During the fifth week of school there was an enforced vacation of three or four days, over Sunday, while the school committee were investigating certain complaints of abusive punishment, against Master Brench.
The complaints were from numbers of the parents, and concerned putting those props in pupils' mouths to abolish "buzzing" of the lips, while studying their lessons; and also complaints about "sitting on nothing," said to be injurious to the spine. The affair did not much concern us young folks at the old Squire's. Indeed, we did not much care for the school that winter. Master Brench's attention was chiefly directed to keeping order and devising punishments for violations of school discipline. School studies appeared to be of minor importance with him.
It was on Tuesday of that week, while we were at home, that the following incident occurred.
Owing to our long winters, sheep raising, in Maine, has often been an uncertain business. But at the old Squire's we usually kept a flock of eighty or a hundred. They often brought us no real profit, but grandmother Ruth was an old-fashioned housewife who would have felt herself bereaved if she had had no woolen yarn for socks and bed blankets.
The sheep were already at the barn for the winter; it was the 12th of December, though as yet we had had no snow that remained long on the ground. We were cutting firewood out in the lot that day and came in at noon with good appetites, for the air was sharp.
While we sat at table a stranger drove up. He said that his name was Morey, and that he was stocking a farm which he had recently bought in the town of Lovell, nineteen or twenty miles west of our place.
"I want to buy a flock of sheep," he said. "I have called to see if you have any to sell."
"Well, perhaps," the old Squire replied, for that was one of the years when wool was low priced. As he and Morey went out to the west barn where the sheep were kept, grandmother Ruth looked disturbed.
"You go out and tell your grandfather not to sell those sheep," she said after a few minutes to Addison and me. "Tell him not to price them."
Addison and I went out, but we arrived too late. Mr. Morey and the old Squire were standing by the yard bars, looking at the sheep, and as we came up the stranger said:
"Now, about how much would you take for this flock—you to drive them over to my place in Lovell?"
Before either Addison or I could pass on grandmother Ruth's admonition, the old Squire had replied smilingly, "Well, I'd take five dollars a head for them."
As a matter of fact, the old gentleman had not really intended to sell the sheep; he had not thought that the man would pay that price for them, because it was now only the beginning of winter, and the sheep would have to be fed at the barn for nearly six months.
But to the old Squire's surprise Mr. Morey, with as little ado as if he were buying a pair of shoes, said, "Very well. I will take them."
Drawing out his pocketbook, he handed the old Squire ten new fifty-dollar bills and asked whether we could conveniently drive the sheep over to his farm on the following day. In fact, before the old Squire had more than counted the money, Mr. Morey had said good-day and had driven off.
Just what grandmother Ruth said when the old gentleman went in to put the bills away in his desk, we boys never knew; but for a long time thereafter the sale of the sheep was a sore subject at the old farm.
The transaction was not yet complete, however, for we still had to deliver the sheep to their new owner. At six o'clock the following morning Halstead, Addison and I set out to drive them to Lovell. The old Squire had been up since three o'clock, feeding the flock with hay and provender for the drive; he told us that he would follow later in the day with a team to bring us home after our long walk. The girls put us up luncheons in little packages, which we stowed in our pockets.
It was still dark when we started. The previous day had been clear, but the sky had clouded during the night. It was raw and chilly, with a feel of snow in the air. The sheep felt it; they were sluggish and unwilling to leave the barn. Finally, however, we got them down the lane and out on the hard-frozen highway; Halstead ran ahead, shaking the salt dish; Addison and I, following after, hustled the laggards along.
The leader of our flock was a large brock-faced ewe called Old Peg. She was known to be at least eleven years old, which is a venerable age for a sheep. She raised twin lambs every spring and was, indeed, a kind of flock mother, for many of the sheep were either her children or her grandchildren. Wherever the flock went, she took the lead and set the pace.
So long as we kept Old Peg following Halstead and the salt dish, the rest of the sheep scampered after, and we got on well.
We had gone scarcely more than a mile when, owing to a too hasty breakfast, or the morning chill, Halstead was taken with cramps. He was never a very strong boy and had always been subject to such ailments. We had to leave him at a wayside farmhouse—the Sylvester place—to be dosed with hot ginger tea. At last, after losing half an hour there, we went on without him; Addison now shook the salt dish ahead, and I, brandishing a long stick, kept stragglers from lagging in the rear.
Three persons are needed to drive a flock of a hundred sheep; but we saw no way except to go on and do the best we could. Now that it was light, the sky looked as if a storm were at hand.
The storm did not reach us until nearly eleven o'clock, however; we had got as far as the town of Albany before the first flakes began to fall. Then Old Peg made trouble. Leaving the barn and going off so far was against all her ideas of propriety, and now that a snowstorm had set in she was certain that something or other was wrong. She looked this way and that, sometimes turning completely round to look at the road. Presently she made a bolt off to the left and, jumping a stone wall, tried to circle back through a field. Part of the flock immediately followed, and we had a lively race to head her off and start her along the road again.
Addison abandoned the salt dish,—it was no longer attractive to the sheep,—and helped me to drive the flock. At every cross road Peg seemed bent on taking the wrong turn. In spite of the cold she kept us in a perspiration, and we did not have time even to eat the luncheon that we had brought in our pockets. Old Peg's one idea was to lead the flock home to the old farm.
By hard work we kept the sheep going in the right direction until after three o'clock in the afternoon. By that time four or five inches of snow had fallen. It whitened the whole country and loaded the fleeces of the sheep. The flock had begun to lag, and the younger sheep were bleating plaintively. We were getting worried, for the storm was increasing, and as nearly as Addison could remember we had six miles farther to go. It would soon be night; the forests that here bordered the road were darkening already. We had no idea how we should get the flock on after dark.
Old Peg soon took the matter out of our hands. She had been plodding on moodily at the head of her large family for half an hour or more, and coming at length to a dim cross road that entered the highway from the woods on the north side, she turned and started up it at a headlong run.
How she ran! And how the flock streamed after her! How we ran, too, to head her off and turn her back! Addison dashed out to one side of the narrow forest road and I to the other. But there was brush and swamp on both sides. Neither of us could catch up with Old Peg. Stumbling through the snowy thickets, we tried to get past her half a dozen times, but she still kept ahead.
She must have gone a mile. When she at last emerged into an opening, we saw, looming dimly through the storm and the fast-gathering dusk, a large, weathered barn, with its great doors standing open.
"Well, let her go, confound her!" Addison exclaimed, panting.
Quite out of breath, we gave up the chase and fell behind. Old Peg never stopped until she was inside that barn. When we caught up with the rout, she had her flock about her on the barn floor.
"Perhaps it's just as well to let them stay overnight here," Addison said after we had looked round.
Thirty or forty yards farther along the road stood a low, dark house, with the door hanging awry and half the glass in the two front windows broken. Evidently it was a deserted farm. From appearances, no one had lived there for years. But some one had stored a quantity of hay in the mow beside the barn floor; the sheep were already nibbling at it.
"I don't know whose hay this is," Addison said, "but the sheep must be fed. The old Squire or Mr. Morey can look up the owners and settle for it afterwards."
We strewed armfuls of the hay over the barn floor and let the hungry creatures help themselves. Then we shut the barn doors and went to the old house.
Every one knows what a cheerless, forbidding place a deserted house is by night. The partly open door stuck fast; but we squeezed in, and Addison struck a match. One low room occupied most of the interior; there was a fireplace, but so much snow had come down the large chimney that the prospect of having a fire there was poor. As in many old farmhouses, there was a brick oven close beside the fireplace.
"Maybe we can light a fire in the oven," Addison said, and after breaking up several old boards we did succeed in kindling a blaze there. The dreary place was not a little enlivened by the firelight. We stood before it, warmed our fingers and munched the cold meat, doughnuts and cheese that the girls had put up for us.
But the smoke had disturbed a family of owls in the chimney. Their dismal whooping and chortling, heard in the gloom of the night and the storm, were uncanny to say the least. I wanted to go back to the barn, with the sheep; but Addison was more matter-of-fact.
"Oh, let them hoot!" he said. "I am going to stay here and have a fire, if I can find anything to burn."
While poking about at the far end of the room for more boards to break up, he found a battered old wardrobe with double doors and called to me to help him drag it in front of the oven.
"Going to smash that?" I asked.
"No, going to sleep in it," said he. "We'll set it up slantwise before the fire, open the doors and lie down in it. I've a notion that it will keep us warm, even if it isn't very soft."
The wardrobe was about four feet wide, and, after propping up the top end at an easy slant, we lay down in it, and took turns getting up to replenish the blaze in the oven. It was not wholly uncomfortable; but any sense of ease that I had begun to feel was banished by a suspicion that Addison now confided to me.
"I don't certainly know what place this is," he said, "but I'm beginning to think that it must be the old Jim Cronin farm. I've heard that it's over in this vicinity, away off in the woods by itself. If that's so," Addison went on, "nobody has lived here for eight or nine years. Cronin, you know, kept his wife shut up down cellar for a year or two, because she tried to run away from him. Finally she disappeared, and a good many thought that Cronin murdered her. Folks say the old house is haunted, but that's all moonshine. Cronin himself enlisted and was killed in the Civil War. By the way those owls carry on up the chimney I guess nobody ever comes here."
That account quite destroyed my peace of mind. I would much rather have gone out with the sheep, but I did not like to leave Addison. I got up and searched for more fuel, for I could not bear to think of letting the fire go out. No loose boards remained except an old cleated door partly off its hinges, which opened on a flight of dark stairs that led into the cellar. We broke up the door and took turns again tending the fire.
"Oh, well, this isn't so bad," Addison said. "But I wonder what the old Squire will think when he gets to Morey's place with the team and finds that we haven't come. Hope he isn't out looking for us in the storm."
That thought was disquieting; but there was nothing we could do about it, and so we resigned ourselves to pass the night as best we could. The owls still hooted and chortled at times, but their noise did not greatly disturb us now. After a while I dropped off to sleep, and I guess Addison did, too.
It was probably well toward morning when a cry like a loud shriek brought me to my feet outside the old wardrobe! A single dying ember flickered in the oven. Addison, too, was on his feet, with his eyes very wide and round.
"I say!" he whispered. "What was that?"
Before I could speak we heard it again; but this time, now that we were awake, it sounded less like a human shriek than the shrill yelp of an animal. The sounds came from directly under us; and for the instant all I could think of was Cronin's murdered wife!
Addison had turned to stare at the dark cellar doorway, when we heard it yet again—a wild staccato yelp, prolonged and quavering.
"There must be a wolf or a fox down there!" Addison muttered and picked up a loose brick from the fireplace.
He started to throw it down the cellar stairs, when three or four yelps burst forth at once, followed by a rumble and clatter below, as if a number of animals were running madly round, and then by the ugliest, most savage growl that ever came to my ears!
Addison stopped short. "Good gracious!" he exclaimed. "That's some big beast. Sounds like a bear! He'll be up here in a minute! Quick, help me stand this wardrobe in front of the doorway!"
He seized it on one side, I on the other, and between us we quickly stood that heavy piece of furniture up against the dark opening. Then, while I held it in place, Addison propped it fast with the door from the foot of the chamber stairs, which with one wrench he tore from its hinges.
It was evidently foxes, or bears, or both; but how they had got into the cellar was not clear. We started the fire blazing again and, standing in front of it, listened to the uproar. At times we heard yelps in the storm outside, at the back of the house, and decided that there must be some other way than the stairs of getting into the cellar.
After a while it began to grow light. Snow was still falling, but not so fast. The commotion below had quieted, but we heard a fox barking outside and from the back window caught sight of the animal moving about in the snow, holding up first one foot then another. Farther away, among the bushes of the clearing, stood another fox; and, still farther off in the woods, a third was barking querulously. Tracks in the snow led to a large hole under the sill of the house where a part of the cellar wall had caved in.
"But there's a bear or some other large animal down cellar," Addison said. "You watch here at the window."
He got a brick and, pulling the old wardrobe aside, flung it down the stairs and yelled. Instantly there was a clatter below, and out from the hole under the sill bounded a big black animal, evidently a bear, and loped away through the snow.
We could now pretty well account for the nocturnal uproar. Bears hibernate in winter, but are often out until the first snows come. The storm had probably surprised this one while he was still roaming about, and he had hastily searched for a den.
The storm had abated, and we decided to start for Lovell at once. We gave the sheep a foddering of hay and then got the flock outdoors. Old Peg was very loath to leave the barn, and we had to drag her out by main strength. Addison went ahead and tramped a path in the deep snow. Finding that there was no help for it, Old Peg followed, and the flock trailed after her in a woolly file several hundred feet long. Flourishing my stick and shouting loudly, I urged on the rear of the procession.
In less than half an hour we met the old Squire with the team and two men from the Morey farm. The old gentleman had arrived there about six o'clock the night before and had been worried as to what had become of us. He must have passed the place where Old Peg had bolted up the road not long after we were there; but it was already so dark that he had not seen our snow-covered tracks.
"Well, well, boys, you must have had a hard time of it!" were his first words. "Where did you pass the night?"
"At the old Cronin farm, I guess," Addison replied.
"That lonesome place!" the old Squire exclaimed.
"Itwasslightly lonesome," Addison admitted dryly.
"Did you see a ghost?" one of the men asked with a grin.
"Not a white one," Addison replied. "But we saw something pretty big and black. There were owls in the chimney and foxes in the cellar—also a bear. I guess that's all the ghost there is. But there's a hay bill for somebody to pay; about three hundredweight, I think."
From there on, with the men to help us, we made better progress, and before noon we had delivered the flock to its new owner. The warm dinner that we ate at the Morey farm tasted mighty good to Addison and me.
We never saw Peg again; but before the winter had passed, the old Squire bought another small flock of sheep from a neighbor.
The school committee finally decided that Master Brench's curious methods of punishment were not actually dangerous. He was advised, however, to discontinue them; and school went on again Monday morning. Six or seven of the older boys refused to come back; but the old Squire thought we would better attend, for example's sake, if for no other reason, and we did so. During Christmas week, however, we were out several days, on account of an order for Christmas trees which had come up to us from Portland. I still remember that order distinctly. It ran as follows:
"Bring us one large Christmas tree, a balsam fir, fifteen feet tall, at least, and wide-spreading. Do not allow the tips of the boughs or the end buds to get broken or rubbed off.
"Bring six smaller firs, ten feet tall, to set in a half circle on each side of the large tree.
"Bring us also a large box of 'lion's-paw,' as much as four or five bushels of the trailing vines. And another large box of holly, carefully packed in more of the same soft vines, so that the berries shall not be shaken off.
"And, if you can find them, bring a dozen witches' brooms."
The order was from the superintendent of a Sunday school at Portland. This was the winter after our first memorable venture in selling Christmas trees in the city, when we had left the two large firs that we could not sell on the steps of two churches. TheEastern Argushad printed an item the next day, saying that the Sunday-school children wished to thank the unknown Santa Claus who had so kindly remembered them.
I suppose we should hardly have given away those two trees if we could have sold them; and my cousin Addison, who was always on the lookout to earn a dollar, sent a note afterward to the Sunday schools of both churches, informing them that we should be very glad to furnish them with Christmas trees in future, at fair rates. Not less than five profitable orders came from that one gift, which did not really cost us anything.
"What in the world are 'witches' brooms'?" Addison exclaimed, after reading the order. Theodora echoed the query. We had heard of witches' broom-sticks, but witches' brooms were clearly something new in the way of Christmas decorations. But what? We looked in the dictionary; no help there. We asked questions of older people, and got no help from them. Finally we went to the old Squire, who repeated the query absently, "Witches' brooms? Witches' brooms? Why, let me see. Aren't they those great dense masses of twigs you sometimes see in the tops of fir trees? It is a kind of tree disease, some say tree cancer. At first they are green, but they turn dead and dry by the second year, and may kill that part of the tree. Often they are as large as a bushel basket. I saw one once fully six feet in diameter, a dry globe of closely packed twigs."
We knew what he meant now, but we had never heard those singular growths called "witches' brooms" before. Unlike mistletoe, the broom is not a plant parasite, but a growth from the fir itself, like an oak gall, or a gnarl on a maple or a yellow birch; but instead of being a solid growth on the tree trunk, it is a dense, abnormal growth of little twigs on a small bough of the fir, generally high up in the top.
The next day we went out along the borders of the farm wood lot and cut the seven firs; then, thinking that there might be a sale for others, we got enough more to make up a load for our trip to Portland.
While we were thus employed, Theodora and Ellen gathered the "lion's-paw," on the knolls by the border of the pasture woods; and in the afternoon we cut an immense bundle of holly along the wall by the upper field.
Holly is a word of many meanings; but in Maine what is called holly is the winterberry, a deciduous shrub that botanists rank as a species of alder. The vivid red berries are very beautiful, and resemble coral.
All the while we had been on the lookout for witches' brooms. In the swamp beyond the brook we found six, only two of which were perfect enough to use as decorations; at first we were a little doubtful of being able to fill this part of the order. There was one place, however, where we knew they could be found, and that was in the great fir swamp along Lurvey's Stream, on the way up to the hay meadows. Addison mentioned it at the supper table that evening; but the distance was fully thirteen miles; and at first we thought it hardly worth while to go so far for a dozen witches' brooms, for which the Sunday school would probably be unwilling to pay more than fifty cents apiece.
"And yet," Addison remarked, "if this Sunday school wants a dozen, other schools may want some after they see them. What if we go up and get seventy-five or a hundred, and take them along with the rest of our load? They may sell pretty well. Listen: 'Witches' brooms for your Christmas tree! Very sylvan! Very odd! Something new and unique! Only fifty cents apiece! Buy a broom! Buy a witches' broom!'"
The girls laughed. "What a peddler you would make, Ad!" Ellen cried; and we began to think that the venture might be worth trying.
It snowed hard that night, and instead of going up the stream on the ice with two hand sleds, as we had at first planned, Addison and I set a hayrack on two traverse sleds, and with two of the work-horses drove up the winter road. Axes and ropes were taken, feed for the team, and food enough for two days.
The sun had come out bright and warm; there was enough snow to make the sleds run easily, and we got on well until past three in the afternoon, when we were made aware of a very unusual change of temperature, for Maine in December. It grew warm rapidly; clouds overspread the sky; a thunderpeal rumbled suddenly. Within ten minutes a thundershower was falling, and almost as if by magic, all that snow melted away. We were left with our rack and traverse sleds, scraping and bumping over logs and stones. Never before or since have I seen six inches of snow go out of sight so suddenly. When we started, the earth was white on every hand, and the firs and spruces were like huge white umbrellas. In a single hour earth and forest were black again.
But matters more practical than scenery engaged our attention. It was eight miles farther to the fir swamp. The good sledding had vanished with the snow; every hole and hollow was full of water; it was hard to get on with our team; and for a time we hardly knew what course to follow.
On a branch trail, about half a mile off the winter road, there was another camp, known to us as Brown's Camp, which had been occupied by loggers the winter before. Addison thought that we had better go there and look for witches' brooms the next day. We reached the camp just at dusk, after a hard scramble over a very rough bit of trail.
Brown's Camp consisted of two low log houses, the man camp and the ox camp, and dreary they looked, standing there silent and deserted in the dark, wet wilderness of firs.
The heavy door of the ox camp stood ajar, and I think a bear must recently have been inside, for it was only with the greatest difficulty that we could lead or pull the horses in. Buckskin snorted constantly, and would not touch his corn; and the sweat drops came out on Jim's hair. We left them the lantern, to reassure them, and closing the door, went to the man camp, kindled a fire in the rusted stove, then warmed our food, and tried to make ourselves comfortable in the damp hut, with the blankets and sleigh robes that we had brought on the sleds.
Tired as we were, neither of us felt like falling asleep that night. It was a dismal place. We wished ourselves at home. Judging by the outcries, all the wild denizens of the wilderness were abroad. For a long time we lay, whispering now and then, instead of speaking aloud. A noise at the ox camp startled us, and, fearful lest one of the horses had thrown himself, Addison went hastily to the door to listen. "Come here," he whispered, in a strange tone.
I peeped forth over his shoulder, and was as much bewildered as he by what I saw. Cloudy as was the night, glimpses of something white appeared everywhere, going and coming, or flopping fitfully about. There were odd sounds, too, as of soft footfalls, and now and then low, petulant cries.
"What in the world are they?" Addison muttered.
Soon one of the mysterious white objects nearly bounced in at the door, and we discovered it was a hare in its white winter coat. The whole swamp was full of hares, all on the leap, going in one direction.
Seizing a pole, Addison knocked over three or four of them; still they came by; there must have been hundreds, perhaps thousands of them, all going one way.
At a distance we heard occasionally loud, sharp squealings, as of distress, and presently a lynx that seemed to be on the roof of the ox camp squalled hideously. Addison took the gun that we had brought, and while the hares were still flopping past, tried to get a shot at the lynx. But he was unable to make it out in the darkness, and it escaped.
I brought in one of the hares. I had an idea that we might add a bunch of them to our load for Portland; but it and the others that we had knocked over were too lank and light to be salable.
For an hour or more hares by the dozen continued to leap past the camp. We repeatedly heard lynxes, or other beasts of prey, snarling at a distance, as if following the mob of hares. Where all those hares came from, or where they went, or why they were traveling by night, we never knew. That is a question for naturalists. The next morning, when we went out to look for witches' brooms, there was not a hare in sight, except those that Addison had killed.
The witches' brooms were plentiful in the fir swamp along the stream; and as they were usually high up in the tree tops and not easily reached by climbing, we began to cut down such firs as had them. At that time and in that remote place, a fir-tree was of no value whatever.
Firs are easy trees to fell, for the wood is very soft, but they are bad to climb or handle on account of the pitch. We cut down about fifty trees that day, and left them as they fell, after getting the one or more witches' brooms in the top. Of those, we got eighty-two, all told; with the green fir boughs that went with them, they pretty nearly filled the rack. All were sear and dry, for they were just a densely interwoven mass of little twigs, but they contained a great many yellow flakes of dried pitch. In two of them we found the nests of flying squirrels; but in both cases the squirrels "flew" before the tree fell, and sailed away to other firs, standing near.
Altogether, it was a day of hard work. We were very tired—all the more so because we had slept hardly ten minutes the preceding night. But again we were much disturbed by the snarling of lynxes and the uneasiness of our horses at the ox camp. In fact, it was another dismal night for us; we hitched up at daybreak, and after a fearfully rough drive over bare logs and stones, and several breakages of harness, we reached the old Squire's, thoroughly tired out, at four o'clock in the afternoon.
The girls, however, were delighted with our lofty load of witches' brooms. In truth, it was rather picturesque, so many of those great gray bunches of intermeshed twigs, ensconced amid the green fir boughs that we had cut with them. A hall or a church would look odd indeed thus decorated.
Cheered by a good supper, we made ready to start for Portland the next morning. During the night, however, the weather changed. By daybreak on the twenty-third considerable snow had fallen, and we were able to travel this time on snow again. We had the rack piled higher than before, with the Christmas trees and the boxes of lion's-paw in the front end, and all those witches' brooms stacked and lashed on at the rear. The load was actually fourteen feet high, yet far from heavy; witches' brooms are dry and light. A northwest wind, blowing in heavy gusts behind us, fairly pushed us along the road. We got on fast, baited our team at New Gloucester at one o'clock in the afternoon, and by dusk had reached Welch's Tavern, eleven miles out of Portland.
Here we put up for the night; as our load was too bulky to draw into the barn, we were obliged to leave it in the yard outside, near the garden fence—fifty yards, perhaps, from the tavern piazza.
We had supper and were about to go to bed, when in came three fellows who had driven up from the city, on their way to hunt moose in Batchelder's Grant. All three were in a hilarious mood; they called for supper, and said that they meant to drive on to Ricker's Tavern, at the Poland Spring.
There was a lively fire on the hearth, for the night was cold and windy; the newcomers stood in front of it—while Addison and I sat back, looking on. The cause of their boisterousness was quite apparent; they were plentifully supplied with whiskey. Then, as now, the "Maine law" prohibited the sale of intoxicants; but this happened to be one of the numerous periods when the authorities were lax in enforcing the law.
Soon one of the newly arrived moose hunters drew out a large flask, from which all three drank. Turning to us, he cried, "Step up, boys, and take a nip!" Addison thanked him, but said that we were just going to bed.
"Oh, you'll sleep all the warmer for it. Come, take a swig with us."
We made no move to accept the invitation.
"Aw, you're temperance, are you?" one of the three exclaimed. "Nice little temperance lads!"
"Yes," Addison said, laughing. "But that's all right. We thank you just the same."
The three stood regarding us in an ugly mood, ready to quarrel. "If there's anything I hate," one of them remarked with a sneer, "it's a young fellow who's too much a mollycoddle to take a drink with a friend, and too stingy to pay for one."
We made no reply, and he continued to vent offensive remarks. The landlord came in, and Addison asked him to show us to our room. The hilarious trio called out insultingly to us as we ascended the stairs, and when the hotel keeper went down, we heard them asking him who we were and what our lofty load consisted of.
Half an hour or more later, we heard the moose hunters drive off, shouting uproariously; hardly three minutes afterward there was a sudden alarm below, and the window of our room was illuminated with a ruddy light.
"Fire! The place is afire!" Addison exclaimed.
We jumped up and looked out. The whole yard was brilliantly illuminated; then we saw that our load by the garden fence was on fire, and burning fiercely.
Throwing on a few clothes, we rushed downstairs. The hotel keeper and his hostler were already out with buckets of water, but could do little. The load was ablaze, and those dry, pitchy witches' brooms flamed up tremendously. Fortunately, the wind carried the flame and sparks away from the tavern and barns, or the whole establishment might have burned down. The crackling was terrific; the firs as well as the witches' brooms burned. Great gusts of flame and vapor rose, writhing and twisting in the wind. Any one might have imagined them to be witches of the olden time, riding wildly away up toward the half-obscured moon!
So great was the heat that it proved impossible to save the rack and sleds, or even the near-by garden fence, which had caught fire.
That disaster ended the trip. It was now too near Christmas Day to get more large firs, to say nothing of witches' brooms; and we were obliged to send word to this effect to our Portland patrons. The next morning Addison and I rode home on old Jim and Buckskin, with their harness tied up in a bundle before us. The wind was piercing and bleak; we were both so chilled as to be ill of a cold for several days afterward. The story that we had to tell at home was far from being an inspiriting one. Not only had we lost our load, traverse sleds and rack, but in due time we had a bill of ten dollars to pay the hotel keeper for his garden fence.
We always supposed that those drunken ruffians touched off our load just before driving away; but of course it may have been a spark from the chimney.
That was our first and last experience with witches' brooms.
I think it was the following Friday afternoon that a curious diversion occurred at the schoolhouse, just as the school was dismissed. Coming slowly along the white highway two small boys were espied, each carrying on his head a raft-like platform laden with plaster-of-Paris images. They were dark-complexioned little fellows, not more than twelve or thirteen years old; and were having difficulty to keep their feet and stagger along with their preposterous burdens.
The plaster casts comprised images of saints, elephants, giraffes, cherubs with little wings tinted in pink and yellow, a tall Madonna and Child, a bust of George Washington, a Napoleon, a grinning Voltaire, an angel with a pink trumpet and an evil-looking Tom Paine.
I suppose the loads were not as heavy as they looked, but the boys were having a hard time of it, to judge from their distressed faces peering anxiously from underneath the rafts which, at each step, rocked to and fro and seemed always on the point of toppling. Frantic clutches of small brown hands and the quick shifting of feet alone saved a smash-up.
The master was still in the schoolhouse with some of the older boys and girls; but the younger ones had rushed out when the bell rang.
"Hi, where are you going?" several shouted. "What you got on your heads?"
The little strangers turned their faces and, nodding violently, tried to smile ingratiatingly. Some one let fly a snowball, and in a moment the mob of boys, shouting and laughing noisily, chased after them. No harm was intended; it was merely excess of spirits at getting out from school. But the result was disastrous. The little fellows faced round in alarm, cried out wildly in an unknown tongue and then, in spite of their burdens, tried to run away.
The inevitable happened: one of them stumbled, fell against the other, and down they both went headlong with a crash. The tall Madonna was broken in two; Washington had his cocked hat crushed; the cherubs had lost their wings; and as for the elephants and the giraffes, there was a general mix-up of broken trunks and long necks.
The little fellows had scrambled to their feet, and after a frightened glance set up wails of lamentation in which the wordpadronerecurred fast and fearfully. By that time Master Brench, with the older pupils, among whom were my cousins, Addison, Theodora and Ellen, had come out. The old Squire, too, chanced to be approaching with a horse sled; often of late, since the traveling was bad, he had driven to the schoolhouse to get us.
It was a wholly compassionate group that now gathered about the forlorn itinerants. Who they were or whither they were traveling was at first far from clear, for they could not speak a word of English.
At last the old Squire, touched by their looks of despair and sorrow, decided to put their "rafts" on the horse sled and to take the little strangers home with us for the night.
They seemed to be chilled to the very marrow of their bones, for they hung round the stove in the kitchen as if they would never thaw out. When grandmother Ruth set a warm supper before them, they ate like starved animals and cast pathetic glances at the table to see whether there was more food. Tears stood in grandmother's eyes as she replenished their plates.
Little by little, with the aid of many signs and gestures, they managed to tell us their story. Apadronehad brought them with nine other boys from Naples to sell plaster images for him; we gathered that this man, who lived in Portland, cast the images himself. The only English words he had taught them were "ten cent," "twenty-five cent" and "fifty cent"—the prices of the plaster casts.
A few days before, in spite of the bitterly cold weather, he had sent them out with their wares and bidden them to call at every house until they had sold their stock. Then they were to bring back the money they had taken in. He had given a package of dry, black bread to each of them and had told them to sleep at nights in barns.
Sales were few, and long after their bread was gone they had wandered on, not daring to go back until they had sold all their wares. What little money they had taken in they dared not spend for food, for fear thepadronewould whip them! Their tale roused no little indignation in the old Squire and grandmother Ruth.
What with the food and the warmth the little Italians soon grew so sleepy that they drowsed off before our eyes. We made a couch of blankets for them in a warm corner, and they were still soundly asleep there when Addison and I went out to do the farm chores the next morning.
We kept the little image peddlers with us for several days thereafter. In fact, we were at a loss to know what to do with them, for a cold snap had come on. With their thin clothes and worn-out shoes they were in no condition either to go on or to go back; and, moreover, now that their images were broken, they were in terror of theirpadrone.
One of the boys was slightly larger and stronger than the other; his name, he managed to tell us, was Emilio Foresi. The first name of the other was Tomaso, but I have forgotten his surname. Tomaso, I recollect, had little gold rings in his ears. His voice was soft, and he had gentle manners.
Under the influence of good food and a warm place to sleep both boys brightened visibly and even grew vivacious. On the third morning we heard Emilio singing some Neapolitan folk-song to himself. Yet they were shy about singing to us, and it was only after considerable coaxing that Theodora induced them to sing a few Italian songs together. Halstead had an old violin, and we found that Tomaso could play it surprisingly well.
By carefully sorting our reserve of worn clothes and shoes we managed to fit out the little strangers more comfortably, but the problem of what to do with them remained. Grandmother Ruth thought that theirpadronemight trace them and appear on the scene.
Several days more passed; and then the old Squire, having business at Portland, decided to take them with him. He intended to find this Neapolitanpadroneand try to secure better treatment for the boys in the future.
Addison drove them to the railway station, where the old Squire checked their empty image "rafts" in the baggage car. Before they left the old farm, first Emilio and then Tomaso took grandmother Ruth's hand very prettily and said, with deep feeling, "Vi ringrazio," several times, and managed to add "Tank you."
After his return from Portland the old Squire told us that he had gone with the lads to the place where they lodged and had taken an officer with him. They found thepadronein a basement, engaged in casting more images. At first the Italian was very angry; but partly by persuasion, partly by putting the fear of the law into his heart, they made him promise not to send his boys out again until May.
The old Squire also enlisted the sympathies of two women in Portland, who undertook to see that the boys were better housed and cared for in the future. And there for the time being the episode of the little image venders ended.
Twelve, perhaps it was thirteen, years passed. Addison, Halstead, Theodora and Ellen went their various ways in life, and of the group of young folks at the old farm I alone was left there. The old Squire was not able now to do more than oversee the work and to give me advice from his large experience of the past.
One day, late in October, we were in the apple house getting the crop of winter apples ready for market—Baldwins, Greenings, Blue Pearmains, Russets, Orange Apples, Arctic Reds—about four hundred barrels of them. We were sorting the apples carefully and putting the "number ones" in fresh, new barrels.
It was near noon, and grandmother Ruth had come out to say that our midday meal would soon be ready. She remained for a few moments and was counting the barrels we had put up that forenoon, when the doorway darkened behind her, and, looking up, we saw a stranger standing there—a well-dressed, rather handsome young man with dark hair and dark moustache. He was looking at us inquiringly, smilingly, almost timidly, I thought.
"How do you do?" I said. "You wanted to see some one here?"
He came a step nearer and said, with a foreign accent, "I ver glad see you again."
Seeing our puzzled looks, he went on: "I tink maybe you not remember me. But I come here one time, when snow ver deep. Ver cold then," and he shuddered to show how cold it was. "I stay here whole week. You no remember? I Emilio—Emilio Foresi."
Now, indeed, we remembered the little image peddlers. "Yes, yes, yes!" the old Squire cried.
"Well, I never! Can it be possible?" grandmother Ruth exclaimed. "Why, you've grown up, of course!"
Grown up, in good truth, and a very prosperous-looking young man was Emilio. He evidently remembered well his sojourn with us years ago, and, moreover, remembered it with pleasure; for now he grasped the old Squire's hand warmly and then, laughing joyously, held grandmother Ruth's in both his own.
"But where have you been all this time?" the old Squire exclaimed.
"I live now in Boston. Not long did I sell the images. I leave mypadrone. He was hard man, not so ver bad, but ver poor. Then I have a cart and sell fruit, banan, orange, apple, in de street, four year. After that I have fruit stand on Tremont Street three year. I do ver well, and have five fruit stands; and now I buy apples to send to Genoa and Messina."
"But Tomaso, where's little Tomaso?" grandmother Ruth exclaimed.
Emilio's face saddened. "Tomaso he die," said he and shook his head. "He tak bad colds and have cough two year. Doctors said he have no chance in dis climate. I send him home to Napoli, and he die. But America fine place," Emilio added, as if defending our climate. "Good country. Everybody do well here."
We had Emilio as a guest at our midday meal that day—quite a different Emilio from the pinched little fellow of thirteen years before. He glanced round the old dining-room.
"Here where I sit dat first night!" he cried, laughing like a boy. "Big old clock right over there, Tomaso dis side of me, and young, kind, pretty girl on other side. All smile so kind to us; and oh, how good dat warm, nice food taste, we so hongry!"
He remembered every detail of his stay. The red apples that we had given him seemed to have impressed him especially; neither of the boys had ever eaten an apple before.
"Whole big basketful you fetch up from de cellar and say tak all you want," he ran on, still laughing. "Naver any apple taste like dose, so beeg, so red!"
As we sat and talked he told us of his present business and how he had tried the then novel experiment of shipping small lots of New England apples to Italy. There had been doubt whether the apples would bear the voyage and arrive in sound condition, but he had no trouble when the fruit was carefully selected and well put up. That led him to inquire about our apple crop and to explain that that was perhaps one of the reasons—not the only one—for his visit.
"I know you raise good apples," he said. "I like to buy them."
We told him how many we had, and he asked what price we expected to get. We answered that the local dealers had already fixed the price that fall at two dollars a barrel.
"I will pay you two dollars and a half," Emilio said without a moment's hesitation.
"But, Emilio," the old Squire put in, "we couldn't ask more than the market price."
"Ah, but you have good apples!" he replied. "I know how dose apples taste, and I know dey will be well barreled. No wormy apples, no bruised apples. Dey worf more because good honest man put dem up. I pay you two fifty."
We shipped the entire lot to him the following week and received prompt payment. Incidentally, we learned that Foresi's rating as a business man was high, and that he enjoyed the reputation of being an honorable dealer. For many years—as long as he was in the business, in fact—we sent him choice lots of winter fruit, for which he always insisted on paying a price considerably in advance of the market quotations.
Just before school closed a disagreeable incident occurred.
It was one of the few times that the old Squire really reproved us sternly. Often, of course, he had to caution us a little, or speak to us about our conduct; but he usually did it in an easy, tolerant way, ending with a laugh or a joke. But that time he was in earnest.
He had come home that night just at dark from Three Rivers, in Canada, where he was engaged in a lumbering enterprise. He had been gone a fortnight, and during his absence Addison, Halstead and I had been doing the farm chores. The drive from the railway stations, on that bleak January afternoon had chilled the old gentleman, and he went directly into the sitting-room to get warm. So it was not until he came out to sit down to supper with us that he noticed a vacant chair at table.
"Where is Halstead?" he asked. "Isn't Halstead at home?"
No one answered at first; none of us liked to tell him what had happened. We had always found our cousin Halstead hard to get on with. Lately he had been complaining to us that he ought to be paid wages for his labor, when, as a matter of fact, what he did at the farm never half repaid the old Squire for his board, clothes and the trouble he gave. During the old gentleman's absence that winter Halstead had become worse than ever and had also begun making trouble at the district school.
His special crony at school was Alfred Batchelder, who had an extremely bad influence on him. Alfred was a genius at instigating mischief, and he and Halstead played an odious prank at the schoolhouse, as a result of which the school committee suspended them for three weeks.
That was unfortunate, for it turned the boys loose to run about in company. Usually they quarreled by the time they had been together half a day; but this time there seemed to be a special bond between them, and they hatched a secret project to go off trapping up in the great woods. They intended to stay until spring, when they would reappear with five hundred dollar's worth of fur!
Addison and I guessed that something of the sort was in the wind, for we noticed that Halstead was collecting old traps and that he was oiling a gun he called his. We also missed two thick horse blankets from the stable and a large hand sled. A frozen quarter of beef also disappeared from the wagon-house chamber.
"Let him go, and good riddance," Addison said, and we decided not to tell grandmother or the girls what we suspected. In fact, I fear that we hoped Halstead would go.
The following Friday afternoon while the rest of us were at school both boys disappeared. That evening Mrs. Batchelder sent over to inquire whether Alfred was at our house. Halstead, to his credit, had shown that he did not wish grandmother to worry about him. Shortly before two o'clock that afternoon, he had come hastily to the sitting-room door, and said, "Good-by, gram. I'm going away for a spell. Don't worry." Then, shutting the door, he had run off before she could reply or ask a question.
When we got home from school that night, Addison and I found traces of the runaways. There had been rain the week before, followed by a hard freeze and snow squalls, which had left a film of light snow on the hard crust beneath. At the rear of the west barn we found the tracks of a hand sled leading off across the fields toward the woods.
"Gone hunting, I guess," said Addison. "They are probably heading for the Old Slave's Farm, or for Adger's lumber camp. Let them go. They'll be sick to death of it in a week."
I felt much the same about it; but grandmother and Theodora were not a little disturbed. Ellen, however, sided with Addison. "Halse will be back by to-morrow night," she said. "He and Alfred will have a spat by that time."
Saturday and Sunday passed, however, and then all the following week, with no word from them.
On Tuesday evening, when they had been gone eleven days, Mrs. Batchelder hastened in with alarming news for us. She had had a letter from Alfred, she said, written from Berlin Falls in New Hampshire, where he had gone to work in a mill; but he had not said one word about Halstead!
"I don't think they could have gone off together," she said, and she read Alfred's letter aloud to us, or seemed to do so, but did not hand it to any of us to read.
We had never trusted Mrs. Batchelder implicitly; and a long time afterwards it came out that there was one sentence in that letter that she had not read to us. It was this: "Don't say anything to any of them about Halstead." Guessing that there had been trouble of some kind between the boys, she was frightened; to shield Alfred she had hurried over with the letter, and had tried to make us believe that the boys had not gone off together.
Addison and I still thought that the boys had set out in company, though we did not know what to make of Alfred's letter. We were waiting in that disturbed state of mind, hoping to hear something from Alfred that would clear up the mystery, when the old Squire came home.
"He has gone away, sir," Addison said at last, when the old gentleman inquired for Halstead at supper.
"Gone away? Where? What for?" the old gentleman asked in much astonishment; and then the whole story had to be told him.
The old Squire heard it through without saying much. When we had finished, he asked, "Did you know that Halstead meant to go away?"
"We did not know for certain, sir," Addison replied.
"Still, you both knew something about it?"
"Yes, sir."
"Did either one of you do anything to prevent it?"
We had to admit that we had done nothing.
The old Squire regarded us a moment or two in silence.
"In one of the oldest narratives of life that have come down to us," he said at last, "we read that there were once two brothers living together, who did not agree and who often fell out. After a time one of them disappeared, and when the other—his name was Cain—was asked what had become of his brother, he replied, 'Am I my brother's keeper?'
"In this world we all have to be our brothers' keepers," the old Squire continued. "We are all to a degree responsible for the good behavior and safety of our fellow beings. If we shirk that duty, troubles come and crimes are committed that might have been prevented. Especially in a family like ours, each ought to have the good of all at heart and do his best to make things go right."
That was a great deal for the old Squire to say to us. Addison and I saw just where we had shirked and where we had let temper and resentment influence us. Scarcely another word was said at table. It was one of those times of self-searching and reflection that occasionally come unbidden in every family circle. The old Squire went into the sitting-room to think it over and to learn what he could from grandmother. He was very tired, and I am afraid he felt somewhat discouraged about us.
Addison and I went up to our room early that evening. We exchanged scarcely a word as we went gloomily to bed. We knew that we were to blame; but we also felt tremendously indignant with Halstead.
Very early the next morning, however, long before it was light, Addison roused me.
"Wake up," he said. "Let's go see if we can find that noodle of ours and get him back home."
It was cold and dark and dreary; one of those miserable, shivery mornings when you hate to stir out of bed. But I got up, for I agreed with Addison that we ought to look for Halstead.
After dabbling our faces in ice-cold water and dressing we tiptoed downstairs. Going to the kitchen, we kindled a fire in order to get a bit of breakfast before we started. Theodora had heard us and came hastily down to bear a hand. She guessed what we meant to do.
"I'm glad you're going," said she as she began to make coffee and to warm some food.
It was partly the bitter weather, I think, but Addison and I felt so cross that we could hardly trust ourselves to speak.
"I'll put you up a nice, big lunch," Theodora said, trying to cheer us. "And I do hope that you will find him at the Old Slave's Farm, or over at Adger's camp. If you do, you may all be back by night."
She stole up to her room to get a pair of new double mittens that she had just finished knitting for Addison; and for me she brought down a woolen neck muffler that grandmother had knitted for her. Life brightens up, even in a Maine winter, with a girl like that round.
Addison took his shotgun, and I carried the basket of luncheon. No snow had come since Halstead and Alfred left, and we could still see along the old lumber road the faint marks of their hand-sled runners. In the hollows where the film of snow was a little deeper, two boot tracks were visible.
"Halse wouldn't go off far into the woods alone, after Alf left him," said I.
"No, he is too big a coward," said Addison.
It was thirteen miles up to the Old Slave's Farm, where the negro—who called himself Pinkney Doman—had lived for so many years before the Civil War.
"We can make it in three hours!" Addison exclaimed. "If we find him there, we shall be back before dark. And we had better hurry," he added, with a glance at the sky. "For I guess there's a storm coming; feels like it."
In a yellow-birch top at a little opening near the old road we saw two partridges eating buds; Addison shot one of them and took it along, slung to his gun barrel.
The faint trail of the sled continued along the old winter road all the way up to the clearing where the negro had lived, and by ten o'clock we came into view of the two log cabins. Very still and solitary they looked under that cold gray sky.
"No smoke," Addison said. "But we'll soon know." He called once. We then hurried forward and pushed open the door of the larger cabin. No one was there.
But clearly the two truants had stopped there, for the sled track led directly to the door of the cabin. There had been a fire in the stone fireplace. Beside a log at the door, too, Addison espied a hatchet that a while before we had missed from the tool bench in the wagon-house.
"Well, if that isn't like their carelessness!" he exclaimed, laughing. "I'll take this along."
But the runaways had not tarried long. We found the sled track again, leading into the woods at the northwest of the clearing.
"Well, that settles it," said Addison. "They haven't gone to Adger's, for that is east from here. I'll tell you! They went to Boundary Camp on Lurvey's Stream. And that's eighteen or nineteen miles from here." He glanced at the sky. "Now, what shall we do? It will snow to-night."
"Perhaps we could get up there by dark," said I.
For a moment Addison considered. "All right!" he exclaimed. "It's a long jaunt. But come on!"
On we tramped again, following that will-o'-the-wisp of a hand-sled track into the thick spruce forest. For the first nine or ten miles everything went well; then one of the dangers of the great Maine woods in winter suddenly presented itself.
About one o'clock it began to snow—little icy pellets that rattled down through the tree tops like fine shot or sifted sand. The chill, damp wind sighing drearily across the forest presaged a northeaster.
"We've got to hurry!" Addison said, glancing round.
We both struck into a trot and, with our eyes fastened to the trail, ran on for about two miles until we came to a brook down in a gorge. By the time we had crossed that the storm was upon us and the forest had taken on the bewildering misty, gray look that even the most experienced woodsman has reason to dread.
The snow that had fallen had obscured the faint sled tracks, and Addison, who was ahead, pulled up. "We can't do it," he said. "We shan't get through."
My first impulse was to run on, to run faster; that is always your first instinct in such cases. Then I remembered the old Squire's advice to us what to do if we should ever happen to be caught by a snowstorm in the great woods:
"Don't go on a moment after you feel bewildered. Don't start to run, and don't get excited. Stop right where you are and camp. If you run, you will begin to circle, get crazy and perish before morning."
Addison cast another uneasy glance into the dim forest ahead. "Better camp, I guess," he said. Turning, we hurried back into the hollow.
A few yards back from the brook were two rocks, about six feet apart and nearly as high as my head. Hard snow lay between them; but we broke it into pieces by stamping on it, and succeeded in clearing most of it away, so that we bared the leaves and twigs that covered the ground. Then, while I hacked off dry branches from a fallen fir-tree, Addison gathered a few curled rolls of bark from several birches near by and kindled a fire between the rocks.
We kept the fire going for more than an hour, until all the remaining snow was thawed and the frost and wet thoroughly dried out, and until the rocks had become so hot that we could hardly touch them. Then, after hauling away the brands and embers, we brushed the place clean with green boughs, and thus made for ourselves a warm, dry spot between the rocks.
With poles and green boughs, we made for our shelter a roof that was tight enough to keep out the snow. Except that we made a little mat of bark and dry fir brush, to lie on, and that Addison brought an armful of curled bark from the birches and a quantity of dry sticks to burn now and then, that was the extent of our preparation for the night. We had as warm and comfortable a den as any one could wish for.
We decided not to cook our partridge, but to eat the food in our basket. After our meal we got a drink of water at the brook, then crawled inside our den and—as Maine woodsmen say—"pulled the hole in after us," by stopping it with boughs.
"Now, let it storm!" Addison exclaimed.
Taking off our jackets and spreading them over us, we cuddled down there by the warm rocks, and there we passed the night safely and by no means uncomfortably.
It was still snowing fast in the morning; but the flakes were larger now, and the weather had perceptibly moderated during the latter part of the night. The forest, however, still looked too misty for us to find our way through it.
"We might as well take it easy," Addison said. "If Halse is at Boundary Camp, he will not leave in such weather as this."
All that forenoon it snowed steadily, and in fact for most of the afternoon. More than a foot of snow had come. We opened the front of our snow-coated den, kindled a fire there, and after dressing our partridge broiled it over the embers. Still it snowed; but the weather now was much warmer. By the following morning, we thought, we should have clear, cold weather and should be able to set out again.
But never were weather predictions more at fault. The next morning it was raining furiously; and our den had begun to drip. In fact, a veritable January thaw had set in.
All that forenoon it poured steadily; and water began to show yellow through the snow in the brook beside our camp. Addison crept out and looked round, but soon came back dripping wet.
"Look here!" said he in some excitement. "There's a freshet coming, and Lurvey's Stream is between us and Boundary Camp. If we don't start soon, we can't get there at all."
Just as he finished speaking a deep, portentous rumbling began and continued for several seconds. The distant mountain sides seemed to reverberate with it, and at the end the whole forest shook with heavy, jarring sounds. We both leaped out into the rain.
"What is it, Ad?" I cried.
"Earthquake," said Addison at last. "I've heard the old Squire say that one sometimes comes in Maine, when there is a great winter thaw."
The deep jar and tremor gave us a strange sense of insecurity and terror; there seemed to be no telling what might happen next. Accordingly, we abandoned our moist den and set off in the rain. We went halfway to our knees at every step in the now soft, slushy snow. Addison went ahead with the hatchet, spotting a tree every hundred feet or so, and I followed in his tracks, carrying the basket and the gun. In fifteen minutes we were wet to our skins.
For three or four miles we were uncertain of our course. The forest then lightened ahead, and presently we came out on the shore of a small lake that looked yellow over its whole surface.
"Good!" Addison exclaimed. "This must be Lone Pond, and see, away over there is Birchboard Mountain. Boundary Camp is just this side of it. It can't be more than four or five miles."
Skirting the south shore of the pond, we pushed on through fir and cedar swamps. Worse traveling it would be impossible to imagine. Every hole and hollow was full of yellow slush. Finally, after another two hours or so of hard going, we came out on Lurvey's Stream about half a mile below the camp, which was on the other bank. A foot or more of water was running yellow over the ice; but the ice itself was still firm, and we were able to cross on it.
Even before we came in sight of the camp, we smelled wood smoke.
"Halse is there!" I exclaimed.
"It may be trappers from over the line," Addison said. "Be cautious."
I ran forward, however, and peeped in at the little window. Some one was crawling on the floor, partly behind the old camp stove, and I had to look twice before I could make out that it was really Halstead. Then we burst in upon him, and Addison said rather shortly, "Well, hunter, what are you doing here?"
Halstead raised himself slowly off the floor beside the stove, stared at us for a moment without saying a word, and then suddenly burst into tears!
It was some moments before Halstead could speak, he was so shaken with sobs. We then discovered that his left leg was virtually useless, and that in general he was in a bad plight. He had been there for eight days in that condition, crawling round on one knee and his hands to keep a fire and to cook his food.
"But how did you get hurt?" Addison asked.
"That Alf did it!" Halstead cried; and then, with tears still flowing, he went on to tell the story—his side of it.
While getting their breakfast on the third morning after they had reached the camp, they had had a dispute about making their coffee; hard names had followed, and at last, in high temper, Alfred had sprung up declaring that he would not camp with Halstead another hour. Grabbing the gun, he had started off.
"That's my gun! Leave it here! Drop it!" Halstead had shouted angrily and had run after him.
Down near the bank of the stream, Halstead had overtaken him and had tried to wrest the gun from him. Alfred had turned, struck him, and then given him so hard a push that he had fallen over sidewise with his foot down between two logs. Alfred had run on without even looking back.
The story did not astonish us. For the time being, however, we were chiefly concerned to find out how badly Halstead was injured, with a view to getting him home. His ankle was swollen, sore and painful; he could not touch the foot to the floor, and he howled when we tried to move it.
Evidently he had suffered a good deal, and pity prevented us from freeing our minds to him as fully as we should otherwise have done. The main thing now was to get him home, where a doctor could attend him.
"We shall have to haul him on the hand sled," Addison said to me; and fortunately the sled that Alfred and he had taken was there at the camp.
But first we cooked a meal of some of the beef, corn meal and coffee they had taken from the old Squire's.
It was still raining; and on going out an hour later we found that the stream had risen so high that we could not cross it. The afternoon, too, was waning; and, urgent as Halstead's case appeared, we had to give up the idea of starting that night. During the rest of the afternoon we busied ourselves rigging a rude seat on the sled.
There were good dry bunks at the camp, but little sleep was in store for us. Halstead was in a fevered, querulous mood and kept calling to us for something or other all night long. Whenever he fell asleep he tumbled about and hurt his ankle. That would partly wake him and set him crying, or shouting what he would do to Alfred.
Throughout the night the roar of the stream outside grew louder, and at daybreak it was running feather white. As for the snow, most of it had disappeared; stumps, logs and stones showed through it everywhere; the swamps were flooded, and every hole, hollow and depression was full of water.
That was Wednesday. We made a soup of the beef bone, cooked johnny-cake from the corn meal and kept Halstead as quiet as possible. We had left home early Sunday morning and knew that our folks would be greatly worried about all three of us.
As the day passed, the stream rose steadily until the water was nearly up to the camp door.
"If only we had a boat, we could put Halse in it and go home," Addison said.
We discussed making a raft, for if we could navigate the stream we could descend it to within four miles of the old farm. But the roaring yellow torrent was clearly so tumultuous that no raft that we could build would hold together for a minute; and we resigned ourselves to pass another night in the camp.
The end of the thaw was at hand, however; at sunset the sky lightened, and during the evening the stars came out. At midnight, while replenishing the fire, I heard smart gusts of wind blowing from the northwest. It was clearing off cold. Noticing that it seemed very light outside, I went to the door and saw the bright arch of a splendid aurora spanning the whole sky. It was so beautiful that I waked Addison to see it.
By morning winter weather had come again; the snow slush was frozen. The stream, however, was still too high to be crossed, and the swamps and meadows were also impassable. We now bethought ourselves of another route home, by way of a lumber trail that led southward to Lurvey's Mills, where there was a bridge over the stream.
"It is five miles farther, but it is our only chance of getting home this week," Addison said.
We were busy bundling Halstead up for the sled trip when the door opened and in stepped Asa Doane, one of our hired men at the farm, and a neighbor named Davis.
"Well, well, here you are, then!" Asa exclaimed in a tone of great relief. "Do you know that the old Squire's got ten men out searching the woods for you? Why, the folks at home are scared half to death!"
We were not sorry to see Asa and Davis, and to have help for the long pull homeward. We made a start, and after a very hard tramp we finally reached the old farm, thoroughly tired out, at eight o'clock that evening.
Theodora and grandmother were so affected at seeing us back that they actually shed tears. The old Squire said little; but it was plain to see that he was greatly relieved.
If the day had been a fatiguing one for us, it had been doubly so for poor Halstead. We carried him up to his room, put him to bed and sent for a doctor. He did not leave his room again for three weeks and required no end of care from grandmother and the girls.
Little was ever said among us afterwards of this escapade of Halstead's. As for Alfred, he came sneaking home about a month later, but had the decency, or perhaps it was the prudence, to keep away from us for nearly a year.