In a little walled inclosure near the roadside at the old Squire's stood two very large pear-trees that at a distance looked like Lombardy poplars; they had straight, upright branches and were fully fifty feet tall. One was called the Eastern Belle and the other the Indian Queen. They had come as little shoots from grandmother Ruth's people in Connecticut when she and the old Squire were first married. Grandmother always spoke of them as "Joe's pear-trees"; Joseph was the old Squire's given name. Some joke connected with their early married life was in her mind when she spoke thus, for she always laughed roguishly when she said "Joe's pears," but she would never explain the joke to us young folks. She insisted that those were the old Squire's pears, and told us not to pick them.
In the orchard behind the house were numerous other pear-trees. There were no restrictions on those or on the early apples or plums; but every year grandmother half jokingly told us not to go to those two trees in the walled inclosure, and she never went there herself.
I must confess, however, that we young folks knew pretty well how those pears tasted. The Eastern Belle bore a large, long pear that turned yellow when ripe and had a fine rosy cheek on one side. The Indian Queen was a thick-bodied pear with specks under the skin, a deep-sunk nose and a long stem. It had a tendency to crack on one side; but it ripened at about the same time as the Belle, and its flavor was even finer.
The little walled pen that inclosed the two pear-trees had a history of its own. The town had built it as a "pound" for stray animals in 1822, shortly after the neighborhood was settled. The walls were six or seven feet high, and on one side was a gateway. The inclosure was only twenty feet wide by thirty feet long. It had not been used long as a pound, for a pound that was larger and more centrally situated became necessary soon after it was built. When those two little pear-trees came from Connecticut the old Squire set them out inside this walled pen; he thought they would be protected by the high pound wall. A curious circumstance about those pear-trees was that they did not begin bearing when they were nine or ten years old, as pear-trees usually do. Year after year passed, until they had stood there twenty-seven years, with never blossom or fruit appearing on them.
The old Squire tried various methods of making the trees bear. At the suggestion of neighbors he drove rusty nails into the trunks, and buried bags of pear seeds at the foot of them, and he fertilized the inclosure richly. But all to no purpose. Finally grandmother advised the old Squire to spread the leached ashes from her leach tub—after she had made soap and hulled corn in the spring—on the ground inside the pen. The old Squire did so, and the next spring both trees blossomed. They bore bountifully that summer and every season afterward, until they died.
We had a young neighbor, Alfred Batchelder, who was fond of foraging by night for plums, grapes, and pears in the orchards of his neighbors. His own family did not raise fruit; they thought it too much trouble to cultivate the trees. But Alfred openly boasted of having the best fruit that the neighborhood afforded. One of Alfred's cronies in these nocturnal raids was a boy, named Harvey Yeatton, who lived at the village, six or seven miles away; almost every year he came to visit Alfred for a week or more in September.
It was a good-natured community. To early apples, indeed, the rogues were welcome; but garden pears, plums, and grapes were more highly prized, for in Maine it requires some little care to raise them. At the farm of our nearest neighbors, the Edwardses, there were five greengage trees that bore delicious plums. For three summers in succession Alfred and Harvey stole nearly every plum on those trees—at least, there was little doubt that it was they who took them.
They also took the old Squire's pears in the walled pen. Twice Addison and I tracked them home the next morning in the dewy grass, across the fields. Time and again, too, they took our Bartlett pears and plums. Addison wanted the old Squire to send the sheriff after them and put a stop to their raids, but he only laughed. "Oh, I suppose those boys love pears and plums," he said, forbearingly. But we of the younger generation were indignant.
One day, when the old Squire and I were driving to the village, we met Alfred; the old gentleman stopped, and said to him:
"My son, hadn't you better leave me just a few of those pears in the old pound this year?"
"I never touched a pear there!" Alfred shouted. "You can't prove I did, and you'd better not accuse me."
The old Squire only laughed, and drove on.
A few nights afterward both pear-trees were robbed and nearly stripped of fruit. We found several broken twigs on the top branches, and guessed that Alfred had used a long pole with a hook at the end with which to shake down the fruit. After what had passed on the road this action looked so much like defiance that the old Squire was nettled. He did nothing about it at the time, however.
Another year passed. Then at table one night Ellen remarked that Harvey Yeatton had come to visit Alfred again. "Alfred brought him up from the village this afternoon," she said. "I saw them drive by together."
"Now the pears and plums will have to suffer again!" said I.
"Yes," said Ellen. "They stopped down at the foot of the hill, and looked up at those two pear-trees in the old pound; then they glanced at the house, to see if any one had noticed that they were passing."
"Those pears are just getting ripe," said Addison. "It wouldn't astonish me if they disappeared to-night. There's no moon, is there?"
"No," said grandmother Ruth. "It's the dark of the moon. Joseph, you had better look out for your pears to-night," she added, laughing.
The old Squire went on eating his supper for some minutes without comment; but just as we finished, he said, "Boys, where did we put our skunk fence last fall?"
"Rolled it up and put it in the wagon-house chamber," said I.
"About a hundred and fifty feet of it, isn't there?"
"A hundred and sixty," said Addison. "Enough, you know, to go round that patch of sweet corn in the garden."
"That wire fence worked well with four-footed robbers," the old Squire remarked, with a twinkle in his eye. "Perhaps it might serve for the two-footed kind. You fetch that down, boys; I've an idea we may use it to-night."
For several summers the garden had been ravaged by skunks. Although carnivorous by nature, the little pests seem to have a great liking for sweet corn when in the milk.
Wire fence, woven in meshes, such as is now used everywhere for poultry yards, had then recently been advertised. We had sent for a roll of it, two yards in width, and thereafter every summer we had put it up round the corn patch. None of the pests ever scaled the wire fence; and thereafter we had enjoyed our sweet corn in peace.
That night, just after dusk, we reared the skunk fence on top of the old pound wall, and fastened it securely in an upright position all round the inclosure. The wall was what Maine farmers call a "double wall"; it was built of medium-sized stones, and was three or four feet wide at the top. It was about six feet high, and when topped with the wire made a fence fully twelve feet in height.
The old pound gate had long ago disappeared; in its place were two or three little bars that could easily be let down. The trespassers would naturally enter by that gap, and on a moonless night would not see the wire fence on top of the wall. They would have more trouble in getting out of the place than they had had in getting into it if the gap were to be stopped.
At the farm that season were two hired men, brothers named James and Asa Doane, strong, active young fellows; and since it was warm September weather, the old Squire asked them to make a shake-down of hay for themselves that night behind the orchard wall, near the old pound, and to sleep there "with one eye open." If the rogues did not come for the pears, we would take down the skunk fence early the next morning, and set it again for them the following night.
Nothing suited Asa and Jim better than a lark of that sort. About eight o'clock they ensconced themselves in the orchard, thirty or forty feet from the old pound gateway. Addison also lay in wait with them. If the rogues came and began to shake the trees, all three were to make a rush for the gap, keep them in there, and shout for the old Squire to come down from the house.
Addison's surmise that Alfred and his crony would begin operations that very night proved a shrewd one. Shortly after eleven o'clock he heard a noise at the entrance of the old pound. Asa and Jim were asleep. Addison lay still, and a few minutes later heard the rogues put up their poles with the hooks on them, and begin gently to shake the high limbs.
The sound of the pears dropping on the ground waked Asa and Jim, and at a whispered word from Addison all three bounded over the orchard wall and rushed to the gateway, shouting, "We've got ye! We've got ye now! Surrender! Surrender and go to jail!"
Surprised though they were, Alfred and Harvey had no intention of surrendering. Dropping their poles, they sprang for the pound wall. In a moment they had scrambled to the top. Then they jumped for the ground on the other side; but the yielding meshes of the skunk fence brought them up short. It was too dark for them to see what the obstruction was, and they bounced and jumped against the wire meshes like fish in a net.
"Cut it with your jackknife!" Harvey whispered to Alfred; and then both boys got out their knives and sawed away at the meshes—with no success whatever!
By that time Jim and Asa had entered the pound, and shouting with laughter, each grabbed a boy by the ankle and hauled him down from the wall. At about that time, too, the old Squire arrived on the scene, bringing a rope and a new horsewhip. I myself had been sleeping soundly, and was slow to wake. Even grandmother Ruth and the girls were ahead of me, and when I rushed out, they were standing at the orchard gate, listening in considerable excitement to the commotion at the old pound. When I reached the place Jim and Asa—with Addison looking on—had tied the rogues together, and were haling them up through the orchard.
"Take 'em to the barn, Squire!" Jim shouted. "Shut the big doors, so the neighbors can't hear 'em holler, and then give it to 'em good!"
"Yes, give it to 'em, Squire!" Asa exclaimed. "They need it."
The old Squire was following after them, cracking his whip, for I suppose he thought it well to frighten the scamps thoroughly. It was too dark for me to see Alfred's face or Harvey's, but they had little to say. The procession moved on to the barn; I rolled the doors open, while Addison ran to get a lantern. Grandmother and the girls had retired hastily to the ell piazza, where they stood listening apprehensively.
"Now I am going to give you your choice," the old Squire said. "Shall I send for the sheriff, or will you take a whipping and promise to stop stealing fruit?"
Neither Alfred nor Harvey would reply; and the old Squire told Addison to hitch up Old Sol and fetch Hawkes, the sheriff. The prospect of jail frightened the boys so much that they said they would take the whipping, and promise not to steal any more fruit.
"I am sorry to say, Alfred, that I don't wholly trust your word," the old Squire said. "You have told me falsehoods before. We must have your promise in writing."
He sent me into the house for paper and pencil, and then set Addison to write a pledge for the boys to sign. As nearly as I remember, it ran like this:
"We, the undersigned, Harvey Yeatton and Alfred Batchelder, confess that we have been robbing gardens and stealing our neighbors' fruit for four years. We have been caught to-night stealing pears at the old pound. We have been given our choice of going to jail or taking a whipping and promising to steal no more in the future. We choose the whipping and the promise, and we engage to make no complaint and no further trouble about this for any one."
The old Squire read it over to them and bade them to take notice of what they were signing. "For if I hear of your stealing fruit again," said he, "I shall get a warrant and have you arrested for what you have done to-night. Here are four witnesses ready to testify against you."
Alfred and Harvey put their names to the paper while I held the lantern.
"Now give it to 'em, Squire!" said Jim, when the boys had signed.
From the first Addison and I had had little idea that the old Squire would whip the boys. It was never easy to induce him to whip even a refractory horse or ox. Now he took the paper, read their names, then folded it and put it into his pocket.
"I guess this will hold you straight, boys," he said. "Now you can go home."
"What, ain't ye goin' to lick 'em?" Jim exclaimed.
"Not this time," said the old gentleman. "Untie them and let them go."
Jim and Asa were greatly disappointed. "Let me give 'em jest a few licks," Jim begged, with a longing glance at the whip.
"Not this time," the old Squire replied. "If we catch them at this again, I'll see about it. And, boys," he said to them, as Jim and Asa very reluctantly untied the knots of their bonds, "any time you want a pocketful of pears to eat just come and ask me. But mind, don't you steal another pear or plum in this neighborhood!"
Addison opened the barn doors, and Alfred and Harvey took themselves off without ceremony.
Apparently they kept their promise with us, for we heard of no further losses of fruit in that neighborhood.
At that time a flock of twenty or thirty turkeys was usually raised at the old farm every fall—fine, great glossy birds. Nearly every farmhouse had its flock; and by October that entire upland county resounded to the plaintiveYeap-yeap, yop-yop-yop!and the noisyGobble-gobble-gobble!of the stupid yet much-prized "national bird." At present you may drive the whole length of our county and neither hear nor see a turkey.
In their young days the old Squire and Judge Fessenden of Portland, later in life Senator Fessenden, had been warm friends; and after the old Squire chose farming for a vocation and went to live at the family homestead, he was wont to send the judge a fine turkey for Thanksgiving—purely as a token of friendship and remembrance. The judge usually acknowledged the gift by sending in return an interesting book, or other souvenir, sometimes a new five-dollar greenback—when he could not think of an appropriate present.
The old Squire did not like to accept money from an old friend, and after we young people went home to Maine to live he transferred to us the privilege of sending Senator Fessenden a turkey for Thanksgiving, and allowed us to have the return present.
By September we began to look the flock over and pick out the one that bade fair to be the largest and handsomest in November. There was much "hefting" and sometimes weighing of birds on the barn scales. We carefully inspected their skins under their feathers, for we sent the judge a "yellow skin," and never a "blue skin," however heavy.
That autumn there was considerable difference of opinion among us which young gobbler, out of twenty or more, was the best and promised to "dress off" finest by Thanksgiving. Addison chose a dark, burnished bird with a yellow skin; at that time our flock was made up of a mixture of breeds—white, speckled, bronze and golden. Halstead chose a large speckled gobbler with heavy purple wattles and a long "quitter" that bothered him in picking up his food.
Theodora and Ellen also selected two, and I had my eye on one with golden markings, but of that I need say no more here; as weeks passed, it proved inferior to Addison's and to Theodora's.
Even as late as October 20, it was not easy to say which was the best one out of five; at about that time I also discovered that Addison was secretly feeding his bronze turkey, out at the west barn, with rations of warm dough. Theodora and I exchanged confidences and began feeding ours on dough mixed with boiled squash, for we had been told that this was good diet for fattening turkeys.
When Halstead found out what we were doing, he was indignant and declared we were not playing fair; but we rejoined that he had the same chance to "feed up," if he desired to take the trouble.
At the Corners, about a mile from the old Squire's, there lived a person who had far too great an influence over Halstead. His name was Tibbetts; he was post-master and kept a grocery; also he sold intoxicants covertly, in violation of the state law, and was a gambler in a small, mean way. Claiming to know something of farming and of poultry, he told Halstead that the best way to fatten a turkey speedily was to shut it up and not allow it to run with the rest of the flock. He said, too, that if a turkey were shut up in a well-lighted place, it would fret itself, running to and fro, particularly if it heard other turkeys calling to it.
The food for fattening turkeys, said Tibbetts, should consist of a warm dough, made from two parts corn meal and one part wheat bran. To a quart of such dough he asserted that a tablespoonful of powdered eggshells should be added, also a dust of Cayenne pepper. And if a really perfect food for fattening poultry were desired, Tibbetts declared that a tablespoonful of new rum should be added to the water with which the quart of dough was mixed. A wonderful turkey food, no doubt!
Tibbetts also told Halstead to take a pair of sharp shears and cut off an inch and a half of his turkey's "quitter," if it were too long and bothered him about eating. If the turkey grew "dainty," as Tibbetts expressed it, Halstead was to make the dough into rolls about the size of his thumb, then open the bird's beak, shove the rolls in, and make him swallow them—three or four of them, three times a day.
Halstead came home from the Corners and made a quart of dough according to the Tibbetts formula. I do not know certainly about the spoonful of rum. If Tibbetts gave him the rum, Halstead kept quiet about it; the old Squire was a strict observer of the Maine law.
None of us found out what Halstead was doing for four or five days, and then only by accident. For he had caught his speckled gobbler and put him down at the foot of the stairs in the wagon-house cellar; and he got a sheet of hemlock bark, four feet long by two or three feet wide, such as are peeled off hemlock logs, and sold at tanneries, for the turkey to stand on.
It was dark as Egypt down in that cellar, when the door at the head of the stairs was shut; and turkeys, as is well-known, are very timid about moving in the dark. That poor gobbler just stood there, stock-still, on that sheet of bark and did not dare step off it. Three times a day Halstead used to go down there, on the sly, with a lantern, and feed him.
This went on for some time; Addison and I learned of it from hearing a little faint gobble in the cellar one morning when the flock was out in the farm lane, just behind the wagon-house. The young gobblers were gobbling and the hen turkeys yeaping; and from down cellar came a faint, answering gobble. We wondered how a turkey had got into that cellar, and on opening the door and peering down the stairs, we discovered Halstead's speckled gobbler standing on the curved sheet of hemlock bark.
While Addison and I were wondering about it, Halstead came out, and roughly told us to let his turkey alone! In reply to our questions he at last gave us some information about his project and boasted that within three weeks he would have a turkey four pounds heavier than any other in the flock; but he would not tell us how to make his kind of dough.
Addison scoffed at the scheme; but to show how well it was working, Halstead took us downstairs and had us "heft" the turkey. It did seem to be getting heavy. Halstead also got his dough dish and showed us how he fed his bird. After the second roll of dough had been shoved down his throat, the poor gobbler opened his bill and gave a queer little gasp of repletion, likeCa-r-r-r!None the less, Halstead made him swallow four rolls of dough!
Addison was disgusted. "Halse, I call that nasty!" he said. "I wouldn't care to eat a turkey fattened that way. I've a good notion to tell the old Squire about this."
Halstead was angry. "Oh, yes!" he exclaimed. "After I raise the biggest turkey, I suppose you will go and tell everybody that it isn't fit to eat!"
So Addison and I went about our business, but we used to peep down there once in a while, to see that poor bird standing, humped up, on his sheet of bark. Sometimes, too, when we saw Halstead going down with the lantern to feed him, we went along to see the performance and hear the turkey groan,Ca-r-r-r!"Halstead, that's wicked!" Addison said several times; and Halstead retorted that we were both trying to make out a story against him, so as to sneak our own turkeys in ahead of his.
Nine or ten days passed. Halstead was nearly always behindhand when we turned out to do the farm chores. As we went through the wagon-house one morning Addison stopped to take another peep at the captive; I went on, but a moment later heard him calling to me softly. When I joined him at the foot of the stairs he lighted a match for me to see. Halstead's gobbler lay dead with both feet up in the air. We wondered what Halstead would say when he went to feed his turkey. As we left, we heard him coming down from upstairs. He did not join us, to help do the chores, for half an hour. When he did appear, he looked glum; he had carried the poor victim of forced feeding out behind the west barn and buried him in the bean field—without ceremonies.
We said nothing—except now and then, as days passed, to ask him how the speckled gobbler was coming on. Halstead would look hard at us, but vouchsafed no replies.
The judge's turkey was sent to Portland on November 15; at that period each state appointed its own Thanksgiving Day, and in Maine the 17th had been set. Addison's choice had proved the best turkey: I think it weighed nearly seventeen pounds; he divided the five dollars with Theodora. The old Squire never learned of Halstead's bootless experiment in forced feeding.
Cold weather was again approaching. October had been very wet; but bright, calm days of Indian summer followed in November. And about that time Catherine, Theodora and Ellen had an odd adventure while out in the woods gathering partridge berries.
At the old farm we called the vivid green creeping vine that bears those coral-red berries in November, "partridge berry," because partridge feed on the berries and dig them from under the snow. Botanists, however, call the vineMitchella repens. In our tramps through the woods we boys never gave it more than a passing glance, for the berries are not good to eat. The girls, however, thought that the vine was very pretty. Every fall Theodora and Ellen, with Kate Edwards, and sometimes the Wilbur girls, went into the woods to gather lion's-paw and mitchella with which to decorate the old farmhouse at Thanksgiving and Christmas. But it was one of their girl friends, named Lucia Scribner, or rather Lucia's mother, at Portland, who invented mitchella jars, and started a new industry in our neighborhood.
Lucia, who was attending the village Academy, often came up to the old farm on a Friday night to visit our girls over Saturday and Sunday. On one visit they gathered a basketful of mitchella, and when Lucia went home to Portland for Thanksgiving, she carried a small boxful of the vines and berries to her mother. Mrs. Scribner was an artist of some ability, and she made several little sketches of the vine on whitewood paper cutters as gifts to her friends. In order to keep the vine moist and fresh while she was making the sketches, she put it in a little glass jar with a piece of glass over the top.
The vine was so pretty in the jar that Mrs. Scribner was loath to throw it away; and after a while she saw that the berries were increasing in size. She had put nothing except a few spoonfuls of water into the jar with the vine; but the berries grew slowly all winter, until they were twice as big as in the fall.
Mrs. Scribner was delighted with the success of her chance experiment. The jar with the vine in it made a very pretty ornament for her work table. Moreover, the plant needed little care. To keep it fresh she had only to moisten it with a spoonful of water every two or three weeks. And cold weather—even zero weather—did not injure it at all. Friends who called on Mrs. Scribner admired her jar, and said that they should like to get some of them. Mrs. Scribner wrote to Theodora and suggested that she and her girl friends make up some mitchella jars, and sell them in the city.
That was the way the little industry began. The girls, however, did not really go into the business until the next fall. Then Theodora, Ellen, and Catherine prepared over a hundred jarfuls of the green vine and berries. Those they sent to Portland and Boston during Christmas week under the name of Mitchella Jars, and Christmas Bouquets. The jars, which were globular in shape and which ranged from a quart in capacity up to three and four quarts, cost from fifteen to thirty-five cents apiece. When filled with mitchella vines, they brought from a dollar and a quarter to two dollars.
On the day above referred to they set out to gather more vines, and they told the people at home that they were going to "Dunham's open"—an old clearing beyond our farther pasture, where once a settler named Dunham had begun to clear a farm. The place was nearly two miles from the old Squire's, and as the girls did not expect to get home until four o'clock, they took their luncheon with them.
They hoped to get enough mitchella at the "open" to fill fifteen jars, and so took two bushel baskets. Four or five inches of hard-frozen snow was on the ground; but in the shelter of the young pine and fir thickets that were now encroaching on the borders of the "open" the "cradle knolls" were partly bare.
However, they found less mitchella at Dunham's open than they had hoped. After going completely round the borders of the clearing they had gathered only half a basketful. Kate then proposed that they should go on to another opening at Adger's lumber camp, on a brook near the foot of Stoss Pond. She had been there the winter before with Theodora, and both of them remembered having seen mitchella growing there.
The old lumber road was not hard to follow, and they reached the camp in a little less than an hour. They found several plats of mitchella, and began industriously to gather the vine.
They had such a good time at their work that they almost forgot their luncheon. When at last they opened the pasteboard box in which it was packed, they found the sandwiches and the mince pie frozen hard. Kate suggested that they go down to the lumber camp and kindle a fire.
"There's a stove in it that the loggers left three years ago," she said. "We'll make a fire and thaw our lunch."
"We have no matches!" Ellen exclaimed, when they reached the camp.
Inside the old cabin, however, they found three or four matches in a little tin box that was nailed to a log behind the stovepipe. Hunters had occupied the camp not long before; but they had left scarcely a sliver of anything dry or combustible inside it; they had even whittled and shaved the old bunk beam and plank table in order to get kindlings. After a glance round, Kate went out to gather dry brush along the brook.
Running on a little way, she picked up dry twigs here and there. At last, by a clump of white birches, she found a fallen spruce. As she was breaking off some of the twigs a strange noise caused her to pause suddenly. It was, indeed, an odd sound—not a snarl or a growl, or yet a bark like that of a dog, but a querulous low "yapping." At the same instant she heard the snow crust break, as if an animal were approaching through the thicket of young firs.
More curious than frightened, Kate listened intently. A moment later she saw a large gray fox emerge from among the firs and come toward her. Supposing that it had not seen or scented her, and thinking to frighten it, she cried out suddenly, "Hi, Mr. Fox!"
To her surprise the fox, instead of bounding away, came directly toward her, and now she saw that its head moved to and fro as it ran, and that clots of froth were dropping from its jaws. Kate had heard that foxes, as well as dogs and wolves, sometimes run mad. She realized that if this beast were mad, it would attack her blindly and bite her if it could. Still clutching her armful of dry twigs, she turned and sped back toward the camp. As she drew near the cabin, she called to the other girls to open the door. They heard her cries, and Ellen flung the door open. As Kate darted into the room, she cried, "Shut it, quick!"
Startled, the other two girls slammed the door shut, and hastily set the heavy old camp table against it.
"It's only a fox!" Kate cried. "But it has gone mad, I think. I was afraid it would bite me."
Peering out of the one little window and the cracks between the logs, they saw the animal run past the camp. It was still yapping weirdly, and it snapped at bushes and twigs as it passed. Suddenly it turned back and ran by the camp door again. Afterward they heard its cries first up the slope behind the camp, and then down by the brook.
"We mustn't go out," Kate whispered. "If it were to bite us, we, too, should go mad."
There was no danger of the beast's breaking into the camp, and after a while the girls kindled a fire, thawed out their luncheon and ate it. The December sun was sinking low, and soon set behind the tree tops. It was a long way home, and they had their baskets of mitchella to carry. Hoping that the distressed creature had gone its way, they listened for a while at the door, and at last ventured forth; but when they drew near the place where Kate had gathered the dry spruce branches they heard the creature yapping in the thickets ahead. In a panic they ran back to the camp.
Their situation was not pleasant. They dared not venture out again. Darkness had already set in; the camp was cold and they had little fuel. The prospect that any one from home would come to their aid was small, for they were now a long way from Dunham's open, where they had said they were going, and where, of course, search parties would look for them. Kate, however, remained cheerful.
"It's nothing!" she exclaimed. "I can soon get wood for a fire." Under the bunk she had found an old axe, and with it she proceeded to chop up the camp table.
"The only thing I'm afraid of," she said, "is that the boys will start out to look for us, and that if they find our tracks in the snow, they'll come on up here and run afoul of that fox before they know it."
"We can shout to them," Ellen suggested.
Not much later, in fact, they began to make the forest resound with loud, clear calls. For a long while the only answer to their cries came from two owls; but Kate was right in thinking that we boys would set out to find them.
Addison, Halstead and I had been up in Lot 32 that day with the old Squire, making an estimate of timber, and we did not reach home until after dark. Grandmother met us with the news that the girls had gone to Dunham's open for partridge-berry vines, and had not returned. She was very uneasy about them; but we were hungry and, grumbling a little that the girls could not come home at night as they were expected to, sat down to supper.
"I am afraid they've lost their way," grandmother said, after a few minutes. "It's going to be very cold. You must go to look for them!" And the old Squire agreed with her.
Just as we finished supper Thomas Edwards, Kate's brother, came in with a lantern, to ask whether Kate was there; and without much further delay we four boys set off. Addison took his gun and Halstead another lantern. We were not much worried about the girls; indeed, we expected to meet them on their way home. When we reached Dunham's open, however, and got no answer to our shouts, we became anxious.
At last we found their tracks leading up the winter road to Adger's camp, and we hurried along the old trail.
We had not gone more than half a mile when Tom, who was ahead, suddenly cried, "Hark! I heard some one calling!"
We stopped to listen; and after a moment or two we all heard a distant cry.
"That's Kate!" Tom muttered. "Something's the matter with them, sure!"
We started to run, but soon heard the same cry again, followed by indistinct words.
"What's the matter?" Tom shouted.
Again we heard their calls, but could not make out what they were trying to say. We were pretty sure now that the girls were at the old lumber camp; and hastening on to the top of the ridge that sloped down toward the brook, we all shouted loudly. Immediately a reply came back in hasty, anxious tones:
"Take care! There's a mad fox down here!"
"A what?" Addison cried.
"A fox that has run mad!" Kate repeated.
"Where is he?" Halstead cried.
"Running round in the thickets," Kate answered. "Look out, boys, or he'll bite you. That's the reason we didn't come home. We didn't dare leave the camp."
This was such a new kind of danger that for a few moments we were at a loss how to meet it. Tom looked about for a club.
"It's only a fox," he said. "I guess we can knock him over before he can bite us."
He and Addison went ahead with the club and the gun; Halstead and I, following close behind, held the lanterns high so that they could see what was in front of them. In this manner we moved down the brushy slope to the camp. The girls, who were peering out of the door, were certainly glad to see us.
"But where's your 'mad' fox?" we asked.
"He's round here somewhere. He really is," Kate protested earnestly. "We heard him only a little while ago."
Thereupon, while the girls implored us to be careful, we began to search about by lantern light. At last we heard a low wheezing noise near the old dam. On bringing the lantern nearer we finally caught sight of an animal behind the logs. It was a fox surely enough, and it acted as if it were disabled or dying. While Halstead and I held the lanterns, Addison took aim and shot the beast. Tom found a stick with a projecting knot that he could use as a hook, and with it he hauled the body out into plain view. It was a large cross-gray fox.
"Boys, that skin's worth thirty dollars!" Tom exclaimed.
"But I shouldn't like to be the one to skin it," Addison said. "Don't touch it with your hands, Tom."
While the girls were telling us of the fox's strange actions we warmed ourselves at the fire in the camp stove, and then all set off for home, for by this time it was getting late and the night was growing colder.
Halstead led the way with the two lanterns; Addison and I, each shouldering a basket of mitchella, followed; Tom, dragging the body of the fox with his hooked stick, came behind the girls. It was nearly midnight when we reached home.
Tom still thought that the fox's silvery pelt ought to be saved; but the old Squire persuaded him not to run the risk of skinning the creature.
Despite the hard times and low prices, the old Squire determined to go on with his lumber business that winter; and as more teams were needed for work at his logging camp in the woods, he bought sixteen work-horses, from Prince Edward Island. They had come by steamer to Portland; and the old Squire, with two hired men, went down to get them. He and the men drove six of them home, hitched to a new express wagon, and led the other ten behind.
The horses were great, docile creatures, with shaggy, clumsy legs, hoofs as big as dinner plates, and fetlocks six inches long. Later we had to shear their legs, because the long hair loaded up so badly with snow. Several of them were light red in color, and had crinkly manes and tails; and three or four weighed as much as sixteen hundred pounds apiece. Each horse had its name, age, and weight on a tag. I still remember some of the names. There was Duncan, Ducie, Trube, Lill, Skibo, Sally, Prince, and one called William-le-Bon.
They reached us in October, but we were several weeks getting them paired in spans and ready to go up into the woods for the winter's work.
The first snow that fall caught us in the midst of "housing-time," but fine weather followed it, so that we were able to finish our farmwork and get ready for winter.
Housing-time! How many memories of late fall at the old farm cling to that word! It is one of those homely words that dictionary makers have overlooked, and refers to those two or three weeks when you are making everything snug at the farm for freezing weather and winter snow; when you bring the sheep and young cattle home from the pasture, do the last fall ploughing, and dig the last rows of potatoes; when you bank sawdust, dead leaves or boughs round the barns and the farmhouse; when you get firewood under cover, and screw on storm windows and hang storm doors. It is a busy time in Maine, where you must prepare for a long winter and for twenty degrees below zero.
At last we were ready to start up to the logging camp with the sixteen horses. We hitched three spans of them to a scoot that had wide, wooden shoes, and that was loaded high with bags of grain, harnesses, peavies, shovels, axes, and chains. The other ten horses we led behind by halters.
Asa Doane, one of our hired men at the farm, drove the three spans on the scoot; Addison and I sat on the load behind and held the halters of the led horses. We had often taken horses into the woods in that way, and expected to have no trouble this time; although these horses were young, they were not high-spirited or mettlesome. We started at daybreak, and expected, if all went well, to reach the first of the two lumber camps by nine o'clock that evening.
We had a passenger with us—an eccentric old hunter named Tommy Goss, with his traps and gun. He had come to the farm the previous night, on his way up to his trapping grounds beyond the logging camps, and as his pack was heavy, he was glad of a lift on the scoot. Tommy was a queer, reticent old man; I wanted him to tell me about his trapping, but could get scarcely a word from him. We were pretty busy with our horses, however, for it is not easy to manage so many halters.
The air was very frosty and sharp in the early morning; but when the sun came up from a mild, yellow, eastern sky, we felt a little warmer. Not a breath of wind stirred the tree tops. The leaves had already fallen, and lay in a dense, damp carpet throughout the forest; the song birds had gone, and the woods seemed utterly quiet. When a red squirrel "chickered" at a distance, or when a partridge whirred up, the sound fell startlingly loud on the air.
There was, indeed, something almost ominous in the stillness of the morning. As we entered the spruce woods beyond the bushy clearing of the Old Slave's Farm, Addison cast his eye southward, and remarked that there was a "snow bank" rising in the sky. Turning, we saw a long, leaden, indeterminate cloud. It was then about nine o'clock in the morning.
By ten o'clock the cloud had hidden the sun, and by noon the entire sky had grown dark. The first breath of the oncoming storm stirred the trees, and we felt a piercing chill in the air. Then fine "spits" of snow began to fall.
"It's coming," Addison said; "but I guess we can get up to camp. We can follow the trail if it does storm."
At the touch of the snow, the coats of the horses ruffled up, and they stepped sluggishly. Asa had to chirrup constantly to the six ahead, and those behind lagged at their halters. The storm increased and we got on slowly. By four o'clock it had grown dark.
Suddenly the horses pricked their ears uneasily, and one of them snorted. We were ascending a rocky, wooded valley between Saddleback Mountain and the White Birch Hills. The horses continued to show signs of uneasiness, and presently sounds of a tremendous commotion came from the side of the hills a little way ahead. It sounded as if a terrific fight between wild animals was in progress. The horses had stopped short, snorting.
"What's broke loose?" Addison exclaimed. "Must be bears."
"Uh-huh!" old Tommy assented. "Tham's b'ars. Sounds like as if one b'ar had come along to another b'ar's den and was tryin' to git in and drive tother one out. B'ars is dennin' to-night, and tham as has put off lookin' up a den till now is runnin' round in a hurry to get in somewhars out of the snow.
"A b'ar's allus ugly when he's out late, lookin' for a den," the old trapper went on. "A b'ar hates snow on his toes. Only time of year when I'm afraid of a b'ar is when he is jest out of his den in the spring, and when he's huntin' fer a den in a snowstorm."
Addison and I were crying, "Whoa!" and trying to hold those ten horses. Asa was similarly engaged with his six on the scoot. Every instant, too, the sounds were coming nearer, and a moment later two large animals appeared ahead of us in the stormy obscurity. One was chasing the other, and was striking him with his paw; their snarls and roars were terrific.
We caught only a glimpse of them. Then all sixteen of the horses bolted at once. Asa could not hold his six. They whirled off the trail and ran down among the trees toward a brook that we could hear brawling in the bed of the ravine. They took the scoot with them, and in wild confusion our ten led horses followed madly after them. Bags, harnesses, axes, and shovels flew off the scoot. Halters crossed and crisscrossed. I was pulled off the load, and came near being trodden on by the horses behind. I could not see what had become of old Tommy or the bears.
Still hanging to his reins, Asa had jumped from the scoot. Addison, too, still clinging to his five halters, had leaped off. Before I got clear, two horses bounded over me. The three spans on the scoot dashed down the slope, but brought up abruptly on different sides of a tree. Some of them were thrown down, and the others floundered over them. Two broke away and ran with the led horses. It was a rough place, littered with large rocks and fallen trees. In their panic the horses floundered over those, but a little farther down came on a bare, shelving ledge that overhung the brook. Probably they could not see where they were going, or else those behind shoved the foremost off the brink; at any rate, six of the horses went headlong down into the rocky bed of the torrent, whence instantly arose heart-rending squeals of pain.
It had all happened so suddenly that we could not possibly have prevented it. In fact, we had no more than picked ourselves up from among the snowy logs and stones when they were down in the brook. Those that had not gone over the ledge were galloping away down the valley.
"Goodness! What will the old Squire say to this?" were Addison's first words.
After a search, we found a lantern under a heap of bags and harness. It was cracked, but Asa succeeded in lighting it; and about the first object I saw with any distinctness was old Tommy, doubled up behind a tree.
"Are you hurt?" Addison called to him.
"Wal, I vum, I dunno!" the old man grunted. "Wa'n't that a rib-h'ister!"
Concluding that there was not much the matter with him, we hastened down to the brook. There hung one horse—William-le-Bon—head downward, pawing on the stones in the brook with his fore hoofs. He had caught his left hind leg in the crotch of a yellow birch-tree that grew at the foot of the ledges. In the brook lay Sally, with a broken foreleg. Beyond her was Duncan, dead; he had broken his neck. Lill was cast between two big stones; and she, too, had broken her leg. Moaning dolefully, Prince floundered near by. Another horse had got to his feet; he was dragging one leg, which seemed to be out of joint or broken.
Meanwhile the storm swirled and eddied. We did not know what to do. Asa declared that it was useless to try to save Prince, and with a blow of the axe he put him out of his misery. Then, while I held the lantern, he and Addison cut the birch-tree in which William-le-Bon hung. The poor animal struggled so violently at times that they had no easy task of it; but at last the tree fell over, and we got the horse's leg free. It was broken, however, and he could not get up.
As to the others, it was hard to say, there in the night and storm, what we ought to do for them. In the woods a horse with a broken leg is little better than dead, and in mercy is usually put out of its misery. We knew that the four horses lying there were very seriously injured, and Asa thought that we ought to put an end to their sufferings. But Addison and I could not bring ourselves to kill them, and we went to ask Tommy's advice.
The old man was pottering about the scoot, trying to recover his traps and gun. He hobbled down to the brink of the chasm and peered over at the disabled animals; but "I vum, I dunno," was all that we could get from him in the way of advice.
At last we brought the horse blankets from the scoot and put them over the suffering creatures to protect them from the storm. In their efforts to get up, however, the animals thrashed about constantly, and the blankets did not shelter them much. We had no idea where the horses were that had run away.
At last, about midnight, we set off afoot up the trail to the nearest lumber camp. Asa led the way with the lantern, and old Tommy followed behind us with his precious traps. The camp was nearly six miles away; it proved a hard, dismal tramp, for now the snow was seven or eight inches deep. We reached the camp between two and three o'clock in the morning, and roused Andrews, the foreman, and his crew of loggers. Never was warm shelter more welcome to us.
At daybreak the next morning it was still snowing, but Andrews and eight of his men went back with us. The horses still lay there in the snow in a pitiful plight; we all agreed that it was better to end their sufferings as quickly as possible.
We then went in search of the runaways, and after some time found them huddled together in a swamp of thick firs about two miles down the trail. We captured them without trouble and led them back to the scoot, which we reloaded and sent on up to camp with Asa. Addison and I put bridles on two of the horses,—Ducie and Skibo,—and rode home to the farm.
It was dark when we got home, and no one heard us arrive. After we had put up the horses, we went into the house with our dismal tidings. The old Squire was at his little desk in the sitting-room, looking over his season's accounts.
"You go in and tell him," Addison said to me.
I dreaded to do it, but at last opened the door and stole in.
"Ah, my son," the old gentleman said, looking up, "so you are back."
"Yes, sir," said I, "but—but we've had trouble, sir, terrible trouble."
"What!" he exclaimed. "What do you mean?"
"We've had a dreadful time. Some bears came out ahead of us and scared the horses!" I blurted out. "And we've lost six of them! They ran off the ledges into Saddleback brook and broke their legs. We had to kill them."
The old Squire jumped to his feet with a look of distress on his face. Addison now came into the room, and helped me to give a more coherent account of what had happened.
After his first exclamation of dismay, the old Squire sat down and heard our story to the end. Naturally, he felt very badly, for the accident had cost him at least a thousand dollars. He did not reproach us, however.
"I have only myself to blame," he said. "It is a bad way of taking horses into the woods—leading so many of them together. I have always felt that it was risky. They ought to go separate, with a driver for every span. This must be a lesson for the future."
"It is an ill wind that blows no one any good," says the proverb. Our disaster proved a bonanza to old Tommy Goss; he set his traps there all winter, near the frozen bodies of the horses, and caught marten, fishers, mink, "lucivees," and foxes by the dozen.
The loss of Master Joel Pierson as our teacher at the district school the following winter, was the greatest disappointment of the year. We had anticipated all along that he was coming back, and I think he had intended to do so; but an offer of seventy-five dollars a month—more than double what our small district could pay—to teach a village school in an adjoining county, robbed us of his invaluable services; for Pierson was at that time working his way through college and could not afford to lose so good an opportunity to add to his resources during the winter vacation.
We did not learn this till the week before school was to begin; and when his letter to Addison reached us, explaining why he could not come, there were heart-felt lamentations at the old Squire's and at the Edwards farm.
I really think that the old Squire would have made up the difference in wages to Master Pierson from his own purse; but the offer to go to the larger school had already been accepted.
As several of the older boys of our own district school had become somewhat unruly—including Newman Darnley, Alf Batchelder and, I grieve to say, our cousin Halstead—the impression prevailed that the school needed a "straightener." Looking about therefore at such short notice, the school agent was led to hire a master, widely noted as a disciplinarian, named Nathaniel Brench, who for years had borne the nickname of "Czar" Brench, owing to his autocratic and cruel methods of school government.
I remember vividly that morning in November, the first day of school, when Czar Brench walked into the old schoolhouse, glanced smilingly round, and laid his package of books and his ruler, a heavy one, on the master's desk; then, coming forward to the box stove in the middle of the floor, he warmed his hands at the stovepipe. Such a big man! Six feet three in his socks, bony, broad-shouldered, with long arms and big hands.
He wore a rather high-crowned, buff-colored felt hat. Light buff, indeed, seemed to be his chosen color, for he wore a buff coat, buff vest and buff trousers. Moreover, his hair, his bushy eyebrows and his short, thin moustache were sandy.
Beaming on us with his smiling blue eyes, he rubbed his hands gently as he warmed them.
"I hope we are going to have a pleasant term of school together," he said, in a tone as soft as silk. "And it will not be my fault if we don't have a real quiet, nice time."
We learned later that it was his custom always to begin school with a beautiful speech of honeyed words—the calm before the storm.
"Of course we have to have order in the schoolroom," he said apologetically. "I confess that I like to have the room orderly, and that I do not like to hear whispering in study hours. When the scholars go out and come in at recess time, too, it sort of disturbs me to have crowding and noise. I never wish to be hard or unreasonable with my scholars—I never am, if I can avoid it. But these little things, as you all know, have to be mentioned sometimes, if we are going to have a really pleasant and profitable term.
"There is another thing that always make me feel nervous in school hours, and that is buzzing with the lips while you are getting your lessons, I don't like to speak about it, and there may be no need for it, but lips buzzing in study hours always make me feel queer. It's just as easy to get your lessons with your eyes as with your lips, and for the sake of my feelings I hope you will try to do so.
"Speaking of lessons," he went on, "I don't believe in giving long ones. I always liked short, easy lessons myself, and I suppose you do."
In point of fact he gave the longest, hardest lessons of any teacher we ever had! We had to put in three or four hours of hard study every evening in order to keep up; and if we failed—
By this time some of the larger boys—Newman Darnley, Ben Murch, Absum Glinds and Melzar Tibbetts—were smiling broadly and winking at one another. The new master, they thought, was "dead easy."
Later in the morning, when the bell rang for the boys to come in from their recess, Newman and many of the others pushed in at the doorway, pell-mell, as usual. Before they were fairly inside the room the new master, calm and smiling, stood before them. One of his long arms shot out; he collared Newman and, with a trip of the foot, flung him on the floor. Ben Murch, coming next, landed on top of Newman. Alfred Batchelder, Ephraim Darnley, Absum Glinds, Melzar Tibbetts and my cousin, Halstead, followed Ben, till with incredible suddenness nine of the boys, all almost men-grown, were piled in a squirming heap on the floor!
Filled with awe, we smaller boys stole in to our seats, casting frightened glances at the teacher, who stood beaming genially at the heap of boys on the floor.
"Lie still, lie still," he said, as some of the boys at the bottom of the pile struggled to get out. "Lie still. I suppose you forgot that it disturbs me to have crowding and loud trampling. Try and remember that it disturbs me."
Turning away, he said, "The girls may now have their recess."
To this day I remember just how those terrified girls stole out from the schoolroom. Not until they had come in from their recess and had taken their seats did Master Brench again turn his attention to the pile of boys. He walked round it with his face wreathed in smiles.
"Like as not that floor is hard," he remarked. "It has just come into my mind. I'm afraid you're not wholly comfortable. Rise quietly, brush one another, and take your seats. It grieves me to think how hard that floor must be."
There were at that time about sixty-five pupils in our district, ranging in size and age from little four-year-olds, just learning the alphabet, to young men and women twenty years of age. It was impossible that so many young persons could be gathered in a room without some shuffling of feet and some noise with books and slates. Moreover, boys and girls unused to study for nine months of the year are not always able at first to con lessons without unconsciously and audibly moving their lips.
Buzzing lips, however, were among the seven "deadly sins" under the régime of Czar Brench. Dropping a book or a slate, wriggling about in your seat, whispering to a seatmate, sitting idly without seeming to study and not knowing your lesson reasonably well were other grave offenses.
Because of the length of the lessons, there were frequently failures in class; the punishment for that was to stand facing the school, and study the lesson diligently, feverishly, until you knew it. There were few afternoons that term when three or four pupils were not out there, madly studying to avoid remaining after school. For no one knew what would happen if you were left there alone with Czar Brench!
He seemed to care for little except order and strict discipline. He used to take off his boots and, putting on an old pair of carpet slippers, walk softly up and down the room, leisurely swinging his ruler. First and last that winter he feruled nearly all of us boys and several of the girls. "Little love pats to assist memory," he used to say, as he brought his ruler down on the palms of our hands.
Feruling with the ruler was for ordinary, miscellaneous offenses; but Czar Brench had more picturesque punishments for the six or seven "deadly sins." If you dropped a book, he would instantly cry, "Pick up that book and fetch it to me!" Then, when you came forward, he would say, "Take it in your right hand. Face the school. Hold it out straight, full stretch, and keep it there till I tell you to lower it."
Oh, how heavy that book soon got to be! And when Czar Brench calmly went on hearing lessons and apparently forgot you there, the discomfort soon became torture. Your arm would droop lower and lower, until Czar Brench's eye would fall on you, and he would say quietly, "Straight out, there!"
There were many terribly tired arms at our school that winter!
But holding books at arm's length was a far milder penalty than "sitting on nothing," which was Czar Brench's specially devised punishment for those who shuffled uneasily on those hard old benches during study hours.
"Aha, there, my boy!" he would cry. "If you cannot sit still on that bench, come right out here and sit on nothing."
Setting a stool against the wall, he would order the pupil to sit down on it with his back pressing against the wall. Then he would remove the stool, leaving the offender in a sitting posture, with his back to the wall and his knees flexed. By the time the victim had been there ten minutes, he wished never to repeat the experience. I know whereof I speak, for I "sat on nothing" three times that winter.
Czar Brench's most picturesque, not to say bizarre, punishment was for buzzing lips. Many of us, studying hard to get our lessons, were very likely to make sounds with our lips, and in the silence of that schoolroom the least little lisp was sure to reach the master's ear.
"Didn't I hear a buzzer then?" he would ask in his softest tone, raising his finger to point to the offender. "Ah, yes. It is—it isyou! Come out here. Those lips need a lesson."
The lesson consisted in your standing, facing the school, with your mouth propped open. The props were of wood, and were one or two inches long, for small or large "buzzers."
I remember one day when six boys—and I believe one girl—stood facing the school with their mouths propped open at full stretch, each gripping a book and trying to study! Inveterate "buzzers"—those who had been called out two or three times—had not only to face the school with props in their mouths but to mount and stand on top of the master's desk.
If Czar Brench had not been so big and strong, the older boys would no doubt have rebelled and perhaps carried him out of the schoolhouse, which was the early New England method of getting rid of an unpopular schoolmaster. None of the boys, however, dared raise a finger against him, and he ruled his little kingdom as an absolute monarch. At last, however, towards the close of the term, some one dared to defy him—and it was not one of the big boys, but our youthful neighbor Catherine Edwards.
That afternoon Czar Brench had put a prop in Rufus Darnley, Jr.'s mouth. Rufus was only twelve years old and by no means one of the bright boys of the school. He stuttered in speech, and, being dull, had to study very hard to get his lessons. Every day or two he forgot his lips and "buzzed." I think he had stood on the master's desk four or five times that term.
It was a high desk; and that afternoon Rufus, trying to study up there, with his mouth propped open, lost his balance and fell to the floor in front of the desk. In falling, the prop was knocked out of his mouth.
At the crash Czar Brench, who had been hearing the grammar class with his back to Rufus, turned. I think he thought that Rufus had jumped down; for, fearing the teacher's wrath, the frightened boy scrambled to his feet and, with a cry, started to run out of school.
With one long stride the master had him by the arm. "I don't quite know what I shall do to you," he said, as he brought the boy back.
He shook Rufus until the little fellow's teeth chattered and his eyes rolled; and while he shook him, he seemed to be reflecting what new punishment he could devise for this rebellious attempt.
To the utter amazement of us all, Catherine, who was sitting directly in front of them, suddenly spoke out.
"Mr. Brench," she cried, "you are a hard, cruel man!"
The master was so astounded that he let go of Rufus and stared down at her. "Stand up!" he commanded, no longer in his soft tone, but in a terrible voice.
Catherine stood up promptly, unflinching; her eyes, blazing with indignation, looked squarely into his.
"Let me see your hand," he said.
Instead of one hand, Catherine instantly thrust out both, under his very nose.
"Ferule me!" she cried. "Ferule both my hands, Mr. Brench! Ferule me all you want to! I don't care how hard you strike! But you are a bad, cruel man, and I hate you!"
Still holding the ruler, Czar Brench gazed at her for some moments in silence; he seemed almost dazed.
"You are the first scholar that ever spoke to me like that," he said at last. A singular expression had come into his face; he was having a new experience. For another full minute he stared down at the girl, but he apparently had no longer any thought of feruling her.
"Take your seat," he said to her at last; and, after sending the still trembling Rufus to his seat, he dismissed the grammar class.
Nothing out of the ordinary happened afterwards. There were but three weeks more of school, and the term ended about as usual.
The school agent and certain of the parents in the district who believed in the importance of rigid discipline wished to have Czar Brench teach there another winter; but for some reason he declined to return. At the old Squire's we thought that it was, perhaps, because he had failed to conquer Catherine.