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Bart Ridgeley: A Story of Northern Ohio

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Title: Bart Ridgeley: A Story of Northern Ohio

Author: A. G. Riddle


        
Release date: May 1, 2004 [eBook #12249]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BART RIDGELEY: A STORY OF NORTHERN OHIO ***

BART RIDGELEY;

A STORY OF NORTHERN OHIO.

BY

A.G. RIDDLE

1873.




CONTENTS.

      I. A FAILURE

     II. THE BLUE CHAMBER

    III. NEWBURY

     IV. AT THE POST OFFICE

      V. MRS. MARKHAM'S VIEWS

     VI. WHAT HE THOUGHT OF THINGS

    VII. LOGIC OF THE GODS

   VIII. A RAMBLE IN THE WOODS, AND WHAT CAME OF IT

     IX. A DARKENED SOUL

      X. AFTER THE FLOOD

     XI. UNCLE ALECK

    XII. A CONSECRATION

   XIII. BLACKSTONE

    XIV. THE YOUNG IDEA SHOOTS

     XV. SNOW'S PARTY

    XVI. WALTZ

   XVII. BART

  XVIII. SUGAR MAKING

    XIX. HENRY

     XX. WHAT THE GIRLS SAID

    XXI. A DEPARTURE

   XXII. A SHATTERED COLUMN

  XXIII. THE STORM

   XXIV. A LAW SUIT (TO BE SKIPPED)

    XXV. THE WARNING

   XXVI. LOST

  XXVII. THE BABES IN THE WOODS

 XXVIII. AT JUDGE MARKHAM'S

   XXIX. AFTER

    XXX. JEFFERSON

   XXXI. OLD BEN

  XXXII. THE LETTERS

 XXXIII. AT WILDER'S

  XXXIV. ROUGH SKETCHES

   XXXV. SARTLIFF

  XXXVI. OLD GID

 XXXVII. THE OLD STORY

XXXVIII. THE OLD STORY OVER AGAIN

  XXXIX. ABOUT LAWYERS, AND DULL

     XL. THE DISGUISE

    XLI. THE INVITATION

   XLII. ADMITTED

  XLIII. JULIA

   XLIV. FINDING THE WAY

    XLV. SOME THINGS PUT AT REST

   XLVI. PRINCE ARTHUR

  XLVII. THE TRIAL

 XLVIII. THE ADVOCATE

   XLIX. WAITING

      L. THE GOSPEL OF LOVE

     LI. THE RETURN

    LII. FINAL DREAM LAND




CHAPTER I.

A FAILURE.


He could see from the top of the hill, down which the road wound to
the river, that the bridge was gone, and he paused for a moment
with an involuntary feeling that it was useless to go forward; but
remembering that his way led across, at all events, he walked down to
the bank. There it ran, broad, rapid, and in places apparently deep.
He looked up and down in vain: no lodged drift-wood; no fallen trees;
no raft or wreck; a recent freshet had swept all clear to high-water
mark, and the stream rolled, and foamed, and boiled, and gurgled, and
murmured in the afternoon August sun as gleefully and mockingly as if
its very purpose was to baffle the wearied youth who looked into and
over its changing tide.

In coming from Cleveland that morning he had taken a wrong road, and
now, at mid-afternoon, he found his progress stayed with half his
day's journey still before him. It would have been but a moment's task
to remove his clothes and swim over, but the region was open and clear
on that side for a considerable distance, and notwithstanding his
solitude, he hesitated to make the transit in that manner. It was
apparent, from the little-travelled road, that the stream had been
forded by an indirect course, and one not easily determined from the
shore. It occurred to him that possibly some team from Cleveland might
pass along and take him over; and, wearied, he sat down by his light
valise to wait, and at least rest; and as he gazed into the rapid
current a half-remembered line of a forgotten poet ran and ran through
his mind thus:

  "Which running runs, and will run forever on."

His reflections were not cheerful. Three months before he had gone
over to Hudson with a very young man's scheme of maintaining himself
at school, and finally in college; and finding it impracticable, had
strayed off to the lower part of the State with a vague idea of going
down the Mississippi, and, perhaps, to Texas. He spent some time with
relatives near Cincinnati, and under a sudden impulse--all his plans,
as he was pleased to call them, were impulses--he had returned,
adding, as he was conscious, another to a long-growing list of
failures, which, in the estimation of many acquaintances, also
included himself.

His meditations were interrupted by the sound of an approaching
carriage coming over the hill. He knew the horses. They were Judge
Markham's, and driven by the Judge himself, alone, in a light vehicle.
The young man sprang up at the sight. Here was the man whom of all men
he most respected, and feared as much as he could fear any man, whose
good opinion he most cared to have, and yet who he was conscious had a
dislike for him.

The Judge would certainly take him over the river, and so home, but
in his frank and ingenuous nature how could he face him on his
almost ignominious return? He stood still, a little away from the
carriage-track, half wishing he might not be seen. He was seen,
however, and a close observer might have discovered the half sneer on
the otherwise handsome and manly face of the Judge, who had taken in
the situation. The horses were held in a walk as they came down near
where the young man stood, with a half ashamed, yet eager, expression
of countenance, and turned partly away, as if he expected--in fact,
wished for nothing.

"What are you doing here?" called out the Judge.

It was not a wholly courteous inquiry, and scarcely necessary, though
not purposely offensive; but the tone and manner struck like an insult
on the young man's sensitive spirit, and his answer went back a little
sharply:

"I am waiting for the river to run by,"

"Ah! I see. Well, I am glad you have found something that suits you."

There was no mistaking the sarcasm of this remark, and perhaps its
sting was deeper than was meant. The Judge was not an unkind man,
though he did not relish the reply to his question; he held up his
horses on the margin of the water, and perhaps he wanted to be asked
by this pert youth for the favor of a passage over. Of course the
petition was not, and never would have been made. He lingered a
moment, and without another word entered the river, and, turning his
horses' heads up stream for a short distance, drove out on the other
side; as he turned into the regular track again, he caught a view of
the young man standing impassive on the same spot where he first saw
him.

It is possible that Judge Markham, the most wealthy and popular man
of his region, did not feel wholly at ease as, with his fine team and
empty carriage, he drove away, leaving the weary, travel-stained youth
standing on the other side of the river; and it is possible that
the form of the deserted one may be brought to his memory in the
hereafter.

"'Something that suits me'--'something that suits me!' All right,
Judge Markham!" and as the carriage was hidden in the woods, the
waters that rolled on between them were as nothing to the bitter,
swelling tide that, for a moment, swept through the young man's bosom.
He was undecided no longer.

Removing his boots and stockings, he entered the river at the point,
and, following the course taken by the Judge, he passed out, and
resumed his journey homeward.

As he walked rapidly onward, the momentary bitterness subsided. He was
not one to hate, or cherish animosities, but he was capable of deep
impressions, and of forming strong resolutions. There was a chord of
melancholy running through his nature, which, under excitement, often
vibrated the longest; and almost any strong emotion left behind a tone
of sadness that lingered for hours, and sometimes for days, although
his mind was normally buoyant and hopeful.

As he went on over the hills, in the rude pioneer country of Northern
Ohio, thirty-six or seven years ago, he thought sad-colored thoughts
of the past, or, rather, he recalled sombre memories of the, to him,
far-off time, when, with his mother and brothers, he formed one of
a sobbing group around a bed whereon a gasping, dying man was vainly
trying to say some last words; of afterwards awakening in the deep
nights, and listening to the unutterably sweet and mournful singing of
his mother, unable to sleep in her loneliness; of the putting away
of his baby brother, and the jubilee when he was brought back; of the
final breaking up of the family, and of his own first goings away; of
the unceasing homesickness and pining with which he always languished
for home in his young boy years; of the joy with which he always
hurried home, the means by which he would prolong his stay, and the
anguish with which he went away again. His mother was to him the chief
good. For him, like Providence, she always was, and he could imagine
no possible good, or even existence, without her--it would be the end
of the world when she ceased to be. And he remembered all the places
where he had lived, and the many times he had run away. And then came
the memory of Julia Markham, as she was years ago, when he lived in
her neighborhood, and her sweet and beautiful mother used to intrust
her to his care, in the walks to and from school, down on the State
road--Julia, with her great wonderful eyes, and world of wavy hair,
and red lips; and then, as she grew into beautiful and ever more
beautiful girlhood, he used to be more and more at Judge Markham's
house, and used to read to Julia's mother and herself. It was there
that he discovered Shakespeare, and learned to like him, and Milton,
whom he didn't like and wouldn't read, and the Sketch Book, and
Knickerbocker's History, and Cooper's novels, and Scott, and,
more than all, Byron, whom Mrs. Markham did not want him to read,
recommending, instead, Young's Night Thoughts, and Pollock's Course of
Time, and Southey--the dear good woman!

And then came a time when he was in the store of Markham & Co., and
finally was taken from the counter, because of his sharp words to
customers, and set at the books, and sent away from that post because
he illustrated them with caricatures on the margins, and smart
personal rhymes. Julia was sixteen, and as sweet a romping, hoydenish,
laughing, brave, strong girl as ever bewitched the heart of dreaming
youth; and he had taught her to ride on horseback; and then she was
sent off, away "down country," to the centre of the world, to Boston,
where were uncles and aunts, and was gone, oh, ever and ever so
long!--half a lifetime--nearly two years--and came back; and then his
thoughts became confused. Then he thought of Judge Markham, and now
he was sure that the Judge did not like him; and he remembered that
Julia's mother, as he came towards manhood, was kind and patronizing,
and that when he went to say good-by to Julia, three months ago,
although she knew he was coming, she was not at home, and he only saw
her mother and Nell Roberts. Then he thought of all the things he had
tried to do within the last two years, and how he had done none of
them. People had not liked him, and he had not suspected why, and had
not cared. People liked his elder brothers, and he was glad and proud
of it; and a jumble of odds and ends and fragments became tangled and
snarled in his mind. What would people say of his return? Did he care?
He asked nobody's leave to go, and came back on his own account. But
his mother--she would look sad; but she would be glad. It certainly
was a mistake, his going; could it be a blunder, his returning?

He was thinking shallowly; but deeper thoughts came to him. He began
to believe that easy places did not exist; and he scorned to seek them
for himself, if they did. The world was as much to be struggled with
in one place as another; and, after all, was not the struggle mainly
with one's own self, and could that be avoided? Then what in himself
was wrong? what should be fought against? Who would tell him? Men
spoke roughly to him, and he answered back sharply. He couldn't help
doing that. How could he be blamed? He suspected he might be.

He knew there were better things than to chop and clear land, and
make black salts, or tend a saw-mill, or drive oxen, or sell tape and
calico; but, in these woods, poor and unfriended, how could he find
them? Was not his brother Henry studying law at Jefferson, and were
they not all proud of him, and did not everybody expect great things
of him? But Henry was different from him. Dr. Lyman believed in
him; Judge Markham spoke with respect of him. Julia Markham--how
inexpressibly lovely and radiant and distant and inaccessible she
appeared! And then he felt sore, as if her father had dealt him a
blow, and he thought of his sending him away the year before, and
wished he had explained. No matter. How he writhed again and again
under the sting of his contemptuous sarcasm! "He wouldn't even pick me
up; would leave me to lie by the wayside."

Towards sundown, weary and saddened, he reached the centre,
"Jugville," as he had named it, years before, in derision. He was a
mile and a half from home, and paused a moment to sit on the platform
in front of "Marlow's Hotel," and rest. The loungers were present in
more than usual force,--Jo and Biather Alexander, old Neaze Savage,
old Cal Chase, Tinker,--any number of old and not highly-esteemed
acquaintances.

"Hullo, Bart Ridgeley! is that you?"

Bart did not seem to think it necessary to affirm or deny.

"Ben away, hain't ye? Must a-gone purty much all over all creation,
these last three months. How's all the folks where you ben?"

No reply. A nod to one or two of the dozen attracted towards him was
the only notice he took of them, seeming not to hear the question and
comments of Tinker. His silence tempted old Cal, the small joker of
the place, to open:

"You's gone an everlastin' while. S'pose you hardly know the place,
it's changed so."

"It has changed some," he answered to this; "its bar-room loafers
are a good deal more unendurable, and its fools, always large, have
increased in size."

A good-natured laugh welcomed this reply.

"There, uncle Cal, it 'pears to me you've got it," said one.

"'Pears to me we've all got it," was the response of that worthy.

"Come in, Bart," said the landlord, "and take something on the
strength o' that."

"Thank you, I will be excused; I have a horror of a sudden death;"
and, taking up his valise, he started across the fields to the near
woods.

"Bully!" "Good!" "You've got that!" cried several to the discomfited
seller of drinks. "It is your treat; we'll risk the stuff!" and the
party turned in to the bar to realize their expectations.

"There is one thing 'bout it," said Bi, "Bart hain't changed much,
anyway."

"And there's another thing 'bout it," said uncle Bill, "a chap that
carries such a sassy tongue should be sassy able. He'll answer some
chap, some day, that wun't stan' it."

"The man that picks him up'll find an ugly customer; he'd be licked
afore he begun. I tell you what, them Ridgeley boys is no fighters,
but the stuff's in 'em, and Bart's filled jest full. I'd as liv tackle
a young painter." This was Neaze's view.

"That's so," said Jo. "Do you remember the time he had here last fall,
with that braggin' hunter chap, Mc-Something, who came along with his
rifle, darin' all hands about here to shute with him? He had one of
them new peck-lock rifles, and nobody dared shute with him; and Bart
came along, and asked to look at the feller's gun, and said something
'bout it, and Mc-Somebody dared him to shute, and Bart sent over to
Haw's and got 'old Potleg,' that Steve Patterson shot himself with,
and loaded 'er up, and then the hunter feller wouldn't shute except
on a bet, and Bart hadn't but fifty cents, and they shot twenty rods
off-hand, and Bart beat him; and they doubled the bet, and Bart beat
agin, and they went on till Bart won more'n sixty dollars. Sometimes
the feller shot wild, and Bart told him he'd have to get a dog to hunt
where he hit, and he got mad, and Bart picked up his first half-dollar
and pitched it to Jotham, who put up the mark, and left the rest on
the ground."

"There come mighty near bein' trouble then, an' there would ha' ben ef
the Major hadn't took Bart off," said Bi.

And while these rough, good-natured men talked him over, Barton walked
off southerly, across the newly-shorn meadow, to the woods. Twilight
was in their depths, and shadows were stealing mysteriously out, and
already the faint and subtle aroma which the gathering dew releases
from foliage, came out like an incense to bathe the quick and healthy
senses of the wearied youth. He removed his hat, opened his bosom,
expanded his nostrils and lungs, and drank it as the bee takes nectar
from the flowers. What an exquisite sense of relief and quiet came to
him, as he found himself lost in the shadows of the young night! Not a
tree in these woods that he did not know, and they all seemed to reach
out their mossy arms with their myriad of little, cool, green
hands, to welcome him back. They knew nothing of his failures and
disappointments, and were more sympathizing than the coarse and ribald
men whose rude taunts he had just heard, and to whose admiration he
was as indifferent as to their sarcasm. These were grand and beautiful
maple woods, free from tangling underbrush, and standing thick and
stately on wide, gentle slopes; and to-night the lisping breath of
the summer evening came to this young but sad and burdened heart, with
whispers soothing and restful.

He had never been so long from home before; the nearer he approached
it, the more intense his longings grew, and he passed rapidly through
the open glades, disappearing momentarily in the obscurity of the
thickets, past the deserted sugar camp, until finally the woods grew
lighter, the trees more scattered, and he reached the open pasture
lands in sight of the low farm-house, which held his mother and home.
How strange, and yet familiar, even an absence of only three months
made everything! The distance of his journey seemed to have expanded
the months into years.

He entered by a back way, and found his mother in the little front
sitting-room. She arose with--"Oh, Barton, have you come?" and
received from his lips and eyes the testimonials of his heart. She
was slight, lithe, and well made, with good Puritan blood, brain, and
resolution; and as she stood holding her child by both his hands, and
looking eagerly into his face, a stranger would have noticed their
striking resemblance. Her face, though womanly, was too marked and
strong for beauty. Both had the square decisive brow, and wide, deep
eyes--hers a lustrous black, and his dark gray or blue, as the light
was. Her hair was abundant, and very dark; his a light brown, thick,
wavy, and long. Both had the same aquiline nose, short upper-lip,
bland, firm, but soft mouth, and well-formed chin. Her complexion was
dark, and his fair--too fair for a man.

"Yes, mother, I have come; are you glad to see me?"

"Glad--very glad, but sorry." She had a good deal of the Spartan in
her nature, and received her son with a sense of another failure,
and failures were not popular with her. "I did not hear from you--was
anxious about you; but now, when you come back to the nothing for you
here, I know you found less elsewhere."

"Well, mother, I know I am a dreadful drag even on your patience, and
I fear a burden besides, instead of a help. I need not say much to
you; you, at least, understand me. It was a mistake to go away as
I did, and I bring back all I carried away, with the result of some
reflection. I can do as much here as anywhere. I hoped I could do
something for you, and I, poor unweaned baby and booby, can do better
for myself near you than elsewhere."

Not much was said. She was thoughtful, deep natured, tender, and
highly strung, though not demonstrative, and these qualities in him
were modified by the soft, sensuous, imaginative elements that came to
him--all that he inherited, except his complexion, from his father.

His mother gave him supper, and he sat and inquired about home events,
and gave her a pleasant account of their relatives in the lower part
of the State. He said nothing of the discovery he had made among
them--her own family relatives--that she had married beneath her,
and had never been forgiven; and he fancied that he discovered some
opening of old, old sorrows, dating back to her girlhood days, as
he talked of her relatives. The two younger brothers came rattling
in--George, a handsome, eager young threshing-machine, a bright,
broad-browed boy, and Edward, older, with drooping head and thoughtful
face, and with something of Bart's readiness at reply. George ran to
him--

"Oh, Bart, I am so glad! and there is so much--a flock of turkeys--and
a wolverine, and oh! so many pigeons and everything--more than you can
shoot in all the fall!"

"Well, captain, we will let them all live, I guess, unless that
wolverine comes around!"

"There is a real, true wolverine; several have seen him, and he
screeches, and yells, and climbs trees, and everything!"

"There _is_ something around," said Edward. "Theodore and Bill Johnson
heard him, over in the woods, not a week ago."

"Likely enough," replied Bart; "but wolverines don't climb. There
may be a panther. Now, Ed, what has been going on on the farm? Is the
haying done?"

"Yes; and the wheat is all in, and most all the oats. The corn is
splendid in the old elm lot, and then the Major has been chopping
down your old sugar camp, where we worked when you came home from old
Hewitt's."

"Oh, dear, that was the loveliest bit of woodland, in the bend of the
creek, in all the magnificent woods; well?"

"He has nearly finished the Jenks house," resumed Edward, "and is now
at Snow's, in Auburn. He said you would be home before now."

"What about his colts?"

"Oh, Arab runs about wild as ever, and he has Dolf with him."

"How many hands has he with him?"

"Four or five."

"Dr. Lyman asked about you," said George, "and wondered where you
were. He said you would be back in three weeks, and that something
must have happened."

"It would be lucky for the Doctor's patients," replied Bart, "if
something should keep him away three days."

"I guess he wants you to go a-fishing with him. They had a great time
down there the other day--he, and Mr. Young, and Sol Johnson. They
undertook to put up a sail as Henry and you do, and it didn't work,
and they came near upsetting; and' Sol and old man Young were scart,
and old Young thought he would get drownded. Oh, it must have been
fun!"

And so the boys chippered, chirped, and laughed on to a late bed-time,
and then went to bed perfectly happy.

Then came inquiries about Henry, who had written not long before, and
had wondered why he had not heard from Barton; and, at last, wearied
and worn with his three hundred miles' walk, Bart bade his mother
good-night, and went to his old room, to rest and sleep as the young,
and healthful, and hopeful, without deep sorrows or the stings of
conscience, may do. In the strange freaks of a half-sleeping fancy, in
his dreams, he remembered to have heard the screech of a wild animal,
and to have seen the face of Julia Markham, pale with the mingled
expression of courage and fear.




CHAPTER II.

THE BLUE CHAMBER.


In the morning he found the front yard had a wild and tangled, and
the garden a neglected look, and busied himself, with the boys, in
improving their appearance.

In the afternoon he overhauled a small desk, the contents of which
soon lay about on the floor. There were papers of all colors and
sizes--scraps, single sheets, and collections of several pages--all
covered with verses in many hands, from that of the young boy to
elegant clerkly manuscript. They seemed to represent every style of
poetic composition. It would have been amusing to watch the manner
and expression with which the youth dealt with these children of his
fancy, and to listen to his exclamations of condensed criticism. He
evidently found little to commend. As he opened or unrolled one after
another, and caught the heading, or a line of the text, he dashed it
to the floor, with a single word of contempt, disgust, or derision.
"Faugh!" "Oh!" "Pshaw!" "Blank verse? Blank enough!" Some he lingered
over for a moment, but his brow never cleared or relented, and each
and all were condemned with equal justice and impartiality. When the
last was thrown down, and he was certain that none remained, he rose
and contemplated their crumpled and creased forms with calm disdain.

"Oh, dear! you thought, some of you, that you might possibly be
poetry, you miserable weaklings and beguilers! You are not even
verses--are hardly rhymes. You are, one and all, without sense or
sound." His brow grew severe in its condemnation. "There! take
that! and that! and that!"--stamping them with his foot; "poor
broken-backed, halting, limping, club-footed, no-going, unbodied,
unsouled, nameless things. How do you like it? What business had you
to be? You had no right to be born--never were born; had no capacity
for birth; you don't even amount to failures! Words are wasted on you:
let me see if you'll burn." Lighting one, he threw it upon the hearth.
"It does! I am surprised at that. I rather like it. How blue and faint
the flame is--it hardly produces smoke, and"--watching until it was
consumed--"no ashes. Too ethereal for smoke and ashes. Let me try the
rest;" and he did.

He then opened a small drawer and took out a portfolio, in which were
various bits of bristol-board and paper, covered with crayon and pen
sketches, and some things in water-colors--all giving evidence of a
ready hand which showed some untaught practice. Whether his sense of
justice was somewhat appeased, or because he regarded them with more
favor, or reserved them for another occasion, was, perhaps, uncertain.
Singularly enough, on each of them, no matter what was the subject,
appeared one or more young girl's heads--some full-faced, some
three-fourths, and more in profile--all spirited, all looking alike,
and each having a strong resemblance to Julia Markham. Two or three
were studied and deliberate attempts. He contemplated these long and
earnestly, and laid them away with a sigh. They undoubtedly saved the
collection.

That night he wrote to Henry:

"DEAR BROTHER,--I am back, of course. It is an unpleasant way of
mine--this coming back. It was visionary for me to try a fall with the
sciences at Hudson. You would have been too many for them; I ran
away. I found Colton sick at Cincinnati. The Texan Rangers had left.
I looked into the waters of the Ohio, running and hurrying away
returnlessly to the south-west. Lord, how they called to me in their
liquid offers to carry me away! They seemed to draw me to linger, and
gurgle, and murmur in little staying, coaxing eddies at my feet, to
persuade me to go.

"How near one seems to that far-off region of fever and swamp, of sun
and sea, of adventure and blood, and old buccaneering, standing by
those swift waters, already on their way thither! Should I go? Was
I not too good to go, and be lost? Think of the high moral
considerations involved? No matter, I didn't go--I came! Well!

"On reflection--and I thus assume that I do reflect--I think men don't
find opportunities, or, if they do, they don't know them. One must
make an opportunity for himself, and then he will know what to do with
it. The other day I stood on the other side of the Chagrin waiting for
an opportunity, and it didn't come, and I made one. I waded through,
and liked it, and that was not the only lesson I learned at the same
time. But that other was for my personal improvement. A man can as
well find the material for his opportunity in one place as another.
See how I excuse myself!

"Just now, I am a reformed young Blue Beard. Fatima and her sister may
go--have gone. I have just overhauled my 'Blue Chamber,' taken down
all my suspended wives, and burned them. They ended in smoke. Lord!
there wasn't flesh and blood enough in them all to decompose, and they
gave out no odor even while burning. I burned them all, cleaned off
all the blood-spots, ventilated the room, opened the windows, and will
turn it to a workshop. No more sighing for the unattainable, no more
grasping at the intangible, no more clutching at the impalpable. I am
no poet, and we don't want poetry. Our civilization isn't old enough.
Poets, like other maggots, will be produced when fermentation comes.
I am going about the humdrum and the useful. I am about as low in
the public estimation as I can well go; at any rate I am down on hard
land, which will be a good starting-point. Now don't go off and become
sanguine over me, nor trouble yourself much about me.

"'The world will find me after many a day,' as Southey says of one of
his books. I doubt if it ever did. The Doctor contends that Southey
was a poet; but then he thinks I am, also!

"What a deuce of a clamor is made about this new comet or planet! What
a useful thing to us poor, mud-stranded mortals to find out that there
is another little fragment of a world, away some hundreds of
millions of miles, outside of no particular where--for I believe
this astronomical detective is only on its track! The Doctor is in
ecstacies over it, takes it as a special personal favor, and declaims
luminously and constellationally about writing one's name among the
stars, like that frisky cow who, in jumping over the moon, upon a
time, made the milky way. I've always had some doubts about that
exploit; but then there is the mark she left. Your friend Roberts
is uneasy about this new star business; he is afraid that it will
unsettle the cheese market, and he don't know about it, nor do I.

"There! I got home only last night, and haven't heard any news to
write you. Some time I will tell of two or three things I saw and
heard, and about some of our cousins, who regard us as belonging to
the outer and lower skirts of the race. If I am to be one end of a
family, let it be the beginning.

"Mother sends love. Edward and George speak of you constantly. I've
not seen our Major since my return.

"Write me a good, sharp, cutting, criticising, deuced brotherly letter
soon. As ever,

"BART.

"P.S. Have you read Pickwick?

"B."

It was full of badinage, with only a dip or two into an absorbing
purpose that he had fully formed, and which he evidenced to himself by
the summary expulsion of the muses.

In the world of nature and humanity, is there such an embodiment of
contradictions and absurdities as a youth in his transit from the
dreamland of boyhood to the battle-field of manhood, through a region
partaking of both, and abounding with strange products of its own? I
am not speaking of the average boy, such boys as make up the male mass
of the world--the undreaming, unthinking, plodding, drudging, sweating
herd, whose few old commonplace, well-worn ideas don't possess the
power of reproduction, and whose thoughts are thirteenth or thirteen
hundredth-handed, and transmitted unimpregnated to other dullards, and
whose life and spirit is that of the young animal merely--but a real
young man, one of possibilities, intended for a man, and not merely
for a male, one in whom the primitive forces of nature are planted,
and who may develop into a new driving or forming power. What a mad,
impulsive, freaky thing it is! You may see him bruising his still
soft head a score of times against the impossible, and he will still
contend that he can do it. He will spring frantically up the face of
an unclimbable precipice, as the young salmon leaps up a cataract, and
die in the faith that he can go up it.

Oh, sublime faith! Oh, sublime folly! What strides he is constantly
taking to the ridiculous, and not always from the sublime! How strong!
how weak! How wise! how foolish! Consistent only in folly, and steady
in the purpose of being foolish. How beautiful, and how ugly! What a
lovable, detestable, desirable, proud, wilful, arrogant, supercilious,
laughing, passionate, tender, cruel, loving, hating, good sort of a
good-for-nothing he is! He believes everything--he believes nothing;
and, like Mary's Son, questions and mocks the doctors to their beards
in the very temple. Patience! he must have his time, and room to grow
in, develop, and shape out. Let him have coral for his teeth, and
climbing, and running, and jumping for his muscle. No man may love
him, and no woman but his mother, and she is to be tried to the extent
of endurance. Wait for him; he will, with or without your help, turn
out good or bad, and in either event people will say: "I always told
you so," "I always knew it was in him"; and cite a score of unhappened
things in proof of their sagacity.

Barton was one of these; neither better nor worse, full of
possibilities and capabilities, impulsive, rash, and unreasoning. He
has just made a resolve, and will act upon it; proud and sensitive
to a degree, he had heard a word of fault once at the store, which
another word would have explained. He would not say it, and went. It
was discovered that the fault was not his, in time for him to remain;
but he left without that word. He is willing to take his chances, and
must speak and act for himself.

He sealed and directed his letter, walked about with the plaintive
airs of old melodies running and running through his head, and sang
snatches and verses of sad old ballads, going over and over with some
touching line, or complaining strain, till he was saturated with its
tender melancholy, and so he came back to ordinary life.




CHAPTER III.

NEWBURY.


Newbury was one of the twenty-odd townships, five miles square, that
then made up the county of Geauga, and a part of the Western Reserve,
the Yankee-doodledom of Ohio, settled exclusively by emigrants from
New England. It was so much of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont,
etc., translated into the broader and freer West. It has been
said that the Yankee, like a certain vegetable, heads best when
transplanted. It was the old thing over, under new and trying
circumstances. The same old ideas and notions, habits of thought and
life; poor, economical and thrifty folk, with the same reverence
for religion and law, love of education, and restless desire for
improvement, and to better the present condition. In the West the
Yankee developed his best qualities in the second generation. He
became a little straighter and less angular, and wider between the
eyes. In the first generation he lived out his life scarcely refracted
by the new atmosphere. This crop still stood firm and hardy on the
Reserve, and they often turned homesick eyes, talked lovingly and
lingeringly of "down country," as they all called loved and cherished
New England. Most of the first settlers were poor, but hardy and
enterprising. The two last qualities were absolutely necessary to take
them through the long, wearisome journey to Ohio, the then far West.
They took up lands, built cabins, and forced a subsistence from the
newly-cleared, stumpy virgin soil. This homogeneous people constituted
a practical and thorough democracy. Their social relations were based
on personal equality, varied only by the accident of superior talents,
address or enterprise, and as yet but little modified by wealth or its
adventitious circumstances.

Among the emigrants scattered here and there was occasionally found a
branch of a "down country" family of some pretensions, dating back to
services in the Revolution, to old wealth, or official position.
Among these were one or two families at Painesville, near the lake, at
Parkman, several at Warren, and more at Cleveland, who had made each
other's acquaintance, and who, as the country improved and the
means of communication were perfected, formed and kept up a sort of
association over the heads, and hardly within the observation, of the
people generally. Of these, as we may say, by right of his wife,
was Judge Markham. He was a hardy, intelligent, and, for his day, a
cultivated man, who came early into the woods as an agent for many
large stockholders of the old Connecticut Land Company, and a liberal
percentage of the sales placed in his hands the nucleus of a large
fortune. Sagacity in investments and improvements, with thorough
business capacity, had already made him one of the wealthiest men on
the Reserve; while a handsome person, and frank, pleasant address,
rendered him very popular. He had been for several years an associate
judge of the court of common pleas for Geauga county, and had an
extensive acquaintance and influence. Mrs. Markham, a genuine daughter
of the old Puritan ancestry, dating back to the first landing, a true
specimen of the best Yankee woman under favorable circumstances, was
a most thoroughly accomplished lady, who had gone into the woods with
her young husband, and who shed and exercised a wide and beneficent
influence through her sphere. So simple, sweet, natural and judicious
was she ever, that her neighbors felt her to be quite one of
themselves, as she was. Everybody was drawn to her; and so
approachable was she, that the lower and more common declared that she
was no lady at all.

Their only child, Julia, just maturing into womanhood, was one of the
best and highest specimens of the American girl, to whom refinement,
grace, and a strong, rich, sweet nature, came by right of birth,
while she inherited beauty from both parents; she seemed, however,
unconscious of this last possession, as she was of the admiration
which filled the atmosphere that surrounded her. She, too, must speak
and act for herself.

At the time of the incidents to be narrated, the northern and eastern
part of Newbury had a considerable population. It was traversed by
a highway leading west through its centre to Cleveland, and by a
stage-road leading from Painesville to the Ohio river, through its
eastern part. This was called the "State road," and on it stood
Parker's Hotel, a stage-house much frequented, and constituting the
centre of a little village, while further south was the extensive
trading establishment of Markham & Co., using the name and some of
the capital of the Judge, and managed mainly by Roberts and another
junior. Judge Markham's spacious and elegant dwelling stood about half
a mile south of the store.

The south-western part of the township, with much of two adjoining
townships, remained an unbroken forest, belonging to an eccentric
landholder who refused to sell it. This was spoken of as "the
woods," and furnished cover and haunts for wild game and animals,
hunting-ground for the pioneers, and also gave shelter to a few
shiftless squatters, in various parts of its wide expanse. In the
eastern border of the township was Punderson's pond, a beautiful,
irregular-shaped body of limpid water, embosomed by deep wooded
hills, and of considerable extent, well stocked with fish, and much
frequented on that account.

In the afternoon of the second day after his return, Bart went down
a highway leading east to the State road, to the post-office, kept at
Markham's store, and this road took him down by the southern end of
the pond, and thence southerly on the State road. He passed along by
Dr. Lyman's, Jonah Johnson's, and so on, past houses, and clearings,
and woodlands, looking almost wistfully, as if he expected pleasant
greetings; but the few he saw merely nodded to him, or called out:
"Are you back again?" He paused on the hill by the saw-mill, which
overlooked the pond, and gazed long over its beautiful surface,
sleeping in utter solitude amid the green hills, under the slanting
summer sun, and seemed to recognize in it what he had observed, on the
evening of his return, about the old homestead--the change that had
taken place in himself--a change which often accounts for the strange
appearance of the most familiar and cherished places. We find it
reflected in the face of inanimate nature, and wonder at her altered
guise, unconscious of the cause. He sauntered musingly on to the
State road, and over by the old grist-mill, past several houses, up to
Parker's. Here, by a beautiful spring under the shade of old apple
and cherry-trees, near the carriage-way, was an indolent group of
afternoon idlers. Conspicuous among them was the dark and striking
face of Dr. Lyman, the rich mahogany of Uncle Josh, and the homely,
shrewd, and fresh-colored countenance of Jonah Johnson. Bart could not
avoid them if he would; and regretted that he had not gone across the
woods to the post-office, and so escaped them.

"Well, young Scholasticus," said the Doctor, after the slight
greetings had been given to the new-comer, "you seem to have graduated
with great rapidity. You went through college like--"

"One of your emetics, Doctor. I came out at the same door I went in
at. Now, doctus, doctior, doctissimus, I am fair game on this point,
so blaze away with everything but your saddle-bags, and I will laugh
with the rest of you."

A good-natured laugh welcomed this coming down.

"Well," replied the doctor, "there can't be much more said."

"I should like to know, young man," remarked Uncle Josh, "whether you
raly got into the college, I should."

"Well, Mr. Burnett, I _raly_ did not, I didn't," mimicking Uncle Josh.

"What did you do, badinage apart?"

"I took a good outside look at the buildings, which was improving;
called on your friends Dr. Nutting and Rev. Beriah Green, who asked me
what church I belonged to, and who was my instructor in Latin."

"What reply did you make?"

"What could I say? I didn't hear the first; and as to the second, I
couldn't bring reproach upon you, and so I said I had never had
one. You must own, Doctor, that I showed great tenderness for your
reputation."

"You certainly did me a kindness."

"Thank you, Doctor."

"I should raly like to know," said Uncle Josh, "what you are thanking
the Doctor for, I should."

"Well, go on."

"I went off," continued Bart. "The fact is, I thought that that
retreat of the sciences might hold that little learning, which is a
dangerous thing--as you used to not quote exactly--and I thought it
prudent to avoid that 'Pierian spring.'"

"What is the young man talking about now?" inquired Uncle Josh. "I
would raly like to know, I would."

"I must ask the Doctor to explain," answered Bart. "I was referring to
one of his old drinking-places, where, according to him, the more
one drank the soberer he grew. You would not fancy that tipple, would
you?"

"You see, Uncle Josh," said the Doctor, laughing, "what comes of a
young man's going a week to college."

"The young man didn't know anything at all, before," declared Uncle
Josh, "and he seems to know less now, amazingly."

This was Uncle Josh's sincere opinion, and was received with a shout
of laughter, in which Bart heartily joined. Indeed, it was his first
sincere laugh for many a day.

Johnson asked him "whether he went to the Ohio river," and being
answered in the affirmative, asked him "by what route he went, and
what he saw."

Uncle Jonah, as Bart usually called him, was one of his very few
recognized friends, and asked in a way that induced him to make a
serious answer.

"I walked the most of the way there, and all the way back. I went by
way of Canton, Columbus, Dayton, and so to Cincinnati, and returned
the same way."

"What do you think of that part of the State which you saw?"

"Unquestionably we have the poorest part of it. As our ancestors
landed on the most desolate part of the continent, so we took the
worst part of Ohio. If you were to see the wheat-fields of Stark, or
the corn on the Scioto, and the whole of the region about Xenia and
Dayton, and on the Miami, you would want to emigrate."

"What about the people?"

"Oh, dear! I didn't see much of them, and that little did not make
me wish to see more. The moment you step across the south line of the
Reserve you step into a foreign country, and among a foreign people,
who speak a foreign language, and who know one of us as quick as they
see us; and they seem to have a very prudent distrust of us. After
passing this black, Dutch region, you enter a population of emigrants
from Virginia, Kentucky, Maryland, and some from North Carolina, and
all unite in detesting and distrusting the Reserve Yankee.

"It is singular, the difference between the lake and river side of the
State. At Cincinnati you seem to be within a step of New Orleans, and
hear of no other place--not a word of New York, and less of Boston.
There everything looks and goes south-west, while we all tend
eastward." In reply to questions, Bart told them of Columbus and
Cincinnati, giving fresh and graphic descriptions, for he observed
closely, and described with a racy, piquant exaggeration what he saw.
Breaking off rather abruptly, he seemed vexed at the length of his
monologue, and went on towards the post-office.

"That young man will not come to a single darn," said Uncle Josh; "not
one darn. He is not good for anything, and never will be. His father
was a very likely man, and so is his mother, and his older brothers
are very likely men, but he is not worth a cuss."

"Uncle Josh is thinking about Bart's sketch of him, clawing old Nore
Morton's face," said Uncle Jonah.

"I did not like that; I did not like it at all. It made me look like
hell amazingly," said the old man, much moved.

"You had good reason for not liking it," rejoined Uncle Jonah, "for it
was exactly like you."

"Dr. Lyman, what do you think of this young man? He was with you,
wa'n't he, studyin' something or other?" asked Uncle Josh; "don't you
agree with me?"

"I don't know," answered the Doctor, "I am out of all patience with
him. He is quick and ready, and wants to try his hand at every new
thing; and the moment he finds he can do it, he quits it. There is
no stability to him. He studied botany a week, and Latin a month, and
Euclid ten days."

"He hunts well, and fishes well--don't he?" asked another.

"They say he shoots well," said Uncle Josh, "but he will wander in the
woods all day, and let game run off from under his eyes, amazingly!
They said at the big hunt, in the woods, he opened the lines and let
all the deer out. He isn't good for a thing--not a cussed thing."

"Isn't he as smart as his brother Henry?" asked Uncle Jonah.

"It is not a question of smartness," replied the Doctor. "He is too
smart; but Henry has steadiness, and bottom, and purpose, and power,
and will, and industry. But Bart, if you start him on a thing, runs
away out of sight of you in an hour. The next you see of him he is off
loafing about, quizzing somebody; and if you call his attention
back to what you set him at, he laughs at you. I have given him
up, utterly; though I mean to ask him to go a-fishing one of these
nights."

"Exactly," said Uncle Jonah, "make him useful. But, Dr. Lyman and
Joshua Burnett, the boy has got the stuff in him--the stuff in him.
Why, he told you here, in fifteen minutes, more about the State of
Ohio than you both ever knew. You will see--"

"You will see, too, that he will not come to a darn," said Uncle Josh,
regarding that as a sad doom indeed.




CHAPTER IV.

AT THE POST-OFFICE.


Barton found a more attractive group at the store. The post-office
occupied a window and corner near the front of the large,
old-fashioned, square store-room; and, as he entered the front door,
he saw, in the back part of the room, a gay, laughing, warbling,
giggling, chirping group of girls gathered about Julia Markham, as
their natural centre. Barton was a little abashed; he might have
moved up more cautiously, and reconnoitred, had he not been taken
by surprise. There was no help for it. He deposited his letters and
called for his mail, which gave him time to gather his forces in hand.

Now Barton was born to love and serve women in all places, and under
all forms and circumstances. His was not a light, silly, vapid,
complimentary devotion, but deep in his nature, through and through,
he reverenced woman as something sacred and high, and above the vulgar
nature of men; this reformed his mind, and inspired his manners; and,
while he was generally disliked by men, he was favorably regarded by
women. It was not in woman's nature to think ill of a youth who was
always so modestly respectful, and anxious to please and oblige;
and no man thus constituted was ever awkward or long embarrassed in
woman's presence. She always gets from him, if not his best, what
is proper. If he can lose self-consciousness, and receive the full
inspiration of her presence, he will soon be at his ease, if not
graceful.

The last thing absolutely that ever could occur to Barton, and it
never had as yet, was the possibility of his being an object of
interest personally to a woman, or to women. He was modest--almost to
bashfulness; but as he never presumed, he was never snubbed; and now,
on this summer afternoon, he had came upon a group of seven or eight
of the most attractive girls of the neighborhood, accompanied by one
or two strangers. There was Julia, never so lovely before, with a
warm color on her cheek, and a liquid light in her dark eyes, in
whose presence all other girls were commonplace; and her friends Nell
Roberts and Kate Fisher, Lizzie Mun and Pearlie Burnett, and several
others. The young man was seen and recognized, and had to advance.
Think of walking thirty feet alone in the faces of seven or eight
beautiful girls, and at the same time be easy and graceful! It is
funny, what a hush the presence of one young man will bring over
a laughing, romping cluster of young women. At his entrance, their
girlish clamor sunk to a liquid murmur; and, when he approached, they
were nearly silent, all but Julia and a stylish blonde, whom Barton
had never seen before. They were gathered around a cloud and tangle of
women's mysterious fabrics, whose names are as unknown to men as
their uses. Most of the young girls suspended their examinations and
rippling comments, and, with a little heightened color, awaited the
approach of the enemy. He came on, and gracefully bowed to each, was
permitted to take the hands of two or three, and greeted with a little
chorus of--"You have come back!" "Where have you been?" "How do you
do?" Julia greeted him with her eyes, as he entered, with a sweet
woman's way, that thrilled him, and which enabled him to approach her
so well. She had remained examining a bit of goods, as if unaware of
his immediate presence for a moment, and he had been introduced to
the strange lady by Kate Fisher as her cousin, Miss Walters, from
Pittsburgh.

Then Julia turned to him, and, with a charming manner, asked: "Mr.
Ridgeley"--she had not called him Bart, or Barton, since her return
from Boston--"Mr. Ridgeley, what do the girls mean? Have you really
been away?"

"Have I really been away? And if I really have, am I to be permitted
to take your hand, and asked how I really do? as if you really cared?"

"Really," was her answer, "you see we have just received our fall
fashions, and it is not the fall style this year to give and take
hands after an absence."

"A-h! how popular that will be with poor masculines! Is that to be
worn by all of you?"

"I don't know," said Kate; "it is not fall with some of us yet."

"Thank you! and may I ask Miss Markham if it was the spring and summer
style not to say good-bye at a parting?"

The tone was gay, but there was something more in it, and the girl
replied: "That depends upon the lady, I presume; both styles may be
varied at her pleasure."

"Ah, I think I understand! You are kind to explain."

"Mr. Barton," said Lizzie, "Flora and I here cannot determine about
our colors"--holding up some gay ribbons--"and the rest can't help us
out. What do you think of them?"

"That they are brilliant," answered Barton, looking both steadily and
innocently in the faces, in a way that deepened their hues.

"Oh, no! these ribbons?" exclaimed the blushing girl, thrusting them
towards his eyes.

"Indeed I am color blind, though not wholly blind to color." And a
little ripple of laughter ran over the bright group, and then they all
laughed again.

Can any one tell why a young girl laughs, save that she is happy and
joyous? If she does or says anything, she laughs, and if she don't,
she laughs, and her companions laugh because she does, and then they
all laugh, and then laugh again because they laughed before, and then
they look at each other and laugh again; thus they did now, and Barton
could no more tell what they were laughing at than could they; he was
not so foolishly jealous as to imagine that they were laughing at him.

Then Kate turned to him: "You won't go away again, I hope. We are
going to have a little party before long, and you must come, and I
want to see you waltz with my cousin. She waltzes beautifully, and I
want to see her with a good partner. Will you come?"

"Indeed I would be most happy; but your compliment is ironical. You
know we don't waltz, and none of us can, if we try."

"Is that the awful dance where the gentleman takes the lady around the
waist, and she leans on him, and they go swinging around? Oh, I think
that is awful!"

"The Germans, and many of our best ladies, and gentlemen, waltz,"
replied Miss Walters, "as they do in Baltimore and New York, and I
suppose my cousin thought no harm could be said of it at her little
party."

"Oh, I am sure I did not mean that it was wrong, and I would like to
see the dance!" was the eager disclaimer.

Barton had drawn away from this discussion, and lingered a moment near
Julia, to ask after her mother. She replied that Mrs. Markham was very
well, but did not ask him to call and see for himself, nor did she in
any way encourage him to prolong the conversation. So, with a little
badinage and _persiflage_, he took his leave.

I shall not attempt to set down what was said of him after he left,
nor will I affirm that anything was said. Young ladies, for aught I
know, occasionally talk up young men among themselves, and if they do
it is nobody's business.




CHAPTER V.

MRS. MARKHAM'S VIEWS.


In the gathering twilight, in a parlor at the Markham mansion, sat
Julia by the piano, resting her head on one hand, while with the other
she brought little ripples of music from the keys; sometimes a medley,
then single and prolonged notes, like heavy drops of water into a
deep pool, and then a twinkling shower of melody. She was not sad, or
pensive, or thoughtful; but in one of these quiet, sweet, and grave
moods that come to deep natures--as a cloud passing over deep, still
water enables one under its shadow to see into its depths. Her mother
stood at an open window, inhaling the evening fragrance of flowers,
and occasionally listening to the wild note of the mysterious
whippoorwill, that came from a thicket of forest-trees in the
distance.

The step of her father caught the ear of the young girl, who sprang up
and ran towards him with eager face and sparkle of eye and voice.

"Oh, papa, the trunks came this afternoon, with the fashion-plates,
and patterns, and everything, and all we girls--Nell, Kate Fisher,
Miss Flora Walter, Pearlie, Ann, and all hands of us--have had a
regular 'opening.' We went through with them all. The cottage bonnet
is a love of a thing, and I am going to have it trimmed for myself.
Sleeves are bigger than ever, and there were lots of splendid things!"

"And so Roberts has suited you all, for once, has he?" said the Judge,
passing an arm around her small waist.

"Roberts! Faugh, he had nothing to do with it. Aunt Mary selected
them all herself. They are the latest and newest from Paris--almost
direct."

"Does that make them better?"

"Well, I don't know that there is anything in their coming from Paris,
except that one likes to know that they come from the beginning-place
of such things. Now if they had been made in Boston, New York, or
Baltimore, one would not be certain they were like the right thing;
and now we know they are the real thing itself. Do you understand?"

"Oh, yes--as well as a man may; and it is quite well put, too, and
I don't know that I ever had so clear an idea of the value of things
from a distance before."

"Well, you see, when a thing comes clear from the farthest off,
we know there ain't anything beyond; and when it comes from the
beginning, we don't take it second hand."

"I see; but why do you care, you girls in this far-off, rude region?"

"Mamma, do you hear that? Here is my own especial father, and your
husband, asking me, a woman, and a very young woman too, for a
reason."

"It is because you are a very young one that he expects you to give
a reason. Perhaps he thinks you will not claim the privilege of our
sex."

"Well, I won't. Now, then, Papa Judge, this is not a far-off, rude
region, and you see that the French ladies want these styles and
fashions, and all that; well, if they want them, we want them too."

"Now I don't quite see. How do you know they want them? Perhaps they
are sent here because they don't want them; and, besides, why should
a backwoods girl in Ohio want what a high-born lady in the French
capital wants?"

"Because the American girl is a woman; and, besides, the court must
hear and decide, and not ask absurd questions."

"And who is to see you in French millinery, here in the woods?"

"Oh, bless its foolish man's heart, that thinks a woman dresses to
please its taste, when it hasn't any! We dress to please ourselves and
plague each other--don't you know that? and we ain't pleased with poky
home-made things."

"Julia! Mother," appealed the Judge, with uplifted hands, to Mrs.
Markham, "where did this young lady get her notions?"

"From the common source of woman's notions, as you call them, I
presume--her feelings and fancies; and she is merely letting you see
the workings of a woman's mind. We should all betray our sex a hundred
times a day, if our blessed husbands and fathers had the power to
understand us, I fear."

"And don't we understand you?"

"Of course you do, as well as you ever will. My dear husband, don't
you also understand that if you fully comprehended us, or we you, we
should lose interest in each other? that now we may be a perpetual
revelation and study to each other, and so never become worn and
common?"

"There, Papa Judge, are you satisfied--not with our arguments, but
with us?"

"The man who was not would be unreasonable and--"

"Man-like," put in Julia. "Let me sing you my new song."

A piano was a novelty in Northern Ohio. Julia played with a real skill
and expression, and her father, though no musician, loved to listen,
and more to hear her sing, with her clear, strong, sweet voice, and so
she played and sang her song.

When she had finished, "By the way," remarked her father, "I
understand that our travelled young townsman, who has just returned
from foreign parts, was at the post-office this afternoon, and perhaps
you met him."

"Whom do you mean?" asked Julia.

"Your mother's pet, Bart Ridgeley."

"Now, papa, that is hardly kind, after what you said of him the other
day. He is not mother's pet at all. She is only kind to him, as to
everybody. Indeed, he don't seem to me like anybody's pet, to be
patted and kept in-doors when it rains, and eat jellies, and be nice.
I saw him at the store a moment; he was very civil, and merely asked
after mamma, and went out."

"Did you ask him to call and see mamma?" asked her father a little
gravely.

"Not at all. The truth is, papa, after what you said I could not ask
him, and was hardly civil to him."

"Was it unpleasant to be hardly civil to him?"

"No; though I like to be civil to everybody. You know I have seen
little of him since I came home, and when I have, he was sometimes
silent and distant, and not like what he was before I went away."

"You find him improved in appearance and manners?" persisted the
Judge.

"Well, he was always good-looking, and had the way of a gentleman.
Miss Walters seemed quite taken with him, and was surprised that he
had grown up here in the woods."

Her father was silent a moment, and the subject was changed. Mrs.
Markham was attentive to what was said of poor Bart, but made no
comment at the time.

       *       *       *       *       *

In their room, that night, in her sweet, serious way, she said to
her husband, "Edward, I do not want to say a word in favor of Barton
Ridgeley. I do not ask you to change your opinion of him or your
course towards him; but I wish to ask if it is necessary to discuss
him, especially with Julia?"

"Why?"

"Well, can it be productive of good? If you are mistaken in your
estimate of him, you do him injustice, and in any event you will call
her attention to him, and she may observe and study him; and almost
any young woman who should do that might become interested in him."

"Do you think so? Men don't like him."

"Is that a reason why a woman would not?"

"Have you discovered any reason to think that Julia cares in the least
for him?"

"Julia is young, and, like the women of our family, develops in these
respects slowly; but, like the rest of us, she will have her own
fancies some time, and you know"--with a still softer voice--"that
one of them left a beautiful home, and a circle of love and luxury, to
follow her heart into the woods."

"Yes, and thank God that she did! Roses and blessings and grace came
with you," said the Judge, with emotion. "But this boy--what is he
to us, or what can he ever be? He is so freaky, and unsteady, and
passionate, and flies off at a word, and goes before he is touched. He
will do nothing, and come to nothing."

"What can he do? Would you really have him buy an axe and chop
cord-wood, or work as a carpenter, or sell tape behind the counter?
Are there not enough to do all that work as fast as it needs to be
done? Is there not a clamorous need of brain-work, and who is there to
do it? Who is to govern, and manage, and control twenty years hence?
Look over all the young men whom you know, and who promises to be fit
to lead? Think over those you know in Cleveland, or Painesville, or
Warren. Is somebody to come from somewhere else? Think of your own
plans and expectations. Who can help you? I see possibilities in this
wayward, passionate, hasty, generous youth. He is a tender and devoted
son, and I am glad he came back; and nobody knows how he may be pushed
against us and others."

"Well," said the Judge, after a thoughtful pause, "what can I do? What
would you have me do--change myself, or try to change him?"

"I don't know," thoughtfully: "I think there is nothing you can do
now. I would wish you to cultivate a manner towards him that would
leave it in your power to serve him or make him useful, if occasion
presents. He needs a better education, and perhaps a profession. He
should study law. He has a capacity to become a very superior public
speaker--one of the first. I don't think there is much danger of his
forming bad habits or associations. He avoids and shuns everything of
that kind. You know he deeded his share of his father's land to his
brother, to provide a home for his mother, and I presume will remain,
both from choice and necessity, with her for the present."

The Judge mused over her words. He did not tell her of having met and
left Barton the other side of the Chagrin; nor did he disclose fully
the dislike he felt for him, or the fears he may have entertained at
the idea of any intimacy between him and Julia. His wife mused also
in her woman's way. She, too, would have hesitated to have Barton
restored to the old relations of his boyhood. While she knew of much
to admire and hope for in him, she knew also that there was much
to cause anxiety, if not apprehension. In thinking further, she was
inclined to call upon his mother, whom she much esteemed for her
strong and decisive traits of character, soft and womanly though
she was. Cares and anxieties had kept her from association with her
neighbors, among whom, as she knew, she seldom appeared, except on
occasions of sickness or suffering, or when some event seemed
to demand the presence of a deciding woman's mind and will. She
remembered one or two such times in their earlier forest life, when
Mrs. Ridgeley had quietly assumed her natural place for a day, to
go back to her round of widowed love, care and toil. She would make
occasion to see her, and perhaps find some indirect way to be useful
to both mother and son.




CHAPTER VI.

WHAT HE THOUGHT OF THINGS.


How grateful to the sensitive heart of the young man would have been
the knowledge that he was an object of thoughtful interest to Julia's
mother, who, next to his own, had his reverence and regard! He knew he
was generally disliked; his intuitions assured him of this, and in his
young arrogance he had not cared. Indeed, he had come to feel a morbid
pleasure in avoiding and being avoided; but now, as he sat in the
little silent room in the late night, he felt his isolation. He
had been appalled at a discovery--or rather a revelation--made that
afternoon. He knew that he loved Julia, and that this love would be
the one passion of manhood, as it had been of his boyhood. He had
given himself up to it as to a delicious onflowing stream, drifting
him through enchanted lands, and had not thought or cared whither it
might bear, or on what desolate shore it might finally strand him.

Now he felt its full strength and power, and he knew, too, that it was
a force to be controlled, when perhaps that had become impossible. He
had never asked himself if a return of his passion were even possible,
until now, when his whole fervid nature had gone out in a great hungry
longing for her love and sympathy. She had never stood so lovely and
so inaccessible as he had seen her that day. How deeply through and
through came the first greeting of her eyes! It was an electric flash
never received before, and which as suddenly disappeared. How cool and
indifferent was her manner and look as he approached, and stood near
her! No inquiry, save that mocking one! Not a word; not a thought of
where he had been, or why he had returned, or what he would do; the
shortest answer as to his inquiry about her mother; no intimation that
he might even call at the house. Thus he went over with it all--over
and over again. What did he care? But he did, and could not deceive
himself. He did care, and must not; and then he went back over all
their intercourse since her return home, two or three months before he
left, and it was all alike on her part--a cool, indifferent avoidance
of him.

Oh, she was so glorious--so beautiful! The whole world lay in the
span of her slender waist--a world not for him. Was it something to
be adventured for, fought for, found anywhere? something that he could
climb up to and take? something to plunge down to in fathomless ocean
and carry back? No, it was her woman's heart. Like her father, she
disliked him; and if, like her father, she would openly let him see
and hear it--but doesn't she? What had he to offer her? How could he
overcome her father's dislike? He felt in his soul what would come to
him finally, but then, in the lapsing time? And she avoided him now!

He returned to his algebraic problem, with a desperate plunge at its
solution. The unknown quantity remained unknown; and, a moment later,
he was gratified to see how he had finally caught and expressed, with
his pencil, a look of Julia, that had always eluded him before. But
was he to be overcome by a girl? Was life and its ambitions to be
crushed out and brought to nought by one small hand? He would see. It
would be inexpressible luxury to tell her once--but just once--all his
passion and worship, and then, of course, remain silent forever, and
go out of her presence. He wished her to know it all, so that, as she
would hear and know of him in the coming years, she would know that he
was worthy, not of her love, but worthy to love her, whatever that may
mean, or whatever of comfort it might bring to either. What precious
logic the heart of a young man in his twenty-second year is capable
of!




CHAPTER VII.

LOGIC OF THE GODS.


"Doctor," said Barton, in the little office of the latter, "I've
called to borrow your Euclid; may I have it? I have never tried
Euclid, really."

"Oh, yes, you can have it, and welcome. Do you want to try yourself on
the _pons asinorum?_"

"What is that; another bridge of sighs? for I suppose they can be
found out of Venice."

"It is a place over which asses have to be carried. It is, indeed, a
bridge of sighs, and a bridge of size."

"Oh, Doctor, don't you do that! Well, let me try it! I want more
work; and especially I want a wrestle with Euclid."

"Work! what are you doing, that you call work?"

"Well, hoeing beans, pulling up weeds, harvesting oats, with
recreations in Latin Grammar, Dabol, Algebra, Watts on the Mind,
Butler's Analogy, and other trifles."

"All at one time?"

"No, not more than three at the same time. Don't lecture me, Doctor, I
am incorrigible. When I work, I don't play."

"And when you don't play you work, occasionally; well, I think Euclid
will do you good."

"I won't take it as a prescription, Doctor!"

"A thorough course of mathematics would do more for one of your
flighty mind, than anything else; you want chaining down to the severe
logic of lines and angles."

"To the solution of such profound problems as, that the whole of a
thing is more than a fraction of it; and things that are exactly alike
resemble each other, for instance, eh?"

"Pshaw! you will make fun of everything. Will you ever reach
discretion, and deal with things seriously?"

"I was never more serious in my life, and could cry with mortification
over my lost, idled-away hours, you never believed in me, and are not
to blame for that, nor have I any promises to make. I am not thought
to be at all promising, I believe."

"Bart," said the Doctor, seriously, "you don't lack capacity; but you
are too quick and impulsive, and all imagination and fancy."

"Well, Doctor, you flatter me; but really is not the imagination one
of the highest elements of the human mind? In the wide world's history
was it not a crowning, and one of the most useful qualities of many of
the greatest men?"

"Great men have had imagination. I presume, and achieved great things
in spite of it; but through it, never."

"Why, Doctor! the mere mathematician is the most servile of mortals.
He is useful, but cannot create, or even discover. He weighs and
measures. Project one of his angles into space, and, though it may
reach within ten feet of a blazing star that dazzles men with eyes,
yet he will neither see nor know of its existence. His foot-rule won't
reach it, and he has no eyes. Imagination! it was the logic of the
gods--the power to create; and among men it abolishes the impossible.
By its force and strength one may strike fire from hidden flints in
darkened worlds, and beat new windows in the blind sides of the ages.
Columbus imagined another continent, and sailed to it; and so of all
great discoverers."

The Doctor listened with some surprise. "Did it ever occur to you,
Bart, that you might be an orator of some sort?"

"Such an orator as Brutus is--cold, formal, and dead? I'd rather
not be an orator at all, 'but talk right on,' like plain, blunt Mark
Antony."

"And yet Brutus has been quoted and held up by poets and orators as a
sublime example of virtue and patriotism, young man!"

"And yet he never made murder the fashion;" and--striking an
attitude--"Caesar had his Brutus! Charles had his Cromwell! and George
III. had--what the devil did George have? He was stupid enough to have
been a mathematician, though I never heard that he was."

"Oh dear, Bart!" said the Doctor, with a sigh, "for God's sake, and
your own, do study Euclid if you can! Don't you see that your mind is
always sky-rocketing and chasing thistle-down through the air?"

  "'The downy thistle-seed my fare,
      My strain forever new,'"
said Bart, laughing, and preparing to go.

"By the way," asked the Doctor, "wouldn't you like to go fishing one
of these nights? We haven't been but once or twice this summer. Jonah,
and Theodore, and 'Brother Young' and I have been talking about it
for some days. We will rig up a fire-jack, if you will go, and use the
spear."

"I am afraid I would be sky-rocketing, Doctor; but send me word when
you are ready."

       *       *       *       *       *

Barton had now entered upon something like a regular course. He had
one of those intense nervous temperaments that did not require or
permit excessive sleep. He arose with the first light, and took up at
once the severest study he had until breakfast, and then worked with
the boys, or alone, the most of the forenoon, at whatever on the farm,
or about the house, seemed most to want his hand; the afternoons and
evenings were given to unremitting study or reading. His tone of mind
and new habit of introspection induced him to take long walks in the
woods and secluded places, and after his work for the day was done;
he imposed upon himself a regular and systematic course, and compelled
himself to adhere to it. He saw few, went nowhere; and among that busy
people, after the little buzz occasioned by his return had subsided,
he ceased to be an object of interest or comment.

It was remarked among them that they did not hear his rifle in the
forests, and nobody had presents of wild turkeys and venison, as they
sometimes had, and he was in his own silent way shaping out his own
destiny.

He received a letter from Henry in reply to his own, full of kindness,
with such hints as the elder could give as to his course of study. His
observing mother saw at once a marked change in his manner and
words. Thoughtful and forbearing, his arrogance disappeared, and his
impetuous, dashing way evidently toned down, while he was more tender
towards her, and seemed to fall naturally into the place of an elder
brother--careful and gentle to the young boys.




CHAPTER VIII.

A RAMBLE IN THE WOODS, AND WHAT CAME OF IT.


Already the summer had deepened and ripened into autumn. The sky had
a darker tint, and the breeze had a plaintive note in its voice; and
here and there the footprints of change were in the tree-tops.

On one of those serene, deep afternoons, Barton, who had been
importuned by the boys to go into the woods in pursuit of a flock of
turkeys, that George had over and over declared "could be found just
out south, and which were just as thick and fat as anything," yielded,
and, taking his rifle, started out, accompanied by them, in high glee.
George's declaration about the turkeys was, without much difficulty,
verified, and Bart, who was a practised hunter, and knew all the
habits of the shy and difficult bird, managed in a short time to
secure two. He felt an old longing for a good, long, lonely ramble,
and directed the boys, who were in ecstacies at his skill and the
result, to carry the game back to their mother, while he went out
to the Slashing, adding that if he did not come back until into the
night, they might know he had gone to the pond, to meet the Doctor and
a fishing-party; and with a good-natured admonition from George, to
look out for that wolverine that haunted the Slashing, they separated.

The "Slashing" was a large tract of fallen timber, all of which had
been cut down years before, and left to decay as it fell. Near this,
and to the east, an old roadway had been cut, leading south, which was
often used by the neighbors to go from the Ridgeley neighborhood
to settlements skirting the eastern border of "the woods" before
mentioned. Still further east, and surrounded by forest, on a small
stream, was Coe's carding machine and fulling mill, to which a
by-way led from the State road, at a point near Parker's. The Coes,
a shiftless, harmless set, lived much secluded, and were often the
objects of charity, and as such somewhat under the patronage of Mrs.
Markham and Julia; and some of her young friends were occasionally
attracted there for a ramble among the rocks and springs, from which
Coe's creek, a little stream, arose. From the old road a path led to
the fields of Judge Markham, about a fourth of a mile distant, which
was the shortest route from his house to Coe's.

       *       *       *       *       *

On his return ramble, just as Bart was about to emerge from the woods
into the opening made by the old road from the west, he was surprised
to see Julia approaching him, going along that track towards home. She
was alone, and walking with a quick step. Lifting his hat, he stepped
forward towards the path in which she was walking. The meeting in the
wild, still woods, under the deepening shades of approaching night,
was a surprise to both; and, by the light in the eyes of the youth,
and warmer color in the face of the maiden, seemed not unpleasant to
either.

"This is a surprise, meeting you here alone," said Barton, stepping to
the side of the footway, a little in advance of her.

"It must be," answered Julia. "Poor old lady Coe is quite ill, and
I've been around there, and, as it was latish, I have taken this short
way home, rather than go all the way around the road."

"Indeed, if you are really going this way you must permit me to
attend you," said Bart, placing his gun against a stump. "It is a
good half-mile to the path that leads out to your father's, and it is
already darkening;" and he turned and walked by her side.

"It is really not necessary," said the girl, quite decidedly. "I know
the way, and am not in the least afraid."

"Forgive me, Miss Markham, but I really fear that you must choose
between my attendance out of these woods and turning back around the
road," replied Bart.

His manner, so frank and courteous, and his voice, so gentle, had
nevertheless, to her woman's ear, a vibration of the man's nerve of
force and will, to which the girl seemed unconsciously to yield. They
walked along. The mystery of night was weaving its weird charm in the
forest, and strange notes and sounds came from its depths, and these
young, pure natures found an undefined sweetness in companionship.
On they walked in silence, as if neither cared to break it. The young
girl at length said:

"Mr. Ridgeley"--not Barton, or his first name, as in her
childhood--what a heart-swoon smote the youth at the formal
address!--"Mr. Ridgeley, there is something I must say to you. My
father does not care to have me in your company, and I must not
receive the most ordinary attention from you. He would not, I fear,
like to know that you were at our house."

Did it cost her anything to say this? Apparently not, though her voice
and manner diminished its sting. A moment's pause, and Barton's voice,
cold and steady, answered back:

"I know what your father's feelings towards me are," and then, with
warmth, "but I am sure that he would think less of me, if possible,
were I to permit any woman to find her way, at this hour, out of this
wilderness."

It was not much to say, but it was well said, and he turned his face
towards her as he said it, lit up with a clear expression of man's
loyalty to woman--not unpleasant to the young girl. Why could not
he leave it there and to the future? They walked on, and the shadows
deepened.

"Miss Markham, I, too, must say a thing to you: from my boyhood to
this hour, deeply, passionately, with my whole heart and soul, have I
loved you."

There was no mistaking; the intensity of his voice made his words
thrill. She recoiled from them as if stunned, and turned her face,
pale now, and marked, fully towards him.

"What! What did you say?"

"I love you!" with a deep, full voice.

"How dare you utter such words to me?"

Her eyes flashed and nostrils dilated.

"Because they are true; because I am a man and you are a woman,"
steadily and proudly.

"A man! you a man! Is it manly to waylay me in this lonely place,
and force yourself upon me, and insult me with this? You compel me
to--to--"

"Scorn and despise you!" supplied the youth, in a bitter tone.

"Take the words, then, if you choose them."

She was simply grand in her style, till this last expression, which
had the angry snap of an enraged woman. Some high natures might have
answered back her scorn; a lower one might have complained; and still
another would have left her in the woods. Barton said nothing,
but, with a cold, stony face, walked on by her side. If, in his
desperation, he wanted this killing thrust, which must ever rankle and
never heal, to enable him to overcome and subdue his great passion, he
had got it. That little hand, that emphasized her words with a gesture
of superb disdain, would never have to repeat the blow. It raised
about her a barrier that he was never after to approach.

He was not a man to complain. He would have told her why he said these
words; he could not now. Some men are like wolves in traps, and die
without a moan. Barton could die, and smile back into the face of his
slayer, and say no word.

Night was now deepening in the woods, with the haughty maiden, and
high, proud and humiliated youth, walking still side by side through
its shadows. They at length reached the path that led from the open
way to the left, approaching Julia's home. There was a continuous
thicket of thrifty second-growth young trees bordering the track along
which the two were journeying, and the opening through it made by this
narrow path was black with shadow, like the entrance to a cave.

"This is the way," said Bart, turning into it.

These were the first words he had uttered, and came as if from a
distance. Without a word of hesitation Julia turned into the path with
him, yet with almost a shudder at the darkness. They had not taken
a dozen steps when an appalling, shrieking yell, a brute yell, of
ferocious animal rage--the rage for blood and lust to mangle and
tear--burst from the thicket on their right. A wild plunge through
tangled brush and limbs, another more appalling shriek, and a dark,
shadowy form, with a fierce, hungry growl, crouched in the pathway
just before them, with its yellow, tawny, cruel eyes flashing in their
faces. The first sound seemed to heat every fiery particle of the
blood of the youth into madness, and open an outlet to the burning
elements of his nature. Here was something to encounter, and for her,
and in her presence; and the brute had hardly crouched as if for its
spring, when, with an answering cry, a man's shout, a challenge and
a charge, he sprang forward, with his unarmed strength, to the
encounter. As if cowed and overcome by the higher nature, the brute
turned, and with a complaining whine like a kicked dog, ran into the
depths of the woods. Barton had momentarily, in a half frenzy, wished
for a grapple, and felt a pang of real disappointment.

"The brute is a coward," he said, as he turned back, where the white
robes of Julia were dimly visible in the darkness. She was a daughter
of the Puritans, and had the blood and high courage of her race. The
first cry of the animal had almost frozen her blood, but the eager,
proud, manly shout of Barton affected her like a trumpet-call. She
exulted in his dashing courage, and felt an irresistible impulse to
rush forward to his aid. It all occurred in the fraction of a moment;
and when she realized that the peril was over, she was well-nigh
overcome.

"You were always brave," said Barton, cheerily, with just a little
strain in his voice; "you were in no danger, and it is all over."

No answer.

"You are not overcome?" with an anxious voice. "Oh," coming close to
her, "if I might offer you support!"

He held out his hand, and she put hers in it. How cool and firm his
touch was, and how her tremor subsided under it! He pulled her hand
within his arm, and hers rested fully upon his, with but their light
summer draperies between them.

"But a little way further," he said, in his cheery voice, and they
hurried forward.

Neither spoke. What did either think? The youth was sorry for the
awful fright of the poor girl, and so glad of the little thing that
eased his own humiliation. The girl--who can tell what a girl thinks?

As they reached the cleared land, a sense of relief came to Julia,
who had started a dozen times, in her escape out of the woods, at
imaginary sounds. Day was still in the heavens, and the sight of her
father's house gladdened her.

"Will you mind the dew?" asked her companion.

"Not in the least," she answered; and he led her across the pastures
to the rear of an enclosure that surrounded the homestead. He seemed
to know the way, and conducted her through a large open gate, and so
to a lane that led directly to the rear of the house, but a few yards
distant. He laid his hand upon the small gate that opened into it, and
turning to her, said:

"I may not intrude further upon you. For your relief, I ought perhaps
to say that the words of madness and folly which I uttered to you will
neither be recalled nor repeated. Let them lie where they fell--under
your feet. Your father's house, and your father's daughter, will be
sacred from me."

The voice was firm, low, and steady; and opening the gate, the young
girl entered, paused a moment, and then, without a word, ran rapidly
towards the house. As she turned an angle, she saw the youth still
standing by the gate, as if to protect her. She flew past the corner,
and called, in a distressed voice:

"Mamma! mamma! oh, mother!"

She was a Puritan girl, with the self-repression and control of her
race, and the momentary apprehension that seized her as she left the
side of Barton was overcome as she entered her father's house.

"Julia!" exclaimed her mother, coming forward, "is that you? Where
have you come from? What is the matter?"

"I came through the woods," said the girl, hurriedly. "I've been so
awfully frightened! Such dreadful things have happened!" with a half
hysterical laugh, which ended in a sob.

"Julia! Julia! my child! what under the heavens has happened? Are you
hurt?"

"No, only dreadfully frightened. I was belated, and it came on dark,
and just as we turned into the path from the old road, that awful
beast, with a terrible shriek, sprang into the road before us, and was
about to leap upon me, when Barton sprang at him and drove him off. If
it had not been for him, I would have been torn in pieces."

"Barton?--was he with you? Thank God! oh, bless and thank God for
your escape! My child! my child! How awful it sounds! Come! come to my
room, and let me hold you, and hear it all!"

"Oh, mamma! what a weak and cowardly thing a woman is! I thought I was
so strong, and really courageous, and the thought of this thing makes
me tremble now."

They gained her mother's room, and Julia, seating herself at her
mother's feet, and resting her arms on her mother's lap, undertook to
tell her story.

"I cannot tell you how it all happened. Barton met me, and would come
along with me, and then he said strange things to me; and I answered
him back, and quarrelled with him, and--"

"What could he have said to you? Tell me all."

Julia began and told with great minuteness, and with much feeling, her
whole adventure. She explained that she really did not want Bart to
come with her, for that it would displease her father; and that when
he did, she thought he ought to know that he was not at liberty to be
her escort or come to the house, and so she told him. She could not
tell why she answered him just as she did, but she was surprised, and
not quite herself, and she might have said it differently, and need
not have said so much, and he certainly must know that she did not
mean it all. Surely it was most his fault; if he really had such
feelings, why should he tell her, and tell her as he did? It was
dreadful, and she would never be happy again; and she laid her head in
her mother's lap, in her great anguish.

When her burst of grief had subsided, and she was calm, her mother
asked several questions, and learned all that was said, and was
much excited at Julia's account of the encounter with the beast and
Barton's intrepidity. She seemed to feel that they had both escaped a
great danger, through his courage.

"My dear child," she said, "I don't know what to think of these
strange and trying events, mixed up as they are. There is one very,
very unfortunate thing about it."

"That I met Barton? Oh, mother!"

"No, no; not that. It was unfortunate that you came the way you did,
or unfortunate that you went, perhaps; but it is not that. It was most
providential that Barton was with you, but so unfortunate that he said
to you what he did."

"Is it a misfortune to be loved, mother?"

"Let us not talk of this to-night, my darling," stooping and kissing
her still pale cheek. "God only knows of these things. It may not be a
misfortune, but it may bring unhappiness, dear, to somebody."

"Perhaps, mother, if he had not had such feelings he would not have
come with me."

"My child! my child! don't say what might have happened. I am glad
and grateful--so grateful that he was with you--that he was generous
enough to come, after what you said to him; but now, how can we
express our gratitude to him?"

"Oh, mamma! I am sure it is no matter. He won't care now what we
think."

"You are too much agitated, my daughter, to-night; let us not talk it
over now. But what became of Barton? did he come in?"

"No, I left him at the back gate, without a word, only waiting for me
to run in. Of course he went back to the woods and wild beasts. What
other place was there for him?"

"Don't, don't, Julia! don't say such words. Harm will not come to
him."

"I know it won't," said the young girl; "for when the whole world
turns against a brave, true heart, God watches over it with the more
care."

"True, my child; and we can at least pray God to be near him, only
don't think of this matter now. In a day or two you will be yourself,
and look at it in a different light. Your father will return
to-morrow, and it may not be best to tell him of all this at present.
It would only disturb him."

"Yes, mamma; I could not tell him everything as I have told you, and
so I must not tell him anything, nor anybody else. How wretched it all
is!"




CHAPTER IX.

A DARKENED SOUL.


As Julia left Bart, the full force of her scornful words seemed for
the first time to reach him. The great restraint her presence imposed
in some way suspended, or broke their effect, and he turned from the
gate with a half-uttered moan of anguish. He did not then recall her
words or manner; he only realized that, in a cruel and merciless way,
she had crushed his heart and soul. It was not long; both recoiled
with a sense of wrong and injustice, and utter helplessness, for the
hurt came from a woman. Instinctively he returned to the point whence
they had emerged when they left the woods, and the thought of the
screaming brute came to him with a sense of relief. Here was an object
upon which he could wreak himself, and in a half frenzy of madness he
hurried towards a spot in the edge of the Slashing, towards which
the cowardly thing had run when it fled from his onset. He paused
to listen upon the margin of that tangled wilderness of young trees,
briers, and decaying trunks. How solemn and quiet, wild and lonely it
was, in the deep night and deeper woods! The solemn hush fell upon
the bruised spirit of the youth with the quieting touch and awe of a
palpable presence, rebukingly, yet tenderly and pityingly.

Quick to compassionate others, he had ever been relentless to himself,
and refused to regard himself as an object of injustice, or as needing
compassion. As he stood for a moment confronting himself, scorned,
despised and humiliated, he felt for himself the measureless contempt
to which he seemed to have fallen; yet, under it all, and against it
all, he arose. "Oh, Bart! Bart! what a poor, abject, grovelling
thing you really are," he said bitterly, "when the word of a girl
so overcomes you! when the slap of her little hand so benumbs and
paralyzes you! If you can't put her haunting face from you now, God
can hardly help you. How grand she was, in her rage and scorn! Let me
always see her thus!" and he turned back into the old road. Along
this he sauntered until his eye met the dull gleam of his rifle-barrel
against the old stump where he left it. With a great start, he
exclaimed, "Oh, if I could only go back to the moment when I stood
here with power to choose, and dream!" It was a momentary weakness, a
mere recoil from the wound still so fresh and ragged.

It was still in early evening, with time and life heavy on his hands,
when he remembered that the Doctor had sent him word to come to the
pond that night. Taking his rifle by the muzzle, and throwing it
across his shoulder, he plunged into the woods in a right line for the
west shore of the pond, at about its midway.

Through thick woods tangled with underbrush and laced with wild
vines, down steep banks, over high hills and rocky precipices, across
clearings and hairy brier patches, he took his way, and found relief
in the physical exertions of which he was still capable. At last he
stood on the margin of the forest and hill-embosomed waters of that
lovely little lake. It was solitary and silent, but for the weird
sounds of night birds and aquatic animals that frequented its reedy
margin, and a soft, silvery mist was just rising from its unruffled
surface, that gathered in a translucent veil against the dark forest
of the opposite shore. Its simple, serene and quiet beauty, under the
stars and rising moon, was not lost upon the poetic nature of Barton,
still heaving with the recent storm.

He ran his eye along the surface of the water, and discerned in the
shadow of the wood, near the island, a fourth of a mile distant, a
light, and below it the dark form of a boat. Placing his closed hands
to his lips, he blew a strong, clear, full whistle, with one or two
notes, and was answered by Theodore. At the landing near him was a
half-rotten canoe, partially filled with water, and near it was an old
paddle. Without a moment's thought, Barton pushed it into deep water,
springing into it as it glided away. He had not passed half the
distance to the other boat, when he discovered that it was filling.
With his usual rashness, he determined to reach his friends in it
by his own exertions, and without calling to them for aid, and by an
almost superhuman effort he drove on with his treacherous craft. The
ultimate danger was not much to a light and powerful swimmer, and he
plunged forward. The noise and commotion of forcing his waterlogged
canoe through the water attracted the attention of the party he
was approaching, but who had hardly appreciated his situation as he
lightly sprang from his nearly filled boat into their midst.

"Hullo, Bart! Why under the heavens did you risk that old log? Why
didn't you call to us to meet you?"

"Because," said Bart, excited by his effort and danger, "because to
myself I staked all my future on reaching you in that old hulk, and I
won. Had it sunk, I had made up my mind to go with her, and, like Mr.
Mantalini, in Dickens's last novel, 'become a body, a demnition moist
unpleasant body.'"

"What old wreck is it?" inquired Young, looking at the scarcely
perceptible craft that was sinking near them.

"It is the remains of the old canoe made by Thomas Ridgeley, in his
day, I think," said Jonah.

"Nothing of the sort," said Bart; "it is the remains of old Bullock's
'gundalow,' that has been sinking and swimming, like old John Adams
in the Revolution, these five years past. Don't let me think to-night,
Uncle Jonah, that anything from my father's hand came to take me into
the depths of this pond."

The craft occupied by the party was a broad, scow-like float, with low
sides, steady, and of considerable capacity. At the bow was a raised
platform, covered with gravel, on which stood a fire-jack. The crew
were lying on the silent water, engaged with their lines, when Bart so
unceremoniously joined them. He went forward to a vacant place and lay
down in the bottom, declining to take a line.

"What is the matter, Bart?" asked the Doctor.

"I don't know. I've been wandering about in the woods, and I must have
met something, or I have lost something,--I don't know which."

"I guess you saw the wolverine," said Theodore.

"I guess I did;" and pretty soon, "Doctor, is this your robe? Let
me cover myself with it; I am cold!" and there was something almost
plaintive in his voice.

"Let me spread it over you," said the Doctor, with tenderness. "What
ails you, Bart? are you ill?"

"If you left your saddle-bags at home, I think I am; if they are
here, I am very well. Doctor," he went on, "can a man have half of his
faculties shut off and retain the others clear and strong?"

"I don't know,--perhaps so; why?"

"Well, I feel as if one of your astringents had placed its claws on a
full half of me and drawn it all into a pucker; and the other half is
in some way set free, and I feel clairvoyant."

"What do you think you can see?" asked the Doctor.

"A young man--quite a young man--blindfolded, groping backward in the
chambers of his darkened soul, and trying to escape out of it," said
Bart.

"What a queer fancy!" said the Doctor.

"He must have an unusually large soul," said Uncle Jonah.

"Every soul is big enough for the man to move in, small as it is,"
said Bart.

"What is your youth doing in his, now?" asked the Doctor.

"He is sitting down, resigned," answered Bart.

"If his soul was dark, why was he blindfolded?" asked the Doctor.

"Well, I don't know. For the same reason that men with eyes think that
a blind man cannot see so well in the dark, perhaps," was the answer.
"And see here," looking into the water, "away down here is a beautiful
star. There, I can blot it out with my hand! and see, now, how I can
shatter it into wavelets of stars, and now break it into a hundred, by
merely disturbing the water where I see it, 'like sunshine broken in
a rill.' Who knows but it may be the just-arrived light of an old, old
star which has just come to us? How easy to climb back on one of these
filmy rays, myriads of millions of leagues, home to its source! I
will take off the bandage and let the poor boy see it, and climb if he
may."

"You are fanciful and metaphysical," said the Doctor. "Euclid has not
operated, I fear. Why would you go up to the source of that ray? Would
you expect to find God and heaven there?"

"I should but traverse the smallest portion of God," said Bart, "and
yet how far away He seems just now. Somebody's unshapen hand cuts His
light off; and I cannot see Him by looking down, and I haven't the
strength to look up."

"How incoherently you talk; after all, suppose that there is no
God, for do your best, it is but a sentiment, a belief without
demonstrative proof."

"Oh, Doctor, don't! You are material, and go by lines and angles;
cannot you understand that a God whose existence you would have
to prove is no God at all? that if His works and givings out don't
declare and proclaim him, He is a sham? You cannot see and hear,
Doctor, when you are in one of your material moods. Look up, if you
can see no reflection in the waters below."

"Well, when I look into the revealed heaven, for instance, Bart, I see
it peopled with things of the earth, reflected into it from the earth;
showing that the whole idea is of the earth--earthy."

"Oh, Doctor! like the poor old Galilean; when he thought it was all
up, he went out and dug bait, and started off a-fishing. You attend
to your fishing, and let me dream. If God should attempt to reveal
Himself to you to-night, which I wouldn't do, He would have to
elevate and enlarge and change you to a celestial, so that you could
understand Him; or shrink and shrivel Himself to your capacity, and
address you on your level, as I do, using the language and imagery of
this earth, and you would answer Him as you do me--'It is all of the
earth--earthy.' I want to sleep."

The Doctor pondered as if there was a matter for thought in what
he had heard, and a little ripple of under-talk ran on about the
subjects, the everlasting old, old and eternally new problems that
men have dreamed and stumbled over, and always will--which Bart had
dreamily spoken of as if they were very familiar to his thoughts, and
they spoke of him, and wondered if anything had happened, and pulled
their boat to a new position, while the overtaxed youth subsided
into fitful slumber. Theodore finally awoke him, and said that they
proposed to light up the jack, if he would take the spear, and they
would push out to deeper water, and try for bass. Bart stared about
him uncomprehendingly for a moment. "Oh, Theodore, my fishing days
are over! I will never 'wound the gentle bosom of this lake' with fish
spear, or gig, or other instrument; and I've backed this old rifle
around for the last time to-day."

"Bart, think of all our splendid times in the woods!"

"What a funny dream I had: I dreamed I was a young Indian, not John
Brown's 'little Indian,' but a real red, strapping, painted young
Indian, and our tribe was encamped over on the west side of this
Indian lake, by Otter Point; and I was dreadfully in love with the
chief's daughter."

"Who didn't love you again," said Theodore.

"Of course not, being a well-brought up young Indianess: and I went
to the Indian spring, that runs into the pond, just above 'Barker's
Landing,' that you all know of."

"I never knew that it was an Indian spring," said Young.

"Well, it is," replied Bart. "It has a sort of an earthen rim around
it, or had a few minutes ago; and the water bubbles up from the
bottom. Well, you drop a scarlet berry into it, and if it rises and
runs over the rim, the sighed-for loves you, or she don't, and I have
forgotten which. I found a scarlet head of ginseng, and dropped the
seeds in one after another, and they all plumped straight to the
bottom."

"Well, what was the conclusion?"

"Logical. The berries were too heavy for the current, or the current
was too weak for the berries."

"And the Indianess?"

"She and all else faded out."

"Oh, pshaw! how silly!" said Young. "Will you take the spear, or won't
you?"

"Will you take the spear, or won't you?" replied Bart, mimicking him
with great effect.

"Have you heard from Henry lately?" asked Uncle Jonah.

"A few days ago," answered Bart, who turned moodily away like a
peevish child angered with half sleep, and a pang from the thrust he
had received.

"Henry is the most ambitious young man I ever knew," said the Doctor;
"I fear he may never realize his aspirations."

"Why not?" demanded Bart, with sudden energy. "What is there that my
brother Henry may not hope to win, I would like to know? He will win
it or die in the effort."

"He will not, if he lives a thousand years," said Young, annoyed at
Bart's mimicking him. "It ain't in him."

"What ain't in him, Old Testament?" demanded Bart, with asperity.

"The stuff. I've sounded him; it ain't there!"

"You've sounded him! Just as you are now sounding this bottomless
pond, with a tow string six feet long, having an angle worm at one
end, and an old hairy curmudgeonly grub at the other."

"There, Brother Young," said Uncle Jonah, "stop before worse comes."

"Mr. Young," said Bart, a moment later, with softened voice, making
way towards him, "forgive me if you can. I've done with coarse and
vulgar speeches like that. You believe in Henry, and only spoke to
annoy me. I take it all back. I will even spear you some bass, if
Theodore will light up the jack. Give me the oars, and let me wake up
a little, while we go to better ground below."

For a few moments he handled the polished, slender-tined, long-handled
spear with great dexterity and success, and told the story of old
Leather Stocking spearing bass from the Pioneers. He soon ceased,
however, and declared he would do no more, and his companions,
disgusted with his freaky humor, prepared to return. Bart, casting
down his spear, remained in moody silence until they landed. Theodore
picked up his rifle, the fish were placed in baskets, the tackle
stowed away, the boat secured, and the party proceeded homeward.

Bart lived further from the pond than any of the party, and Theodore,
who loved him, and was kind to his moods, taking a few of the finest
fish, accompanied him home. As they were about to separate from Uncle
Jonah--the father of Theodore--he turned to Bart, and said: "Something
has happened, no matter what; don't be discouraged, you stick to them
old books; there's souls in 'em, and they will carry you out to your
place, some time."

"Thank you, thank you, Uncle Jonah!" said Bart, warmly; "these are the
only encouraging words I've heard for two years."

"Theodore," said Bart, as they walked on, "what an uncomfortable bore
I must have been to-night."

"Oh, I don't know! we thought that something had happened, perhaps."

"No, I'm trying to change, and be more civil and quiet, and have been
thinking it all over, and don't feel quite comfortable; and we have
both something to do besides run in the woods. You were very good to
come with me, Theodore," he said, as they parted at the gate.




CHAPTER X.

AFTER THE FLOOD.


The next morning Bart was not up as usual, and George rushed into the
low-ceiled room, under the roof.

"Bart! breakfast is ready! Ma thinks it strange you ain't up. That was
a splendid big bass. Where did you take him? Are you sick?" as he came
in.

"No, Georgie; I am only languid and dull. I must have been wofully
tired."

"I should think you would be, running all day and up all night. I
should think you'd be hungry, too, by this time."

"Georgie, how handsome you look this morning! What a splendid young
man you will be, and so bright, and joyous, and good! Everybody will
love you; no woman will scorn you. There, tell mother not to wait! I
will get up soon."

Some time after, the light, quick step of his mother was heard
approaching his door, where she paused as if to listen.

"I am up, mother," called out Bart; and she found him partly dressed,
and sitting listlessly on his bed, pale and dejected.

"It is nothing, mother; I'm only a little depressed and dull. I'll be
all right in an hour. I ran in the woods a good deal, took cold, and
am tired."

She looked steadily and wistfully at him. The great change in his face
could not escape her. Weary he looked, and worn, as from a heart-ill.

"What has happened, Barton? Did you go to anybody's house? Whom did
you see?"

"No; I went to the pond, and met the Doctor and Uncle Jonah, and
Theodore came home with me."

"Did you meet Julia Markham anywhere?"

"I did; she was going home from Coe's by the old road, and I went out
of the woods with her."

A long, hard-drawn breath from his mother, who saw that he took her
question like a stab.

"It is no matter, mother. It had to be over some time."

"Barton! you don't mean, Barton--"

"I do, just that, mother," steadily. "She was kinder in her scorn than
she meant. It was what I needed."

"Her scorn! her scorn, Barton!"

"Yes, her scorn, mother," decidedly and firmly.

"You must have talked and acted foolishly, Barton."

"I did talk and act foolishly, and I take the consequences."

"You are both young, Barton, and you have all the world in which to
overcome your faults and repair your mistakes, and Julia--"

"Not another word of her, mother dear! She has gone more utterly out
of my life than as if she were buried. Then I might think of her; now
I will not," firmly.

"Oh, that this should come to you now, my poor, poor boy!"

"Don't pity me, mother! I am soft enough now, and don't you for a
moment think that I have nothing else to do in this world but to be
killed out of it by the scorn of a girl. Let us not think of these
Markhams. The Judge is ambitious, and proud of his wealth and self,
and his daughter is ambitious too. The world wants me; it has work for
me. I can hear its voices calling me now, and I am not ready. Don't
think I am to sit and languish and pine for any girl;" and his mouth
was firm with will and purpose, and a great swell of pride and pain
agitated the bosom of his mother, who recognized the high elements of
a nature drawn from her own.

"You know, mother," he continued, thoughtfully, "that I am not one
to be loved. I am not handsome and popular, like Morris, whom all
men like and many women love; nor thoughtful and accomplished and
considerate, like Henry, whom everybody esteems and respects, and of
whom so much is expected."

"Do you envy them, Barton?"

"Envy them, mother? Don't I love the world for loving Morris? Don't I
follow him about to feel the gladness that he brings? Don't I live on
the praises of Henry? and don't I tear every man that utters a doubt
of his infallibility? Poor old Dominie Young! I was savage on him last
night, for an unnecessary remark about Henry; and I'll go and hear him
preach, to show my contrition; and penitence can't go further. Now,
mother dear, I probably wanted this, and I am now down on the flat,
hard foundation of things. Don't blame this Julia, and don't think of
her in connection with me. No girl will ever scorn one of your boys
but once."

She lingered, and would have said more; but he put her away with
affected gayety, and said he was coming down immediately,--and he did.
But the melancholy chords vibrated long.

There was another overhauling of the little desk, and innumerable
sketches of various excellence, having a family resemblance, with
faults in common, were sent to join the departed verses.

That night, in a letter to Henry, he said: "I've burned the last of my
ships, not saving even a small boat."


       *       *       *       *       *

Mrs. Ridgeley pondered over the revelation which her woman's
intuitions had drawn from Barton. No woman can understand why a son
of hers should fail with any natural-born daughter of woman, and she
suspected that poor Bart had, with his usual impetuosity, managed the
affair badly. No matter if he had; she felt that he was not an object
of any woman's scorn; and this particular Julia, she had every reason
to know, would live to correct her impressions and mourn her folly.
She, however, was incapable of injustice to even her own sex; and if
Julia did not fancy Barton, she was not to blame, however faulty her
taste. She remembered with satisfaction that she and hers were under
no obligations to the Markhams, and she only hoped that her son would
be equal to adhering to his purpose. She had little fear of this,
although she knew nothing of the offensive manner of his rejection,
and had no intimation of what followed it. To her, Julia was to be
less than the average girl of her acquaintance.

In the afternoon the two mothers met by accident, at the store,
whither Mrs. Ridgeley had gone to make a few small purchases, and
Mrs. Markham to examine the newly-arrived goods. Mrs. Ridgeley had
no special inducement to waste herself on Mrs. Markham, and none to
exhibit any sensibility at the treatment of Barton; her manner was an
admirable specimen of the cool, neighborly, indifferently polite. She
was by nature a thorough-bred and high-spirited woman; and had Julia
openly murdered poor Bart, the manner of his mother would not have
betrayed her knowledge of the fact to Mrs. Markham. That lady
busied herself with some goods until Mrs. Ridgeley had completed her
purchases, when she approached her with her natural graciousness,
which was so spontaneous that it was hardly a virtue, and was met
with much of her own frank suavity. These ladies never discussed the
weather, or their neighbors, or hired girls,--which latter one of them
did not have; and with a moment's inquiry after each other's welfare,
in which each omitted the family of the other, Mrs. Markham asked
Mrs. Ridgeley's judgment as to the relative qualities of two or three
pieces of ladies' fabrics, carelessly saying that she was choosing for
Julia, who was quite undecided. Mrs. Ridgeley thought Miss Markham was
quite right to defer the matter to her mother's judgment, and feared
that her own ignorance of goods of that quality would not enable her
to aid Mrs. Markham. Mrs. Markham casually remarked that there was
much demand for the goods, and that Julia had had a long walk around
to the Coes the day before, and home through the woods, and was
a little wearied to-day, and had referred the matter to her. Mrs.
Ridgeley understood that Miss Markham was accustomed to healthy
out-door exercise, and yet young girls were sometimes, she presumed,
nearly as imprudent as boys, etc.; she trusted Miss Markham would soon
be restored.

If either of the ladies looked the other in the face while speaking
and spoken to, as is allowable, neither discovered anything by the
scrutiny. Mrs. Markham thought Mrs. Ridgeley must suffer much on
account of the rashness of so many spirited boys, though she believed
that Mrs. Ridgeley was fortunate in the devotion of all her sons. Mrs.
Ridgeley thanked her; as to her boys, she had become accustomed to
their caring for themselves, and when they were out she seldom was
anxious about them. Mrs. Markham thought that they must have some
interesting adventures in their hunting excursions. Mrs. Ridgeley said
that Morris always enjoyed telling of what he had done and met in the
woods, while Barton never mentioned anything, unless he had found a
rare flower, a splendid tree, or a striking view, or something of that
sort.

The ladies gave each other much well-bred attention, and Mrs. Markham
went on to remark that she had not seen Barton since his return, but
that Julia had mentioned meeting him once or twice. Mrs. Ridgeley
replied that soon after Barton came home, she remembered that he spoke
of meeting Miss Markham at the store. The faces of the ladies told
nothing to each other. Mrs. Markham gave an animated account of her
call at the house being built by Major Ridgeley for Mr. Snow, in
Auburn, and said that Mr. Snow was promising that Major Ridgeley might
give a ball in it; and the Major undertook to have it ready about New
Year's, and that the ball would be very select, she understood; the
house was to contain a very fine ball-room, etc.

Had Mrs. Ridgeley received a letter recently from Henry? She had.
Would Barton probably go and study with his brother? She thought that
would be pleasant for both. Mrs. Markham was very kind to inquire
about the boys. Would Mrs. Ridgeley permit Mrs. Markham to send her
home in her new buggy? It stood at the door. Mrs. Ridgeley thanked
her; she was going up by Coe's, and so out across the bit of woods,
home. Did not Mrs. Ridgeley fear the animal that had been heard to
scream in these woods? Mrs. Ridgeley did not in the least, and she
doubted if there was one.

The ladies separated. Mrs. Markham decided that Barton had not told
his mother of meeting Julia the day before, nor of their adventure
afterwards, and she was relieved from the duty of explaining anything;
and she thought well of the young man's discretion, or pride.

Mrs. Ridgeley thought that Mrs. Markham was talking at her for a
purpose, perhaps to find out what Barton told her; and it was some
little satisfaction, perhaps, to know that Julia did not feel like
being out,--but then Julia was a noble girl, and would feel regret at
inflicting pain. Poor Bart! Generous Mrs. Ridgeley! It also occurred
to Mrs. Ridgeley that Mrs. Markham did not return to the subject of
the goods, and she was really afraid that Julia might lose her dress.




CHAPTER XI.

UNCLE ALECK.


The marvellous power of Christianity to repeat itself in new forms
apparently variant, and reveal itself under new aspects, or rather its
wonderful fulness and completeness, that enables the different ages of
men, under ever-varying conditions of culture and development, to find
in it their greatest needs supplied, and their highest civilization
advanced, may be an old observation. A change in the theological
thought and speculation of New England was beginning to make its way
to the surface at about the time of the migration of its sons and
daughters to the far-off Ohio wilderness, and many minds carried with
them into the woods a tinge of the new light. Theodore Parker had not
announced the heresy that there was an important difference between
theology and religion, and that life was of more consequence than
creed. But Calvinism had come to mean less to some minds, and there
was another turning back to the great source by strong new seekers,
to whom the accepted formulas had become empty, dry shells, to be
pulverized, and the dead dust kneaded anew with the sweet waters of
the ever fresh fountain. Those who bore the germs of the new thought
to the wild freedom of nature, in the woods, found little to restrain
or direct it; and, as is usual upon the remoulding of religious
thought, while the strong religious nature questions only as to the
true, many of different temperament boldly question the truth of all.
The seeds and sources of a religious revolution are remote, and
its apparent results a generation of heretics and infidels. Heresy
sometimes becomes orthodoxy in its turn, and in its career towards
that, and in its days of zeal and warfare, the infidel often becomes
its convert.

Those in the new colony, who turned to the somewhat softer and sweeter
givings out of the Great Teacher, and to whom these qualities made the
predominant elements of his doctrines, were few in numbers, scattered
and weak, while the mass of the immigrants were staunch in the
theology of their old home. The holders of the new ideas not only
suffered from the odium of all new heresies, but their doctrines were
especially odious, as tending to destroy the wholesome sanctions of
fitting punishments, while, like the teachers of all ideas at variance
with the old, they were surrounded by and confounded with the herd of
old scoffers and unbelievers, who always try to ally themselves
with those who, for any reason, doubt or question the dogmas always
rejected by them.

And so it is that the apostles of a new dogma come to be weighted
with whatever of odium may attach to the old rejectors of the old; and
there is always this bond of sympathy between the new heretic and the
old infidel; they are both opposed to the holders of the old faith,
and hence so far are allies.

In Newbury, in that far-off time, a dozen families, perhaps,
respectable for intelligence and morality, were zealous acceptors of
the new ideas; and about these, to their great scandal, gathered the
straggling, rude spirits and doubtful characters that lightly float on
the wave of emigration, to be dropped wherever that subsides.

The organizing power of the new ideas in itself, was not great. Their
spirit was not, and cannot, be aggressive. They consisted in part of
a rejection of much that made Puritanism intolerant in doctrine, and
that furnished it with its organizing and militant power.

Men organize to do, and not merely to not do. Among the most earnest
in the support of these ideas were Thomas Ridgeley and his wife, who
were also among the most prominent in their neighborhood. Their
public religious exercises were not frequent, and were holden in a
school-house in their vicinity, the most attractive feature of which
was the excellent singing of the small congregation. Mrs. Ridgeley
came from a family of much local celebrity for their vocal powers,
while her husband was not only an accomplished singer, but master of
several instruments, and in the new settlements he was often employed
as a teacher of music.

The preacher of this small congregation was Mr. Alexander, "Uncle
Aleck," as everybody called him, who lived in the west part of the
town, on the border of "the woods." A man well in years, inferior in
person, with a mild, sweet, benevolent face, and blameless, dreamy
life, he spent much time in "sarching the Scripters," as he expressed
it, in constant conversations and mild disputations of Bible texts
and doctrines, and sermonizing at the Sunday assemblies of his
co-believers. He was a man without culture, without the advantage of
much converse with cultivated people, of rather feeble and slender
mental endowments, but of a wonderfully sweet, serene, cheerful
temper, and a most abiding faith. His was a heart and soul whose love
and compassion embraced the created universe. He believed that God
created only to multiply the objects of His own love, and that the
ultimate end of all Providence was to bless, and he did not doubt that
He would manage to have His way. That He had ever generated forces and
powers beyond His control, he did not believe. The gospels, to him,
were luminous with love, mercy, and protecting providence; and while
his sermons were faulty and confused, his language vicious, and his
pronounciation depraved, so that he furnished occasional provocation
to scoffers among the profane, and to critics among the orthodox,
there was always such sweetness and tenderness, and love so broad,
deep, rich and pure, that few earnest or thoughtful minds ever heard
him without being moved and elevated by his benignant spirit.

He was always in converse with the Master in his early ministrations,
in beautiful, far-off, peaceful Galilee. He was a contented and
happy feeder upon the manna and wine of those early wanderings and
preachings among a simple and primitive people; and was forever
lingering away from Jerusalem, and avoiding the final catastrophe,
which he could never contemplate without shuddering horror. No power
on earth could ever convert his simple faith to the idea that this
great sacrifice was an ill-devised scheme to end in final failure; and
he preached accordingly. The elder Ridgeley had been dead many years;
the simple faith had gained few proselytes; Uncle Aleck's sermons made
little impression, and gained nothing in clearness of statement or
doctrine, but ripened and deepened in tenderness and sweetness. His
people remained unpopular, and nothing but the force of character of a
few saved them from personal proscription.

The Ridgeley boys, the older ones, were steady in the faith of their
parents. Morris openly acknowledged it and Henry had been destined
by his father to its teachings; Barton stood by his mother, however he
esteemed her faith, and occasionally said sharp and pungent things of
its opponents, which confirmed the unpopular estimate in which he was
undoubtedly held.

The Markhams were orthodox. Dr. Lyman was a nearly unbelieving
materialist at this time, but had several times "wabbled," as Bart
expressed it, from orthodoxy to infidelity, without touching the
proscribed ground of Uncle Aleck.

Mr. Young was an obsolete revival exhorter, whose life did little
to illustrate and enforce his givings out. He had a weakness for the
elder Scriptures; and hence the irreverent name applied to him in the
boat by Bart.




CHAPTER XII.

A CONSECRATION.


Among the adherents of uncle Aleck were the Coes, a mild, moony race,
and recently it was understood that Emeline, the only daughter in a
family of eight or nine, a languid, dreamy, verse-making mystic, had
expressed a wish to receive the rite of Christian baptism, at that
time practised by Uncle Aleck and his associates in Northern Ohio.

The ceremony had been postponed on account of the illness of her
mother, and was finally performed on the Sunday following the
incidents last narrated. A meeting was to be holden in the primitive
forest, near Coe's cabin, on the margin of a deep, crystal pool,
formed naturally by the springs that supplied Coe's Creek. Few events
happened in that quiet region, and this was an event. News of it had
circulated widely, and hundreds attended.

The occasion was not without a certain touching interest. The beauty
of the day, the wildness of the scenery under the grand old trees,
with rude rocks, beautiful slopes, and running, pure water, and the
deepening tints of autumn in sky, cloud and foliage,--the warm shafts
of sunshine that here and there lit it all up,--the sincere gravity
that fell as a Sabbath hush on the expectant multitude, who seemed to
realize the presence of a solemn mystery,--carried back an imaginative
mind to an earlier day and a more primitive people, when the early
Christians, in the absence of schism, administered the same rite.

Uncle Aleck, imbued with the sweetest spirit of his Master, seemed
inspired with a sense of the sacredness of the act he was to perform.
Of its divine origin, and sweet and consecrating efficacy, he had not
the slightest doubt. The simple services of his faith he performed in
a way that harmonized entirely with the occasion and its surroundings.
A grand hymn under the old trees was sung by the choir with fine
effect; a short, fervent prayer, the reading of two or three portions
of one of the gospels, and a few words of sweet and simple fervor,
expressive of a great love and sacrifice, and the unutterable hope
and rest of its grateful acknowledgment in the public act about to be
performed, followed; and then the believing, trembling girl was led
into the translucent waters, which for a single instant closed over
her, and was returned, with a little cry of ecstasy, to her friends.
Another hymn, a simple benediction, and the solemnly impressed crowd
broke up into little knots, and left the spot vacant to the silence of
approaching night.

Conspicuous in this gathering, as conspicuous everywhere where he
appeared, was Major Ridgeley, an elder brother of Bart. Slightly
taller, and absolutely straight in the shoulders, with an uppish turn
to his head, the Major was universally pronounced a handsome man. His
large, bright, hazel eye, pure red and white complexion just touched
by the sun, with a world of black curling hair swept carelessly back
from, an open white brow, with well-formed mouth and chin, and his
frank, dashing, manly way, cheery voice, and gay manner, made him a
universal favorite; and, farmer and carpenter though he was, he was
welcomed as an equal by the best people in the community. He had
little literary cultivation, but mixing freely among men, and received
with universal kindness by all women, he had the ready manners of a
man of the world, which, with a shrewd vigor of mind, qualified him
for worldly success.

Bart came upon the ground with his mother, near whom he remained,
and to whom he was very attentive. To him the whole thing was very
impressive. His poetic fancy idealized it, and carried him back till
he seemed to see and hear the dedication of a young, pure spirit to
the sweet sacredness of a holy life, as in the days of the preachings
of the apostles. When the final hymn was given out he stood by
his brother, facing most of the crowd, and for the first time they
recognized in him a nameless something that declared and asserted
itself--something that vaguely hinted of the sheaf of the boy Joseph,
that arose and stood upright, and to which their sheaves involuntarily
did obeisance.

Still very young, and less handsome than his brother, he was yet
more striking, pale and fair, with little color, and a face of boyish
roundness, which began to develop lines of thought and strength. His
brow, not so beautiful, was more ample; his features were regular, but
lacked the light, bright, vivacious expression of Morris; while from
his deep, unwinking eyes men saw calmly looking out a strong, deep
nature, not observed before. He joined his mother and brother in the
last hymn. Everybody knew the Ridgeleys could sing. They carried
the burden of the grand and simple old tune nearly alone. The fine
mezzo-soprano of the mother, the splendid tenor of Morris, and the
rich baritone of Bart, in their united effect, had never been equalled
in the hearing of that assembly. The melody was a sweet and fitting
finale of the day, swelling out and dying away in the high arches of
the forest.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Coes were objects of the kindness of Mrs. Markham and Julia,
obnoxious as was their religious faith; but Mrs. Markham was tolerant,
and she and her husband and daughter, with most of the State road
people, were present.

While they were waiting for the crowd to disperse, so that they could
reach their carriage, the Ridgeleys, who began to move out, on their
way home, approached, and were pleasantly recognized by the Markhams,
with whom the Major was a great favorite. The two parties joined,
shook hands, and interchanged a pleasant greeting--all but Bart. He
moved a little away, and acknowledged their presence by holding his
hat in his hand, as if unconscious that he was a spectacle for the
eyes of some of them, and without betraying that he could by any
possibility care. It was a sore trial for him.

Mrs. Markham looked at him several times as if she would go to him,
and an expression once or twice came into the sweet and pensive face
of Julia, that seemed to mean that she wished she could say to him,
"I want so much to thank you for your courage and generosity!" Morris
noticed the strange conduct of Barton, and felt an impulse to call to
him, and on their way home he spoke to him about it.

"Why, Bart, what is the matter? I thought you and the Markhams were on
the best of terms; especially you and Julia and Mrs. Markham."

"Well, Major, you see a shrewd man can be mistaken, don't you?"

"What has happened?"

"That which renders it absolutely impossible that I should ever
voluntarily go into the presence of these Markhams, and especially of
Julia."

The voice was low, and full of force, with a little bitterness. Morris
looked at his brother with incredulous amazement.

"Morris," said Bart, "don't ask more about it. Mother guessed
something of it. Pray don't refer to it ever again."

Morris walked forward, with their mother; and when he turned back to
the stricken face of his young brother, there was a great tenderness
in his eye; but his brow gathered and his face darkened into a
momentary frown. He was by nature frank and brave, and could not long
do any one injustice. His nature was hopeful, and bright, and manly.
No girl could always scorn his brother Bart; nor did he believe that
Bart would willingly remain scorned.




CHAPTER XIII.

BLACKSTONE.


The town of Burton was one of the oldest in the county. It was the
residence of many wealthy men, the seat of Judge Hitchcock, Chief
Justice of the State, as well as the home of Seabury Ford, a rising
young politician, just commencing a most useful and honorable career,
which was to conduct him to the Chief Magistracy of the State.

The young Whig party had failed to elect Gen. Harrison, but the result
of the contest assured it of success in the campaign of 1840, for
which a vast magazine was rapidly and silently accumulating. The
monetary and credit disasters of '36-'37, occurring in the third term
of uninterrupted party rule, would of themselves have overthrown a
wiser and better administration than that of Mr. Van Buren, patriotic
and enlightened as that was, contrasted with some which followed.

Men, too, were beginning to examine and analyze the nature and designs
of slavery; and already Theodore Weld had traversed the northern and
middle States, and with his marvellous eloquence and logic, second
to none of those who followed him, had stirred to their profoundest
depths the cool, strong, intellectual souls of the New Englanders of
those regions.

One early October morning, as Gen. Ford, then commander of a brigade
of militia, in which Major Ridgeley held a commission, was arranging
some papers in his law office, a young man paused a moment in front
of the open door, and upon being observed, lifted his hat and stepped
frankly forward. Young men in Ohio then seldom removed their hats to
men, and rarely to women; and the act, gracefully done as it was, was
remarked by the lawyer.

"General Ford, I believe?" said the youth.

"Yes; will you walk in?"

"I am Barton Ridgeley," said the young man, stepping in; "usually
called Bart."

"A brother of Major Ridgeley?"

"Yes; though I am thought not to be much like him."

"The Major is a warm friend of mine," said the General, "and I should
be glad to serve you."

"Thank you, General; I feel awkward over my errand here," hesitating;
"I wanted to see a lawyer in his office, with his books and papers,
and be permitted to look, especially at his books."

"You are entirely welcome. I am not much of a lawyer, and have but a
few books, but nothing would give me more pleasure than to have you
examine them."

"I may annoy you."

"Not at all. I've not much to do. Take a seat."

Bart did so. He found the General, whom he had only seen at a distance
on muster days, a man of the ordinary height, with heavy shoulders,
with a little stoop in them, a very fine head and face, and a clear,
strong, grayish, hazel eye; and, on the whole, striking in his
appearance. There were files of leading newspapers, the _National
Intelligencer, Ohio State Journal, Courier and Inquirer_, etc. These
did not so much attract the young man's attention; but, approaching a
large book-case, filled compactly with dull yellow books, uniform in
their dingy, leathery appearance, he asked: "Are these law-books?"

"Yes, those are law-books."

"And these, then, are the occult cabalistical books, full of darkness
and quirks and queer terms, in which is hidden away, somewhere, a rule
or twist or turn that will help the wrong side of every case?"

"So people seem to think," said the General, smiling.

"Does a student have to read all of these?"

"Oh, no, not to exceed a dozen or fourteen."

"A-h-h-h! not more than that? Will you show me some of them?"

"Certainly. There, this is Blackstone, four volumes, which covers
the whole field of the law; all the other elementary writers are only
amplifications of the various titles or heads of Blackstone."

"Indeed! only four volumes! Can one be a lawyer by reading
Blackstone?"

"A thorough mastery of it is an admirable foundation of a good
lawyer."

"How long is it expected that an ordinary dullard would require to
master Blackstone?"

"Some students do it in four months. I have known one or two to do it
in three. They oftener require six, and some a year."

Bart could hardly repress his astonishment. "Four months! a month to
one of these books!" running them over. "They have some notes, I see;
but, General, a man should commit it to memory in that time!"

The General smiled.

"This is an English work; is there an American which answers to
Blackstone?"

"Yes, Kent's Commentaries, four volumes, which many prefer. I have
not got it. Also Swift's work, in two volumes, which does not stand
so high. Judge Cowan, of New York, has also written a book of some
merit."

"Shall I annoy you if I sit down and read Blackstone a little?"

"Not at all."

He read the title-page, glanced at the American preface, etc., and
then plunged in promiscuously. "It has less Latin than I expected. Is
it good classical Latin?"

A smile.

"It is law Latin, and most of it would have puzzled Cicero and Virgil,
I fear. Are you a Latin scholar?"

"I'm not a scholar at all. I've been an idler, generally, and have
picked up only a few phrases of Latin. I've a brother, a student with
Giddings & Wade, at Jefferson, who would have told me all I want to
know, but I had a fancy to find it out first hand."

"Exactly;" and the General thought he looked like a youth who would
not take things second-hand. "They are able lawyers, and it is said
Giddings will retire from the bar and run for Congress. It is thought
that Mr. Whittlesey will resign, and make an opening."

Bart thought that the General spoke of this with interest, and he made
another dab at Blackstone. He then wandered off to a small but select
case of miscellaneous books. "Adam Smith!" he said, with animation; "I
never saw that before. How interesting it must be to get back to the
beginning of things. And here is Junius, whom I have only read about!
and Hume! and Irving! and Scott's Novels! Oh dear, oh dear! General,
what a happy man you must be, with all these about you, and these
newspapers, to come and go between you and the outside world."

"Oh! I don't know. I have but few books, compared with real libraries,
and yet I must say I have more than I make useful."

Bart plunged into Ivanhoe for a moment, and then laid it down with a
sigh.

The General, who found much in the frank enthusiasm of Bart to attract
him, asked him many questions about himself, surroundings, etc., all
of which were answered with a modest frankness, that won much on the
open, manly nature of Ford.

Bart said he most of all wanted to study law, but he did not know how
to accomplish it. He was without means, and wanted to remain with his
mother, and he wanted only to look at the books, and learn a little
about what he would have to do, the time, etc. The General said "the
laws of Ohio required two years' study, before admission, which would
be upon examination before the Supreme Court, or by a committee of
lawyers appointed for that purpose; lawyers who received students
usually charged fifty or sixty dollars per year for use of books and
instruction, the last of which often did not amount to much."

Bart looked wistfully at the books, and arose to go. The General
asked him to remain to dinner with such hearty cordiality, that Bart
assented, and the General took him into the house and introduced him
to Mrs. Ford, a tall, slender woman, of fine figure, with striking
features, and really handsome; of very kindly manners, and full of
genuine good womanly qualities, who believed in her husband, and was
full of ambition for him.

The quiet, easy manners, and frank, sparkling conversation of Bart,
won her good-will at once.

"Was he acquainted with Judge Markham's people?"

"A little."

"Mrs. Markham is one of the most superior and accomplished women I
ever met," said Mrs. Ford. Of course he was acquainted with Julia, who
was thought to be the belle of all that region?

Barton was slightly acquainted with her, and thought her very
beautiful. His acquaintance with young ladies of her position was
very limited, but he could believe that few superiors of hers could be
found anywhere, etc.

Poor Bart!

Mrs. Ford presumed that a great many young men had their eyes on her,
and it would be a matter of interest to see where her choice would
fall.

It was some satisfaction to Bart to feel that he could hear this point
referred to without any but the same pain and bruise of heart that any
thought of her occasioned.

After dinner, General Ford said to Bart that if he really wished to
enter upon the study of the law, he would do what he could for him;
that he would permit him to take home such books as he could spare,
and when he had read one he would examine him upon it, and give him
another.

This was more than had entered Bart's mind; and so unaccustomed was he
to receiving favors, that the sensations of gratitude were new to him,
and he hardly expressed them satisfactorily to himself.

His new tutor had taken a real liking to him; he may have remembered
that the Major was one of the rising young men in the south-west part
of the county, whom he liked also. He called Barton's attention to the
chapters of Blackstone that would demand his more careful reading, and
they parted well pleased with each other.

Bart pushed off across the fields in a right line for home, with the
priceless book in his hand; light came to him, and opportunity. Lord!
how his heart and soul and brain arose and went out to meet them! As
the branches of the young forest-tree that springs up by a river-side
shoot out, rank, and strong, and full, to the beautiful light and air,
and so, too, as the tree grows one-sided and disfigured, the danger is
that this embodiment of young force and energy may develop one-sided.
The poetic, upward tendency of his nature will help him, and his
devotion to his mother will hold him unwarped, while the struggle
with a great, pure, and utterly hopeless passion shall at least make
a sacred desert of his heart, where no unhallowed thought shall take
root. His was eminently a nature to be strengthened and purified by
suffering.

But he had the law in his hands. No matter how gnarled, warped or
obscure were the paths to its lurking-places, he would find them all
out, and pluck out all its meanings, and make its soul his own. He had
already learned from his brother the fallacy of the vulgar judgment of
the law, and he knew enough of history to know that some of the wisest
and greatest of men were eminent lawyers, and he thought nothing of
the moral dangers of the law as a profession. He had never been even
in a magistrate's court, but he had heard the legends and traditions
of the advocates; had read that eminent fiction, Wirt's Life of
Patrick Henry, and a volume of Charles Phillips's speeches, and had
felt that strong inner going forth of the soul that yearned to find
utterance in oversweeping speech.

Several times on his way home he stopped to read, and only suspended
his studies at the approach of evening, which found him east of the
pond, lying across his direct route, and which he found the means of
passing.

Blackstone he took in earnest, and smiled to find nothing that he did
not seem to comprehend, and often went back, fearing that the seeming
might not be the real meaning.

At the end of a week he returned to his kind friend, the General,
not without misgivings as to the result of his work. He found him at
leisure in the afternoon, and was received with much kindness.

"Well, how goes Blackstone?"

"Indeed I don't know; and I am anxious, if you have leisure, to find
out."

The General took the book, and turning to the definition of law, and
the statement of a few elementary principles, found that they were
thoroughly understood. Turning on, he paused with his finger in the
book.

"What do you think of the English Constitution?"

Bart looked a little puzzled.

"The English government seems to be an admirable structure--on paper;
but as to the principles that lie below it, or around it, that
govern and control its workings, and from which it can't depart, I am
cloudy."

"Yes, a good many are; but then there is, as you know, a great
unwritten English Constitution--certain great fixed principles which
from time to time have been observed, through many ages, until their
observance has become a law, from which the government cannot depart,
and they take the form of maxims and rules."

"I think I understand what you mean; but to me everything is in
cloud-land, vague and shifting, and the fact that nobody has ever
attempted to put in writing these principles, or even to enumerate
them, leads one to doubt whether really there are such things. When
king, lords and commons are, in theory and practice, absolutely
omnipotent, I can't comprehend how there can be any other
constitution. When they enact a law, nobody can question it, nobody
can be heard against it; no court can pronounce it unconstitutional.
What may have been thought to be unconstitutional they can declare
to be law, and that ends it. So they can annihilate any one of the
so-called constitutional maxims. When a party in power wants to do a
thing, it is constitutional; when a minister or great noble is to be
got rid of, he is impeached for a violation of the constitution, and
constitutionally beheaded."

"Well," said the General, smiling, "but this, for instance: the great
palladium of British liberty, taxation, must be accompanied with
representation."

"Yes; that, if adhered to, would protect property and its owners;
but then it never has been carried out, even in England, while the
non-taxpayer is wholly out of its reach; and my recollection is, that
the constitutional violation of this palladium of the Constitution by
king, lords and commons, produced a lively commotion, some sixty-odd
years ago."

"Yes, I've heard of that; but the attempt to tax the colonies was
clearly unconstitutional; they were without representation in the
Parliament that enacted the law."

"But then, General, you are to remember that, according to Blackstone,
Parliament was and is, by the English Constitution, omnipotent. The
fact is, we took one part of the constitution, and George the other;
we kept our part, and all our land, and George maintained his, on his
island, strong as ever; and yet there, property-owners always have
been and always will be taxed, who do not vote. I fear that it will be
found that all the other maxims have from time to time suffered in the
same way."

"You must admit, however," said the General, "that the maxims in favor
of personal freedom have usually been adhered to in England proper."

"Yes, the sturdy elements of the natural constitution of the English
people have vindicated their liberty against all constitutional
violations of it; and while I cordially detest them, one and all,
there isn't another nation in Europe that I am willing to be descended
from."

"I fear that is the common sentiment among our people," said the
General. "And so you think the world-famous British Constitution
may be written in one condensed sentence--the old English
formula--Parliament is omnipotent."

"Yes, just that. Parliament is the constitution; everything else is
ornamental."

Without expressing any opinion, the General resumed, and turning at
hop, skip and jump, he found that Bart happened to be at home wherever
he alighted. He finally turned to the last page, and asked questions
with the same result, closing the book with:

"Well, what else have you been doing this week?"

"Not much; I've worked a little, dabbled with geometry some, read
Gibbon a little, newspapers less, run some in the woods, and fooled
away some of my time," answered Bart, with a self-condemning air.

"Have you slept any?"

"Oh, yes."

"Oh, dear!" said the General, laughing good-humoredly, and then
looking grave, "this will never do--never!"

"Well, General," said Bart, crestfallen, "I've only had the book a
week, and although I don't memorize easily, I believe I can commit the
whole before a month is out, except the notes."

"Oh, my dear boy, it isn't that! I don't know but there is a man in
the world who, without having seen a law book before, has taken up and
mastered the first volume of Blackstone in a week, but I never heard
of him. What will never do is--it will not do for you to go on in this
way; you would read up a library in a year, if you lived, but will die
in six months, at this rate."

With tears in his eyes, Bart said: "Do not fear me, General; I am
strong and healthy; besides, there are a good many things worse than
death."

"I am serious," said the General. "No mortal can stand such work
long."

"Well, General, I must work while the fit is on; I am thought to be
incapable of keeping to any one thing long."

"How old are you?"

"In my twenty-second year."

"Have you ever practised speaking in public?"

"I am thought to make sharp and rough answers to folks, quite too
much, I believe," answered Bart, laughing; "but, save in a debating
school, where I was ruled out for creating disorder, I've never tried
speech-making."

"You will grow more thoughtful as you grow older," said the General.

"If I do," said Bart, "I know those who think I can't grow old fast
enough."

The General gave him the second volume of Blackstone, with the
injunction to be two weeks with it.

"Suppose I finish it in a week?"

"You must not; but if you do, bring it back, and take a scolding."

"Certainly," said Bart.

The General asked him to go in to tea. Bart thought that would not do,
and excused himself.

       *       *       *       *       *

The end of another week found Bart at the end of the second volume,
and also at General Ford's office. The General was away; but he found
an opportunity further to cultivate the acquaintance of Mrs. Ford, who
introduced him to several of her circle of acquaintance, and permitted
him to take the third volume of Blackstone.

The work was finished with the fourth week, to General Ford's
satisfaction, and Bart was then set to try his teeth on Buller's "Nisi
Prius," made up of the most condensed of all possible abstracts of
intricate cases, stated in the fewest possible words, and those of old
legal significance, the whole case often not occupying more than four
or five lines.

The cases, as there stated, convey no shadow of an idea to the
unlearned mind. What a tussle poor Bart had with them! How often he
turned them over, and bit at and hammered them, before they could be
made to reveal themselves.

The General looked grim when he handed him the book, and said that he
did so by the advice of Judge Hitchcock. He also loaned him Adam Smith
and Junius, with permission to take any books from his library during
the winter, and they parted--the General to go to his duties in the
Legislature, and Barton to work his way on through the winter and into
the law.

The devotion of Bart to his books took him wholly from association
with others. He wrote occasionally to Henry, saying little of what he
was doing, and going rarely to the post-office, and never elsewhere.
He developed more his care of his mother, and a protecting tenderness
to his younger brothers.

Kate Fisher's little party came and went, without Bart's attendance.

The Major was spreading himself out in building houses, clearing land,
and unconsciously preparing the way to a smash-up; and the immediate
care of the family devolved more and more upon the younger brother.




CHAPTER XIV.

THE YOUNG IDEA SHOOTS.


There was a region south, on the State road, partly in the townships
of Auburn and Mantua, that, like "the woods," long remained a
wilderness, and was known as the "Mantua Woods." Within the last year
or two, the whole of it had been sold and settled, with the average of
new settlers, strong, plain, simple people, with a sprinkling of the
rough, and a little element of the dangerous.

They had built there a neat frame school-house, just on the banks
of Bridge Creek, and were fully bent on availing themselves of the
benefits of the Ohio Common School Fund and laws.

Here, on one bleak, late November Monday morning, in front of the
new school-house, stood Bart Ridgeley, who appeared then and there
pursuant to a stipulation made with him, to keep their first school.
He undertook it with great doubt of his ability to instruct the
pupils, but with none of his capacity to manage them. He stood
surrounded by some forty young specimens of both sexes and all
ages--from rough, stalwart young men, bold and fearless in eye and
bearing, down to urchins of five. One-half were girls, and among them
several well-grown lasses, rustic and sweet.

There had also come up seven or eight of the principal patrons, to
see the young school-master and learn of the prospects. They were
evidently disappointed, and wondered what "Morey" could be thinking of
to hire that pale, green boy, with his neat dress and gloves, to come
down there. Grid Bingham or John Craft would throw him out of the
window in a week. Finally, Jo Keys did not hesitate to recommend him
to go home; while Canfield, who knew his brother Morris, thought he
had better try the school.

Bart was surprised and indignant. He cut the matter very short.

"Gentlemen," he said quietly, but most decidedly, "I came down here to
keep your school, and I shall certainly do it," with a little nod
of his head to Keys. "I shall be glad to see you at almost any other
time, but just now I am engaged." The decided way in which he put an
end to the interview was not without its effect.

He called the scholars in, and began. They brought every sort of
reading-book, from the Bible, English Reader, American Preceptor,
Columbian Orator, Third Part, etc., to a New England Primer. But
beyond reading, and spelling, and writing, he had only arithmetic,
grammar and geography. On the whole, he got off well, and before the
end of the first week was on good terms, apparently, with his whole
school, with one or two exceptions; and so on through the second,
which closed on Friday, and Bart turned gladly and eagerly toward
home, to his mother and brothers.

The close of that week had been a little under a cloud, which left
just a nameless shadow over the commencement of the third, and Bart
began it with an uneasy feeling.

Bingham, a short, stout, compact young ruffian, of twenty-two or
twenty-three, not quite as tall as Bart, but a third more in weight,
and who had an ugly reputation as a quarrelsome fellow of many fights,
had at first treated Bart with good-natured toleration, and said he
would let him go on awhile. With him consorted John Craft, a chap
of about his age, but of better reputation. Bingham had broken up a
school the winter before, just below in Mantua, and was from the
first an object of dread to parents in the new district. He was a
dull scholar, and his blunders had exposed him to ridicule, which the
teacher could not always repress. He left the school, on that Friday,
moody and sullen, and came back on Monday full of mischief.

Not a word was said, that reached Bart's ears, but the young women
had a scared look, and an ominous dread seemed to brood over the
school-room. Monday and Tuesday came and went, as did the scholars,
and also Wednesday forenoon.

The room was arranged with three rows of desks on two sides, and one
on the third. Behind these sat the large scholars, with Grid, near the
door. When he called the scholars in, after the recess, Bart quietly
locked the outside door, and put the key in his pocket. He was cool,
collected, and on the alert.

The first class began to read, each rising while reading, and then
sitting down. Bart had observed that Bingham sat with his book closed,
and wholly inattentive to the exercise, and quietly placed himself
within a few feet of his desk.

As it came Bingham's turn, he sat with an assumed look of swaggering
indifference. "Mr. Bingham," said Bart very quietly, "will you read?"

"I'm not goin' to read for any God damned----" the sentence was never
finished, though Grid was; yet just how, nobody who saw it could quite
tell. Something cracked, and Grid and his desk went sprawling into the
middle of the floor. A hand came upon his collar as the last word
was uttered. It was so sudden that he only seized his desk, which was
taken from its fastening at the bottom as if it were pasteboard,
and went in ruins with its occupant. As he struck, half stunned and
surprised, he arose partly to his feet, and received on the side of
his head a full blow from the fist of Bart.

Craft, who had been amazed at the suddenness of the catastrophe, and
who was to have shared in the fight, if necessary, arose hesitatingly
just as Grid received his _quietus_. Bart turned upon him with his
white, galvanized face, and watery, flashing eyes, "Sit down, John
Craft," in a voice that tore him like a rasp on his spine, and John
sat down. During this time, and until now, no other sound was heard
in the room; now a half sob, with suppressed cries, broke from the
terrified girls and children. "Hush! hush! not a word!" said the still
excited master; "it is over, and nobody much hurt." Bingham now began
to rise, and Bart approached him: "Wait a moment, Mr. Bingham," he
said, and, unlocking the outside door: "There! now take your books and
leave, and don't let me find you about this school-house so long as
I remain--go!" and the humbled bully sullenly picked up his small
property and went.

"Mr. Craft," said Bart, approaching that cowed and trembling youth,
"you and I can get along. I don't want to part with you if you will
remain with me. I will excuse you from school this afternoon, and you
can come back in the morning, and that may be the last of it. I will
not humiliate you and myself with any punishment." There was a
tremor in Bart's voice, and a softness in his face. John arose: "Mr.
Ridgeley, I don't know how I came to--I am very sorry--I want to stay
with you."

"All right, John, we will shake hands on it." And they did.

"My poor, poor children!" said Bart, going up to the younger ones, who
had huddled into the farthest corner and clambered on to the desks.
"My poor scared little things, it is all over now, and we are all so
glad and happy, aren't we?" and he took up some of the smallest in his
arms and kissed them, and the still frightened, but glad and rejoicing
young women, looked as if they would be willing to have that passed
round. When they were pacified, and resumed their places, Charley
Smith gathered up the boards and parts of the disabled desk, and Bart,
with a few kind words to the older scholars, resumed the exercises of
the school.

Scenes of violence were rare, even in that rude day, among that
people; the sensibilities of the children were deeply wounded, and
none of them were in a fitting condition to profit by their exercises,
which were barely gone through with, and they were early dismissed to
their homes, with the marvellous tale of the afternoon's events.

Bart was in the habit of remaining to write up the copies, and place
everything in order before he left. The young men and older maidens
lingered at the door, and then returned in a body, to say how glad
they were that it had ended as it did. They knew something would
happen, and they were so glad, and then they shook hands with him, and
went hurrying home.

When they left, Bart locked the door, and, throwing himself into
the chair by his table, laid his head down and burst into an
uncontrollable flood of tears;--but he was a man now, and tears only
choked and suffocated him. He was ashamed of himself for his weakness,
and bathing his eyes, walked about the school-room to regain his
composure. Every particle of anger left his bosom before Bingham left
the house, and now he was fully under the influence of the melancholy
part of his nature. Never before, even in childish anger, had he
touched a human being with violence, and now he had exerted his
strength, and had grappled with and struck a fellow-man in a brute
struggle for animal mastery; he felt humiliated and abased. That the
fellow's nature was low, and that he was compelled to act as he had
done, was little comfort to him. He was glad that he decided not to
punish or expel John. Darkness came, and he was aroused by a noise at
the door. He unlocked it, and found Canfield and Morey and Smith.

"Hullo, Ridgeley!" exclaimed the former. "Good God! and so you had
a pitched battle, and licked that bully before he had time to begin;
give me your hand! Who would have thought it?"

"I did," said Morey. "I knowed he'd do it. What will Jo Keys say now,
I wonder?" And the party went inside, and wondered over the wrecked
desk, and asked all about it. And then came in the stalwart Jo
himself, celebrated for his strength.

"Wal, wal, wal! if this don't beat all natur, I give it up! What are
you made of, young man, all spring and whalebone? I'd a bet he would
'a cleaned out a school-house full o' such dainty book chaps. I
give it up. Let me feel o' you," taking Bart good-naturedly by the
shoulder. "You'll do, by----. My Valdy said that when Grid gathered
himself up the first time, he went heels over head, clear to the
fire-place."

And so the good-natured athlete went over with it all, with a huge
relish for the smallest detail, and others came in, until nearly all
the male patrons of the school had assembled; and Bart informally, but
with hearty unanimity, was declared the greatest school-master of his
day; they quoted all the similar instances within the range of memory
or legend, and this achievement was pronounced the greatest. They were
proud of him, and of the exploit, and of themselves that they had him.
Morey, who had taken him because he could find no other, blazed
up into a man of fine discernment; and Jo nearly killed him with
approving slaps on his feeble back. Indeed, his apologies for what he
had said were too striking.

Life in all new communities is run mainly on muscle, and whoever
exhibits skill and bravery in its rough encounters, peaceful or
warlike, always commands a premium. The people among whom Bart lived
had not passed beyond the discipline of brute force, and he shared
the usual fortune of heroes of this sort, of having his powers and
achievements exaggerated, even by those under whose eyes he had acted.

A rumor reached Markham's and Parker's, from which it spread, that
Bart's school had arisen against him, and the first version was that
he was killed, or very dangerously wounded; that he defended himself
with desperation, and killed one or two, but was finally overcome;
that the neighborhood was divided and in arms, and the school-house
had been burned. But the stage came in soon after, and the driver
declared that he had seen Grid Bingham, whom he knew, brought out
dead, that John Craft was badly hurt, and one or two more, and that
Bart, who escaped without injury, would be arrested for murder. It was
finally said that he would not be arrested, but that Grid was either
dead or dying; that he headed four or five of the older boys, and
they were whipped out by Bart single-handed, who locked the door, and
pitched in, etc.

The rumor produced a deep sensation in Newbury; and, whilst it was
thought that Bart had been rash, and undoubtedly in fault, yet he had
behaved handsomely. When it was ascertained that he was victor, it was
generally thought that he was a credit to the place, which was very
natural and proper, considering that he had never before been thought
to be a credit to anything anywhere.




CHAPTER XV.

SNOW'S PARTY.


It was called a house-warming, although the proprietor had not taken
possession of the house with his family. The ball-room and most of
the rooms were complete, and the building was, on the whole, in a
good condition to receive a large company. The Major was the presiding
genius of the festivities; and while the affair was in a way informal,
and an assemblage of friends and neighbors of the owner, still he had
made a judicious use of his authority, and had invited a good many
rather prominent people from a distance. The evening of the occasion
saw not only a numerous assemblage, but one in which the highest
grades of society were fully represented.

As it was not strictly a ball, there was not the least impropriety in
the straightest church-members--and they were strict, then--attending
it; and they did. The sleighing was fine, and, as the usage was,
the guests came early, and went early--the next morning. The barns,
stables and neighboring houses were freely offered, and an efficient
corps of attendants were on hand, while the absence of public-houses
in the immediate neighborhood relieved the occasion of the presence
of the unbidden rough element that would otherwise have volunteered an
attendance.

The Markhams were there, with Julia, and the bevy of beautiful girls
we saw with her at the store; Mrs. Ford from Burton, with some of her
set; two or three from Chardon; the Harmons from Mantua; some of
the Kings from Ravenna; two or three Perkinses from Warren, and many
others. A rather showy young Mr. Greer, a gentleman of leisure, and
who floated about quite extensively, knew everybody, and seemed on
pleasant terms with them all, was among the guests.

The essential elements of pleasure and enjoyment--high and gay
spirits, good-nature, with a desire to please and be pleased, where
everybody was at their best, and where was a large infusion of good
breeding--were present, and a general good time was the logical
result.

There was a plenty of good music, and the younger part of the company
put it to immediate and constant use. The style of dancing was that of
the mediaeval time, between the stately and solemn of the older, and
the easy, gliding, insipid of the present; and one which required, on
the part of the gentlemen, lightness and activity, rather than grace,
and allowed them great license in the matter of fancy steps. Two long
ranks contra-faced, and hence contra dance--degenerated to country
dance--was the prevailing figure; the leading couple commencing and
dancing down with every other couple, until in turn each on the floor
had thus gone through.

The cotillon, with its uniform step and more graceful style, had been
already introduced by instructors, who had found short engagements
under the severe reprobation of the Orthodox churches; but the waltz
was unknown, except in name, and the polka, schottische, etc., had
then never been mentioned on the Reserve.

The young people early took possession of the dancing-hall, where,
surrounded by the elders, a quick succession of Money Musk, Opera
Reel, Chorus Jig, etc., interspersed sparingly with cotillons,
evidenced the relish with which young spirits and light hearts enjoy
the exercises of the ball-room.

Julia Markham was the conceded belle, beautiful and elegant in form
and style, faultless in dress and manner, brilliant with the vivacity
of healthy girlhood. Next to her, undoubtedly, was Miss Walters, with
whom ranked several elegant girls from abroad.

And of the young people here may be remarked what is usually true in
all country places, that there were about three cultivated and refined
girls to one young man of corresponding accomplishments.

As the ball went forward, the elders--and the elders did not dance in
the young Ohio in those days, rarely or never--gathered into various
groups, discussing the dancers and various kindred topics, and the
little odds and ends of graceful "they says" that append themselves to
the persons of those at all noticeable.

Mrs. Ford and Mrs. Markham were the centre of the principal of these.
They were really good friends, and liked each other. Their husbands
were friends, and possible rivals, and watched each other. Both were
ambitious, and lived too near each other.

"Who is Miss Walters?" Mrs. Ford asked.

"She is from Pittsburgh. Her brother is in New Orleans, and she
remains with the Fishers, relatives of hers, till he returns."

"She is very elegant."

"She is indeed, and she and Julia are great friends."

"Who is that dancing with Julia?"

"A Mr. Thorndyke. He is of a Boston family, on a visit to his uncle in
Thorndyke. Mr. Markham knew them, and he came up to call on us."

"He dances a little languidly, I think."

"He feels a little out of place in this mixed company, I presume. His
notions are high Boston."

"How does that suit Julia?"

"It amuses her. He was telling her how this and that is done in
Boston, and she in return told him how we do not do the same things
here, and claimed that our way is the best."

"Here comes Major Ridgeley. He seems much at home in a ball-room."

"Yes, he is one of those ready men, who always appear best in a
crowd."

He saw and made his way to them; inquired about the General, spoke
of his reply to Byington, complimented the dancing of Julia, inquired
about her partner, and rattled on about several things.

"Will your brother Barton be here this evening?" asked Mrs. Ford.

"I don't know; he thought he would not," was the reply. "He don't go
out at all, lately."

"What an awful time he had with that Bingham!" said Mrs. Ford. "They
say he has broken up two or three schools, and was a powerful and
dangerous man, twenty-five or six years old. I would really like to
see Barton. He is quite a lion."

"Bart is sensitive about it," answered the Major, "and don't speak
of it. Why, I was on my way up from Ravenna, the next day after it
happened, and called at his school-house for half an hour; the desk
had not been put up then, and I asked him what had happened to it, and
he said the boys had torn it down in a scuffle. He never said a word
of the fracas to me, and I only heard of it when I got up to Parker's.
There I found young Johnson, who had just come from there."

"Why, how you talk! What is the reason for that, do you suppose?"

"I don't know. He was at home a few days after, and seemed hurt
and sad over it; and when I asked him how many innocents he had
slaughtered since, he said one in two days, and at that rate they
would just last him through."

"It is funny," said Mrs. Ford.

"As I have observed, Barton is not much inclined to talk about what he
does," said Mrs. Markham; "and, do you know, Major, he has not given
me a chance to speak to him since his return."

"He thinks, possibly, that he is under a cloud," answered the Major.

"He chooses to think so, then," said Mrs. Markham; and the music
closed, and the dancers looked for seats, and the Major went away to
meet an engagement for the next dance.




CHAPTER XVI.

WALTZ.


A little commotion about the door--a little mob of young men and
boys--and a little spreading buzz and whisper--some hand-shakings--two
or three introductions--then another buzz--and Bart made his way
forward, with an air of being annoyed and bored and pushed forward
as if to escape. He was under the inspiration of one of those sudden
impulses upon which he acted, so sudden, often, as to seem not the
result of mental process.

He discovered Mrs. Ford and Mrs. Markham, with Julia, Miss Walters,
and several others, about them, whom he at once approached with the
modest assurance of a thorough-bred gentleman, safe in the certainty
of a gracious reception, and conscious of power to please. A happy
word to the two or three who made way for him, and he stood bowing and
smiling, and turning and bowing to each with the nice discriminating
tact that rendered to all their due.

Mrs. Ford graciously extended her hand, which he took, and bowed very
low over; she was nearest him. Mrs. Markham, in a pleased surprise,
gave him hers, and its reception was, to her nice perception, even
more profoundly acknowledged. To Miss Markham and Miss Walters
precisely the same, with a little of the chivalrous devotion of a
knight to acknowledged beauty.

"The fall and _winter_ style prevails, I presume," he said, in gay
banter, as if anticipating that their gloved hands were not to be
touched.

"Your memory is good, Mr. Ridgeley," said Julia, with a little laugh
and a little flush.

"Forgetfulness is not my weakness," he replied.

"I was not aware you knew Mrs. Ford," said Mrs. Markham, observing the
little flutter in Julia's cheeks, and thinking there was a meaning in
Bart's _persiflage_.

"Mrs. Ford and General Ford," he answered with much warmth, "have
been so very, very kind to me, that I have presumed to claim her
acquaintance, even here; but then, they have only known me three
months," with affected despair.

"Well," said Mrs. Ford, "what of that?"

"I find you with those who have known me all my life," with a
deprecating look towards Mrs. Markham.

"Well, Mr. Ridgeley, you are not deserving of forbearance at my hands,
if I only knew of anything bad to say of you."

"What exquisite irony! May I be permitted to know which of my thousand
faults is now specially remembered against me?"

"You have not permitted me, until this moment, even to speak to you
since your return last summer."

"May I ask that you will permit that to stand with my other
misdemeanors until some rare fortune enables me to atone for all at
once?"

"And when will that be?"

"Oh!

  In that blissful never,
  When the Sundays come together,
  When the sun and glorious weather
  Wrap the earth in spring forever;
  As in that past time olden,
  Which poets call the golden."

Laughing.

"And so I have poetry, and inspire it myself--that is some
compensation, certainly," said Mrs. Markham, smiling.

"I fear my verses have deepened my offence," said Bart, with affected
gravity.

Kate Fisher intervened here: "Mr. Ridgeley, I have more cause for
offence than even Mrs. Markham. Why didn't you come to my little
party? I made it on your account."

"The offence was great," he answered, "but then staying away was ample
punishment, as you must know."

"No, I don't know it. I know you weren't there, and your excuse was
merely a regret, which always means one don't want to go."

"Oh, Mrs. Ford!" said Bart, "see what your coming here, or my coming
here, exposes me to!"

"Have I heard the worst?"

"Well, you see, Mrs. Ford," said Kate, "that Mr. Ridgeley can waltz,
and so can Miss Walters, and I made a little party to see them waltz,
and he didn't come."

"That is grave. Will you leave it to me to pass judgment upon him?"

"I will."

"And do you submit, Mr. Ridgeley?"

"She's so very kind to you," remarked Mrs. Markham.

"I do," said the young man, "and will religiously perform the
sentence."

"Well, it won't be a religious exercise--you are to waltz with Miss
Walters, now and here."

A little clapping of little hands marked the righteousness of the
award.

"Mrs. Ford," observed the culprit, "your judgment, as usual, falls
heaviest on the innocent. Miss Walters, it remains for you to say
whether this sentence shall be executed. If you will permit me the
honor, I shall undergo execution with an edifying resignation."

The smiling girl frankly placed her hand in his: "I should be sorry to
prevent justice," she said, which was also applauded.

Major Ridgeley was spoken to, and it was understood that the next
dance would be a waltz, which had never before been more than named
in a Yankee ball-room, on the Reserve; and it was anticipated with
curiosity, not unmixed with horror, by many.

The floor was cleared, a simple waltz air came from the band, and the
pleased Miss Walters, in the arms of Barton, was whirled out from her
mob of curious friends, on to and over the nearly vacant floor,
the centre of all eyes, few of which had witnessed such a spectacle
before. The music went on with its measured rise and fall, sweet and
simple, and youth and maiden possessed with it, seemed to abandon
themselves utterly to it, and were controlled and informed by it; with
one impulse, one motion, and one grace, each contributing an exact
proportion, they glided, circling; and while the maiden thus yielded
and was sustained, her attitude, so natural, graceful and womanly,
had nothing languishing, voluptuous or sensuous; a sweet, unconscious
girl, inspired by music and the poetry and grace of its controlling
power, in the dance. Miss Walters dearly loved to dance, and above all
to waltz. She had rarely met a partner who so exactly suited her step
and style, and who so helped the inspiration she was apt to feel.

Bart had had little practice as a waltzer, but natural grace, and the
presence of ladies, usually brought him to his best; and it was not in
nature, perhaps, that he should not receive some inspiration from the
beautiful girl, half given to his embrace, and wholly to his guidance.

So around and around through the hushed and admiring throng they went,
whirling, turning, advancing, retreating, rising and falling, swaying
and sinking, yet always in unison, and in rhythmic obedience to the
music.

Sometimes the music rose loud and rapid, and then languished to almost
dying away; but whatever its movement or time, it was embodied and
realized by the beautiful pair, in their sweeping, graceful motions.
The maiden's face was wrapt with a sweet, joyous light in her
half-shut eyes; his, pale, but lit up and softened in the lamp-light,
seemed fairly beautiful, like a poet's.

"How beautiful!" "How exquisite!" from the ladies.

"What a dance for lovers!" said Mrs. Ford.

"They are lovers, are they not?" asked a lady from Warren.

"I think not," said Mrs. Markham, with a glance at Julia, who, never
withdrawing her eyes, stood with lips slightly apart, and her face
bright with unenvying admiration.

A little ripple--a murmur--and a decided clapping of hands around the
room, with other sounds from the crowd at the entrance, marked the
appreciation of the beautiful performance. The moment that this
reached Barton, he led his delighted partner towards her group of
friends, remarking: "Your admirers are sincere, Miss Walters, but too
demonstrative, I fear."

"Oh, I don't mind it," said the straightforward girl.

"And I have to thank you for your courtesy to me," he went on, "and
only hope that all my punishments may come in the same form."

"Mrs. Ford, is the judgment satisfied?"

"Satisfactory as far as you went, but then you did not serve out your
time."

"Have consideration, I pray, for the minister of justice," bowing to
Miss Walters.

"She seemed rather to like it," said Mrs. Ford.

"Indeed I did!" and the young ladies gathered about to congratulate
her, and cast admiring glances at her partner.

"Mr. Ridgeley," said Mrs. Markham, "I was not aware that you were an
accomplished waltzer."

"You forget," Bart answered mockingly, "that I am travelled; and you
know my only aptitude is for the useless."

"I did not say that."

"You are too kind. I sometimes supply words to obvious thoughts."

"And sometimes to those that have no existence."

The floor filled again, and the music struck up. Standing, a moment
later, at a window, Julia saw a figure pass out, pause at the roadway,
turn and look up. The full glare of the lamps revealed the face of
Bart, from which the light had faded, and its beauty and spirit of
expression had departed. He gazed for an instant up at the brilliant
and joyous scene, where a moment before he had been a central and
applauded figure, and then, muffling his face in his cloak, he turned
away.

He had not intended to go, and sat melancholy through the darkness of
the early night; but somehow, a hungry, intense longing came to him
to go and look for a moment upon the loveliness of Julia, as she would
stand open to the eyes of all, just for one moment, and then to go
away. He felt that he ought not to do it, but he went. He could not
help it.

When he reached the place, three miles away, he was annoyed by being
recognized and pointed at, and talked at, on account of his late
encounter with Grid.

"He ain't a powerful-lookin' chap." "I wouldn't be afeared o' him."
"He's a darned sight harder'n he looks," etc.

When he escaped into the ball-room, the impulse to go into the
immediate presence of Julia was followed, and ended by as sudden a
retreat. He had not known how utterly weak and helpless he was, and
felt angry with himself that he could ever wish for the presence of
one who had so scorned him. He was ashamed, also, that the music, the
dance, and gay joyance of the scene he had just left, had still such a
seductive charm for him, and he recorded a mental resolution to avoid
all similar allurements for the future. Having made this resolution,
and strong in his faith of keeping it, he merely turned to take final
leave, as he fell under the eyes of Julia, and without seeing her.

The night outside was cold, dark, and thick, with a pitiless snow,
that was rapidly filling the track along the highway. Bart turned,
without the remotest touch of self-pity, to face it, with a heart as
cold and dark as the night that swallowed him up. He felt that there
was not a heart left behind that would throb with a moment's pain for
him--that would miss him, or wonder at his departure; and he was sure
that he did not care.

Yet, with what a sweet, remonstrating, expostulating call the music
came after him, with its plaining at his desertion! Fainter and
sweeter it came, and died out with a wailing sob, as the night, with
its storm and darkness, blotted him out!

Mrs. Ford, who may have anticipated his attendance at the
supper-table, missed him. His late partner in the dance cast her eyes
inquiringly through the thronged rooms. She remarked to Julia that
she believed Mr. Ridgeley had left, and thought it very strange. Julia
said she presumed he had, and did not say what she thought.

Most of the elders left early; the young people danced the music and
themselves away, and the gray, belated dawn of the next day looked
coldly into the windows of a sacked, soiled, and silent house.




CHAPTER XVII.

BART.


Bart devoted himself unselfishly and unsparingly to his school, to all
its duties and to all his scholars, and especially to the children
of the poor, and the backward pupils. He went early to the house, and
remained late. He was the tender, considerate, elder brother of the
scholars, and was astonished at his power to win regard, and maintain
order. Order maintained itself after one memorable occasion--one to
which he never referred, and of which he did not like to hear. It made
his school famous, and drew to it many visitors, and to himself no
little curiosity and attention.

He endeavored to carry on his law-reading; but beyond reviewing--and
not very thoroughly--Blackstone, he could do little. As usual, he was
homesick; and whenever a week was ended he left the school-house for
his mother's, and never returned until the following Monday morning.

His kind patrons noticed with surprise that he seemed sad and
depressed after the expulsion of Grid, and that this gloominess was
deepened about the time of Snow's ball.

Barton came to take a real pleasure in his school. Formed to love
everything, and without the power of hating, or of long retaining a
resentment, he became attached to his little flock, especially the
younger ones, and was loved in return by them, without reserve or
doubt. He did much to improve, not alone the minds of the older
pupils, but to soften and refine the manners of the young men under
his charge; while the young women, always inclined to idealize, found
how pleasant it was to receive little acts of gentlemanly attention
from him.

In the afternoon of a long, bright, March day--one of those wondrous
days, glorious above with sky and sun, and joyous with the first note
of the blue-bird--the little red school-house by the margin of the
maple-woods was filled with the pupils and their parents, assembled
for the last time. Bart, in a low voice, tremulous with emotion, bade
them all good-by, and most of them forever, and taking his little
valise, walked with a saddened heart back to his mother. This time he
had not failed, and he never was to fail again.

How many events and occurrences linked in an endless series unite to
form the sum-total of ordinary human life! Incident to it, they are
in fact all ordinary. If any appear extraordinary, it is because
they occur in the life of an extraordinary individual, or remarkable
consequences flow from them. Like all parts of human life, in and of
themselves they are always fragmentary: springing from what precedes
them, they have no beginning proper; causing and flowing into others,
they have no ending, in effect; and as the dramatic in actual life is
never framed with reference to the unities, so results are constantly
being produced and worked out by accidents, and the prominent events
often contribute nothing to any supposed final catastrophe. Strangers
interlope for a moment, and change destinies, coming out for a
day, from nothing, and going to nowhere, but marring and misshaping
everything.

No plot is to develop as this sketch of old-time life continues, and
incidents will be of value only as they tend to mould and develop
the character and powers of one, and little will be noticed save that
which concerns him. It is, perhaps, already apparent that he is very
impressible, that slight forces which would produce little effect on
different natures, are capable of changing his shape, will beat him
flat, roll him round, or convert him into a cube or triangle, and yet,
that certain strong, always acting forces will restore him, with more
or less of the mark or impress of the disturbing cause upon him. He
has a strong, tenacious nature, unstained with the semblance of a
vice. He forms quick resolutions, but can adhere to them. He is tender
to weakness, and fanciful to phantasy. His aptitude for sarcasm and
ridicule, unsparingly as it had been turned upon everybody, brought
upon him general dislike. His indecision and vacillation in adopting
and pursuing a scheme in life, lost him the confidence of his
acquaintances--ready to believe anything of one who had dealt them
so many sharp thrusts. He was sensitive to a fault, and a slight word
would have driven him forever from Julia Markham, and turned him back
upon himself, as a dissolving and transforming fire. Mentally, he was
quick as a flash, with a strong grasp, and a power of ready analysis;
and so little did his mental achievements cost him, that his
acquirements were doubted. He already paid the penalty of a nervous
and brilliant intellect--that of being adjudged not profound. Men
are always being deceived as to the real value of things, by their
apparent cost.

We see this illustrated in the case of some grave and ponderous
weakling, who has nothing really in him, and yet who creaks, and
groans, and labors, and toils, to get under way, until our sympathy
with his painful effort leads us so to rejoice over his final delivery
that we have lost all power or disposition to weigh or estimate his
half-strangled, commonplace bantling, when it is finally born, and
we are rather inclined to wonder over it as a prodigy. No doubt the
generation of men who witnessed the mountain in labor, regarded
the sickly, hairy little mouse, finally brought forth, as a genuine
wonder.

Great is mediocrity! It is the average world, and the majority
conspires to do it reverence. Genius, if such a thing there is, may be
appreciated by school-boys; the average grown world count it as of no
value. If a man has a brilliant intellect, let him bewail it on the
mountains, as the daughter of Jephtha did her virginity. If he has
wit, let him become Brutus.

Readiness and genius are apt to be arrogant; and, when joined with a
lively temper, with an ardent, impetuous nature, they render a young
man an object of dread, dislike, or worse. Bart had grave doubts
of his being a genius, but it had been abundantly manifest to his
sensitive perceptions that he was disliked; and he had in part arrived
at the probable cause, and was now very persistently endeavoring to
correct it by holding his tongue and temper.

Like all young men bent upon a pursuit where his success must depend
upon intellect, he was most anxious to ascertain the quality and
extent of his brain-power--a matter of which a young man can form
no proper idea. Later in life a man is informed by the estimate of
others, and can judge somewhat by what he has done. The youth has
done nothing. He has made no manifestation by which an observer can
determine; when he looks at himself, he can examine his head and face;
but the mind, turned in upon itself, with no mirror, weight, count or
measure, feels the hopelessness of the effort.

If some one would only tell him of his capacity and power, of his
mental weakness and deficiency, it would not, perhaps, change his
course, but might teach him how best to pursue it.




CHAPTER XVIII.

SUGAR MAKING.


The long, cold winter was past; spring had come, and with it sugar
making, the carnival season, in the open air, among the trees.

The boys had the preparations for sugar making in an advanced stage. A
new camp had been selected on a dry slope, wood had been cut, the tubs
distributed, and they were waiting for Bart and a good day. Both came
together; and on the day following the close of his school, at an
early hour they hurried off to tap the trees.

Spring and gladness were in the air. The trill of the blue-bird was
a thrill; and the first song of the robin was full of lilac and apple
blossoms. The softened winds fell to zephyrs, and whispered strange
mysterious legends to the brown silent trees, and murmured lovingly
over the warming beds of the slumbering flowers. Young juices were
starting up under rough bark, and young blood and spirits throbbed in
the veins of the boys, and loud and repeated bursts of joyous voices
gushed with the fulness of the renewing power of the season.

The day, with its eager hope, strength and joyousness, filled Bart
to the eyes, and his spirit in exultation breaking from the unnatural
thrall that had for many months of darkness and anxious labor
overshadowed it, went with a bound of old buoyancy, and he started
with laughing, open brow, and springy step, over the spongy ground, to
the poetry of life in the woods.

That one day they tapped all the trees. The next, the kettles were
hung on the large crane, the immense logs were rolled up, the kettles
filled with sap, and the blue smoke of the first fire went curling up
gracefully through the tree-tops. What an event, the first fire! Not
as in New England, sugar in the West is never made until the winter
snow has disappeared, and the surface has become dry, and the woods
pleasant, and the opening day at the boiling was as brilliant as its
predecessor.

Bart and Edward, with a yoke of steers, gathered the sap towards
evening, and George tended the kettles; many curious bright-eyed
chickadees boldly ventured up about the works, peeping, flitting,
and examining, with head first on one side and then on the other, the
funny doings of these humans in their dominions, and searching for the
store of raw pork, which, according to their recollection, ought to be
hid away somewhere near by.

The boys had pulled down, removed and rebuilt their old snug cabin,
with one end open to the broad and roaring fire; in the bottom of
which, over its floor, were placed a large quantity of sweet bright
straw, and two or three heavy blankets.

The "run" made it necessary to boil all night; and filling the kettles
and adjusting the fires, Bart and the boys, hungry and tired, went
up to supper and the chores; after which Bart and Edward, taking the
former's rifle, and lighted by a hickory torch, returned to the camp
for the night--Edward really to sleep, sweet and unbroken, in the
cabin, and Bart to take care of the kettles and fires, to muse and
dream, and think bright, strange thoughts, and watch the effects of
the lights and shadows, listen to the dropping of the sap into the
buckets, and the boding owls, whose melancholy notes harmonized with,
rather than interrupted, the solemn effect of deepest night. Man
easily reverts to savagery and nature; and this tendency was marked in
Bart, whom this new recurrence to old habits of wood-life, so dear to
him, filled with such pleasant sensations of joyous unrest, that until
near the coming dawn he was disinclined to sleep, and when he did, the
first note of an old robin from the topmost twig of a giant old maple
awoke him fresh to the labor and enjoyment of another resplendent day.
And so the days followed each other, and the spring deepened. Myriads
of flower-beds shot up through the dead leaves, and opened out their
frail and wondrously tinted petals for a single day, and faded. Not
a new one opened--not a cloud or tint varied the sky--not a note of
a bird or tap of a woodpecker, that was not marked by Bart, to whom
Nature had at least given the power to appreciate and love her lighter
works.




CHAPTER XIX.

HENRY.


The principal event of the spring among the Ridgeleys, was the return
home of Henry. He had closed his novitiate, and was awaiting
his examination for admission to the bar. He had already, on the
recommendation of his friend and instructor, Wade, formed a favorable
business connection with the younger Hitchcock, at Painesville; and
now, after a year's absence, he came back to his mother and brothers,
for a few days of relaxation and visiting. Less strong than the Major,
of grave, thoughtful, but cheerful face and mien, heavy-browed and
deep-eyed, with plain, marked face, and finished manners, he was well
calculated to impress favorably, and win confidence and respect. His
mind was solid, but lacked the sparkle and vivacity of Bart's, and
compensatingly was believed to be deep. He was the pride and hope of
the family: around him gathered all its expectations of distinction,
and no one shared all these more intensely than Bart, who had awaited
his coming with hope and fear. He was accompanied by a fellow-student
named Ranney, of about his own age, and like him, above the usual
height, broad and heavy-shouldered, with a massive head and strong
face, a high narrow forehead; rather shy in manner, and taciturn.

They came one night while Bart was in the sugar-camp, where he spent
many nights, and he met them the next morning at the breakfast-table.
No one could be gladder than he to meet his brother, but, like his
mother, he was struck by his emaciated form and languor of manner.

Bart had heard of Ranney as a man of strong, profound, ingenious mind,
with much power of sarcasm, and who had formed a partnership with
Wade, on the retirement of Mr. Giddings from the bar. He stood a
little in awe of him, whose good opinion he would have gladly secured,
but who, he had a presentiment, would not understand him. Indeed, he
was quite certain he did not understand himself.

The young men had been fellow-students for two years, had many things
in common, and were strong friends.

Bart soon found that they had a slender view of his law reading,
and spoke slightingly of Ford as a lawyer. They had both diligently
studied to the lower depths of the law, had a fair appreciation of
their acquisitions, and would not overestimate the few months of
solitary reading of a boy in the country.

Bart did not mention his studies, and only answered modestly his
brother's inquiries, who closed the subject for the time by saying
that if he was serious in his desire to study law, "he would either
arrange to take him to Painesville in the Fall, or have his friend
Ranney take him in hand." Bart was pleased with the idea of being with
either; and possibly he may have wondered whether whoever took him in
hand would not have that hand full.

The young men strolled off to his sugar-camp during the forenoon,
lounged learnedly about, evincing little interest in the camp and
surroundings, although the deepening season had filled the woods with
flowers and birds; and Bart wondered whether "Coke on Littleton," and
executory devises, and contingent remainders, had produced in them
their natural consequences. He watched to see whether new maple sugar
was sweet to them, and on full reflection doubted if it was.

They did not interfere with his work, and sauntered back to an early
dinner, and Bart saw no more of them until night.

He closed out his work early for the day, and spent the evening with
them and his mother.

Henry naturally inquired about his old acquaintances, and Bart
answered graphically. He was in a mood of reckless gayety. He took
them up, one after another, and in a few happy strokes presented
them in ludicrous caricature, irresistible for its hits of humor,
and sometimes for wit, and sometimes sarcasm--a stream of sparkle
and glitter, with queer quotations of history, poetry, and Scripture,
always apt, and the latter not always irreverent. Ranney had a
capacity to enjoy a medley, and both of the young men abandoned
themselves to uncontrollable laughter; and even the good mother, who
tried in vain to stop her reckless son, surprised herself with tears
streaming down her cheeks. Bart, for the most part, remained
grave, and occasionally Edward helped him out with a suggestion, or
contributed a dry and pungent word of his own.

As the fit subsided, Henry, half serious and half laughing, turned to
him: "Oh, Bart, I thought you had reformed, and become considerate and
thoughtful, and I find that you are worse than ever."

"But, Henry, what's the use of having neighbors and acquaintances and
friends, if one cannot serve them up to his guests; and only think,
I've gone about for six months with the odds and ends of 'flat, stale
and unprofitable' things accumulating in and about him--the said
Bart--until, as a sanitary measure, I had to utter them."

"How do you feel after it?" inquired Henry.

"Rather depressed, though I hope to tone up again."

"Bart," said Henry, gravely, "I haven't seen much of you for two or
three years; I used to get queer glimpses of you in your letters, and
I must look through your mental and moral make-up some time."

"You will find me like the sterile, stony glebe, which, when the
priest reached in his career of invocation and blessing--'Here,' said
the holy father, 'prayers and supplications are of no avail. This
must have manure.' Grace would, I fear, be wasted on me, and our good
mother would willingly see me under your subsoiling and fertilizing
hand."

"Do you ever seriously think?"

"I? oh yes! such thoughts as I can think. I think of the wondrously
beautiful in nature, and am glad. I think of the wretched race of men,
and am sad. I think of my shallow self, and am mad."

Henry, with unchanged gravity: "Do you believe in anything?"

"Yes, I believe fully in our mother; a good deal in you, though my
faith is shaken a little just now; and am inclined to great faith in
your friend Mr. Ranney."

All smile but Henry. "Yes, all that of course, but abstract
propositions. Have you faith, in anything?"

"Well, I believe in genius, I believe in poetry--though not much in
poets--music--though that is not for men. I believe in love--for those
who may have it. I believe in woman and in God. When I draw myself
close to Him, I am overcome with a great awe, and dare not pray. It
is only when I seem to push Him off, and coop Him up in a little
crystal-domed palace beyond the stars, and out of hearing, that I
dare tell Him how huge He is, and pipe little serenades of psalmody to
Him."

"Oh, Barton, you are profane!"

"No, mother, men are profane in their gorgeous egotism. We are the
braggarts, and ascribe egotism to God Himself; while we are the sole
objects of interest in the universe. God was and is on our account
only; and when men fancy that they have found a way of running things
without Him, they shove Him out entirely. I put it plainly, and it
sounds bad."

"This is a compendious confession of faith," said Henry; and, pausing,
"why do you put genius first?"

"As the most doubtful, and, at the same time, an interesting article.
I am at the age when a young man queries anxiously about it. Has he
any of it--the least bit?"

"Well, what is your conclusion?"

"Sometimes I fancy I feel faintly its stir and spur and inspiration."

"When it may be only dyspepsia," said Henry.

"It may be. I haven't ranked myself among geniuses."

"Yet you believe in it. What is it?"

"I can't tell. Can you tell what is electricity or life?"

"That is not logical. You answer one question by asking another."

"I am not sure but that is allowable," interrupted Ranney. "You pose
your opponent with an unanswerable question, and he in turn proposes
several, thereby suggesting that there are things unknown, and that if
you will push him to that realm you are equally involved. It may not
be logical, but it usually silences."

"Not quite, in this instance," said Henry, "for we know by their
manifestations that life and electricity are; they manifest themselves
to us."

"And by the same rule genius manifests itself to your brother,
although it may not to you."

"Thank you, Mr. Ranney," said Bart.

"Now I do not suppose," he went on, "that genius is a beneficent
little imp, or genie, lodged in the brain of the fortunate or
unfortunate, who is all-powerful, and always at hand to give strength,
emit a flash of light, or pour inspiration into the faculties, nor
does it consist in anything that answers to that idea. But there are
men endowed with quick, strong intellects, with warm, ardent, intense
temperaments, and with strong imaginations; where these, or their
equivalents, are found happily blended, the result is genius. There
is a working power that can do anything, and with apparent ease. If
it plunges down, it need not remain long; if it mounts up, it alights
again without effort or injury."

"And such a 'working power,' you suppose, would, of itself, be a
constant self-supply, and always equal to emergencies, and of its own
unaided spontaneous inspirations and energies, I suppose," said Henry,
"and has nothing to do but float and plunge about, diving and soaring,
in the amplitude of nature?"

"Well, Henry, you can't get out of a man what isn't in him.

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