The Light in the Clearing: A Tale of the North Country in the Time of Silas Wright

MY SECOND PERIL

We always thank God for men like Purvis: we never thank them. They are without honor in their own time, but how they brighten the pages of memory! How they stimulated the cheerfulness of the old countryside and broke up its natural reticence!

Mr. Franklin Purvis was our hired man—an undersized bachelor. He had a Roman nose, a face so slim that it would command interest and attention in any company, and a serious look enhanced by a bristling mustache and a retreating chin. At first and on account of his size I had no very high opinion of Mr. Purvis. That first evening after his arrival I sat with him on the porch surveying him inside and out.

"You don't look very stout," I said.

"I ain't as big as some, but I'm all gristle from my head to my heels, inside an' out," he answered.

I surveyed him again as he sat looking at the ledges. He was not more than a head taller than I, but if he were "all gristle" he might be entitled to respect and I was glad to learn of his hidden resources—glad and a bit apprehensive as they began to develop.

"I'm as full o' gristle as a goose's leg," he went on. "God never made a man who could do more damage when he lets go of himself an' do it faster. There ain't no use o' talkin'."

There being no use of talking, our new hired man continued to talk while I listened with breathless interest and growing respect. He took a chew of tobacco and squinted his eyes and seemed to be studying the wooded rock ledges across the road as he went on:

"You'll find me wide awake, I guess. I ain't afraid o' anythin' but lightnin'—no, sir!—an' I can hurt hard an' do it rapid when I begin, but I can be jest as harmless as a kitten. There ain't no man that can be more harmlesser when he wants to be an' there's any decent chance for it—none whatsomever! No, sir! I'd rather be harmless than not—a good deal."

This relieved, and was no doubt calculated to relieve, a feeling of insecurity which his talk had inspired. He blew out his breath and shifted his quid as he sat with his elbows resting on his knees and took another look at the ledges as if considering how much of his strength would be required to move them.

"Have you ever hurt anybody?" I asked.

"Several," he answered.

"Did you kill 'em?"

"No, I never let myself go too fur. Bein' so stout, I have to be kind o' careful."

After a moment's pause he went on:

"A man threatened to lick me up to Seaver's t'other day. You couldn't blame him. He didn't know me from a side o' sole leather. He just thought I was one o' them common, every-day cusses that folks use to limber up on. But he see his mistake in time. I tell ye God was good to him when he kept him away from me."

Aunt Deel called us to supper.

"Le's go in an' squench our hunger," Mr. Purvis proposed as he rose and shut his jackknife.

I was very much impressed and called him "Mr. Purvis" after that. I enjoyed and believed many tales of adventure in which he had been the hero as we worked together in the field or stable. I told them to my aunt and uncle one evening, whereupon the latter said:

"He's a good man to work, but Jerusalem—!"

He stopped. He always stopped at the brink of every such precipice. I had never heard him finish an uncomplimentary sentence.

I began to have doubts regarding the greatness of our hired man. I still called him "Mr. Purvis," but all my fear of him had vanished.

One day Mr. Grimshaw came out in the field to see my uncle. They walked away to the shade of a tree while "Mr. Purvis" and I went on with the hoeing. I could hear the harsh voice of the money-lender speaking in loud and angry tones and presently he went away.

"What's the rip?" I asked as my uncle returned looking very sober.

"We won't talk about it now," he answered.

That look and the fears it inspired ruined my day which had begun with eager plans for doing and learning. In the candle-light of the evening Uncle Peabody said:

"Grimshaw has demanded his mortgage money an' he wants it in gold coin. We'll have to git it some way, I dunno how."

"W'y of all things!" my aunt exclaimed. "How are we goin' to git all that money—these hard times?—ayes! I'd like to know?"

"Well, I can't tell ye," said Uncle Peabody. "I guess he can't forgive us for savin' Rodney Barnes."

"What did he say?" I asked.

"Why, he says we hadn't no business to hire a man to help us. He says you an' me ought to do all the work here. He thinks I ought to took you out o' school long ago."

"I can stay out o' school and keep on with my lessons," I said.

"Not an' please him. He was mad when he see ye with a book in yer hand out there in the corn-field."

What were we to do now? I spent the first sad night of my life undoing the plans which had been so dear to me but not so dear as my aunt and uncle. I decided to give all my life and strength to the saving of the farm. I would still try to be great, but not as great as the Senator. Purvis stayed with us through the summer and fall.

After the crops were in we cut and burned great heaps of timber and made black salts of the ashes by leaching water through them and boiling down the lye. We could sell the salts at three dollars and a half a hundred pounds. The three of us working with a team could produce from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and forty pounds a week. Yet we thought it paid—there in Lickitysplit. All over the hills men and women were turning their efforts and strength into these slender streams of money forever flowing toward the mortgagee.

Mr. Dunkelberg had seen Benjamin Grimshaw and got him to give us a brief extension. They had let me stay out of school to work. I was nearly thirteen years old and rather strong and capable. I think that I got along in my books about as well as I could have done in our little school.

One day in December of that year, I had my first trial in the full responsibility of man's work. I was allowed to load and harness and hitch up and go to mill without assistance. My uncle and Purvis were busy with the chopping and we were out of flour and meal. It took a lot of them to keep the axes going. So I filled two sacks with corn and two with wheat and put them into the box wagon, for the ground was bare, and hitched up my horses and set out. Aunt Deel took a careful look at the main hitches and gave me many a caution before I drove away. She said it was a shame that I had to be "Grimshawed" into a man's work at my age. But I was elated by my feeling of responsibility. I knew how to handle horses and had driven at the drag and plow and once, alone, to the post-office, but this was my first long trip without company. I had taken my ax and a chain, for one found a tree in the road now and then those days, and had to trim and cut and haul it aside. It was a drive of six miles to the nearest mill, over a bad road. I sat on two cleated boards placed across the box, with a blanket over me and my new overcoat and mittens on, and was very comfortable and happy.

I had taken a little of my uncle's chewing tobacco out of its paper that lay on a shelf in the cellarway, for I had observed that my uncle generally chewed when he was riding. I tried a little of it and was very sick for a few minutes.

Having recovered, I sang all the songs I knew, which were not many, and repeated the names of the presidents and divided the world into its parts and recited the principal rivers with all the sources and emptyings of the latter and the boundaries of the states and the names and locations of their capitals. It amused me in the midst of my loneliness to keep my tongue busy and I exhausted all my knowledge, which included a number of declamations from the speeches of Otis, Henry and Webster, in the effort. Before the journey was half over I had taken a complete inventory of my mental effects. I repeat that it was amusement—of the only kind available—and not work to me.

I reached the mill safely and before the grain was ground the earth and the sky above it were white with snow driving down in a cold, stiff wind out of the northwest. I loaded my grists and covered them with a blanket and hurried away. The snow came so fast that it almost blinded me. There were times when I could scarcely see the road or the horses. The wind came colder and soon it was hard work to hold the reins and keep my hands from freezing.

Suddenly the wheels began jumping over rocks. The horses were in the ditch. I knew what was the matter, for my eyes had been filling with snow and I had had to brush them often. Of course the team had suffered in a like manner. Before I could stop I heard the crack of a felly and a front wheel dropped to its hub. I checked the horses and jumped out and went to their heads and cleared their eyes. The snow was up to my knees then.

It seemed as if all the clouds in the sky were falling to the ground and stacking into a great, fleecy cover as dry as chaff.

We were there where the road drops into a rocky hollow near the edge of Butterfield's woods. They used to call it Moosewood Hill because of the abundance of moosewood around the foot of it. How the thought of that broken wheel smote me! It was our only heavy wagon, and we having to pay the mortgage. What would my uncle say? The query brought tears to my eyes.

I unhitched and led my horses up into the cover of the pines. How grateful it seemed, for the wind was slack below but howling in the tree-tops! I knew that I was four miles from home and knew, not how I was to get there. Chilled to the bone, I gathered some pitch pine and soon had a fire going with my flint and tinder. I knew that I could mount one of the horses and lead the other and reach home probably. But there was the grist. We needed that; I knew that we should have to go hungry without the grist. It would get wet from above and below if I tried to carry it on the back of a horse. I warmed myself by the fire and hitched my team near it so as to thaw the frost out of their forelocks and eyebrows. I felt in my coat pockets and found a handful of nails—everybody carried nails in one pocket those days—and I remember that my uncle's pockets were a museum of bolts and nuts and screws and washers.

The idea occurred to me that I would make a kind of sled which was called a jumper.

So I got my ax out of the wagon and soon found a couple of small trees with the right crook for the forward end of a runner and cut them and hewed their bottoms as smoothly as I could. Then I made notches in them near the top of their crooks and fitted a stout stick into the notches and secured it with nails driven by the ax-head. Thus I got a hold for my evener. That done, I chopped and hewed an arch to cross the middle of the runners and hold them apart and used all my nails to secure and brace it. I got the two boards which were fastened together and constituted my wagon seat and laid them over the arch and front brace. How to make them fast was my worst problem. I succeeded in splitting a green stick to hold the bolt of the evener just under its head while I heated its lower end in the fire and kept its head cool with snow. With this I burnt a hole in the end of each board and fastened them to the front brace with withes of moosewood.

It was late in the day and there was no time for the slow process of burning more holes, so I notched the other ends of the boards and lashed them to the rear brace with a length of my reins. Then I retempered my bolt and brought up the grist and chain and fastened the latter between the boards in the middle of the front brace, hitched my team to the chain and set out again, sitting on the bags.

It was, of course, a difficult journey, for my jumper was narrow. The snow heaped up beneath me and now and then I and my load were rolled off the jumper. When the drifts were more than leg deep I let down the fence and got around them by going into the fields. Often I stopped to clear the eyes of the horses—a slow task to be done with the bare hand—or to fling my palms against my shoulders and thus warm myself a little.

It was pitch dark and the horses wading to their bellies and the snow coming faster when we turned into Rattleroad. I should not have known the turn when we came to it, but a horse knows more than a man in the dark. Soon I heard a loud halloo and knew that it was the voice of Uncle Peabody. He had started out to meet me in the storm and Shep was with him.

"Thank God I've found ye!" he shouted. "I'm blind and tired out and I couldn't keep a lantern goin' to save me. Are ye froze?"

"I'm all right, but these horses are awful tired. Had to let 'em rest every few minutes."

I told him about the wagon—and how it relieved me to hear him say:

"As long as you're all right, boy, I ain't goin' to worry 'bout the ol' wagon—not a bit. Where'd ye git yer jumper?"

"Made it with the ax and some nails," I answered.

I didn't hear what he said about it for the horses were wallowing and we had to stop and paw and kick the snow from beneath them as best we could before it was possible to back out of our trouble. Soon we found an entrance to the fields—our own fields not far from the house—where Uncle Peabody walked ahead and picked out the best wading. After we got to the barn door at last he went to the house and lighted his lantern and came back with it wrapped in a blanket and Aunt Deel came with him.

How proud it made me to hear him say:

"Deel, our boy is a man now—made this jumper all 'lone by himself an' has got through all right."

She came and held the lantern up to my face and looked at my hands.

"Well, my stars, Bart!" she exclaimed in a moment. "I thought ye would freeze up solid—ayes—poor boy!"

The point of my chin and the lobes of my ears and one finger were touched and my aunt rubbed them with snow until the frost was out.

We carried the grist in and Aunt Deel made some pudding. How good it was to feel the warmth of the fire and of the hearts of those who loved me! How I enjoyed the pudding and milk and bread and butter!

"I guess you've gone through the second peril that ol' Kate spoke of," said Aunt Deel as I went up-stairs.

Uncle Peabody went out to look at the horses.

When I awoke in the morning I observed that Uncle Peabody's bed had not been slept in. I hurried down and heard that our off-horse had died in the night of colic. Aunt Deel was crying. As he saw me Uncle Peabody began to dance a jig in the middle of the floor.

"Balance yer partners!" he shouted. "You an' I ain't goin' to be discouraged if all the hosses die—be we, Bart?"

"Never," I answered.

"That's the talk! If nec'sary we'll hitch Purvis up with t'other hoss an' git our haulin' done."

He and Purvis roared with laughter and the strength of the current swept me along with them.

"We're the luckiest folks in the world, anyway," Uncle Peabody went on. "Bart's alive an' there's three feet o' snow on the level an' more comin' an' it's colder'n Greenland."

It was such a bitter day that we worked only three hours and came back to the house and played Old Sledge by the fireside.

Rodney Barnes came over that afternoon and said that he would lend us a horse for the hauling.

When we went to bed that night Uncle Peabody whispered:

"Say, ol' feller, we was in purty bad shape this mornin'. If we hadn't 'a' backed up sudden an' took a new holt I guess Aunt Deel would 'a' caved in complete an' we'd all been a-bellerin' like a lot o' lost cattle."

We had good sleighing after that and got our bark and salts to market and earned ninety-eight dollars. But while we got our pay in paper "bank money," we had to pay our debts in wheat, salts or corn, so that our earnings really amounted to only sixty-two and a half dollars, my uncle said. This more than paid our interest. We gave the balance and ten bushels of wheat to Mr. Grimshaw for a spavined horse, after which he agreed to give us at least a year's extension on the principal.

We felt easy then.

MY THIRD PERIL

"Mr. Purvis" took his pay in salts and stayed with us until my first great adventure cut him off. It came one July day when I was in my sixteenth year. He behaved badly, and I as any normal boy would have done who had had my schooling in the candle-light. We had kept Grimshaw from our door by paying interest and the sum of eighty dollars on the principal. It had been hard work to live comfortably and carry the burden of debt. Again Grimshaw had begun to press us. My uncle wanted to get his paper and learn, if possible, when the Senator was expected in Canton.

So he gave me permission to ride with Purvis to the post-office—a distance of three miles—to get the mail. Purvis rode in our only saddle and I bareback, on a handsome white filly which my uncle had given me soon after she was foaled. I had fed and petted and broken and groomed her and she had grown so fond of me that my whistled call would bring her galloping to my side from the remotest reaches of the pasture. A chunk of sugar or an ear of corn or a pleasant grooming always rewarded her fidelity. She loved to have me wash her legs and braid her mane and rub her coat until it glowed, and she carried herself proudly when I was on her back. I had named her Sally because that was the only name which seemed to express my fondness.

"Mr. Purvis" was not an experienced rider. My filly led him at a swift gallop over the hills and I heard many a muttered complaint behind me, but she liked a free head when we took the road together and I let her have her way.

Coming back we fell in with another rider who had been resting at Seaver's little tavern through the heat of the day. He was a traveler on his way to Canton and had missed the right trail and wandered far afield. He had a big military saddle with bags and shiny brass trimmings and a pistol in a holster, all of which appealed to my eye and interest. The filly was a little tired and the stranger and I were riding abreast at a walk while Purvis trailed behind us. The sun had set and as we turned the top of a long hill the dusk was lighted with a rich, golden glow on the horizon far below us.

We heard a quick stir in the bushes by the roadside.

"What's that?" Purvis demanded in a half-whisper of excitement. We stopped.

Then promptly a voice—a voice which I did not recognize—broke the silence with these menacing words sharply spoken:

"Your money or your life!"

"Mr. Purvis" whirled his horse and lashed him up the hill. Things happened quickly in the next second or two. Glancing backward I saw him lose a stirrup and fall and pick himself up and run as if his life depended on it. I saw the stranger draw his pistol. A gun went off in the edge of the bushes close by. The flash of fire from its muzzle leaped at the stranger. The horses reared and plunged and mine threw me in a clump of small poppies by the roadside and dashed down the hill. All this had broken into the peace of a summer evening on a lonely road and the time in which it had happened could be measured, probably, by ten ticks of the watch.

My fall on the stony siding had stunned me and I lay for three or four seconds, as nearly as I can estimate it, in a strange and peaceful dream. Why did I dream of Amos Grimshaw coming to visit me, again, and why, above all, should it have seemed to me that enough things were said and done in that little flash of a dream to fill a whole day—enough of talk and play and going and coming, the whole ending with a talk on the haymow. Again and again I have wondered about that dream. I came to and lifted my head and my consciousness swung back upon the track of memory and took up the thread of the day, the briefest remove from where it had broken.

I peered through the bushes. The light was unchanged. I could see quite clearly. The horses were gone. It was very still. The stranger lay helpless in the road and a figure was bending over him. It was a man with a handkerchief hanging over his face with holes cut opposite his eyes. He had not seen my fall and thought, as I learned later, that I had ridden away.

His gun lay beside him, its stock toward me. I observed that a piece of wood had been split off the lower side of the stock. I jumped to my feet and seized a stone to hurl at him. As I did so the robber fled with gun in hand. If the gun had been loaded I suppose that this little history would never have been written. Quickly I hurled the stone at the robber. I remember it was a smallish stone about the size of a hen's egg. I saw it graze the side of his head. I saw his hand touch the place which the stone had grazed. He reeled and nearly fell and recovered himself and ran on, but the little stone had put the mark of Cain upon him.

The stranger lay still in the road. I lifted his head and dropped it quickly with a strange sickness. The feel of it and the way it fell back upon the ground when I let go scared me, for I knew that he was dead. The dust around him was wet. I ran down the hill a few steps and stopped and whistled to my filly. I could hear her answering whinny far down the dusty road and then her hoofs as she galloped toward me. She came within a few feet of me and stood snorting. I caught and mounted her and rode to the nearest house for help. On the way I saw why she had stopped. A number of horses were feeding on the roadside near the log house where Andrew Crampton lived. Andrew had just unloaded some hay and was backing out of his barn. I hitched my filly and jumped on the rack saying:

"Drive up the road as quick as you can. A man has been murdered."

What a fearful word it was that I had spoken! What a panic it made in the little dooryard! The man gasped and jerked the reins and shouted to his horses and began swearing. The woman uttered a little scream and the children ran crying to her side. Now for the first time I felt the dread significance of word and deed. I had had no time to think of it before. I thought of the robber fleeing, terror-stricken, in the growing darkness.

The physical facts which are further related to this tragedy are of little moment to me now. The stranger was dead and we took his body to our home and my uncle set out for the constable. Over and over again that night I told the story of the shooting. We went to the scene of the tragedy with lanterns and fenced it off and put some men on guard there.

How the event itself and all that hurrying about in the dark had shocked and excited me! The whole theater of life had changed. Its audience had suddenly enlarged and was rushing over the stage and a kind of terror was in every face and voice. There was a red-handed villain behind the scenes, now, and how many others, I wondered. Men were no longer as they had been. Even the God to whom I prayed was different. As I write the sounds and shadows of that night are in my soul again. I see its gathering gloom. I hear its rifle shot which started all the galloping hoofs and swinging lanterns and flitting shadows and hysterical profanity. In the morning they found the robber's footprints in the damp dirt of the road and measured them. The whole countryside was afire with excitement and searching the woods and fields for the highwayman.

"Mr. Purvis," who had lost confidence suddenly in the whole world, had been found, soon after daylight next morning, under a haycock in the field of a farmer who was getting in his hay. Our hired man rose up and reported in fearful tones. A band of robbers—not one, or two, even, but a band of them—had chased him up the road and one of their bullets had torn the side of his trousers, in support of which assertion he showed the tear. With his able assistance we see at a glance both the quality and the state of mind prevailing among the humbler citizens of the countryside. They were, in a way, children whose cows had never recovered from the habit of jumping over the moon and who still worshiped at the secret shrine of Jack the Giant Killer.

The stranger was buried. There was nothing upon him to indicate his name or residence. Weeks passed with no news of the man who had slain him. I had told of the gun with a piece of wood broken out of its stock, but no one knew of any such weapon in or near Lickitysplit.

One day Uncle Peabody and I drove up to Grimshaw's to make a payment of money. I remember it was gold and silver which we carried in a little sack. I asked where Amos was and Mrs. Grimshaw—a timid, tired-looking, bony little woman who was never seen outside of her own house—said that he was working out on the farm of a Mr. Beekman near Plattsburg. He had gone over on the stage late in June to hire out for the haying. I observed that my uncle looked very thoughtful as we rode back home and had little to say.

"You never had any idee who that robber was, did ye?" he asked by and by.

"No—I could not see plain—it was so dusk," I said.

"I think Purvis lied about the gang that chased him," he said. "Mebbe he thought they was after him. In my opinion he was so scairt he couldn't 'a' told a hennock from a handsaw anyway. I think it was just one man that did that job."

How well I remember the long silence that followed and the distant voices that flashed across it now and then—the call of the mire drum in the marshes and the songs of the winter wren and the swamp robin. It was a solemn silence.

The swift words, "Your money or your life," came out of my memory and rang in it. I felt its likeness to the scolding demands of Mr. Grimshaw, who was forever saying in effect:

"Your money or your home!"

That was like demanding our lives because we couldn't live without our home. Our all was in it. Mr. Grimshaw's gun was the power he had over us, and what a terrible weapon it was! I credit him with never realizing how terrible.

We came to the sand-hills and then Uncle Peabody broke the silence by saying:

"I wouldn't give fifty cents for as much o' this land as a bird could fly around in a day."

Then for a long time I heard only the sound of feet and wheels muffled in the sand, while my uncle sat looking thoughtfully at the siding. When I spoke to him he seemed not to hear me.

Before we reached home I knew what was in his mind, but neither dared to speak of it.

People came from Canton and all the neighboring villages to see and talk with me and among them were the Dunkelbergs. Unfounded tales of my bravery had gone abroad.

Sally seemed to be very glad to see me. We walked down to the brook and up into the maple grove and back through the meadows.

The beauty of that perfect day was upon her. I remember that her dress was like the color of its fire-weed blossoms and that the blue of its sky was in her eyes and the yellow of its sunlight in her hair and the red of its clover in her cheeks. I remember how the August breezes played with her hair, flinging its golden curving strands about her neck and shoulders so that it touched my face, now and then, as we walked! Somehow the rustle of her dress started a strange vibration in my spirit. I put my arm around her waist and she put her arm around mine as we ran along. A curious feeling came over me. I stopped and loosed my arm.

"It's very warm!" I said as I picked a stalk of fire-weed.

What was there about the girl which so thrilled me with happiness?

She turned away and felt the ribbon by which her hair was gathered at the back of her head.

I wanted to kiss her as I had done years before, but I was afraid.

She turned suddenly and said to me:

"A penny for your thoughts."

"You won't laugh at me?"

"No."

"I was thinking how beautiful you are and how homely I am."

"You are not homely. I like your eyes and your teeth are as white and even as they can be and you are a big, brave boy, too."

Oh, the vanity of youth! I had never been so happy as then.

"I don't believe I'm brave," I said, blushing as we walked along beside the wheat-fields that were just turning yellow. "I was terribly scared that night—honest I was!"

"But you didn't run away."

"I didn't think of it or I guess I would have."

After a moment of silence I ventured:

"I guess you've never fallen in love."

"Yes, I have."

"Who with?"

"I don't think I dare tell you," she answered, slowly, looking down as she walked.

"I'll tell you who I love if you wish," I said.

"Who?"

"You." I whispered the word and was afraid she would laugh at me, but she didn't. She stopped and looked very serious and asked:

"What makes you think you love me?"

"Well, when you go away I shall think an' think about you an' feel as I do when the leaves an' the flowers are all gone an' I know it's going to be winter, an' I guess next Sunday Shep an' I will go down to the brook an' come back through the meadow, an' I'll kind o' think it all over—what you said an' what I said an' how warm the sun shone an' how purty the wheat looked, an' I guess I'll hear that little bird singing."

We stopped and listened to the song of a bird—I do not remember what bird it was—and then she whispered:

"Will you love me always and forever?"

"Yes," I answered in the careless way of youth.

She stopped and looked into my eyes and I looked into hers.

"May I kiss you?" I asked, and afraid, with cheeks burning.

She turned away and answered: "I guess you can if you want to."

Now I seem to be in Aladdin's tower and to see her standing so red and graceful and innocent in the sunlight, and that strange fire kindled by our kisses warms my blood again.

It was still play, although not like that of the grand ladies and the noble gentlemen in which we had once indulged, but still it was play—the sweetest and dearest kind of play which the young may enjoy, and possibly, also, the most dangerous.

She held my hand very tightly as we went on and I told her of my purpose to be a great man.

My mind was in a singular condition of simplicity those days. It was due to the fact that I had had no confidant in school and had been brought up in a home where there was neither father nor mother nor brother.

That night I heard a whispered conference below after I had gone up-stairs. I knew that something was coming and wondered what it might be. Soon Uncle Peabody came up to our little room looking highly serious. He sat down on the side of his bed with his hands clasped firmly under one knee, raising his foot below it well above the floor. He reminded me of one carefully holding taut reins on a horse of a bad reputation. I sat, half undressed and rather fearful, looking into his face. As I think of the immaculate soul of the boy, I feel a touch of pathos in that scene. I think that he felt it, for I remember that his whisper trembled a little as he began to tell me why men are strong and women are beautiful and given to men in marriage.

"You'll be falling in love one o' these days," he said. "It's natural ye should. You remember Rovin' Kate?" he asked by and by.

"Yes," I answered.

"Some day when you're a little older I'll tell ye her story an' you'll see what happens when men an' women break the law o' God. Here's Mr. Wright's letter. Aunt Deel asked me to give it to you to keep. You're old enough now an' you'll be goin' away to school before long, I guess."

I took the letter and read again the superscription on its envelope:

I put it away in the pine box with leather hinges on its cover which Uncle Peabody had made for me and wondered again what it was all about, and again that night I broke camp and moved further into the world over the silent trails of knowledge.

Uncle Peabody went away for a few days after the harvesting. He had gone afoot, I knew not where. He returned one afternoon in a buggy with the great Michael Hacket of the Canton Academy. Hacket was a big, brawny, red-haired, kindly Irishman with a merry heart and tongue, the latter having a touch of the brogue of the green isle which he had never seen, for he had been born in Massachusetts and had got his education in Harvard. He was then a man of forty.

"You're coming to me this fall," he said as he put his hand on my arm and gave me a little shake. "Lad! you've got a big pair of shoulders! Ye shall live in my house an' help with the chores if ye wish to."

"That'll be grand," said Uncle Peabody, but, as to myself, just then, I knew not what to think of it.

We were picking up potatoes in the field.

"Without 'taters an' imitators this world would be a poor place to live in," said Mr. Hacket. "Some imitate the wise—thank God!—some the foolish—bad 'cess to the devil!"

As he spoke we heard a wonderful bird song in a tall spruce down by the brook.

"Do ye hear the little silver bells in yon tower?" he asked.

As we listened a moment he whispered: "It's the song o' the Hermit Thrush. I wonder, now, whom he imitates. I think the first one o' them must 'a' come on Christmas night an' heard the angels sing an' remembered a little o' it so he could give it to his children an' keep it in the world."

I looked up into the man's face and liked him, and after that I looked forward to the time when I should know him and his home.

Shep was rubbing his neck fondly on the schoolmaster's boot.

"That dog couldn't think more o' me if I were a bone," he said as he went away.

END OF BOOK ONE

Which is the Story of the Principal Witness

IN WHICH I MEET OTHER GREAT MEN

It was a sunny day in late September on which Aunt Deel and Uncle Peabody took me and my little pine chest with all my treasures in it to the village where I was to go to school and live with the family of Mr. Michael Hacket, the schoolmaster. I was proud of the chest, now equipped with iron hinges and a hasp and staple. Aunt Deel had worked hard to get me ready, sitting late at her loom to weave cloth for my new suit, which a traveling tailor had fitted and made for me. I remember that the breeches were of tow and that they scratched my legs and made me very uncomfortable, but I did not complain. My uncle used to say that nobody with tow breeches on him could ride a horse without being thrown—they pricked so.

The suit which I had grown into—"the Potsdam clothes," we called them often, but more often "the boughten clothes"—had been grown out of and left behind in a way of speaking. I had an extra good-looking pair of cowhide boots, as we all agreed, which John Wells, the cobbler, had made for me. True, I had my doubts about them, but we could afford no better.

When the chest was about full, I remember that my aunt brought something wrapped in a sheet of the St. Lawrence Republican and put it into my hands.

"There are two dozen cookies an' some dried meat," said she. "Ayes, I thought mebbe you'd like 'em—if you was hungry some time between meals. Wait a minute."

She went to her room and Uncle Peabody and I waited before we shut the hasp with a wooden peg driven into its staple.

Aunt Deel returned promptly with the Indian Book in her hands.

"There," said she, "you might as well have it—ayes!—you're old enough now. You'll enjoy readin' it sometimes in the evenin', mebbe—ayes! Please be awful careful of it, Bart, for it was a present from my mother to me—ayes it was!"

How tenderly she held and looked at the sacred heirloom so carefully stitched into its cover of faded linen. It was her sole legacy. Tears came to my eyes as I thought of her generosity—greater, far greater than that which has brought me gifts of silver and gold—although my curiosity regarding the Indian Book had abated, largely, for I had taken many a sly peek at it. Therein I had read how Captain Baynes—my great grandfather—had been killed by the Indians.

I remember the sad excitement of that ride to the village and all the words of advice and counsel spoken by my aunt.

"Don't go out after dark," said she. "I'm 'fraid some o' them rowdies'll pitch on ye."

"If they do I guess they'll be kind o' surprised," said Uncle Peabody.

"I don't want him to fight."

"If it's nec'sary, I believe in fightin' tooth an' nail," my uncle maintained.

I remember looking in vain for Sally as we passed the Dunkelbergs'. I remember my growing loneliness as the day wore on and how Aunt Deel stood silently buttoning my coat with tears rolling down her cheeks while I leaned back upon the gate in front of the Hacket house, on Ashery Lane, trying to act like a man and rather ashamed of my poor success. It reminded me of standing in the half-bushel measure and trying in vain, as I had more than once, to shoulder the big bag of corn. Uncle Peabody stood surveying the sky in silence with his back toward us. He turned and nervously blew out his breath. His lips trembled a little as he said.

"I dunno but what it's goin' to rain."

I watched them as they walked to the tavern sheds, both looking down at the ground and going rather unsteadily. Oh, the look of that beloved pair as they walked away from me!—the look of their leaning heads! Their silence and the sound of their footsteps are, somehow, a part of the picture which has hung all these years in my memory.

Suddenly I saw a man go reeling by in the middle of the road. His feet swung. They did not rise and reach forward and touch the ground according to the ancient habit of the human foot. They swung sideways and rose high and each crossed the line of his flight a little, as one might say, when it came to the ground, for the man's movements reminded me of the aimless flight of a sporting swallow. He zig-zagged from one side of the street to the other. He caught my eye just in time and saved me from breaking down. I watched him until he swung around a corner. Only once before had I seen a man drunk and walking, although I had seen certain of our neighbors riding home drunk—so drunk that I thought their horses were ashamed of them, being always steaming hot and in a great hurry.

Sally Dunkelberg and her mother came along and said that they were glad I had come to school. I could not talk to them and seeing my trouble, they went on, Sally waving her hand to me as they turned the corner below. I felt ashamed of myself. Suddenly I heard the door open behind me and the voice of Mr. Hacket:

"Bart," he called, "I've a friend here who has something to say to you. Come in."

I turned and went into the house.

"Away with sadness—laddie buck!" he exclaimed as he took his violin from its case while I sat wiping my eyes. "Away with sadness! She often raps at my door, and while I try not to be rude, I always pretend to be very busy. Just a light word o' recognition by way o' common politeness! Then laugh, if ye can an' do it quickly, lad, an' she will pass on."

The last words were spoken in a whisper, with one hand on my breast.

He tuned the strings and played the Fisher's Hornpipe. What a romp of merry music filled the house! I had never heard the like and was soon smiling at him as he played. His bow and fingers flew in the wild frolic of the Devil's Dream. It led me out of my sadness into a world all new to me.

"Now, God bless your soul, boy!" he exclaimed, by and by, as he put down his instrument. "We shall have a good time together—that we will. Not a stroke o' work this day! Come, I have a guide here that will take us down to the land o' the fairies."

Then with his microscope he showed me into the wonder world of littleness of which I had had no knowledge.

"The microscope is like the art o' the teacher," he said. "I've known a good teacher to take a brain no bigger than a fly's foot an' make it visible to the naked eye."

One of the children, of which there were four in the Hacket home, called us to supper. Mrs. Hacket, a stout woman with a red and kindly face, sat at one end of the table, and between them were the children—Mary, a pretty daughter of seventeen years; Maggie, a six-year-old; Ruth, a delicate girl of seven, and John, a noisy, red-faced boy of five. The chairs were of plain wood—like the kitchen chairs of to-day. In the middle of the table was an empty one—painted green. Before he sat down Mr. Hacket put his hand on the back of this chair and said:

"A merry heart to you, Michael Henry."

I wondered at the meaning of this, but dared not to ask. The oldest daughter acted as a kind of moderator with the others.

"Mary is the constable of this house, with power to arrest and hale into court for undue haste or rebellion or impoliteness," Mr. Hacket explained.

"I believe that Sally Dunkelberg is your friend," he said to me presently.

"Yes, sir," I answered.

"A fine slip of a girl that and a born scholar. I saw you look at her as the Persian looks at the rising sun."

I blushed and Mary and her mother and the boy John looked at me and laughed.

"Puer pulcherrime!" Mr. Hacket exclaimed with a kindly smile.

Uncle Peabody would have called it a "stout snag." The schoolmaster had hauled it out of his brain very deftly and chucked it down before me in a kind of challenge.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"You shall know in a week, my son," he answered. "I shall put you into the Latin class Wednesday morning, and God help you to like it as well as you like Sally."

Again they laughed and again I blushed.

"Hold up yer head, my brave lad," he went on. "Ye've a perfect right to like Sally if ye've a heart to."

He sang a rollicking ballad of which I remember only the refrain:

It was a merry supper, and when it ended Mr. Hacket rose and took the green chair from the table, exclaiming:

"Michael Henry, God bless you!"

Then he kissed his wife and said:

"Maggie, you wild rose of Erin! I've been all day in the study. I must take a walk or I shall get an exalted abdomen. One is badly beaten in the race o' life when his abdomen gets ahead of his toes. Children, keep our young friend happy here until I come back, and mind you, don't forget the good fellow in the green chair."

Mary helped her mother with the dishes, while I sat with a book by the fireside. Soon Mrs. Hacket and the children came and sat down with me.

"Let's play backgammon," Mary proposed.

"I don't want to," said John.

"Don't forget Michael Henry," she reminded.

"Who is Michael Henry?" I asked.

"Sure, he's the boy that has never been born," said Mrs. Hacket. "He was to be the biggest and noblest one o' them—kind an' helpful an' cheery hearted an' beloved o' God above all the others. We try to live up to him."

He seemed to me a very strange and wonderful creature—this invisible occupant of the green chair.

I know now what I knew not then that Michael Henry was the spirit of their home—an ideal of which the empty green chair was a constant reminder.

We played backgammon and Old Maid and Everlasting until Mr. Hacket returned.

He sat down and read aloud from the Letters of an Englishwoman in America.

"Do you want to know what sleighing is?" she wrote. "Set your chair out on the porch on a Christmas day. Put your feet in a pail-full of powdered ice. Have somebody jingle a bell in one ear and blow into the other with a bellows and you will have an exact idea of it."

When she told of a lady who had been horned by a large insect known as a snapdragon, he laughed loudly and closed the book and said:

"They have found a new peril of American life. It is the gory horn of the snapdragon. Added to our genius for boastfulness and impiety, it is a crowning defect. Ye would think that our chief aim was the cuspidor. Showers of expectoration and thunder claps o' profanity and braggart gales o' Yankee dialect!—that's the moral weather report that she sends back to England. We have faults enough, God knows, but we have something else away beneath them an' none o' these writers has discovered it."

The sealed envelope which Mr. Wright had left at our home, a long time before that day, was in my pocket. At last the hour had come when. I could open it and read the message of which I had thought much and with a growing interest.

I rose and said that I should like to go to my room. Mr. Hacket lighted a candle and took me up-stairs to a little room where my chest had been deposited. There were, in the room, a bed, a chair, a portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte and a small table on which were a dictionary, a Bible and a number of school books.

"These were Mary's books," said Mr. Hacket. "I told yer uncle that ye could use them an' welcome. There's another book here which ye may study if ye think it worth the bother. It's a worn an' tiresome book, my lad, but I pray God ye may find no harm in it. Use it as often as ye will. It is the book o' my heart. Ye will find in it some kind o' answer to every query in the endless flight o' them that's coming on, an' may the good God help us to the truth."

He turned and bade me good night and went away and closed the door.

I sat down and opened the sealed envelope with trembling hands, and found in it this brief note: