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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Village Watch-Tower, by 
+(AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Village Watch-Tower
+
+Author: (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
+Posting Date: August 7, 2008 [EBook #936]
+Release Date: June, 1997
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VILLAGE WATCH-TOWER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by R. McGowan, and E. P. McGowan
+
+
+
+
+
+THE VILLAGE WATCH-TOWER
+
+by Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
+
+INTRODUCTION TO THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EDITION
+
+These days the name of Kate Douglas Wiggin is virtually unknown. But
+if one mentions the title "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm," recognition (at
+least in America) is instant. Everyone has heard of Rebecca; her story
+has been in print continuously since it was first published in 1903.
+It is certainly Mrs. Wiggin's most famous book, and the only one of her
+many books that is still in print. Everything else she wrote has slipped
+into complete obscurity. Occasionally in an antique shop, one may
+still find a copy of her immensely popular seasonal book, "The Birds'
+Christmas Carol", but that is about the extent of what is readily
+available, even second-hand.
+
+The Birds' Christas Carol is available as our Etext #721, Nov. 1996.
+
+In 1904, Jack London wrote (from Manchuria!) to say that Rebecca had won
+his heart. ("She is real," he wrote, "she lives; she has given me many
+regrets, but I love her.") Some eighty years later I happened to pick
+up and read "Rebecca" for the first time. The book was so thoroughly
+enjoyable that when I had finished it, I began at once a search for
+other works by the same author--especially for a sequel to "Rebecca",
+which seemed practically to demand one. There was never a sequel
+written, but "The New Chronicles of Rebecca" was published in 1907, and
+contained some further chapters in the life of its heroine. I had to be
+satisfied with that, for the time being. Then, well over a year after
+jotting down Mrs. Wiggin's name on my list of authors to "purchase on
+sight", I finally ran across a copy of "The Village Watch-Tower"; and it
+was not even a book of which I had heard. It was first published in
+1895 by Houghton, who published much of her other work at the time, and
+apparently was never published again. Shortly thereafter I found a copy
+of her autobiography.
+
+Kate Douglas Wiggin (nee Smith) was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
+on September 28, 1856. She was raised for the most-part in Maine, which
+forms a backdrop to much of her fiction. She moved to California in
+the 1870s, and became involved in the "free kindergarten" movement. She
+opened the Silver Street Free Kindergarten in San Francisco, the first
+free kindergarten in California, and there she worked until the late
+1880s (meantime opening her own training school for teachers). Her first
+husband, Samuel Wiggin, died in 1889. By then famous, she returned to
+New York and Maine. She moved in international social circles, lecturing
+and giving readings from her work. In 1895 she married for the second
+time (to George Riggs).
+
+At her home in San Francisco, overlooking the Golden Gate and Marin
+County, she wrote her first book, "The Birds' Christmas Carol", to raise
+money for her school. The book also proved to be her means of entrance
+into publishing, translation, and travel in elite circles throughout
+Europe. The book was republished many times thereafter, and translated
+into several languages. In addition to factual and educational works
+(undertaken together with her sister, Nora Archibald Smith) she also
+wrote a number of other popular novels in the early years of the 20th
+century, including "Rebecca", and "The Story of Waitstill Baxter"
+(1913). She died in 1923, on August 23, at Harrow-on-Hill, England.
+
+Beverly Seaton observed, in "American Women Writers", that Mrs. Wiggin
+was "a popular writer who expressed what her contemporaries themselves
+thought of as 'real life'" (p. 413). "The Village Watch-Tower" I think
+is a perfect example of that observation; it captures vividly a few
+frozen moments of rural America, right at the twilight of the 19th
+century. Most of it was written in the village of Quillcote, Maine,
+her childhood home--and certainly the model for the village of these
+stories.
+
+No attempt has been made to edit this book for consistency or to
+update or "correct" the spelling. Mrs. Wiggin's spelling is somewhat
+transitional between modern American and British spellings. The only
+liberty taken is that of removing extra spaces in contractions. E.g.,
+I have used "wouldn't" where the original has consistently "would
+n't"; this is true for all such contractions with "n't" which appeared
+inordinately distracting to the modern reader.
+
+R. McGowan, San Jose, March 1997
+
+
+
+
+
+THE VILLAGE WATCH-TOWER
+
+
+Dear old apple-tree, under whose gnarled branches these stories were
+written, to you I dedicate the book. My head was so close to you, who
+can tell from whence the thoughts came? I only know that when all the
+other trees in the orchard were barren, there were always stories to be
+found under your branches, and so it is our joint book, dear apple-tree.
+Your pink blossoms have fallen on the page as I wrote; your ruddy fruit
+has dropped into my lap; the sunshine streamed through your leaves and
+tipped my pencil with gold. The birds singing in your boughs may have
+lent a sweet note here and there; and do you remember the day when the
+gentle shower came? We just curled the closer, and you and I and the sky
+all cried together while we wrote "The Fore-Room Rug."
+
+It should be a lovely book, dear apple-tree, but alas! it is not
+altogether that, because I am not so simple as you, and because I have
+strayed farther away from the heart of Mother Nature.
+
+KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN
+
+"Quillcote," Hollis, Maine, August 12, 1895.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+     The Village Watch-Tower                 1
+     Tom o' the Blueb'ry Plains             31
+     The Nooning Tree                       55
+     The Fore-Room Rug                      95
+     A Village Stradivarius                123
+     The Eventful Trip of the Midnight Cry 195
+
+
+
+
+
+THE VILLAGE WATCH-TOWER.
+
+
+It stood on the gentle slope of a hill, the old gray house, with its
+weather-beaten clapboards and its roof of ragged shingles. It was in the
+very lap of the road, so that the stage-driver could almost knock on the
+window pane without getting down from his seat, on those rare occasions
+when he brought "old Mis' Bascom" a parcel from Saco.
+
+Humble and dilapidated as it was, it was almost beautiful in the
+springtime, when the dandelion-dotted turf grew close to the great stone
+steps; or in the summer, when the famous Bascom elm cast its graceful
+shadow over the front door. The elm, indeed, was the only object that
+ever did cast its shadow there. Lucinda Bascom said her "front door 'n'
+entry never hed ben used except for fun'rals, 'n' she was goin' to keep
+it nice for that purpose, 'n' not get it all tracked up."
+
+She was sitting now where she had sat for thirty years. Her high-backed
+rocker, with its cushion of copperplate patch and its crocheted tidy,
+stood always by a southern window that looked out on the river. The
+river was a sheet of crystal, as it poured over the dam; a rushing,
+roaring torrent of foaming white, as it swept under the bridge and
+fought its way between the rocky cliffs beyond, sweeping swirling,
+eddying, in its narrow channel, pulsing restlessly into the ragged
+fissures of its shores, and leaping with a tempestuous roar into the
+Witches' Eel-pot, a deep wooded gorge cleft in the very heart of the
+granite bank.
+
+But Lucinda Bascom could see more than the river from her favorite
+window. It was a much-traveled road, the road that ran past the house
+on its way from Liberty Village to Milliken's Mills. A tottering old
+sign-board, on a verdant triangle of turf, directed you over Deacon
+Chute's hill to the "Flag Medder Road," and from thence to Liberty
+Centre; the little post-office and store, where the stage stopped twice
+a day, was quite within eyeshot; so were the public watering-trough,
+Brigadier Hill, and, behind the ruins of an old mill, the wooded path
+that led to the Witches' Eel-pot, a favorite walk for village lovers.
+This was all on her side of the river. As for the bridge which knit
+together the two tiny villages, nobody could pass over that without
+being seen from the Bascoms'. The rumble of wheels generally brought
+a family party to the window,--Jot Bascom's wife (she that was Diadema
+Dennett), Jot himself, if he were in the house, little Jot, and grandpa
+Bascom, who looked at the passers-by with a vacant smile parting his
+thin lips. Old Mrs. Bascom herself did not need the rumble of wheels
+to tell her that a vehicle was coming, for she could see it fully ten
+minutes before it reached the bridge,--at the very moment it appeared
+at the crest of Saco Hill, where strangers pulled up their horses, on
+a clear day, and paused to look at Mount Washington, miles away in the
+distance. Tory Hill and Saco Hill met at the bridge, and just there,
+too, the river road began its shady course along the east side of the
+stream: in view of all which "old Mis' Bascom's settin'-room winder"
+might well be called the "Village Watch-Tower," when you consider
+further that she had moved only from her high-backed rocker to her bed,
+and from her bed to her rocker, for more than thirty years,--ever since
+that july day when her husband had had a sun-stroke while painting the
+meeting-house steeple, and her baby Jonathan had been thereby hastened
+into a world not in the least ready to receive him.
+
+She could not have lived without that window, she would have told you,
+nor without the river, which had lulled her to sleep ever since she
+could remember. It was in the south chamber upstairs that she had been
+born. Her mother had lain there and listened to the swirl of the water,
+in that year when the river was higher than the oldest inhabitant had
+ever seen it,--the year when the covered bridge at the Mills had been
+carried away, and when the one at the Falls was in hourly danger of
+succumbing to the force of the freshet.
+
+All the men in both villages were working on the river, strengthening
+the dam, bracing the bridge, and breaking the jams of logs; and with the
+parting of the boom, the snapping of the bridge timbers, the crashing
+of the logs against the rocks, and the shouts of the river-drivers,
+the little Lucinda had come into the world. Some one had gone for
+the father, and had found him on the river, where he had been since
+day-break, drenched with the storm, blown fro his dangerous footing time
+after time, but still battling with the great heaped-up masses of logs,
+wrenching them from one another's grasp, and sending them down the
+swollen stream.
+
+Finally the jam broke; and a cheer of triumph burst from the excited
+men, as the logs, freed from their bondage, swept down the raging
+flood, on and ever on in joyous liberty, faster and faster, till they
+encountered some new obstacle, when they heaped themselves together
+again, like puppets of Fate, and were beaten by the waves into another
+helpless surrender.
+
+With the breaking of the jam, one dead monarch of the forest leaped into
+the air as if it had been shot from a cannon's mouth, and lodged between
+two jutting peaks of rock high on the river bank. Presently another log
+was dashed against it, but rolled off and hurried down the stream; then
+another, and still another; but no force seemed enough to drive the
+giant from its intrenched position.
+
+"Hurry on down to the next jam, Raish, and let it alone," cried the men.
+"Mebbe it'll git washed off in the night, and anyhow you can't budge it
+with no kind of a tool we've got here."
+
+Then from the shore came a boy's voice calling, "There's a baby up to
+your house!" And the men repeated in stentorian tones, "Baby up to your
+house, Raish! Leggo the log; you're wanted!"
+
+"Boy or girl?" shouted the young father.
+
+"Girl!" came back the answer above the roar of the river.
+
+Whereupon Raish Dunnell steadied himself with his pick and taking a
+hatchet from his belt, cut a rude letter "L" on the side of the stranded
+log.
+
+"L's for Lucindy," he laughed. "Now you log if you git's fur as Saco,
+drop in to my wife's folks and tell 'em the baby's name."
+
+There had not been such a freshet for years before, and there had never
+been one since; so, as the quiet seasons went by, "Lucindy's log" was
+left in peace, the columbines blooming all about it, the harebells
+hanging their heads of delicate blue among the rocks that held it in
+place, the birds building their nests in the knot-holes of its withered
+side.
+
+Seventy years had passed, and on each birthday, from the time when she
+was only "Raish Dunnell's little Lou," to the years when she was Lucinda
+Bascom, wife and mother, she had wandered down by the river side, and
+gazed, a little superstitiously perhaps, on the log that had been marked
+with an "L" on the morning she was born. It had stood the wear and tear
+of the elements bravely, but now it was beginning, like Lucinda, to show
+its age. Its back was bent, like hers; its face was seamed and wrinkled,
+like her own; and the village lovers who looked at it from the opposite
+bank wondered if, after all, it would hold out as long as "old Mis'
+Bascom."
+
+She held out bravely, old Mrs. Bascom, though she was "all skin, bones,
+and tongue," as the neighbors said; for nobody needed to go into the
+Bascoms' to brighten up aunt Lucinda a bit, or take her the news; one
+went in to get a bit of brightness, and to hear the news.
+
+"I should get lonesome, I s'pose," she was wont to say, "if it wa'n't
+for the way this house is set, and this chair, and this winder, 'n' all.
+Men folks used to build some o' the houses up in a lane, or turn 'em
+back or side to the road, so the women folks couldn't see anythin' to
+keep their minds off their churnin' or dish-washin'; but Aaron Dunnell
+hed somethin' else to think about, 'n' that was himself, first, last,
+and all the time. His store was down to bottom of the hill, 'n' when he
+come up to his meals, he used to set where he could see the door; 'n'
+if any cust'mer come, he could call to 'em to wait a spell till he got
+through eatin'. Land! I can hear him now, yellin' to 'em, with his mouth
+full of victuals! They hed to wait till he got good 'n' ready, too.
+There wa'n't so much comp'tition in business then as there is now, or
+he'd 'a' hed to give up eatin' or hire a clerk. ... I've always felt to
+be thankful that the house was on this rise o' ground. The teams hev to
+slow up on 'count o' the hill, 'n' it gives me consid'ble chance to see
+folks 'n' what they've got in the back of the wagon, 'n' one thing 'n'
+other. ... The neighbors is continually comin' in here to talk about
+things that's goin' on in the village. I like to hear 'em, but land!
+they can't tell me nothing'! They often say, 'For massy sakes, Lucindy
+Bascom, how d' you know that?' 'Why,' says I to them, 'I don't ask no
+questions, 'n' folks don't tell me no lies; I just set in my winder,
+'n' put two 'n' two together,--that's all I do.' I ain't never ben in a
+playhouse, but I don't suppose the play-actors git down off the platform
+on t' the main floor to explain to the folks what they've ben doin',
+do they? I expect, if folks can't understand their draymas when the're
+actin' of 'em out, they have to go ignorant, don't they? Well, what do I
+want with explainin', when everythin' is acted out right in the road?"
+
+There was quite a gathering of neighbors at the Bascoms' on this
+particular July afternoon. No invitations had been sent out, and none
+were needed. A common excitement had made it vital that people should
+drop in somewhere, and speculate about certain interesting matters well
+known to be going on in the community, but going on in such an underhand
+and secretive fashion that it well-nigh destroyed one's faith in human
+nature.
+
+The sitting-room door was open into the entry, so that whatever breeze
+there was might come in, and an unusual glimpse of the new foreroom rug
+was afforded the spectators. Everything was as neat as wax, for Diadema
+was a housekeeper of the type fast passing away. The great coal stove
+was enveloped in its usual summer wrapper of purple calico, which, tied
+neatly about its ebony neck and portly waist, gave it the appearance
+of a buxom colored lady presiding over the assembly. The kerosene lamps
+stood in a row on the high, narrow mantelpiece, each chimney protected
+from the flies by a brown paper bag inverted over its head. Two plaster
+Samuels praying under the pink mosquito netting adorned the ends of
+the shelf. There were screens at all the windows, and Diadema fidgeted
+nervously when a visitor came in the mosquito netting door, for fear a
+fly should sneak in with her.
+
+On the wall were certificates of membership in the Missionary Society; a
+picture of Maidens welcoming Washington in the Streets of Alexandria, in
+a frame of cucumber seeds; and an interesting document setting forth the
+claims of the Dunnell family as old settlers long before the separation
+of Maine from Massachusetts,--the fact bein' established by an obituary
+notice reading, "In Saco, December 1791, Dorcas, daughter of Abiathar
+Dunnell, two months old of Fits unbaptized."
+
+"He may be goin' to marry Eunice, and he may not," observed Almira
+Berry; "though what she wants of Reuben Hobson is more 'n I can make
+out. I never see a widower straighten up as he has this last year. I
+guess he's been lookin' round pretty lively, but couldn't find anybody
+that was fool enough to give him any encouragement."
+
+"Mebbe she wants to get married," said Hannah Sophia, in a tone that
+spoke volumes. "When Parson Perkins come to this parish, one of his
+first calls was on Eunice Emery. He always talked like the book o'
+Revelation; so says he, 'have you got your weddin' garment on, Miss
+Emery?' says he. 'No,' says she, 'but I ben tryin' to these twenty
+years.' She was always full of her jokes, Eunice was!"
+
+"The Emerys was always a humorous family," remarked Diadema, as she
+annihilated a fly with a newspaper. "Old Silas Emery was an awful
+humorous man. He used to live up on the island; and there come a freshet
+one year, and he said he got his sofy 'n' chairs off, anyhow!" That was
+just his jokin'. He hadn't a sign of a sofy in the house; 't was his
+wife Sophy he meant, she that was Sophy Swett. Then another time, when
+I was a little mite of a thin runnin' in 'n' out o' his yard, he caught
+holt o' me, and says he, 'You'd better take care, sissy; when I kill you
+and two more, thet'll be three children I've killed!' Land! you couldn't
+drag me inside that yard for years afterwards. ... There! she's got
+a fire in the cook-stove; there's a stream o' smoke comin' out o'
+the kitchen chimbley. I'm willin' to bet my new rug she's goin' to be
+married tonight!'
+
+"Mebbe she's makin' jell'," suggested Hannah Sophia.
+
+"Jell'!" ejaculated Mrs. Jot scornfully. "Do you s'pose Eunice Emery
+would build up a fire in the middle o' the afternoon 'n' go to makin' a
+jell', this hot day? Besides, there ain't a currant gone into her house
+this week, as I happen to know."
+
+"It's a dretful thick year for fol'age," mumbled grandpa Bascom,
+appearing in the door with his vacant smile. "I declare some o' the
+maples looks like balls in the air."
+
+"That's the twentieth time he's hed that over since mornin'," said
+Diadema. "Here, father, take your hat off 'n' set in the kitchen door
+'n' shell me this mess o' peas. Now think smart, 'n' put the pods in the
+basket 'n' the peas in the pan; don't you mix 'em."
+
+The old man hung his hat on the back of the chair, took the pan in his
+trembling hands, and began aimlessly to open the pods, while he chuckled
+at the hens that gathered round the doorstep when they heard the peas
+rattling in the pan.
+
+"Reuben needs a wife bad enough, if that's all," remarked the Widow
+Buzzell, as one who had given the matter some consideration.
+
+"I should think he did," rejoined old Mrs. Bascom. "Those children 'bout
+git their livin' off the road in summer, from the time the dand'lion
+greens is ready for diggin' till the blackb'ries 'n' choke-cherries
+is gone. Diademy calls 'em in 'n' gives 'em a cooky every time they go
+past, 'n' they eat as if they was famished. Rube Hobson never was any
+kind of a pervider, 'n' he's consid'able snug besides."
+
+"He ain't goin' to better himself much," said Almira. "Eunice Emery
+ain't fit to housekeep for a cat. The pie she took to the pie supper at
+the church was so tough that even Deacon Dyer couldn't eat it; and the
+boys got holt of her doughnuts, and declared they was goin' fishin' next
+day 'n' use 'em for sinkers. She lives from hand to mouth Eunice Emery
+does. She's about as much of a doshy as Rube is. She'll make tea that's
+strong enough to bear up an egg, most, and eat her doughnuts with it
+three times a day rather than take the trouble to walk out to the meat
+or the fish cart. I know for a fact she don't make riz bread once a
+year."
+
+"Mebbe her folks likes buttermilk bread best; some do," said the Widow
+Buzzell. "My husband always said, give him buttermilk bread to work on.
+He used to say my riz bread was so light he'd hev to tread on it to
+keep it anywheres; but when you'd eat buttermilk bread he said you'd got
+somethin' that stayed by you; you knew where it was every time. ... For
+massy sake! there's the stage stoppin' at the Hobson's door. I wonder if
+Rube's first wife's mother has come from Moderation? If 't is, they must
+'a' made up their quarrel, for there was a time she wouldn't step foot
+over that doorsill. She must be goin' to stay some time, for there's a
+trunk on the back o' the stage. ... No, there ain't nobody gettin' out.
+Land, Hannah Sophia, don't push me clean through the glass! It beats me
+why they make winders so small that three people can't look out of 'em
+without crowdin'. Ain't that a wash-boiler he's handin' down? Well, it's
+a mercy; he's ben borrowin' long enough!"
+
+"What goes on after dark I ain't responsible for," commented old Mrs.
+Bascom, "but no new wash-boiler has gone into Rube Hobson's door in the
+daytime for many a year, and I'll be bound it means somethin'. There
+goes a broom, too. Much sweepin' he'll get out o' Eunice; it's a slick
+'n' a promise with her!"
+
+"When did you begin to suspicion this, Diademy?" asked Almira Berry.
+"I've got as much faculty as the next one, but anybody that lives on
+the river road has just got to give up knowin' anything. You can't keep
+runnin' to the store every day, and if you could you don't find out much
+nowadays. Bill Peters don't take no more interest in his neighbors than
+a cow does in election."
+
+"I can't get mother Bascom to see it as I do," said Diadema, "but for
+one thing she's ben carryin' home bundles 'bout every other night for
+a month, though she's ben too smart to buy anythin' here at this store.
+She had Packard's horse to go to Saco last week. When she got home, jest
+at dusk, she drove int' the barn, 'n' bimeby Pitt Packard come to git
+his horse,--'t was her own buggy she went with. She looked over here
+when she went int' the house, 'n' she ketched my eye, though 't was half
+a mile away, so she never took a thing in with her, but soon as't was
+dark she made three trips out to the barn with a lantern, 'n' any fool
+could tell 't her arms was full o' pa'cels by the way she carried the
+lantern. The Hobsons and the Emerys have married one another more 'n
+once, as fur as that goes. I declare if I was goin' to get married I
+should want to be relation to somebody besides my own folks."
+
+"The reason I can hardly credit it," said Hannah Sophia, "is because
+Eunice never had a beau in her life, that I can remember of. Cyse
+Higgins set up with her for a spell, but it never amounted to nothin'.
+It seems queer, too, for she was always so fond o' seein' men folks
+round that when Pitt Packard was shinglin' her barn she used to go out
+nights 'n' rip some o' the shingles off, so 't he'd hev more days' work
+on it."
+
+"I always said 't was she that begun on Rube Hobson, not him on her,"
+remarked the Widow Buzzell. "Their land joinin' made courtin' come
+dretful handy. His critters used to git in her field 'bout every other
+day (I always suspicioned she broke the fence down herself), and then
+she'd hev to go over and git him to drive 'em out. She's wed his onion
+bed for him two summers, as I happen to know, for I've been ou' doors
+more 'n common this summer, tryin' to fetch my constitution up. Diademy,
+don't you want to look out the back way 'n' see if Rube's come home
+yet?"
+
+"He ain't," said old Mrs. Bascom, "so you needn't look; can't you see
+the curtains is all down? He's gone up to the Mills, 'n' it's my opinion
+he's gone to speak to the minister."
+
+"He hed somethin' in the back o' the wagon covered up with an old linen
+lap robe; 't ain't at all likely he 'd 'a' hed that if he'd ben goin' to
+the minister's," objected Mrs. Jot.
+
+"Anybody'd think you was born yesterday, to hear you talk, Diademy,"
+retorted her mother-in-law. "When you 've set in one spot's long's I
+hev, p'raps you'll hev the use o' your faculties! Men folks has more 'n
+one way o' gettin' married, 'specially when they 're ashamed of it. ...
+Well, I vow, there's the little Hobson girls comin' out o' the door
+this minute, 'n' they 're all dressed up, and Mote don't seem to be with
+'em."
+
+Every woman in the room rose to her feet, and Diadema removed her
+murderous eye from a fly which she had been endeavoring to locate for
+some moments.
+
+"I guess they 're goin' up to the church to meet their father 'n'
+Eunice, poor little things," ventured the Widow Buzzell.
+
+"P'raps they be," said old Mrs. Bascom sarcastically; "p'raps they be
+goin' to church, takin' a three-quart tin pail 'n' a brown paper bundle
+along with 'em. ... They 're comin' over the bridge, just as I s'posed.
+... Now, if they come past this house, you head 'em off, Almiry, 'n' see
+if you can git some satisfaction out of 'em. ... They ain't hardly old
+enough to hold their tongues."
+
+An exciting interview soon took place in the middle of the road, and
+Almira reentered the room with the expression of one who had penetrated
+the inscrutable and solved the riddle of the Sphinx. She had been
+vouch-safed one of those gleams of light in darkness which almost dazzle
+the beholder.
+
+"That's about the confirmingest thing I've heern yet!" she ejaculated,
+as she took off her shaker bonnet. "They say they're goin' up to their
+aunt Hitty's to stay two days. They're dressed in their best, clean to
+the skin, for I looked; 'n' it's their night gownds they've got in the
+bundle. They say little Mote has gone to Union to stop all night with
+his uncle Abijah, 'n' that leaves Rube all alone, for the smith girl
+that does his chores is home sick with the hives. And what do you s'pose
+is in the pail? _Fruit_ _cake_,--that's what 't is, no more 'n' no less!
+I knowed that Smith girl didn't bake it, 'n' so I asked 'em, 'n' they
+said Miss Emery give it to 'em. There was two little round try-cakes,
+baked in muffin-rings. Eunice hed took some o' the batter out of a
+big loaf 'n' baked it to se how it was goin' to turn out. That means
+wedding-cake, or I'm mistaken!"
+
+"There ain't no gittin' round that," agreed the assembled company, "now
+is there, Mis' Bascom?"
+
+Old Mrs. Bascom wet her finger, smoothed the parting of her false front,
+and looked inscrutable.
+
+"I don't see why you're so secret," objected Diadema.
+
+"I've got my opinions, and I've had 'em some time," observed the good
+lady. "I don't know 's I'm bound to tell 'em and have 'em held up to
+ridicule. Let the veal hang, I say. If any one of us is right, we'll all
+know to-morrow."
+
+"Well, all any of us has got to judge from is appearances," said
+Diadema, "and how you can twist 'em one way, and us another, stumps me!"
+
+"Perhaps I see more appearances than you do," retorted her
+mother-in-law. "Some folks mistakes all they see for all there is. I was
+reading a detective story last week. It seems there was an awful murder
+in Schenectady, and a mother and her two children was found dead in one
+bed, with bullet holes in their heads. The husband was away on business,
+and there wasn't any near neighbors to hear her screech. Well, the
+detectives come from far and from near, and begun to work up the case.
+One of 'em thought 't was the husband,--though he set such store by his
+wife he went ravin' crazy when he heard she was dead,--one of 'em laid
+it on the children,--though they was both under six years old; and one
+decided it was suicide,--though the woman was a church member and
+didn't know how to fire a gun off, besides. And then there come along
+a detective younger and smarter than all the rest, and says he, 'If
+all you bats have seen everything you can see, I guess I'll take a look
+around,' says he. Sure enough, there was a rug with 'Welcome' on it
+layin' in front of the washstand, and when he turned it up he found
+an elegant diamond stud with a man's full name and address on the gold
+part. He took a train and went right to the man's house. He was so taken
+by surprise (he hadn't missed the stud, for he had a full set of 'em)
+that he owned right up and confessed the murder."
+
+"I don't see as that's got anything to do with this case," said Diadema.
+
+"It's got this much to do with it," replied old Mrs. Bascom, "that
+perhaps you've looked all round the room and seen everything you had
+eyes to see, and perhaps I've had wit enough to turn up the rug in front
+o' the washstand."
+
+"Whoever he marries now, Mis' Bascom'll have to say 't was the one she
+meant," laughed the Widow Buzzell.
+
+"I never was caught cheatin' yet, and if I live till Saturday I shall be
+seventy-one years old," said the old lady with some heat. "Hand me Jot's
+lead pencil, Diademy, and that old envelope on the winder sill. I'll
+write the name I think of, and shut it up in the old Bible. My hand's
+so stiff to-day I can't hardly move it, but I guess I can make it plain
+enough to satisfy you."
+
+"That's fair 'n' square," said Hannah Sophia, "and for my pat I hope it
+ain't Eunice, for I like her too well. What they're goin' to live on is
+more 'n I can see. Add nothin' to nothin' 'n' you git nothin',--that's
+arethmetic! He ain't hed a cent o' ready money sence he failed up four
+years ago, 'thout it was that hundred dollars that fell to him from his
+wife's aunt. Eunice'll hev her hands full this winter, I guess, with
+them three hearty children 'n' him all wheezed up with phthisic from
+October to April!... Who's that coming' down Tory Hill? It's Rube's
+horse 'n' Rube's wagon, but it don't look like Rube."
+
+"Yes, it's Rube; but he's got a new Panama hat, 'n' he 's hed his linen
+duster washed," said old Mrs. Bascom. ... "Now, do you mean to tell me
+that that woman with a stuck-up hat on is Eunice Emery? It ain't, 'n'
+that green parasol don't belong to this village. He's drivin' her into
+his yard!... Just as I s'posed, it's that little, smirkin' worthless
+school-teacher up to the Mills.--Don't break my neck, Diademy; can't you
+see out the other winder?--Yes, he's helpin' her out, 'n' showin' her
+in. He can't 'a' ben married more'n ten minutes, for he's goin' clear up
+the steps to open the door for her!"
+
+"Wait 'n' see if he takes his horse out," said Hannah Sophia. "Mebbe
+he'll drive her back in a few minutes. ... No, he's onhitched! ...
+There, he's hangin' up the head-stall!"
+
+"I've ben up in the attic chamber," called the Widow Buzzell, as she
+descended the stairs; "she's pulled up the curtains, and took off her
+hat right in front o' the winder, 's bold as a brass kettle! She's come
+to stay! Ain't that Rube Hobson all over,--to bring another woman int'
+this village 'stid o' weedin' one of 'em out as he'd oughter. He ain't
+got any more public sperit than a--hedgehog, 'n' never had!"
+
+Almira drew on her mitts excitedly, tied on her shaker, and started for
+the door.
+
+"I'm goin' over to Eunice's," she said, "and I'm goin' to take my bottle
+of camphire. I shouldn't wonder a mite if I found her in a dead faint on
+the kitchen floor. Nobody need tell me she wa'n't buildin' hopes."
+
+"I'll go with you," said the Widow Buzzell. "I'd like to see with my
+own eyes how she takes it, 'n' it'll be too late to tell if I wait
+till after supper. If she'd ben more open with me 'n' ever asked for my
+advice, I could 'a' told her it wa'n't the first time Rube Hobson has
+played that trick."
+
+"I'd come too if 't wa'n't milkin' but Jot ain't home from the Centre,
+and I've got to do his chores; come in as you go along back, will you?"
+asked Diadema.
+
+Hannah Sophia remained behind, promising to meet them at the post-office
+and hear the news. As the two women walked down the hill she drew the
+old envelope from the Bible and read the wavering words scrawled upon it
+in old Mrs. Bascom's rheumatic and uncertain hand,--
+
+_the_ _milikins_ _Mills_ _Teecher._
+
+
+"Well Lucindy, you do make good use o' your winder," she exclaimed, "but
+how you pitched on anything so onlikely as her is more'n I can see."
+
+"Just because 't was onlikely. A man's a great sight likelier to do an
+onlikely thing than he is a likely one, when it comes to marryin'. In
+the first place, Rube sent his children to school up to the Mills 'stid
+of to the brick schoolhouse, though he had to pay a little something to
+get 'em taken in to another deestrick. They used to come down at night
+with their hands full o' 'ward o' merit cards. Do you s'pose I thought
+they got 'em for good behavior, or for knowin' their lessons? Then aunt
+Hitty told me some question or other Rube had asked examination day.
+Since when has Rube Hobson 'tended examinations, thinks I. And when I
+see the girl, a red-and-white paper doll that wouldn't know whether to
+move the churn-dasher up 'n' down or round 'n' round, I made up my
+mind that bein' a man he'd take her for certain, and not his next-door
+neighbor of a sensible age and a house 'n' farm 'n' cow 'n' buggy!"
+
+"Sure enough," agreed Hannah Sophia, "though that don't account for
+Eunice's queer actions, 'n' the pa'cels 'n' the fruit cake."
+
+"When I make out a case," observed Mrs. Bascom modestly, "I ain't one to
+leave weak spots in it. If I guess at all, I go all over the ground
+'n' stop when I git through. Now, sisters or no sisters, Maryabby Emery
+ain't spoke to Eunice sence she moved to Salem. But if Eunice has ben
+bringin' pa'cels home, Maryabby must 'a' paid for what was in 'em; and
+if she's ben bakin' fruit cake this hot day, why Maryabby used to be
+so font o' fruit cake her folks were afraid she'd have fits 'n' die.
+I shall be watchin' here as usual to-morrow morning', 'n' if Maryabby
+don't drive int' Eunice's yard before noon I won't brag any more for a
+year to come."
+
+Hannah Sophia gazed at old Mrs. Bascom with unstinted admiration. "You
+do beat all," she said; "and I wish I could stay all night 'n' see how
+it turns out, but Almiry is just comin' over the bridge, 'n' I must
+start 'n' meet her. Good-by. I'm glad to see you so smart; you always
+look slim, but I guess you'll tough it out's long 's the rest of us. I
+see your log was all right, last time I was down side o' the river."
+
+
+"They say it 's jest goin' to break in two in the middle, and fall into
+the river," cheerfully responded Lucinda. "They say it's just hanging'
+on by a thread. Well, that's what they 've ben sayin' about me these
+ten years, 'n' here I be still hanging! It don't make no odds, I guess,
+whether it's a thread or a rope you 're hangin' by, so long as you
+hang."
+
+* * *
+
+
+The next morning, little Mote Hobson, who had stayed all night with his
+uncle in Union, was walking home by the side of the river. He strolled
+along, the happy, tousle-headed, barefooted youngster, eyes one moment
+on the trees in the hope of squirrels and birds'-nests, the next on the
+ground in search of the first blueberries. As he stooped to pick up a
+bit of shining quartz to add to the collection in his ragged trousers'
+pockets he glanced across the river, and at that very instant Lucinda's
+log broke gently in twain, rolled down the bank, crumbling as it went,
+and, dropping in like a tired child, was carried peacefully along on the
+river's breast.
+
+Mote walked more quickly after that. It was quite a feather in his cap
+to see, with his own eyes, the old landmark slip from its accustomed
+place and float down the stream. The other boys would miss it and say,
+"It's gone!" He would say, "I saw it go!"
+
+Grandpa Bascom was standing at the top of the hill. His white locks were
+uncovered, and he was in his shirt-sleeves. Baby Jot, as usual, held
+fast by his shaking hand, for they loved each other, these two. The
+cruel stroke of the sun that had blurred the old man's brain had spared
+a blessed something in him that won the healing love of children.
+
+"How d' ye, Mote?" he piped in his feeble voice. "They say Lucindy's
+dead. ... Jot says she is, 'n' Diademy says she is, 'n' I guess she is.
+... It 's a dretful thick year for fol'age; ... some o' the maples looks
+like balls in the air."
+
+Mote looked in at the window. The neighbors were hurrying to and fro.
+Diadema sat with her calico apron up to her face, sobbing; and for the
+first morning in thirty years, old Mrs. Bascom's high-backed rocker was
+empty, and there was no one sitting in the village watch-tower.
+
+
+
+
+TOM O' THE BLUEB'RY PLAINS.
+
+
+The sky is a shadowless blue; the noon-day sun glows fiercely; a cloud
+of dust rises from the burning road whenever the hot breeze stirs the
+air, or whenever a farm wagon creaks along, its wheels sinking into the
+deep sand.
+
+In the distance, where the green of the earth joins the blue of the sky,
+gleams the silver line of a river.
+
+As far as the eye an reach, the ground is covered with blueberry bushes;
+red leaves peeping among green ones; bloom of blue fruit hanging in full
+warm clusters,--spheres of velvet mellowed by summer sun, moistened with
+crystal dew, spiced with fragrance of woods.
+
+In among the blueberry bushes grow huckleberries, "choky pears," and
+black-snaps.
+
+Gnarled oaks and stunted pines lift themselves out of the wilderness of
+shrubs. They look dwarfed and gloomy, as if Nature had been an untender
+mother, and denied them proper nourishment.
+
+The road is a little-traveled one, and furrows of feathery grasses grow
+between the long, hot, sandy stretches of the wheel-ruts.
+
+The first goldenrod gleams among the loose stones at the foot of the
+alder bushes. Whole families of pale butterflies, just out of their
+long sleep, perch on the brilliant stalks and tilter up and down in the
+sunshine.
+
+Straggling processions of wooly brown caterpillars wend their way in
+the short grass by the wayside, where the wild carrot and the purple
+bull-thistle are coming into bloom.
+
+The song of birds is seldom heard, and the blueberry plains are given
+over to silence save for the buzzing of gorged flies, the humming of
+bees, and the chirping of crickets that stir the drowsy air when the
+summer begins to wane.
+
+It is so still that the shuffle-shuffle of a footstep can be heard in
+the distance, the tinkle of a tin pail swinging musically to and fro,
+the swish of an alder switch cropping the heads of the roadside weeds.
+All at once a voice breaks the stillness. Is it a child's, a woman's, or
+a man's? Neither yet all three.
+
+     "I'd much d'ruth-er walk in the bloom-in' gy-ar-ding,
+     An' hear the whis-sle of the jol-ly
+     --swain."
+
+Everybody knows the song, and everybody knows the cracked voice. The
+master of this bit of silent wilderness is coming home: it is Tom o' the
+blueb'ry plains.
+
+He is more than common tall, with a sandy beard, and a mop of tangled
+hair straggling beneath his torn straw hat. A square of wet calico drips
+from under the back of the hat. His gingham shirt is open at the throat,
+showing his tanned neck and chest. Warm as it is, he wears portions of
+at least three coats on his back. His high boots, split in foot and leg,
+are mended and spliced and laced and tied on with bits of shingle rope.
+He carries a small tin pail of molasses. It has a bail of rope, and
+a battered cover with a knob of sticky newspaper. Over one shoulder,
+suspended on a crooked branch, hangs a bundle of basket stuff,--split
+willow withes and the like; over the other swings a decrepit,
+bottomless, three-legged chair.
+
+
+I call him the master of the plains, but in faith he had no legal claim
+to the title. If he owned a habitation or had established a home on any
+spot in the universe, it was because no man envied him what he took; for
+Tom was one of God's fools, a foot-loose pilgrim in this world of
+ours, a poor addle-pated, simple-minded, harmless creature,--in village
+parlance, a "softy."
+
+Mother or father, sister or brother, he had none, nor ever had, so far
+as any one knew; but how should people who had to work from sun-up to
+candlelight to get the better of the climate have leisure to discover
+whether or no Blueb'ry Tom had any kin?
+
+At some period in an almost forgotten past there had been a house on
+Tom's particular patch of the plains. It had long since tumbled
+into ruins and served for fire-wood and even the chimney bricks had
+disappeared one by one, as the monotonous seasons came and went.
+
+Tom had settled himself in an old tool-shop, corn-house, or rude
+out-building of some sort that had belonged to the ruined cottage. Here
+he had set up his house-hold gods; and since no one else had ever wanted
+a home in this dreary tangle of berry bushes, where the only shade came
+from stunted pines that flung shriveled arms to the sky and dropped dead
+cones to the sterile earth, here he remained unmolested.
+
+In the lower part of the hut he kept his basket stuff and his collection
+of two-legged and three-legged chairs. In the course of evolution they
+never sprouted another leg, those chairs; as they were given to him,
+so they remained. The upper floor served for his living-room, and was
+reached by a ladder from the ground, for there was no stairway inside.
+
+No one had ever been in the little upper chamber. When a passer-by
+chanced to be-think him that Tom's hermitage was close at hand, he
+sometimes turned in his team by a certain clump of white birches and
+drove nearer to the house, intending to remind Tom that there was a
+chair to willow-bottom the next time he came to the village. But at
+the noise of the wheels Tom drew in his ladder; and when the visitor
+alighted and came within sight, it was to find the inhospitable host
+standing in the opening of the second-story window, a quaint figure
+framed in green branches, the ladder behind him, and on his face a kind
+of impenetrable dignity, as he shook his head and said, "Tom ain't ter
+hum; Tom's gone to Bonny Eagle."
+
+There was something impressive about his way of repelling callers; it
+was as effectual as a door slammed in the face, and yet there was a sort
+of mendacious courtesy about it. No one ever cared to go further;
+and indeed there was no mystery to tempt the curious, and no spoil to
+attract the mischievous or the malicious. Any one could see, without
+entering, the straw bed in the far corner, the beams piled deep with
+red and white oak acorns, the strings of dried apples and bunches of
+everlastings hanging from the rafters, and the half-finished baskets
+filled with blown bird's-eggs, pine cones, and pebbles.
+
+No home in the village was better loved than Tom's retreat in the
+blueberry plains. Whenever he approached it, after a long day's tramp,
+when he caught the first sight of the white birches that marked the
+gateway to his estate and showed him where to turn off the public road
+into his own private grounds, he smiled a broader smile than usual, and
+broke into his well-known song:
+
+     "I'd much d'ruth-er walk in the bloom-in' gy-ar-ding,
+     An' hear the whis-sle of the jol-ly
+     --swain."
+
+Poor Tom could never catch the last note. He had sung the song for more
+than forty years, but the memory of this tone was so blurred, and his
+cherished ideal of it so high (or so low, rather), that he never managed
+to reach it.
+
+Oh, if only summer were eternal! Who could wish a better supper than
+ripe berries and molasses? Nor was there need of sleeping under roof nor
+of lighting candles to grope his way to pallet of straw, when he might
+have the blue vault of heaven arching over him, and all God's stars for
+lamps, and for a bed a horse blanket stretched over an elastic couch of
+pine needles. There were two gaunt pines that had been dropping their
+polished spills for centuries, perhaps silently adding, year by year,
+another layer of aromatic springiness to poor Tom's bed. Flinging his
+tired body on this grateful couch, burying his head in the crushed sweet
+fern of his pillow with one deep-drawn sigh of pleasure,--there, haunted
+by no past and harassed by no future, slept God's fool as sweetly as a
+child.
+
+Yes, if only summer were eternal, and youth as well!
+
+But when the blueberries had ripened summer after summer, and the gaunt
+pine-trees had gone on for many years weaving poor Tom's mattress, there
+came a change in the aspect of things. He still made his way to the
+village, seeking chairs to mend; but he was even more unkempt than of
+old, his tall figure was bent, and his fingers trembled as he wove the
+willow strands in and out, and over and under.
+
+There was little work to do, moreover, for the village had altogether
+retired from business, and was no longer in competition with its
+neighbors: the dam was torn away, the sawmills were pulled down;
+husbands and fathers were laid in the churchyard, sons and brothers and
+lovers had gone West, and mothers and widows and spinsters stayed on,
+each in her quiet house alone. "'T ain't no hardship when you get used
+to it," said the Widow Buzzell. "Land sakes! a lantern 's 's good 's a
+man any time, if you only think so, 'n' 't ain't half so much trouble to
+keep it filled up!"
+
+But Tom still sold a basket occasionally, and the children always
+gathered about him for the sake of hearing him repeat his well-worn
+formula,--"Tom allers puts two handles on baskets: one to take 'em up by,
+one to set 'em down by." This was said with a beaming smile and a wise
+shake of the head, as if he were announcing a great discovery to an
+expectant world. And then he would lay down his burden of basket stuff,
+and, sitting under an apple-tree in somebody's side yard, begin his task
+of willow-bottoming an old chair. It was a pretty sight enough, if one
+could keep back the tears,--the kindly, simple fellow with the circle of
+children about his knees. Never a village fool without a troop of babies
+at his heels. They love him, too, till we teach them to mock.
+
+When he was younger, he would sing,
+
+     "Rock-a-by, baby, on the treetop,"
+
+and dance the while, swinging his unfinished basket to and fro for a
+cradle. He was too stiff in the joints for dancing nowadays, but
+he still sang the "bloomin' gy-ar-ding" when ever they asked him,
+particularly if some apple-cheeked little maid would say, "Please, Tom!"
+He always laughed then, and, patting the child's hand, said, "Pooty
+gal,--got eyes!" The youngsters dance with glee at this meaningless
+phrase, just as their mothers had danced years before when it was said
+to them.
+
+Summer waned. In the moist places the gentian uncurled its blue fringes;
+purple asters and gay Joe Pye waved their colors by the roadside; tall
+primroses put their yellow bonnets on, and peeped over the brooks to see
+themselves; and the dusty pods of the milkweed were bursting with their
+silky fluffs, the spinning of the long summer. Autumn began to paint the
+maples red and the elms yellow, for the early days of September brought
+a frost. Some one remarked at the village store that old Blueb'ry Tom
+must not be suffered to stay on the plains another winter, now that he
+was getting so feeble,--not if the "_se_leckmen" had to root him out
+and take him to the poor-farm. He would surely starve or freeze, and his
+death would be laid at their door.
+
+Tom was interviewed. Persuasion, logic, sharp words, all failed to move
+him one jot or tittle. He stood in his castle door, with the ladder
+behind him, smiling, always smiling (none but the fool smiles always,
+nor always weeps), and saying to all visitors, "Tom ain't ter hum; Tom's
+gone to Bonny Eagle; Tom don' want to go to the poor-farm."
+
+November came in surly.
+
+The cheerful stir and bustle of the harvest were over, the corn was
+shocked, the apples and pumpkins were gathered into barns. The problem
+of Tom's future was finally laid before the selectmen; and since the
+poor fellow's mild obstinancy had defeated all attempts to conquer it,
+the sheriff took the matter in hand.
+
+The blueberry plains looked bleak and bare enough now. It had rained
+incessantly for days, growing ever colder and colder as it rained. The
+sun came out at last, but it shone in a wintry sort of way,--like a duty
+smile,--as if light, not heat, were its object. A keen wind blew the
+dead leaves hither and thither in a wild dance that had no merriment in
+it. A blackbird flew under an old barrel by the wayside, and, ruffling
+himself into a ball, remarked despondently that feathers were no sort of
+protection in this kind of climate. A snowbird, flying by, glanced in
+at the barrel, and observed that anybody who minded a little breeze like
+that had better join the woodcocks, who were leaving for the South by
+the night express.
+
+The blueberry bushes were stripped bare of green. The stunted pines and
+sombre hemlocks looked in tone with the landscape now; where all was
+dreary they did not seem amiss.
+
+"Je-whilikins!" exclaimed the sheriff as he drew up his coat collar.
+"A madhouse is the place for the man who wants to live ou'doors in the
+winter time; the poor-farm is too good for him."
+
+But Tom was used to privation, and even to suffering. "Ou'doors" was the
+only home he knew, and with all its rigors he loved it. He looked over
+the barren plains, knowing, in a dull sort of way, that they would
+shortly be covered with snow; but he had three coats, two of them with
+sleeves, and the crunch-crunch of the snow under his tread was music
+to his ears. Then, too, there were a few hospitable firesides where he
+could always warm himself; and the winter would soon be over, the birds
+would come again,--new birds, singing the old songs,--the sap would
+mount in the trees, the buds swell on the blueberry bushes, and the
+young ivory leaves push their ruddy tips through the softening ground.
+The plains were fatherland and mother-country, home and kindred, to
+Tom. He loved the earth that nourished him, and he saw through all the
+seeming death in nature the eternal miracle of the resurrection. To him
+winter was never cruel. He looked underneath her white mantle, saw the
+infant spring hidden in her warm bosom, and was content to wait. Content
+to wait? Content to starve, content to freeze, if only he need not be
+carried into captivity.
+
+The poor-farm was not a bad place, either, if only Tom had been a
+reasonable being. To be sure, when Hannah Sophia Palmer asked old Mrs.
+Pinkham how she liked it, she answered, with a patient sigh, that
+"her 'n' Mr. Pinkham hed lived there goin' on nine year, workin' their
+fingers to the bone 'most, 'n' yet they hadn't been able to lay up a
+cent!" If this peculiarity of administration was its worst feature, it
+was certainly one that would have had no terrors for Tom o' the blueb'ry
+plains. Terrors of some sort, nevertheless, the poor-farm had for him;
+and when the sheriff's party turned in by the clump of white birches and
+approached the cabin, they found that fear had made the simple wise. Tom
+had provished the little upper chamber, and, in place of the piece of
+sacking that usually served him for a door in winter, he had woven a
+defense of willow. In fine, he had taken all his basket stuff, and,
+treating the opening through which he entered and left his home
+precisely as if it were a bottomless chair, he had filled it in solidly,
+weaving to and fro, by night as well as by day, till he felt, poor fool,
+as safely intrenched as if he were in the heart of a fortress.
+
+The sheriff tied his horse to a tree, and Rube Hobson and Pitt Packard
+got out of the double wagon. Two men laughed when they saw the pathetic
+defense, but the other shut his lips together and caught his breath.
+(He had been born on a poor-farm, but no one knew it at Pleasant River.)
+They called Tom's name repeatedly, but no other sound broke the silence
+of the plains save the rustling of the wind among the dead leaves.
+
+"Numb-head!" muttered the sheriff, pounding on the side of the cabin
+with his whip-stock. "Come out and show yourself! We know you're in
+there, and it's no use hiding!"
+
+At last in response to a deafening blow from Rube Hobson's hard fist,
+there came the answering note of a weak despairing voice.
+
+"Tom ain't ter hum," it said; "Tom's gone to Bonny Eagle."
+
+"That's all right!" guffawed the men; "but you've got to go some more,
+and go a diff'rent way. It ain't no use fer you to hold back; we've got
+a ladder, and by Jiminy! you go with us this time!"
+
+The ladder was put against the side of the hut, and Pitt Packard climbed
+up, took his jack-knife, slit the woven door from top to bottom, and
+turned back the flap.
+
+The men could see the inside of the chamber now. They were humorous
+persons who could strain a joke to the snapping point, but they felt,
+at last, that there was nothing especially amusing in the situation.
+Tom was huddled in a heap on the straw bed in the far corner. The vacant
+smile had fled from his face, and he looked, for the first time in his
+life, quite distraught.
+
+"Come along, Tom," said the sheriff kindly; "we 're going to take you
+where you can sleep in a bed, and have three meals a day."
+
+     "I'd much d'ruth-er walk in the bloom-in' gy-ar-ding,"
+
+sang Tom quaveringly, as he hid his head in a paroxysm of fear.
+
+"Well, there ain't no bloomin' gardings to walk in jest now, so come
+along and be peaceable."
+
+"Tom don' want to go to the poor-farm," he wailed piteously.
+
+But there was no alternative. They dragged him off the bed and down the
+ladder as gently as possible; then Rube Hobson held him on the back seat
+of the wagon, while the sheriff unhitched the horse. As they were on
+the point of starting, the captive began to wail and struggle more than
+ever, the burden of his plaint being a wild and tremulous plea for his
+pail of molasses.
+
+"Dry up, old softy, or I'll put the buggy robe over your head!" muttered
+Rube Hobson, who had not had much patience when he started on the trip,
+and had lost it all by this time.
+
+"By thunder! he shall hev his molasses, if he thinks he wants it!" said
+Pitt Packard, and he ran up the ladder and brought it down, comforting
+the shivering creature thus, for he lapsed into a submissive silence
+that lasted until the unwelcome journey was over.
+
+Tom remained at the poorhouse precisely twelve hours. It did not enter
+the minds of the authorities that any one so fortunate as to be admitted
+into that happy haven would decline to stay there. The unwilling guest
+disappeared early on the morrow of his arrival, and, after some search,
+they followed him to the old spot. He had climbed into his beloved
+retreat, and, having learned nothing from experience, had mended the
+willow door as best he could, and laid him down in peace. They dragged
+him out again, and this time more impatiently; for it was exasperating
+to see a man (even if he were a fool) fight against a bed and three
+meals a day.
+
+The second attempt was little more successful than the first. As a
+place of residence, the poor-farm did not seem any more desirable or
+attractive on near acquaintance than it did at long range. Tom remained
+a week, because he was kept in close confinement; but when they judged
+that he was weaned from his old home, they loosed his bonds, and--back
+to the plains he sped, like an arrow shot from the bow, or like a bit of
+iron leaping to the magnet.
+
+What should be done with him?
+
+Public opinion was divided. Some people declared that the village had
+done its duty, and if the "dog-goned lunk-head" wanted to starve
+and freeze, it was his funeral, not theirs. Others thought that
+the community had no resource but to bear the responsibility of its
+irresponsible children, however troublesome they might be. There was
+entire unanimity of view so far as the main issues were concerned. It
+was agreed that nobody at the poor-farm had leisure to stand guard over
+Tom night and day, and that the sheriff could not be expected to spend
+his time forcing him out of his hut on the blueberry plains.
+
+There was but one more expedient to be tried, a very simple and
+ingenious but radical and comprehensive one, which, in Rube Hobson's
+opinion, would strike at the root of the matter.
+
+Tom had fled from captivity for the third time.
+
+He had stolen out at daybreak, and, by an unexpected stroke of fortune,
+the molasses pail was hanging on a nail by the shed door. The remains of
+a battered old bushel basket lay on the wood-pile: bottom it had none,
+nor handles; rotundity of side had long since disappeared, and none
+but its maker would have known it for a basket. Tom caught it up in his
+flight, and, seizing the first crooked stick that offered, he slung the
+dear familiar burden over his shoulder and started off on a jog-trot.
+
+Heaven, how happy he was! It was the rosy dawn of an Indian summer
+day,--a warm jewel of a day, dropped into the bleak world of yesterday
+without a hint of beneficent intention; one of those enchanting weather
+surprises with which Dame Nature reconciles us to her stern New England
+rule.
+
+The joy that comes of freedom, and the freedom that comes of joy, unbent
+the old man's stiffened joints. He renewed his youth at every mile. He
+ran like a lapwing. When his feet first struck the sandy soil of the
+plains, he broke into old song of the "bloom-in' gy-ar-ding" and the
+"jolly swain," and in the marvelous mental and spiritual exhilaration
+born of the supreme moment he almost grasped that impossible last note.
+His heard could hardly hold its burden of rapture when he caught the
+well-known gleam of the white birches. He turned into the familiar
+path, boy's blood thumping in old man's veins. The past week had been
+a dreadful dream. A few steps more and he would be within sight, within
+touch of home,--home at last! No--what was wrong? He must have gone
+beyond it, in his reckless haste! Strange that he could have forgotten
+the beloved spot! Can lover mistake the way to sweetheart's window? Can
+child lose the path to mother's knee?
+
+He turned,--ran hither and thither, like one distraught. A nameless
+dread flitted through his dull mind, chilling his warm blood, paralyzing
+the activity of the moment before. At last, with a sob like that of a
+frightened child who flies from some imagined evil lurking in darkness,
+he darted back to the white birches and started anew. This time
+he trusted to blind instinct; his feet knew the path, and, left to
+themselves, they took him through the tangle of dry bushes straight to
+his--
+
+It had vanished!
+
+Nothing but ashes remained to mark the spot,--nothing but ashes! And
+these, ere many days, the autumn winds would scatter, and the leafless
+branches on which they fell would shake them off lightly, never dreaming
+that they hid the soul of a home. Nothing but ashes!
+
+Poor Tom o' the blueb'ry plains!
+
+
+
+
+THE NOONING TREE.
+
+
+The giant elm stood in the centre of the squire's fair green meadows,
+and was known to all the country round about as the "Bean ellum." The
+other trees had seemingly retired to a respectful distance, as if they
+were not worthy of closer intimacy; and so it stood alone, king of the
+meadow, monarch of the village.
+
+It shot from the ground for a space, straight, strong, and superb,
+and then bust into nine splendid branches, each a tree in itself, all
+growing symmetrically from the parent trunk, and casting a grateful
+shadow under which all the inhabitants of the tiny village might have
+gathered.
+
+It was not alone its size, its beauty, its symmetry, its density of
+foliage, that made it the glory of the neighborhood, but the low grown
+of its branches and the extra-ordinary breadth of its shade. Passers-by
+from the adjacent towns were wont to hitch their teams by the wayside,
+crawl through the stump fence and walk across the fields, for a nearer
+view of its magnificence. One man, indeed, was known to drive by the
+tree every day during the summer, and lift his hat to it, respectfully,
+each time he passed; but he was a poet and his intellect was not greatly
+esteemed in the village.
+
+The elm was almost as beautiful in one season as in another. In the
+spring it rose from moist fields and mellow ploughed ground, its tiny
+brown leaf buds bursting with pride at the thought of the loveliness
+coiled up inside. In summer it stood in the midst of a waving garden of
+buttercups and whiteweed, a towering mass of verdant leafage, a shelter
+from the sun and a refuge from the storm; a cool, splendid, hospitable
+dome, under which the weary farmer might fling himself, and gaze upward
+as into the heights and depths of an emerald heaven. As for the birds,
+they made it a fashionable summer resort, the most commodious and
+attractive in the whole country; with no limit to the accommodations
+for those of a gregarious turn of mind, liking the advantages of select
+society combined with country air. In the autumn it held its own; for
+when the other elms changed their green to duller tints, the nooning
+tree put on a gown of yellow, and stood out against the far background
+of sombre pine woods a brilliant mass of gold and brown. In winter, when
+there was no longer dun of upturned sod, nor waving daisy gardens, nor
+ruddy autumn grasses, it rose above the dazzling snow crust, lifting
+its bare, shapely branches in sober elegance and dignity, and seeming to
+say, "Do not pity me; I have been, and, please God, I shall be!"
+
+Whenever the weather was sufficiently mild, it was used as a "nooning"
+tree by all the men at work in the surrounding fields; but it was in
+haying time that it became the favorite lunching and "bangeing" place
+for Squire Bean's hands and those of Miss Vilda Cummins, who owned the
+adjoining farm. The men congregated under the spreading branches
+at twelve o' the clock, and spent the noon hour there, eating and
+"swapping" stories, as they were doing to-day.
+
+Each had a tin pail, and each consumed a quantity of "flour food" that
+kept the housewives busy at the cook stove from morning till night. A
+glance at Pitt Packard's luncheon, for instance, might suffice as
+an illustration, for, as Jabe Slocum said, "Pitt took after both his
+parents; one et a good deal, 'n' the other a good while." His pail
+contained four doughnuts, a quarter section of pie, six buttermilk
+biscuits, six ginger cookies, a baked cup custard, and a quart of cold
+coffee. This quantity was a trifle unusual, but every man in the group
+was lined throughout with pie, cemented with buttermilk bread, and
+riveted with doughnuts.
+
+Jabe Slocum and Brad Gibson lay extended slouchingly, their cowhide
+boots turned up to the sky; Dave Milliken, Steve Webster, and the others
+leaned back against the tree-trunk, smoking clay pipes, or hugging their
+knees and chewing blades of grass reflectively.
+
+One man sat apart from the rest, gloomily puffing rings of smoke into
+the air. After a while he lay down in the grass with his head buried
+in his hat, sleeping to all appearances, while the others talked and
+laughed; for he had no stories, though he put in an absent-minded word
+or two when he was directly addressed. This was the man from Tennessee,
+Matt Henderson, dubbed "Dixie" for short. He was a giant fellow,--a
+"great gormin' critter," Samantha Ann Milliken called him; but if he
+had held up his head and straightened his broad shoulders, he would have
+been thought a man of splendid presence.
+
+He seemed a being from another sphere instead of from another section
+of the country. It was not alone the olive tint of the skin, the mass
+of wavy dark hair tossed back from a high forehead, the sombre eyes,
+and the sad mouth,--a mouth that had never grown into laughing curves
+through telling Yankee jokes,--it was not these that gave him what the
+boys called a "kind of a downcasted look." The man from Tennessee had
+something more than a melancholy temperament; he had, or physiognomy was
+a lie, a sorrow tugging at his heart.
+
+"I'm goin' to doze a spell," drawled Jabe Slocum, pulling his straw hat
+over his eyes. "I've got to renew my strength like the eagle's, 'f I'm
+goin' to walk to the circus this afternoon. Wake me up, boys, when you
+think I'd ought to sling that scythe some more, for if I hev it on my
+mind I can't git a wink o' sleep."
+
+This was apparently a witticism; at any rate, it elicited roars of
+laughter.
+
+"It's one of Jabe's useless days; he takes 'em from his great-aunt
+Lyddy," said David Milliken.
+
+"You jest dry up, Dave. Ef it took me as long to git to workin' as it
+did you to git a wife, I bate this hay wouldn't git mowed down to crack
+o' doom. Gorry! ain't this a tree! I tell you, the sun 'n' the airth,
+the dew 'n' the showers, 'n' the Lord God o' creation jest took holt 'n'
+worked together on this tree, 'n' no mistake!"
+
+"You're right, Jabe." (This from Steve Webster, who was absently cutting
+a _D_ in the bark. He was always cutting _D_'s these days.) "This ellum
+can't be beat in the State o' Maine, nor no other state. My brother that
+lives in California says that the big redwoods, big as they air, don't
+throw no sech shade, nor ain't so han'some, 'specially in the fall o'
+the year, as our State o' Maine trees; 'assiduous trees,' he called
+'em."
+
+"_Assidyus_ trees? Why don't you talk United States while you're about
+it, 'n' not fire yer long-range words round here? _Assidyus!_ What does
+it mean, anyhow?"
+
+"Can't prove it by me. That's what he called 'em, 'n' I never forgot
+it."
+
+"Assidyus--assidyus--it don't sound as if it meant nothing', to me."
+
+"Assiduous means 'busy,'" said the man from Tennessee, who had suddenly
+waked from a brown study, and dropped off into another as soon as he had
+given the definition.
+
+"Busy, does it? Wall, I guess we ain't no better off now 'n we ever was.
+One tree's 'bout 's busy as another, as fur 's I can see."
+
+"Wall, there is kind of a meanin' in it to me, but it'sturrible far
+fetched," remarked Jabe Slocum, rather sleepily. "You see, our ellums
+and maples 'n' all them trees spends part o' the year in buddin' 'n'
+gittin' out their leaves 'n' hangin' em all over the branches; 'n' then,
+no sooner air they full grown than they hev to begin colorin' of 'em red
+or yeller or brown, 'n' then shakin' 'em off; 'n' this is all extry, you
+might say, to their every-day chores o' growin' 'n' cirkerlatin' sap,
+'n' spreadin' 'n' thickenin' 'n' shovin' out limbs, 'n' one thing 'n'
+'nother; 'n' it stan's to reason that the first 'n' hemlocks 'n' them
+California redwoods, that keeps their clo'es on right through the year,
+can't be so busy as them that keeps a-dressin' 'n' ondressin' all the
+time."
+
+"I guess you're 'bout right," allowed Steve, "but I shouldn't never 'a'
+thought of it in the world. What yer takin' out o' that bottle, Jabe? I
+thought you was a temperance man."
+
+"I guess he 's like the feller over to Shandagee schoolhouse, that said
+he was in favor o' the law, but agin its enforcement!" laughed Pitt
+Packard.
+
+"I ain't breakin' no law; this is yarb bitters," Jabe answered, with a
+pull at the bottle.
+
+"It's to cirkerlate his blood," said Ob Tarbox; "he's too dog-goned lazy
+to cirkerlate it himself."
+
+"I'm takin' it fer what ails me," said Jabe oracularly; "the heart
+knoweth its own bitterness, 'n' it 's a wise child that knows its own
+complaints 'thout goin' to a doctor."
+
+"Ain't yer scared fer fear it'll start yer growth, Laigs?" asked little
+Brad Gibson, looking at Jabe's tremendous length of limb and foot. "Say,
+how do yer git them feet o' yourn uphill? Do yer start one ahead, 'n'
+side-track the other?"
+
+The tree rang with the laughter evoked by this sally, but the man from
+Tennessee never smiled.
+
+Jabe Slocum's imperturbable good humor was not shaken in the very least
+by these personal remarks. "If I thought 't was a good growin' medicine,
+I'd recommend it to your folks, Brad," he replied cheerfully. "Your
+mother says you boys air all so short that when you're diggin' potatoes,
+yer can't see her shake the dinner rag 'thout gittin' up 'n' standing
+on the potato hills! If I was a sinikitin feller like you, I wouldn't
+hector folks that had made out to grow some."
+
+"Speakin' o' growin'," said Steve Webster, "who do you guess I seen in
+Boston, when I was workin' there? That tall Swatkins girl from the
+Duck Pond, the one that married Dan Robinson. It was one Sunday, in the
+Catholic meetin'-house. I'd allers wanted to go to a Catholic meetin',
+an' I declare it's about the solemnest one there is. I mistrusted I was
+goin' to everlastin'ly giggle, but I tell yer I was the awedest cutter
+yer ever see. But anyway, the Swatkins girl--or Mis' Robinson, she is
+now--was there as large as life in the next pew to me, jabberin' Latin,
+pawin' beads, gettin' up 'n' kneelin' down, 'n' crossin' herself north,
+south, east, 'n' west, with the best of 'em. Poor Dan! 'Grinnin' Dan,'
+we used to call him. Well, he don't grin nowadays. He never was good for
+much, but he 's hed more 'n his comeuppance!"
+
+"Why, what 's the matter with him? Can't he git work in Boston?"
+
+"Matter? Why, his wife, that I see makin' believe be so dreadful pious
+in the Catholic meetin', she 's carried on wuss 'n the Old Driver for
+two years, 'n' now she 's up 'n' left him,--gone with a han'somer man."
+
+Down on Steve Webster's hand came Jabe Slocum's immense paw with a grasp
+that made him cringe.
+
+"What the"--began Steve, when the man from Tennessee took up his scythe
+and slouched away from the group by the tree.
+
+"Didn't yer know no better 'n that, yer thunderin' fool? Can't yer see a
+hole in a grindstun 'thout it's hung on yer nose?"
+
+"What hev I done?" asked Steve, as if dumfounded.
+
+"Done? Where 've yer ben, that yer don't know Dixie's wife 's left him?"
+
+"Where 've I ben? Hain't I ben workin' in Boston fer a year; 'n' since
+I come home last week, hain't I ben tendin' sick folks, so 't I
+couldn't git outside the dooryard? I never seen the man in my life till
+yesterday, in the field, 'n' I thought he was one o' them dark-skinned
+Frenchies from Guildford that hed come up here fer hayin'."
+
+"Mebbe I spoke too sharp," said Jabe apologetically; "but we 've ben
+scared to talk wives, or even women folks, fer a month o' Sundays, fer
+fear Dixie 'd up 'n' tumble on his scythe, or do somethin' crazy. You
+see it's this way (I'd ruther talk than work; 'n' we ain't workin' by
+time to-day, anyway, on account of the circus comin'): 'Bout a year 'n'
+a half ago, this tall, han'some feller turned up here in Pleasant River.
+He inhailed from down South somewheres, but he didn't like his work
+there, 'n' drifted to New York, 'n' then to Boston; 'n' then he
+remembered his mother was a State o' Maine woman, 'n' he come here to
+see how he liked. We didn't take no stock in him at first,--we never
+hed one o' that nigger-tradin' secedin' lot in amongst us,--but he was
+pleasant spoken 'n' a square, all-round feller, 'n' didn't git off any
+secesh nonsense, 'n' it ended in our likin' him first-rate. Wall, he got
+work in the cannin' fact'ry over on the Butterfield road, 'n' then he
+fell in with the Maddoxes. You 've hearn tell of 'em; they're relation
+to Pitt here."
+
+
+"I wouldn't own 'em if I met 'em on Judgement Bench!" exclaimed Pitt
+Packard hotly. "My stepfather's second wife married Mis' Maddox's first
+husband after he got divorced from her, 'n' that's all there is to it;
+they ain't no bloody-kin o' mine, 'n' I don't call 'em relation."
+
+"Wall, Pitt's relations or not, they're all wuss 'n the Old Driver,
+as yer said 'bout Dan Robinson's wife. Dixie went to board there. Mis
+Maddox was all out o' husbands jest then,--she 'd jest disposed of her
+fourth, somehow or 'nother; she always hed a plenty 'n' to spare, though
+there's lots o' likely women folks round here that never hed one chance,
+let alone four. Her daughter Fidelity was a chip o' the old block. Her
+father hed named her Fidelity after his mother, when she wa'n't nothin'
+but a two-days-old baby, 'n' he didn't know how she was goin' to turn
+out; if he 'd 'a' waited two months, I believe I could 'a' told him.
+_In_fidelity would 'a' ben a mighty sight more 'propriate; but either
+of 'em is too long fer a name, so they got to callin' her Fiddy. Wall,
+Fiddy didn't waste no time; she was nigh onto eighteen years old when
+Dixie went there to board, 'n' she begun huneyfuglin' him's soon as ever
+she set eyes on him. Folks warned him, but 't wa'n't no use; he was kind
+o' bewitched with her from the first. She wa'n't so han'some, neither.
+Blamed 'f I know how they do it; let 'em alone, 'f yer know when yer
+'re well off, 's my motter. She was red-headed, but her hair become her
+somehow when she curled 'n' frizzed it over a karosene lamp, 'n' then
+wound it round 'n' round her head like ropes o' carnelian. She hedn't
+any particular kind of a nose nor mouth nor eyes, but gorry! when she
+looked at yer, yer felt kind as if yer was turnin' to putty inside."
+
+"I know what yer mean," said Steve interestedly.
+
+"She hed a figger jest like them fashion-paper pictures you 've seen,
+an' the very day any new styles come to Boston Fiddy Maddox would hev
+'em before sundown; the biggest bustles 'n' the highest hats 'n' the
+tightest skirts 'n' the longest tails to 'em; she'd git 'em somehow,
+anyhow! Dixie wa'n't out o' money when he come here, an' a spell
+afterwards there was more 'n a thousand dollars fell to him from his
+father's folks down South. Well, Fiddy made that fly, I tell you! Dixie
+bought a top buggy 'n' a sorrel hoss, 'n' they was on the road most o'
+the time when he wa'n't to work; 'n' when he was, she 'd go with Lem
+Simmons, 'n' Dixie none the wiser. Mis Maddox was lookin' up a new
+husband jest then, so 't she didn't interfere"--
+
+"She was the same kind o' goods, anyhow," interpolated Ob Tarbox.
+
+"Yes, she was one of them women folks that air so light-minded you can't
+anchor 'em down with a sewin'-machine, nor a dishpan, nor a husband 'n'
+young ones, nor no namable kind of a thing; the least wind blows 'em
+here 'n' blows 'em there, like dandelion puffs. As time went on, the
+widder got herself a beau now 'n' then; but as fast as she hooked 'em,
+Fiddy up 'n' took 'em away from her. You see she 'd gethered in most of
+her husbands afore Fiddy was old enough to hev her finger in the pie;
+but she cut her eye-teeth early, Fiddy did, 'n' there wa'n't no kind of
+a feller come to set up with the widder but she 'd everlastin'ly grab
+him, if she hed any use fer him, 'n' then there 'd be Hail Columby, I
+tell yer. But Dixie, he was 's blind 's a bat 'n' deef 's a post. He
+could n't see nothin' but Fiddy, 'n' he couldn't see her very plain."
+
+"He hed warnin's enough," put in Pitt Packard, though Jabe Slocum never
+needed any assistance in spinning a yarn.
+
+"Warnin's! I should think he hed. The Seventh Day Baptist minister went
+so fur as to preach at him. 'The Apostle Paul gin heed,' was the text.
+'Why did he gin heed?' says he. 'Because he heerd. If he hadn't 'a'
+heerd, he couldn't 'a' gin heed, 'n' 't wouldn't 'a' done him no good
+to 'a' heerd 'thout he gin heed!' Wall, it helped consid'ble many in
+the congregation, 'specially them that was in the habit of hearin' 'n'
+heedin', but it rolled right off Dixie like water off a duck's back. He
+'n' Fiddy was seen over to the ballin' alley to Wareham next day, 'n'
+they didn't come back for a week."
+
+     "'He gin her his hand,
+     And he made her his own,'"
+
+sang little Brad Gibson.
+
+"He hed gin her his hand, but no minister nor trial-jestice nor
+eighteen-carat ring nor stificate could 'a' made Fiddy Maddox anybody's
+own 'ceptin' the devil's, an' he wouldn't 'a' married her; she'd 'a'
+ben too near kin. We'd never 'spicioned she 'd git 's fur 's marryin'
+anybody, 'n' she only married Dixie 'cause he told her he 'd take her to
+the Wareham House to dinner, 'n' to the County Fair afterwards; if any
+other feller hed offered to take her to supper, 'n' the theatre on top
+o' that, she 'd 'a' married him instid."
+
+"How 'd the old woman take it?" asked Steve.
+
+"She disowned her daughter _punctilio:_ in the first place, fer runnin'
+away 'stid o' hevin' a church weddin'; 'n' second place, fer marryin' a
+pauper (that was what she called him; 'n' it was true, for they 'd spent
+every cent he hed); 'n' third place, fer alienatin' the 'fections of a
+travelin' baker-man she hed her eye on fer herself. He was a kind of a
+flour-food peddler, that used to drive a cart round by Hard Scrabble,
+Moderation, 'n' Scratch Corner way. Mis' Maddox used to buy all her
+baked victuals of him, 'specially after she found out he was a widower
+beginnin' to take notice. His cart used to stand at her door so long
+everybody on the rout would complain o' stale bread. But bime bye Fiddy
+begun to set at her winder when he druv up, 'n' bime bye she pinned a
+blue ribbon in her collar. When she done that, Mis' Maddox alles hed to
+take a back seat. The boys used to call it a danger signal. It kind o'
+drawed yer 'tention to p'ints 'bout her chin 'n' mouth 'n' neck, 'n' one
+thing 'n' 'nother, in a way that was cal'lated to snarl up the thoughts
+o' perfessors o' religion 'n' turn 'em earthways. There was a spell
+I hed to say, '_Remember_ _Rhapseny!_ _Remember_ _Rhapseny!_' over to
+myself whenever Fiddy put on her blue ribbons. Wall, as I say, Fiddy set
+at the winder, the baker-man seen the blue ribbons, 'n' Mis' Maddox's
+cake was dough. She put on a red ribbon; but land! her neck looked 's if
+somebody 'd gone over it with a harrer! Then she stomped round 'n' slat
+the dish-rag, but 't wa'n't no use. 'Gracious, mother,' says Fiddy, 'I
+don't do nothin' but set at the winder. The sun shines for all.' 'You're
+right it does,' says Mis' Maddox, ''n' that's jest what I complain of.
+I'd like to get a change to shine on something myself.'
+
+"But the baker-man kep' on comin', though when he got to the Maddoxes'
+doorsteps he couldn't make change for a quarter nor tell pie from bread;
+an' sure 's you're born, the very day Fiddy went away to be married to
+Dixie, that mornin' she drawed that everlastin' numhead of a flour-food
+peddler out into the orchard, 'n' cut off a lock o' her hair, 'n' tied
+it up with a piece o' her blue ribbon, 'n' give it to him; an' old Mis'
+Bascom says, when he went past her house he was gazin' at it 'n' kissin'
+of it, 'n' his horse meanderin' on one side the road 'n' the other, 'n'
+the door o' the cart open 'n' slammin' to 'n' fro, 'n' ginger cookies
+spillin' out all over the lot. He come back to the Maddoxes next
+morning' ('t wa'n't his day, but his hoss couldn't pull one way when
+Fiddy's ribbon was pullin' t'other); an' when he found out she 'd gone
+with Dixie, he cussed 'n' stomped 'n' took on like a loontic; an' when
+Mis' Maddox hinted she was ready to heal the wownds Fiddy 'd inflicted,
+he stomped 'n' cussed wuss 'n' ever, 'n' the neighbors say he called her
+a hombly old trollop, an' fired the bread loaves all over the dooryard,
+he was so crazy at bein' cheated.
+
+"Wall, to go back to Dixie--I'll be comin' right along, boys." (This to
+Brad Gibson, who was taking his farewell drink of ginger tea preparatory
+to beginning work.)
+
+"I pity you, Steve!" exclaimed Brad, between deep swallows. "If you 'd
+known when you was well off, you 'd 'a' stayed in Boston. If Jabe hed a
+story started, he 'd talk three days after he was dead."
+
+"Go 'long; leave me be! Wall, as I was sayin', Dixie brought Fiddy home
+('Dell,' he called her), an' they 'peared bride 'n' groom at meetin'
+next Sunday. The last hundred dollars he hed in the world hed gone into
+the weddin' tower 'n' on to Fiddy's back. He hed a new suit, 'n' he
+looked like a major. You ain't got no idea what he was, 'cause his eyes
+is dull now, 'n' he 's bowed all over, 'n' ain't shaved nor combed,
+hardly; but they was the han'somest couple that ever walked up the broad
+aisle. She hed on a green silk dress, an' a lace cape that was like a
+skeeter nettin' over her neck an' showed her bare skin through, an' a
+hat like an apple orchard in full bloom, hummin'-bird an' all. Dixie
+kerried himself as proud as Lucifer. He didn't look at the minister 'n'
+he didn't look at the congregation; his great eyes was glued on Fiddy,
+as if he couldn't hardly keep from eatin' of her up. An' she behaved
+consid'able well for a few months, as long 's the novelty lasted an' the
+silk dresses was new. Before Christmas, though, she began to peter out
+'n' git slack-twisted. She allers hated housework as bad as a pig would
+a penwiper, an' Dixie hed to git his own breakfast afore he went to
+work, or go off on an empty stomach. Many 's the time he 's got her
+meals for her 'n' took 'em to her on a waiter. Them secesh fellers'll
+wait on women folks long as they can stan' up.
+
+"Then bime bye the baby come along; but that made things wuss 'stid o'
+better. She didn't pay no more 'tention to it than if it hed belonged
+to the town. She 'd go off to dances, an' leave Dixie to home tendin'
+cradle; but that wa'n't no hardship to him for he was 'bout as much
+wropped up in the child as he was in Fiddy. Wall, sir, 'bout a month ago
+she up 'n' disappeared off the face o' the airth 'thout sayin' a word or
+leavin' a letter. She took her clo'es, but she never thought o' takin'
+the baby; one baby more or less didn't make no odds to her s' long 's
+she hed that skeeter-nettin' cape. Dixie sarched fer her high an' low
+fer a fortnight, but after that he give it up as a bad job. He found out
+enough, I guess, to keep him pretty busy thinkin' what he 'd do next.
+But day before yesterday the same circus that plays here this afternoon
+was playin' to Wareham. A lot of us went over on the evenin' train, an'
+we coaxed Dixie into goin', so 's to take his mind off his trouble. But
+land! he didn't see nothin'. He 'd walk right up the lions 'n' tigers
+in the menagerie as if they was cats 'n' chickens, an' all the time the
+clown was singin' he looked like a dumb animile that 's hed a bullet put
+in him. There was lots o' side shows, mermaids 'n' six-legged calves
+'n' spotted girls, 'n' one thing 'n' 'nother, an' there was one o' them
+whirligig machines with a mess o' rocking'-hosses goin' round 'n' round,
+'n' an organ in the middle playin' like sixty. I wish we 'd 'a' kept
+clear o' the thing, but as bad luck would hev it, we stopped to look,
+an' there on top o' two high-steppin' white wooden hosses, set Mis'
+Fiddy an' that dod-gasted light-complected baker-man! If ever she was
+suited to a dot, it was jest then 'n' there. She could 'a' gone prancin'
+round that there ring forever 'n' forever, with the whoopin' 'n'
+hollerin' 'n' whizzin' 'n' whirlin' soundin' in her ears, 'n' the music
+playin' like mad, 'n' she with nothin' to do but stick on 'n' let some
+feller foot the bills. Somebody must 'a' ben thinkin' o' Fiddy Maddox
+when the invented them whirl-a-go-rounds. She was laughin' 'n' carryin'
+on like the old Scratch; her apple-blossom hat dome off, 'n' the
+baker-man put it on, 'n' took consid'able time over it, 'n' pulled her
+ear 'n' pinched her cheek when he got through; an' that was jest the
+blamed minute we ketched sight of 'em. I pulled Dixie off, but I was
+too late. He give a groan I shall remember to my dyin' day, 'n' then
+he plunged out o' the crowd 'n' through the gate like a streak o'
+lightnin'. We follered, but land! we couldn't find him, an' true as I
+set here, I never expected to see him alive agin. But I did; I forgot
+all about one thing, you see, 'n' that was the baby. If it wa'n't no
+attraction to its mother, I guess he cal'lated it needed a father all
+the more. Anyhow, he turned up in the field yesterday mornin', ready for
+work, but lookin' as if he 'd hed his heart cut out 'n' a piece o' lead
+put in the place of it."
+
+"I don't seem as if she 'd 'a' ben brazen enough to come back so near
+him," said Steve.
+
+"Wall, I don't s'pose she hed any idea o' Dixie's bein' at a circus over
+Wareham jest then; an' ten to one she didn't care if the whole town seen
+her. She wanted to get rid of him, 'n' she didn't mind how she did it.
+Dixie ain't one of the shootin' kinds, an' anyhow, Fiddy Maddox wa'n't
+one to look ahead; whatever she wanted to do, that she done, from the
+time she was knee high to a grasshopper. I've seen her set down by a
+peck basket of apples, 'n' take a couple o' bites out o' one, 'n' then
+heave it fur 's she could heave it 'n' start in on another, 'n' then
+another; 'n' 't wa'n't a good apple year, neither. She'd everlastin'ly
+spile 'bout a dozen of 'em 'n' smaller 'bout two mouthfuls. Doxy Morton,
+now, would eat an apple clean down to the core, 'n' then count the seeds
+'n' put 'em on the window-sill to dry, 'n' get up 'n' put the core
+in the stove, 'n' wipe her hands on the roller towel, 'n' take up her
+sewin' agin; 'n' if you 've got to be cuttin' 'nitials in tree bark an'
+writin' of 'em in the grass with a stick like you 've ben doin' for the
+last half-hour, you 're blamed lucky to be doin' _D_'s not _F_'s, like
+Dixie there!"
+
+
+*****
+
+
+It was three o'clock in the afternoon. The men had dropped work and
+gone to the circus. The hay was pronounced to be in a condition where
+it could be left without much danger; but, for that matter, no man would
+have stayed in the field to attend to another man's hay when there was a
+circus in the neighborhood.
+
+Dixie was mowing on alone, listening as in a dream to that subtle
+something in the swish of the scythe that makes one seek to know the
+song it is singing to the grasses.
+
+
+     "Hush, ah, hush, the scythes are saying,
+     Hush, and heed not, and fall asleep;
+     Hush, they say to the grasses swaying,
+     Hush, they sing to the clover deep;
+     Hush,--'t is the lullaby Time is singing,--
+     Hush, and heed not, for all things pass.
+     Hush, ah, hush! and the scythes are swinging
+     Over the clover, over the grass."
+
+
+And now, spent with fatigue and watching and care and grief,--heart
+sick, mind sick, body sick, sick with past suspense and present
+certainty and future dread,--he sat under the cool shade of the nooning
+tree, and buried his face in his hands. He was glad to be left alone
+with his miseries,--glad that the other men, friendly as he felt them
+to be, had gone to the circus, where he would not see or hear them for
+hours to come.
+
+How clearly he could conjure up the scene that they were enjoying with
+such keen relish! Only two days before, he had walked among the same
+tents, staring at horses and gay trappings and painted Amazons as one
+who noted nothing; yet the agony of the thing he now saw at last lit up
+all the rest as with a lightning flash, and burned the scene forever
+on his brain and heart. It was at Wareham, too,--Wareham, where she had
+promised to be his wife, where she had married him only a year before.
+How well he remembered the night! They left the parsonage; they had
+ten miles to drive in the moonlight before reaching their
+stopping-place,--ten miles of such joy as only a man could know, he
+thought, who had had the warm fruit of life hanging within full vision,
+but just out of reach,--just above his longing lips; and then, in an
+unlooked-for, gracious moment, his! He could swear she had loved him
+that night, if never again.
+
+But this picture passed away, and he saw that maddening circle with the
+caracoling steeds. He head the discordant music, the monotonous creak of
+the machinery, the strident laughter of the excited riders. As first the
+thing was a blur, a kaleidoscope of whirling colors, into which there
+presently crept form and order. ... A boy who had cried to get on, and
+was now crying to get off. ... Old Rube Hobson and his young wife; Rube
+looking white and scared, partly by the whizzing motion, and partly
+by the prospect of paying out ten cents for the doubtful pleasure. ...
+Pretty Hetty Dunnell with that young fellow from Portland; she too timid
+to mount one of the mettle-some chargers, and snuggling close to him in
+one of the circling seats. The, good Got!--Dell! sitting on a prancing
+white horse, with the man he knew, the man he feared, riding beside her;
+a man who kept holding on her hat with fingers that trembled,--the very
+hat she "'peared bride in" a man who brushed a grasshopper from her
+shoulder with an air of ownership, and, when she slapped his hand
+coquettishly, even dared to pinch her pink cheek,--his wife's
+cheek,--before that crowd of on-lookers! Merry-go-round, indeed! The
+horrible thing was well named; and life was just like it,--a whirl of
+happiness and misery, in which the music cannot play loud enough to
+drown the creak of the machinery, in which one soul cries out in pain,
+another in terror, and the rest laugh; but the prancing steeds gallop
+on, gallop on, and once mounted, there is no getting off, unless...
+
+There were some things it was not possible for a mean to bear! The
+river! The river! He could hear it rippling over the sunny sands,
+swirling among the logs, dashing and roaring under the bridge, rushing
+to the sea's embrace. Could it tell whither it was hurrying? NO; but it
+was escaping from its present bonds; it would never have to pass over
+these same jagged rocks again. "On, on to the unknown!" called the
+river. "I come! I come!" he roused himself to respond, when a faint,
+faint, helpless voice broke in upon the mad clatter in his brain,
+cleaving his torn heart in twain; not a real voice,--the half-forgotten
+memory of one; a tender wail that had added fresh misery to his night's
+vigil,--the baby!
+
+But the feeble pipe was borne down by the swirl of the water as it
+dashed between the rocky banks, still calling to him. If he could only
+close his ears to it! But it still called--called still--the river! And
+still the child's voice pierced the rush of sound with its pitiful
+flute note, until the two resolved themselves into contesting strains,
+answering each other antiphonally. The river--the baby--the river--the
+baby; and in and through, and betwixt and between, there spun the
+whirling merry-go-round, with its curveting wooden horses, its
+discordant organ, and its creaking machinery.
+
+But gradually the child's voice gained in strength, and as he heard it
+more plainly the other sounds grew fainter, till at last, thank God!
+they were hushed. The din, the whirlwind, and the tempest in his brain
+were lulled into silence, as under a "Peace, be still!" and, worn out
+with the contest, the man from Tennessee fell asleep under the grateful
+shade of the nooning tree. So deep was the slumber that settled over
+exhausted body and troubled spirit that the gathering clouds, the sudden
+darkness, the distant muttering of thunder, the frightened twitter of
+the birds, passed unnoticed. A heavy drop of rain pierced the thick
+foliage and fell on his face, but the storm within had been too fierce
+for him to heed the storm without. He slept on.
+
+
+*****
+
+
+Almost every man, woman, and child in the vicinity of Pleasant River
+was on the way to the circus,--Boomer's Grand Six-in-One Universal
+Consolidated Show; Brilliant Constellations of Fixed Stars shining in
+the same Vast Firmament; Glittering Galaxies of World-Famous Equestrian
+Artists; the biggest elephants, the funniest clowns, the pluckiest
+riders, the stubbornest mules, the most amazing acrobats, the tallest
+man and the shortest man, the thinnest woman and the thickest woman,
+on the habitable globe; and no connection with any other show on earth,
+especially Sypher's Two-in-One Show now devastating the same State.
+
+If the advertisements setting forth these attractions were couched in
+language somewhat rosier than the facts would warrant, there were few
+persons calm enough to perceive it, when once the glamour of the village
+parade and the smell of the menagerie had intoxicated the senses.
+
+The circus had been the sole topic of conversation for a fortnight. Jot
+Bascom could always be relied on for the latest and most authentic news
+of its triumphant progress from one town to another. Jot was a sort of
+town crier; and whenever the approach of a caravan was announced, he
+would go over on the Liberty road to find out just where it was and what
+were its immediate plans, for the thrilling pleasure of calling at every
+one of the neighbors' on his way home, and delivering his budget of
+news. He was an attendant at every funeral, and as far as possible at
+every wedding, in the village; at every flag-raising and husking, and
+town and county fair. When more pressing duties did not hinder, he
+endeavored to meet the two daily trains that passed through Milliken's
+Mills, a mile or two from Pleasant River. He accompanied the sheriff on
+all journeys entailing serving of papers and other embarrassing duties
+common to the law. On one occasion, when the two lawyers of the village
+held an investigation before Trial Justice Simeon Porter, they waited
+an hour because Jot Bascom did not come. They knew that something was
+amiss, but it was only on reflection that they remembered that Jot was
+not indispensable. He went with all paupers to the Poor Farm, and never
+missed a town meeting. He knew all the conditions attending any swapping
+of horses that occurred within a radius of twenty miles,--the terms of
+the trade and the amount paid to boot. He knew who owed the fish-man and
+who owed the meat-man, and who could not get trusted by either of them.
+In fact, so far as the divine attributes of omniscience and omnipresence
+could be vested in a faulty human creature, they were present in Jot
+Bascom. That he was quite unable to attend conscientiously to home
+duties, when overborne by press of public service, was true. When
+Diadema Bascom wanted kindling split, wood brought in, the cows milked,
+or the pigs fed, she commonly found her spouse serving humanity in bulk.
+
+All the details of the approach of the Grand Six-in-One Show had,
+therefore, been heralded to those work-sodden and unambitious persons
+who tied themselves to their own wood-piles or haying-fields.
+
+These were the bulletins issues:--
+
+The men were making a circle in the Widow Buzzell's field, in the same
+place where the old one had been,--the old one, viewed with awe for five
+years by all the village small boys.
+
+The forerunners, outriders, proprietors, whatever they might be, had
+arrived and gone to the tavern.
+
+An elephant was quartered in the tavern shed!
+
+The elephant had stepped through the floor!!
+
+The advance guard of performers and part of the show itself had come!
+
+And the "Cheriot"!!
+
+This far-famed vehicle had paused on top of Deacon Chute's hill, to
+prepare for the street parade. Little Jim Chute had been gloating over
+the fact that it must pass by his house, and when it stopped short under
+the elms in the dooryard his heart almost broke for joy. He pinched the
+twenty-five-cent piece in his pocket to assure himself that he was alive
+and in his right mind. The precious coin had been the result of careful
+saving, and his hot, excited hands had almost worn it thin. But alas for
+the vanity of human hopes! When the magnificent red-and-gold "Cheriot"
+was uncovered, that its glories might shine upon the waiting world, the
+door opened, and a huddle of painted Indians tumbled out, ready to lead
+the procession, or, if so disposed, to scalp the neighborhood. Little
+Jim gave one panic-stricken look as they leaped over the chariot steps,
+and then fled to the barn chamber, whence he had to be dragged by his
+mother, and cuffed into willingness to attend the spectacle that had
+once so dazzled his imagination.
+
+On the eventful afternoon of the performance the road was gay with
+teams. David and Samantha Milliken drove by in Miss Cummin's neat
+carryall, two children on the back seat, a will-o'-the-wisp baby girl
+held down by a serious boy. Steve Webster was driving Doxy Morton in his
+mother's buggy. Jabe Slocum, Pitt Packard, Brad Gibson, Cyse Higgins,
+and scores of others were riding "shank's mare," as they would have
+said.
+
+It had been a close, warm day, and as the afternoon wore away it grew
+hotter and closer. There was a dead calm in the air, a threatening
+blackness in the west that made the farmers think anxiously of their
+hay. Presently the thunderheads ran together into big black clouds,
+which melted in turn into molten masses of smoky orange, so that the
+heavens were like burnished brass. Drivers whipped up their horses, and
+pedestrians hastened their steps. Steve Webster decided not to run even
+the smallest risk of injuring so precious a commodity as Doxy Morton by
+a shower of rain, so he drove into a friend's yard, put up his horse,
+and waited till the storm should pass by. Brad Gibson stooped to drink
+at a wayside brook, and as he bent over the water he heard a low,
+murmuring, muttering sound that seemed to make the earth tremble.
+
+Then from hill to hill "leapt the live thunder." Even the distant
+mountains seemed to have "found a tongue." A zigzag chain of lightning
+flashed in the lurid sky, and after an appreciable interval another
+peal, louder than the first, and nearer.
+
+The rain began to fall, the forked flashes of flame darted hither and
+thither in the clouds, and the boom of heaven's artillery grew heavier
+and heavier. The blinding sheets of light and the tumultuous roar
+of sound now followed each other so quickly that they seemed almost
+simultaneous. Flash--crash--flash--crash--flash--crash; blinding and
+deafening eye and ear at once. Everybody who could find a shelter of any
+sort hastened to it. The women at home set their children in the midst
+of feather beds, and some of them even huddled there themselves, their
+babies clinging to them in sympathetic fear, as the livid shafts of
+light illuminated the dark rooms with more than noonday glare.
+
+The air was full of gloom; a nameless terror lurked within it; the
+elements seemed at war with each other. Horses whinnied in the stables,
+and colts dashed about the pastures. The cattle sought sheltered places;
+the cows ambling clumsily towards some refuge, their full bags dripping
+milk as they swung heavily to and fro. The birds flew towards the
+orchards and the deep woods; the swallows swooped restlessly round the
+barns, and hid themselves under the eaves or in the shadow of deserted
+nests.
+
+The rain now fell in sheets.
+
+"Hurry up 'n' git under cover, Jabe," said Brad Gibson; "you're jest the
+kind of a pole to draw lightnin'!"
+
+"You hain't, then!" retorted Jabe. "There ain't enough o' you fer
+lightnin' to ketch holt of!"
+
+Suddenly a ghastly streak of light leaped out of a cloud, and then
+another, till the sky seemed lit up by cataracts of flame. A breath of
+wind sprang into the still air. Then a deafening crash, clap, crack,
+roar, peal! and as Jabe Slocum looked out of a protecting shed door,
+he saw a fiery ball burst from the clouds, shooting brazen arrows as it
+fell. Within the instant the meeting-house steeple broke into a tongue
+of flame, and then, looking towards home, he fancied that the fireball
+dropped to earth in Squire Bean's meadow.
+
+The wind blew more fiercely now. There was a sudden crackling of wood,
+falling of old timers, and breaking of glass. The deadly fluid ran in a
+winding course down a great maple by the shed, leaving a narrow charred
+channel through the bark to tell how it passed to earth. A sombre pine
+stood up, black and burned, its heart gaping through a ghastly wound in
+the split trunk.
+
+The rain now subsided; there was only an occasional faint rumbling of
+thunder, as if it were murmuring over the distant sea; the clouds broke
+away in the west; the sun peeped out, as if to see what had been going
+on in the world since he hid himself an hour before. A delicate rainbow
+bridge stretched from the blackened church steeple to the glittering
+weathercock on the squire's barn; and there, in the centre of the fair
+green meadows from which it had risen in glorious strength and beauty
+for a century or more, lay the nooning tree.
+
+The fireball, if ball of fire indeed there were, had struck in the very
+centre of its splendid dome, and ploughed its way from feather tip to
+sturdy root, riving the tree in twain, cleaving its great boughs left
+and right, laying one majestic half level with the earth, and bending
+the other till the proud head almost touched the grass.
+
+The rainbow was reflected in the million drops glittering upon the bowed
+branches, turning each into a tear of liquid opal. The birds hopped on
+the prone magnificence, and eyed timorously a strange object underneath.
+
+There had been one swift, pitiless, merciful stroke! The monarch of the
+meadow would never again feel the magic thrill of the sap in its veins,
+nor the bursting of brown bud into green leaf.
+
+The birds would build their nests and sing their idyls in other boughs.
+The "time of pleasure and love" was over with the nooning tree; over
+too, with him who slept beneath; for under its fallen branches, with the
+light of a great peace in his upturned face, lay the man from Tennessee.
+
+
+
+
+THE FORE-ROOM RUG.
+
+
+Diadema, wife of Jot Bascom, was sitting at the window of the village
+watch-tower, so called because it commanded a view of nearly everything
+that happened in Pleasant River; those details escaping the physical
+eye being supplied by faith and imagination working in the light of
+past experience. She sat in the chair of honor, the chair of choice,
+the high-backed rocker by the southern window, in which her husband's
+mother, old Mrs. Bascom, had sat for thirty years, applying a still
+more powerful intellectual telescope to the doings of her neighbors.
+Diadema's seat had formerly been on the less desirable side of the
+little light-stand, where Priscilla Hollis was now installed.
+
+Mrs. Bascom was at work on a new fore-room rug, the former one having
+been transferred to Miss Hollis's chamber; for, as the teacher at the
+brick schoolhouse, a graduate of a Massachusetts normal school, and
+the daughter of a deceased judge, she was a boarder of considerable
+consequence. It was a rainy Saturday afternoon, and the two women were
+alone. It was a pleasant, peaceful sitting-room, as neat as wax in every
+part. The floor was covered by a cheerful patriotic rag carpet woven
+entirely of red, white, and blue rags, and protected in various exposed
+localities by button rugs,--red, white, and blue disks superimposed one
+on the other.
+
+Diadema Bascom was a person of some sentiment. When her old father,
+Captain Dennett, was dying, he drew a wallet from under his pillow, and
+handed her a twenty-dollar bill to get something to remember him by.
+This unwonted occurrence burned itself into the daughter's imagination,
+and when she came as a bride to the Bascom house she refurnished the
+sitting-room as a kind of monument to the departed soldier, whose sword
+and musket were now tied to the wall with neatly hemmed bows of bright
+red cotton.
+
+The chair cushions were of red-and-white glazed patch, the turkey
+wings that served as hearth brushes were hung against the white-painted
+chimney-piece with blue skirt braid, and the white shades were finished
+with home-made scarlet "tossels." A little whatnot in one corner was
+laden with the trophies of battle. The warrior's brass buttons were
+strung on a red picture cord and hung over his daguerreotype on the
+upper shelf; there was a tarnished shoulder strap, and a flattened
+bullet that the captain's jealous contemporaries swore _he_ never
+stopped, unless he got it in the rear when he was flying from the foe.
+There was also a little tin canister in which a charge of powder had
+been sacredly preserved. The scoffers, again, said that "the cap'n put
+it in his musket when he went into the war, and kep' it there till he
+come out." These objects were tastefully decorated with the national
+colors. In fact, no modern aesthete could have arranged a symbolic
+symphony of grief and glory with any more fidelity to an ideal than
+Diadema Bascom, in working out her scheme of red, white, and blue.
+
+Rows of ripening tomatoes lay along the ledges of the windows, and a
+tortoise-shell cat snoozed on one of the broad sills. The tall clock in
+the corner ticked peacefully. Priscilla Hollis never tired of looking
+at the jolly red-cheeked moon, the group of stars on a blue ground, the
+trig little ship, the old house, and the jolly moon again, creeping one
+after another across the open space at the top.
+
+Jot Bascom was out, as usual, gathering statistics of the last horse
+trade; little Jot was building "stickin'" houses in the barn; Priscilla
+was sewing long strips for braiding; while Diadema sat at the drawing-in
+frame, hook in hand, and a large basket of cut rags by her side.
+
+Not many weeks before she had paid one of her periodical visits to the
+attic. No housekeeper in Pleasant River save Mrs. Jonathan Bascom would
+have thought of dusting a garret, washing the window and sweeping down
+the cobwebs once a month, and renewing the camphor bags in the chests
+twice a year; but notwithstanding this zealous care the moths had
+made their way into one of her treasure-houses, the most precious of
+all,--the old hair trunk that had belonged to her sister Lovice. Once
+ensconced there, they had eaten through its hoarded relics, and reduced
+the faded finery to a state best described by Diadema as "reg'lar
+riddlin' sieves." She had brought the tattered pile down in to the
+kitchen, and had spent a tearful afternoon in cutting the good pieces
+from the perforated garments. Three heaped-up baskets and a full
+dish-pan were the result; and as she had snipped and cut and sorted,
+one of her sentimental projects had entered her mind and taken complete
+possession there.
+
+"I declare," she said, as she drew her hooking-needle in and out, "I
+wouldn't set in the room with some folks and work on these pieces; for
+every time I draw in a scrap of cloth Lovice comes up to me for all the
+world as if she was settin' on the sofy there. I ain't told you my plan,
+Miss Hollis, and there ain't many I shall tell; but this rug is going to
+be a kind of a hist'ry of my life and Lovey's wrought in together, just
+as we was bound up in one another when she was alive. Her things and
+mine was laid in one trunk, and the moths sha'n't cheat me out of 'em
+altogether. If I can't look at 'em wet Sundays, and shake 'em out, and
+have a good cry over 'em, I'll make 'em up into a kind of dumb show that
+will mean something to me, if it don't to anybody else.
+
+"We was the youngest of thirteen, Lovey and I, and we was twins. There
+'s never been more 'n half o' me left sence she died. We was born
+together, played and went to school together, got engaged and married
+together, and we all but died together, yet we wa'n't a mite alike.
+There was an old lady come to our house once that used to say, 'There's
+sister Nabby, now: she 'n' I ain't no more alike 'n if we wa'n't two;
+she 's jest as diff'rent as I am t' other way.' Well, I know what I want
+to put into my rag story, Miss Hollis, but I don't hardly know how to
+begin."
+
+Priscilla dropped her needle, and bent over the frame with interest.
+
+"A spray of two roses in the centre,--there 's the beginning; why, don't
+you see, dear Mrs. Bascom?"
+
+"Course I do," said Diadema, diving to the bottom of the dish-pan. "I've
+got my start now, and don't you say a word for a minute. The two roses
+grow out of one stalk; they'll be Lovey and me, though I'm consid'able
+more like a potato blossom. The stalk 's got to be green, and here
+is the very green silk mother walked bride in, and Lovey and I had
+roundabouts of it afterwards. She had the chicken-pox when we was about
+four years old, and one of the first things I can remember is climbing
+up and looking over mother's footboard at Lovey, all speckled. Mother
+had let her slip on her new green roundabout over her nightgown, just to
+pacify her, and there she set playing with the kitten Reuben Granger had
+brought her. He was only ten years old then, but he 'd begun courting
+Lovice.
+
+"The Grangers' farm joined ours. They had eleven children, and mother
+and father had thirteen, and we was always playing together. Mother
+used to tell a funny story about that. We were all little young ones and
+looked pretty much alike, so she didn't take much notice of us in the
+daytime when we was running out 'n' in; but at night when the turn-up
+bedstead in the kitchen was taken down and the trundle-beds were full,
+she used to count us over, to see if we were all there. One night, when
+she 'd counted thirteen and set down to her sewing, father come in and
+asked if Moses was all right, for one of the neighbors had seen him
+playing side of the river about supper-time. Mother knew she 'd counted
+us straight, but she went round with a candle to make sure. Now, Mr.
+Granger had a head as red as a shumac bush; and when she carried the
+candle close to the beds to take another tally, there was thirteen
+children, sure enough, but if there wa'n't a red-headed Granger right in
+amongst our boys in the turn-up bedstead! While father set out on a hunt
+for our Moses, mother yanked the sleepy little red-headed Granger out o'
+the middle and took him home, and father found Moses asleep on a pile of
+shavings under the joiner's bench.
+
+"They don't have such families nowadays. One time when measles went
+all over the village, they never came to us, and Jabe Slocum said there
+wa'n't enough measles to go through the Dennett family, so they didn't
+start in on 'em. There, I ain't going to finish the stalk; I'm going
+to draw in a little here and there all over the rug, while I'm in the
+sperit of plannin' it, and then it will be plain work of matching colors
+and filling out.
+
+"You see the stalk is mother's dress, and the outside green of the moss
+roses is the same goods, only it 's our roundabouts. I meant to make 'em
+red, when I marked the pattern, and then fill out round 'em with a light
+color; but now I ain't satisfied with anything but white, for nothing
+will do in the middle of the rug but our white wedding dresses. I shall
+have to fill in dark, then, or mixed. Well, that won't be out of the
+way, if it 's going to be a true rag story; for Lovey's life went out
+altogether, and mine hasn't been any too gay.
+
+"I'll begin on Lovey's rose first. She was the prettiest and the
+liveliest girl in the village, and she had more beaux than you could
+shake a stick at. I generally had to take what she left over. Reuben
+Granger was crazy about her from the time she was knee-high; but when
+he went away to Bangor to study for the ministry, the others had it
+all their own way. She was only seventeen; she hadn't ever experienced
+religion, and she was mischeevous as a kitten.
+
+"You remember you laughed, this morning, when Mr. Bascom told about
+Hogshead Jowett? Well, he used to want to keep company with Lovey; but
+she couldn't abide him, and whenever he come to court her she clim' into
+a hogshead, and hid till after he 'd gone. The boys found it out, and
+used to call him 'Hogshead Jowett." He was the biggest fool in Foxboro'
+Four Corners; and that 's saying consid'able, for Foxboro' is famous
+for its fools, and always has been. There was thirteen of 'em there one
+year. They say a man come out from Portland, and when he got as fur
+as Foxboro' he kep' inquiring the way to Dunstan; and I declare if he
+didn't meet them thirteen fools, one after another, standing in their
+front dooryards ready to answer questions. When he got to Dunstan, says
+he, 'For the Lord's sake, what kind of a village is that I've just went
+through? Be they _all_ fools there?'
+
+"Hogshead was scairt to death whenever he come to see Lovice. One night,
+when he 'd been there once, and she 'd hid, as she always done, he come
+back a second time, and she went to the door, not mistrusting it was
+him. 'Did you forget anything?' says she, sparkling out at him through
+a little crack. He was all taken aback by seeing her, and he stammered
+out, 'Yes, I forgot my han'k'chief; but it don't make no odds, for I
+didn't pay out but fifteen cents for it two year ago, and I don't make
+no use of it 'ceptins to wipe my nose on.' How we did laugh over that!
+Well, he had a conviction of sin pretty soon afterwards, and p'r'aps
+it helped his head some; at any rate he quit farming, and become a
+Bullockite preacher.
+
+"It seems odd, when Lovice wa'n't a perfessor herself, she should have
+drawed the most pious young men in the village, but she did: she had
+good Orthodox beaux, Free and Close Baptists, Millerites and Adventists,
+all on her string together; she even had one Cochranite, though the
+sect had mostly died out. But when Reuben Granger come home, a
+full-feathered-out minister, he seemed to strike her fancy as he never
+had before, though they were always good friends from children. He had
+light hair and blue eyes and fair skin (his business being under cover
+kep' him bleached out), and he and Lovey made the prettiest couple you
+ever see; for she was dark complected, and her cheeks no otherways than
+scarlit the whole durin' time. She had a change of heart that winter; in
+fact she had two of 'em, for she changed hers for Reuben's, and found a
+hope at the same time. 'T was a good honest conversion, too, though she
+did say to me she was afraid that if Reuben hadn't taught her what love
+was or might be, she 'd never have found out enough about it to love God
+as she 'd ought to.
+
+"There, I've begun both roses, and hers is 'bout finished. I sha'n't
+have more 'n enough white alapaca. It's lucky the moths spared one
+breadth of the wedding dresses; we was married on the same day, you
+know, and dressed just alike. Jot wa'n't quite ready to be married, for
+he wa'n't any more forehanded 'bout that than he was 'bout other things;
+but I told him Lovey and I had kept up with each other from the start,
+and he 'd got to fall into line or drop out o' the percession.--Now what
+next?"
+
+"Wasn't there anybody at the wedding but you and Lovice?" asked
+Priscilla, with an amused smile.
+
+"Land, yes! The meeting-house was cram jam full. Oh, to be sure! I know
+what you 're driving at! Well, I have to laugh to think I should have
+forgot the husbands! They'll have to be worked into the story, certain;
+but it'll be consid'able of a chore, for I can't make flowers out of
+coat and pants stuff, and there ain't any more flowers on this branch
+anyway."
+
+Diadema sat for a few minutes in rapt thought, and then made a sudden
+inspired dash upstairs, where Miss Hollis presently heard her rummaging
+in an old chest. She soon came down, triumphant.
+
+"Wa'n't it a providence I saved Jot's and Reuben's wedding ties! And
+here they are,--one yellow and green mixed, and one brown. Do you know
+what I'm going to do? I'm going to draw in a butterfly hovering over
+them two roses, and make it out of the neckties,--green with brown
+spots. That'll bring in the husbands; and land! I wouldn't have either
+of 'em know it for the world. I'll take a pattern of that lunar moth you
+pinned on the curtain yesterday."
+
+Miss Hollis smiled in spite of herself. "You have some very ingenious
+ideas and some very pretty thoughts, Mrs. Bascom, do you know it?"
+
+"It's the first time I ever heard tell of it," said Diadema cheerfully.
+"Lovey was the pretty-spoken, pretty-appearing one; I was always plain
+and practical. While I think of it, I'll draw in a little mite of this
+red into my carnation pink. It was a red scarf Reuben brought Lovey from
+Portland. It was the first thing he ever give her, and aunt Hitty said
+if one of the Abel Grangers give away anything that cost money, it meant
+business. That was all fol-de-rol, for there never was a more liberal
+husband, though he was a poor minister; but then they always _are_ poor,
+without they're rich; there don't seem to be any halfway in ministers.
+
+"We was both lucky that way. There ain't a stingy bone in Jot Bascom's
+body. He don't make much money, but what he does make goes into the
+bureau drawer, and the one that needs it most takes it out. He never
+asks me what I done with the last five cents he give me. You 've never
+been married Miss Hollis, and you ain't engaged, so you don't know much
+about it; but I tell you there 's a heap o' foolishness talked about
+husbands. If you get the one you like yourself, I don't know as it
+matters if all the other women folks in town don't happen to like him
+as well as you do; they ain't called on to do that. They see the face
+he turns to them, not the one he turns to you. Jot ain't a very good
+provider, nor he ain't a man that 's much use round a farm, but he 's
+such a fav'rite I can't blame him. There 's one thing: when he does
+come home he 's got something to say, and he 's always as lively as a
+cricket, and smiling as a basket of chips. I like a man that 's good
+comp'ny, even if he ain't so forehanded. There ain't anything specially
+lovable about forehandedness, when you come to that. I shouldn't ever
+feel drawed to a man because he was on time with his work. He 's got
+such pleasant ways, Jot has! The other afternoon he didn't get home
+early enough to milk; and after I done the two cows, I split the
+kindling and brought in the wood, for I knew he 'd want to go to the
+tavern and tell the boys 'bout the robbery up to Boylston. There ain't
+anybody but Jot in this village that has wit enough to find out what 's
+going on, and tell it in an int'resting way round the tavern fire. And
+he can do it without being full of cider, too; he don't need any apple
+juice to limber _his_ tongue!
+
+"Well, when he come in, he see the pails of milk, and the full wood-box,
+and the supper laid out under the screen cloth on the kitchen table, and
+he come up to me at the sink, and says he, 'Diademy, you 're the best
+wife in this county, and the brightest jewel in my crown,--that 's what
+_you_ are!' (He got that idea out of a duet he sings with Almiry Berry.)
+Now I'd like to know whether that ain't pleasanter than 't is to have a
+man do all the shed 'n' barn work up smart, and then set round the stove
+looking as doleful as a last year's bird's nest? Take my advice, Miss
+Hollis: get a good provider if you can, but anyhow try to find you a
+husband that'll keep on courting a little now and then, when he ain't
+too busy; it smooths things consid'able round the house.
+
+"There, I got so int'rested in what I was saying, I've went on and
+finished the carnation, and some of the stem, too. Now what comes next?
+Why, the thing that happened next, of course, and that was little Jot.
+
+"I'll work in a bud on my rose and one on Lovey's, and my bud'll be made
+of Jot's first trousers. The goods ain't very appropriate for a rosebud,
+but it'll have to do, for the idee is the most important thing in this
+rug. When I put him into pants, I hadn't any cloth in the house, and it
+was such bad going Jot couldn't get to Wareham to buy me anything; so I
+made 'em out of an old gray cashmere skirt, and lined 'em with flannel."
+
+"Buds are generally the same color as the roses, aren't they?" ventured
+Priscilla.
+
+"I don't care if they be," said Diadema obstinately. "What's to hender
+this bud's bein' grafted on? Mrs. Granger was as black as an Injun, but
+the little Granger children were all red-headed, for they took after
+their father. But I don't know; you've kind o' got me out o' conceit
+with it. I s'pose I could have taken a piece of his baby blanket; but
+the moths never et a mite o' that, and it's too good to cut up. There's
+one thing I can do: I can make the bud up with a long stem, and have it
+growing right up alongside of mine,--would you?"
+
+"No, it must be stalk of your stalk, bone of your bone, flesh of your
+flesh, so to speak. I agree with you, the idea is the first thing.
+Besides, the gray is a very light shade, and I dare say it will look
+like a bluish white."
+
+"I'll try it and see, but I wish to the land the moths _had_ eat
+the pinning-blanket, and then I could have used it. Lovey worked the
+scallops on the aidge for me. My grief! what int'rest she took in my
+baby clothes! Little Jot was born at Thanksgiving time, and she come
+over from Skowhegan, where Reuben was settled pastor of his first
+church. I shall never forget them two weeks to the last day of my life.
+There was deep snow on the ground. I had that chamber there, with the
+door opening into the setting-room. Mother and father Bascom kep' out in
+the dining-room and kitchen, where the work was going on, and Lovey and
+the baby and me had the front part of the house to ourselves, with Jot
+coming in on tiptoe, heaping up wood in the fireplace so 't he 'most
+roasted us out. He don't forget his chores in time o' sickness.
+
+"I never took so much comfort in all my days. Jot got one of the
+Billings girls to come over and help in the housework, so 't I could
+lay easy 's long as I wanted to; and I never had such a rest before nor
+since. There ain't any heaven in the book o' Revelations that 's any
+better than them two weeks was. I used to lay quiet in my good feather
+bed, fingering the pattern of my best crochet quilt, and looking at the
+fire-light shining on Lovey and the baby. She 'd hardly leave him in the
+cradle a minute. When I did n't want him in bed with me, she 'd have
+him in her lap. Babies are common enough to most folks, but Lovey was
+diff'rent. She 'd never had any experience with children, either, for we
+was the youngest in our family; and it wa'n't long before we come near
+being the oldest, too, for mother buried seven of us before she went
+herself. Anyway, I never saw nobody else look as she done when she held
+my baby. I don't mean nothing blasphemious when I say 't was for all the
+world like your photograph of Mary, the mother of Jesus.
+
+"The nights come in early, so it was 'most dark at four o'clock.
+The little chamber was so peaceful! I could hear Jot rattling the
+milk-pails, but I'd draw a deep breath o' comfort, for I knew the milk
+would be strained and set away without my stepping foot to the floor.
+Lovey used to set by the fire, with a tall candle on the light-stand
+behind her, and a little white knit cape over her shoulders. She had the
+pinkest cheeks, and the longest eyelashes, and a mouth like a little red
+buttonhole; and when she bent over the baby, and sung to him,--though
+his ears wa'n't open, I guess for his eyes wa'n't,--the tears o' joy
+used to rain down my cheeks. It was pennyrial hymns she used to sing
+mostly, and the one I remember best was
+
+
+     "'Daniel's wisdom may I know,
+     Stephen's faith and spirit show;
+     John's divine communion feel,
+     Moses' meekness, Joshua's zeal,
+     Run like the unwearied Paul,
+     Win the day and conquer all.
+
+
+     "'Mary's love may I possess,
+     Lydia's tender-heartedness,
+     Peter's fervent spirit feel,
+     James's faith by works reveal,
+     Like young Timothy may I
+     Every sinful passion fly.'
+
+
+"'Oh Diademy,' she 'd say, 'you was always the best, and it 's nothing
+more 'n right the baby should have come to you. P'r'aps God will think
+I'm good enough some time; and if he does, Diademy, I'll offer up a
+sacrifice every morning and every evening. But I'm afraid,' says she,
+'he thinks I can't stand any more happiness, and be a faithful follower
+of the cross. The Bible says we 've got to wade through fiery floods
+before we can enter the kingdom. I don't hardly know how Reuben and I
+are going to find any way to wade through; we're both so happy, they 'd
+have to be consid'able hot before we took notice,' says she, with the
+dimples all breaking out in her cheeks.
+
+"And that was true as gospel. She thought everything Reuben done was
+just right, and he thought everything she done was just right. There
+wa'n't nobody else; the world was all Reuben 'n' all Lovey to them.
+If you could have seen her when she was looking for him to come from
+Skowhegan! She used to watch at the attic window; and when she seen him
+at the foot of the hill she 'd up like a squirrel, and run down the road
+without stopping for anything but to throw a shawl over her head. And
+Reuben would ketch her up as if she was a child, and scold her for not
+putting a hat on, and take her under his coat coming up the hill. They
+was a sight for the neighbors, I must confess, but it wa'n't one you
+could hardly disapprove of, neither. Aunt Hitty said it was tempting
+Providence and couldn't last, and God would visit his wrath on 'em for
+making idols of sinful human flesh.
+
+"She was right one way,--it didn't last; but nobody can tell me God was
+punishing of 'em for being too happy. I guess he 'ain't got no objection
+to folks being happy here below, if they don't forget it ain't the whole
+story.
+
+"Well, I must mark in a bud on Lovey's stalk now, and I'm going to make
+it of her baby's long white cloak. I earned the money for it myself,
+making coats, and put four yards of the finest cashmere into it; for
+three years after little Jot was born I went over to Skowhegan to help
+Lovey through her time o' trial. Time o' trial! I thought I was happy,
+but I didn't know how to be as happy as Lovey did; I wa'n't made on that
+pattern.
+
+"When I first showed her the baby (it was a boy, same as mine), her eyes
+shone like two evening stars. She held up her weak arms, and gathered
+the little bundle o' warm flannen into 'em; and when she got it close
+she shut her eyes and moved her lips, and I knew she was taking her lamb
+to the altar and offering it up as a sacrifice. Then Reuben come in. I
+seen him give one look at the two dark heads laying close together on
+the white piller, and then go down on his knees by the side of the bed.
+'T wa'n't no place for me; I went off, and left 'em together. We didn't
+mistrust it then, but they only had three days more of happiness, and
+I'm glad I give 'em every minute."
+
+The room grew dusky as twilight stole gently over the hills of Pleasant
+River. Priscilla's lip trembled; Diadema's tears fell thick and fast on
+the white rosebud, and she had to keep wiping her eyes as she followed
+the pattern.
+
+
+"I ain't said as much as this about it for five years," she went on,
+with a tell-tale quiver in her voice, "but now I've got going I can't
+stop. I'll have to get the weight out o' my heart somehow.
+
+"Three days after I put Lovey's baby into her arms the Lord called her
+home. 'When I prayed so hard for this little new life, Reuben,' says she
+holding the baby as if she could never let it go, 'I didn't think I'd
+got to give up my own in place of it; but it's the first fiery flood
+we've had, dear, and though it burns to my feet I'll tread it as brave
+as I know how.'
+
+"She didn't speak a word after that; she just faded away like a
+snowdrop, hour by hour. And Reuben and I stared at one another in the
+face as if we was dead instead of her, and we went about that house o'
+mourning like sleep-walkers for days and says, not knowing whether we et
+or slept, or what we done.
+
+"As for the baby, the poor little mite didn't live many hours after its
+mother, and we buried 'em together. Reuben and I knew what Lovey would
+have liked. She gave her life for the baby's, and it was a useless
+sacrifice, after all. No, it wa'n't neither; it _could_n't have been!
+You needn't tell me God'll let such sacrifices as that come out useless!
+But anyhow, we had one coffin for 'em both, and I opened Lovey's arms
+and laid the baby in 'em. When Reuben and I took our last look, we
+thought she seemed more 'n ever like Mary, the mother of Jesus. There
+never was another like her, and there never will be. 'Nonesuch,' Reuben
+used to call her."
+
+There was silence in the room, broken only by the ticking of the old
+clock and the tinkle of a distant cowbell. Priscilla made an impetuous
+movement, flung herself down by the basket of rags, and buried her head
+in Diadema's gingham apron.
+
+"Dear Mrs. Bascom, don't cry. I'm sorry, as the children say."
+
+"No, I won't more 'n a minute. Jot can't stand it to see me give way.
+You go and touch a match to the kitchen fire, so 't the kettle will
+be boiling, and I'll have a minute to myself. I don't know what the
+neighbors would think to ketch me crying over my drawing-in frame; but
+the spell's over now, or 'bout over, and when I can muster up courage
+I'll take the rest of the baby's cloak and put a border of white
+everlastings round the outside of the rug. I'll always mean the baby's
+birth and Lovey's death to me; but the flowers will remind me it 's life
+everlasting for both of 'em, and so it's the most comforting end I can
+think of."
+
+It was indeed a beautiful rug when it was finished and laid in front of
+the sofa in the fore-room. Diadema was very choice of it. When company
+was expected she removed it from its accustomed place, and spread it in
+a corner of the room where no profane foot could possibly tread on it.
+Unexpected callers were managed by a different method. If they seated
+themselves on the sofa, she would fear they did not "set easy" or "rest
+comfortable" there, and suggest their moving to the stuffed chair by
+the window. The neighbors thought this solicitude merely another sign of
+Diadema's "p'ison neatness," excusable in this case as there was so much
+white in the new rug.
+
+The fore-room blinds were ordinarily closed, and the chillness of death
+pervaded the sacred apartment; but on great occasions, when the sun was
+allowed to penetrate the thirty-two tiny panes of glass in each window,
+and a blaze was lighted in the fire-place, Miss Hollis would look in as
+she went upstairs, and muse a moment over the pathetic little romance
+of rags, the story of two lives worked into a bouquet of old-fashioned
+posies, whose gay tints were brought out by a setting of sombre threads.
+Existence had gone so quietly in this remote corner of the world that
+all its important events, babyhood, childhood, betrothal, marriage,
+motherhood, with all their mysteries of love and life and death, were
+chronicled in this narrow space not two yards square.
+
+Diadema came in behind the little school-teacher one afternoon.
+
+"I cal'late," she said, "that being kep' in a dark room, and never being
+tread on, it will last longer 'n I do. If it does, Priscilla, you know
+that white crepe shawl of mine I wear to meeting hot Sundays: that would
+make a second row of everlastings round the border. You could piece
+out the linings good and smooth on the under side, draw in the white
+flowers, and fill 'em round with black to set 'em off. The rug would be
+han'somer than ever then, and the story--would be finished."
+
+
+
+
+A VILLAGE STRADIVARIUS.
+
+
+I.
+
+
+     "Goodfellow, Puck and goblins,
+     Know more than any book.
+     Down with your doleful problems,
+     And court the sunny brook.
+     The south-winds are quick-witted,
+     The schools are sad and slow,
+     The masters quite omitted
+     The lore we care to know."
+
+     Emerson's _April._
+
+
+"Find the 317th page, Davy, and begin at the top of the right-hand
+column."
+
+The boy turned the leaves of the old instruction book obediently, and
+then began to read in a sing-song, monotonous tone:--
+
+"'One of Pag-pag'"--
+
+"Pag-a-ni-ni's."
+
+"'One of Paggernyner's' (I wish all the fellers in your stories didn't
+have such tough old names!) 'most dis-as-ter-ous triumphs he had when
+playing at Lord Holland's.' (Who was Lord Holland, uncle Tony?) 'Some
+one asked him to im-pro-vise on the violin the story of a son who kills
+his father, runs a-way, becomes a highway-man, falls in love with a
+girl who will not listen to him; so he leads her to a wild country site,
+suddenly jumping with her from a rock into an a-b-y-double-s'"--
+
+"Abyss."
+
+"'--a--rock--into--an--abyss, were they disappear forever. Paggernyner
+listened quietly, and when the story was at an end he asked that all the
+lights should be distinguished.'"
+
+"Look closer, Davy."
+
+"'Should be extinguished. He then began playing, and so terrible was
+the musical in-ter-pre-ta-tion of the idea which had been given him
+that several of the ladies fainted, and the sal-salon-s_a_lon, when
+relighted, looked like a battle-field.' Cracky! Wouldn't you like to
+have been there, uncle Tony? But I don't believe anybody ever played
+that way, do you?"
+
+"Yes," said the listener, dreamily raising his sightless eyes to the
+elm-tree that grew by the kitchen door. "I believe it, and I can hear
+it myself when you read the story to me. I feel that the secret of
+everything in the world that is beautiful, or true, or terrible, is
+hidden in the strings of my violin, Davy, but only a master can draw it
+from captivity."
+
+"You make stories on your violin, too, uncle Tony, even if the ladies
+don't faint away in heaps, and if the kitchen doesn't look like a
+battle-field when you 've finished. I'm glad it doesn't, for my part,
+for I should have more housework to do than ever."
+
+"Poor Davy! you couldn't hate housework any worse if you were a woman;
+but it is all done for to-day. Now paint me one of your pictures,
+laddie; make me see with your eyes."
+
+The boy put down the book and leaped out of the open door, barely
+touching the old millstone that served for a step. Taking a stand in
+the well-worn path, he rested his hands on his hips, swept the landscape
+with the glance of an eagle, and began like a young improvisator:--
+
+"The sun is just dropping behind Brigadier Hill."
+
+"What color is it?"
+
+"Red as fire, and there isn't anything near it,--it 's almost alone
+in the sky; there 's only teenty little white feather clouds here and
+there. The bridge looks as if it was a silver string tying the two sides
+of the river together. The water is pink where the sun shines into it.
+All the leaves of the trees are kind of swimming in the red light,--I
+tell you, nunky, just as if I was looking through red glass. The weather
+vane on Squire Bean's barn dazzles so the rooster seems to be shooting
+gold arrows into the river. I can see the tip top of Mount Washington
+where the peak of its snow-cap touches the pink sky. The hen-house door
+is open. The chickens are all on their roost, with their heads cuddled
+under their wings."
+
+"Did you feed them?"
+
+The boy clapped his hand over his mouth with a comical gesture of
+penitence, and dashed into the shed for a panful of corn, which he
+scattered over the ground, enticing the sleepy fowls by insinuating
+calls of "Chick, chick, chick, chick! _Come,_ biddy, biddy, biddy,
+biddy! _Come,_ chick, chick, chick, chick, chick!"
+
+The man in the doorway smiled as over the misdemeanor of somebody very
+dear and lovable, and rising from his chair felt his way to a corner
+shelf, took down a box, and drew from it a violin swathed in a silk bag.
+He removed the covering with reverential hands. The tenderness of the
+face was like that of a young mother dressing or undressing her child.
+As he fingered the instrument his hands seemed to have become all eyes.
+They wandered caressingly over the polished surface as if enamored of
+the perfect thing that they had created, lingering here and there with
+rapturous tenderness on some special beauty,--the graceful arch of
+the neck, the melting curves of the cheeks, the delicious swell of the
+breasts.
+
+When he had satisfied himself for the moment, he took the bow, and
+lifting the violin under his chin, inclined his head fondly toward it
+and began to play.
+
+The tune at first seemed muffled, but had a curious bite, that began
+in distant echoes, but after a few minutes' the playing grew firmer and
+clearer, ringing out at last with velvety richness and strength until
+the atmosphere was satiated with harmony. No more ethereal note ever
+flew out of a bird's throat than Anthony Croft set free from this
+violin, his _liebling_, his "swan song," made in the year he had lost
+his eyesight.
+
+Anthony Croft had been the only son of his mother, and she a widow. His
+boyhood had been exactly like that of all the other boys in Edgewood,
+save that he hated school a trifle more, if possible, than any of the
+others; though there was a unanimity of aversion in this matter that
+surprised and wounded teachers and parents.
+
+The school was the ordinary "deestrick" school of that time; there were
+not enough scholars for what Cyse Higgins called a "degraded" school.
+The difference between Anthony and the other boys lay in the reason as
+well as the degree of his abhorrence.
+
+He had come into the world a naked, starving human soul; he longed to
+clothe himself, and he was hungry and ever hungrier for knowledge; but
+never within the four walls of the village schoolhouse could he get hold
+of one fact that would yield him its secret sense, one glimpse of clear
+light that would shine in upon the "darkness which may be felt" in his
+mind, one thought or word that would feed his soul.
+
+The only place where his longings were ever stilled, where he seemed at
+peace with himself, where he understood what he was made for, was out
+of doors in the woods. When he should have been poring over the sweet,
+palpitating mysteries of the multiplication table, his vagrant gaze was
+always on the open window near which he sat. He could never study when a
+fly buzzed on the window-pane; he was always standing on the toes of his
+bare feet, trying to locate and understand the buzz that puzzled him.
+The book was a mute, soulless thing that had no relation to his
+inner world of thought and feeling. He turned ever from the dead
+seven-times-six to the mystery of life about him.
+
+He was never a special favorite with his teachers; that was scarcely to
+be expected. In his very early years, his pockets were gone through with
+every morning when he entered the school door, and the contents, when
+confiscated, would comprise a jew's-harp, a bit of catgut, screws
+whittled out of wood, tacks, spools, pins, and the like. But when robbed
+of all these he could generally secrete a piece of elastic, which, when
+put between his teeth and stretched to its utmost capacity, would yield
+a delightful twang when played upon with the forefinger. He could also
+fashion an interesting musical instrument in his desk by means of spools
+and catgut and bits of broken glass. The chief joy of his life was an
+old tuning-fork that the teacher of the singing school had given him,
+but, owing to the degrading and arbitrary censorship of pockets that
+prevailed, he never dared bring it into the schoolroom. There were ways,
+however, of evading inexorable law and circumventing base injustice.
+He hid the precious thing under a thistle just outside the window. The
+teacher had sometimes a brief season of apathy on hot afternoons, when
+she was hearing the primer class read, "_I see a pig. The pig is big.
+The big pig can dig;_" which stirring in phrases were always punctuated
+by the snores of the Hanks baby, who kept sinking down on his fat little
+legs in the line and giving way to slumber during the lesson. At such
+a moment Anthony slipped out of the window and snapped the tuning-fork
+several times,--just enough to save his soul from death,--and then
+slipped in again. He was caught occasionally, but not often; and even
+when he was, there were mitigating circumstances, for he was generally
+put under the teacher's desk for punishment. It was a dark, close,
+sultry spot, but when he was well seated, and had grown tied of looking
+at the triangle of elastic in the teacher's congress boot, and tired
+of wishing it was his instead of hers, he would tie one end of a bit of
+thread to the button of his gingham shirt, and, carrying it round his
+left ear several times, make believe he was Paganini languishing in
+prison and playing on a violin with a single string.
+
+As he grew older there was no marked improvement, and Tony Croft was by
+general assent counted the laziest boy in the village. That he was lazy
+in certain matters merely because he was in a frenzy of industry to
+pursue certain others had nothing to do with the case, of course.
+
+If any one had ever given him a task in which he could have seen cause
+working to effect, in which he could have found by personal experiment a
+single fact that belonged to him, his own by divine right of discovery,
+he would have counted labor or study all joy.
+
+He was one incarnate Why and How, one brooding wonder and interrogation
+point. "Why does the sun drive away the stars? Why do the leaves turn
+red and gold? What makes the seed swell in the earth? From whence comes
+the life hidden in the egg under the bird's breast? What holds the moon
+in the sky? Who regulates her shining? Who moves the wind? Who made
+me, and what am I? Who, why, how whither? If I came from God but only
+lately, teach me his lessons first, put me into vital relation with
+life and law, and then give me your dead signs and equivalents for real
+things, that I may learn more and more, and ever more and ever more."
+
+There was no spirit in Edgewood bold enough to conceive that Tony
+learned anything in the woods, but as there was never sufficient school
+money to keep the village seat of learning open more than half the year
+the boy educated himself at the fountain head of wisdom, and knowledge
+of the other half. His mother, who owned him for a duckling hatched
+from a hen's egg, and was never quite sure he would not turn out a black
+sheep and a crooked stick to boot, was obliged to confess that Tony had
+more useless information than any boy in the village. He knew just where
+to find the first Mayflowers, and would bring home the waxen beauties
+when other people had scarcely begun to think about the spring. He could
+tell where to look for the rare fringed gentian, the yellow violet, the
+Indian pipe. There were clefts in the rocks of the Indian Cellar where,
+when every one else failed, he could find harebells and columbines.
+
+When his tasks were done, and the other boys were amusing themselves
+each in his own way, you would find Tony lying flat on the pine needles
+in the woods, listening to the notes of the wild birds, and imitating
+them patiently, til you could scarcely tell which was boy and which was
+bird; and if you could, the birds couldn't, for many a time he coaxed
+the bobolinks and thrushes to perch on the low boughs above his head and
+chirp to him as if he were a feathered brother. There was nothing about
+the building of nests with which he was not familiar. He could have
+taken hold and helped if the birds had not been so shy, and if he had
+had beak and claw instead of clumsy fingers. He would sit near a beehive
+for hours without moving, or lie prone in the sandy road, under the
+full glare of the sun, watching the ants acting out their human comedy;
+sometimes surrounding a favorite hill with stones, that the comedy might
+not be turned into a tragedy by a careless footfall. The cottage on the
+river road grew more and more to resemble a museum and herbarium as the
+years went by, and the Widow Croft's weekly house-cleaning was a matter
+that called for the exercise of Christian grace.
+
+Still, Tony was a good son, affectionate, considerate, and obedient.
+His mother had no idea that he would ever be able, or indeed willing,
+to make a living; but there was a forest of young timber growing up, a
+small hay farm to depend upon, and a little hoard that would keep him
+out of the poorhouse when she died and left him to his own devices.
+It never occurred to her that he was in any way remarkable. If he were
+difficult to understand, it reflected more upon his eccentricity than
+upon her density. What was a woman to do with a boy of twelve who, when
+she urged him to drop the old guitar he was taking apart and hurry off
+to school, cried, "Oh, mother! when there is so much to learn in this
+world, it is wicked, wicked to waste time in school."
+
+About this period Tony spent hours in the attic arranging bottles and
+tumblers into a musical scale. He also invented an instrument made
+of small and great, long and short pins, driven into soft board to
+different depths, and when the widow passed his door on the way to bed
+she invariable saw this barbaric thing locked up to the boy's breast,
+for he often played himself to sleep with it.
+
+At fifteen he had taken to pieces and put together again, strengthened,
+soldered, tinkered, mended, and braced every accordion, guitar,
+melodeon, dulcimer, and fiddle in Edgewood, Pleasant River, and the
+neighboring villages. There was a little money to be earned in this way,
+but very little, as people in general regarded this "tinkering" as a
+pleasing diversion in which they could indulge him without danger. As
+an example of this attitude, Dr. Berry's wife's melodeon had lost two
+stops, the pedals had severed connection with the rest of the works,
+it wheezed like an asthmatic, and two black keys were missing. Anthony
+worked more than a week on its rehabilitation, and received in return
+Mrs. Berry's promise that the doctor would pull a tooth for him some
+time! This, of course, was a guerdon for the future, but it seemed
+pathetically distant to the lad who had never had a toothache in his
+life. He had to plead with Cyse Higgins for a week before that prudent
+young farmer would allow him to touch his five-dollar fiddle. He
+obtained permission at last only because by offering to give Cyse his
+calf in case he spoiled the violin. "That seems square," said Cyse
+doubtfully, "but after all, you can't play on a calf!" "Neither will
+your fiddle give milk, if you keep it long enough," retorted Tony; and
+this argument was convincing.
+
+So great was his confidence in Tony's skill that Squire Bean trusted his
+father's violin to him, one that had been bought in Berlin seventy years
+before. It had been hanging on the attic wall for a half century, so
+that the back was split in twain, the sound-post lost, the neck and the
+tailpiece cracked. The lad took it home, and studied it for two whole
+evenings before the open fire. The problem of restoring it was quite
+beyond his abilities. He finally took the savings of two summers'
+"blueberry money" and walked sixteen miles to Portland, where he bought
+a book called The Practical Violinist. The Supplement proved to be
+a mine of wealth. Even the headings appealed to his imagination and
+intoxicated him with their suggestions,--On Scraping, Splitting, and
+Repairing Violins, Violin Players, Great Violinists, Solo Playing,
+etc.; and at the very end a Treatise on the Construction, Preservation,
+Repair, and Improvement of the Violin, by Jacob Augustus Friedheim,
+Instrument Maker to the Court of the Archduke of Weimar.
+
+There was a good deal of moral advice in the preface that sadly puzzled
+the boy, who was always in a condition of chronic amazement at the
+village disapprobation of his favorite fiddle. That the violin did not
+in some way receive the confidence enjoyed by other musical instruments,
+he perceived from various paragraphs written by the worthy author of The
+Practical Violinist, as for example:--
+
+"Some very excellent Christian people hold a strong prejudice against
+the violin because they have always known it associated with dancing and
+dissipation. Let it be understood that your violin is 'converted,' and
+such an obligation will no longer lie against it. ... Many delightful
+hours may be enjoyed by a young man, if he has obtained a respectable
+knowledge of his instrument, who otherwise would find the time hang
+heavy on his hands; or, for want of some better amusement, would
+frequent the dangerous and destructive paths of vice and be ruined
+forever. ... I am in hopes, therefore, my dear young pupil, that your
+violin will occupy your attention at just those very times when, if you
+were immoral or dissipated, you would be at the grogshop, gaming-table,
+or among vicious females. Such a use of the violin, notwithstanding the
+prejudices many hold against it, must contribute to virtue, and furnish
+abundance of innocent and entirely unobjectionable amusement. These are
+the views with which I hope you have adopted it, and will continue to
+cherish and cultivate it."
+
+
+II.
+
+
+     "There is no bard in all the choir,
+    .......
+     Not one of all can put in verse,
+     Or to this presence could rehearse
+     The sights and voices ravishing
+     The boy knew on the hills in spring,
+     When pacing through the oaks he heard
+     Sharp queries of the sentry-bird,
+     The heavy grouse's sudden whir,
+     The rattle of the kingfisher."
+
+     Emerson's _Harp._
+
+
+Now began an era of infinite happiness, of days that were never long
+enough, of evenings when bedtime came all too soon. Oh that there had
+been some good angel who would have taken in hand Anthony Croft the
+boy, and, training the powers that pointed so unmistakably in certain
+directions, given to the world the genius of Anthony Croft, potential
+instrument maker to the court of St. Cecilia; for it was not only that
+he had the fingers of a wizard; his ear caught the faintest breath of
+harmony or hint of discord, as
+
+
+     "Fairy folk a-listening
+     Hear the seed sprout in the spring,
+     And for music to their dance
+     Hear the hedge-rows wake from trance;
+     Sap that trembles into buds
+     Sending little rhythmic floods
+     Of fairy sound in fairy ears.
+     Thus all beauty that appears
+     Has birth as sound to finer sense
+     And lighter-clad intelligence."
+
+
+As the universe is all mechanism to one man, all form and color to
+another, so to Anthony Croft the world was all melody. Notwithstanding
+all these gifts and possibilities, the doctor's wife advised the Widow
+Croft to make a plumber of him, intimating delicately that these freaks
+of nature, while playing no apparent part in the divine economy, could
+sometimes be made self-supporting.
+
+The seventeenth year of his life marked a definite epoch in his
+development. He studied Jacob Friedheim's treatise until he knew
+the characteristics of all the great violin models, from the Amatis,
+Hieronymus, Antonius, and Nicolas, to those of Stradivarius, Guarnerius,
+and Steiner.
+
+It was in this year, also, that he made a very precious discovery. While
+browsing in the rubbish in Squire Bean's garret to see if he could find
+the missing sound-post of the old violin, he came upon a billet of wood
+wrapped in cloth and paper. When unwrapped, it was plainly labeled "Wood
+from the Bean Maple at Pleasant Point; the biggest maple in York County,
+and believed to be one of the biggest in the State of Maine." Anthony
+found that the oldest inhabitant of Pleasant River remembered the stump
+of the tree, and that the boys used to jump over it and admire
+its proportions whenever they went fishing at the Point. The wood,
+therefore, was perhaps eighty or ninety years old. The squire agreed
+willingly that it should be used to mend the old violin, and told Tony
+he should have what was left for himself. When, by careful calculation,
+he found that the remainder would make a whole violin, he laid it
+reverently away for another twenty years, so that he should be sure it
+had completed its century of patient waiting for service, and falling on
+his knees by his bedside said, "I thank Thee, Heavenly Father, for
+this precious gift, and I promise from this moment to gather the most
+beautiful wood I can find, and lay it by where it can be used some time
+to make perfect violins, so that if any creature as poor and helpless as
+I am needs the wherewithal to do good work, I shall have helped him as
+Thou hast helped me." And according to his promise so he did, and the
+pieces of richly curled maple, of sycamore, and of spruce began to
+accumulate. They were cut from the sunny side of the trees, in just
+the right season of the year, split so as to have a full inch thickness
+towards the bark, and a quarter inch towards the heart. They were then
+laid for weeks under one of the falls in Wine Brook, where the musical
+tinkle, tinkle of the stream fell on the wood already wrought upon by
+years of sunshine and choruses of singing birds.
+
+
+This boy, toiling not alone for himself, but with full and conscious
+purpose for posterity also, was he not worthy to wear the mantle of
+Antonius Stradivarius?
+
+
+"That plain white-aproned man who stood at work Patient and accurate
+full fourscore years, Cherished his sight and touch by temperance,
+And since keen sense is love of perfectness, Made perfect violins, the
+needed paths For inspiration and high mastery."
+
+And as if the year were not full enough of glory, the school-teacher
+sent him a book with a wonderful poem in it.
+
+That summer's teaching had been the freak of a college student, who had
+gone back to his senior year strengthened by his experience of village
+life. Anthony Croft, who was only three or four years his junior, had
+been his favorite pupil and companion.
+
+"How does Tony get along?" asked the Widow Croft when the teacher came
+to call.
+
+"Tony? Oh, I can't teach him anything."
+
+Tears sprang to the mother's eyes.
+
+"I know he ain't much on book learning," she said apologetically, "but
+I'm bound he don't make you no trouble in deportment."
+
+"I mean," said the school-teacher gravely, "that I can show him how to
+read a little Latin and do a little geometry, but he knows as much in
+one day as I shall ever know in a year."
+
+Tony crouched by the old fireplace in the winter evenings, dropping his
+knife or his compasses a moment to read aloud to his mother, who sat in
+the opposite corner knitting:--
+
+
+     "Of old Antonio Stradivari,--him
+     Who a good quarter century and a half ago
+     Put his true work in the brown instrument,
+     And by the nice adjustment of its frame
+     Gave it responsive life, continuous
+     With the master's finger-tips, and perfected
+     Like them by delicate rectitude of use."
+
+
+The mother listened with painful intentness. "I like the sound of it,"
+she said, "but I can't hardly say I take in the full sense."
+
+"Why mother," said the lad, in a rare moment of self-expression, "you
+know the poetry says he cherished his sight and touch by temperance;
+that an idiot might see a straggling line and be content, but he had
+an eye that winced at false work, and loved the true. When it says his
+finger-tips were perfected by delicate rectitude of use, I think it
+means doing everything as it is done in heaven, and that anybody
+who wants to make a perfect violin must keep his eye open to all the
+beautiful things God has made, and his ear open to all the music he has
+put into the world, and then never let his hands touch a piece of work
+that is crooked or straggling or false, till, after years and years of
+rightness, they are fit to make a violin like the squire's, a violin
+that can say everything, a violin that an angel wouldn't be ashamed to
+play on."
+
+Do these words seem likely ones to fall from the lips of a lad who had
+been at the tail of his class ever since his primer days? Well,
+Anthony was seventeen now, and he was "educated," in spite of sorry
+recitations,--educated, the Lord knows how! Yes, in point of fact the
+Lord does know how! He knows how the drill and pressure of the daily
+task, still more the presence of the high ideal, the inspiration working
+from within, how these educate us.
+
+The blind Anthony Croft sitting in the kitchen doorway had seemingly
+missed the heights of life he might have trod, and had walked his close
+on fifty years through level meadows of mediocrity, a witch in every
+finger-tip waiting to be set to work, head among the clouds, feet
+stumbling, eyes and ears open to hear God's secret thought; seeing and
+hearing it, too, but lacking force to speak it forth again; for while
+imperious genius surmounts all obstacles, brushes laws and formulas from
+its horizon, and with its own free soul sees its "path and the outlets
+of the sky," potential genius forever needs an angel of deliverance to
+set it free.
+
+Poor Anthony Croft, or blessed Anthony Croft, I know not which,--God
+knows! Poor he certainly was, yet blessed after all. "One thing I do,"
+said Paul. "One thing I do," said Anthony. He was not able to realize
+his ideals, but he had the "angel aim" by which he idealized his reals.
+
+O waiting heart of God! how soon would thy kingdom come if we all did
+our allotted tasks, humble or splendid, in this consecrated fashion!
+
+
+III.
+
+
+     "Therein I hear the Parcae reel
+     The threads of man at their humming wheel,
+     The threads of life and power and pain,
+     So sweet and mournful falls the strain."
+
+     Emerson's _Harp._
+
+
+Old Mrs. Butterfield had had her third stroke of paralysis, and died
+of a Sunday night. She was all alone in her little cottage on the river
+bank, with no neighbor nearer than Croft's, and nobody there but a blind
+man and a small boy. Everybody had told her it was foolish to live alone
+in a house on the river road, and everybody was pleased in a discreet
+and chastened fashion of course, that it had turned out exactly as they
+had predicted.
+
+Aunt Mehitable Tarbox was walking up to Milliken's Mills, with her
+little black reticule hanging over her arm, and noticing that there
+was no smoke coming out of the chimney, and that the hens were gathered
+about the kitchen door clamoring for their breakfast, she thought it
+best to stop and knock. No response followed the repeated blows from
+her hard knuckles. She then tapped smartly on Mrs. Butterfield's bedroom
+window with her thimble finger. This proving of no avail, she was
+obliged to pry open the kitchen shutter, split open a mosquito netting
+with her shears, and crawl into the house over the sink. This was a
+considerable feat for a somewhat rheumatic elderly lady, but this one
+never grudged trouble when she wanted to find out anything.
+
+When she discovered that her premonitions were correct, and that
+old Mrs. Butterfield was indeed dead, her grief at losing a pleasant
+acquaintance was largely mitigated by her sense of importance at being
+first on the spot, and chosen by Providence to take command of the
+situation. There were no relations in the village; there was no woman
+neighbor within a mile: it was therefore her obvious Christian duty not
+only to take charge of the remains, but to conduct such a funeral as the
+remains would have wished for herself.
+
+The fortunate Vice-President suddenly called upon by destiny to guide
+the ship of state, the general who sees a possible Victoria Cross in
+a hazardous engagement, can have a faint conception of aunt Hitty's
+feeling on this momentous occasion. Funerals were the very breath of her
+life. There was no ceremony, either of public or private import, that,
+to her mind, approached a funeral in real satisfying interest. Yet,
+with distinct talent in this direction, she had always been "cabined,
+cribbed, confined" within hopeless limitations. She had assisted in a
+secondary capacity at funerals in the families of other people, but she
+would have reveled in personally conducted ones. The members of her own
+family stubbornly refused to die, however, even the distant connections
+living on and on to a ridiculous old age; and if they ever did die, by
+reason of a falling roof, shipwreck, or conflagration, they generally
+died in Texas or Iowa, or some remote State where aunt Hitty could not
+follow the hearse in the first carriage. This blighted ambition was a
+heart sorrow of so deep and sacred a character that she did not even
+confess it to "Si," as her appendage of a husband was called.
+
+Now at last her chance for planning a funeral had come. Mrs. Butterfield
+had no kith or kin save her niece, Lyddy Ann, who lived in Andover,
+or Lawrence, or Haverhill Massachusetts,--aunt Hitty couldn't remember
+which, and hoped nobody else could. The niece would be sent for when
+they found out where she lived; meanwhile the funeral could not be put
+off.
+
+She glanced round the house preparatory to locking it up and starting
+to notify Anthony Croft. She would just run over and talk to him about
+ordering the coffin; then she could attend to all other necessary
+preliminaries herself. The remains had been well-to-do, and there was no
+occasion for sordid economy, so aunt Hitty determined in her own mind to
+have the latest fashion in everything, including a silver coffin plate.
+The Butterfield coffin plates were a thing to be proud of. They had
+been sacredly preserved for years and years, and the entire
+collection--numbering nineteen in all had been framed, and adorned the
+walls of the deceased lady's best room. They were not of solid silver,
+it is true, but even so it was a matter of distinction to have belonged
+to a family that could afford to have nineteen coffin plates of any
+sort.
+
+Aunt Hitty planned certain dramatic details as she walked town the road
+to Croft's. It came to her in a burst of inspiration that she would have
+two ministers: one for the long prayer, and one for the short prayer and
+the remarks. She hoped that Elder Weeks would be adequate in the latter
+direction. She knew she couldn't for the life of her think of anything
+interesting about Mrs. Butterfield, save that she possessed nineteen
+coffin plates, and brought her hens to Edgewood every summer for their
+health; but she had heard Elder Weeks make a moving discourse out of
+less than that. To be sure, he needed priming, but she was equal to
+that. There was Ivory Brown's funeral: how would that have gone on if it
+hadn't been for her? Wasn't the elder ten minutes late, and what would
+his remarks have amounted to without her suggestions? You might almost
+say she was the author of the discourse, for she gave him all the
+appropriate ideas. As she had helped him out of the wagon she had said:
+"Are you prepared? I thought not; but there's no time to lose. Remember
+there are aged parents; two brothers living, one railroading in Spokane
+Falls, the other clerking in Washington, D. C. Don't mention the
+Universalists,--there's ben two in the fam'ly; nor insanity,--there 's
+ben one o' them. The girl in the corner by the clock is the one that
+the remains has been keeping comp'ny with. If you can make some genteel
+allusions to her, it'll be much appreciated by his folks."
+
+As to the long prayer, she knew that the Rev. Mr. Ford could be relied
+on to pray until aunt Becky Burnham should twitch him by the coat tails.
+She had done it more than once. She had also, on one occasion, got up
+and straightened his ministerial neckerchief, which he had gradually
+"prayed" around his saintly neck until it was behind the right ear.
+
+These plans proved so fascinating to aunt Hitty that she walked quite
+half a mile beyond Croft's, and was obliged to retrace her steps.
+She conceived bands of black alpaca for the sleeves and hats of the
+pallbearers, and a festoon of the same over the front gate, if there
+should be any left over. She planned the singing by the choir. There
+had been no real choir-singing at any funeral in Edgewood since the Rev.
+Joshua Beckwith had died. She would ask them to open with--
+
+     Rebel mourner, cease your weepin'.
+     You too must die.
+
+This was a favorite funeral hymn. The only difficulty would be in
+keeping aunt Becky Burnham from pitching it in a key where nobody but a
+soprano skylark, accustomed to warble at a great height, could
+possibly sing it. It was generally given at the grave, when Elder Weeks
+officiated; but it never satisfied aunt Hitty, because the good elder
+always looked so unpicturesque when he threw a red bandanna handkerchief
+over his head before beginning the twenty-seven verses. After the long
+prayer, she would have Almira Berry give for a solo--
+
+     This gro-o-oanin' world 's too dark and
+     dre-e-ar for the saints' e - ter - nal rest,
+
+This hymn, if it did not wholly reconcile one to death, enabled one to
+look upon life with sufficient solemnity. It was a thousand pities, she
+thought, that the old hearse was so shabby and rickety, and that Gooly
+Eldridge, who drove it, would insist on wearing a faded peach-blow
+overcoat. It was exasperating to think of the public spirit at Egypt,
+and contrast it with the state of things at Pleasant River. In Egypt
+they had sold the old hearse house for a sausage shop, and now they were
+having hearse sociables every month to raise money for a new one.
+
+All these details flew through aunt Hitty's mind in fascinating
+procession. There shouldn't be "a hitch" anywhere. There had been a
+hitch at her last funeral, but she had been only an assistant there.
+Matt Henderson had been struck by lightning at the foot of Squire Bean's
+old nooning tree, and certain circumstances combined to make the funeral
+one of unusual interest, so much so that fat old Mrs. Potter from
+Deerwander created a sensation at the cemetery. She was so anxious
+to get where she could see everything to the best advantage that she
+crowded too near the bier, stepped on the sliding earth, and pitched
+into the grave. As she weighed over two hundred pounds, and was in a
+position of some disadvantage, it took five men to extricate her from
+the dilemma, and the operation made a long and somewhat awkward break in
+the religious services. Aunt Hitty always said of this catastrophe,
+"If I'd 'a' ben Mis' Potter, I'd 'a' ben so mortified I believe I'd 'a'
+said, 'I wa'n't plannin' to be buried, but now I'm in here I declare
+I'll stop!'"
+
+Old Mrs. Butterfield's funeral was not only voted an entire success by
+the villagers, but the seal of professional approval was set upon it
+by an undertaker from Saco, who declared that Mrs. Tarbox could make
+a handsome living in the funeral line anywhere. Providence, who always
+assists those who assist themselves, decreed that the niece Lyddy Ann
+should not arrive until the aunt was safely buried; so, there being
+none to resist her right or grudge her the privilege aunt Hitty, for the
+first time in her life, rode in the next buggy to the hearse. Si, in his
+best suit, a broad weed and weepers, drove Cyse Higgins's black colt,
+and aunt Hitty was dressed in deep mourning, with the Widow Buzzell's
+crape veil over her face, and in her hand a palmleaf fan tied with a
+black ribbon. Her comment to Si, as she went to her virtuous couch that
+night, was: "It was an awful dry funeral, but that was the only flaw in
+it. It would 'a' ben perfect if there' ben anybody to shed tears. I
+come pretty nigh it myself, though I ain't no relation, when Elder Weeks
+said, 'You'll go round the house, my sisters, and Mis' Butterfield won't
+be there; you'll go int' the orchard, and Mis' Butterfield won't be
+there; you'll go int' the barn and Mis' Butterfield won't be there;
+you'll go int' the shed, and Mis' Butterfield won't be there; you'll go
+int' the hencoop, and Mis' Butterfield won't be there!' That would 'a'
+drawed tears from a stone most, 'specially sence Mis' Butterfield set
+such store by her hens."
+
+And this is the way that Lyddy Butterfield came into her kingdom, a
+little lone brown house on the river's brim. She had seen it only once
+before when she had driven out from Portland, years ago, with her aunt.
+Mrs. Butterfield lived in Portland, but spent her summers in Edgewood
+on account of her chickens. She always explained that the country was
+dreadful dull for her, but good for the hens; they always laid so much
+better in the winter time.
+
+Lyddy liked the place all the better for its loneliness. She had never
+had enough of solitude, and this quiet home, with the song of the
+river for company, if one needed more company than chickens and a cat,
+satisfied all her desires, particularly as it was accompanied by a snug
+little income of two hundred dollars a year, a meagre sum that seemed to
+open up mysterious avenues of joy to her starved, impatient heart.
+
+When she was a mere infant, her brother was holding her on his knee
+before the great old-fashioned fireplace heaped with burning logs.
+A sudden noise startled him, and the crowing, restless baby gave an
+unexpected lurch, and slipped, face downward, into the glowing embers.
+It was a full minute before the horror-stricken boy could extricate the
+little creature from the cruel flame that had already done its fatal
+work. The baby escaped with her life, but was disfigured forever. As
+she grew older, the gentle hand of time could not entirely efface the
+terrible scars. One cheek was wrinkled and crimson, while one eye and
+the mouth were drawn down pathetically. The accident might have changed
+the disposition of any child, but Lyddy chanced to be a sensitive,
+introspective bit of feminine humanity, in whose memory the burning
+flame was never quenched. Her mother, partly to conceal her own wounded
+vanity, and partly to shield the timid, morbid child, kept her out of
+sight as much as possible; so that at sixteen, when she was left an
+orphan, she had lived almost entirely in solitude.
+
+She became, in course of time, a kind of general nursery governess in a
+large family of motherless children. The father was almost always away
+from home; his sister kept the house, and Lyddy stayed in the nursery,
+bathing the brood and putting them to bed, dressing them in the morning,
+and playing with them in the safe privacy of the back garden or the open
+attic. They loved her, disfigured as she was, for the child despises
+mere externals, and explores the heart of things to see whether it be
+good or evil,--but they could never induce her to see strangers, nor to
+join any gathering of people.
+
+The children were grown and married now, and Lyddy was nearly forty when
+she came into possession of house and lands and fortune; forty, with
+twenty years of unexpended feeling pent within her. Forty, that is
+rather old to be interesting, but age is a relative matter. Haven't you
+seen girls of four-and-twenty who have nibbled and been nibbled at ever
+since they were sixteen, but who have neither caught anything nor been
+caught? They are old, if you like, but Lyddy was forty and still young,
+with her susceptibilities cherished, not dulled, and with all the
+"language of passion fresh and rooted as the lovely leafage about a
+spring."
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+     "He shall daily joy dispense
+     Hid in song's sweet influence."
+
+     Emerson's _Merlin._
+
+
+Lyddy had very few callers during her first month as a property owner
+in Edgewood. Her appearance would have been against her winning friends
+easily in any case, even if she had not acquired the habits of a
+recluse. It took a certain amount of time, too, for the community to get
+used to the fact that old Mrs. Butterfield was dead, and her niece
+Lyddy Ann living in the cottage on the river road. There were numbers
+of people who had not yet heard that old Mrs. Butterfield had bought the
+house from the Thatcher boys, and that was fifteen years ago; but this
+was not strange, for, notwithstanding aunt Hitty's valuable services in
+disseminating general information, there was a man living on the Bonny
+Eagle road who was surprised to hear that Daniel Webster was dead, and
+complained that folks were not so long-lived as they used to be.
+
+Aunt Hitty thought Lyddy a Goth and a Vandal because she took down
+the twenty silver coffin plates and laid them reverently away. "Mis'
+Butterfield would turn in her grave," she said, "if she knew it. She
+ain't much of a housekeeper, I guess," she went on, as she cut over
+Dr. Berry's old trousers into briefer ones for Tommy Berry. "She gives
+considerable stuff to her hens that she'd a sight better heat over and
+eat herself, in these hard times when the missionary societies can't
+hardly keep the heathen fed and clothed and warmed--no, I don't mean
+warmed, for most o' the heathens live in hot climates, somehow or
+'nother. My back door's jest opposite hers; it's across the river, to
+be sure, but it's the narrer part, and I can see everything she does as
+plain as daylight. She washed a Monday, and she ain't taken her clothes
+in yet, and it's Thursday. She may be bleachin' of 'em out, but it
+looks slack. I said to Si last night I should stand it till 'bout
+Friday,--seein' 'em lay on the grass there, but if she didn't take 'em
+in then, I should go over and offer to help her. She has a fire in the
+settin'-room 'most every night, though we ain't had a frost yet; and
+as near's I can make out, she's got full red curtains hangin' up to her
+windows. I ain't sure, for she don't open the blinds in that room till
+I get away in the morning, and she shuts 'em before I get back at night.
+Si don't know red from green, so he's useless in such matters. I'm going
+home late to-night, and walk down on that side o' the river, so't I can
+call in after dark and see what makes her house light up as if the sun
+was settin' inside of it."
+
+As a matter of fact, Lyddy was reveling in house-furnishing of a humble
+sort. She had a passion for color. There was a red-and-white straw
+matting on the sitting-room floor. Reckless in the certain possession
+of twenty dollars a month, she purchased yards upon yards of turkey red
+cotton; enough to cover a mattress for the high-backed settle, for long
+curtains at the windows, and for cushions to the rockers. She knotted
+white fringes for the table covers and curtains, painted the inside
+of the fireplace red, put some pots, of scarlet geraniums on the
+window-sills, filled newspaper rack with ferns and tacked it over an
+ugly spot in the wall, edged her work-basket with a tufted trimming of
+scarlet worsted, and made an elaborate photograph case of white crash
+and red cotton that stretched the entire length of the old-fashioned
+mantelshelf, and held pictures of Mr. Reynolds, Miss Elvira Reynolds,
+George, Susy, Anna, John, Hazel, Ella, and Rufus Reynolds, her former
+charges. When all this was done, she lighted a little blaze on the
+hearth, took the red curtains from their hands, let them fall gracefully
+to the floor, and sat down in her rocking-chair, reconciled to her
+existence for absolutely the first time in her forty years.
+
+I hope Mrs. Butterfield was happy enough in Paradise to appreciate and
+feel Lyddy's joy. I can even believe she was glad to have died, since
+her dying could bring such content to any wretched living human soul.
+As Lydia sat in the firelight, the left side of her poor face in shadow,
+you saw that she was distinctly harmonious. Her figure, clad in plain
+black-and-white calico dress, was a graceful, womanly one. She had
+beautifully sloping shoulders and a sweet wrist. Her hair was soft
+and plentiful, and her hands were fine, strong, and sensitive. This
+possibility of rare beauty made her scars and burns more pitiful, for
+if a cheap chrome has smirch across its face, we think it a matter of no
+moment, but we deplore the smallest scratch or blur on any work of real
+art.
+
+Lydia felt a little less bitter and hopeless about life when she sat in
+front of her own open fire, after her usual twilight walk. It was her
+habit to wander down the wooded road after her simple five-o'clock
+supper, gatherings ferns or goldenrod or frost flowers for her vases;
+and one night she heard, above the rippling of the river, the strange,
+sweet, piercing sound of Anthony Croft's violin.
+
+She drew nearer, and saw a middle-aged man sitting in the kitchen
+doorway, with a lad of ten or twelve years leaning against his knees.
+She could tell little of his appearance, save that he had a high
+forehead, and hair that waved well back from it in rather an unusual
+fashion. He was in his shirt-sleeves, but the gingham was scrupulously
+clean, and he had the uncommon refinement of a collar and necktie. Out
+of sight herself, Lyddy drew near enough to hear; and this she did every
+night without recognizing that the musician was blind. The music had
+a curious effect upon her. It was a hitherto unknown influence in her
+life, and it interpreted her, so to speak, to herself. As she sat on
+the bed of brown pine needles, under a friendly tree, her head resting
+against its trunk, her eyes half closed, the tone of Anthony's violin
+came like a heavenly message to a tired, despairing soul. Remember that
+in her secluded life she had heard only such harmony as Elvira Reynolds
+evoked from her piano or George Reynolds from his flute, and the
+Reynolds temperament was distinctly inartistic.
+
+Lyddy lived through a lifetime of emotion in these twilight concerts.
+Sometimes she was filled with an exquisite melancholy from which there
+was no escape; at others, the ethereal purity of the strain stirred her
+heart with a strange, sweet vision of mysterious joy; joy that she had
+never possessed, would never possess; joy whose bare existence she never
+before realized. When the low notes sank lower and lower with their soft
+wail of delicious woe, she bent forward into the dark, dreading that
+something would be lost in the very struggle of listening; then, after
+a, pause, a pure human tone would break the stillness, and soaring,
+bird-like, higher and higher, seem to mount to heaven itself, and,
+"piercing its starry floors," lift poor scarred Lydia's soul to the very
+grates of infinite bliss. In the gentle moods that stole upon her in
+those summer twilights she became a different woman, softer in her
+prosperity than she had ever been in her adversity; for some plants only
+blossom in sunshine. What wonder if to her the music and the musician
+became one? It is sometimes a dangerous thing to fuse the man and his
+talents in this way; but it did no harm here, for Anthony Croft was his
+music, and the music was Anthony Croft. When he played on his violin,
+it was as if the miracle of its fashioning were again enacted; as if the
+bird on the quivering bough, the mellow sunshine streaming through the
+lattice of green leaves, the tinkle of the woodland stream, spoke in
+every tone; and more than this, the hearth-glow in whose light the
+patient hands had worked, the breath of the soul bending itself in
+passionate prayer for perfection, these, too, seemed to have wrought
+their blessed influence on the willing strings until the tone was laden
+with spiritual harmony. One might indeed have sung of this little red
+violin--that looked to Lyddy, in the sunset glow, as if it were veneered
+with rubies--all that Shelley sang of another perfect instrument:--
+
+
+     "The artist who this viol wrought
+     To echo all harmonious thought,
+     Fell'd a tree, while on the steep
+     The woods were in their winter sleep,
+     Rock'd in that repose divine
+     Of the wind-swept Apennine;
+     And dreaming, some of Autumn past,
+     And some of Spring approaching fast,
+     And some of April buds and showers,
+     And some of songs in July bowers,
+     And all of love; and so this tree--
+     O that such our death may be!--
+     Died in sleep, and felt no pain,
+     To live in happier form again."
+
+The viol "whispers in enamoured tone:"--
+
+
+     "Sweet oracles of woods and dells,
+     And summer windy ill sylvan cells;..
+     The clearest echoes of the hills,
+     The softest notes of falling rills,
+     The melodies of birds and bees,
+     The murmuring of summer seas,
+     And pattering rain, and breathing dew,
+     And airs of evening; all it knew....
+     --All this it knows, but will not tell
+      To those who cannot question well
+     The spirit that inhabits it;...
+     But, sweetly as its answers will
+     Flatter hands of perfect skill,
+     It keeps its highest, holiest tone
+     For one beloved Friend alone."
+
+Lyddy heard the violin and the man's voice as he talked to the
+child,--heard them night after night; and when she went home to the
+little brown house to light the fire on the hearth and let down the warm
+red curtains, she fell into sweet, sad reveries; and when she blew out
+her candle for the night, she fell asleep and dreamed new dreams, and
+her heart was stirred with the rustling of new-born hopes that rose and
+took wing like birds startled from their nests.
+
+
+V.
+
+
+     "Nor scour the seas, nor sift mankind,
+     A poet or a friend to find:
+     Behold, he watches at the door!
+     Behold his shadow on the floor!"
+
+     Emerson's _Saadi._
+
+Lyddy Butterfield's hen turkey was of a roving disposition. She had
+never appreciated her luxurious country quarters in Edgewood, and was
+seemingly anxious to return to the modest back yard in her native city.
+At any rate, she was in the habit of straying far from home, and the
+habit was growing upon her to such an extent that she would even lead
+her docile little gobblers down to visit Anthony Croft's hens and share
+their corn.
+
+Lyddy had caught her at it once, and was now pursuing her to that end
+for the second time. She paused in front of the house, but there were
+no turkeys to be seen. Could they have wandered up the hill road,--the
+discontented, "traipsing," exasperating things? She started in that
+direction, when she heard a crash in the Croft kitchen, and then the
+sound of a boy's voice coming from an inner room,--a weak and querulous
+voice, as if the child were ill.
+
+She drew nearer, in spite of her dread of meeting people, or above all
+of intruding, and saw Anthony Croft standing over the stove, with an
+expression of utter helplessness on his usually placid face. She had
+never really seen him before in the daylight, and there was something
+about his appearance that startled her. The teakettle was on the floor,
+and a sea of water was flooding the man's feet, yet he seemed to be
+gazing into vacancy. Presently he stooped, and fumbled gropingly for the
+kettle. It was too hot to be touched with impunity, and he finally left
+it in a despairing sort of way, and walked in the direction of a shelf,
+from under which a row of coats was hanging. The boy called again in a
+louder and more insistent tone, ending in a whimper of restless pain.
+This seemed to make the man more nervous than ever. His hands went
+patiently over and over the shelf, then paused at each separate nail.
+
+"Bless the poor dear!" thought Lyddy. "Is he trying to find his hat,
+or what is he trying to do? I wonder if he is music mad?" and she drew
+still nearer the steps.
+
+At this moment he turned and came rapidly toward the door. She looked
+straight in his face. There was no mistaking it: he was blind. The
+magician who had told her through his violin secrets that she had
+scarcely dreamed of, the wizard who had set her heart to throbbing and
+aching and longing as it had never throbbed and ached and longed before,
+the being who had worn a halo of romance and genius to her simple mind,
+was stone-blind! A wave of impetuous anguish, as sharp and passionate
+as any she had ever felt for her own misfortunes, swept over her soul at
+the spectacle of the man's helplessness. His sightless eyes struck her
+like a blow. But there was no time to lose. She was directly in his
+path: if she stood still he would certainly walk over her, and if she
+moved he would hear her, so, on the spur of the moment, she gave a
+nervous cough and said, "Good-morning, Mr. Croft."
+
+He stopped short. "Who is it?" he asked.
+
+"I am--it is--I am--your new neighbor," said Lyddy, with a trembling
+attempt at cheerfulness.
+
+"Oh, Miss Butterfield! I should have called up to see you before this
+if it hadn't been for the boy's sickness. But I am a good-for-nothing
+neighbor, as you have doubtless heard. Nobody expects anything of me."
+
+("Nobody expects anything of me." Her own plaint, uttered in her own
+tone!)
+
+"I don't know about that," she answered swiftly. "You've given me, for
+one, a great deal of pleasure with your wonderful music. I often hear
+you as you play after supper, and it has kept me from being lonesome.
+That isn't very much, to be sure."
+
+"You are fond of music, then?"
+
+"I didn't know I was; I never heard any before," said Lyddy simply; "but
+it seems to help people to say things they couldn't say for themselves,
+don't you think so? It comforts me even to hear it, and I think it must
+be still more beautiful to make it."
+
+Now, Lyddy Ann Butterfield had no sooner uttered this commonplace speech
+than the reflection darted through her mind like a lightning flash that
+she had never spoken a bit of her heart out like this in all her life
+before. The reason came to her in the same flash: she was not being
+looked at; her disfigured face was hidden. This man, at least, could
+not shrink, turn away, shiver, affect indifference, fix his eyes on
+hers with a fascinated horror, as others had done. Her heart was divided
+between a great throb of pity and sympathy for him and an irresistible
+sense of gratitude for herself. Sure of protection and comprehension,
+her lovely soul came out of her poor eyes and sat in the sunshine. She
+spoke her mind at ease, as we utter sacred things sometimes under cover
+of darkness.
+
+"You seem to have had an accident; what can I do to help you?" she
+asked.
+
+"Nothing, thank you. The boy has been sick for some days, but he seems
+worse since last night. Nothing is in its right place in the house, so I
+have given up trying to find anything, and am just going to Edgewood to
+see if somebody will help me for a few days."
+
+"Uncle Tony! Uncle To-ny! where are you? Do give me another drink, I'm
+so hot!" came the boy's voice from within.
+
+"Coming, laddie! I don't believe he ought to drink so much water, but
+what can I do? He is burning up with fever."
+
+"Now look here, Mr. Croft," and Lydia's tone was cheerfully decisive.
+"You sit down in that rocker, please, and let me command the ship for
+a while. This is one of the cases where a woman is necessary. First and
+foremost, what were you hunting for?"
+
+"My hat and the butter," said Anthony meekly, and at this unique
+combination they both laughed. Lyddy's laugh was particularly fresh,
+childlike, and pleased; one that would have astonished the Reynolds
+children. She had seldom laughed heartily since little Rufus had cried
+and told her she frightened him when she twisted her face so.
+
+"Your hat is in the wood-box, and I'll find the butter in the twinkling
+of an eye, though why you want it now is more than--My patience, Mr.
+Croft, your hand is burned to a blister!"
+
+"Don't mind me. Be good enough to look at the boy and tell me what ails
+him; nothing else matters much."
+
+"I will with pleasure, but let me ease you a little first. Here's a rag
+that will be just the thing," and Lyddy, suiting the pretty action to
+the mendacious worn, took a good handkerchief from her pocket and tore
+it in three strips, after spreading it with tallow from a candle heated
+over the stove. This done, she hound up the burned hand skillfully, and,
+crossing the dining-room, disappeared within the little chamber door
+beyond. She came out presently, and said half hesitatingly, "Would
+you--mind going out in the orchard for an hour or so? You seem to be
+rather in the way here, and I should like the place to myself, if you'll
+excuse me for saying so. I'm ever so much more capable than Mrs. Buck;
+won't you give me a trial, sir? Here's your violin and your hat. I'll
+call you if you can help or advise me."
+
+"But I can't let a stranger come in and do my housework," he objected.
+"I can't, you know, though I appreciate your kindness all the same."
+
+"I am your nearest neighbor, and your only one, for that matter," said
+Lyddy firmly; "its nothing more than right that I should look after
+that sick child, and I must do it. I haven't got a thing to do in my
+own house. I am nothing but a poor lonely old maid, who's been used to
+children all her life, and likes nothing better than to work over them."
+
+A calm settled upon Anthony's perturbed spirit, as he sat under the
+apple-trees and heard Lyddy going to and fro in the cottage. "She isn't
+any old maid," he thought; "she doesn't step like one; she has soft
+shoes and a springy walk. She must be a very handsome woman, with a hand
+like that; and such a voice! I knew the moment she spoke that she didn't
+belong in this village."
+
+As a matter of fact, his keen ear had caught the melody in Lyddy's
+voice, a voice full of dignity, sweetness, and reserve power. His sense
+of touch, too, had captured the beauty of her hand, and held it in
+remembrance,--the soft palm, the fine skin, supple fingers, smooth
+nails, and firm round wrist. These charms would never have been noted
+by any seeing man in Edgewood, but they were revealed to Anthony Croft
+while Lyddy, like the good Samaritan, bound up his wounds. It is these
+saving stars that light the eternal darkness of the blind.
+
+Lyddy thought she had met her Waterloo when, with arms akimbo, she gazed
+about the Croft establishment, which was a scene of desolation for the
+moment. Anthony's cousin from Bridgton was in the habit of visiting
+him every two months for a solemn house-cleaning, and Mrs. Buck from
+Pleasant River came every Saturday and Monday for baking and washing.
+Between times Davy and his uncle did the housework together; and
+although it was respectably done, there was no pink-and-white daintiness
+about it, you may be sure.
+
+Lyddy came out to the apple-trees in about an hour, laughing a little
+nervously as she said, "I'm sorry to have taken a mean advantage of you,
+Mr. Croft, but I know everything you've got in your house, and exactly
+where it is. I couldn't help it, you see, when I was making things tidy.
+It would do you good to see the boy. His room was too light, and the
+flies were devouring him. I swept him and dusted him, put on clean
+sheets and pillow slips, sponged him with bay rum, brushed his hair,
+drove out the flies, and tacked a green curtain up to the window.
+Fifteen minutes after he was sleeping like a kitten. He has a sore
+throat and considerable fever. Could you--can you--at least, will you,
+go up to my house on an errand?"
+
+"Certainly I can. I know it inside and out as well as my own."
+
+"Very good. On the clock shelf in the sitting-room there is a bottle of
+sweet spirits of nitre; it's the only bottle there, so you can't make
+any mistake. It will help until the doctor comes. I wonder you didn't
+send for him yesterday?"
+
+"Davy wouldn't have him," apologized his uncle.
+
+"Wouldn't he?" said Lyddy with cheerful scorn. "He has you under pretty
+good control, hasn't he? But children are unmerciful tyrants."
+
+"Couldn't you coax him into it before you go home?" asked Anthony in a
+wheedling voice.
+
+"I can try; but it isn't likely I can influence him, if you can't.
+Still, if we both fail, I really don't see what 's to prevent our
+sending for the doctor in spite of him. He is as weak as a baby,
+you know, and can't sit up in bed: what could he do? I will risk the
+consequences, if you will!"
+
+There was a note of such amiable and winning sarcasm in all this, such
+a cheery, invincible courage, such a friendly neighborliness and
+cooperation, above all such a different tone from any he was accustomed
+to hear in Edgewood, that Anthony Croft felt warmed through to the core.
+
+As he walked quickly along the road, he conjured up a vision of autumn
+beauty from the few hints nature gave even to her sightless ones on this
+glorious morning,--the rustle of a few fallen leaves under his feet, the
+clear wine of the air, the full rush of the swollen river, the whisking
+of the squirrels in the boughs, the crunch of their teeth on the nuts,
+the spicy odor of the apples lying under the trees. He missed his mother
+that morning more than he had missed her for years. How neat she was,
+how thrifty, how comfortable, and how comforting! His life was so dreary
+and aimless; and was it the best or the right one for Davy, with his
+talent and dawning ambition? Would it not be better to have Mrs.
+Buck live with them altogether, instead of coming twice a week, as
+heretofore? No; he shrank from that with a hopeless aversion born of
+Saturday and Monday dinners in her company. He could hear her pour her
+coffee into the saucer; hear the scraping of the cup on the rim, and
+know that she was setting it sloppily down on the cloth. He could
+remember her noisy drinking, the weight of her elbow on the table, the
+creaking of her calico dress under the pressure of superabundant flesh.
+Besides, she had tried to scrub his favorite violin with sapolio. No,
+anything was better than Mrs. Buck as a constancy.
+
+He took off his hat unconsciously as he entered Lyddy's sitting-room.
+A gentle breeze blew one of the full red curtains towards him till it
+fluttered about his shoulders like a frolicsome, teasing hand. There was
+a sweet, pungent odor of pine boughs, a canary sang in the window, the
+clock was trimmed with a blackberry vine; he knew the prickles, and
+they called up to his mind the glowing tints he had loved so well. His
+sensitive hand, that carried a divining rod in every finger-tip, met a
+vase on the shelf, and, traveling upward, touched a full branch of alder
+berries tied about with a ribbon. The ribbon would be red; the woman
+who arranged this room would make no mistake; for in one morning Anthony
+Croft had penetrated the secret of Lyddy's true personality, and in a
+measure had sounded the shallows that led to the depths of her nature.
+
+Lyddy went home at seven o'clock that night rather reluctantly. The
+doctor had said Mr. Croft could sit up with the boy unless he grew much
+worse, and there was no propriety in her staying longer unless there was
+danger.
+
+"You have been very good to me," Anthony said gravely, as he shook her
+hand at parting,--"very good."
+
+They stood together on the doorstep. A distant bell, called to evening
+prayer-meeting; the restless murmur of the river and the whisper of
+the wind in the pines broke the twilight stillness. The long, quiet day
+together, part of it spent by the sick child's bedside, had brought the
+two strangers curiously near to each other.
+
+"The house hasn't seemed so sweet and fresh since my mother died," he
+went on, as he dropped her hand, "and I haven't had so many flowers and
+green things in it since I lost my eyesight."
+
+"Was it long ago?"
+
+"Ten years. Is that long?"
+
+"Long to bear a burden."
+
+"I hope you know little of burden-bearing?"
+
+"I know little else."
+
+"I might have guessed it from the alacrity with which you took up
+Davy's and mine. You must be very happy to have the power to make
+things straight and sunny and wholesome; to breathe your strength into
+helplessness such as mine. I thank you, and I envy you. Good-night."
+
+Lyddy turned on her heel without a word; her mind was beyond and above
+words. The sky seemed to have descended upon, enveloped her, caught her
+up into its heaven, as she rose into unaccustomed heights of feeling,
+like Elijah in his chariot of fire. She very happy! She with power,
+power to make things straight and sunny and wholesome! She able to
+breathe strength into helplessness, even a consecrated, Godsmitten
+helplessness like his! She not only to be thanked, but envied!
+
+Her house seemed strange to her that night. She went to bed in the dark,
+dreading even the light of a candle; and before she turned down her
+counterpane she flung herself on her knees, and poured out her soul in
+a prayer that had been growing, waiting, and waited for, perhaps, for
+years:--
+
+"O Lord, I thank Thee for health and strength and life. I never could do
+it before, but I thank Thee to-night for life on any terms. I thank
+Thee for this home; for the chance of helping another human creature,
+stricken like myself; for the privilege of ministering to a motherless
+child. Make me to long only for the beauty of holiness, and to be
+satisfied if I attain to it. Wash my soul pure and clean, and let that
+be the only mirror in which I see my face. I have tried to be useful.
+Forgive me if it always seemed so hard and dreary a life. Forgive me
+if I am too happy because for one short day I have really helped in a
+beautiful way, and found a friend who saw, because he was blind, the
+real me underneath; the me that never was burned by the fire; the me
+that isn't disfigured, unless my wicked discontent has done it; the me
+that has lived on and on and on, starving to death for the friendship
+and sympathy and love that come to other women. I have spent my forty
+years in the wilderness, feeding on wrath and bitterness and tears.
+Forgive me, Lord, and give me one more vision of the blessed land of
+Canaan, even if I never dwell there."
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+     "Nor less the eternal poles
+     Of tendency distribute souls.
+     There need no vows to bind
+     Whom not each other seek, but find."
+
+     Emerson's _Celestial Love._
+
+
+Davy's sickness was a lingering one. Mrs. Buck came for two or three
+hours a day, but Lyddy was the self-installed angel of the house; and
+before a week had passed the boy's thin arms were around her neck, his
+head on her loving shoulder, and his cheek pressed against hers. Anthony
+could hear them talk, as he sat in the kitchen busy at his work. Musical
+instruments were still brought him to repair, though less frequently
+than of yore, and he could still make many parts of violins far better
+than his seeing competitors. A friend and pupil sat by his side in the
+winter evenings and supplemented his weakness, helping and learning
+alternately, while his blind master's skill filled him with wonder and
+despair. The years of struggle for perfection had not been wasted; and
+though the eye that once detected the deviation of a hair's breadth
+could no longer tell the true from the false, yet nature had been busy
+with her divine work of compensation. The one sense stricken with death,
+she poured floods of new life and vigor into the others. Touch became
+something more than the stupid, empty grasp of things we seeing mortals
+know, and in place of the two eyes he had lost he now had ten in every
+finger-tip. As for odors, let other folks be proud of smelling musk and
+lavender, but let him tell you by a quiver of the nostrils the various
+kinds of so-called scentless flowers, and let him bend his ear and
+interpret secrets that the universe is ever whispering to us who are
+pent in partial deafness because, forsooth, we see.
+
+He often paused to hear Lydia's low, soothing tones and the boy's
+weak treble. Anthony had said to him once, "Miss Butterfield is very
+beautiful, isn't she, Davy? You haven't painted me a picture of her yet.
+How does she look?"
+
+Davy was stricken at first with silent embarrassment. He was a truthful
+child, but in this he could no more have told the whole truth than
+he could have cut off his hand. He was knit to Lyddy by every tie of
+gratitude and affection. He would sit for hours with his expectant face
+pressed against the window-pane, and when he saw her coming down the
+shady road he was filled with a sense of impending comfort and joy.
+
+"NO," he said hesitatingly, "she isn't pretty, nunky, but she's sweet
+and nice and dear, Everything on her shines, it's so clean; and when
+she comes through the trees, with her white apron and her purple calico
+dress, your heart jumps, because you know she's going to make everything
+pleasant. Her hair has a pretty wave in it, and her hand is soft on your
+forehead; and it's most worth while being sick just to have her in the
+house."
+
+Meanwhile, so truly is "praise our fructifying sun," Lydia bloomed into
+a hundred hitherto unsuspected graces of mind and heart and speech.
+A sly sense of humor woke into life, and a positive talent for
+conversation, latent hitherto because she had never known any one who
+cared to drop a plummet into the crystal springs of her consciousness.
+When the violin was laid away, she would sit in the twilight, by Davy's
+sofa, his thin hand in hers, and talk with Anthony about books and
+flowers and music, and about the meaning of life, too,--its burdens and
+mistakes, and joys and sorrows; groping with him in the darkness to find
+a clue to God's purposes.
+
+Davy had long afternoons at Lyddy's house as the autumn grew into
+winter. He read to her while she sewed rags for a new sitting-room
+carpet, and they played dominoes and checkers together in the twilight
+before supper time,--suppers that were a feast to the boy, after Mrs.
+Buck's cookery. Anthony brought his violin sometimes of an evening, and
+Almira Berry, the next neighbor on the road to the Mills, would drop
+in and join the little party. Almira used to sing Auld Robin Gray, What
+Will You Do, Love, and Robin Adair, to the great enjoyment of everybody;
+and she persuaded Lyddy to buy the old church melodeon, and learn to
+sing alto in Oh, Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast, Gently, Gently Sighs the
+Breeze, and I know a Bank. Nobody sighed for the gayeties and advantages
+of a great city when, these concerts being over, Lyddy would pass crisp
+seedcakes and raspberry shrub, doughnuts and cider, or hot popped corn
+and molasses candy.
+
+"But there, she can afford to," said aunt Hitty Tarbox; "she's pretty
+middlin' wealthy for Edgewood. And it's lucky she is, for she 'bout
+feeds that boy o' Croft's. No wonder he wants her to fill him up, after
+six years of the Widder Buck's victuals. Aurelia Buck can take good
+flour and sugar, sweet butter and fresh eggs, and in ten strokes of her
+hand she can make 'em into something the very hogs 'll turn away from. I
+declare, it brings the tears to my eyes sometimes when I see her coming
+out of Croft's Saturday afternoons, and think of the stone crocks full
+of nasty messes she's left behind her for that innocent man and boy to
+eat up.... Anthony goes to see Miss Butterfield consid'able often.
+Of course it's awstensibly to walk home with Davy, or do an errand or
+something, but everybody knows better. She went down to Croft's pretty
+nearly every day when his cousin from Bridgton come to house-clean.
+She suspicioned something, I guess. Anyhow, she asked me if Miss
+Butterfield's two hundred a year was in gov'ment bonds. Anthony's
+eyesight ain't good, but I guess he could make out to cut cowpons
+off.... It would be strange if them two left-overs should take an'
+marry each other; though, come to think of it, I don't know's 't would
+neither. He's blind, to be sure, and can't see her scarred face. It's a
+pity she ain't deef, so't she can't hear his everlastin' fiddle. She's
+lucky to get any kind of a husband; she's too humbly to choose. I
+declare, she reminds me of a Jack-o'-lantern, though if you look at the
+back of her, or see her in meetin' with a thick veil on, she's about the
+best appearin' woman in Edgewood.... I never see anybody stiffen up as
+Anthony has. He had me make him three white shirts and three gingham
+ones, with collars and cuffs on all of 'em. It seems as if six shirts at
+one time must mean something out o' the common!"
+
+Aunt Hitty was right; it did mean something out of the common. It meant
+the growth of an all-engrossing, grateful, divinely tender passion
+between two love-starved souls. On the one hand, Lyddy, who though she
+had scarcely known the meaning of love in all her dreary life, yet was
+as full to the brim of all sweet, womanly possibilities of loving and
+giving as any pretty woman; on the other, the blind violin-maker, who
+had never loved any woman but his mother, and who was in the direst need
+of womanly sympathy and affection.
+
+Anthony Croft, being ministered unto by Lyddy's kind hands, hearing
+her sweet voice and her soft footstep, saw her as God sees, knowing the
+best; forgiving the worst, like God, and forgetting it, still more like
+God, I think.
+
+And Lyddy? There is no pen worthy to write of Lyddy. Her joy lay deep
+in her heart like a jewel at the bottom of a clear pool, so deep that
+no ripple or ruffle on the surface could disturb the hidden treasure.
+If God had smitten these two with one hand, he had held out the other in
+tender benediction.
+
+There had been a pitiful scene of unspeakable solemnity when Anthony
+first told Lyddy that he loved her, and asked her to be his wife. He had
+heard all her sad history by this time, though not from her own lips,
+and his heart went out to her all the more for the heavy cross that
+had been laid upon her. He had the wit and wisdom to put her affliction
+quite out of the question, and allude only to her sacrifice in marrying
+a blind man, hopelessly and helplessly dependent on her sweet offices
+for the rest of his life, if she, in her womanly mercy, would love him
+and help him bear his burdens.
+
+When his tender words fell upon Lyddy's dazed brain she sank beside
+his chair, and, clasping his knees, sobbed: "I love you, I cannot help
+loving you, I cannot help telling you I love you! But you must hear the
+truth; you have heard it from others, but perhaps they softened it. If I
+marry you, people will always blame me and pity you. You would never ask
+me to be your wife if you could see my face; you could not love me an
+instant if you were not blind."
+
+"Then I thank God unceasingly for my infirmity," said Anthony Croft, as
+he raised her to her feet.
+
+
+*****
+
+
+Anthony and Lyddy Croft sat in the apple orchard, one warm day in late
+spring.
+
+Anthony's work would have puzzled a casual on-looker. Ten stout wires
+were stretched between two trees, fifteen or twenty feet apart, and each
+group of five represented the lines of the musical staff. Wooden
+bars crossed the wires at regular intervals, dividing the staff into
+measures. A box with many compartments sat on a stool beside him, and
+this held bits of wood that looked like pegs, but were in reality whole,
+half, quarter, and eighth notes, rests, flats, sharps, and the like.
+These were cleft in such a way that he could fit them on the wires
+almost as rapidly as his musical theme came to him, and Lyddy had
+learned to transcribe with pen and ink the music she found in wood and
+wire, He could write only simple airs in this way, but when he played
+them on the violin they were transported into a loftier region, such
+genius lay in the harmony, the arabesque, the delicate lacework of
+embroidery with which the tune was inwrought; now high, now low, now
+major, now minor, now sad, now gay, with the one thrilling, haunting
+cadence recurring again and again, to be watched for, longed for, and
+greeted with a throb of delight.
+
+Davy was reading at the window, his curly head buried in a well-worn
+Shakespeare opened at Midsummer Night's Dream. Lyddy was sitting under
+her favorite pink apple-tree, a mass of fragrant bloom, more beautiful
+than Aurora's morning gown. She was sewing; lining with snowy lawn
+innumerable pockets in a square basket that she held in her lap. The
+pockets were small, the needles were fine, the thread was a length of
+cobweb. Everything about the basket was small except the hopes that she
+was stitching into it; they were so great that her heart could scarcely
+hold them. Nature was stirring everywhere. The seeds were springing in
+the warm earth. The hens were clucking to their downy chicks just out of
+the egg. The birds were flying hither and thither in the apple boughs,
+and there was one little home of straw so hung that Lyddy could look
+into it and see the patient mother brooding her nestlings. The sight of
+her bright eyes, alert for every sign of danger, sent a rush of feeling
+through Lyddy's veins that made her long to clasp the little feathered
+mother to her own breast.
+
+A sweet gravity and consecration of thought possessed her, and the
+pink blossoms falling into her basket were not more delicate than the
+rose-colored dreams that flushed her soul.
+
+Anthony put in the last wooden peg, and taking up his violin called,
+"Davy, lad, come out and tell me what this means!"
+
+Davy was used to this; from a wee boy he had been asked to paint the
+changing landscape of each day, and to put into words his uncle's music.
+
+Lyddy dropped her needle, the birds stopped to listen, and Anthony
+played.
+
+"It is this apple orchard in May time," said Davy; "it is the song of
+the green things growing, isn't it?"
+
+"What do you say, dear?" asked Anthony, turning to his wife.
+
+Love and hope had made a poet of Lyddy. "I think Davy is right," she
+said. "It is a dream of the future, the story of all new and beautiful
+things growing out of the old. It is full of the sweetness of present
+joy, but there is promise and hope in it besides. It is like the Spring
+sitting in the lap of Winter, and holding a baby Summer in her bosom."
+
+Davy did not quite understand this, though he thought it pretty; but
+Lyddy's husband did, and when the boy went back to his books, he took
+his wife in his arms and kissed her twice,--once for herself, and then
+once again.
+
+
+
+
+THE EVENTFUL TRIP OF THE MIDNIGHT CRY.
+
+
+In the little villages along the Saco River, in the year 1850 or
+thereabouts, the arrival and departure of the stage-coach was the one
+exciting incident of the day. It did not run on schedule time in those
+days, but started from Limington or Saco, as the case might be, at about
+or somewhere near a certain hour, and arrived at the other end of the
+route whenever it got there. There were no trains to meet (the railway
+popularly known as the "York and Yank'em" was not built till 1862); the
+roads were occasionally good and generally bad; and thus it was often
+dusk, and sometimes late in the evening, when the lumbering vehicle
+neared its final destination and drew up to the little post-offices
+along the way. However late it might be, the village postmaster had to
+be on hand to receive and open the mailbags; after which he distributed
+the newspapers and letters in a primitive set of pine pigeon-holes on
+the wall, turned out the loafers, "banked up" the fire, and went home to
+bed.
+
+"Life" Lane was a jolly good fellow,--just the man to sit on the box
+seat and drive the three horses through ruts and "thank-you-ma'ams,"
+slush and mud and snow. There was a perennial twinkle in his eye,
+his ruddy cheeks were wrinkled with laughter, and he had a good story
+forever on the tip of his tongue. He stood six feet two in his stockings
+(his mother used to say she had the longest Life of any woman in the
+State o' Maine); his shoulders were broad in proportion, and his lungs
+just the sort to fill amply his noble chest. Therefore, when he had what
+was called in the vernacular "turrible bad goin'," and when any other
+stage-driver in York County would have shrunk into his muffler and
+snapped and snarled on the slightest provocation, Life Lane opened his
+great throat when he passed over the bridges at Moderation or Bonny
+Eagle, and sent forth a golden, sonorous "Yo ho! halloo!" into the still
+air. The later it was and the stormier it was, the more vigor he put
+into the note, and it was a drowsy postmaster indeed who did not start
+from his bench by the fire at the sound of that ringing halloo. Thus the
+old stage-coach, in Life Lane's time, was generally called "The Midnight
+Cry," and not such a bad name either, whether the term was derisively
+applied because the stage was always late; or whether Life's "Yo ho!"
+had caught the popular fancy.
+
+There was a pretty girl in Pleasant River (and, alas! another in Bonny
+Eagle) who went to bed every night with the chickens, but stayed awake
+till she heard first the rumble of heavy wheels on a bridge, then a
+faint, bell-like tone that might have come out of the mouth of a silver
+horn; whereupon she blushed as if it were an offer of marriage, and
+turned over and went to sleep.
+
+If the stage arrived in good season, Life would have a few minutes to
+sit on the loafers' beach beside the big open fire; and what a feature
+he was, with his tales culled from all sorts of passengers, who were
+never so fluent as when sitting beside him "up in front!" There was a
+tallow dip or two, and no other light save that of the fire. Who that
+ever told a story could wish a more inspiring auditor than Jacob Bean,
+a literal, honest old fellow who took the most vital interest in every
+detail of the stories told, looking upon their heroes and their
+villains as personal friends or foes. He always sat in one corner of the
+fireplace, poker in hand, and the crowd tacitly allowed him the role of
+Greek chorus. Indeed, nobody could have told a story properly without
+Jake Bean's parentheses and punctuation marks poked in at exciting
+junctures.
+
+"That 's so every time!" he would say, with a lunge at the forestick.
+"I'll bate he was glad then!" with another stick flung on in just the
+right spot. "Golly! but that served 'em right!" with a thrust at the
+backlog.
+
+The New England story seemed to flourish under these conditions: a
+couple of good hard benches in a store or tavern, where you could not
+only smoke and chew but could keep on your hat (there was not a man in
+York County in those days who could say anything worth hearing with his
+hat off); the blazing logs to poke; and a cavernous fireplace into which
+tobacco juice could be neatly and judiciously directed. Those were good
+old times, and the stage-coach was a mighty thing when school children
+were taught to take off their hats and make a bow as the United States
+mail passed the old stage tavern.
+
+Life Lane's coaching days were over long before this story begins, but
+the Midnight Cry was still in pretty fair condition, and was driven
+ostensibly by Jeremiah Todd, who lived on the "back-nippin'" road from
+Bonny Eagle to Limington.
+
+When I say ostensibly driven, I but follow the lead of the villagers,
+who declared that, though Jerry held the reins, Mrs. Todd drove the
+stage, as she drove everything else. As a proof of this lady's strong
+individuality, she was still generally spoken of as "the Widder Bixby,"
+though she had been six years wedded to Jeremiah Todd. The Widder Bixby,
+then, was strong, self-reliant, valiant, indomitable. Jerry Todd was,
+to use his wife's own characterization, so soft you could stick a cat's
+tail into him without ruffling the fur. He was always alluded to as "the
+Widder Bixby's husband;" but that was no new or special mortification,
+for he had been known successively as Mrs. Todd's youngest baby, the
+Widder Todd's only son, Susan Todd's brother, and, when Susan Todd's
+oldest boy fought at Chapultepec, William Peck's uncle.
+
+The Widder Bixby's record was far different. She was the mildest of the
+four Stover sisters of Scarboro, and the quartette was supposed to
+have furnished more kinds of temper than had ever before come from one
+household. When Peace, the eldest, was mad, she frequently kicked the
+churn out of the kitchen door, cream and all,--and that lost her a
+husband.
+
+Love, the second, married, and according to local tradition once kicked
+her husband all the way up Foolscap Hill with a dried cod-fish. Charity,
+the third, married too,--for the Stovers of Scarboro were handsome
+girls, but she got a fit mate in her spouse. She failed to intimidate
+him, for he was a foeman worthy of her steel; but she left his bed and
+board, and left in a manner that kept up the credit of the Stover family
+of Scarboro.
+
+They had had a stormy breakfast one morning before he started to
+Portland with a load of hay. "Good-by," she called, as she stood in the
+door, "you've seen the last of me!" "No such luck!" he said, and whipped
+up his horse. Charity baked a great pile of biscuits, and left them on
+the kitchen table with a pitcher of skimmed milk. (She wouldn't give
+him anything to complain of, not she!) She then put a few clothes in a
+bundle, and, tying on her shaker, prepared to walk to Pleasant River,
+twelve miles distant. As she locked the door and put the key in its
+accustomed place under the mat, a pleasant young man drove up and
+explained that he was the advance agent of the Sypher's Two-in-One
+Menagerie and Circus, soon to appear in that vicinity. He added that
+he should be glad to give her five tickets to the entertainment if she
+would allow him to paste a few handsome posters on that side of her barn
+next the road; that their removal was attended with trifling difficulty,
+owing to the nature of a very superior paste invented by himself; that
+any small boy, in fact, could tear them off in an hour, and be well paid
+by the gift of a ticket.
+
+The devil entered into Charity (not by any means for the first time),
+and she told the man composedly that if he would give her ten tickets he
+might paper over the cottage as well as the barn, for they were going
+to tear it down shortly and build a larger one. The advance agent was
+delighted, and they passed a pleasant hour together; Charity holding the
+paste-pot, while the talkative gentleman glued six lions and an elephant
+on the roof, a fat lady on the front door, a tattooed man between the
+windows, living skeletons on the blinds, and ladies insufficiently
+clothed in all the vacant spaces and on the chimneys. Nobody went by
+during the operation, and the agent remarked, as he unhitched his horse,
+that he had never done a neater job. "Why, they'll come as far to see
+your house as they will to the circus!" he exclaimed.
+
+"I calculate they will," said Charity, as she latched the gate and
+started for Pleasant River.
+
+I am not telling Charity Stover's story, so I will only add that
+the bill-poster was mistaken in the nature of his paste, and greatly
+undervalued its adhesive properties.
+
+The temper of Prudence, the youngest sister, now Mrs. Todd, paled into
+insignificance beside that of the others, but it was a very pretty thing
+in tempers nevertheless, and would have been thought remarkable in any
+other family in Scarboro.
+
+You may have noted the fact that it is a person's virtues as often
+as his vices that make him difficult to live with. Mrs. Todd's
+masterfulness and even her jealousy might have been endured, by the
+aid of fasting and prayer, but her neatness, her economy, and her
+forehandedness made a combination that only the grace of God could have
+abided with comfortably, so that Jerry Todd's comparative success is a
+matter of local tradition. Punctuality is a praiseworthy virtue enough,
+but as the years went on, Mrs. Todd blew her breakfast horn at so early
+an hour that the neighbors were in some doubt as to whether it might not
+herald the supper of the day before. They also predicted that she would
+have her funeral before she was fairly dead, and related with great
+gusto that when she heard there was to be an eclipse of the sun on
+Monday, the 26th of July, she wished they could have it the 25th, as
+Sunday would be so much more convenient than wash-day.
+
+She had oilcloth on her kitchen to save the floor, and oilcloth mats to
+save the oilcloth; yet Jerry's boots had to be taken off in the shed,
+and he was required to walk through in his stocking feet. She blackened
+her stove three times a day, washed her dishes in the woodhouse, in
+order to keep her sink clean, and kept one pair of blinds open in the
+sitting-room, but spread newspapers over the carpet wherever the sun
+shone in.
+
+It was the desire of Jerry's heart to give up the fatigues and exposures
+of stage-driving, and "keep store," but Mrs. Todd deemed it much better
+for him to be in the open air than dealing out rum and molasses to a
+roystering crew. This being her view of the case, it is unnecessary to
+state that he went on driving the stage.
+
+"Do you wear a flannel shirt, Jerry?" asked Pel Frost once. "I don'
+know," he replied, "ask Mis' Todd; she keeps the books."
+
+"Women-folks" (he used to say to a casual passenger), "like all other
+animiles, has to be trained up before they're real good comp'ny. You
+have to begin with 'em early, and begin as you mean to hold out. When
+they once git in the habit of takin' the bit in their teeth and runnin',
+it's too late for you to hold 'em in."
+
+It was only to strangers that he aired his convictions on the training
+of "womenfolks," though for that matter he might safely have done it
+even at home; for everybody in Limington knew that it would always
+have been too late to begin with the Widder Bixby, since, like all the
+Stovers of Scarboro, she had been born with the bit in her teeth. Jerry
+had never done anything he wanted to since he had married her, and he
+hadn't really wanted to do that. He had been rather candid with her on
+this point (as candid as a tender-hearted and obliging man can be with
+a woman who is determined to marry him, and has two good reasons why she
+should to every one of his why he shouldn't), and this may have been
+the reason for her jealousy. Although by her superior force she had
+overborne his visible reluctance, she, being a woman, or at all events
+of the female gender, could never quite forget that she had done the
+wooing.
+
+Certainly his charms were not of the sort to tempt women from the
+strict and narrow path, yet the fact remained that the Widder Bixby was
+jealous, and more than one person in Limington was aware of it.
+
+Pelatiah, otherwise "Pel" Frost, knew more about the matter than most
+other folks, because he had unlimited time to devote to general culture.
+Though not yet thirty years old, he was the laziest man in York County.
+(Jabe Slocum had not then established his record; and Jot Bascom had
+ruined his by cutting his hay before it was dead in the summer of '49,
+always alluded to afterwards in Pleasant River as the year when gold was
+discovered and Jot Bascom cut his hay.)
+
+Pel was a general favorite in half a dozen villages, where he was the
+life of the loafers' bench. An energetic loafer can attend properly to
+one bench, but it takes genius as well as assiduity to do justice to six
+of them. His habits were decidedly convivial, and he spent a good deal
+of time at the general musters, drinking and carousing with the other
+ne'er-do-weels. You may be sure he was no favorite of Mrs. Todd's; and
+she represented to him all that is most undesirable in womankind, his
+taste running decidedly to rosy, smiling, easy-going ones who had no
+regular hours for meals, but could have a dinner on the table any time
+in fifteen minutes after you got there.
+
+Now, a certain lady with a noticeable green frock and a white "drawn-in"
+cape bonnet had graced the Midnight Cry on its journey from Limington to
+Saco on three occasions during the month of July. Report said that she
+was a stranger who had appeared at the post-office in a wagon driven by
+a small, freckled boy.
+
+The first trip passed without comment; the second provoked some
+discussion; on the occasion of the third, Mrs. Todd said nothing,
+because there seemed nothing to say, but she felt so out-of-sorts that
+she cut Jerry's hair close to his head, though he particularly fancied
+the thin fringe of curls at the nape of his neck.
+
+Pel Frost went over to Todd's one morning to borrow an axe, and seized
+a favorable opportunity to ask casually, "Oh, Mis' Todd, did Jerry find
+out the name o' that woman in a green dress and white bunnit that rid to
+Saco with him last week?"
+
+"Mr. Todd's got something better to do than get acquainted with his lady
+passengers," snapped Mrs. Todd, "'specially as they always ride inside."
+
+"I know they gen'ally do," said Pel, shouldering the axe (it was for
+his mother's use), "but this one rides up in front part o' the way, so I
+thought mebbe Jerry 'd find out something 'bout her. She's han'some as a
+picture, but she must have a good strong back to make the trip down 'n'
+up in one day."
+
+Nothing could have been more effective or more effectual than this
+blow dealt with consummate skill. Having thus driven the iron into Mrs.
+Todd's soul, Pel entertained his mother with an account of the interview
+while she chopped the kindling-wood. He had no special end in view when,
+Iago-like, he dropped his first poisoned seed in Mrs. Todd's fertile
+mind, or, at most, nothing worse than the hope that matters might reach
+an unendurable point, and Jerry might strike for his altars and his
+fires. Jerry was a man and a brother, and petticoat government must
+be discouraged whenever and wherever possible, or the world would soon
+cease to be a safe place to live in. Pel's idea grew upon him in the
+night watches, and the next morning he searched his mother's garret till
+he found a green dress and a white bonnet. Putting them in a basket, he
+walked out on the road a little distance till he met the stage, when,
+finding no passengers inside, he asked Jerry to let him jump in and
+"ride a piece." Once within, he hastily donned the green wrapper and
+tell-tale headgear, and, when the Midnight Cry rattled down the stony
+hill past the Todd house, Pel took good care to expose a large green
+sleeve and the side of a white bonnet at the stage window. It was easy
+enough to cram the things back into the basket, jump out, and call a
+cordial thank you to the unsuspecting Jerry. He was rewarded for his
+ingenuity and enterprise at night, when he returned Mrs. Todd's axe, for
+just as he reached the back door he distinctly heard her say that if she
+saw that green woman on the stage again, she would knock her off with a
+broomstick as sure as she was a Stover of Scarboro. As a matter of fact
+she was equal to it. Her great-grandmother had been born on a soil where
+the broomstick is a prominent factor in settling connubial differences;
+and if it occurred to her at this juncture, it is a satisfactory proof
+of the theory of atavism.
+
+Pel intended to see this domestic tragedy through to the end, and
+accordingly took another brief trip in costume the very next week,
+hoping to be the witness of a scene of blood and carnage. But Mrs. Todd
+did not stir from her house, although he was confident she had seen "my
+lady green-sleeves" from her post at the window. Puzzled by her apathy,
+and much disappointed in her temper, he took off the dress, and,
+climbing up in front, rode to Moderation, where he received an urgent
+invitation to go over to the county fair at Gorham. The last idea was
+always the most captivating to Pel, and he departed serenely for a stay
+of several days without so much luggage as a hairbrush. His mother's
+best clothespin basket, to say nothing of its contents, appeared at this
+juncture to be an unexpected incumbrance; so on the spur of the moment
+he handed it up to Jerry just as the stage was starting, saying, "If
+Mis' Todd has a brash to-night, you can clear yourself by showing her
+this basket, but for massy sakes don't lay it on to me! You can stan' it
+better'n I can,--you 're more used to it!"
+
+Jerry took the basket, and when he was well out on the road he looked
+inside and saw a bright green calico wrapper, a white cape bonnet, a
+white "fall veil," and a pair of white cotton gloves. He had ample time
+for reflection, for it was a hot day, and though he drove slowly, the
+horses were sweating at every pore. Pel Frost, then, must have overheard
+his wife's storm of reproaches, perhaps even her threats of violence.
+It had come to this, that he was the village laughing-stock, a butt of
+ridicule at the store and tavern.
+
+Now, two years before this, Jerry Todd had for the first and only time
+in his married life "put his foot down." Mrs. Todd had insisted on
+making him a suit of clothes much against his wishes. When finished she
+put them on him almost by main force, though his plaintive appeals would
+have melted any but a Stover-of-Scarboro heart. The stuff was a large
+plaid, the elbows and knees came in the wrong places, the seat was lined
+with enameled cloth, and the sleeves cut him in the armholes.
+
+Mr. Todd said nothing for a moment, but the pent-up slavery of years
+stirred in him, and, mounting to his brain, gave him a momentary courage
+that resembled intoxication. He retired, took off the suit, hung it over
+his arm, and, stalking into the sitting-room in his undergarments,
+laid it on the table before his astonished spouse, and, thumping it
+dramatically, said firmly, "I--will--not--wear--them--clo'es!" whereupon
+he fell into silence again and went to bed.
+
+The joke of the matter was, that, all unknown to himself, he had
+absolutely frightened Mrs. Todd. If only he could have realized the
+impressiveness and the thorough success of his first rebellion! But
+if he had realized it he could not have repeated it often, for so much
+virtue went out of him on that occasion that he felt hardly able to
+drive the stage for days afterward.
+
+"I shall have to put down my foot agin," he said to himself on the
+eventful morning when Pel presented him with the basket. "Dern my luck,
+I've got to do it agin, when I ain't hardly got over the other time."
+So, after an hour's plotting and planning, he made some purchases in
+Biddeford and started on his return trip. He was very low in his mind,
+thinking, if his wife really meditated upon warfare, she was likely to
+inspect the stage that night, but giving her credit in his inmost heart
+for too much common sense to use a broomstick,--a woman with her tongue!
+
+The Midnight Cry rattled on lumberingly. Its route had been shortened,
+and Mrs. Todd wanted its name changed to something less outlandish, such
+as the Rising Sun, or the Breaking Dawn, or the High Noon, but her idea
+met with no votaries; it had been, was, and ever should be, the Midnight
+Cry, no matter what time it set out or got back. It had seen its best
+days, Jerry thought, and so had he, for that matter. Yet he had been
+called "a likely feller" when he married the Widder Bixby, or rather
+when she married him. Well, the mischief was done; all that remained was
+to save a remnant of his self-respect, and make an occasional dash for
+liberty.
+
+He did all his errands with his usual care, dropping a blue ribbon for
+Doxy Morton's Sunday hat, four cents' worth of gum-camphor for Almira
+Berry, a spool of cotton for Mrs. Wentworth, and a pair of "galluses"
+for Living Bean. He finally turned into the "back-nippin'" road from
+Bonny Eagle to Limington, and when he was within forty rods of his own
+house he stopped to water his horses. If he feared a scene he had good
+reason, for as the horses climbed the crest of the long hill the lady in
+green was by his side on the box. He looked anxiously ahead, and there,
+in a hedge of young alder bushes, he saw something stirring, and, unless
+he was greatly mistaken, a birch broom lay on the ground near the hedge.
+
+Notwithstanding these danger signals, Jerry's arm encircled the plump
+waist of the lady in green, and, emboldened by the shades of twilight,
+his lips sought the identical spot under the white "fall veil" where
+her incendiary mouth might be supposed to lurk, quite "fit for treasons,
+stratagems, and spoils." This done, he put on the brake and headed his
+horses toward the fence. He was none too soon, for the Widder Bixby,
+broom in hand, darted out from the alders and approached the stage with
+objurgations which, had she rated them at their proper value, needed
+no supplement in the way of blows. Jerry gave one terror-stricken
+look, wound his reins round the whipstock, and, leaping from his seat,
+disappeared behind a convenient tree.
+
+At this moment of blind rage Mrs. Todd would have preferred to chastise
+both her victims at once; but, being robbed of one by Jerry's cowardly
+flight, her weapon descended upon the other with double force. There was
+no lack of courage here at least. Whether the lady in green was borne up
+by the consciousness of virtue, whether she was too proud to retreat,
+or whatever may have been her animating reason, the blow fell, yet she
+stood her ground and gave no answering shriek. Enraged as much by her
+rival's cool resistance as by her own sense of injury, the Widder
+Bixby aimed full at the bonnet beneath which were the charms that
+had befuddled Jerry Todd's brain. To blast the fatal beauty that had
+captivated her wedded husband was the Widder Bixby's idea, and the broom
+descended. A shower of seeds and pulp, a copious spattering of pumpkin
+juice, and the lady in green fell resistlessly into her assailant's
+arms; her straw body, her wooden arms and pumpkin head, decorating the
+earth at her feet! Mrs. Todd stared helplessly at the wreck she
+had made, not altogether comprehending the ruse that had led to her
+discomfiture, but fully conscious that her empire was shaken to its
+foundations. She glanced in every direction, and then hurling the
+hateful green-and-white livery into the stage, she gathered up all
+traces of the shameful fray, and sweeping them into her gingham apron
+ran into the house in a storm of tears and baffled rage.
+
+Jerry stayed behind the tree for some minutes, and when the coast was
+clear he mounted the seat and drove to the store and the stable. When
+he had put up his horses he went into the shed, took off his boots
+as usual, but, despite all his philosophy, broke into a cold sweat of
+terror as he crossed the kitchen threshold. "I can't stand many more
+of these times when I put my foot down," he thought, "they're too
+weakening!"
+
+But he need not have feared. There was a good supper under the mosquito
+netting on the table, and, most unusual luxury, a pot of hot tea. Mrs.
+Todd had gone to bed and left him a pot of tea!
+
+Which was the more eloquent apology!
+
+Jerry never referred to the lady in green, then or afterwards; he was
+willing to let well enough alone; but whenever his spouse passed a
+certain line, which, being a Stover of Scarboro, she was likely to do
+about once in six months, he had only to summon his recreant courage and
+glance meaningly behind the kitchen door, where the birch broom hung
+on a nail. It was a simple remedy to outward appearances, but made his
+declining years more comfortable. I can hardly believe that he ever
+took Pel Frost into his confidence, but Pel certainly was never more
+interesting to the loafers' bench than when he told the story of the
+eventful trip of the Midnight Cry and "the breaking in of the Widder
+Bixby."
+
+
+NOTES:
+
+1. On page 20, reentered is spelled with diaeresis over the second "e".
+
+2. On pages 153 & 154 the verses beginning respectively "Rebel mourner"
+and "This gro-o-oanin' world" are accompanied with staves of music in
+the treble clef.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Village Watch-Tower, by 
+(AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
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