If anything was missing at the old farmhouse—clothes-brush, soap, comb or other articles of daily use—some one almost always would exclaim, "Look in Bethesda!" or "I left it in Bethesda!" Bethesda was one of those household words that you use without thought of its original significance or of the amused query that it raises in the minds of strangers.
Like most New England houses built seventy-five years ago, the farmhouse at the old Squire's had been planned without thought of bathing facilities. The family washtub, brought to the kitchen of a Saturday night, and filled with well water tempered slightly by a few quarts from the teakettle, served the purpose. We were not so badly off as our ancestors had been, however, for in 1865, when we young folks went home to live at the old Squire's, stoves were fully in vogue and farmhouses were comfortably warmed. Bathing on winter nights was uncomfortable enough, we thought, but it was not the desperately chilly business that it must have been when farmhouses were heated by a single fireplace.
In the sitting-room we had both a fireplace and an "air-tight" for the coldest weather. In grandmother Ruth's room there was a "fireside companion," and in the front room a "soapstone comfort," with sides and top of a certain kind of variegated limestone that held heat through the winter nights.
So much heat rose from the lower rooms that the bedrooms on the floor above, where we young folks slept, were by no means uncomfortably cold, even in zero weather. Grandmother Ruth would open the hall doors an hour before it was time for us to go to bed, to let the superfluous heat rise for our benefit.
In the matter of bathing, however, a great deal was left to be desired at the old house. There were six of us to take turns at that one tub. Grandmother Ruth took charge: she saw to it that we did not take too long, and listened to the tearful complaints about the coldness of the water. On Saturday nights her lot was not a happy one. She used to sit just outside the kitchen door and call our names when our turns came; and as each of us went by she would hand us our change of underclothing.
Although the brass kettle was kept heating on the stove all the while, we had trouble in getting enough warm water to "take the chill off." More than once—unbeknown to grandmother Ruth—I followed Addison in the tub without changing the water. He had appreciably warmed it up. One night Halstead twitted me about it at the supper table, and I recollect that the lack of proper sensibility that I had shown scandalized the entire family.
"Oh, Joseph!" grandmother often exclaimed to the old Squire. "We must have some better way for these children to bathe. They are getting older and larger, and I certainly cannot manage it much longer."
Things went on in that way for the first two years of our sojourn at the old place—until after the old Squire had installed a hydraulic ram down at the brook, which forced plenty of water up to the house and the barns. Then, in October of the third year, the old gentleman bestirred himself.
He had been as anxious as any one to improve our bathing facilities, but it is not an easy job to add a bathroom to a farmhouse. He walked about at the back of the house for hours, and made several excursions to a hollow at a distance in the rear of the place, and also climbed to the attic, all the while whistling softly:
"Roll on, Silver Moon,Guide the traveler on his way."
"Roll on, Silver Moon,Guide the traveler on his way."
That was always a sure sign that he was getting interested in some scheme.
Then things began to move in earnest. Two carpenters appeared and laid the sills for an addition to the house, twenty feet long by eighteen feet wide, just behind the kitchen, which was in the L. The room that they built had a door opening directly into the kitchen. The floor, I remember, was of maple and the walls of matched spruce.
Meanwhile the old Squire had had a sewer dug about three hundred feet long; and to hold the water supply he built a tank of about a thousand gallons' capacity, made of pine planks; the tank was in the attic directly over the kitchen stove, so that in winter heat would rise under it through a little scuttle in the floor and prevent the water from freezing.
From the tank the pipes that led to the new bathroom ran down close to the chimney and the stove pipe. Those bathroom pipes gave the old Squire much anxiety; there was not a plumber in town; the old gentleman had to do the work himself, with the help of a hardware dealer from the village, six miles away.
But if the pipe gave him anxiety, the bathtub gave him more. When he inquired at Portland about their cost, he was somewhat staggered to learn that the price of a regular tub was fifty-eight dollars.
But the old Squire had an inventive brain. He drove up to the mill, selected a large, sound pine log about four feet in diameter and set old Davy Glinds, a brother of Hughy Glinds, to excavate a tub from it with an adze. In his younger days Davy Glinds had been a ship carpenter, and was skilled in the use of the broadaxe and the adze. He fashioned a good-looking tub, five feet long by two and a half wide, smooth hewn within and without. When painted white the tub presented a very creditable appearance.
The old Squire was so pleased with it that he had Glinds make another; and then, discovering how cheaply pine bathtubs could be made, he hit upon a new notion. The more he studied on a thing like that, the more the subject unfolded in his dear old head. Why, the old Squire asked himself, need the Saturday-night bath occupy a whole evening because the eight or ten members of the family had to take turns in one tub, when we could just as well have more tubs?
Before grandmother Ruth fairly realized what he was about, the old gentleman had five of these pine tubs ranged there in the new lean-to. He had the carpenters inclose each tub within a sealed partition of spruce boards. There was thus formed a little hall five feet wide in the center of the new bathroom, from which small doors opened to each tub.
"What do you mean, Joseph, by so many tubs?" grandmother cried in astonishment, when she discovered what he was doing.
"Well, Ruth," he said, "I thought we'd have a tub for the boys, a tub for the girls, then tubs for you and me, mother, and one for our hired help."
"Sakes alive, Joe! All those tubs to keep clean!"
"But didn't you want a large bathroom?" the old Squire rejoined, with twinkling eyes.
"Yes, yes," cried grandmother, "but I had no idea you were going to make a regular Bethesda!"
Bethesda! Sure enough, like the pool in Jerusalem, it had five porches! And that name, born of grandmother Ruth's indignant surprise, stuck to it ever afterwards.
When the old Squire began work on that bathroom he expected to have it finished in a month. But one difficulty after another arose: the tank leaked; the sewer clogged; nothing would work. If the hardware dealer from the village came once to help, he came fifty times! His own experience in bathrooms was limited. Then, to have hot water in abundance, it was necessary to send to Portland for a seventy-five-gallon copper heater; and six weeks passed before that order was filled.
November, December and January passed before Bethesda was ready to turn on the water; and then we found that the kitchen stove would not heat so large a heater, or at least would not do it and serve as a cook-stove at the same time. Nor would it sufficiently warm the bathroom in very cold weather even with the kitchen door open. Then one night in February the pipes at the far end froze and burst, and the hardware man had to make us another hasty visit.
To ward off such accidents in the future the old Squire now had recourse to what is known as the Granger furnace—a convenience that was then just coming into general favor among farmers. They are cosy, heat-holding contrivances, made of brick and lined either with fire brick or iron; they have an iron top with pot holes in which you can set kettles. The old Squire connected ours with the heater, and he placed it so that half of it projected into the new bathroom, through the partition wall of the kitchen. It served its purpose effectively and on winter nights diffused a genial glow both in the kitchen and in the bathroom.
But it was the middle of April before the bathroom was completed; and the cost was actually between eight and nine hundred dollars!
"My sakes, Joseph!" grandmother exclaimed. "Another bathroom like that would put us in the poor-house. And the neighbors all think we're crazy!"
The old Squire, however, rubbed his hands with a smile of satisfaction. "I call it rather fine. I guess we are going to like it," he said.
Like it we did, certainly. Bathing was no longer an ordeal, but a delight. There was plenty of warm water; you had only to pick your tub, enter your cubicle and shut the door. Bethesda, with its Granger furnace and big water heater, was a veritable household joy.
"Ruth," the old Squire said, "all I'm sorry for is that I didn't do this thirty years ago. When I reflect on the cold, miserable baths we have taken and the other privations you and I have endured all these years it makes me heartsick to think what I've neglected."
"But nine hundred dollars, Joseph!" grandmother interposed with a scandalized expression. "That's an awful bill!"
"Yes," the old Squire admitted, "but we shall survive it."
Grandmother was right about our neighbors. What they said among themselves would no doubt have been illuminating if we had heard it; but they maintained complete silence when we were present. But we noticed that when they called at the farmhouse they cast curious and perhaps envious glances at the new lean-to.
Then an amusing thing happened. We had been enjoying Bethesda for a few weeks, but had not yet got past our daily pride in it, when one hot evening in the latter part of June who should come driving into the yard but David Barker, "the Burns of Maine," a poet and humorist of state-wide renown.
The old Squire had met him several times; but his visit that night was accidental. He had come into our part of the state to visit a kinsman, but had got off his proper route and had called at our house to ask how far away this relative lived.
"It is nine or ten miles up there," the old Squire said when they had shaken hands. "You are off your route. Better take out your horse and spend the night with us. You can find your way better by daylight."
After some further conversation Mr. Barker decided to accept the old Squire's invitation. While grandmother and Ellen got supper for our guest, the old Squire escorted him to the hand bowl that he had put in at the end of the bathroom hall. I imagine that the old Squire was just a little proud of our recent accommodations.
"And, David, if you would like a bath before retiring to-night, just step in here and make yourself at home," he said and opened several of the doors to the little cubicles.
David looked the tubs over, first one and then another.
"Wal, Squire," he said at last, in that peculiar voice of his, "I've sometimes wondered why our Maine folks had so few bathtubs, and sometimes been a little ashamed on't. But now I see how 'tis. You've got all the bathtubs there are cornered up here at your place!"
He continued joking about our bathrooms while he was eating supper; and later, before retiring, he said, "I know you are a neat woman, Aunt Ruth, and I guess before I go to bed I'll take a turn in your bathroom."
Ellen gave him a lamp; and he went in and shut the door. Fifteen minutes—half an hour—nearly an hour—passed, and still he was in there; and we heard him turning on and letting off water, apparently barrels of it! Occasionally, too, we heard a door open and shut.
At last, when nearly an hour and a half had elapsed, the old Squire, wondering whether anything were wrong, went to the bathroom door. He knocked, and on getting a response inquired whether there was any trouble.
"Doesn't the water run, David?" he asked. "Is it too cold for you? How are you getting on in there?"
"Getting on beautifully," came the muffled voice of the humorist above the splashing within. "Doing a great job. Only one tub more! Four off and one to come."
"But, David!" the old Squire began in considerable astonishment.
"Yes. Sure. It takes time. But I know Aunt Ruth is an awful neat woman, and I determined to do a full job!"
He had been taking a bath in each of the five tubs in succession. That was Barker humor.
It was some time the following week, I think, that the old Squire looked across to us at the breakfast table and said, "Boys, don't you want to walk the town lines for me? I think I shall let you do it this time—and have the fee," he added, smiling.
The old gentleman was one of the selectmen of the town that year; and an old law, or municipal regulation, required that one or more of the selectmen should walk the town lines—follow round the town boundaries on foot—once a year, to see that the people of adjoining towns, or others, were not trespassing. The practice of walking the town lines is now almost or quite obsolete, but it was a needed precaution when inhabitants were few and when the thirty-six square miles of a township consisted mostly of forest. At this time the southern half of our town was already taken up in farms, but the northern part was still in forest lots. The selectmen usually walked the north lines only.
When the state domain, almost all dense forest, was first surveyed, the land was laid off in ranges, so-called, and tiers of lots. The various grants of land to persons for public services were also surveyed in a similar manner and the corners and lines established by means of stakes and stones, and of blazed trees. If a large rock happened to lie at the corner of a range or lot, the surveyor sometimes marked it with a drill. Such rocks made the best corners.
Usually the four corners of the town were established by means of low, square granite posts, set in the earth and with the initial letter of the township cut in it with a drill.
As if it were yesterday I remember that sharp, cold morning. Hard-frozen snow a foot deep still covered the cleared land, and in the woods it was much deeper. The first heavy rainstorm of spring had come two days before, but it had cleared off cold and windy the preceding evening, with snow squalls and zero weather again. Nevertheless, Addison and I were delighted at the old Squire's proposal, especially since the old gentleman had hinted that we could have the fee, which was usually four dollars when two of the selectmen walked the lines and were out all day.
"Go to the northeast corner of the town first," the old Squire said. "The corner post is three miles and a half from here; you will find it in the cleared land a hundred rods northeast of the barn on the Jotham Silver place. Start from there and go due west till you reach the wood-lot on the Silver farm. There the blazed trees begin, and you will have to go from one to another. It is forest nearly all the way after that for six miles, till you come to the northwest town corner.
"You can take my compass if you like," the old Squire added. "But it will not be of much use to you, for it will be easier to follow the blazed trees or corner stakes. Take our lightest axe with you and renew the old blazes on the trees." He apparently felt some misgivings that we might get lost, for he added, "If you want to ask Thomas to go with you, you may."
Tom was more accustomed to being in the woods than either of us; but Addison hesitated about inviting him, for of course if he went we should have to divide the fee with him. However, the old Squire seemed to wish to have him go with us, and at last, while Theodora was putting up a substantial luncheon for us, Ellen ran over to carry the invitation to Tom. He was willing enough to go and came back with her, carrying his shotgun.
"It will be a long jaunt," the old gentleman said as we started off. "But if you move on briskly and don't stop by the way, you can get back before dark."
The snow crust was so hard and the walking so good that we struck directly across the fields and pastures to the northeast and within an hour reached the town corner on the Silver farm. At that point our tramp along the north line of the town began, and we went from one blazed tree to another and freshened the blazes.
We went on rapidly, crossed Hedgehog Ridge and descended to Stoss Pond, which the town line crossed obliquely. We had expected to cross the pond on the ice; but the recent great rainstorm and thaw had flooded the ice to a depth of six or eight inches. New ice was already forming, but it would not quite bear our weight, and we had to make a detour of a mile through swamps round the south end of the pond and pick up the line again on the opposite shore.
Stoss Pond Mountain then confronted us, and it was almost noon when we neared Wild Brook; we heard it roaring as we approached and feared that we should find it very high.
"We may have to fell a tree over it to get across," Addison said.
So it seemed, for upon emerging on the bank we saw a yellow torrent twenty feet or more wide and four or five feet deep rushing tumultuously down the rocky channel.
Tom, however, who had come out on the bank a little way below, shouted to us, above the roar, to come that way, and we rejoined him at a bend where the opposite bank was high. He was in the act of crossing cautiously on a snow bridge. During the winter a great snowdrift, seven or eight feet deep, had lodged in the brook; and the recent freshet had merely cut a channel beneath it, leaving a frozen arch that spanned the torrent.
"Don't do it!" Addison shouted to him. "It will fall with you!"
But, extending one foot slowly ahead of the other, Tom safely crossed to the other side.
"Come on!" he shouted. "It will hold."
Addison, however, held back. The bridge looked dangerous; if it broke down, whoever was on it would be thrown into the water and carried downstream in the icy torrent.
"Oh, it's strong enough!" Tom exclaimed. "That will hold all right." And to show how firm it was, he came part way back across the frozen arch and stood still.
It was an unlucky action. The whole bridge suddenly collapsed under him, and down went Tom with it into the rushing water, which whirled him along toward a jam of ice and drift stuff twenty or thirty yards below. By flinging his arms across one of those great cakes of hard-frozen snow he managed to keep his head up; and he shouted lustily for us to help him. He bumped against the jam and hung there, fighting with both arms to keep from being carried under it.
Addison, who had the axe, ran down the bank and with a few strokes cut a moosewood sapling, which we thrust out to Tom. He caught hold of it, and then, by pulling hard, we hauled him to the bank and helped him out.
Oh, but wasn't he a wet boy, and didn't his teeth chatter! In fact, all three of us were wet, for, in our excitement, Addison and I had gone in knee-deep, and the water had splashed over us. In that bitter cold wind we felt it keenly. Tom was nearly torpid; he seemed unable to speak, and we could hardly make him take a step. His face and hands were blue.
"What shall we do with him?" Addison whispered to me in alarm. "It's five miles home. I'm afraid he'll freeze."
We then thought of the old Squire's logging camp on Papoose Pond, the outlet of which entered Wild Brook about half a mile above where we had tried to cross it. We knew that there was a cooking stove in the camp and decided that our best plan was to take Tom there and dry his clothes. Getting him between us, we tried to make him run, but he seemed unable to move his feet.
"Run, run, Tom!" we shouted to him. "Run, or you'll freeze!"
He seemed not to hear or care. In our desperation we slapped him and dragged him along between us. Finally his legs moved a little, and he began to step.
"Run, run with us!" Addison kept urging.
At last we got him going, although he shook so hard that he shook us with him. The exertion did him good. We hustled him along and, following the brook, came presently to a disused lumber road that led to the logging camp in the woods a few hundred yards from the shore of the pond. All three of us were panting hard when we reached it, but our wet clothes were frozen stiff.
We rushed Tom into the camp and, finding matches on a shelf behind the stovepipe, kindled a fire of such dry stuff as we found at hand. Then, as the place warmed up, we pulled off Tom's frozen outer coat and waistcoat, got the water out of his boots, and set him behind the stove.
Still he shook and could speak only with difficulty. We kept a hot fire and finally boiled water in a kettle and, gathering wintergreen leaves from a knoll outside the camp, made a hot tea for him.
At last we put him into the bunk and covered him as best we could with our own coats, which we did not miss, since the camp was now as hot as an oven. For more than an hour longer, however, his tremors continued in spite of the heat. Addison and I took turns rushing outside to cut wood from dry spruces to keep the stove hot. A little later, as I came in with an armful, I found Addison watching Tom.
"Sh!" he said. "He's asleep."
The afternoon was waning; a cold, windy night was coming on.
"What shall we do?" Addison whispered in perplexity. "I don't believe we ought to take him out; his clothes aren't dry yet. We shall have to stay here all night with him."
"But what will the folks at home think?" I exclaimed.
"Of course they will worry about us," Addison replied gloomily. "But I'm afraid Tom will get his death o' cold if we take him out. We ought to keep him warm."
Our own wet clothes had dried by that time, and, feeling hungry, we ate a part of our luncheon. Night came on with snow squalls; the wind roared in the forest. It was so bleak that we gave up all idea of going home; and, after bringing in ten or a dozen armfuls of wood, we settled down to spend the night there. Still Tom slept, but he breathed easier and had ceased to shiver. Suddenly he sat up and cried, "Help!"
"Don't you know where you are?" Addison asked. "Still dreaming?"
He stared round in the feeble light. "Oh, yes!" he said and laughed. "It's the old camp. I tumbled into the brook. But what makes it so dark?"
"It's night. You have been asleep two or three hours. We shall have to stay here till morning."
"With nothing to eat?" Tom exclaimed. "I'm hungry!"
In his haste to set off from home with Ellen he had neglected to take any luncheon. We divided with him what we had left; and he ate hungrily.
While he was eating, we heard a sound of squalling, indistinct above the roar of the wind in the woods.
"Bobcat!" Tom exclaimed. Then he added, "But it sounds more like an old gander."
"May be a flock of wild geese passing over," Addison said. "They sometimes fly by night."
"Not on such a cold night in such a wind," Tom replied.
Soon we heard the same sounds again.
"That's an old gander, sure," Tom admitted.
"Seems to come from the same place," Addison remarked. "Out on Papoose Pond, I guess."
"Yes, siree!" Tom exclaimed. "A flock of geese has come down on that pond. If I had my gun, I could get a goose. But my gun is in Wild Brook," he added regretfully. "I let go of it when I fell in."
The squalling continued at intervals. The night was so boisterous, however, that we did not leave the camp and after a time fell asleep in the old bunk.
The cold waked me soon after daybreak. Tom and Addison were still asleep, with their coats pulled snugly about their shoulders and their feet drawn up. I rekindled the fire and clattered round the stove. Still they snoozed on; and soon afterwards, hearing the same squalling sounds again, I stole forth in the bleak dawn to see what I could discover.
When I had pushed through the swamp of thick cedar that lay between the camp and the pond, I beheld a goose flapping its wings and squalling scarcely more than a stone's throw away. A second glance, in the increasing light, showed me the forms of other geese, great numbers of them on the newly formed ice. On this pond, as on the other, water had gathered over the winter ice and then frozen again.
With the exception of this one gander, the flock was sitting there very still and quiet. The gander waddled among the others, plucking at them with his pink beak, as if to stir them up. Now and then he straightened up, flapped his wings and squalled dolorously. None of the others I noticed flapped, stirred or made any movement whatever. They looked as if they were asleep, and many of them had their heads under their wings.
At last I went out toward them on the new ice, which had now frozen solid enough to bear me. The gander rose in the air and circled overhead, squalling fearfully. On going nearer, I saw that all those geese were frozen in, and that they were dead; the entire flock, except that one powerful old gander, had perished there. They were frozen in the ice so firmly that I could not pull them out; in fact, I could scarcely bend the necks of those that had tucked them under their wings. I counted forty-one of them besides the gander.
While I was looking them over, Tom and Addison appeared on the shore. They had waked and missed me, but, hearing the gander, had guessed that I had gone to the pond. Both were astonished and could hardly believe their eyes till they came out where I stood and tried to lift the geese.
"We shall have to chop them out with the axe!" Tom exclaimed. "By jingo, boys, here's goose feathers enough to make two feather beds and pillows to boot."
The gander, still squalling, circled over us again.
"The old fellow feels bad," Addison remarked. "He has lost his whole big family."
We decided that the geese on their way north had been out in the rainstorm, and that when the weather cleared and turned cold so suddenly, with snow squalls, they had become bewildered, perhaps, and had descended on the pond. The cold wave was so sharp that, being quite without food, they had frozen into the ice and perished there.
"Well, old boy," Tom said, addressing the gander that now stood flapping his wings at us a few hundred feet away, "you've lost your women-folks. We may as well have them as the bobcats."
He fetched the axe, and we cut away the ice round the geese and then carried six loads of them down to camp.
If we had had any proper means of preparing a goose we should certainly have put one to bake in the stove oven; for all three of us were hungry. As it was, Addison said we had better make a scoot, load the geese on it, and take the nearest way home. We had only the axe and our jackknives to work with, and it was nine o'clock before we had built a rude sled and loaded the geese on it.
As we were about to start we heard a familiar voice cry, "Well, well; there they are!" And who should come through the cedars but the old Squire! A little behind him was Tom's father.
On account of the severity of the weather both families had been much alarmed when we failed to come home the night before. Making an early start that morning, Mr. Edwards and the old Squire had driven to the Silver farm and, leaving their team there, had followed the town line in search of us. On reaching Wild Brook they had seen that the snow bridge had fallen, and at first they had been badly frightened. On looking round, however, they had found the marks of our boot heels on the frozen snow, heading up-stream, and had immediately guessed that we had gone to the old camp. So we had their company on the way home; and much astonished both of them were at the sight of so many geese.
The two households shared the goose feathers. The meat was in excellent condition for cooking, and our two families had many a good meal of roast goose. We sent six of the birds to the town farm, and we heard afterwards that the seventeen paupers there partook of a grand goose dinner, garnished with apple sauce. But I have often thought of that old gander flying north to the breeding grounds alone.
The following week we walked the remaining part of the town line and received the fee.
Throughout that entire season the old Squire was much interested in a project for making a fortune from the sale of spring water. The water of the celebrated Poland Spring, twenty miles from our place—where the Poland Spring Hotel now stands—was already enjoying an enviable popularity; and up in our north pasture on the side of Nubble Hill, there was, and still is, a fine spring, the water of which did not differ in analysis from that of the Poland Spring. It is the "boiling" type of spring, and the water, which is stone-cold, bubbles up through white quartzose sand at the foot of a low granite ledge. It flows throughout the year at the rate of about eight gallons a minute.
It had always been called the Nubble Spring, but when the old Squire and Addison made their plans for selling the spring water they rechristened it the Rose-Quartz Spring on account of an outcrop of rose quartz in the ledges near by.
They had the water analyzed by a chemist in Boston, who pronounced it as pure as Poland water, and, indeed, so like it that he could detect no difference. All of us were soon enthusiastic about the project.
First we set to work to make the spring more attractive. We cleared up the site and formed a granite basin for the water, sheltered by a little kiosk with seats where visitors could sit as they drank. We also cleared up the slope round it and set out borders of young pine and balm-of-Gilead trees.
We sent samples of the water in bottles and kegs to dealers in spring waters, along with a descriptive circular—which Addison composed—and the statement of analysis. Addison embellished the circular with several pictures of the spring and its surroundings, and cited medical opinions on the value of pure waters of this class. We also invited our neighbors and fellow townsmen to come and drink at our spring.
Very soon orders began to come in. The name itself, the Rose-Quartz Spring, was fortunate, for it conveyed a suggestion of crystal purity; that with the analysis induced numbers of people in the great cities, especially in Chicago, to try it.
Less was known in 1868 than now of the precautions that it is necessary to take in sending spring water to distant places, in order to insure its keeping pure. Little was known of microbes or antisepsis.
The old Squire and Addison decided that they would have to send the water to their customers in kegs of various sizes and in barrels; but as kegs made of oak staves, or of spruce, would impart a woody taste to the water, they hit upon the expedient of making the staves of sugar-maple wood. The old Squire had a great quantity of staves sawed at his hardwood flooring mill, and at the cooper shop had them made into kegs and barrels of all sizes from five gallons' capacity up to fifty gallons'. After the kegs were set up we filled them with water and allowed them to soak for a week to take out all taste of the wood before we filled them from the spring and sent them away.
We believed that that precaution was sufficient, but now it is known that spring water can be kept safe only by putting it in glass bottles and glass carboys. No water will keep sweet in barrels for any great length of time, particularly when exported to hot climates.
The spring was nearly a mile from the farmhouse; and at a little distance below it we built a shed and set up a large kettle for boiling water to scald out the kegs and barrels that came back from customers and dealers to be refilled. We were careful not only to rinse them but also to soak them before we cleaned them with scalding water. As the business of sending off the water grew, the old Squire kept a hired man at the spring and the shed to look after the kegs and to draw the water. His name was James Doane. He had been with the old Squire six years and as a rule was a trustworthy man and a good worker. He had one failing: occasionally, although not very often, he would get drunk.
So firm was the old Squire's faith in the water that we drew a supply of it to the house every second morning. Addison fitted up a little "water room" in the farmhouse, and we kept water there in large bottles, cooled, for drinking. The water seemed to do us good, for we were all unusually healthy that summer. "Here's the true elixir of health," the old Squire often said as he drew a glass of it and sat down in the pleasant, cool "water room" to enjoy it.
Addison and he had fixed the price of the water at twenty-five cents a gallon, although we made our neighbors and fellow townsmen welcome to all they cared to come and get. We first advertised the water in June, and sales increased slowly throughout the summer and fall. Apparently the water gave good satisfaction, for the kegs came back to be refilled. By the following May the success of the venture seemed assured. Those who were using the water spoke well of it, and the demand was growing. In April we received orders for more than nine hundred gallons, and in May for more than thirteen hundred gallons.
The old Squire was very happy over the success of the enterprise. "It's a fine, clean business," he said. "That water has done us good, and it will do others good; and if they drink that, they will drink less whiskey."
Addison spent the evenings in making out bills and attending to the correspondence; for there were other matters that had to be attended to besides the Rose-Quartz Spring. Besides the farm work we had to look after the hardwood flooring mill that summer and the white-birch dowel mill. For several days toward the end of June we did not even have time to go up to the spring for our usual supply of water. But we kept Jim Doane there under instructions to attend carefully to the putting up of the water. It was his sole business, and he seemed to be attending to it properly. He was at the spring every day and boarded at the house of a neighbor, named Murch, who lived nearer to Nubble Hill than we did. Every day, too, we noticed the smoke of the fire under the kettle in which he heated water for scalding out the casks.
The first hint we had that things were going wrong was when Willis Murch told Addison that Doane had been on a spree, and that for several days he had been so badly under the influence of liquor that he did not know what he was about.
On hearing that news Addison and the old Squire hastened to the spring. Jim was there, sober enough now, and working industriously. But he looked bad, and his account of how he had done his work for the last week was far from clear. The old Squire gave him another job at the dowel mill and stationed his brother, Asa Doane, a strictly temperate man, at the spring. We could not learn just what had happened during the past ten days, but we hoped that no serious neglect had occurred.
But there had.
Toward the middle of July a letter of complaint came—the first we had ever received. "This barrel of water from your spring is not keeping good," were the exact words of it. I remember them well, for we read them over and over again. Addison replied at once, and sent another barrel in its place.
Before another week had passed a second complaint came. "This last barrel of water from your spring is turning 'ropy,'" it said. Another customer sent his barrel back when half full, with a letter saying, "It isn't fit to drink. The barrel is slimy inside."
Addison examined the barrel carefully, and found that there was, indeed, an appreciable film of vegetable growth on the staves inside. The taste of the water also was quite different.
Within a fortnight four more barrels and kegs were returned to us, in at least two cases accompanied by sharp words of condemnation. "No better than pond water," one customer wrote.
We carefully examined the inside of all these barrels and kegs as soon as they came back. Besides invisible impurities in the water, there was in every one more or less visible dirt, even bits of grass and slivers of wood.
There was only one conclusion to reach: Jim Doane had not been careful in filling the kegs and had not properly cleansed and scalded them. As nearly as we could discover from bits of information that came out subsequently, there were days and days when he was too "hazy" to know whether he had cleansed the barrels or not. He had filled them and sent them off in foul condition.
Addison wrote more than fifty letters to customers, defending the purity of Rose-Quartz Spring water, relating the facts of this recent "accident" and asking for a continued trial of it. I suppose that people at a distance thought that if there had been carelessness once there might be again. Very likely, too, they suspected that the water had never been so pure as we had declared it to be. Owners of other springs who had put water on the market improved the opportunity to circulate reports that Rose-Quartz water would not "keep." We got possession of three circulars in which that damaging statement had been sent broadcast.
There is probably no commodity in the world that depends so much on a reputation for purity as spring water. By September the orders for water had fallen off to a most disheartening extent. Scarcely three hundred gallons were called for.
In the hope that this was merely a temporary set-back, and knowing that there was no fault in the water itself, the old Squire spent a thousand dollars in advertisements to stem the tide of adverse criticism. So far as we could discover, the effort produced little or no effect on sales. The opinion had gone abroad that the water would not keep pure for any great length of time. By the following spring sales had dwindled to such an extent that it was hardly worth while to continue the business. Considered as a commercial asset, the Rose-Quartz Spring was dead.
Regretfully we gave up the enterprise and let the spring fall into disuse. It was then, I remember, that the old Squire said, "It takes us one lifetime to learn how to do things."
ABOUT this time an affair which had long been worrying Addison and myself came to a final settlement.
Up in the great woods, three or four miles from the old Squire's farm, there was a clearing of thirty or forty acres in which stood an old house and barn, long unoccupied. A lonelier place can hardly be imagined. Sombre spruce and fir woods inclosed the clearing on all sides; and over the tree-tops on the east side loomed the three rugged dark peaks of the Stoss Pond mountains.
Thirty years before, Lumen Bartlett, a young man about twenty years old, had cleared the land with his own labor, built the house and barn, and a little later gone to live there with his wife, Althea, who was younger even than he.
Life in so remote a place must have been somewhat solitary; but they were very happy, it is said, for a year and a half. Then one morning they fell to quarreling bitterly over so trifling a thing as a cedar broom. In the anger of the moment Althea made a bundle of her clothing and without a word of farewell set off on foot to go home to her parents, who lived ten miles away.
Lumen, equally stubborn, took his axe and went out to his work of clearing land for a new field. No one saw him alive afterwards; but two weeks later some hunters found his body in the woods. Apparently the tops of several of the trees he had been trying to cut down had lodged together, and to bring them down he had cut another large tree on which they hung. This last tree must have started to fall suddenly. Lumen ran the wrong way and was caught under the top of one of the lodged trees as it came crashing down. The marks showed that he had tried, probably for hours, to cut off with his pocket knife one large branch that lay across his body. They found the knife with the blade broken. He had also tried to free himself by digging with his bare fingers into the hard, rocky earth. If Lumen had been to blame for the quarrel, he paid a fearful penalty.
Afterwards, however, Althea declared that she had been to blame; and if that were true, she also paid a sad penalty. During the few remaining years of her life she was never in her right mind. She used to imagine that she heard Lumen calling to her for help, and several times, eluding her parents, she made her way back to the clearing. Every time when they found her she was wandering about the place, stopping now and then as if to listen, then flitting on again, saying in a sad singsong, "I'm coming, Lumen! Oh, I'll come back!"
Naturally, persons of a superstitious nature began to imagine that they, too, heard strange cries at the deserted farm, for no one ever lived there subsequently. Very likely they did hear cries—the cries of wild animals; that old clearing in the woods was a great place for bears, foxes, raccoons and "lucivees."
A year or two before we young folks went home to live on the old farm the town sold this deserted lot at auction for unpaid taxes. Some years before, vagrant woodsmen had accidentally burned the old house; but the barn, a weathered, gray structure, was still intact. Since the land adjoined other timber lots that the old Squire owned, he bid it off and let it lie unoccupied except as a pasture where sheep, or young stock that needed little care, could be put away for the summer. The soil was good, and the grass was excellent in quality.
One year, in May, after we had repaired the brush fence, we turned into it our three Morgan colts along with two Percherons from a stock farm near the village, a Morgan three-year-old belonging to our neighbors, the Edwardses, three colts owned by other neighbors, and a beautiful sorrel three-year-old mare, the pet of young Mrs. Kennard, wife of the principal at the village academy. Her father, who had recently died, had given her the colt.
All four Morgans were dark-chestnut colts, lithe but strong and clear-eyed. And what chests and loins they had for their size! They were not so showy as the larger, dappled Percherons, perhaps, but they were better all-round horses. Lib, Brown and Joe were the names of our Morgans; Chet was the name that the Edwards young folks gave theirs. Yet none of them was so pretty as Mrs. Kennard's Sylph. She was, indeed, a blonde fairy of a mare, as graceful as a deer.
On the afternoon that we took Sylph up to the clearing, Mrs. Kennard walked all the way with us, because she wished to see for herself what the place was like. When she saw what a remote, wild region it was, she was loath to leave her pet there, and Mr. Kennard had some ado to reassure her. At last, after giving the colt many farewell pats and caresses, she came away with us. On the way home she said over and over to Addison and me, "Be sure to go up often and see that Sylph is all right." And, laughing a little, we promised that we would, and that we would also give the colt sugar lumps as well as her weekly salt.
"Salting" the sheep and young cattle that were out at pasture for the season was one of our weekly duties. When we were very busy we sometimes put it off until Sunday morning. Sometimes it slipped our minds altogether for a few days, or even for a week; but Mrs. Kennard's solicitude for her pet had touched our hearts, and we resolved that we should always be prompt in performing the task.
The colts had been turned out on Tuesday; and the following Sunday morning after breakfast Addison and I, with the girls accompanying us, set off with the salt and the sugar lumps. It was a long walk for the girls, but an inspiring one on such a bright morning. The songs of birds and the chatter of squirrels filled the woodland. Fresh green heads of bosky ferns and wake-robin were pushing up through the old mats of last year's foliage.
"How jealous the rest of them will be of Sylph!" said Ellen, who had the sugar lumps. "I believe I shall give each of them a lump, so that they won't be spiteful and kick her."
As we neared the bars in the brush fence we saw several of the colts at the upper side of the clearing beyond the old barn. At the first call from us, up went their pretty heads; there was a general whinny, and then they came racing to the bars to greet us. Perhaps they had been a little homesick so far from stables and barns.
"One—two—three—four—why, they are not all here!" Theodora said. "Here are only seven. Lib isn't here, or Mrs. Kennard's Sylph."
"Oh, I guess they're not far off," Addison said, and began calling, "Co' jack, co' jack!" He wanted them all there before he dropped the salt in little piles on the grassy greensward.
But the absent ones did not come. Ellen ventured the opinion that they might have jumped the fence and wandered off.
"Oh, they wouldn't separate up here in the woods," Addison said. "Colts keep together when off in a back pasture like this."
But when he went on calling and they still did not come, we began really to fear that they had got out and strayed.
"Let's go round the fence," Addison said at last, "and see if we find a gap, or hoofprints on the outside, where they have jumped over."
He and Theodora went one way, Ellen and I the other. We met halfway round the clearing without having discovered either gaps in the fence or tracks outside. Remembering that horses, when rolling, sometimes get cast in hollows between knolls, we searched the entire clearing, and even looked into the old barn, the door of which stood slightly ajar; but we found no trace of the missing animals and began to believe that they really had jumped out.
We gave the seven colts their salt and were about to start home to report to the old Squire when Ellen remarked that we had not actually looked among the alders down by the brook, where the colts went for water.
"Oh, but those colts would not stay down there by themselves all this time with us calling them!" Addison exclaimed.
"But let's just take a look, to be certain," Ellen replied, and she and I ran down there.
We had no more than pushed our way through the alder clumps when two crows rose silently and went flapping away; and then I caught sight of something that made me stop short: the body of one of the Morgan colts—our Lib—lying close to the brook!
"Oh!" gasped Ellen. "It's dead!"
Pushing on through the alders, we saw one of the Percherons near the Morgan. The sight affected Ellen so much that she turned back; but I went on and a little farther up the brook found the sorrel lying stark and stiff.
A moment later Ellen returned, with Addison and Theodora. Both girls were moved to tears as they gazed at poor Sylph; they felt even worse about her than about our own Morgan.
"Oh, what will Mrs. Kennard say?" Ellen cried. "How dreadfully she will feel!"
Addison closely examined the bodies of the colts. "I cannot understand what did it!" he exclaimed. "No marks. No blood. It wasn't wild animals. It couldn't have been lightning, for there hasn't been a thundershower this season. Must be something they've eaten."
We looked all along the brook, but could see no Indian poke, the fresh growths of which will poison stock. Nor had we ever seen ground hemlock or poisonous ivy there. The clearing was nearly all good, grassy upland such as farmers consider a safe pasturage. Truly the shadow of tragedy seemed to hover there.
We bore our sorrowful tidings home, and the old Squire was as much astonished and mystified as every one else. None of us had the heart either to carry the sad news or even to send word of it to Mrs. Kennard; but we notified the owner of the Percherons at once. He came to look into the matter the next morning.
The affair made an unusual stir, and all that Monday a considerable number of persons walked up to the clearing to see if they could determine the cause of the colts' mysterious death. Many and various were the conjectures. Some professed to believe that the colts had been wantonly poisoned. "It's a state-prison offense to lay poison for domestic animals," we overheard several of them say; but no one could find any motive for such a deed.
The owner of the Percheron brought a horse doctor, who made a careful examination, but he was unable to determine anything more than that the horses had died of a virulent poison. We buried them that afternoon.
Before night the news had reached Mrs. Kennard. In her grief she not only reproached herself bitterly for allowing Sylph to be turned out in so wild a place but held the old Squire and all of us as somehow to blame for her pet's death. The owner of the Percherons also intimated that he should hold us liable for his loss, although when a man turns his stock out in a neighbor's pasture it is generally on the understanding that it is at his own risk. He took away his other Percheron colt; and during the day all the other persons who had colts up there took their animals home. In all respects the occurrence was most disagreeable—a truly black Monday with us. The old Squire said little, except that he wanted the right thing done.
For an hour or more after we went to bed that night Addison and I lay talking about the affair, but we could think of no explanation of the strange occurrence and at last fell asleep. The next morning, however, the solution of the mystery flashed into Addison's mind. As we were dressing at five o'clock, he suddenly turned to me and exclaimed in a queer voice:
"I know what killed those colts!"
"What?" I asked.
"That fox bed!"
For a whole minute we stood there, half dressed, looking at each other in consternation. Without doubt, the blame for the loss of the colts was on us. What the consequences might be we hardly dared to think.
"What shall we do?" I exclaimed.
Addison looked alarmed as he answered in a low tone, "Keep quiet—till we think it over."
"We must tell the old Squire," I said.
"But there's Willis," Addison reminded me. "It was Willis who made the bed, you know."
The old clearing was, as I have said, a great place for foxes; and the preceding fall Addison and I, wishing to add to the fund we were accumulating for our expenses when we should go away to college, had entered into a kind of partnership with Willis Murch to do a little trapping up there. Addison and I were little more than silent partners, however; Willis actually tended the traps.
But there are years, as every trapper knows, when you cannot get a fox into a steel trap by any amount of artfulness. What the reason is, I do not know, unless some fox that has been trapped and that has escaped passes the word round among all the other foxes. There were plenty of foxes coming to the clearing; we never went up there without seeing fresh signs about the old barn. Yet Willis got no fox.
What is more strange, it was so all over New England that fall; foxes kept clear of steel traps. As the fur market was quick, certain city dealers began sending out offers of "fox pills" to trappers whom they had on their lists. Willis received one of those letters and showed it to us. The fox pills were, of course, poison and were to be inclosed in little balls of tallow and laid where foxes were known to come.
Trappers were advised to use them but were properly cautioned how and where to expose them. After picking up one of the pills, a fox would make for the nearest running water as fast as he could go; and that was the place for the trapper to look for him, for, after drinking, the fox soon expired. It has been argued that poison is more humane than the steel trap, since it brings a quick death; but both are cruel. There are also other considerations that weigh against the use of poison; but at that time there was no law against it.
The furrier who wrote to Willis offered to send him a box of those pills for seventy-five cents. We talked it over and agreed to try it, and Addison and I contributed the money.
A few days later Willis received the pills and proceeded to lay them out after a plan of his own. He cut several tallow candles into pieces about an inch long, and embedded a pill in each. When he had prepared twenty or more of those pieces of poisoned tallow, he put them in what he called a fox bed, of oat chaff, behind that old barn. The bed was about as large as the floor of a small room. At that time of year farmers were killing poultry, and Willis collected a basketful of chickens' and turkeys' heads to put into the bed along with the pieces of tallow. He thought that the foxes would smell the heads and dig the bed over.
We had said nothing to any one about it. The old Squire was away from home; but we knew pretty well that he would not approve of that method of getting foxes. Indeed, he had little sympathy with the use of traps. Willis was the only one who looked after the bed, or, indeed, who went up to the clearing at all.
During the next three or four weeks Willis gathered in not less than ten pelts, I think. They were mostly red foxes, but one was a large "crossed gray," the skin of which brought twenty-two dollars. After every few days Willis "doctored" the bed with more pills; he probably used more than a hundred.
What had happened to the colts was now clear. They had nuzzled that chaff for the oat grains that were left in it and had picked up some of those little balls of tallow. We wondered now that we had not at once guessed the cause of their death, and we wondered, too, that we had not thought of the fox bed and the danger from it when we first turned the colts into the pasture. The fact remains, however, that it had never occurred to us that fox pills would poison colts as well as foxes.
All that day as we worked we brooded over it; and that evening, when we had done the chores, we stole off to the Murches' and, calling Willis out, told him about it and asked him what he thought we had better do. At first he was incredulous, then thoroughly alarmed. It was not so much the thought of having to settle for the loss of the horses that terrified him as it was the dread that he might be imprisoned for exposing poison to domestic animals.
"Don't say a word!" he exclaimed. "Nobody knows about that fox bed. If we keep still, it will never come out."
Addison and I both felt that such secrecy would leave us with a mighty mean feeling in our hearts; but Willis begged us never to say a word about it to any one. He was as penitent as we were, I think; but the thought that he might have to go to jail filled him with panic.
We went home in a very uncomfortable frame of mind, without having reached any decision.
"We've got to square this somehow," Addison said. "If I had the money, I'd settle for the colts and say nothing more to Willis about it."
"Money wouldn't make Mrs. Kennard feel much better," I said.
"That's so; but we might find a pretty sorrel colt somewhere, and make her a present of it in place, of Sylph—if we only had the money."
If it had not been for Willis, I rather think that we should have gone to the old Squire that very evening and told him the whole story; but the legal consequences of the affair troubled us, and since they affected Willis more than they affected us we did not like to say anything.
Week after week went by without our being able to bring ourselves to confess. The concealment was a source of daily uneasiness to us; although we rarely spoke of the affair to each other, it was always on our minds. Whenever we did speak of it together, Addison would say, "We've got to straighten that out," or, "I hate to have that colt scrape hanging on us in this way." We tried several times to get Willis's consent to our telling the old Squire; but he had brooded over the thing so long that he had convinced himself that if his act became known he would surely be sent to the penitentiary.
So there the matter lay covered up all summer until one afternoon in September, when the old Squire drove to the village to contract for his apple barrels, and I went with him to get a pair of boots. Just as we were starting for home we met Mrs. Kennard. Previously she had often visited us at the farm, but since the death of Sylph she had not come near us. The old Squire tried to-day to be more cordial than ever, but Mrs. Kennard answered him rather coldly. She started on, but turned suddenly and asked whether we had learned anything more about the death of those colts.
"And, oh, do you think that poor Sylph lay there, suffering, a long time?" she exclaimed, with tears in her eyes. "I keep thinking of it."
"No, we have learned nothing more," the old Squire said gently. "It was a mysterious affair; but I think all three of the colts died suddenly, within a few minutes."
That was all he could say to comfort her, and Mrs. Kennard walked slowly away with her handkerchief at her eyes. It was painful, and I sat there in the wagon feeling like a mean little malefactor.
"Very singular about those colts," the old Squire remarked partly to me, partly to himself, as we drove on. "A strange thing."
Sudden resolution nerved me. I was sick of skulking. "Sir," said I, swallowing hard several times, "I know what killed those colts!"
The old Squire glanced quickly at me, started to speak, but, seeing how greatly agitated I was, kindly refrained from questioning me.
"It was fox pills!" I blurted out. "Willis Murch and Ad and I had a fox bed up there last winter. We never thought of it when the colts were put in. They ate the poison pills."
The old Squire made no comment, and I plunged into further details.
"That accounts for it, then," he said at last.
I had expected him to speak plainly to me about those fox pills, but he merely asked me what I thought of using poison in trapping.
"I never would use it again!" I exclaimed hotly. "I've had enough of it!"
"I am glad you see it so," he remarked. "It is a bad method. You never know what may come of it. Hounds or deer may get it, or sheep, or young cattle, or even children."
We drove on in silence for some minutes. Clearly the old Squire was having me do my own thinking; for he now asked me what I thought should be done next.
"Ad thinks we ought to square it up somehow," I replied.
The old Squire nodded. "I am glad to hear that," he said. "What does Addison think we ought to do?"
"Pay Mr. Cutter for that Percheron colt."
"Yes, and Mrs. Kennard?"
"He thinks we could find another sorrel colt somewhere and make her a present of it."
The old Squire nodded again. "I see. Perhaps we can." Then, after a minute, "And what about letting this be known?"
"Willis is scared," I said. "Addison thinks it would be about as well now to settle up if we can and say nothing."
The old Squire did not reply to that for some moments. I thought he was not so well pleased. "I do not believe that, in the circumstances, Willis need fear being imprisoned," he said finally, "and I see no reason for further concealment. True, several months have passed and people have mostly forgotten it; perhaps not much good would come from publishing the facts abroad. We'll think it over."
After a minute he said, "I'm glad you told me this," and, turning, shook hands with me gravely.
"Ad and I don't want you to think that we expect you to square this up for us!" I exclaimed. "We want to do something to pay the bill ourselves, and to pay you for Lib, too."
The old Squire laughed. "Yes, I see how you feel," he said. "Would you like me to give you and Addison a job on shares this fall or winter, so that you could straighten this out?"
"Yes, sir, we would," said I earnestly. "And make Willis help, too!"
"Yes, yes," the old Squire said and laughed again. "I agree with you that Willis should do his part. Nothing like square dealing, is there, my son?" he went on. "It makes us all feel better, doesn't it?"
And he gave me a brisk little pat on the shoulder that made me feel quite like a man.
How much better I felt after that talk with the old Squire! I felt as blithe as a bird; and when we got home I ran and frisked and whistled all the way to the pasture, where I went to drive home the Jersey herd. The only qualm I felt was that I had acted without Addison's consent; but his first words when I had told him relieved me on that score.
"I'm glad of it!" he said. "We've been in that fox bed long enough. Now let Willis squirm." And when I told him of the old Squire's arrangement for our paying off the debt, he said, "That suits me. But we'll make Willis work!"
We went over to tell Willis that evening. He was, I think, even more relieved than we were; in the weeks of anxiety that he had passed he had determined that nothing would ever induce him to use poison again for trapping animals.
At that time many new telegraph lines were being put up in Maine; and the old Squire had recently accepted a contract for three thousand cedar poles, twenty feet long, at the rate of twenty-five cents a pole. Up in lot "No. 5," near Lurvey's Stream, there was plenty of cedar suitable for the purpose; the poles could be floated down to the point of delivery. The old Squire let us furnish a thousand of those poles, putting in our own labor at cutting and hauling. And in that way we earned the money to pay for the damage done by our fox pills.
Mr. Cutter, the owner of the Percheron, was willing to settle his loss for one hundred dollars; and during the winter, by dint of many inquiries, we heard of another sorrel, a three-year-old, which we purchased for a hundred and fifteen dollars. We took Mr. Kennard into our confidence and with his connivance planned a pleasant surprise for his wife. While Theodora and Ellen, who had accompanied us to the village, were entertaining Mrs. Kennard indoors, the old Squire and Addison and I smuggled the colt into the little stable and put her in the same stall where Sylph had once stood. When all was ready, Mr. Kennard went in and said:
"Louise, Sylph's got back! Come out to the stable!"
Wonderingly Mrs. Kennard followed him out to the stable. For a moment she gazed, astonished; then, of course, she guessed the ruse. "Oh, but it isn't Sylph!" she cried. "It isn't half so pretty!" And out came her pocket handkerchief again.
The old Squire took her gently by the hand. "It's the best we could do," he said. "We hope you will accept her with our best wishes."
Truth to say, Mrs. Kennard's tears were soon dried; and before long the new colt became almost as great a pet as the lost Sylph.
"Don't you ever forget, and don't you ever let me forget, how the old Squire has helped us out of this scrape," Ad said to me that night after we had gone upstairs. "He's an old Christian. If he ever needs a friend in his old age and I fail him, let my name be Ichabod!"