bears at a shot.

Good thoughts spread with slow but sure contagion.  There were some
who understood the teacher.  His words went home and far with them,
even to their graves, and how much farther who can say?  They went
over the hills, indeed, to other neighbourhoods, and here they are,
still travelling, and going now, it may be, to the remotest corners
of the earth.  The big boys talked about this matter of lying and
declared the teacher was right.

"There's Tunk Hosely," said Sam Price.  "Nobody'd take his word for
nuthin'."

"'Less he was t' say he was a fool out an' out," another boy
suggested.

"Dunno as I'd b'lieve him then," said Sam.  "Fer I'd begin t' think
he knew suthin'."

A little girl came in, crying, one day.

"What is the trouble?" said the teacher, tenderly, as he leaned
over and put his arm around her.

"My father is sick," said the child, sobbing.

"Very sick?" the teacher inquired.

For a moment she could not answer, but stood shaken with sobs.

"The doctor says he can't live," said she, brokenly.

A solemn stillness fell in the little schoolroom.  The teacher
lifted the child and held her close to his broad breast a moment.

"Be brave, little girl," said he, patting her head gently.
"Doctors don't always know.  He may be better to-morrow."

He took the child to her seat, and sat beside her and whispered a
moment, his mouth close to her ear.  And what he said, none knew,
save the girl herself, who ceased to cry in a moment but never
ceased to remember it.

A long time he sat, with his arm around her, questioning the
classes.  He seemed to have taken his place between her and the
dark shadow.

Joe Beach had been making poor headway in arithmetic.

"I'll come over this evening, and we'll see what's the trouble.
It's all very easy," the teacher said.

He worked three hours with the young man that evening, and filled
him with high ambition after hauling him out of his difficulty.

But of all difficulties the teacher had to deal with, Polly Vaughn
was the greatest.  She was nearly perfect in all her studies, but a
little mischievous and very dear to him.  "Pretty;" that is one
thing all said of her there in Faraway, and they said also with a
bitter twang that she loved to lie abed and read novels.  To Sidney
Trove the word "pretty" was inadequate.  As to lying abed and
reading novels, he was free to say that he believed in it.

"We get very indignant about slavery in the south," he used to say;
"but how about slavery on the northern farms?  I know people who
rise at cock-crow and strain their sinews in heavy toil the
livelong day, and spend the Sabbath trembling in the lonely shadow
of the Valley of Death.  I know a man who whipped his boy till he
bled because he ran away to go fishing.  It's all slavery, pure and
simple."

"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return
unto the ground," said Ezra Tower.

"If God said it, he made slaves of us all," said young Trove.
"When I look around here and see people wasted to the bone with
sweat and toil, too weary often to eat the bread they have earned,
when I see their children dying of consumption from excess of
labour and pork fat, I forget the slaves of man and think only of
these wretched slaves of God."

But Polly was not of them the teacher pitied.  She was a bit
discontented; but surely she was cheerful and well fed.  God gave
her beauty, and the widow saw it, and put her own strength between
the curse and the child.  Folly had her task every day, but Polly
had her way, also, in too many things, and became a bit selfish, as
might have been expected.  But there was something very sweet and
fine about Polly.  They were plain clothes she wore, but nobody
save herself and mother gave them any thought.  Who, seeing her
big, laughing eyes, her finely modelled face, with cheeks pink and
dimpled, her shapely, white teeth, her mass of dark hair, crowning
a form tall and straight as an arrow, could see anything but the
merry-hearted Polly?

"Miss Vaughn, you will please remain a few moments after school,"
said the teacher one day near four o'clock.  Twice she had been
caught whispering that day, with the young girl who sat behind her.
Trove had looked down, stroking his little mustache thoughtfully,
and made no remark.  The girl had gone to work, then, her cheeks
red with embarrassment.

"I wish you'd do me a favour, Miss Polly," said the teacher, when
they were alone.

She blushed deeply, and sat looking down as she fussed with her
handkerchief.  She was a bit frightened by the serious air of that
big young man.

"It isn't much," he went on.  "I'd like you to help me teach a
little.  To-morrow morning I shall make a map on the blackboard,
and while I am doing it I'd like you to conduct the school.  When
you have finished with the primer class I'll be ready to take hold
again."

She had a puzzled look.

"I thought you were going to punish me," she answered, smiling.

"For what?" he inquired.

"Whispering," said she.

"Oh, yes!  But you have read Walter Scott, and you know ladies are
to be honoured, not punished.  I shouldn't know how to do such a
thing.  When you've become a teacher you'll see I'm right about
whispering.  May I walk home with you?"

Polly had then a very serious look.  She turned away, biting her
lip, in a brief struggle for self-mastery.

"If you care to," she whispered.

They walked away in silence.

"Do you dance?" she inquired presently.

"No, save attendance on your pleasure," said he.  "Will you teach
me?"

"Is there anything I can teach you?" She looked up at him playfully.

"Wisdom," said he, quickly, "and how to preserve blueberries, and
make biscuit like those you gave us when I came to tea.  As to
dancing, well--I fear 'I am not shaped for sportive tricks.'"

"If you'll stay this evening," said she, "we'll have some more of
my blueberries and biscuit, and then, if you care to, we'll try
dancing."

"You'll give me a lesson?" he asked eagerly.

"If you'd care to have me."

"Agreed; but first let us have the blueberries and biscuit," said
he, heartily, as they entered the door.  "Hello, Mrs. Vaughn, I
came over to help you eat supper.  I have it all planned.  Paul is
to set the table, I'm to peel the potatoes and fry the pork, Polly
is to make the biscuit and gravy and put the kettle on.  You are to
sit by and look pleasant."

"I insist on making the tea," said Mrs. Vaughn, with amusement.

"Shall we let her make the tea?" he asked, looking thoughtfully at
Polly.

"Perhaps we'd better," said she, laughing.

"All right; we'll let her make the tea--we don't have to drink it."

"You," said the widow, "are like Governor Wright, who said to Mrs.
Perkins, 'Madam, I will praise your tea, but hang me if I'll drink
it.'"

"I'm going to teach the primer class in the morning," said Polly,
as she filled the tea-kettle.

"Look out, young man," said Mrs. Vaughn, turning to the teacher.
"In a short time she'll be thinking she can teach you."

"I get my first lesson to-night," said the young man.  "She's to
teach me dancing."

"And you've no fear for your soul?"

"I've more fear for my body," said he, glancing down upon his long
figure.  "I've never lifted my feet save for the purpose of
transportation.  I'd like to learn how to dance because Deacon
Tower thinks it wicked and I've learned that happiness and sin mean
the same thing in his vocabulary."

"I fear you're a downward and backsliding youth," said the widow.

"You know what Ezra Tower said of Ebenezer Fisher, that he was 'one
o' them mush-heads that didn't believe in hell'?  Are you one o'
that kind?"  Proclaimers of liberal thought were at work there in
the north.

"Since I met Deacon Tower I'm sure it's useful and necessary.  He's
got to have some place for his enemies.  If it were not for hell,
the deacon would be miserable here and, maybe, happy hereafter."

"It's a great hope and comfort to him," said the widow, smiling.

"Well, God save us all!" said Trove, who had now a liking for both
the phrase and philosophy of Darrel.  They had taken chairs at the
table.

"Tom," said he, "we'll pause a moment, while you give us the fourth
rule of syntax."

"Correct," said he, heartily, as the last word was spoken.  "Now
let us be happy."

"Paul," said the teacher, as he finished eating, "what is the
greatest of all laws?"

"Thou shalt not lie," said the boy, promptly.

"Correct," said Trove; "and in the full knowledge of the law, I
declare that no better blueberries and biscuit ever passed my lips."

Supper over, Polly disappeared, and young Mr. Trove helped with the
dishes.  Soon Polly came back, glowing in her best gown and
slippers.

"Why, of all things!  What a foolish child!" said her mother.  For
answer Polly waltzed up and down the room, singing gayly.

She stopped before the glass and began to fuss with her ribbons.
The teacher went to her side.

"May I have the honour, Miss Vaughn," Said he, bowing politely.
"Is that the way to do?"

"You might say, 'Will you be my pardner,'" said she, mimicking the
broad dialect of the region.

"I'll sacrifice my dignity, but not my language," said he.  "Let us
dance and be merry, for to-morrow we teach."

"If you'll watch my feet, you'll see how I do it," said she; and
lifting her skirt above her dainty ankles, glided across the floor
on tiptoe, as lightly as a fawn at play.  But Sidney Trove was not
a graceful creature.  The muscles on his lithe form, developed in
the school of work or in feats of strength at which he had met no
equal, were untrained in all graceful trickery.  He loved dancing
and music and everything that increased the beauty and delight of
life, but they filled him with a deep regret of his ignorance.

"Hard work," said he, breathing heavily, "and I don't believe I'm
having as much fun as you are."

The small company of spectators had been laughing with amusement.

"Reminds me of a story," said the teacher.  "'What are all the
animals crying about?' said one elephant to another.  'Why, don't
you know?--it's about the reindeer,' said the other elephant; 'he's
dead.  Never saw anything so sad in my life.  He skipped so, and
made a noise like that, and then he died.'  The elephant jumped up
and down, trying the light skip of the reindeer and gave a great
roar for the bleat of the dying animal,  'What,' said the first
elephant, 'did he skip so, and cry that way?'  And he tried it.
'No, not that way but this way,' said the other; and he went
through it again.  By this time every animal in the show had begun
to roar with laughter.  'What on earth are you doing?' said the
rhinoceros.  'It's the way the reindeer died,' said one of the
elephants.

"'Never saw anything so funny,' said the rhinoceros; 'if the poor
thing died that way, it's a pity he couldn't repeat the act.'

"'This is terrible,' said the zebra, straining at his halter.  'The
reindeer is dead, and the elephants have gone crazy.'"

"Sidney Trove," said the teacher, as he was walking away that
evening, "you'll have to look out for yourself.  You're a teacher
and you ought to be a man--you must be a man or I'll have nothing
more to do with you."




XIX

Amusement and Learning

There was much doing that winter in the Linley district.  They were
a month getting ready for the school "exhibition."  Every home in
the valley and up Cedar Hill rang with loud declamations.   The
impassioned utterances of James Otis, Daniel Webster, and Patrick
Henry were heard in house, and field, and stable.  Every evening
women were busy making costumes for a play, while the young
rehearsed their parts.  Polly Vaughn, editor of a paper to be read
that evening, searched the countryside for literary talent.  She
found a young married woman, who had spent a year in the State
Normal School, and who put her learning at the service of Polly, in
a composition treating the subject of intemperance.  Miss Betsey
Leech sent in what she called "a piece" entitled "Home."  Polly,
herself, wrote an editorial on "Our Teacher," and there was hemming
and hawing when she read it, declaring they all had learned much,
even to love him.  Her mother helped her with the alphabetical
rhymes, each a couplet of sentimental history, as, for example:--

  "A is for Alson, a jolly young man,
  He'll marry Miss Betsey, they say, if he can."

They trimmed the little schoolhouse with evergreen and erected a
small stage, where the teacher's desk had been.  Sheets were hung,
for curtains, on a ten-foot rod.

A while after dark one could hear a sound of sleigh-bells in the
distance.  Away on drifted pike and crossroad the bells began to
fling their music.  It seemed to come in rippling streams of sound
through the still air, each with its own voice.  In half an hour
countless echoes filled the space between them, and all were as one
chorus, wherein, as it came near, one could distinguish song and
laughter.

Young people from afar came in cutters and by the sleigh load;
those who lived near, afoot with lanterns.  They were a merry
company, crowding the schoolhouse, laughing and whispering as they
waited for the first exhibit.  Trove called them to order and made
a few remarks.

"Remember," said he, "this is not our exhibition.  It is only a
sort of preparation for one we have planned.  In about twenty years
the Linley School is to give an exhibition worth seeing.  It will
be, I believe, an exhibition of happiness, ability, and success on
the great stage of the world.  Then I hope to have on the programme
speeches in Congress, in the pulpit, and at the bar.  You shall see
in that play, if I mistake not, homes full of love and honour, men
and women of fair fame.  It may be you shall see, then, some whose
names are known and honoured of all men."

Each performer quaked with fear, and both sympathy and approval
were in the applause.  Miss Polly Vaughn was a rare picture of
rustic beauty, her cheeks as red as her ribbons, her voice low and
sweet.  Trove came out in the audience for a look at her as she
read.  Ringing salvos of laughter greeted the play and stirred the
sleigh-bells on the startled horses beyond the door.  The programme
over, somebody called for Squire Town, a local pettifogger, who
flung his soul and body into every cause.  He often sored his
knuckles on the court table and racked his frame with the violence
of his rhetoric.  He had a stock of impassioned remarks ready for
all occasions.

He rose, walked to the centre of the stage, looked sternly at the
people, and addressed them as "Fellow Citizens."  He belaboured the
small table; he rose on tiptoe and fell upon his heels; often he
seemed to fling his words with a rapid jerk of his right arm as one
hurls a pebble.  It was all in praise of his "young friend," the
teacher, and the high talent of Linley School.

The exhibition ended with this rare exhibit of eloquence.  Trove
announced the organization of a singing-school for Monday evening
of the next week, and then suppressed emotion burst into noise.
The Linley school-house had become as a fount of merry sound in the
still night; then the loud chorus of the bells, diminishing as they
went away, and breaking into streams of music and dying faint in
the far woodland.

One Nelson Cartright--a jack of all trades they called him--was the
singing-master.  He was noted far and wide for song and penmanship.
Every year his intricate flourishes in black and white were on
exhibition at the county fair.

"Wal, sir," men used to say thoughtfully, "ye wouldn't think he
knew beans.  Why, he's got a fist bigger'n a ham.  But I tell ye,
let him take a pen, sir, and he'll draw a deer so nat'ral, sir,
ye'd swear he could jump over a six-rail fence.  Why, it is
wonderful!"

Every winter he taught the arts of song and penmanship in the four
districts from Jericho to Cedar Hill.  He sang a roaring bass and
beat the time with dignity and precision.  For weeks he drilled the
class on a bit of lyric melody, of which a passage is here given:--

"One, two, three, ready, sing," he would say, his ruler cutting the
air, and all began:--

  Listen to the bird, and the maid, and the bumblebee,
    Tra, la la la la, tra, la la la la,
  Joyfully we'll sing the gladsome melody,
    Tra, la, la, la, la.

The singing-school added little to the knowledge or the
cheerfulness of that neighbourhood.  It came to an end the last day
of the winter term.  As usual, Trove went home with Polly.  It was
a cold night, and as the crowd left them at the corners he put his
arm around her.

"School is over," said she, with a sigh, "and I'm sorry."

"For me?" he inquired.

"For myself," she answered, looking down at the snowy path.

There came a little silence crowded with happy thoughts.

"At first, I thought you very dreadful," she went on, looking up at
him with a smile.  He could see her sweet face in the moonlight and
was tempted to kiss it.

"Why?"

"You were so terrible," she answered.  "Poor Joe Beach!  It seemed
as if he would go through the wall."

"Well, something had to happen to him," said the teacher.

"He likes, you now, and every one likes you here.  I wish we could
have you always for a teacher."

"I'd be willing to be your teacher, always, if I could only teach
you what you have taught me."

"Oh, dancing," said she, merrily; "that is nothing.  I'll give you
all the lessons you like."

"No, I shall not let you teach me that again," said he.

"Why?"

"Because your pretty feet trample on me."

Then came another silence.

"Don't you enjoy it?" she asked, looking off at the stars.

"Too much." said he.  "First, I must teach you something--if I can."

He was ready for a query, if it came, but she put him off.

"I intend to be a grand lady," said she, "and, if you do not learn,
you'll never be able to dance with me."

"There'll be others to dance with you," said he.  "I have so much
else to do."

"Oh, you're always thinking about algebra and arithmetic and those
dreadful things," said she.

"No, I'm thinking now of something very different."

"Grammar, I suppose," said she, looking down.

"Do you remember the conjugations?"

"Try me," said she.

"Give me the first person singular, passive voice, present tense,
of the verb to love."

"I am loved," was her answer, as she looked away.

"And don't you know--I love you," said he, quickly.

"That is the active voice," said she, turning with a smile.

"Polly," said he, "I love you as I could love no other in the
world."

He drew her close, and she looked up at him very soberly.

"You love me?" she said in a half whisper.

"With all my heart," he answered.  "I hope you will love me
sometime."

Their lips came together.

"I do not ask you, now, to say that you love me," said the young
man.  "You are young and do not know your own heart."

She rose on tiptoe and fondly touched his cheek with her fingers.

"But I do love you," she whispered.

"I thank God you have told me, but I shall ask you for no promise.
A year from now, then, dear, I shall ask you to promise that you
will be my wife sometime."

"Oh, let me promise now," she whispered.

"Promise only that you will love me if you see none you love
better."

They were slowly nearing the door.  Suddenly she stopped, looking
up at him.

"Are you sure you love me?" she asked.

"Yes," he whispered.

"Sure?"

"As sure as I am that I live."

"And will love me always?"

"Always," he answered.

She drew his head down a little and put her lips to his ear.  "Then
I shall love you always," she whispered.

Mrs. Vaughn, was waiting for them at the fireside.  They sat
talking a while.

"You go off to bed, Polly," said the teacher, presently.  "I've
something to say, and you're not to hear it."

"I'll listen," said she, laughing.

"Then we'll whisper," Trove answered.

"That isn't fair," said she, with a look of injury, as she held the
candle.  "Besides, you don't allow it yourself."

"Polly ought to go away to school," said he, after Polly had gone
above stairs.  "She's a bright girl."

"And I so poor I'm always wondering what'll happen to-morrow," said
Mrs. Vaughn.  "The farm has a mortgage, and it's more than I can do
to pay the interest.  Some day I'll have to give it up."

"Perhaps I can help you," said the young man, feeling the fur on
his cap.

There was an awkward silence.

"Fact is," said the young man, a bit embarrassed, "fact is, I love
Polly."

In the silence that followed Trove could hear the tick of his watch.

"Have ye spoken to her?" said the widow, with a serious look.

"I've told her frankly to-night that I love her," said he.  "I
couldn't help it, she was so sweet and beautiful."

"If you couldn't help it, I don't see how I could," said she.  "But
Polly's only a child.  She's a big girl, I know, but she's only
eighteen."

"I haven't asked her for any promise.  It wouldn't be fair.  She
must have a chance to meet other young men, but, sometime, I hope
she will be my wife."

"Poor children!" said Mrs. Vaughn, "you don't either of you know
what you're doing."

He rose to go.

"I was a little premature," he added, "but you mustn't blame me.
Put yourself in my place.  If you were a young man and loved a girl
as sweet as Polly and were walking home with her on a moonlit
night--"

"I presume there'd be more or less love-making," said the widow.
"She is a pretty thing and has the way of a woman.  We were
speaking of you the other day, and she said to me: 'He is
ungrateful.  You can teach the primer class for him, and be so good
that you feel perfectly miserable, and give him lessons in dancing,
and put on your best clothes, and make biscuit for him, and then,
perhaps, he'll go out and talk with the hired man.' 'Polly,' said
I, 'you're getting to be very foolish.'  'Well, it comes so easy,'
said she.  'It's my one talent'"




XX

At the Theatre of the Woods

Next day Trove went home.  He took with him many a souvenir of his
first term, including a scarf that Polly had knit for him, and the
curious things he took from the Frenchman Leblanc, and which he
retained partly because they were curious and partly because Mrs.
Leblanc had been anxious to get rid of them.  He soon rejoined his
class at Hillsborough, having kept abreast of it in history and
mathematics by work after school and over the week's end.  He was
content to fall behind in the classics, for they were easy, and in
them his arrears gave him no terror.  Walking for exercise, he laid
the plan of his tale and had written some bits of verse.  Of an
evening he went often to the Sign of the Dial, and there read his
lines and got friendly but severe criticism.  He came into the shop
one evening, his "Horace" under his arm.

"'_Maecenas, atavis, edite regibus_'" Trove chanted, pausing to
recall the lines.

The tinker turned quickly.  "'_O et presidium et duice decus
meum_,'" he quoted, never stopping until he had finished She ode.

"Is there anything you do not know?" Trove inquired.

"Much," said the tinker, "including the depth o' me own folly.  A
man that displays knowledge hath need o' more."

Indeed, Trove rarely came for a talk with Darrel when he failed to
discover something new in him--a further reach of thought and
sympathy or some unsuspected treasure of knowledge.  The tinker
loved a laugh and would often search his memory for some phrase of
bard or philosopher apt enough to provoke it.  Of his great store
of knowledge he made no vainer use.

Trove had been overworking; and about the middle of June they went
for a week in the woods together.  They walked to Allen's the first
day, and, after a brief visit there, went off in the deep woods,
camping on a pond in thick-timbered hills.  Coming to the lilied
shore, they sat down a while to rest.  A hawk was sailing high
above the still water.  Crows began to call in the tree-tops.  An
eagle sat on a dead pine at the water's edge and seemed to be
peering down at his own shadow.  Two deer stood in a marsh on the
farther shore, looking over at them.  Near by were the bones of
some animal, and the fresh footprints of a painter.  Sounds echoed
far in the hush of the unbroken wilderness.

"See, boy," said Darrel, with a little gesture of his right hand,
"the theatre o' the woods!  See the sloping hills, tree above tree,
like winding galleries.  Here is a coliseum old, past reckoning.
Why, boy, long before men saw the Seven Hills it was old.  Yet see
how new it is--how fresh its colour, how strong its timbers!  See
the many seats, each with a good view, an' the multitude o' the
people, yet most o' them are hidden.  Ten thousand eyes are looking
down upon us.  Tragedies and comedies o' the forest are enacted
here.  Many a thrilling scene has held the stage--the spent deer
swimming for his life, the painter stalking his prey or leaping on
it."

"Tis a cruel part," said Trove.  "He is the murderer of the play.
I cannot understand why there are so many villains in its cast,
Both the cat and the serpent baffle me."

"Marry, boy, the world is a great school--an' this little drama o'
the good God is part of it," said Darrel.  "An' the play hath a
great moral--thou shalt learn to use thy brain or die.  Now, there
be many perils in this land o' the woods--so many that all its
people must learn to think or perish by them.  A pretty bit o'
wisdom it is, sor.  It keeps the great van moving--ever moving, in
the long way to perfection.  Now, among animals, a growing brain
works the legs of its owner, sending them far on diverse errands
until they are strong.  Mind thee, boy, perfection o' brain and
body is the aim o' Nature.  The cat's paw an' the serpent's coil
are but the penalties o' weakness an' folly.  The world is for the
strong.  Therefore, God keep thee so, or there be serpents will
enter thy blood an' devour thee--millions o' them."

"And what is the meaning of this law?"

"That the weak shall not live to perpetuate their kind," said
Darrel.  "Every year there is a tournament o' the sparrows.  Which
deserves the fair--that is the question to be settled.  Full tilt
they come together, striking with lance and wing.  Knight strives
with knight, lady with lady, and the weak die.  Lest thou forget,
I'll tell thee a tale, boy, wherein is the great plan.  The queen
bee--strongest of all her people--is about to marry.[1]  A clear
morning she comes out o' the palace gate--her attendants following.
The multitude of her suitors throng the vestibule; the air, now
still an' sweet, rings with the sound o' fairy timbrels.  Of a
sudden she rises into the blue sky, an' her suitors follow.  Her
swift wings cleave the air straight as a plummet falls.  Only the
strong may keep in sight o' her; bear that in mind, boy.  Her
suitors begin to fall wearied.  Higher an' still higher the good
queen wings her way.  By an' by, of all that began the journey,
there is but one left with her, an' he the strongest of her people.
An' they are wed, boy, up in the sun-lit deep o' heaven.  So the
seed o' life is chosen, me fine lad."

[1  In behalf of Darrel, the author makes acknowledgment of his
indebtedness to M. Maurice Maeterlinck for an account of the
queen's flight in his interesting "Life of the Bee."]

They sat a little time in silence, looking at the shores of the
pond.

"Have ye never felt the love passion?" said Darrel.

"Well, there's a girl of the name of Polly," Trove answered.

"Ah, Polly! she o' the red lip an' the dark eye," said Darrel,
smiling.  "She's one of a thousand."  He clapped his hand upon his
knee, merrily, and sang a sentimental couplet from an old Irish
ballad.

"Have ye won her affection, boy?" he added, his hand on the boy's
arm.

"I think I have."

"God love thee!  I'm glad to hear it," said the old man.  "She is a
living wonder, boy, a living wonder, an' had I thy youth I'd give
thee worry."

"Since her mother cannot afford to do it, I wish to send her away
to school," said Trove.

"Tut, tut, boy; thou hast barely enough for thy own schooling."

"I've eighty-two dollars in my pocket," said Trove, proudly.  "I do
not need it.  The job in the mill--that will feed me and pay my
room rent, and my clothes will do me for another year."

"On me word, boy; I like it in thee," said Darrel; "but surely she
would not take thy money."

"I could not offer it to her, but you might go there, and perhaps
she would take it from you."

"Capital!" the tinker exclaimed.  "I'll see if I can serve thee.
Marry, good youth, I'll even give away thy money an' take credit
for thy benevolence.  Teacher, philanthropist, lover--I believe
thou'rt ready to write."

"The plan of my first novel is complete," said Trove.  "That poor
thief,--he shall be my chief character,--the man of whom you told
me."

"Poor man!  God make thee kind to him," said the tinker.  "An'
thou'rt willing, I'll hear o' him to-night.  When the firelight
flickers,--that is the time, boy, for tales."

They built a rude lean-to, covered with bark, and bedded with
fragrant boughs.  Both lay in the firelight, Darrel smoking his
pipe, as the night fell.

"Now for thy tale," said the tinker.

The tale was Trove's own solution of his life mystery, shrewdly
come to, after a long and careful survey of the known facts.  And
now, shortly, time was to put the seal of truth upon it, and daze
him with astonishment, and fill him with regret of his cunning.  It
should be known that he had never told Darrel 

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