CHAPTER V.TURNING THE CORNER.The journey home was not a difficult one for Katy, as the roads were broke out thoroughly by this time. The journey, the subsequent day however, was a hard one for Mr. and Mrs. Plympton, as they went with Walter to the cars to see him safely started for his ride to Franklin Academy.“Oh!” said Walter, who was not so absorbed in school–plans but that he could see two pairs of misty eyes when he chanced to turn suddenly toward them, “don’t feel bad, father and mother. You know I shall be back by the first of August, and you know, father, what you said about time going like a sled, the iron on whose runner is rubbed smooth.”“Yes,” said his father soberly.“Be a good boy, Walter,” was his mother’s last reminder. About fifty had preceded it,but she kept this as the last. The next minute, there were two solemn faces on the platform of a country station, gazing intently at a car window that moved off rapidly and framed but for a moment a young, eager, ambitious, hopeful face.Walter’s stay at Franklin Academy was not an eventful one outwardly. There was the usual course of instruction for a boy of sixteen, and Walter acquitted himself creditably. There was the usual proportion of “bad boys and small scrapes,” but Walter had no affinity for them and was known as a warm–hearted, enthusiastic youth, but not at all as a wild one. He gained some note as a fine gymnast. Day after day the academy bell tinkled out its mild warnings that study or recitation hours had arrived, and day after day, the same flock of boys and girls passed along the shaded walks traversing the academy yard. Outwardly, as already asserted, Walter’s academy course was without special incident. In the boy’s personal private history though, a very important corner was turned. That which led to the turn was singular also.It was “composition day” in the academy, and various young essayists had read their opinions upon “School days,” “A Summer landscape,” and “George Washington.” Then came May Elliott’s piece of pen–work. May was not very generally known by the students. Her home was not in town, and the people with whom she boarded lived two miles away, so that the students did not see very much of her apart from her class hours. Although not pretty, yet her face interested you. Her blue eyes had a certain bright, positive look, as if she had something to say to you, and they arrested your attention. The subject of her composition was this, “What are we living for?” Her course of thought was to specify the aims of different people in life, their worthiness and unworthiness; and then she closed in this fashion: “The life that does not take into account the need of those about us, that does not take into account another life, that does not take God into account, is making,—”Here May looked up in her bright, positive way. It was a chance look that she gave in the direction of the north–east rather than the north–west corner of the schoolroom. “Making—a serious mistake,” said May. In the north–east corner sat two students on opposite sides of the same aisle, Walter Plympton and Chauncy Aldrich. Each student said, “Does she mean me?” May Elliott did not mean either individual.It was a chance movement of her eyes, but like many of our movements that without intent are very significant in their results, the look set two young men to thinking. After school, they discussed the merits of May’s theme and treatment. Chauncy was the first speaker. He was a very forcible looking young man, one who seemed to come at you and collide with you, although he might be a hundred feet off. He brushed up his hair in a mighty roll above his forehead, and that gave his head the look of a battering–ram. He was nicknamed “Solomon,” as he talked and acted as if he carried more native and more acquired wisdom in his head than all the students, all the teachers, and all the trustees of Franklin Academy bunched together. And yet he was rather liked in school, as he had a bright, pleasant face, was generally smiling, and combined with a really selfish nature, an apparent readiness to help everybody that came along.“Walter,” said Chauncy, as they went away from the academy together, “What do you think of May Elliott’s composition?”“I thought it was quite good. Anyway she looked over in my corner as if she meant me.”“That’s what I thought. I didn’t know but she was looking at me, as much as to say,‘Chauncy, this is meant for you.’ However, Miss Elliott, you may keep looking all day, and I shall only take what I please of it, and you may dispose of the rest in what market you please.” Here Chauncy pushed back his hat; and his front knob of hair came into prominence, and looked very belligerent, as if warning Miss Elliott to be careful how she threw her ink–arrows in that direction.“Oh, I didn’t suppose she really meant anything personal, Chauncy.”“Perhaps not; but my motto is to be on the lookout, and not take people as meaning to give you a higher per cent than human nature is inclined to allow you.”Chauncy was professedly preparing himself for a “business life,” and terms like “per cent,” “market,” “stock,” were favorite words in his vocabulary. The wise man now resumed his conversation.“The fact is, with regard to what she said about other folks’ need, and another life, and so on, those things of course are so; but as for my needy neighbor, why, look at my needy self—ha—ha!”Here Chauncy gave one of his quick, ready laughs, that had something of the sound of a new half dollar when you throw it on a counter;ringing, yet hard and metallic. “There is my Uncle Bezaleel. His motto is, ‘Don’t forget number one,’ and how he has pulled the money in! Nobody stands higher in the market.”“Bezaleel?” asked Walter, catching at the word.“Yes, Bezaleel Baggs.”“Beelzebub your uncle?” Walter was about to say, remembering Aunt Lydia’s habit of speech; but he checked this imprudent phraseology and remarked, “Bez—Bezaleel Baggs your uncle?”“Yes, and a smart one. He is a great land–owner, buying up whole forests, and he runs mills and so on. He expects to give me a lift, perhaps take me in business with him. That’s my uncle.”“Indeed!” thought Walter.“Oh,” resumed Chauncy, “we were speaking of May Elliott’s composition. Well, I was going to say about her pious remarks at the close, that they are well enough in their place, of course; but if she meant me when she looked our way, I only want to say that there will be time for that by and by.Youcan think them over, if you want to.”Walter made no reply and the two separated.It was a casual remark, “You can think them over,” and at another time, Walter might quickly have forgotten the words. Somehow that day, the words stayed with Walter. They seemed to have roots, and they took hold of Walter’s thoughts, and went deep down into his soul, and there they clung.“I don’t know what the matter is why I keep thinking of that composition,” he said, later in the day.“You look sober, Walt,” observed Chauncy.“Thinking,” replied Walter laughing.“About that composition—eh? Well, here is one who is not,” and the wise man gave two or three satisfied little chuckles.“Why should he fancy I was thinking about that composition?” Walter asked himself. “I am, though, and can’t seem to get rid of it.”He went to his boarding–place, passed directly to his room, and sat down in a chair by the western window. There was an outlook across a stretch of green fields waving with grain, up to a round–topped hill, bushy with vigorous oaks. Over a shoulder of this hill peeped another, but so distant, that a veil of blue haze covered it all day. The stillness of the hour, for it was at twilight, the sun going down behind hangings of crimson along the blue hill,made a quiet in Walter’s breast, and suggested thoughts that in the hurry and noise of the day are not likely to be fostered.“Oh, that composition, ‘What are we living for?’” thought Walter. “Well, whatamI living for?”Was he living for others? He did trust he was a help to those at home, and yet he had no conscious, definite purpose to give himself for their welfare; and as for those outside, he certainly hoped he had done them no harm, and he ventured to think he might have granted a few favors, but he had not thought in a very special way about anybody except Walter Plympton. He had gone on in a boy’s careless fashion, meaning in a general way to mind his parents and consult their welfare; and to do “about the fair thing by outsiders,” was also his thought. As for that other life which we must all meet, the whole subject to his mind was in a hazy condition like the distant blue hill he was looking at. Once a week, while sitting in St. Mary’s at home, the old rector saying some solemn thing in the pulpit or the choir singing a plaintive tune, he was quite likely to think of another life. The other six days, he was thinking of school, and farmwork, and his duties at home, or play, outside.And as for thoughts about God, they would chase through his mind like the shadows of clouds across a green summer field. They might visit him at family prayers, or on Sunday, in church, or when praying by himself at home; but like the hasty cloud–shadows, such thoughts were soon gone. His general attitude toward all these subjects was that of a thoughtless indifference; and any particular attention he paid now and then was the result of a mere habit of going to church, or the saying of hurried prayers, rather than a direct preference and purpose of his heart.“I don’t think I am where I ought to be in such matters,” was Walter’s conclusion, and if he had a comfortable satisfaction in himself when he began to think, it had now melted away like a snow–bank in a spring rain.“The sun has been down, some time,” he said at last, “and the bright colors have all faded out of the sky. It looks pretty sober over there now.”Walter felt, as the sky looked, “sober.” The distant blue hill had quickly turned to a dark, undefined mass of shadow. The hill near by went behind a veil. Soon, the fields shrank out of sight, like green scrolls rolled up and taken away. Walter rose and left the room. He didnot leave his thoughts behind. Those went with him. For several days, he was thinking upon that subject: “What am I living for?” The longer he thought, the more deficient seemed his life. There came another night when he bowed his head in prayer as never before. Feeling his unworthiness, how poor and mean his life had been, he asked God to forgive him. Feeling that his life had been without a strong, definite, acceptable purpose, he asked God to take him, and help him live for the highest ends. And there rose up before him Jesus Christ, as the expression of God’s readiness to forgive a past, deficient life, sincerely regretted; Jesus Christ, as the perfect, divine Guide by which to direct all our lives in the future; Jesus Christ, his Saviour from sin. A letter arrived for the Plymptons one day, and it read thus:“Dear Father and Mother: I suppose you will be surprised to get this, but I wanted to tell you of something that has interested me and I know will interest you. I have made up my mind, God helping me, to be a different person. I hope I haven’t been what people call a bad boy, but still, I might have been better, and thought more of your interests, and tried hard to do my duty toward God. You will forgive me for all my thoughtlessness, won’t you? And you will pray for me, please, won’t you? Your affectionate son,“Walter.”“The dear boy!” exclaimed Mrs. Plympton. “Yes, father and I will pray for you, won’t we?”Mr. Plympton could only nod assent, for the tears filled his eyes. Indeed there were two people in that house who often looked at one another with red eyes that day, but it was the redness that goes with happy hearts, with the bright hopes of a morning sky, and not the glare of a sad fire that destroys our dearest interests.It may have been two weeks after the arrival of the above letter, that another came.“Here is a letter from your brother Boardman,” said Mr. Plympton, entering the kitchen, where his wife was cooking her weekly batch of pies. “Open it, please, and see what he says.”Mrs. Plympton wiped carefully her floury hands, adjusted her spectacles, and sitting down by a window where the light streamed in across the hollyhocks and sunflowers in the yard, began to read:“Dear Ezra and Louisa:—We are all well, and hope you are the same. I suppose you are expecting Walter home before long, this summer, and I got the impression from you that he was not going back again. I think I can give him a job this fall and winter if you agree to it, and I’ll see that he has good wages. I have always, with Lydia’s help, as youknow, managed my store and post–office myself, but I expect I shall need the help of a clerk. I have sold a lot of land, timber land, to Mr. Bezaleel Baggs; and I am putting up a steam mill, and I am interested in it, and it is going to take me away from the store a good deal. Then I have engaged to supply the crew at the life saving station with provisions, and also to take their mail to them. So you see somebody has got to go and look after their orders, and fetch their goods, and it is more than I can conveniently look after. What do you say to letting Walter come here the first of September? Please let me know soon.“Your affectionate brother,“Boardman Blake.”“Well, Ezra, what do you say?”“I—I—don’t know. I sort of hate to have him away, Louisa.”“So do I.”“I suppose though, he must start some time to be doing for himself.”“Oh, here is a postscript! Tucked away up in one corner. I almost lost sight of it.”“What does it say?”“‘P. S.—He can come home every week.’ That makes it different, Ezra.”“And it’s only ten miles away. I suppose he’ll be just crazy to see that life saving station.”“So he will. When he came back last winter, he said it was just aggravating to think he could not stay longer.”“Let us write to Walter and see what he says.”The result of all this was that the first day of September, when the life saving station was opened for the season, there appeared at the door Uncle Boardman’s new clerk, to receive the daily order for the crew’s provisions.“I am beginning a new life,” thought Walter.It was a new life in many ways. About six months ago, the careless, laughing, kindly–natured youth at home, had left it to assume new responsibilities elsewhere, at the academy. He had come back still happy and laughing, but a new and earnest purpose had entered his soul, and was controlling him. He had since been confirmed, in the little village church, openly acknowledging his Saviour. He had entered his uncle’s neighborhood to meet and assume fresh responsibilities. He would come in contact with the men at the life saving station. He would meet others in his daily business duties. Would he keep and increase the religion he had brought with him? Would it lessen?“I shall try hard to do my duty,” said Walter, in his thoughts.We shall see what he did.CHAPTER VI.THE STORE.The morning after his arrival at his uncle’s, Walter began his new duties as clerk, and opened the store. It was in the south–western corner of the house, and was also in a corner made by two roads. One was the lane that came up from the life saving station, widening into a road which went to the outside world. The second, starting at the store, continued its travels in an easterly direction, and ended them in a little fishing village overlooking the sea. Opening from the store into these two roads, as if to solicit and take up all passing custom, were two doors, and each was bordered by two windows. Above one of these doors, that on the road to the outside world, was a small sign, and it said, “B. Blake”; but said it very faintly. The sign once was black, and the name hadbeen painted in gilt letters; but the rains had been scouring the sign for years, and the sun bleaching it; and between the scouring and the bleaching, there had resulted a surface of shabby, blackish gray, streaked with dim, yellow lines. The store, as well as the sign, looked old. The entire house looked old. So did its owner, Boardman Blake; and the great, dark forest of pines beyond the house seemed to murmur day and night, “Growing old, growing old!” As one entered the store, in a very hospitable location between the two doors, he saw a rusty box stove flanked by two benches. The benches in winter rarely were without an occupant. In the spring, summer, and fall, these occupants in part were out on the sea, pulling into their uneasy boats, cod, hake, or haddock; while some were following the plow, hoeing corn or pitching the fragrant hay into bulky carts. Behind the benches, on the wall, were posters, announcing to a generally neglectful and ungrateful world, that “Vandyke’s Life–Bitters” would cure dyspepsia; that “Peaslee’s Liniment” never failed to take the stiffness out of a horse’s joints; while “Payson’s Hair Elixir” was sure to vitalize a bald head into the manufacturing of rich, luxuriant locks. The counters bordered two sides of the store, and sustained the weightof a desk in one corner where Boardman attended to his scanty book–keeping. Then there were two faded old show–cases whose store of peppermints, lozenges in gaudy wrappings, and gumdrops of every known rainbow–tint, excited the admiration of every schoolboy. There were also several pairs of scales, and a cheesebox. Behind the counters, ranged on shelves that began in some mysterious space below the counters’ level, and reached to the dusty, fly–specked ceiling, was an assortment of goods that only a country store can produce. There was not very much of any one article, but so many articles were gathered there that variety made up fully for quantity. There were dry goods, and goods that were not dry, such as bottles of medicine and essences; there were outfits for the farmer, and outfits for the fisherman. Hardware was there, like hammers and planes; and software, like sugar and meal. Goods were there, like boots and shoes; and goods like caps and clothing. As the storekeeper generally had only one suit of clothes on hand at a time, there was but little range of choice for the customer, and if compelled to take what he could find, a giant might have gone away wretched in the suit of a dwarf, or the dwarf departed only to be lost in the apparel of a giant.The store excited Walter’s interest, and as he opened it that first morning, his eyes made a rapid inventory of its miscellaneous contents.“And what is that?” he asked, noticing a shelf on which were clustered a few books. They were not for sale, but their titles and well–thumbed condition showed that they were for reference. One was a state gazetteer, another a volume of state laws, a third a small English dictionary, and a fourth was a Bible. The latter was bound in old leather covers, and its type was antique. It seemed to be a kind of safe, as well as aid to devotion, for various documents were there, like deeds and bills.“What is this?” exclaimed Walter, as a piece of paper fluttered out of the old Bible when he chanced to lift and open the book. “Uncle has a lot of papers in it, and I must look out. I must put this back.”He could not but see the figures, five hundred, in the left hand corner of the document, and carelessly had read, “For value received, I promise to pay Bezaleel Baggs, or order, five hundred dollars.” Walter stopped.“I must not read that, and did not intend to,” thought the clerk. He could but notice a blot in one corner of the bill. It was a singular blot.“It looks like an animal. There is its body, and those four streaks below would make good legs for a small animal. Pig, I guess. Now, I will put that away and attend to my work,” thought Walter. “Hullo! Who’s calling? Who’s here at six o’clock?”Walter noticed that the time by a clock secured to a post, was very near six o’clock.Somebody without was apparently shouting for the storekeeper. Stepping quickly to the door, Walter noticed first a gaily painted wagon. Its wheels were scarlet, and its shining black body was striped with scarlet. He was about saying to himself, “It’s a young fellow aboard,” when this same young fellow lifted a round–topped felt hat, disclosed a wall of hair, and shouted, “Youhere? You don’t say!”“I didn’t say anything about it, but I am glad to see you, Aldrich. What are you up to?”“This morning, I am up to bringing my uncle down here. He is out in the yard, the barnyard. I am clerking it with him, and shall be a neighbor of yours this winter; that is, a mile off, up at the office of my uncle. It is near the mill you know, that your uncle has put up for the sawing of the timber round here. Afeller gets a good apprenticeship with Bezaleel Baggs, I tell you. Oh, he is bright on a trade! I have learned a good deal by being with him, already. Say, what kind of a store have you in there? Most everything, I suppose.”Walter, who was out on the doorstep, here turned to the store. The upper part of the door was of glass, and one who occupied Walter’s position, could easily see within.“Is that a man in the store?” thought Walter. “Is it a man behind the counter?”He could not make out anything very distinctly. Besides, Chauncy was calling out to him, “Look out here, not in there? Do you expect the Hon. Boardman Blake is in there trading with himself? That would be handy, for he could be as sharp as he pleased, or as easy as he pleased. Really, he is out in the barn, for I saw him there a moment ago.”“I thought I noticed somebody in the store, but I guess it was only a shadow.”“Come, tell me about your plans,” said Chauncy, who seemed anxious to catch and hold Walters attention. “Tell me what you are up to?”“Why, I am clerking, am I not?”“Oh, yes. Of course you are. Well, do you like?”Walter did not answer at once. He could not rid his mind of the impression that something was not right in the store. He finally said, “This is my first morning in the store,” and was about to add, “I think I shall like here,” when he chanced to look again into the store. A golden ray of sunlight, as if an auger, had bored its way through the shadows behind the counter, and it fell upon the shelves that held the Bible and other volumes. In that light, Walter saw a form, that of a man, though of no one that he had ever seen before,—a short, heavy man, with broad shoulders, hatless; and was his hair light, or did the sunray brighten it as it fell upon it? He noticed that the man’s side whiskers projected into the sunlight, and also that he leaned over. Walter was about to lay his hand on the latch of the door when a terrific yell from Chauncy delayed him.“Ah–hoo! Ah–hoo!”Was Chauncy calling to him, or shouting to somebody in the store that he had already discovered, and perhaps might wish to notify? If such a thought came into Walter’s mind, it did not come clear as a ray of sunshine, but it was so confused and dim a suspicion that it made little impression upon him, and heturned one moment as if in obedience to Chauncy’s call, who was now shouting, “Ah–hoo–hoo! Plymp–ton!” Then he laughed heartily: “Ha–ha! You did not recognize my Indian yell that I have for folks. See here! I only wanted to say, if you were going into the store, and you have any—any—any—”It took Chauncy some time to tell what he did want, but fumbling in his pocket, he produced a ten–cent piece, and said, “Oh, anything! Bring me some candy!”“There is a customer in here, and I’ll bring it to you quick as I can.”“Customer, boy! You are demented! I don’t believe anybody is there, unless it is the Hon. Boardman, as I said before.”Chauncy was right. When Walter entered the store, no one was there! He went behind the counter, and then he looked under the counter. The usual row of dumb, unintelligent soap–boxes, and spice–boxes, and candy–boxes, could be seen there. He went to the shelves on which were the books. The sunshine, as well as the visitor, had mysteriously vanished. A fly crawling over the books suddenly buzzed in Walter’s face, as if to ask, in the fly–tongue, “What does this fellow want here?”“If this is not strange!” thought Walter.“Where did that man go? Am I getting ‘demented,’ as Chauncy said? Could anybody have gone to the sitting–room from the store?”From the store, one could directly enter the sitting–room. Walter hastily looked into the sitting–room. The sunray might have retreated there, and in the rich overflow of light entering two eastern windows, it certainly would not have been noticed as a separate ray. But had the rich, strong flood of light swallowed up the man, as well as the ray of sunshine? If he had gone into the sitting–room, where was he?“Nonsense!” thought Walter, for he heard the cracked voice of Aunt Lydia piping an old love–song of her girlhood, as she ironed the week’s wash in the kitchen opening out of the sitting–room. “Nonsense! If anybody had come here, of course she would have seen them. She don’t act as if she had seen anybody.” No. Aunt Lydia was singing in sharp, slender strains that old love–ditty, as free from any agitation as if it had been her uninterrupted avocation that morning.“Plympton! Plympton! Where’s that candy? Have you gone to get your folks to make that candy?” Chauncy was now calling fromthe store door, which he had opened. Walter returned, went to one of the show–cases, took out the quantity of candy ordered, and handed it to Chauncy.“The queerest thing!” exclaimed Walter. “I am sure I saw a man in here; but where he has gone, I don’t know.”“Saw a man!” replied Chauncy, with an incredulous air. “Nobody has been round here except you and me. Here’s your uncle up the road.”And there indeed Boardman Blake was, slowly moving along toward the store in his careless, abstracted way.“There’smyuncle, and you can see him down at the fish–house,” continued Chauncy. “He would like to findyouruncle. That’s what I brought him down here for. Don’t you see my uncle?”The fish–house was a black little building, that the rough, strong sea–winds for the last twenty–five years had been trying to push over, and had partially succeeded. It had been found necessary to prop it on one side. Here, the storekeeper accumulated every year a stock of dried salt fish, purchased of the fishermen and then sold out to customers from the surrounding country. Chauncy’s uncle waswalking about the fish–house as if trying to find somebody.“Is that the man I saw in the store?” Walter asked.“Haw–haw!” laughed Chauncy noisily. “He’s been down at the fish–house trying to hunt up your uncle, all the time I have been here. Come out and see him, and let’s ask him.”Walter stepped back to say to Aunt Lydia that he wanted to go to the fish–house, and would be back very soon, and then crossed the road with Chauncy to the fish–house.“The man I saw in the store was sort of built that way, heavy, and short, and broad at the shoulders, and was leaning over. I wish this man would lean over, and let me see how he looks,” thought Walter. The suspected party now turned his face to the young men, as if aware of Walter’s desire to inspect it. It was a face round and full, flanked with thin, gray whiskers. One of the eyes had a cast in it, which gave “Uncle Bezaleel’s” face a certain crookedness of look; but that does not necessarily mean crookedness of character. The eyes of some very honest people have an unfortunate squint. If though, any one looking at the upper part of B. Bagg’s face should say, “B. Baggs is a crooked fellow. Look out!” thenthe voice below entirely contradicted that impression. It was a mild, agreeable voice, kindly, and rather musical. It had a persuasive tone, and if the crooked eye was a misfortune, the voice of which B. Baggs was owner, had proved to be an excellent piece of property. It had coaxed many poor fellows on to their ruin. Its softness, its sympathy, its willingness to be your friend at any sacrifice, and its great grief if you possibly could think it was your enemy, had brought its possessor much money. It was this voice that had made its way to the softest place in the soft heart of Boardman Blake, quicker than the sharpest auger in the world.“Uncle, have you been in Mr. Blake’s store this morning?” inquired Chauncy.“Why, no, child!” said Uncle Bezaleel in the most affectionate and bland of tones, at the same time winking maliciously with his crooked eye. “What made you think so?”“Oh, I didn’t think so. I knew you had been out here all the time, trying to hunt up Mr. Blake; but my friend Plympton here, uncle, thought you had been in.”“Ah, how d’ye do, Mr. Plympton,” said Uncle Bezaleel cordially, addressing Walter by that title of manhood which goes so straight to aboy’s heart. Here, with his fat fingers, he softly squeezed Walter’s hand. “I have been out here and round somewhat, admiring the tidy way you and your uncle keep things in. Now that barnyard looks trim as a dining–room. Thrifty as can be, I’m sure.”The barnyard certainly was very neat for such a place, but that tired, shabby, leaning old fish–house, and the aspect of the place in general, did not sustain B. Baggs’ wonderful opinion of thrift. Walter, though, did not like to mistrust people, and this ready denial, the soft–toned compliment also, were irresistible, and Walter concluded it must have been somebody else that he saw in the store.“Oh, I see, sir,” he cried promptly. “It must have been another man. Excuse me.”“All—all right. I must have my little joke, and I guess you—you—ran into your uncle’s cider barrels, this morning, and couldn’t see straight.”“Haw—haw!” shouted Chauncy.“Oh, no,” laughed Walter. “I don’t imbibe.”“That’s right, young man. Don’t touch it! Don’t.”The crooked eye now gave a funny, wicked look at Walter, while Chauncy, behind Walter’s back, executed with his features a look extraordinaryenough to have fitted out a clown for his performances. Uncle Boardman here arrived, and the upright, moral B. Baggs, proceeded at once to confer with him. But who was it that Walter saw in the store? He intended to speak at once to his uncle and aunt about it, but he was sent away to The Harbor, the fishing village in the neighborhood, and when he returned, other duties occupied his mind, and at last, like other matters we neglect, it went for the present out of his thoughts altogether.Aunt Lydia, the evening of this call by Bezaleel Baggs, had a remark to make to her husband. They were alone in their sitting–room, Aunt Lydia knitting by a little, red, square–topped stand, that supported a kerosene lamp. Uncle Boardman was also sitting near the table, reading the weekly county paper. He had a pleasant face, one to which children, and dogs, and all kinds of dumb animals never made their appeal in vain. It was benevolent as the sunlight after three days of cloudy sky. He may have had brown eyes, but these watchers of the world had their seat so far under his bushy eyebrows, like overhanging eaves, that it was hard to tell their color. When he looked at another, one saw two soft, shininglittle globes of light directed toward him. As he always shaved, his big, smooth face had a certain boy–look to it. When walking, he had a way of looking down, carrying his folded hands before him. He was likely to come in contact with all sorts of beings and objects; but no romping child that he collided with, no big dog bumping against the abstracted pedestrian, ever heard a testy word of remonstrance from him. He took kindly a knock from a fish–barrel, or a poke from a passing wheel–barrow. While people joked about him, everybody respected and trusted his integrity.“He’s good salt all the way through,” said Nahum Caswell, an old fisherman at The Harbor. “He trusts other folks too much, and don’t allers know on which side of his bread the butter is; but then he never takes other folks’ butter from ’em. You can trust Boardman with a mint of money, and not a penny will ketch ’tween his fingers. No, sir.”If Boardman’s eyes, in their great charity, did not at once see into a man’s mean motives, Aunt Lydia’s did, very soon. Her bright, dark eyes looked deep, and did not look in vain. Bezaleel Baggs was uneasy the first time he met her. He felt that a very sharp, clear–seeing pair of eyes had fastened upon him a lookthat meant inspection, and he avoided her in every possible way.“Queer!” exclaimed Aunt Lydia this evening of our story. “Queer, that Belzebub Baggs—”“Bezaleel,” remonstrated Boardman mildly.“Wall, he is pizen whatever he is; but isn’t it queer he don’t like to talk with me? He’ll buttonhole you by the hour, Boardman, and palaver and make his soft speeches; but nary a word does he say to me if he can help it.”“Oh, he has business with me.”“The snake! I wish he had some with me, if I wouldn’t jest scorch him.”Uncle Boardman let out one of his soft, easy–natured chuckles, and remarked. “He probably sees you are a dangerous character. Ha—ha!”“Wall, if he don’t keep away from my winders, I’ll put some b’ilin’ water on him.”“Keep away from what? What’s he been doin’?”“My advice to him is to keep away from my winders. There I was this mornin’ at six o’clock, ironin’ away, and happened to hear a scratchin’ noise behind me—you see I was in the kitchen at the time, and my back was away from the sittin’–room—and I turned sort ofquick, and there was that Baggs at the winder of the sittin’–room—”“Inside?”“No, outside; and yet it seemed sort of queer. His head was turned this way, and it seemed as if he was a slidin’ down outside the clapboards. I couldn’t make it out what he was a doin’. For once in his life, he seemed awful glad to see me, and grinned at me, and really teched his hat. I don’t want none of his grins or hat–techin’s. When he had gone, I went to this winder, and I found this clingin’ to the blind. It looks as if it had been torn from a coat. I jest tucked it in there, because I wasn’t goin’ upstairs to my rag–bag then, and knew it would be safe.”Every housekeeper is apt to have a “saving fever,” but its style may vary extensively in different houses. One housekeeper will carefully cherish the scraps from the table. Another husbands the coal. A third burns no superfluous oil or gas. Another garners all bits of paper or cloth for the rag–man; and a fifth has two eyes out for all possible lessening of the consumption of butter. Aunt Lydia’s ambition, was to treasure up every shred of cloth, all ends of threads, and every slip of paper. She had put the savings of the morningin a little tin box on the mantel, intending to transfer them to the rag–bag the next time she journeyed upstairs.“A piece of cloth!” said Uncle Boardman, handling the relic. “Did you think it came from Baggs’ coat, though I don’t see how? He wore this morning that blue frock–coat of his, with the big, silver buttons.”“It looks more like a piece of coat–linin’.”“Indeed! Oh, I guess it’s all right,” said Uncle Boardman, rising to deposit in the box on the mantel this mysterious fragment. About five minutes later, he was wondering if something were not all wrong. Taking a candle from the mantel and lighting it, he stepped into the store. It was very dark, and very still there, save that the clock was ticking sharply. The storekeeper passed behind the counter to the book–shelf, where Bible and gazetteer, dictionary and statute–book, kept one another company in the dark. He took down the Bible, laid it on the counter, and then proceeded to examine it.“It’s in here somewhere, I know,” he softly whispered to himself; “for I tucked it away here, day before yesterday. He inquired for it, and I told him this morning I would get it, and send it to–morrow.”The desired document was that promise to pay Bezaleel Baggs five hundred dollars, which Walter had noticed. It could not now be found.“Perhaps it’s in the Psalms. I read a good deal there,” thought Uncle Boardman.Many promises are in the Psalms, but none to pay B. Baggs five hundred dollars could be found there.“Maybe it’s in Daniel. I was a lookin’ at the prophecies there,” thought the bewildered storekeeper; but the prophet had no such treasures in his keeping. He now proceeded to make a thorough and deliberate hunt through the book. He began at Genesis, and was patiently turning over the leaves in Proverbs, when a sharp voice rang out overhead, and then came in definite tones down through a funnel–hole in the ceiling. “You goin’ to bed some time ’fore the millennium, Boardman?”It was Aunt Lydia, in her chamber directly above the store; and she was using a very convenient substitute for a speaking–tube; a disused funnel–hole that passed through the ceiling of the store and the floor of Aunt Lydia’s room. Uncle Boardman started back as if the funnel–hole had been the mouth of a cannon, and Aunt Lydia sent from it a very effective shot.“Massy!” he exclaimed inwardly. “I didn’t know she was up there. Comin’, Lydia!” he shouted. “Comin’ very soon!”Giving occasional looks at the funnel–hole as if to be in readiness to dodge the shot that might be expected any moment from that quarter, he hastily completed his investigation of the Bible. So good a book, though, was unwilling to promise so untrustworthy a man as B. Baggs anything without a good assurance of repentance, and Uncle Boardman, closing the book, placed it on the book–shelf again.“Thatisqueer!” he murmured. “Well, if anybody found it, the note won’t do ’em any good, and as for Bezaleel, I can write him another.”Taking his candle again, he passed into the sitting–room, and then upstairs. It was time that he did so, for a fluttering of angry steps around the funnel–hole showed that Aunt Lydia was getting ready another and far heavier shot.CHAPTER VII.STANDING FIRM.Walter was enjoying a brief furlough at home in October. He was in his mother’s sewing–room that opened out of the kitchen. It was a little nest that had room only for a sewing machine, a table, and two chairs. Walter was now occupying one of these chairs, and his mother sat at her table, busily preparing some work for her nimble little machine. It was a mild, autumn day, and through the opened window came the sound of the cricket’s shrill piping, and the beating of the grain with an old–fashioned flail, by Farmer Grant, in his barn on the opposite side of the road. There was a crimson–stained maple near the house, that suggested to Walter the opening of his conversation with his mother.“How soon that maple has turned, mother!”“Oh no. It is time for it.”“Let me see. It is not so early for it afterall. It’s the fifteenth of October. The fifteenth! Why, that is the day Uncle Boardman said his mill would be done, and on my way back, I guess I’ll stop there and see how it looks.”“That the mill where his trees are to be sawed up?”“Yes, and I expect a lot more will come there. You see uncle built the mill, and Baggs buys up the timber where he can, and he and uncle run the mill together, and divide the profits somehow. But it has cost something to put that mill up. I know uncle had to borrow money to do it. I don’t like that Baggs at all, mother. He took me in at first, he was so soft–spoken, but I think I know him now.”“He has been up in this neighborhood trying to buy woodland, and wanted your father to trade with him, but he wouldn’t. We don’t like his looks up this way.”There was a lull in the conversation. The cricket without still kept up his sharp, piercing song, and Farmer Grant patiently beat out an accompaniment to the cricket’s tune.“How long is it now, Walter, since you were confirmed?”“Three months, mother.”“How are you getting along?”“Well, mother, I can’t say that I am making much progress, but I am trying to hold on.”“Any progress we make in a religious life, comes from doing just what you say you are doing, holding on. If we are regular in our prayers and Bible–reading, if we patiently attend to our church duties, and just try from hour to hour to do our duty to those about us, that is all one can do. God will do the rest.”“I had an idea, mother, when I began this life I should make more progress, get along faster.”“Don’t mind that. You must just stick to your purpose, and keep on. I remember what Mark Simpson, an old fisherman down at The Harbor said once. Said Mark,—‘Going to heaven is like tryin’ to row round B’ilin’ P’int when the tide is agin you. If you stick to your oars, and pull ahead, you’ll come round all right.’ And I think Mark has shown that, if any one has. He has had all sorts of troubles, and he does what he advised, he sticks to his oars and pulls ahead. There’s a good deal, Walter, in what I call religious habits; in being particular about your prayers, in reading your Bible, in your attendance at church. Get the wheel down into that track and keep going steadily, and you will find everything easier.”“Yes, I suppose so, mother.”“And there is one thing which it is well for us all to know, Walter. It’s the most important thing. I mean we must get hold of Christ, understand what He has done for us, what He will do for us, and holding Him before our eyes and in our hearts, try to do for Him, and be like Him. And Walter, there is this thing I want you to be particular about, to do some one specific thing for Him. Of course, you try to live for Him; but I mean a particular duty.”“What?”“Well, may I speak of something? It sha’n’t be very hard. Of course, you will go to church yourself; try to get everybody else you can. There, do that.”“Well, I will.”The conversation went on. By and by, his mother exclaimed, “If it isn’t eleven o’clock! And there is your lunch, but I will have it ready soon, and what time do you start?”“Twelve, in the mail–wagon, you know. I go as far as Uncle Boardman’s mill, and I promised to stop there for Chauncy Aldrich, this afternoon, while he is away; and then I walk down to uncle’s at tea–time. It is not more than a mile to walk.”Walter declared the lunch to be “splendid.” Then there was “a stitch” to be taken in Walters coat, for which he said he was “thankful.”“That does me good,” thought his mother. “I don’t know as Walter notices it, but since he has begun his new life, he appreciates more what his father and mother do for him. It may seem to be foolish in me, but the religion that doesn’t come out in little things, won’t come out in great ones.”Oh, patient mothers, hard working fathers, are you “foolish” to be affected by a child’s gratitude for little things? If children only knew it, such gratitude makes this a new world for parents. The mail–wagon soon rolled along to the Plympton farm and halted for Walter. He was passing through the front yard, hurrying along a lilac and rose–bordered path, to the waiting mail–wagon before the house, when his mother called out, “Oh, Walter! Wait a minute.” She ran down the path.“I’ll say this for your father, who isn’t at home. It was his charge, you know when you were little: ‘Honest, boy.’”Walter laughed. “I guess I have got all my bundles now, mother. Good–bye.”“Good–bye, Walter.”As the wagon rattled away, carrying off Prince Alden, the driver, two mail–bags, and two passengers, Walter thought of these words, “Honest, boy.” It was an expression his father had used when Walter was a little fellow. The motto had an influence over Walter, not only because his father uttered it, but practiced it. Mr. Plympton’s daily life was the very crystal of honesty itself; honesty not only shining through his words but radiant in all his actions. After a ride of nine miles, came a group of buildings to which had been recently given the name “Blake’s Mills.” It was a part of the business transaction between Bezaleel Baggs and Walter’s uncle, that the latter should erect a “tide mill” at the head of “Muskrat Creek,” a mile from The Harbor. At the head of this creek, was a large tract of useless land belonging to Boardman Blake, easily flooded at high tides. Swinging backward and forward with the tides, were gates, placed in a dam that had been thrown across the head of the creek. Through these opened gates, swept a strong, clean, cold current from the ocean, at flood tide, and then the water was distributed over the low lands, to be held in check until needed to push the great wheel carrying the machinery of the mill.“If you’ll build a mill,” said B. Baggs to Uncle Boardman, “and run it with me, I’ll agree to furnish you with logs.”At one time, for the sake of his “dear friend Blake,” he talked as if he would build everything, take all risks and give all profits to that dear friend.He did guarantee however, a stated, handsome income to Boardman. “Then,” he added, “you can run the mill for corn and flour, if you wish. However I’ll warrant you on logs a long, steady job; and it will pay you and me enough to make a handsome thing out of it. I’ll furnish logs for five years at least.”At the same time, he made a great display of ready money, suggesting untold resources somewhere. He bought up the trees on extensive tracts of woodland far and near. Wherever he went, an immense business movement seemed to go with him. Uncle Boardman was bewildered. This great being, like a big oceancraft, bore down on him with such an imposing spread of financial sail, that he and his,—all but Aunt Lydia—were easy captures. Boardman built the mill, although he was forced to borrow five hundred dollars of Baggs that he might accomplish this. It was a note for this amount which Walter had stumbled upon and whichhis uncle had subsequently missed, but to cover the debt, he had written and tendered another. It is true that logs had not come to the mill so freely as Baggs had prophesied, for even logs need a little pushing to accomplish a journey; and Uncle Boardman’s receipts were not so large that the disposition of them had perplexed him. It was a fact also that some people had begun to label the mill “Boardman’s Folly;” but Bezaleel Baggs could furnish any amount of palaver, even if he could not make trees cut themselves down, and roll in large numbers to the mill; and his softly padded tongue kept Uncle Boardman quiet. Chauncy Aldrich represented his uncle’s interests at the mill, as that relative was often absent on mysterious journeys, from which he returned with an air of vast importance; as if he had bought up half the world to–day, and it would be delivered at ‘Blake’s Mills’ to–morrow. In connection with Baggs’ “office,” a small, ragged, unpainted shanty, there was a “store” to supply the hands at the mill. Uncle Boardman had stocked this emporium, and Baggs sold the goods on commission. Uncle Boardman sometimes thought that his profits were exceedingly small; though he knew that his “branch store,” as Baggs had pretentiously named it,could have very few customers. Some people had rashly asserted that liquor was sold at this store, but as a town–law forbade it, and as Boardman Blake’s principles forbade it also, the sale of liquor did not seem probable. For all that, something “mysterious” was sold there. It was at this “branch store” that Walter expected to serve, the afternoon of his return from his parents, as Chauncy wished to be away. The mail–wagon deposited Walter at the mill, and then clattered away. The mill was not running, as it was flood tide; and the water was rushing in from the sea, storing up the power that made all mill–running possible. No one seemed to be in the great barn–like mill, and few logs were accumulated there to feed the hungry saws when their sharp teeth might be set in motion.“It looks quiet,” thought Walter.It certainly was quiet in the big, deserted mill; in the narrow little road without; in the adjoining fields, so level and green; in the sky above, through which the sunshine was silently poured down. Nothing seemed to be stirring save the tide, racing up “Muskrat Creek,” and that went with an almost intelligent sound. As it rushed, and eddied, and gurgled, it seemed to say, “On hand, Boardman! We’ll start thatlazy mill, shortly.” Ah, there was one other object stirring, at the office, store, shanty door, and this was Chauncy. He looked out into the road, then up to the sky, and then over toward the mill, as if he expected an arrival from some quarter.“Ha, Plympton!” he shouted.“Here I am,” replied Walter. “Am I late, Aldrich?”“Oh no, but this is one of the days when the market seems to be paralyzed. Haven’t had a customer, and not a log has been hauled to the mill. However, Uncle Baggs is off stirring ’em up somewhere, and trade will begin to move this way. He is a master hand to stir people up and there will be a movement soon.”Here he shoved back his cap, and showed that bristling wall of hair behind which he seemed to be entrenched, and from that impregnable position was defying all the world. His air was that of a challenge to Walter to “come on” if he dared, and show that Bezaleel Baggs would not “stir people up”; yes, “stir ’em up,” and bring on an immense movement in “the market.”“Well,” said Walter, dropping his traveling bag, “if there is little to be done, I can get a chance to read a book I have in my bag. Howlong do you want to be away? Suit yourself, you know. I am here to accommodate you, and sha’n’t be needed at my uncle’s before six.”“Oh, I will be back by five. Besides, my uncle may come, and he will relieve you. He is a great hand to drop on folks sort of unexpected.”“Well, when he drops, I don’t want to be exactly under him, for he looks like solid weight.”“Ha—ha! When Uncle Bezaleeldoescome down on a man, he can drop heavy. Well, good–bye and good luck to you.”Off swaggered Chauncy, his cap at one side of his head; his whole air that of some bragging money king, who had sallied forth to upset “the market” in behalf of himself; or to accomplish some other great feat of financial tumbling. Walter was left alone in the office. For awhile, he read a recent report of the life saving service; for the world that centered in the little building whose outlook and flags–taff he could see from Uncle Boardman’s storedoor, interested him exceedingly. Nobody appeared to interrupt him save a fly, that buzzed up to him vigorously, in Chauncy’s style, but buzzed back immediately at a wave of the hand, which wasnotChauncy’s style.“Ah,” said Walter, after an hour’s fascinatingreading, “I hear a footstep. Somebody’s coming. A customer, probably.”He let his book drop on the counter, and awaited this arrival. A young man entered, whom Walter thought he had seen before; but where, he could not readily say.“He is not over twenty–one,” thought Walter. “He has a nice form.”The young man had a frame of much symmetry, and the dress–coat that he wore, instead of the loose blouse common among the fishermen and farmers, brought out into distinct outline his well–shaped figure. Although his look was that of a rather strong excitement, which flushed his face, and gave it an unnatural eagerness, yet Walter was attracted toward him at once. A little girl, who bore some resemblance to the young man, closely followed him, clinging to the skirt of his coat. The young man appeared to be looking for something on one of the shelves, and with a twinkle of his blue eyes, and in musical, ringing tones, he called out, “In some stores, they say on a card, ‘If you don’t see a thing, ask for it.’”“Well,” replied Walter, “Ask away. I would like to sell something to somebody.”The young man did not lower his eyes to notice Walter, but continued to search withthem the objects on the three shelves behind the counter.“He can’t want soap, or matches, or that pile of mittens for fishermen,” thought Walter.The young man, himself, here expressed his wants.“See here!” he said in a half–whisper, leaning forward. “Where’s that big bottle Baggs keeps on the upper shelf, generally behind a bundle of yarn?”As he leaned forward, Walter noticed by his breath that he had been drinking an intoxicant of some kind. He noticed also that the little girl in the rear was now tugging at his coat, as if to pull him back from an exposed position. Did the child say, “Don’t!”“Go way, Amy! Don’t pull so!” exclaimed the young man rather testily. Still he did not look round at this interferer, and he did not even glance at Walter. His eager eyes were fastened on those generally uninteresting objects, soap, yarn, and matches. Surely, there could be no snake’s eye up there to bewilder one.“Ah, I see the top of it! Just above that big lot of yarn on the third shelf. That’s how I made my mistake—I was looking at the second shelf, you see, and—and it’s the third—don’tAmy! Keep quiet, Amy! There, if you’ll just get that down! A—my, stop!”Was it a big sob, Walter heard behind this customer? The young man’s look was no more eager now than Walter’s. The desire to know, was as strong in the latter, as appetite was in the former, and Walter had now mounted a rickety, flag–bottomed chair, and was pulling aside the packages on the shelves. Reaching a big bundle of yarn on the uppermost shelf, he saw the object of the young man’s intense desire; an immense black bottle with an immense black stopper.“There—there she is! Just hand her down; and if you have any water handy, I’ll mix it myself, you know. Amy, you stop pulling, or I’ll send you outdoors.”The young man’s voice, though earnest, was not cross. Indeed, he had endured a constant twitching from his small companion.“Just hand her down, please.”“Well, no, I think not, if it is liquor,” was Walter’s reply.This, to the young man, was an unexpected turn of affairs. For the first time, he now looked directly at Walter. Still, he stayed good–natured, and that attracted Walter the more strongly.“Why—why—of course it is liquor. You don’t suppose Baggs would hide kerosene, say, behind his mothy old yarn, would he?” and the young man laughed.“Well, no, I should say not,” and Walter laughed also.“You are here to sell, are you not?” asked the young man.“Yes, I suppose I am, for the afternoon; but I didn’t agree to sell everything Baggs might put into this old hole. I don’t know what your business is, though your face looks natural; but if the man that employed you, say to catch fish, should say some day, ‘There goes somebody’s sheep in the road. I am going to shear it, and keep the wool, and I want you to hold it, for I hired you to work for me,’ I guess you would let your fingers burn first, before you would touch the thing that was another man’s.” There was silence now in the little shanty. The young man began to drum on the counter with his fingers.“Then, it is against the law to sell liquor in this town,” observed Walter.“Oh, Baggs is cute to fix that,” replied the would–be customer in a whisper. “You need not take any money now. Baggsgivesus a glass of liquor to–day, and in a week from to–day,when we meet him, we say, ‘A present, Mr. Baggs,’ and wegivehim money enough to cover the worth of the liquor.”The young man was no longer looking at Walter, but at the bottle on the shelf, as if addressing that.“I should think,” said Walter, indignantly, “the devil himself would be ashamed of that mean, underhanded way. I believe in being aboveboard and honest. No, I am not going to have anything to do with this business,” and as he spoke, he very resolutely thrust back the yarn, hiding the bottle from the observation of all save those to whose sight their appetite gave unusual keenness. While he was doing this, he heard a noise at the door. It was only a slight stir at first, as of a lively brush from the wind pushing its way past the door. It was just such a “lively” effort of the wind, as at sea, may grow into a hurricane. Turning toward the door, Walter saw Baggs. It was Baggs indeed, and nobody else, but oh, what a change!“Well, sir!” he roared.How unlike that smooth–speaking, mild–tempered man, who usually went by the name of Baggs! His face was ruffled and darkened with rage. His skin seemed to be blown out;and as certain unnoticed pimples had grown also, it had a mottled, puffy look, like that of a frog. In the midst of this turgidity and discoloration, his twisted eye flashed and wriggled in a frightful manner, while his voice was hoarse and blatant as that of a fog–horn.“You—you are a pretty—feller—in—in this store! Git—git—out of this!” he shouted, catching his breath.As his peculiarity of sight made it difficult to always tell whom he might be looking at, both the young men glanced doubtfully at Baggs, and then inquiringly at one another; as if about to say, “Whom does he mean?”“Git—git—out!” he roared again.“Who—o—o?” asked the young man outside the counter.“You—you—you!” said Baggs, with tremendous emphasis, advancing toward the young man inside the counter. “I meanyou, Walter Plympton. I—I—have heard your—talk—talk—for the last five minutes. I meanyou, sir, whose—whose uncle I have been striving—ving—to exalt to the—the—pin—pin—nack—ul of untold wealth. I meanyou, an ungrateful neph—neph—ew. I meanyou, who wouldn’t give to a fellow—that’s—that’s faint—a little sip—sip that would do him no harm. Will the—law—lawstop that work of—mer—mercy to the sick? You were not—asked—as I understand—it—to sell, but simp—simply to put—as I understand it—the bottlehere.”With new and frightful energy, Baggs here pounded the counter, which he had struck several times before.“You were not asked—asked—to do anything more. Will you—you not—befriend the—the—”Although Baggs’ philanthropy did not fail him, and he could have talked an hour as the champion of the faint and weary, yet his breathdiddesert him; and he stood there, gasping, “the—the—the—the—”Baggs had a great reputation as orator at town meetings, and he was declared by admirers “always to be equal to the occasion,” and it was mortifying now to be found so unequal to this emergency. There was no help for it, though. He could only gasp, “the—the—the—”“Oh well,” remarked Walter, “I can go as well now, as any time. When you catch me selling liquor, you will be likely to find at the same time the Atlantic full of your mill–logs. Good–day, sir.”This reference to Baggs’ logs, which were notnumerous enough that day to fill anything, so affected the orator, that he did succeed in making a new forensic effort.“Go, boy!” he thundered.The next moment, Walter was rushing out of the door, as indignant on the side of the clerk, as Baggs was on the side of the employer.“Such impudence!” exclaimed Baggs, his wrath slowly subsiding. “If you don’t feel just right, I’ll ’tend to you,” he said to the customer. “I’ll trouble you to get down that bottle.”The young man did not stir. He seemed to be in a stupor.“What’s the matter?” asked Baggs. “Feel wuss?” and a sarcastic humor lighted up his twisted eye.“I’m going,” said the young man.“And not take a drink?”“No, I’ve seen enough of it. That young fellow is right in not selling, and if he can’t sell, I won’t be fool enough to drink.”“Come, come!” said a little voice behind him.“Yes, Amy; I’m going,” and out of the store he went. Baggs was amazed. He could not understand it.“Well, if that ain’t queer!” he muttered. He began to wonder if the recent scene werereal, whether it might not have been a dream. There was Walter, though, now almost out of sight; and the young man was moving in the same direction, his coat–skirts still clutched by Amy. These three were substantial witnesses to the reality of the affair; and Baggs, wiping his forehead with a very red, and a very dirty handkerchief, turned toward his desk in what was strictly the “office” part of the shanty.Walter did not intend to take the road he was now traveling, but when he left Baggs, he was feeling so intensely, that the matter of a road was too trivial to be noticed. The road in which he was walking led him to The Harbor; and from this village, he could reach his uncle’s, though his walk would be a long one.“I have started,” he reflected, “and I might as well keep on. Besides, if I turn back to take the right road, I shall have to pass Baggs’ office, and I don’t want to go near that rascal. I will walk a mile to avoid him.” He tramped forward with a kind of fierce energy, busily thinking.“The idea! Wanting to exalt Uncle Boardman to a pinnacle of wealth! And he has been constantly befooling him. He has been pretending to buy up woodland far and near; and I don’t know but that he has bought it, inone way, but I don’t believe he has paid for it. Aunt Lydia saw through him all the time, and she was the sharpest of the lot. Then that liquor business! Wasn’t he cunning, giving away his whiskey! Well, he found one person who would neither sell, nor give for him.”So intensely was Walter thinking, he did not notice how rapidly he was passing through the little fishing–village. There were not more than forty houses at The Harbor, and these were located anywhere along the crooked line of the one narrow street. The neighborhood was very rocky, and in and out among the ledges, wound this single street. Some of the houses were very old, and their roofs were patched with moss. Planted near the ledges, these ancient relics of domestic architecture seemed more like masses of lichen, that had fastened on the ledges, becoming a part of them; and resolute to maintain their rocky anchorage as long as the rough sea winds, and the driving rains, would let them. The village had a small store, whose proprietor considered himself as a dangerous competitor of Boardman Blake, and a box schoolhouse, capped with a rude little belfry, which never had entertained a bell as its guest. It had also an unpainted “hall,” where one evening a dance might bepounded out by the vigorous feet of the young men and women of the village; the next evening might witness an auction; and if the third evening belonged to Sunday, some kind of a religious service might be held there. These three public buildings, the store, the schoolhouse, the hall, Walter had passed. Chancing to look up, he said, “I am almost through the village. I have been so mad, I have made pretty quick time; and there is the road that goes up to Uncle Boardman’s; and—and—there’s the ‘Crescent’! I have a great mind to go home that way, by the Crescent.”The Crescent was a peculiarity of rock and sand in the harbor. If it had been simply a shoal of sand, though shaped like a young moon this year, the shifting tides every day, the great storms of spring or autumn, would have worked it over into something very unlike a young moon another year. There were nubs of rocks at either end, and ledges were scattered along the sides of this marine scimeter, so that a measure of the restless sand was retained; and year after year, the Crescent kept substantially its form.At low tide, the Crescent could be easily reached by any pedestrian. One in passing from The Harbor to Boardman Blake’s, couldleave the road, and at low tide cross over to the Crescent, pass along its ledges and sand, and leaving it, at its easterly extremity, regain the land without wetting the feet. This course would carry one not far from the lane that straggled from the life saving station up to Boardman Blake’s; and although a much longer route than by the road, it had its attractions for those who liked to see the surf tumble on the rocks. Walter was of this number, and instead of following any farther the crooked street that wound among the ledges, and then curved toward Boardman Blake’s store, he digressed at a point opposite the Crescent; and he took the longer, but more romantic way home.“I will cross to those rocks half way down the Crescent, and sit down a while and watch the waves break over the rocks,” he said. “Splendid place there.”It was a tempting outlook upon the somersets thrown by those acrobats of the ocean, the waves, when they reached the rocky line of the shore, and there made tumble after tumble. Walter sat a long time watching and thinking:“Then I have run against Baggs,” he said, “and I didn’t anticipate that. Wasn’t he mad! I never thought that smooth–talking man couldrave like one of these waves. I am sorry for Uncle Boardman’s sake, for I imagine—poor man—he has enough to worry him, and my fuss with Baggs may make him some trouble. But I don’t see what else I could have done. That fellow—I wonder where I have seen him—had been drinking already, and a glass or two more might have just finished him. I could not do that; no, not even set down the bottle for him. And the law was against it; and I could not in any way help break the law. Baggs could not ask it of me, for I didn’t go there for any such purpose. No, sir! I think I did the right thing, and I’ll stick to it, and stand by it.”In his earnestness, Walter rose, stamped on the ledges with his feet, as if to give emphasis to his opinion, and looked off on the wide ocean of blue, whose play was as restless as that of his thoughts. And as he looked, somehow it seemed to him as if he had the sympathy of that wide reach of nature he was watching. The sky seemed to bend down to him in an approval which the gently blowing wind whispered, and that great ocean had a voice, sounding in the thousands of waves pressing toward him, and saying in the roar of the surf, “You are right.” This secret sympathy between law innature and its keeper in the sphere of principle, is one of the rewards of right–doing. And above all, in his heart, Walter had the sense of satisfaction whose source he knew to be God. He did not know what might be the personal consequences of his difficulty with Baggs, but he felt that he was right; and he could plant his feet on that assurance solid as the ledges under him. He remained a long time watching the waves, till he was startled to see what a protracted shadow his form threw on the black ledges.“Sun is getting low,” he said. “I must be going.”He turned, and moved away a short distance, when he turned again, and looked back upon the rocks he had left.“That is strange,” he said.He noticed that this particular ledge, called the “Center Rock” by the fishermen, had a divided summit. The outline of the eastern half of this summit was curiously like that of a chair; as if placed there in anticipation of an arrival by sea. No one, though, came out of the great, empty waste of water, now rapidly blackening in the twilight.“Sort of funny,” he exclaimed, and hurried away.“Ho, what is this?” he asked. Looking toward the land, he noticed that while he had been watching the waves, the tide had turned, and covered the low, sandy flats with a floor of crystal.“Well, it is not so very deep, and I can wade ashore,” said Walter. He was untying his shoes, when he heard the noise of oars. As he chanced to look up to see who might be coming, the boatman turned, and resting on his oars, faced Walter. A smile as from an old acquaintance overspread his features, and he called out, “Hold on there!”A few more strokes, and the boat was on the sand at Walter’s feet.“One good turn deserves another,” cried the boatman. “Jump in!”“Oh, that you?” cried Walter. “Well, I will.” And into the boat he jumped.This opportune arrival was the young man he had met in Baggs’ store that afternoon. He was dressed now for work, and wore a blue blouse. It could not hide, though, his broad shoulders, and when he rowed, one could but admire the easy, strong sweep of the arms.“I was busy watching the waves,” explained Walter, “and I did not notice that the tide had turned.”“You would have crossed without much difficulty to the shore, though in three hours from this time you might have done some swimming.”“I am good for that.”“Dare say. You would have got along, though they do tell some boogerish stories about those rocks. Did you notice the ‘Chair’? It is on the easterly side of what we call the ‘Center Rock.’”“Oh yes, I saw that.”“Well, they say a young girl was caught on the Crescent by the tide toward night, and a rain and fog set in. Oh, it was years ago, and we had no station here; and it was when the men folks used to go off fishing down to Banks—the Newfoundland—and of course there were few folks at home. I mean men folks. Some of the women thought they heard screams in the night; but then in a storm, the waves keep up such a pounding, you can hardly hear your own ears. The storm got worse all that night, and in the morning, it was bad enough outside the Crescent. Soon as the storm would let them cross over, some of the people went, they say; but they didn’t find the girl.”“Well, how did they know she stayed there? Perhaps she went somewhere else.”“They never heard of her anywhere else; and that reminds me of something I didn’t put in. There was a fishing–sloop running along the shore, and made harbor here. It passed by the Crescent in the afternoon, and the skipper saw a girl sitting in what we call the Chair, on the ocean side of Center Rock. That was the last seen of her, and the weather had not set in rainy then. Oh, I have heard my mother tell the story many times; and what was queer, there was a boy mixed up with the affair,—the girl’s brother. My mother used to say that the boy and girl had had some quarrel, and he asked her to go over to Center Rock and see a curious chair there, knowing of course that the tide would turn and bother her. I think he led her there, and left her there. I don’t know as he intended anything so serious as her drowning, but he was mad, and meant to punish her enough to frighten her. But it set in raining, and the fog you know is bewildering; and then the storm was pretty bad that night, and the waves wash clear over Center Rock in a storm. Then my mother used to say—my mother is not living now—the girl was a stranger here, and didn’t know what the Chair might do for one. She and her brother were visiting here, I believe; and isn’t it singular thattheir name should have been Baggs? Not singular that I know of, only we had something to do with somebody of the same name this afternoon, and one thing suggests another.”The young man here rested on his oars, and looking into Walter’s face, said: “You did a good thing for me, this afternoon.”“I am glad if I did.”“What I call ‘the craze’ was on me then. I had one glass, and that is always enough to start me, and I thought I must have more. It was strong, you know, and I can’t touch the stuff safely. It’s too powerful for me. Our talk though, gave me a chance to think; and when Baggs came, I surprised him by refusing it,—he offered it to me, you see. Then I went home, and my sister—she is as good as she can be—gave me a hot supper and some coffee, and I am all right now.”“That’s good. I expect Baggs will want to pitch into me.”“No, he won’t. He knows that I know something about his style of handling that bottle, and I think that will hold him back. I believe that he will be very glad to keep on the right side of you. If he don’t, he will get on the wrong side of me. Baggs is a coward.He can blow and bluster worse than a nor’easter, but he is a coward at the end of it.”“He must stop, though, his liquor business. If nothing more, it will get my uncle into trouble. You see he owns the goods in—”“Does he? I didn’t know that.”“Yes, he owns what is in that pen.”“Though not the pig, or the two pigs, I should say; counting in that precious nephew of Baggs’. Ha–ha!”“That selling, or giving, will give my uncle a bad name.”“I see, I see, for it will come out and every body know it, sooner or later, of course.”“As for the liquor business itself, I won’t have anything to do with it.”“You are right, I know; and I want to do the right thing myself. I mean to do right, and I have just promised my sister I would try again.”“Ask God to help you,” said Walter in a hearty, boy–fashion.“Well, yes, I suppose I ought. But here we are ashore, and sooner than I thought for.”The boat was in a little sand–cove where, affected by the Crescent, the roll of the surf was very gentle.“You go up to your uncle’s, I s’pose, and I goto the life saving station. I am one of the crew there, and it was my turn to be off to–day.”“There! I thought I had seen you somewhere before.”“I have seen you there, and you would have known me quicker, perhaps, if I hadn’t shaved off my beard. That alters me somewhat.”“But it seems to me as if I had seen you before I came this way.”“Shouldn’t wonder. People meet, you know, under queer circumstances.”“Hullo, Woodbury,” called out a man dressed like a fisherman, and waiting on the rocks above the strip of sand. “I’ve been here a–waitin’, some time.”“Then his name is Woodbury,” thought Walter. “I know that much.”The fisherman sprang into the boat vacated by Woodbury and Walter, and thrusting his oar into the sand, pushed off at once. Woodbury went to the left toward the station, while Walter took the lane to his uncle’s.“I am very much surprised to know that Mr. Baggs would do anything of the kind,” said Uncle Boardman in his slow, meditative way, when Walter after supper related the affair of the day. Uncle Boardman, as he spoke, workedhis fingers nervously, as if they were pencils, with which he was working out a problem on a slate.“Sur–prised, Boardman?” inquired Aunt Lydia, thrusting forward her sharp features. “You sur–prised? I am not. I don’t think there is anything that mean critter won’t be up to, or down to, rather. I ventur’ to say there’s been queer carryin’s on, if we only knew.” And Aunt Lydia’s sharp face suggested the beak of a bird that was after its prey; and woe be to that worm, the unhappy Baggs, if once before the beak!“I thought I ought to speak of the matter,” said Walter apologetically. “I hate anything that looks like telling, but I knew you owned the goods up there in Baggs’ place, and you might be involved in trouble.”“Walter, don’t you ’polergize one bit. I shan’t take it, if Boardman does. That mean critter don’t deserve nary a ’polergy.”“Jingle, jingle!” went the warning bell in the store.“I will go, uncle.”“Oh, no! Somebody may want me.” When Uncle Boardman returned, he remarked, “I thought as much. It was—”“Baggs?” said Aunt Lydia eagerly guessing.“Yes, and I thought there must be some extenuating circumstances. He brought it in while we were talking together, saying he had had occasion to give a little liquor to some of the fishermen when sick and faint, and he allowed that he might have been mistaken, in other cases.”“Why should he receive presents of money afterwards, and why not take it at the time, if everything was all right, uncle?”“Now, Boardman, you mean to be charitable,” ejaculated Aunt Lydia, “and it says charity shall hide a multitude of sins, but sich a big sinner, you can’t kiver him up. His sinswillstick out.”“Oh, well, Lydia, I only mean to say what can be said for him, and he allows he hasn’t always done just right, but he promises to stop.”“But what will the poor, sick, faint fishermen do?” inquired Aunt Lydia solicitously, and in a sarcastic tone.Uncle Boardman, though, had taken a candlestick from the mantel–piece, had lighted a long specimen of tallow manufacture, by Aunt Lydia, and was passing out of the door that led upstairs to his chamber.“Well, I guess,” said Uncle Boardman good–naturedlylaughing, “we will send ’em round to you. I don’t know of a better hand to take care of tramps and paupers.”Aunt Lydia had a peculiarity, and that was the indiscriminate relief of everybody who might ask for her charity. In that way, she had nourished some very deserving souls, behind the pitiful looks and shabby garments pleading at her door, and she had also nourished some who were not so deserving, but were frauds of the worst kind.The tallow candle carried by Uncle Boardman had now withdrawn its diminutive rays, and his footsteps had ceased sounding on the uncarpeted stairway leading to the second story.“There,” declared Aunt Lydia, “if that man wasn’t a saint, I wouldn’t take folks’ heads off like that ere Baggs’. There, they do set right down on him; and it jest riles me.”“Aunt,” inquired Walter, “did you ever hear about an accident at the Chair, on the Crescent, when it was said a girl went there, and the tide cut her off from the land?”“A storm comin’ up that night?”“That’s the time.”“Oh, yes, only it happened thirty years ago. But, Walter—” and Aunt Lydia looked at himwith her sharp, black eyes—“though it was so long since, I can see that ere gal now.”“Did you see her?”“Of course. She went by our winders right down that ’ere road. Poor thing! She never came back.”“What was it her brother did?”“Why, they was a–visitin’ here, and they had some quarrel, and he urged her to go there, they said, and he met her beyond the house and went with her. Then, they said, he left her there on purpose—told her suthin’ to keep her there, I s’pose—and she didn’t know ’bout the tides, and was caught. I b’lieve he ’lowed to somebody arterwards that he hadn’t done jest right.”“Was his name Baggs?”“Bagster.”“Oh!”
CHAPTER V.TURNING THE CORNER.The journey home was not a difficult one for Katy, as the roads were broke out thoroughly by this time. The journey, the subsequent day however, was a hard one for Mr. and Mrs. Plympton, as they went with Walter to the cars to see him safely started for his ride to Franklin Academy.“Oh!” said Walter, who was not so absorbed in school–plans but that he could see two pairs of misty eyes when he chanced to turn suddenly toward them, “don’t feel bad, father and mother. You know I shall be back by the first of August, and you know, father, what you said about time going like a sled, the iron on whose runner is rubbed smooth.”“Yes,” said his father soberly.“Be a good boy, Walter,” was his mother’s last reminder. About fifty had preceded it,but she kept this as the last. The next minute, there were two solemn faces on the platform of a country station, gazing intently at a car window that moved off rapidly and framed but for a moment a young, eager, ambitious, hopeful face.Walter’s stay at Franklin Academy was not an eventful one outwardly. There was the usual course of instruction for a boy of sixteen, and Walter acquitted himself creditably. There was the usual proportion of “bad boys and small scrapes,” but Walter had no affinity for them and was known as a warm–hearted, enthusiastic youth, but not at all as a wild one. He gained some note as a fine gymnast. Day after day the academy bell tinkled out its mild warnings that study or recitation hours had arrived, and day after day, the same flock of boys and girls passed along the shaded walks traversing the academy yard. Outwardly, as already asserted, Walter’s academy course was without special incident. In the boy’s personal private history though, a very important corner was turned. That which led to the turn was singular also.It was “composition day” in the academy, and various young essayists had read their opinions upon “School days,” “A Summer landscape,” and “George Washington.” Then came May Elliott’s piece of pen–work. May was not very generally known by the students. Her home was not in town, and the people with whom she boarded lived two miles away, so that the students did not see very much of her apart from her class hours. Although not pretty, yet her face interested you. Her blue eyes had a certain bright, positive look, as if she had something to say to you, and they arrested your attention. The subject of her composition was this, “What are we living for?” Her course of thought was to specify the aims of different people in life, their worthiness and unworthiness; and then she closed in this fashion: “The life that does not take into account the need of those about us, that does not take into account another life, that does not take God into account, is making,—”Here May looked up in her bright, positive way. It was a chance look that she gave in the direction of the north–east rather than the north–west corner of the schoolroom. “Making—a serious mistake,” said May. In the north–east corner sat two students on opposite sides of the same aisle, Walter Plympton and Chauncy Aldrich. Each student said, “Does she mean me?” May Elliott did not mean either individual.It was a chance movement of her eyes, but like many of our movements that without intent are very significant in their results, the look set two young men to thinking. After school, they discussed the merits of May’s theme and treatment. Chauncy was the first speaker. He was a very forcible looking young man, one who seemed to come at you and collide with you, although he might be a hundred feet off. He brushed up his hair in a mighty roll above his forehead, and that gave his head the look of a battering–ram. He was nicknamed “Solomon,” as he talked and acted as if he carried more native and more acquired wisdom in his head than all the students, all the teachers, and all the trustees of Franklin Academy bunched together. And yet he was rather liked in school, as he had a bright, pleasant face, was generally smiling, and combined with a really selfish nature, an apparent readiness to help everybody that came along.“Walter,” said Chauncy, as they went away from the academy together, “What do you think of May Elliott’s composition?”“I thought it was quite good. Anyway she looked over in my corner as if she meant me.”“That’s what I thought. I didn’t know but she was looking at me, as much as to say,‘Chauncy, this is meant for you.’ However, Miss Elliott, you may keep looking all day, and I shall only take what I please of it, and you may dispose of the rest in what market you please.” Here Chauncy pushed back his hat; and his front knob of hair came into prominence, and looked very belligerent, as if warning Miss Elliott to be careful how she threw her ink–arrows in that direction.“Oh, I didn’t suppose she really meant anything personal, Chauncy.”“Perhaps not; but my motto is to be on the lookout, and not take people as meaning to give you a higher per cent than human nature is inclined to allow you.”Chauncy was professedly preparing himself for a “business life,” and terms like “per cent,” “market,” “stock,” were favorite words in his vocabulary. The wise man now resumed his conversation.“The fact is, with regard to what she said about other folks’ need, and another life, and so on, those things of course are so; but as for my needy neighbor, why, look at my needy self—ha—ha!”Here Chauncy gave one of his quick, ready laughs, that had something of the sound of a new half dollar when you throw it on a counter;ringing, yet hard and metallic. “There is my Uncle Bezaleel. His motto is, ‘Don’t forget number one,’ and how he has pulled the money in! Nobody stands higher in the market.”“Bezaleel?” asked Walter, catching at the word.“Yes, Bezaleel Baggs.”“Beelzebub your uncle?” Walter was about to say, remembering Aunt Lydia’s habit of speech; but he checked this imprudent phraseology and remarked, “Bez—Bezaleel Baggs your uncle?”“Yes, and a smart one. He is a great land–owner, buying up whole forests, and he runs mills and so on. He expects to give me a lift, perhaps take me in business with him. That’s my uncle.”“Indeed!” thought Walter.“Oh,” resumed Chauncy, “we were speaking of May Elliott’s composition. Well, I was going to say about her pious remarks at the close, that they are well enough in their place, of course; but if she meant me when she looked our way, I only want to say that there will be time for that by and by.Youcan think them over, if you want to.”Walter made no reply and the two separated.It was a casual remark, “You can think them over,” and at another time, Walter might quickly have forgotten the words. Somehow that day, the words stayed with Walter. They seemed to have roots, and they took hold of Walter’s thoughts, and went deep down into his soul, and there they clung.“I don’t know what the matter is why I keep thinking of that composition,” he said, later in the day.“You look sober, Walt,” observed Chauncy.“Thinking,” replied Walter laughing.“About that composition—eh? Well, here is one who is not,” and the wise man gave two or three satisfied little chuckles.“Why should he fancy I was thinking about that composition?” Walter asked himself. “I am, though, and can’t seem to get rid of it.”He went to his boarding–place, passed directly to his room, and sat down in a chair by the western window. There was an outlook across a stretch of green fields waving with grain, up to a round–topped hill, bushy with vigorous oaks. Over a shoulder of this hill peeped another, but so distant, that a veil of blue haze covered it all day. The stillness of the hour, for it was at twilight, the sun going down behind hangings of crimson along the blue hill,made a quiet in Walter’s breast, and suggested thoughts that in the hurry and noise of the day are not likely to be fostered.“Oh, that composition, ‘What are we living for?’” thought Walter. “Well, whatamI living for?”Was he living for others? He did trust he was a help to those at home, and yet he had no conscious, definite purpose to give himself for their welfare; and as for those outside, he certainly hoped he had done them no harm, and he ventured to think he might have granted a few favors, but he had not thought in a very special way about anybody except Walter Plympton. He had gone on in a boy’s careless fashion, meaning in a general way to mind his parents and consult their welfare; and to do “about the fair thing by outsiders,” was also his thought. As for that other life which we must all meet, the whole subject to his mind was in a hazy condition like the distant blue hill he was looking at. Once a week, while sitting in St. Mary’s at home, the old rector saying some solemn thing in the pulpit or the choir singing a plaintive tune, he was quite likely to think of another life. The other six days, he was thinking of school, and farmwork, and his duties at home, or play, outside.And as for thoughts about God, they would chase through his mind like the shadows of clouds across a green summer field. They might visit him at family prayers, or on Sunday, in church, or when praying by himself at home; but like the hasty cloud–shadows, such thoughts were soon gone. His general attitude toward all these subjects was that of a thoughtless indifference; and any particular attention he paid now and then was the result of a mere habit of going to church, or the saying of hurried prayers, rather than a direct preference and purpose of his heart.“I don’t think I am where I ought to be in such matters,” was Walter’s conclusion, and if he had a comfortable satisfaction in himself when he began to think, it had now melted away like a snow–bank in a spring rain.“The sun has been down, some time,” he said at last, “and the bright colors have all faded out of the sky. It looks pretty sober over there now.”Walter felt, as the sky looked, “sober.” The distant blue hill had quickly turned to a dark, undefined mass of shadow. The hill near by went behind a veil. Soon, the fields shrank out of sight, like green scrolls rolled up and taken away. Walter rose and left the room. He didnot leave his thoughts behind. Those went with him. For several days, he was thinking upon that subject: “What am I living for?” The longer he thought, the more deficient seemed his life. There came another night when he bowed his head in prayer as never before. Feeling his unworthiness, how poor and mean his life had been, he asked God to forgive him. Feeling that his life had been without a strong, definite, acceptable purpose, he asked God to take him, and help him live for the highest ends. And there rose up before him Jesus Christ, as the expression of God’s readiness to forgive a past, deficient life, sincerely regretted; Jesus Christ, as the perfect, divine Guide by which to direct all our lives in the future; Jesus Christ, his Saviour from sin. A letter arrived for the Plymptons one day, and it read thus:“Dear Father and Mother: I suppose you will be surprised to get this, but I wanted to tell you of something that has interested me and I know will interest you. I have made up my mind, God helping me, to be a different person. I hope I haven’t been what people call a bad boy, but still, I might have been better, and thought more of your interests, and tried hard to do my duty toward God. You will forgive me for all my thoughtlessness, won’t you? And you will pray for me, please, won’t you? Your affectionate son,“Walter.”“The dear boy!” exclaimed Mrs. Plympton. “Yes, father and I will pray for you, won’t we?”Mr. Plympton could only nod assent, for the tears filled his eyes. Indeed there were two people in that house who often looked at one another with red eyes that day, but it was the redness that goes with happy hearts, with the bright hopes of a morning sky, and not the glare of a sad fire that destroys our dearest interests.It may have been two weeks after the arrival of the above letter, that another came.“Here is a letter from your brother Boardman,” said Mr. Plympton, entering the kitchen, where his wife was cooking her weekly batch of pies. “Open it, please, and see what he says.”Mrs. Plympton wiped carefully her floury hands, adjusted her spectacles, and sitting down by a window where the light streamed in across the hollyhocks and sunflowers in the yard, began to read:“Dear Ezra and Louisa:—We are all well, and hope you are the same. I suppose you are expecting Walter home before long, this summer, and I got the impression from you that he was not going back again. I think I can give him a job this fall and winter if you agree to it, and I’ll see that he has good wages. I have always, with Lydia’s help, as youknow, managed my store and post–office myself, but I expect I shall need the help of a clerk. I have sold a lot of land, timber land, to Mr. Bezaleel Baggs; and I am putting up a steam mill, and I am interested in it, and it is going to take me away from the store a good deal. Then I have engaged to supply the crew at the life saving station with provisions, and also to take their mail to them. So you see somebody has got to go and look after their orders, and fetch their goods, and it is more than I can conveniently look after. What do you say to letting Walter come here the first of September? Please let me know soon.“Your affectionate brother,“Boardman Blake.”“Well, Ezra, what do you say?”“I—I—don’t know. I sort of hate to have him away, Louisa.”“So do I.”“I suppose though, he must start some time to be doing for himself.”“Oh, here is a postscript! Tucked away up in one corner. I almost lost sight of it.”“What does it say?”“‘P. S.—He can come home every week.’ That makes it different, Ezra.”“And it’s only ten miles away. I suppose he’ll be just crazy to see that life saving station.”“So he will. When he came back last winter, he said it was just aggravating to think he could not stay longer.”“Let us write to Walter and see what he says.”The result of all this was that the first day of September, when the life saving station was opened for the season, there appeared at the door Uncle Boardman’s new clerk, to receive the daily order for the crew’s provisions.“I am beginning a new life,” thought Walter.It was a new life in many ways. About six months ago, the careless, laughing, kindly–natured youth at home, had left it to assume new responsibilities elsewhere, at the academy. He had come back still happy and laughing, but a new and earnest purpose had entered his soul, and was controlling him. He had since been confirmed, in the little village church, openly acknowledging his Saviour. He had entered his uncle’s neighborhood to meet and assume fresh responsibilities. He would come in contact with the men at the life saving station. He would meet others in his daily business duties. Would he keep and increase the religion he had brought with him? Would it lessen?“I shall try hard to do my duty,” said Walter, in his thoughts.We shall see what he did.
TURNING THE CORNER.
The journey home was not a difficult one for Katy, as the roads were broke out thoroughly by this time. The journey, the subsequent day however, was a hard one for Mr. and Mrs. Plympton, as they went with Walter to the cars to see him safely started for his ride to Franklin Academy.
“Oh!” said Walter, who was not so absorbed in school–plans but that he could see two pairs of misty eyes when he chanced to turn suddenly toward them, “don’t feel bad, father and mother. You know I shall be back by the first of August, and you know, father, what you said about time going like a sled, the iron on whose runner is rubbed smooth.”
“Yes,” said his father soberly.
“Be a good boy, Walter,” was his mother’s last reminder. About fifty had preceded it,but she kept this as the last. The next minute, there were two solemn faces on the platform of a country station, gazing intently at a car window that moved off rapidly and framed but for a moment a young, eager, ambitious, hopeful face.
Walter’s stay at Franklin Academy was not an eventful one outwardly. There was the usual course of instruction for a boy of sixteen, and Walter acquitted himself creditably. There was the usual proportion of “bad boys and small scrapes,” but Walter had no affinity for them and was known as a warm–hearted, enthusiastic youth, but not at all as a wild one. He gained some note as a fine gymnast. Day after day the academy bell tinkled out its mild warnings that study or recitation hours had arrived, and day after day, the same flock of boys and girls passed along the shaded walks traversing the academy yard. Outwardly, as already asserted, Walter’s academy course was without special incident. In the boy’s personal private history though, a very important corner was turned. That which led to the turn was singular also.
It was “composition day” in the academy, and various young essayists had read their opinions upon “School days,” “A Summer landscape,” and “George Washington.” Then came May Elliott’s piece of pen–work. May was not very generally known by the students. Her home was not in town, and the people with whom she boarded lived two miles away, so that the students did not see very much of her apart from her class hours. Although not pretty, yet her face interested you. Her blue eyes had a certain bright, positive look, as if she had something to say to you, and they arrested your attention. The subject of her composition was this, “What are we living for?” Her course of thought was to specify the aims of different people in life, their worthiness and unworthiness; and then she closed in this fashion: “The life that does not take into account the need of those about us, that does not take into account another life, that does not take God into account, is making,—”
Here May looked up in her bright, positive way. It was a chance look that she gave in the direction of the north–east rather than the north–west corner of the schoolroom. “Making—a serious mistake,” said May. In the north–east corner sat two students on opposite sides of the same aisle, Walter Plympton and Chauncy Aldrich. Each student said, “Does she mean me?” May Elliott did not mean either individual.It was a chance movement of her eyes, but like many of our movements that without intent are very significant in their results, the look set two young men to thinking. After school, they discussed the merits of May’s theme and treatment. Chauncy was the first speaker. He was a very forcible looking young man, one who seemed to come at you and collide with you, although he might be a hundred feet off. He brushed up his hair in a mighty roll above his forehead, and that gave his head the look of a battering–ram. He was nicknamed “Solomon,” as he talked and acted as if he carried more native and more acquired wisdom in his head than all the students, all the teachers, and all the trustees of Franklin Academy bunched together. And yet he was rather liked in school, as he had a bright, pleasant face, was generally smiling, and combined with a really selfish nature, an apparent readiness to help everybody that came along.
“Walter,” said Chauncy, as they went away from the academy together, “What do you think of May Elliott’s composition?”
“I thought it was quite good. Anyway she looked over in my corner as if she meant me.”
“That’s what I thought. I didn’t know but she was looking at me, as much as to say,‘Chauncy, this is meant for you.’ However, Miss Elliott, you may keep looking all day, and I shall only take what I please of it, and you may dispose of the rest in what market you please.” Here Chauncy pushed back his hat; and his front knob of hair came into prominence, and looked very belligerent, as if warning Miss Elliott to be careful how she threw her ink–arrows in that direction.
“Oh, I didn’t suppose she really meant anything personal, Chauncy.”
“Perhaps not; but my motto is to be on the lookout, and not take people as meaning to give you a higher per cent than human nature is inclined to allow you.”
Chauncy was professedly preparing himself for a “business life,” and terms like “per cent,” “market,” “stock,” were favorite words in his vocabulary. The wise man now resumed his conversation.
“The fact is, with regard to what she said about other folks’ need, and another life, and so on, those things of course are so; but as for my needy neighbor, why, look at my needy self—ha—ha!”
Here Chauncy gave one of his quick, ready laughs, that had something of the sound of a new half dollar when you throw it on a counter;ringing, yet hard and metallic. “There is my Uncle Bezaleel. His motto is, ‘Don’t forget number one,’ and how he has pulled the money in! Nobody stands higher in the market.”
“Bezaleel?” asked Walter, catching at the word.
“Yes, Bezaleel Baggs.”
“Beelzebub your uncle?” Walter was about to say, remembering Aunt Lydia’s habit of speech; but he checked this imprudent phraseology and remarked, “Bez—Bezaleel Baggs your uncle?”
“Yes, and a smart one. He is a great land–owner, buying up whole forests, and he runs mills and so on. He expects to give me a lift, perhaps take me in business with him. That’s my uncle.”
“Indeed!” thought Walter.
“Oh,” resumed Chauncy, “we were speaking of May Elliott’s composition. Well, I was going to say about her pious remarks at the close, that they are well enough in their place, of course; but if she meant me when she looked our way, I only want to say that there will be time for that by and by.Youcan think them over, if you want to.”
Walter made no reply and the two separated.
It was a casual remark, “You can think them over,” and at another time, Walter might quickly have forgotten the words. Somehow that day, the words stayed with Walter. They seemed to have roots, and they took hold of Walter’s thoughts, and went deep down into his soul, and there they clung.
“I don’t know what the matter is why I keep thinking of that composition,” he said, later in the day.
“You look sober, Walt,” observed Chauncy.
“Thinking,” replied Walter laughing.
“About that composition—eh? Well, here is one who is not,” and the wise man gave two or three satisfied little chuckles.
“Why should he fancy I was thinking about that composition?” Walter asked himself. “I am, though, and can’t seem to get rid of it.”
He went to his boarding–place, passed directly to his room, and sat down in a chair by the western window. There was an outlook across a stretch of green fields waving with grain, up to a round–topped hill, bushy with vigorous oaks. Over a shoulder of this hill peeped another, but so distant, that a veil of blue haze covered it all day. The stillness of the hour, for it was at twilight, the sun going down behind hangings of crimson along the blue hill,made a quiet in Walter’s breast, and suggested thoughts that in the hurry and noise of the day are not likely to be fostered.
“Oh, that composition, ‘What are we living for?’” thought Walter. “Well, whatamI living for?”
Was he living for others? He did trust he was a help to those at home, and yet he had no conscious, definite purpose to give himself for their welfare; and as for those outside, he certainly hoped he had done them no harm, and he ventured to think he might have granted a few favors, but he had not thought in a very special way about anybody except Walter Plympton. He had gone on in a boy’s careless fashion, meaning in a general way to mind his parents and consult their welfare; and to do “about the fair thing by outsiders,” was also his thought. As for that other life which we must all meet, the whole subject to his mind was in a hazy condition like the distant blue hill he was looking at. Once a week, while sitting in St. Mary’s at home, the old rector saying some solemn thing in the pulpit or the choir singing a plaintive tune, he was quite likely to think of another life. The other six days, he was thinking of school, and farmwork, and his duties at home, or play, outside.And as for thoughts about God, they would chase through his mind like the shadows of clouds across a green summer field. They might visit him at family prayers, or on Sunday, in church, or when praying by himself at home; but like the hasty cloud–shadows, such thoughts were soon gone. His general attitude toward all these subjects was that of a thoughtless indifference; and any particular attention he paid now and then was the result of a mere habit of going to church, or the saying of hurried prayers, rather than a direct preference and purpose of his heart.
“I don’t think I am where I ought to be in such matters,” was Walter’s conclusion, and if he had a comfortable satisfaction in himself when he began to think, it had now melted away like a snow–bank in a spring rain.
“The sun has been down, some time,” he said at last, “and the bright colors have all faded out of the sky. It looks pretty sober over there now.”
Walter felt, as the sky looked, “sober.” The distant blue hill had quickly turned to a dark, undefined mass of shadow. The hill near by went behind a veil. Soon, the fields shrank out of sight, like green scrolls rolled up and taken away. Walter rose and left the room. He didnot leave his thoughts behind. Those went with him. For several days, he was thinking upon that subject: “What am I living for?” The longer he thought, the more deficient seemed his life. There came another night when he bowed his head in prayer as never before. Feeling his unworthiness, how poor and mean his life had been, he asked God to forgive him. Feeling that his life had been without a strong, definite, acceptable purpose, he asked God to take him, and help him live for the highest ends. And there rose up before him Jesus Christ, as the expression of God’s readiness to forgive a past, deficient life, sincerely regretted; Jesus Christ, as the perfect, divine Guide by which to direct all our lives in the future; Jesus Christ, his Saviour from sin. A letter arrived for the Plymptons one day, and it read thus:
“Dear Father and Mother: I suppose you will be surprised to get this, but I wanted to tell you of something that has interested me and I know will interest you. I have made up my mind, God helping me, to be a different person. I hope I haven’t been what people call a bad boy, but still, I might have been better, and thought more of your interests, and tried hard to do my duty toward God. You will forgive me for all my thoughtlessness, won’t you? And you will pray for me, please, won’t you? Your affectionate son,
“Walter.”
“The dear boy!” exclaimed Mrs. Plympton. “Yes, father and I will pray for you, won’t we?”
Mr. Plympton could only nod assent, for the tears filled his eyes. Indeed there were two people in that house who often looked at one another with red eyes that day, but it was the redness that goes with happy hearts, with the bright hopes of a morning sky, and not the glare of a sad fire that destroys our dearest interests.
It may have been two weeks after the arrival of the above letter, that another came.
“Here is a letter from your brother Boardman,” said Mr. Plympton, entering the kitchen, where his wife was cooking her weekly batch of pies. “Open it, please, and see what he says.”
Mrs. Plympton wiped carefully her floury hands, adjusted her spectacles, and sitting down by a window where the light streamed in across the hollyhocks and sunflowers in the yard, began to read:
“Dear Ezra and Louisa:—We are all well, and hope you are the same. I suppose you are expecting Walter home before long, this summer, and I got the impression from you that he was not going back again. I think I can give him a job this fall and winter if you agree to it, and I’ll see that he has good wages. I have always, with Lydia’s help, as youknow, managed my store and post–office myself, but I expect I shall need the help of a clerk. I have sold a lot of land, timber land, to Mr. Bezaleel Baggs; and I am putting up a steam mill, and I am interested in it, and it is going to take me away from the store a good deal. Then I have engaged to supply the crew at the life saving station with provisions, and also to take their mail to them. So you see somebody has got to go and look after their orders, and fetch their goods, and it is more than I can conveniently look after. What do you say to letting Walter come here the first of September? Please let me know soon.
“Your affectionate brother,
“Boardman Blake.”
“Well, Ezra, what do you say?”
“I—I—don’t know. I sort of hate to have him away, Louisa.”
“So do I.”
“I suppose though, he must start some time to be doing for himself.”
“Oh, here is a postscript! Tucked away up in one corner. I almost lost sight of it.”
“What does it say?”
“‘P. S.—He can come home every week.’ That makes it different, Ezra.”
“And it’s only ten miles away. I suppose he’ll be just crazy to see that life saving station.”
“So he will. When he came back last winter, he said it was just aggravating to think he could not stay longer.”
“Let us write to Walter and see what he says.”
The result of all this was that the first day of September, when the life saving station was opened for the season, there appeared at the door Uncle Boardman’s new clerk, to receive the daily order for the crew’s provisions.
“I am beginning a new life,” thought Walter.
It was a new life in many ways. About six months ago, the careless, laughing, kindly–natured youth at home, had left it to assume new responsibilities elsewhere, at the academy. He had come back still happy and laughing, but a new and earnest purpose had entered his soul, and was controlling him. He had since been confirmed, in the little village church, openly acknowledging his Saviour. He had entered his uncle’s neighborhood to meet and assume fresh responsibilities. He would come in contact with the men at the life saving station. He would meet others in his daily business duties. Would he keep and increase the religion he had brought with him? Would it lessen?
“I shall try hard to do my duty,” said Walter, in his thoughts.
We shall see what he did.
CHAPTER VI.THE STORE.The morning after his arrival at his uncle’s, Walter began his new duties as clerk, and opened the store. It was in the south–western corner of the house, and was also in a corner made by two roads. One was the lane that came up from the life saving station, widening into a road which went to the outside world. The second, starting at the store, continued its travels in an easterly direction, and ended them in a little fishing village overlooking the sea. Opening from the store into these two roads, as if to solicit and take up all passing custom, were two doors, and each was bordered by two windows. Above one of these doors, that on the road to the outside world, was a small sign, and it said, “B. Blake”; but said it very faintly. The sign once was black, and the name hadbeen painted in gilt letters; but the rains had been scouring the sign for years, and the sun bleaching it; and between the scouring and the bleaching, there had resulted a surface of shabby, blackish gray, streaked with dim, yellow lines. The store, as well as the sign, looked old. The entire house looked old. So did its owner, Boardman Blake; and the great, dark forest of pines beyond the house seemed to murmur day and night, “Growing old, growing old!” As one entered the store, in a very hospitable location between the two doors, he saw a rusty box stove flanked by two benches. The benches in winter rarely were without an occupant. In the spring, summer, and fall, these occupants in part were out on the sea, pulling into their uneasy boats, cod, hake, or haddock; while some were following the plow, hoeing corn or pitching the fragrant hay into bulky carts. Behind the benches, on the wall, were posters, announcing to a generally neglectful and ungrateful world, that “Vandyke’s Life–Bitters” would cure dyspepsia; that “Peaslee’s Liniment” never failed to take the stiffness out of a horse’s joints; while “Payson’s Hair Elixir” was sure to vitalize a bald head into the manufacturing of rich, luxuriant locks. The counters bordered two sides of the store, and sustained the weightof a desk in one corner where Boardman attended to his scanty book–keeping. Then there were two faded old show–cases whose store of peppermints, lozenges in gaudy wrappings, and gumdrops of every known rainbow–tint, excited the admiration of every schoolboy. There were also several pairs of scales, and a cheesebox. Behind the counters, ranged on shelves that began in some mysterious space below the counters’ level, and reached to the dusty, fly–specked ceiling, was an assortment of goods that only a country store can produce. There was not very much of any one article, but so many articles were gathered there that variety made up fully for quantity. There were dry goods, and goods that were not dry, such as bottles of medicine and essences; there were outfits for the farmer, and outfits for the fisherman. Hardware was there, like hammers and planes; and software, like sugar and meal. Goods were there, like boots and shoes; and goods like caps and clothing. As the storekeeper generally had only one suit of clothes on hand at a time, there was but little range of choice for the customer, and if compelled to take what he could find, a giant might have gone away wretched in the suit of a dwarf, or the dwarf departed only to be lost in the apparel of a giant.The store excited Walter’s interest, and as he opened it that first morning, his eyes made a rapid inventory of its miscellaneous contents.“And what is that?” he asked, noticing a shelf on which were clustered a few books. They were not for sale, but their titles and well–thumbed condition showed that they were for reference. One was a state gazetteer, another a volume of state laws, a third a small English dictionary, and a fourth was a Bible. The latter was bound in old leather covers, and its type was antique. It seemed to be a kind of safe, as well as aid to devotion, for various documents were there, like deeds and bills.“What is this?” exclaimed Walter, as a piece of paper fluttered out of the old Bible when he chanced to lift and open the book. “Uncle has a lot of papers in it, and I must look out. I must put this back.”He could not but see the figures, five hundred, in the left hand corner of the document, and carelessly had read, “For value received, I promise to pay Bezaleel Baggs, or order, five hundred dollars.” Walter stopped.“I must not read that, and did not intend to,” thought the clerk. He could but notice a blot in one corner of the bill. It was a singular blot.“It looks like an animal. There is its body, and those four streaks below would make good legs for a small animal. Pig, I guess. Now, I will put that away and attend to my work,” thought Walter. “Hullo! Who’s calling? Who’s here at six o’clock?”Walter noticed that the time by a clock secured to a post, was very near six o’clock.Somebody without was apparently shouting for the storekeeper. Stepping quickly to the door, Walter noticed first a gaily painted wagon. Its wheels were scarlet, and its shining black body was striped with scarlet. He was about saying to himself, “It’s a young fellow aboard,” when this same young fellow lifted a round–topped felt hat, disclosed a wall of hair, and shouted, “Youhere? You don’t say!”“I didn’t say anything about it, but I am glad to see you, Aldrich. What are you up to?”“This morning, I am up to bringing my uncle down here. He is out in the yard, the barnyard. I am clerking it with him, and shall be a neighbor of yours this winter; that is, a mile off, up at the office of my uncle. It is near the mill you know, that your uncle has put up for the sawing of the timber round here. Afeller gets a good apprenticeship with Bezaleel Baggs, I tell you. Oh, he is bright on a trade! I have learned a good deal by being with him, already. Say, what kind of a store have you in there? Most everything, I suppose.”Walter, who was out on the doorstep, here turned to the store. The upper part of the door was of glass, and one who occupied Walter’s position, could easily see within.“Is that a man in the store?” thought Walter. “Is it a man behind the counter?”He could not make out anything very distinctly. Besides, Chauncy was calling out to him, “Look out here, not in there? Do you expect the Hon. Boardman Blake is in there trading with himself? That would be handy, for he could be as sharp as he pleased, or as easy as he pleased. Really, he is out in the barn, for I saw him there a moment ago.”“I thought I noticed somebody in the store, but I guess it was only a shadow.”“Come, tell me about your plans,” said Chauncy, who seemed anxious to catch and hold Walters attention. “Tell me what you are up to?”“Why, I am clerking, am I not?”“Oh, yes. Of course you are. Well, do you like?”Walter did not answer at once. He could not rid his mind of the impression that something was not right in the store. He finally said, “This is my first morning in the store,” and was about to add, “I think I shall like here,” when he chanced to look again into the store. A golden ray of sunlight, as if an auger, had bored its way through the shadows behind the counter, and it fell upon the shelves that held the Bible and other volumes. In that light, Walter saw a form, that of a man, though of no one that he had ever seen before,—a short, heavy man, with broad shoulders, hatless; and was his hair light, or did the sunray brighten it as it fell upon it? He noticed that the man’s side whiskers projected into the sunlight, and also that he leaned over. Walter was about to lay his hand on the latch of the door when a terrific yell from Chauncy delayed him.“Ah–hoo! Ah–hoo!”Was Chauncy calling to him, or shouting to somebody in the store that he had already discovered, and perhaps might wish to notify? If such a thought came into Walter’s mind, it did not come clear as a ray of sunshine, but it was so confused and dim a suspicion that it made little impression upon him, and heturned one moment as if in obedience to Chauncy’s call, who was now shouting, “Ah–hoo–hoo! Plymp–ton!” Then he laughed heartily: “Ha–ha! You did not recognize my Indian yell that I have for folks. See here! I only wanted to say, if you were going into the store, and you have any—any—any—”It took Chauncy some time to tell what he did want, but fumbling in his pocket, he produced a ten–cent piece, and said, “Oh, anything! Bring me some candy!”“There is a customer in here, and I’ll bring it to you quick as I can.”“Customer, boy! You are demented! I don’t believe anybody is there, unless it is the Hon. Boardman, as I said before.”Chauncy was right. When Walter entered the store, no one was there! He went behind the counter, and then he looked under the counter. The usual row of dumb, unintelligent soap–boxes, and spice–boxes, and candy–boxes, could be seen there. He went to the shelves on which were the books. The sunshine, as well as the visitor, had mysteriously vanished. A fly crawling over the books suddenly buzzed in Walter’s face, as if to ask, in the fly–tongue, “What does this fellow want here?”“If this is not strange!” thought Walter.“Where did that man go? Am I getting ‘demented,’ as Chauncy said? Could anybody have gone to the sitting–room from the store?”From the store, one could directly enter the sitting–room. Walter hastily looked into the sitting–room. The sunray might have retreated there, and in the rich overflow of light entering two eastern windows, it certainly would not have been noticed as a separate ray. But had the rich, strong flood of light swallowed up the man, as well as the ray of sunshine? If he had gone into the sitting–room, where was he?“Nonsense!” thought Walter, for he heard the cracked voice of Aunt Lydia piping an old love–song of her girlhood, as she ironed the week’s wash in the kitchen opening out of the sitting–room. “Nonsense! If anybody had come here, of course she would have seen them. She don’t act as if she had seen anybody.” No. Aunt Lydia was singing in sharp, slender strains that old love–ditty, as free from any agitation as if it had been her uninterrupted avocation that morning.“Plympton! Plympton! Where’s that candy? Have you gone to get your folks to make that candy?” Chauncy was now calling fromthe store door, which he had opened. Walter returned, went to one of the show–cases, took out the quantity of candy ordered, and handed it to Chauncy.“The queerest thing!” exclaimed Walter. “I am sure I saw a man in here; but where he has gone, I don’t know.”“Saw a man!” replied Chauncy, with an incredulous air. “Nobody has been round here except you and me. Here’s your uncle up the road.”And there indeed Boardman Blake was, slowly moving along toward the store in his careless, abstracted way.“There’smyuncle, and you can see him down at the fish–house,” continued Chauncy. “He would like to findyouruncle. That’s what I brought him down here for. Don’t you see my uncle?”The fish–house was a black little building, that the rough, strong sea–winds for the last twenty–five years had been trying to push over, and had partially succeeded. It had been found necessary to prop it on one side. Here, the storekeeper accumulated every year a stock of dried salt fish, purchased of the fishermen and then sold out to customers from the surrounding country. Chauncy’s uncle waswalking about the fish–house as if trying to find somebody.“Is that the man I saw in the store?” Walter asked.“Haw–haw!” laughed Chauncy noisily. “He’s been down at the fish–house trying to hunt up your uncle, all the time I have been here. Come out and see him, and let’s ask him.”Walter stepped back to say to Aunt Lydia that he wanted to go to the fish–house, and would be back very soon, and then crossed the road with Chauncy to the fish–house.“The man I saw in the store was sort of built that way, heavy, and short, and broad at the shoulders, and was leaning over. I wish this man would lean over, and let me see how he looks,” thought Walter. The suspected party now turned his face to the young men, as if aware of Walter’s desire to inspect it. It was a face round and full, flanked with thin, gray whiskers. One of the eyes had a cast in it, which gave “Uncle Bezaleel’s” face a certain crookedness of look; but that does not necessarily mean crookedness of character. The eyes of some very honest people have an unfortunate squint. If though, any one looking at the upper part of B. Bagg’s face should say, “B. Baggs is a crooked fellow. Look out!” thenthe voice below entirely contradicted that impression. It was a mild, agreeable voice, kindly, and rather musical. It had a persuasive tone, and if the crooked eye was a misfortune, the voice of which B. Baggs was owner, had proved to be an excellent piece of property. It had coaxed many poor fellows on to their ruin. Its softness, its sympathy, its willingness to be your friend at any sacrifice, and its great grief if you possibly could think it was your enemy, had brought its possessor much money. It was this voice that had made its way to the softest place in the soft heart of Boardman Blake, quicker than the sharpest auger in the world.“Uncle, have you been in Mr. Blake’s store this morning?” inquired Chauncy.“Why, no, child!” said Uncle Bezaleel in the most affectionate and bland of tones, at the same time winking maliciously with his crooked eye. “What made you think so?”“Oh, I didn’t think so. I knew you had been out here all the time, trying to hunt up Mr. Blake; but my friend Plympton here, uncle, thought you had been in.”“Ah, how d’ye do, Mr. Plympton,” said Uncle Bezaleel cordially, addressing Walter by that title of manhood which goes so straight to aboy’s heart. Here, with his fat fingers, he softly squeezed Walter’s hand. “I have been out here and round somewhat, admiring the tidy way you and your uncle keep things in. Now that barnyard looks trim as a dining–room. Thrifty as can be, I’m sure.”The barnyard certainly was very neat for such a place, but that tired, shabby, leaning old fish–house, and the aspect of the place in general, did not sustain B. Baggs’ wonderful opinion of thrift. Walter, though, did not like to mistrust people, and this ready denial, the soft–toned compliment also, were irresistible, and Walter concluded it must have been somebody else that he saw in the store.“Oh, I see, sir,” he cried promptly. “It must have been another man. Excuse me.”“All—all right. I must have my little joke, and I guess you—you—ran into your uncle’s cider barrels, this morning, and couldn’t see straight.”“Haw—haw!” shouted Chauncy.“Oh, no,” laughed Walter. “I don’t imbibe.”“That’s right, young man. Don’t touch it! Don’t.”The crooked eye now gave a funny, wicked look at Walter, while Chauncy, behind Walter’s back, executed with his features a look extraordinaryenough to have fitted out a clown for his performances. Uncle Boardman here arrived, and the upright, moral B. Baggs, proceeded at once to confer with him. But who was it that Walter saw in the store? He intended to speak at once to his uncle and aunt about it, but he was sent away to The Harbor, the fishing village in the neighborhood, and when he returned, other duties occupied his mind, and at last, like other matters we neglect, it went for the present out of his thoughts altogether.Aunt Lydia, the evening of this call by Bezaleel Baggs, had a remark to make to her husband. They were alone in their sitting–room, Aunt Lydia knitting by a little, red, square–topped stand, that supported a kerosene lamp. Uncle Boardman was also sitting near the table, reading the weekly county paper. He had a pleasant face, one to which children, and dogs, and all kinds of dumb animals never made their appeal in vain. It was benevolent as the sunlight after three days of cloudy sky. He may have had brown eyes, but these watchers of the world had their seat so far under his bushy eyebrows, like overhanging eaves, that it was hard to tell their color. When he looked at another, one saw two soft, shininglittle globes of light directed toward him. As he always shaved, his big, smooth face had a certain boy–look to it. When walking, he had a way of looking down, carrying his folded hands before him. He was likely to come in contact with all sorts of beings and objects; but no romping child that he collided with, no big dog bumping against the abstracted pedestrian, ever heard a testy word of remonstrance from him. He took kindly a knock from a fish–barrel, or a poke from a passing wheel–barrow. While people joked about him, everybody respected and trusted his integrity.“He’s good salt all the way through,” said Nahum Caswell, an old fisherman at The Harbor. “He trusts other folks too much, and don’t allers know on which side of his bread the butter is; but then he never takes other folks’ butter from ’em. You can trust Boardman with a mint of money, and not a penny will ketch ’tween his fingers. No, sir.”If Boardman’s eyes, in their great charity, did not at once see into a man’s mean motives, Aunt Lydia’s did, very soon. Her bright, dark eyes looked deep, and did not look in vain. Bezaleel Baggs was uneasy the first time he met her. He felt that a very sharp, clear–seeing pair of eyes had fastened upon him a lookthat meant inspection, and he avoided her in every possible way.“Queer!” exclaimed Aunt Lydia this evening of our story. “Queer, that Belzebub Baggs—”“Bezaleel,” remonstrated Boardman mildly.“Wall, he is pizen whatever he is; but isn’t it queer he don’t like to talk with me? He’ll buttonhole you by the hour, Boardman, and palaver and make his soft speeches; but nary a word does he say to me if he can help it.”“Oh, he has business with me.”“The snake! I wish he had some with me, if I wouldn’t jest scorch him.”Uncle Boardman let out one of his soft, easy–natured chuckles, and remarked. “He probably sees you are a dangerous character. Ha—ha!”“Wall, if he don’t keep away from my winders, I’ll put some b’ilin’ water on him.”“Keep away from what? What’s he been doin’?”“My advice to him is to keep away from my winders. There I was this mornin’ at six o’clock, ironin’ away, and happened to hear a scratchin’ noise behind me—you see I was in the kitchen at the time, and my back was away from the sittin’–room—and I turned sort ofquick, and there was that Baggs at the winder of the sittin’–room—”“Inside?”“No, outside; and yet it seemed sort of queer. His head was turned this way, and it seemed as if he was a slidin’ down outside the clapboards. I couldn’t make it out what he was a doin’. For once in his life, he seemed awful glad to see me, and grinned at me, and really teched his hat. I don’t want none of his grins or hat–techin’s. When he had gone, I went to this winder, and I found this clingin’ to the blind. It looks as if it had been torn from a coat. I jest tucked it in there, because I wasn’t goin’ upstairs to my rag–bag then, and knew it would be safe.”Every housekeeper is apt to have a “saving fever,” but its style may vary extensively in different houses. One housekeeper will carefully cherish the scraps from the table. Another husbands the coal. A third burns no superfluous oil or gas. Another garners all bits of paper or cloth for the rag–man; and a fifth has two eyes out for all possible lessening of the consumption of butter. Aunt Lydia’s ambition, was to treasure up every shred of cloth, all ends of threads, and every slip of paper. She had put the savings of the morningin a little tin box on the mantel, intending to transfer them to the rag–bag the next time she journeyed upstairs.“A piece of cloth!” said Uncle Boardman, handling the relic. “Did you think it came from Baggs’ coat, though I don’t see how? He wore this morning that blue frock–coat of his, with the big, silver buttons.”“It looks more like a piece of coat–linin’.”“Indeed! Oh, I guess it’s all right,” said Uncle Boardman, rising to deposit in the box on the mantel this mysterious fragment. About five minutes later, he was wondering if something were not all wrong. Taking a candle from the mantel and lighting it, he stepped into the store. It was very dark, and very still there, save that the clock was ticking sharply. The storekeeper passed behind the counter to the book–shelf, where Bible and gazetteer, dictionary and statute–book, kept one another company in the dark. He took down the Bible, laid it on the counter, and then proceeded to examine it.“It’s in here somewhere, I know,” he softly whispered to himself; “for I tucked it away here, day before yesterday. He inquired for it, and I told him this morning I would get it, and send it to–morrow.”The desired document was that promise to pay Bezaleel Baggs five hundred dollars, which Walter had noticed. It could not now be found.“Perhaps it’s in the Psalms. I read a good deal there,” thought Uncle Boardman.Many promises are in the Psalms, but none to pay B. Baggs five hundred dollars could be found there.“Maybe it’s in Daniel. I was a lookin’ at the prophecies there,” thought the bewildered storekeeper; but the prophet had no such treasures in his keeping. He now proceeded to make a thorough and deliberate hunt through the book. He began at Genesis, and was patiently turning over the leaves in Proverbs, when a sharp voice rang out overhead, and then came in definite tones down through a funnel–hole in the ceiling. “You goin’ to bed some time ’fore the millennium, Boardman?”It was Aunt Lydia, in her chamber directly above the store; and she was using a very convenient substitute for a speaking–tube; a disused funnel–hole that passed through the ceiling of the store and the floor of Aunt Lydia’s room. Uncle Boardman started back as if the funnel–hole had been the mouth of a cannon, and Aunt Lydia sent from it a very effective shot.“Massy!” he exclaimed inwardly. “I didn’t know she was up there. Comin’, Lydia!” he shouted. “Comin’ very soon!”Giving occasional looks at the funnel–hole as if to be in readiness to dodge the shot that might be expected any moment from that quarter, he hastily completed his investigation of the Bible. So good a book, though, was unwilling to promise so untrustworthy a man as B. Baggs anything without a good assurance of repentance, and Uncle Boardman, closing the book, placed it on the book–shelf again.“Thatisqueer!” he murmured. “Well, if anybody found it, the note won’t do ’em any good, and as for Bezaleel, I can write him another.”Taking his candle again, he passed into the sitting–room, and then upstairs. It was time that he did so, for a fluttering of angry steps around the funnel–hole showed that Aunt Lydia was getting ready another and far heavier shot.
THE STORE.
The morning after his arrival at his uncle’s, Walter began his new duties as clerk, and opened the store. It was in the south–western corner of the house, and was also in a corner made by two roads. One was the lane that came up from the life saving station, widening into a road which went to the outside world. The second, starting at the store, continued its travels in an easterly direction, and ended them in a little fishing village overlooking the sea. Opening from the store into these two roads, as if to solicit and take up all passing custom, were two doors, and each was bordered by two windows. Above one of these doors, that on the road to the outside world, was a small sign, and it said, “B. Blake”; but said it very faintly. The sign once was black, and the name hadbeen painted in gilt letters; but the rains had been scouring the sign for years, and the sun bleaching it; and between the scouring and the bleaching, there had resulted a surface of shabby, blackish gray, streaked with dim, yellow lines. The store, as well as the sign, looked old. The entire house looked old. So did its owner, Boardman Blake; and the great, dark forest of pines beyond the house seemed to murmur day and night, “Growing old, growing old!” As one entered the store, in a very hospitable location between the two doors, he saw a rusty box stove flanked by two benches. The benches in winter rarely were without an occupant. In the spring, summer, and fall, these occupants in part were out on the sea, pulling into their uneasy boats, cod, hake, or haddock; while some were following the plow, hoeing corn or pitching the fragrant hay into bulky carts. Behind the benches, on the wall, were posters, announcing to a generally neglectful and ungrateful world, that “Vandyke’s Life–Bitters” would cure dyspepsia; that “Peaslee’s Liniment” never failed to take the stiffness out of a horse’s joints; while “Payson’s Hair Elixir” was sure to vitalize a bald head into the manufacturing of rich, luxuriant locks. The counters bordered two sides of the store, and sustained the weightof a desk in one corner where Boardman attended to his scanty book–keeping. Then there were two faded old show–cases whose store of peppermints, lozenges in gaudy wrappings, and gumdrops of every known rainbow–tint, excited the admiration of every schoolboy. There were also several pairs of scales, and a cheesebox. Behind the counters, ranged on shelves that began in some mysterious space below the counters’ level, and reached to the dusty, fly–specked ceiling, was an assortment of goods that only a country store can produce. There was not very much of any one article, but so many articles were gathered there that variety made up fully for quantity. There were dry goods, and goods that were not dry, such as bottles of medicine and essences; there were outfits for the farmer, and outfits for the fisherman. Hardware was there, like hammers and planes; and software, like sugar and meal. Goods were there, like boots and shoes; and goods like caps and clothing. As the storekeeper generally had only one suit of clothes on hand at a time, there was but little range of choice for the customer, and if compelled to take what he could find, a giant might have gone away wretched in the suit of a dwarf, or the dwarf departed only to be lost in the apparel of a giant.
The store excited Walter’s interest, and as he opened it that first morning, his eyes made a rapid inventory of its miscellaneous contents.
“And what is that?” he asked, noticing a shelf on which were clustered a few books. They were not for sale, but their titles and well–thumbed condition showed that they were for reference. One was a state gazetteer, another a volume of state laws, a third a small English dictionary, and a fourth was a Bible. The latter was bound in old leather covers, and its type was antique. It seemed to be a kind of safe, as well as aid to devotion, for various documents were there, like deeds and bills.
“What is this?” exclaimed Walter, as a piece of paper fluttered out of the old Bible when he chanced to lift and open the book. “Uncle has a lot of papers in it, and I must look out. I must put this back.”
He could not but see the figures, five hundred, in the left hand corner of the document, and carelessly had read, “For value received, I promise to pay Bezaleel Baggs, or order, five hundred dollars.” Walter stopped.
“I must not read that, and did not intend to,” thought the clerk. He could but notice a blot in one corner of the bill. It was a singular blot.
“It looks like an animal. There is its body, and those four streaks below would make good legs for a small animal. Pig, I guess. Now, I will put that away and attend to my work,” thought Walter. “Hullo! Who’s calling? Who’s here at six o’clock?”
Walter noticed that the time by a clock secured to a post, was very near six o’clock.
Somebody without was apparently shouting for the storekeeper. Stepping quickly to the door, Walter noticed first a gaily painted wagon. Its wheels were scarlet, and its shining black body was striped with scarlet. He was about saying to himself, “It’s a young fellow aboard,” when this same young fellow lifted a round–topped felt hat, disclosed a wall of hair, and shouted, “Youhere? You don’t say!”
“I didn’t say anything about it, but I am glad to see you, Aldrich. What are you up to?”
“This morning, I am up to bringing my uncle down here. He is out in the yard, the barnyard. I am clerking it with him, and shall be a neighbor of yours this winter; that is, a mile off, up at the office of my uncle. It is near the mill you know, that your uncle has put up for the sawing of the timber round here. Afeller gets a good apprenticeship with Bezaleel Baggs, I tell you. Oh, he is bright on a trade! I have learned a good deal by being with him, already. Say, what kind of a store have you in there? Most everything, I suppose.”
Walter, who was out on the doorstep, here turned to the store. The upper part of the door was of glass, and one who occupied Walter’s position, could easily see within.
“Is that a man in the store?” thought Walter. “Is it a man behind the counter?”
He could not make out anything very distinctly. Besides, Chauncy was calling out to him, “Look out here, not in there? Do you expect the Hon. Boardman Blake is in there trading with himself? That would be handy, for he could be as sharp as he pleased, or as easy as he pleased. Really, he is out in the barn, for I saw him there a moment ago.”
“I thought I noticed somebody in the store, but I guess it was only a shadow.”
“Come, tell me about your plans,” said Chauncy, who seemed anxious to catch and hold Walters attention. “Tell me what you are up to?”
“Why, I am clerking, am I not?”
“Oh, yes. Of course you are. Well, do you like?”
Walter did not answer at once. He could not rid his mind of the impression that something was not right in the store. He finally said, “This is my first morning in the store,” and was about to add, “I think I shall like here,” when he chanced to look again into the store. A golden ray of sunlight, as if an auger, had bored its way through the shadows behind the counter, and it fell upon the shelves that held the Bible and other volumes. In that light, Walter saw a form, that of a man, though of no one that he had ever seen before,—a short, heavy man, with broad shoulders, hatless; and was his hair light, or did the sunray brighten it as it fell upon it? He noticed that the man’s side whiskers projected into the sunlight, and also that he leaned over. Walter was about to lay his hand on the latch of the door when a terrific yell from Chauncy delayed him.
“Ah–hoo! Ah–hoo!”
Was Chauncy calling to him, or shouting to somebody in the store that he had already discovered, and perhaps might wish to notify? If such a thought came into Walter’s mind, it did not come clear as a ray of sunshine, but it was so confused and dim a suspicion that it made little impression upon him, and heturned one moment as if in obedience to Chauncy’s call, who was now shouting, “Ah–hoo–hoo! Plymp–ton!” Then he laughed heartily: “Ha–ha! You did not recognize my Indian yell that I have for folks. See here! I only wanted to say, if you were going into the store, and you have any—any—any—”
It took Chauncy some time to tell what he did want, but fumbling in his pocket, he produced a ten–cent piece, and said, “Oh, anything! Bring me some candy!”
“There is a customer in here, and I’ll bring it to you quick as I can.”
“Customer, boy! You are demented! I don’t believe anybody is there, unless it is the Hon. Boardman, as I said before.”
Chauncy was right. When Walter entered the store, no one was there! He went behind the counter, and then he looked under the counter. The usual row of dumb, unintelligent soap–boxes, and spice–boxes, and candy–boxes, could be seen there. He went to the shelves on which were the books. The sunshine, as well as the visitor, had mysteriously vanished. A fly crawling over the books suddenly buzzed in Walter’s face, as if to ask, in the fly–tongue, “What does this fellow want here?”
“If this is not strange!” thought Walter.
“Where did that man go? Am I getting ‘demented,’ as Chauncy said? Could anybody have gone to the sitting–room from the store?”
From the store, one could directly enter the sitting–room. Walter hastily looked into the sitting–room. The sunray might have retreated there, and in the rich overflow of light entering two eastern windows, it certainly would not have been noticed as a separate ray. But had the rich, strong flood of light swallowed up the man, as well as the ray of sunshine? If he had gone into the sitting–room, where was he?
“Nonsense!” thought Walter, for he heard the cracked voice of Aunt Lydia piping an old love–song of her girlhood, as she ironed the week’s wash in the kitchen opening out of the sitting–room. “Nonsense! If anybody had come here, of course she would have seen them. She don’t act as if she had seen anybody.” No. Aunt Lydia was singing in sharp, slender strains that old love–ditty, as free from any agitation as if it had been her uninterrupted avocation that morning.
“Plympton! Plympton! Where’s that candy? Have you gone to get your folks to make that candy?” Chauncy was now calling fromthe store door, which he had opened. Walter returned, went to one of the show–cases, took out the quantity of candy ordered, and handed it to Chauncy.
“The queerest thing!” exclaimed Walter. “I am sure I saw a man in here; but where he has gone, I don’t know.”
“Saw a man!” replied Chauncy, with an incredulous air. “Nobody has been round here except you and me. Here’s your uncle up the road.”
And there indeed Boardman Blake was, slowly moving along toward the store in his careless, abstracted way.
“There’smyuncle, and you can see him down at the fish–house,” continued Chauncy. “He would like to findyouruncle. That’s what I brought him down here for. Don’t you see my uncle?”
The fish–house was a black little building, that the rough, strong sea–winds for the last twenty–five years had been trying to push over, and had partially succeeded. It had been found necessary to prop it on one side. Here, the storekeeper accumulated every year a stock of dried salt fish, purchased of the fishermen and then sold out to customers from the surrounding country. Chauncy’s uncle waswalking about the fish–house as if trying to find somebody.
“Is that the man I saw in the store?” Walter asked.
“Haw–haw!” laughed Chauncy noisily. “He’s been down at the fish–house trying to hunt up your uncle, all the time I have been here. Come out and see him, and let’s ask him.”
Walter stepped back to say to Aunt Lydia that he wanted to go to the fish–house, and would be back very soon, and then crossed the road with Chauncy to the fish–house.
“The man I saw in the store was sort of built that way, heavy, and short, and broad at the shoulders, and was leaning over. I wish this man would lean over, and let me see how he looks,” thought Walter. The suspected party now turned his face to the young men, as if aware of Walter’s desire to inspect it. It was a face round and full, flanked with thin, gray whiskers. One of the eyes had a cast in it, which gave “Uncle Bezaleel’s” face a certain crookedness of look; but that does not necessarily mean crookedness of character. The eyes of some very honest people have an unfortunate squint. If though, any one looking at the upper part of B. Bagg’s face should say, “B. Baggs is a crooked fellow. Look out!” thenthe voice below entirely contradicted that impression. It was a mild, agreeable voice, kindly, and rather musical. It had a persuasive tone, and if the crooked eye was a misfortune, the voice of which B. Baggs was owner, had proved to be an excellent piece of property. It had coaxed many poor fellows on to their ruin. Its softness, its sympathy, its willingness to be your friend at any sacrifice, and its great grief if you possibly could think it was your enemy, had brought its possessor much money. It was this voice that had made its way to the softest place in the soft heart of Boardman Blake, quicker than the sharpest auger in the world.
“Uncle, have you been in Mr. Blake’s store this morning?” inquired Chauncy.
“Why, no, child!” said Uncle Bezaleel in the most affectionate and bland of tones, at the same time winking maliciously with his crooked eye. “What made you think so?”
“Oh, I didn’t think so. I knew you had been out here all the time, trying to hunt up Mr. Blake; but my friend Plympton here, uncle, thought you had been in.”
“Ah, how d’ye do, Mr. Plympton,” said Uncle Bezaleel cordially, addressing Walter by that title of manhood which goes so straight to aboy’s heart. Here, with his fat fingers, he softly squeezed Walter’s hand. “I have been out here and round somewhat, admiring the tidy way you and your uncle keep things in. Now that barnyard looks trim as a dining–room. Thrifty as can be, I’m sure.”
The barnyard certainly was very neat for such a place, but that tired, shabby, leaning old fish–house, and the aspect of the place in general, did not sustain B. Baggs’ wonderful opinion of thrift. Walter, though, did not like to mistrust people, and this ready denial, the soft–toned compliment also, were irresistible, and Walter concluded it must have been somebody else that he saw in the store.
“Oh, I see, sir,” he cried promptly. “It must have been another man. Excuse me.”
“All—all right. I must have my little joke, and I guess you—you—ran into your uncle’s cider barrels, this morning, and couldn’t see straight.”
“Haw—haw!” shouted Chauncy.
“Oh, no,” laughed Walter. “I don’t imbibe.”
“That’s right, young man. Don’t touch it! Don’t.”
The crooked eye now gave a funny, wicked look at Walter, while Chauncy, behind Walter’s back, executed with his features a look extraordinaryenough to have fitted out a clown for his performances. Uncle Boardman here arrived, and the upright, moral B. Baggs, proceeded at once to confer with him. But who was it that Walter saw in the store? He intended to speak at once to his uncle and aunt about it, but he was sent away to The Harbor, the fishing village in the neighborhood, and when he returned, other duties occupied his mind, and at last, like other matters we neglect, it went for the present out of his thoughts altogether.
Aunt Lydia, the evening of this call by Bezaleel Baggs, had a remark to make to her husband. They were alone in their sitting–room, Aunt Lydia knitting by a little, red, square–topped stand, that supported a kerosene lamp. Uncle Boardman was also sitting near the table, reading the weekly county paper. He had a pleasant face, one to which children, and dogs, and all kinds of dumb animals never made their appeal in vain. It was benevolent as the sunlight after three days of cloudy sky. He may have had brown eyes, but these watchers of the world had their seat so far under his bushy eyebrows, like overhanging eaves, that it was hard to tell their color. When he looked at another, one saw two soft, shininglittle globes of light directed toward him. As he always shaved, his big, smooth face had a certain boy–look to it. When walking, he had a way of looking down, carrying his folded hands before him. He was likely to come in contact with all sorts of beings and objects; but no romping child that he collided with, no big dog bumping against the abstracted pedestrian, ever heard a testy word of remonstrance from him. He took kindly a knock from a fish–barrel, or a poke from a passing wheel–barrow. While people joked about him, everybody respected and trusted his integrity.
“He’s good salt all the way through,” said Nahum Caswell, an old fisherman at The Harbor. “He trusts other folks too much, and don’t allers know on which side of his bread the butter is; but then he never takes other folks’ butter from ’em. You can trust Boardman with a mint of money, and not a penny will ketch ’tween his fingers. No, sir.”
If Boardman’s eyes, in their great charity, did not at once see into a man’s mean motives, Aunt Lydia’s did, very soon. Her bright, dark eyes looked deep, and did not look in vain. Bezaleel Baggs was uneasy the first time he met her. He felt that a very sharp, clear–seeing pair of eyes had fastened upon him a lookthat meant inspection, and he avoided her in every possible way.
“Queer!” exclaimed Aunt Lydia this evening of our story. “Queer, that Belzebub Baggs—”
“Bezaleel,” remonstrated Boardman mildly.
“Wall, he is pizen whatever he is; but isn’t it queer he don’t like to talk with me? He’ll buttonhole you by the hour, Boardman, and palaver and make his soft speeches; but nary a word does he say to me if he can help it.”
“Oh, he has business with me.”
“The snake! I wish he had some with me, if I wouldn’t jest scorch him.”
Uncle Boardman let out one of his soft, easy–natured chuckles, and remarked. “He probably sees you are a dangerous character. Ha—ha!”
“Wall, if he don’t keep away from my winders, I’ll put some b’ilin’ water on him.”
“Keep away from what? What’s he been doin’?”
“My advice to him is to keep away from my winders. There I was this mornin’ at six o’clock, ironin’ away, and happened to hear a scratchin’ noise behind me—you see I was in the kitchen at the time, and my back was away from the sittin’–room—and I turned sort ofquick, and there was that Baggs at the winder of the sittin’–room—”
“Inside?”
“No, outside; and yet it seemed sort of queer. His head was turned this way, and it seemed as if he was a slidin’ down outside the clapboards. I couldn’t make it out what he was a doin’. For once in his life, he seemed awful glad to see me, and grinned at me, and really teched his hat. I don’t want none of his grins or hat–techin’s. When he had gone, I went to this winder, and I found this clingin’ to the blind. It looks as if it had been torn from a coat. I jest tucked it in there, because I wasn’t goin’ upstairs to my rag–bag then, and knew it would be safe.”
Every housekeeper is apt to have a “saving fever,” but its style may vary extensively in different houses. One housekeeper will carefully cherish the scraps from the table. Another husbands the coal. A third burns no superfluous oil or gas. Another garners all bits of paper or cloth for the rag–man; and a fifth has two eyes out for all possible lessening of the consumption of butter. Aunt Lydia’s ambition, was to treasure up every shred of cloth, all ends of threads, and every slip of paper. She had put the savings of the morningin a little tin box on the mantel, intending to transfer them to the rag–bag the next time she journeyed upstairs.
“A piece of cloth!” said Uncle Boardman, handling the relic. “Did you think it came from Baggs’ coat, though I don’t see how? He wore this morning that blue frock–coat of his, with the big, silver buttons.”
“It looks more like a piece of coat–linin’.”
“Indeed! Oh, I guess it’s all right,” said Uncle Boardman, rising to deposit in the box on the mantel this mysterious fragment. About five minutes later, he was wondering if something were not all wrong. Taking a candle from the mantel and lighting it, he stepped into the store. It was very dark, and very still there, save that the clock was ticking sharply. The storekeeper passed behind the counter to the book–shelf, where Bible and gazetteer, dictionary and statute–book, kept one another company in the dark. He took down the Bible, laid it on the counter, and then proceeded to examine it.
“It’s in here somewhere, I know,” he softly whispered to himself; “for I tucked it away here, day before yesterday. He inquired for it, and I told him this morning I would get it, and send it to–morrow.”
The desired document was that promise to pay Bezaleel Baggs five hundred dollars, which Walter had noticed. It could not now be found.
“Perhaps it’s in the Psalms. I read a good deal there,” thought Uncle Boardman.
Many promises are in the Psalms, but none to pay B. Baggs five hundred dollars could be found there.
“Maybe it’s in Daniel. I was a lookin’ at the prophecies there,” thought the bewildered storekeeper; but the prophet had no such treasures in his keeping. He now proceeded to make a thorough and deliberate hunt through the book. He began at Genesis, and was patiently turning over the leaves in Proverbs, when a sharp voice rang out overhead, and then came in definite tones down through a funnel–hole in the ceiling. “You goin’ to bed some time ’fore the millennium, Boardman?”
It was Aunt Lydia, in her chamber directly above the store; and she was using a very convenient substitute for a speaking–tube; a disused funnel–hole that passed through the ceiling of the store and the floor of Aunt Lydia’s room. Uncle Boardman started back as if the funnel–hole had been the mouth of a cannon, and Aunt Lydia sent from it a very effective shot.
“Massy!” he exclaimed inwardly. “I didn’t know she was up there. Comin’, Lydia!” he shouted. “Comin’ very soon!”
Giving occasional looks at the funnel–hole as if to be in readiness to dodge the shot that might be expected any moment from that quarter, he hastily completed his investigation of the Bible. So good a book, though, was unwilling to promise so untrustworthy a man as B. Baggs anything without a good assurance of repentance, and Uncle Boardman, closing the book, placed it on the book–shelf again.
“Thatisqueer!” he murmured. “Well, if anybody found it, the note won’t do ’em any good, and as for Bezaleel, I can write him another.”
Taking his candle again, he passed into the sitting–room, and then upstairs. It was time that he did so, for a fluttering of angry steps around the funnel–hole showed that Aunt Lydia was getting ready another and far heavier shot.
CHAPTER VII.STANDING FIRM.Walter was enjoying a brief furlough at home in October. He was in his mother’s sewing–room that opened out of the kitchen. It was a little nest that had room only for a sewing machine, a table, and two chairs. Walter was now occupying one of these chairs, and his mother sat at her table, busily preparing some work for her nimble little machine. It was a mild, autumn day, and through the opened window came the sound of the cricket’s shrill piping, and the beating of the grain with an old–fashioned flail, by Farmer Grant, in his barn on the opposite side of the road. There was a crimson–stained maple near the house, that suggested to Walter the opening of his conversation with his mother.“How soon that maple has turned, mother!”“Oh no. It is time for it.”“Let me see. It is not so early for it afterall. It’s the fifteenth of October. The fifteenth! Why, that is the day Uncle Boardman said his mill would be done, and on my way back, I guess I’ll stop there and see how it looks.”“That the mill where his trees are to be sawed up?”“Yes, and I expect a lot more will come there. You see uncle built the mill, and Baggs buys up the timber where he can, and he and uncle run the mill together, and divide the profits somehow. But it has cost something to put that mill up. I know uncle had to borrow money to do it. I don’t like that Baggs at all, mother. He took me in at first, he was so soft–spoken, but I think I know him now.”“He has been up in this neighborhood trying to buy woodland, and wanted your father to trade with him, but he wouldn’t. We don’t like his looks up this way.”There was a lull in the conversation. The cricket without still kept up his sharp, piercing song, and Farmer Grant patiently beat out an accompaniment to the cricket’s tune.“How long is it now, Walter, since you were confirmed?”“Three months, mother.”“How are you getting along?”“Well, mother, I can’t say that I am making much progress, but I am trying to hold on.”“Any progress we make in a religious life, comes from doing just what you say you are doing, holding on. If we are regular in our prayers and Bible–reading, if we patiently attend to our church duties, and just try from hour to hour to do our duty to those about us, that is all one can do. God will do the rest.”“I had an idea, mother, when I began this life I should make more progress, get along faster.”“Don’t mind that. You must just stick to your purpose, and keep on. I remember what Mark Simpson, an old fisherman down at The Harbor said once. Said Mark,—‘Going to heaven is like tryin’ to row round B’ilin’ P’int when the tide is agin you. If you stick to your oars, and pull ahead, you’ll come round all right.’ And I think Mark has shown that, if any one has. He has had all sorts of troubles, and he does what he advised, he sticks to his oars and pulls ahead. There’s a good deal, Walter, in what I call religious habits; in being particular about your prayers, in reading your Bible, in your attendance at church. Get the wheel down into that track and keep going steadily, and you will find everything easier.”“Yes, I suppose so, mother.”“And there is one thing which it is well for us all to know, Walter. It’s the most important thing. I mean we must get hold of Christ, understand what He has done for us, what He will do for us, and holding Him before our eyes and in our hearts, try to do for Him, and be like Him. And Walter, there is this thing I want you to be particular about, to do some one specific thing for Him. Of course, you try to live for Him; but I mean a particular duty.”“What?”“Well, may I speak of something? It sha’n’t be very hard. Of course, you will go to church yourself; try to get everybody else you can. There, do that.”“Well, I will.”The conversation went on. By and by, his mother exclaimed, “If it isn’t eleven o’clock! And there is your lunch, but I will have it ready soon, and what time do you start?”“Twelve, in the mail–wagon, you know. I go as far as Uncle Boardman’s mill, and I promised to stop there for Chauncy Aldrich, this afternoon, while he is away; and then I walk down to uncle’s at tea–time. It is not more than a mile to walk.”Walter declared the lunch to be “splendid.” Then there was “a stitch” to be taken in Walters coat, for which he said he was “thankful.”“That does me good,” thought his mother. “I don’t know as Walter notices it, but since he has begun his new life, he appreciates more what his father and mother do for him. It may seem to be foolish in me, but the religion that doesn’t come out in little things, won’t come out in great ones.”Oh, patient mothers, hard working fathers, are you “foolish” to be affected by a child’s gratitude for little things? If children only knew it, such gratitude makes this a new world for parents. The mail–wagon soon rolled along to the Plympton farm and halted for Walter. He was passing through the front yard, hurrying along a lilac and rose–bordered path, to the waiting mail–wagon before the house, when his mother called out, “Oh, Walter! Wait a minute.” She ran down the path.“I’ll say this for your father, who isn’t at home. It was his charge, you know when you were little: ‘Honest, boy.’”Walter laughed. “I guess I have got all my bundles now, mother. Good–bye.”“Good–bye, Walter.”As the wagon rattled away, carrying off Prince Alden, the driver, two mail–bags, and two passengers, Walter thought of these words, “Honest, boy.” It was an expression his father had used when Walter was a little fellow. The motto had an influence over Walter, not only because his father uttered it, but practiced it. Mr. Plympton’s daily life was the very crystal of honesty itself; honesty not only shining through his words but radiant in all his actions. After a ride of nine miles, came a group of buildings to which had been recently given the name “Blake’s Mills.” It was a part of the business transaction between Bezaleel Baggs and Walter’s uncle, that the latter should erect a “tide mill” at the head of “Muskrat Creek,” a mile from The Harbor. At the head of this creek, was a large tract of useless land belonging to Boardman Blake, easily flooded at high tides. Swinging backward and forward with the tides, were gates, placed in a dam that had been thrown across the head of the creek. Through these opened gates, swept a strong, clean, cold current from the ocean, at flood tide, and then the water was distributed over the low lands, to be held in check until needed to push the great wheel carrying the machinery of the mill.“If you’ll build a mill,” said B. Baggs to Uncle Boardman, “and run it with me, I’ll agree to furnish you with logs.”At one time, for the sake of his “dear friend Blake,” he talked as if he would build everything, take all risks and give all profits to that dear friend.He did guarantee however, a stated, handsome income to Boardman. “Then,” he added, “you can run the mill for corn and flour, if you wish. However I’ll warrant you on logs a long, steady job; and it will pay you and me enough to make a handsome thing out of it. I’ll furnish logs for five years at least.”At the same time, he made a great display of ready money, suggesting untold resources somewhere. He bought up the trees on extensive tracts of woodland far and near. Wherever he went, an immense business movement seemed to go with him. Uncle Boardman was bewildered. This great being, like a big oceancraft, bore down on him with such an imposing spread of financial sail, that he and his,—all but Aunt Lydia—were easy captures. Boardman built the mill, although he was forced to borrow five hundred dollars of Baggs that he might accomplish this. It was a note for this amount which Walter had stumbled upon and whichhis uncle had subsequently missed, but to cover the debt, he had written and tendered another. It is true that logs had not come to the mill so freely as Baggs had prophesied, for even logs need a little pushing to accomplish a journey; and Uncle Boardman’s receipts were not so large that the disposition of them had perplexed him. It was a fact also that some people had begun to label the mill “Boardman’s Folly;” but Bezaleel Baggs could furnish any amount of palaver, even if he could not make trees cut themselves down, and roll in large numbers to the mill; and his softly padded tongue kept Uncle Boardman quiet. Chauncy Aldrich represented his uncle’s interests at the mill, as that relative was often absent on mysterious journeys, from which he returned with an air of vast importance; as if he had bought up half the world to–day, and it would be delivered at ‘Blake’s Mills’ to–morrow. In connection with Baggs’ “office,” a small, ragged, unpainted shanty, there was a “store” to supply the hands at the mill. Uncle Boardman had stocked this emporium, and Baggs sold the goods on commission. Uncle Boardman sometimes thought that his profits were exceedingly small; though he knew that his “branch store,” as Baggs had pretentiously named it,could have very few customers. Some people had rashly asserted that liquor was sold at this store, but as a town–law forbade it, and as Boardman Blake’s principles forbade it also, the sale of liquor did not seem probable. For all that, something “mysterious” was sold there. It was at this “branch store” that Walter expected to serve, the afternoon of his return from his parents, as Chauncy wished to be away. The mail–wagon deposited Walter at the mill, and then clattered away. The mill was not running, as it was flood tide; and the water was rushing in from the sea, storing up the power that made all mill–running possible. No one seemed to be in the great barn–like mill, and few logs were accumulated there to feed the hungry saws when their sharp teeth might be set in motion.“It looks quiet,” thought Walter.It certainly was quiet in the big, deserted mill; in the narrow little road without; in the adjoining fields, so level and green; in the sky above, through which the sunshine was silently poured down. Nothing seemed to be stirring save the tide, racing up “Muskrat Creek,” and that went with an almost intelligent sound. As it rushed, and eddied, and gurgled, it seemed to say, “On hand, Boardman! We’ll start thatlazy mill, shortly.” Ah, there was one other object stirring, at the office, store, shanty door, and this was Chauncy. He looked out into the road, then up to the sky, and then over toward the mill, as if he expected an arrival from some quarter.“Ha, Plympton!” he shouted.“Here I am,” replied Walter. “Am I late, Aldrich?”“Oh no, but this is one of the days when the market seems to be paralyzed. Haven’t had a customer, and not a log has been hauled to the mill. However, Uncle Baggs is off stirring ’em up somewhere, and trade will begin to move this way. He is a master hand to stir people up and there will be a movement soon.”Here he shoved back his cap, and showed that bristling wall of hair behind which he seemed to be entrenched, and from that impregnable position was defying all the world. His air was that of a challenge to Walter to “come on” if he dared, and show that Bezaleel Baggs would not “stir people up”; yes, “stir ’em up,” and bring on an immense movement in “the market.”“Well,” said Walter, dropping his traveling bag, “if there is little to be done, I can get a chance to read a book I have in my bag. Howlong do you want to be away? Suit yourself, you know. I am here to accommodate you, and sha’n’t be needed at my uncle’s before six.”“Oh, I will be back by five. Besides, my uncle may come, and he will relieve you. He is a great hand to drop on folks sort of unexpected.”“Well, when he drops, I don’t want to be exactly under him, for he looks like solid weight.”“Ha—ha! When Uncle Bezaleeldoescome down on a man, he can drop heavy. Well, good–bye and good luck to you.”Off swaggered Chauncy, his cap at one side of his head; his whole air that of some bragging money king, who had sallied forth to upset “the market” in behalf of himself; or to accomplish some other great feat of financial tumbling. Walter was left alone in the office. For awhile, he read a recent report of the life saving service; for the world that centered in the little building whose outlook and flags–taff he could see from Uncle Boardman’s storedoor, interested him exceedingly. Nobody appeared to interrupt him save a fly, that buzzed up to him vigorously, in Chauncy’s style, but buzzed back immediately at a wave of the hand, which wasnotChauncy’s style.“Ah,” said Walter, after an hour’s fascinatingreading, “I hear a footstep. Somebody’s coming. A customer, probably.”He let his book drop on the counter, and awaited this arrival. A young man entered, whom Walter thought he had seen before; but where, he could not readily say.“He is not over twenty–one,” thought Walter. “He has a nice form.”The young man had a frame of much symmetry, and the dress–coat that he wore, instead of the loose blouse common among the fishermen and farmers, brought out into distinct outline his well–shaped figure. Although his look was that of a rather strong excitement, which flushed his face, and gave it an unnatural eagerness, yet Walter was attracted toward him at once. A little girl, who bore some resemblance to the young man, closely followed him, clinging to the skirt of his coat. The young man appeared to be looking for something on one of the shelves, and with a twinkle of his blue eyes, and in musical, ringing tones, he called out, “In some stores, they say on a card, ‘If you don’t see a thing, ask for it.’”“Well,” replied Walter, “Ask away. I would like to sell something to somebody.”The young man did not lower his eyes to notice Walter, but continued to search withthem the objects on the three shelves behind the counter.“He can’t want soap, or matches, or that pile of mittens for fishermen,” thought Walter.The young man, himself, here expressed his wants.“See here!” he said in a half–whisper, leaning forward. “Where’s that big bottle Baggs keeps on the upper shelf, generally behind a bundle of yarn?”As he leaned forward, Walter noticed by his breath that he had been drinking an intoxicant of some kind. He noticed also that the little girl in the rear was now tugging at his coat, as if to pull him back from an exposed position. Did the child say, “Don’t!”“Go way, Amy! Don’t pull so!” exclaimed the young man rather testily. Still he did not look round at this interferer, and he did not even glance at Walter. His eager eyes were fastened on those generally uninteresting objects, soap, yarn, and matches. Surely, there could be no snake’s eye up there to bewilder one.“Ah, I see the top of it! Just above that big lot of yarn on the third shelf. That’s how I made my mistake—I was looking at the second shelf, you see, and—and it’s the third—don’tAmy! Keep quiet, Amy! There, if you’ll just get that down! A—my, stop!”Was it a big sob, Walter heard behind this customer? The young man’s look was no more eager now than Walter’s. The desire to know, was as strong in the latter, as appetite was in the former, and Walter had now mounted a rickety, flag–bottomed chair, and was pulling aside the packages on the shelves. Reaching a big bundle of yarn on the uppermost shelf, he saw the object of the young man’s intense desire; an immense black bottle with an immense black stopper.“There—there she is! Just hand her down; and if you have any water handy, I’ll mix it myself, you know. Amy, you stop pulling, or I’ll send you outdoors.”The young man’s voice, though earnest, was not cross. Indeed, he had endured a constant twitching from his small companion.“Just hand her down, please.”“Well, no, I think not, if it is liquor,” was Walter’s reply.This, to the young man, was an unexpected turn of affairs. For the first time, he now looked directly at Walter. Still, he stayed good–natured, and that attracted Walter the more strongly.“Why—why—of course it is liquor. You don’t suppose Baggs would hide kerosene, say, behind his mothy old yarn, would he?” and the young man laughed.“Well, no, I should say not,” and Walter laughed also.“You are here to sell, are you not?” asked the young man.“Yes, I suppose I am, for the afternoon; but I didn’t agree to sell everything Baggs might put into this old hole. I don’t know what your business is, though your face looks natural; but if the man that employed you, say to catch fish, should say some day, ‘There goes somebody’s sheep in the road. I am going to shear it, and keep the wool, and I want you to hold it, for I hired you to work for me,’ I guess you would let your fingers burn first, before you would touch the thing that was another man’s.” There was silence now in the little shanty. The young man began to drum on the counter with his fingers.“Then, it is against the law to sell liquor in this town,” observed Walter.“Oh, Baggs is cute to fix that,” replied the would–be customer in a whisper. “You need not take any money now. Baggsgivesus a glass of liquor to–day, and in a week from to–day,when we meet him, we say, ‘A present, Mr. Baggs,’ and wegivehim money enough to cover the worth of the liquor.”The young man was no longer looking at Walter, but at the bottle on the shelf, as if addressing that.“I should think,” said Walter, indignantly, “the devil himself would be ashamed of that mean, underhanded way. I believe in being aboveboard and honest. No, I am not going to have anything to do with this business,” and as he spoke, he very resolutely thrust back the yarn, hiding the bottle from the observation of all save those to whose sight their appetite gave unusual keenness. While he was doing this, he heard a noise at the door. It was only a slight stir at first, as of a lively brush from the wind pushing its way past the door. It was just such a “lively” effort of the wind, as at sea, may grow into a hurricane. Turning toward the door, Walter saw Baggs. It was Baggs indeed, and nobody else, but oh, what a change!“Well, sir!” he roared.How unlike that smooth–speaking, mild–tempered man, who usually went by the name of Baggs! His face was ruffled and darkened with rage. His skin seemed to be blown out;and as certain unnoticed pimples had grown also, it had a mottled, puffy look, like that of a frog. In the midst of this turgidity and discoloration, his twisted eye flashed and wriggled in a frightful manner, while his voice was hoarse and blatant as that of a fog–horn.“You—you are a pretty—feller—in—in this store! Git—git—out of this!” he shouted, catching his breath.As his peculiarity of sight made it difficult to always tell whom he might be looking at, both the young men glanced doubtfully at Baggs, and then inquiringly at one another; as if about to say, “Whom does he mean?”“Git—git—out!” he roared again.“Who—o—o?” asked the young man outside the counter.“You—you—you!” said Baggs, with tremendous emphasis, advancing toward the young man inside the counter. “I meanyou, Walter Plympton. I—I—have heard your—talk—talk—for the last five minutes. I meanyou, sir, whose—whose uncle I have been striving—ving—to exalt to the—the—pin—pin—nack—ul of untold wealth. I meanyou, an ungrateful neph—neph—ew. I meanyou, who wouldn’t give to a fellow—that’s—that’s faint—a little sip—sip that would do him no harm. Will the—law—lawstop that work of—mer—mercy to the sick? You were not—asked—as I understand—it—to sell, but simp—simply to put—as I understand it—the bottlehere.”With new and frightful energy, Baggs here pounded the counter, which he had struck several times before.“You were not asked—asked—to do anything more. Will you—you not—befriend the—the—”Although Baggs’ philanthropy did not fail him, and he could have talked an hour as the champion of the faint and weary, yet his breathdiddesert him; and he stood there, gasping, “the—the—the—the—”Baggs had a great reputation as orator at town meetings, and he was declared by admirers “always to be equal to the occasion,” and it was mortifying now to be found so unequal to this emergency. There was no help for it, though. He could only gasp, “the—the—the—”“Oh well,” remarked Walter, “I can go as well now, as any time. When you catch me selling liquor, you will be likely to find at the same time the Atlantic full of your mill–logs. Good–day, sir.”This reference to Baggs’ logs, which were notnumerous enough that day to fill anything, so affected the orator, that he did succeed in making a new forensic effort.“Go, boy!” he thundered.The next moment, Walter was rushing out of the door, as indignant on the side of the clerk, as Baggs was on the side of the employer.“Such impudence!” exclaimed Baggs, his wrath slowly subsiding. “If you don’t feel just right, I’ll ’tend to you,” he said to the customer. “I’ll trouble you to get down that bottle.”The young man did not stir. He seemed to be in a stupor.“What’s the matter?” asked Baggs. “Feel wuss?” and a sarcastic humor lighted up his twisted eye.“I’m going,” said the young man.“And not take a drink?”“No, I’ve seen enough of it. That young fellow is right in not selling, and if he can’t sell, I won’t be fool enough to drink.”“Come, come!” said a little voice behind him.“Yes, Amy; I’m going,” and out of the store he went. Baggs was amazed. He could not understand it.“Well, if that ain’t queer!” he muttered. He began to wonder if the recent scene werereal, whether it might not have been a dream. There was Walter, though, now almost out of sight; and the young man was moving in the same direction, his coat–skirts still clutched by Amy. These three were substantial witnesses to the reality of the affair; and Baggs, wiping his forehead with a very red, and a very dirty handkerchief, turned toward his desk in what was strictly the “office” part of the shanty.Walter did not intend to take the road he was now traveling, but when he left Baggs, he was feeling so intensely, that the matter of a road was too trivial to be noticed. The road in which he was walking led him to The Harbor; and from this village, he could reach his uncle’s, though his walk would be a long one.“I have started,” he reflected, “and I might as well keep on. Besides, if I turn back to take the right road, I shall have to pass Baggs’ office, and I don’t want to go near that rascal. I will walk a mile to avoid him.” He tramped forward with a kind of fierce energy, busily thinking.“The idea! Wanting to exalt Uncle Boardman to a pinnacle of wealth! And he has been constantly befooling him. He has been pretending to buy up woodland far and near; and I don’t know but that he has bought it, inone way, but I don’t believe he has paid for it. Aunt Lydia saw through him all the time, and she was the sharpest of the lot. Then that liquor business! Wasn’t he cunning, giving away his whiskey! Well, he found one person who would neither sell, nor give for him.”So intensely was Walter thinking, he did not notice how rapidly he was passing through the little fishing–village. There were not more than forty houses at The Harbor, and these were located anywhere along the crooked line of the one narrow street. The neighborhood was very rocky, and in and out among the ledges, wound this single street. Some of the houses were very old, and their roofs were patched with moss. Planted near the ledges, these ancient relics of domestic architecture seemed more like masses of lichen, that had fastened on the ledges, becoming a part of them; and resolute to maintain their rocky anchorage as long as the rough sea winds, and the driving rains, would let them. The village had a small store, whose proprietor considered himself as a dangerous competitor of Boardman Blake, and a box schoolhouse, capped with a rude little belfry, which never had entertained a bell as its guest. It had also an unpainted “hall,” where one evening a dance might bepounded out by the vigorous feet of the young men and women of the village; the next evening might witness an auction; and if the third evening belonged to Sunday, some kind of a religious service might be held there. These three public buildings, the store, the schoolhouse, the hall, Walter had passed. Chancing to look up, he said, “I am almost through the village. I have been so mad, I have made pretty quick time; and there is the road that goes up to Uncle Boardman’s; and—and—there’s the ‘Crescent’! I have a great mind to go home that way, by the Crescent.”The Crescent was a peculiarity of rock and sand in the harbor. If it had been simply a shoal of sand, though shaped like a young moon this year, the shifting tides every day, the great storms of spring or autumn, would have worked it over into something very unlike a young moon another year. There were nubs of rocks at either end, and ledges were scattered along the sides of this marine scimeter, so that a measure of the restless sand was retained; and year after year, the Crescent kept substantially its form.At low tide, the Crescent could be easily reached by any pedestrian. One in passing from The Harbor to Boardman Blake’s, couldleave the road, and at low tide cross over to the Crescent, pass along its ledges and sand, and leaving it, at its easterly extremity, regain the land without wetting the feet. This course would carry one not far from the lane that straggled from the life saving station up to Boardman Blake’s; and although a much longer route than by the road, it had its attractions for those who liked to see the surf tumble on the rocks. Walter was of this number, and instead of following any farther the crooked street that wound among the ledges, and then curved toward Boardman Blake’s store, he digressed at a point opposite the Crescent; and he took the longer, but more romantic way home.“I will cross to those rocks half way down the Crescent, and sit down a while and watch the waves break over the rocks,” he said. “Splendid place there.”It was a tempting outlook upon the somersets thrown by those acrobats of the ocean, the waves, when they reached the rocky line of the shore, and there made tumble after tumble. Walter sat a long time watching and thinking:“Then I have run against Baggs,” he said, “and I didn’t anticipate that. Wasn’t he mad! I never thought that smooth–talking man couldrave like one of these waves. I am sorry for Uncle Boardman’s sake, for I imagine—poor man—he has enough to worry him, and my fuss with Baggs may make him some trouble. But I don’t see what else I could have done. That fellow—I wonder where I have seen him—had been drinking already, and a glass or two more might have just finished him. I could not do that; no, not even set down the bottle for him. And the law was against it; and I could not in any way help break the law. Baggs could not ask it of me, for I didn’t go there for any such purpose. No, sir! I think I did the right thing, and I’ll stick to it, and stand by it.”In his earnestness, Walter rose, stamped on the ledges with his feet, as if to give emphasis to his opinion, and looked off on the wide ocean of blue, whose play was as restless as that of his thoughts. And as he looked, somehow it seemed to him as if he had the sympathy of that wide reach of nature he was watching. The sky seemed to bend down to him in an approval which the gently blowing wind whispered, and that great ocean had a voice, sounding in the thousands of waves pressing toward him, and saying in the roar of the surf, “You are right.” This secret sympathy between law innature and its keeper in the sphere of principle, is one of the rewards of right–doing. And above all, in his heart, Walter had the sense of satisfaction whose source he knew to be God. He did not know what might be the personal consequences of his difficulty with Baggs, but he felt that he was right; and he could plant his feet on that assurance solid as the ledges under him. He remained a long time watching the waves, till he was startled to see what a protracted shadow his form threw on the black ledges.“Sun is getting low,” he said. “I must be going.”He turned, and moved away a short distance, when he turned again, and looked back upon the rocks he had left.“That is strange,” he said.He noticed that this particular ledge, called the “Center Rock” by the fishermen, had a divided summit. The outline of the eastern half of this summit was curiously like that of a chair; as if placed there in anticipation of an arrival by sea. No one, though, came out of the great, empty waste of water, now rapidly blackening in the twilight.“Sort of funny,” he exclaimed, and hurried away.“Ho, what is this?” he asked. Looking toward the land, he noticed that while he had been watching the waves, the tide had turned, and covered the low, sandy flats with a floor of crystal.“Well, it is not so very deep, and I can wade ashore,” said Walter. He was untying his shoes, when he heard the noise of oars. As he chanced to look up to see who might be coming, the boatman turned, and resting on his oars, faced Walter. A smile as from an old acquaintance overspread his features, and he called out, “Hold on there!”A few more strokes, and the boat was on the sand at Walter’s feet.“One good turn deserves another,” cried the boatman. “Jump in!”“Oh, that you?” cried Walter. “Well, I will.” And into the boat he jumped.This opportune arrival was the young man he had met in Baggs’ store that afternoon. He was dressed now for work, and wore a blue blouse. It could not hide, though, his broad shoulders, and when he rowed, one could but admire the easy, strong sweep of the arms.“I was busy watching the waves,” explained Walter, “and I did not notice that the tide had turned.”“You would have crossed without much difficulty to the shore, though in three hours from this time you might have done some swimming.”“I am good for that.”“Dare say. You would have got along, though they do tell some boogerish stories about those rocks. Did you notice the ‘Chair’? It is on the easterly side of what we call the ‘Center Rock.’”“Oh yes, I saw that.”“Well, they say a young girl was caught on the Crescent by the tide toward night, and a rain and fog set in. Oh, it was years ago, and we had no station here; and it was when the men folks used to go off fishing down to Banks—the Newfoundland—and of course there were few folks at home. I mean men folks. Some of the women thought they heard screams in the night; but then in a storm, the waves keep up such a pounding, you can hardly hear your own ears. The storm got worse all that night, and in the morning, it was bad enough outside the Crescent. Soon as the storm would let them cross over, some of the people went, they say; but they didn’t find the girl.”“Well, how did they know she stayed there? Perhaps she went somewhere else.”“They never heard of her anywhere else; and that reminds me of something I didn’t put in. There was a fishing–sloop running along the shore, and made harbor here. It passed by the Crescent in the afternoon, and the skipper saw a girl sitting in what we call the Chair, on the ocean side of Center Rock. That was the last seen of her, and the weather had not set in rainy then. Oh, I have heard my mother tell the story many times; and what was queer, there was a boy mixed up with the affair,—the girl’s brother. My mother used to say that the boy and girl had had some quarrel, and he asked her to go over to Center Rock and see a curious chair there, knowing of course that the tide would turn and bother her. I think he led her there, and left her there. I don’t know as he intended anything so serious as her drowning, but he was mad, and meant to punish her enough to frighten her. But it set in raining, and the fog you know is bewildering; and then the storm was pretty bad that night, and the waves wash clear over Center Rock in a storm. Then my mother used to say—my mother is not living now—the girl was a stranger here, and didn’t know what the Chair might do for one. She and her brother were visiting here, I believe; and isn’t it singular thattheir name should have been Baggs? Not singular that I know of, only we had something to do with somebody of the same name this afternoon, and one thing suggests another.”The young man here rested on his oars, and looking into Walter’s face, said: “You did a good thing for me, this afternoon.”“I am glad if I did.”“What I call ‘the craze’ was on me then. I had one glass, and that is always enough to start me, and I thought I must have more. It was strong, you know, and I can’t touch the stuff safely. It’s too powerful for me. Our talk though, gave me a chance to think; and when Baggs came, I surprised him by refusing it,—he offered it to me, you see. Then I went home, and my sister—she is as good as she can be—gave me a hot supper and some coffee, and I am all right now.”“That’s good. I expect Baggs will want to pitch into me.”“No, he won’t. He knows that I know something about his style of handling that bottle, and I think that will hold him back. I believe that he will be very glad to keep on the right side of you. If he don’t, he will get on the wrong side of me. Baggs is a coward.He can blow and bluster worse than a nor’easter, but he is a coward at the end of it.”“He must stop, though, his liquor business. If nothing more, it will get my uncle into trouble. You see he owns the goods in—”“Does he? I didn’t know that.”“Yes, he owns what is in that pen.”“Though not the pig, or the two pigs, I should say; counting in that precious nephew of Baggs’. Ha–ha!”“That selling, or giving, will give my uncle a bad name.”“I see, I see, for it will come out and every body know it, sooner or later, of course.”“As for the liquor business itself, I won’t have anything to do with it.”“You are right, I know; and I want to do the right thing myself. I mean to do right, and I have just promised my sister I would try again.”“Ask God to help you,” said Walter in a hearty, boy–fashion.“Well, yes, I suppose I ought. But here we are ashore, and sooner than I thought for.”The boat was in a little sand–cove where, affected by the Crescent, the roll of the surf was very gentle.“You go up to your uncle’s, I s’pose, and I goto the life saving station. I am one of the crew there, and it was my turn to be off to–day.”“There! I thought I had seen you somewhere before.”“I have seen you there, and you would have known me quicker, perhaps, if I hadn’t shaved off my beard. That alters me somewhat.”“But it seems to me as if I had seen you before I came this way.”“Shouldn’t wonder. People meet, you know, under queer circumstances.”“Hullo, Woodbury,” called out a man dressed like a fisherman, and waiting on the rocks above the strip of sand. “I’ve been here a–waitin’, some time.”“Then his name is Woodbury,” thought Walter. “I know that much.”The fisherman sprang into the boat vacated by Woodbury and Walter, and thrusting his oar into the sand, pushed off at once. Woodbury went to the left toward the station, while Walter took the lane to his uncle’s.“I am very much surprised to know that Mr. Baggs would do anything of the kind,” said Uncle Boardman in his slow, meditative way, when Walter after supper related the affair of the day. Uncle Boardman, as he spoke, workedhis fingers nervously, as if they were pencils, with which he was working out a problem on a slate.“Sur–prised, Boardman?” inquired Aunt Lydia, thrusting forward her sharp features. “You sur–prised? I am not. I don’t think there is anything that mean critter won’t be up to, or down to, rather. I ventur’ to say there’s been queer carryin’s on, if we only knew.” And Aunt Lydia’s sharp face suggested the beak of a bird that was after its prey; and woe be to that worm, the unhappy Baggs, if once before the beak!“I thought I ought to speak of the matter,” said Walter apologetically. “I hate anything that looks like telling, but I knew you owned the goods up there in Baggs’ place, and you might be involved in trouble.”“Walter, don’t you ’polergize one bit. I shan’t take it, if Boardman does. That mean critter don’t deserve nary a ’polergy.”“Jingle, jingle!” went the warning bell in the store.“I will go, uncle.”“Oh, no! Somebody may want me.” When Uncle Boardman returned, he remarked, “I thought as much. It was—”“Baggs?” said Aunt Lydia eagerly guessing.“Yes, and I thought there must be some extenuating circumstances. He brought it in while we were talking together, saying he had had occasion to give a little liquor to some of the fishermen when sick and faint, and he allowed that he might have been mistaken, in other cases.”“Why should he receive presents of money afterwards, and why not take it at the time, if everything was all right, uncle?”“Now, Boardman, you mean to be charitable,” ejaculated Aunt Lydia, “and it says charity shall hide a multitude of sins, but sich a big sinner, you can’t kiver him up. His sinswillstick out.”“Oh, well, Lydia, I only mean to say what can be said for him, and he allows he hasn’t always done just right, but he promises to stop.”“But what will the poor, sick, faint fishermen do?” inquired Aunt Lydia solicitously, and in a sarcastic tone.Uncle Boardman, though, had taken a candlestick from the mantel–piece, had lighted a long specimen of tallow manufacture, by Aunt Lydia, and was passing out of the door that led upstairs to his chamber.“Well, I guess,” said Uncle Boardman good–naturedlylaughing, “we will send ’em round to you. I don’t know of a better hand to take care of tramps and paupers.”Aunt Lydia had a peculiarity, and that was the indiscriminate relief of everybody who might ask for her charity. In that way, she had nourished some very deserving souls, behind the pitiful looks and shabby garments pleading at her door, and she had also nourished some who were not so deserving, but were frauds of the worst kind.The tallow candle carried by Uncle Boardman had now withdrawn its diminutive rays, and his footsteps had ceased sounding on the uncarpeted stairway leading to the second story.“There,” declared Aunt Lydia, “if that man wasn’t a saint, I wouldn’t take folks’ heads off like that ere Baggs’. There, they do set right down on him; and it jest riles me.”“Aunt,” inquired Walter, “did you ever hear about an accident at the Chair, on the Crescent, when it was said a girl went there, and the tide cut her off from the land?”“A storm comin’ up that night?”“That’s the time.”“Oh, yes, only it happened thirty years ago. But, Walter—” and Aunt Lydia looked at himwith her sharp, black eyes—“though it was so long since, I can see that ere gal now.”“Did you see her?”“Of course. She went by our winders right down that ’ere road. Poor thing! She never came back.”“What was it her brother did?”“Why, they was a–visitin’ here, and they had some quarrel, and he urged her to go there, they said, and he met her beyond the house and went with her. Then, they said, he left her there on purpose—told her suthin’ to keep her there, I s’pose—and she didn’t know ’bout the tides, and was caught. I b’lieve he ’lowed to somebody arterwards that he hadn’t done jest right.”“Was his name Baggs?”“Bagster.”“Oh!”
STANDING FIRM.
Walter was enjoying a brief furlough at home in October. He was in his mother’s sewing–room that opened out of the kitchen. It was a little nest that had room only for a sewing machine, a table, and two chairs. Walter was now occupying one of these chairs, and his mother sat at her table, busily preparing some work for her nimble little machine. It was a mild, autumn day, and through the opened window came the sound of the cricket’s shrill piping, and the beating of the grain with an old–fashioned flail, by Farmer Grant, in his barn on the opposite side of the road. There was a crimson–stained maple near the house, that suggested to Walter the opening of his conversation with his mother.
“How soon that maple has turned, mother!”
“Oh no. It is time for it.”
“Let me see. It is not so early for it afterall. It’s the fifteenth of October. The fifteenth! Why, that is the day Uncle Boardman said his mill would be done, and on my way back, I guess I’ll stop there and see how it looks.”
“That the mill where his trees are to be sawed up?”
“Yes, and I expect a lot more will come there. You see uncle built the mill, and Baggs buys up the timber where he can, and he and uncle run the mill together, and divide the profits somehow. But it has cost something to put that mill up. I know uncle had to borrow money to do it. I don’t like that Baggs at all, mother. He took me in at first, he was so soft–spoken, but I think I know him now.”
“He has been up in this neighborhood trying to buy woodland, and wanted your father to trade with him, but he wouldn’t. We don’t like his looks up this way.”
There was a lull in the conversation. The cricket without still kept up his sharp, piercing song, and Farmer Grant patiently beat out an accompaniment to the cricket’s tune.
“How long is it now, Walter, since you were confirmed?”
“Three months, mother.”
“How are you getting along?”
“Well, mother, I can’t say that I am making much progress, but I am trying to hold on.”
“Any progress we make in a religious life, comes from doing just what you say you are doing, holding on. If we are regular in our prayers and Bible–reading, if we patiently attend to our church duties, and just try from hour to hour to do our duty to those about us, that is all one can do. God will do the rest.”
“I had an idea, mother, when I began this life I should make more progress, get along faster.”
“Don’t mind that. You must just stick to your purpose, and keep on. I remember what Mark Simpson, an old fisherman down at The Harbor said once. Said Mark,—‘Going to heaven is like tryin’ to row round B’ilin’ P’int when the tide is agin you. If you stick to your oars, and pull ahead, you’ll come round all right.’ And I think Mark has shown that, if any one has. He has had all sorts of troubles, and he does what he advised, he sticks to his oars and pulls ahead. There’s a good deal, Walter, in what I call religious habits; in being particular about your prayers, in reading your Bible, in your attendance at church. Get the wheel down into that track and keep going steadily, and you will find everything easier.”
“Yes, I suppose so, mother.”
“And there is one thing which it is well for us all to know, Walter. It’s the most important thing. I mean we must get hold of Christ, understand what He has done for us, what He will do for us, and holding Him before our eyes and in our hearts, try to do for Him, and be like Him. And Walter, there is this thing I want you to be particular about, to do some one specific thing for Him. Of course, you try to live for Him; but I mean a particular duty.”
“What?”
“Well, may I speak of something? It sha’n’t be very hard. Of course, you will go to church yourself; try to get everybody else you can. There, do that.”
“Well, I will.”
The conversation went on. By and by, his mother exclaimed, “If it isn’t eleven o’clock! And there is your lunch, but I will have it ready soon, and what time do you start?”
“Twelve, in the mail–wagon, you know. I go as far as Uncle Boardman’s mill, and I promised to stop there for Chauncy Aldrich, this afternoon, while he is away; and then I walk down to uncle’s at tea–time. It is not more than a mile to walk.”
Walter declared the lunch to be “splendid.” Then there was “a stitch” to be taken in Walters coat, for which he said he was “thankful.”
“That does me good,” thought his mother. “I don’t know as Walter notices it, but since he has begun his new life, he appreciates more what his father and mother do for him. It may seem to be foolish in me, but the religion that doesn’t come out in little things, won’t come out in great ones.”
Oh, patient mothers, hard working fathers, are you “foolish” to be affected by a child’s gratitude for little things? If children only knew it, such gratitude makes this a new world for parents. The mail–wagon soon rolled along to the Plympton farm and halted for Walter. He was passing through the front yard, hurrying along a lilac and rose–bordered path, to the waiting mail–wagon before the house, when his mother called out, “Oh, Walter! Wait a minute.” She ran down the path.
“I’ll say this for your father, who isn’t at home. It was his charge, you know when you were little: ‘Honest, boy.’”
Walter laughed. “I guess I have got all my bundles now, mother. Good–bye.”
“Good–bye, Walter.”
As the wagon rattled away, carrying off Prince Alden, the driver, two mail–bags, and two passengers, Walter thought of these words, “Honest, boy.” It was an expression his father had used when Walter was a little fellow. The motto had an influence over Walter, not only because his father uttered it, but practiced it. Mr. Plympton’s daily life was the very crystal of honesty itself; honesty not only shining through his words but radiant in all his actions. After a ride of nine miles, came a group of buildings to which had been recently given the name “Blake’s Mills.” It was a part of the business transaction between Bezaleel Baggs and Walter’s uncle, that the latter should erect a “tide mill” at the head of “Muskrat Creek,” a mile from The Harbor. At the head of this creek, was a large tract of useless land belonging to Boardman Blake, easily flooded at high tides. Swinging backward and forward with the tides, were gates, placed in a dam that had been thrown across the head of the creek. Through these opened gates, swept a strong, clean, cold current from the ocean, at flood tide, and then the water was distributed over the low lands, to be held in check until needed to push the great wheel carrying the machinery of the mill.
“If you’ll build a mill,” said B. Baggs to Uncle Boardman, “and run it with me, I’ll agree to furnish you with logs.”
At one time, for the sake of his “dear friend Blake,” he talked as if he would build everything, take all risks and give all profits to that dear friend.
He did guarantee however, a stated, handsome income to Boardman. “Then,” he added, “you can run the mill for corn and flour, if you wish. However I’ll warrant you on logs a long, steady job; and it will pay you and me enough to make a handsome thing out of it. I’ll furnish logs for five years at least.”
At the same time, he made a great display of ready money, suggesting untold resources somewhere. He bought up the trees on extensive tracts of woodland far and near. Wherever he went, an immense business movement seemed to go with him. Uncle Boardman was bewildered. This great being, like a big oceancraft, bore down on him with such an imposing spread of financial sail, that he and his,—all but Aunt Lydia—were easy captures. Boardman built the mill, although he was forced to borrow five hundred dollars of Baggs that he might accomplish this. It was a note for this amount which Walter had stumbled upon and whichhis uncle had subsequently missed, but to cover the debt, he had written and tendered another. It is true that logs had not come to the mill so freely as Baggs had prophesied, for even logs need a little pushing to accomplish a journey; and Uncle Boardman’s receipts were not so large that the disposition of them had perplexed him. It was a fact also that some people had begun to label the mill “Boardman’s Folly;” but Bezaleel Baggs could furnish any amount of palaver, even if he could not make trees cut themselves down, and roll in large numbers to the mill; and his softly padded tongue kept Uncle Boardman quiet. Chauncy Aldrich represented his uncle’s interests at the mill, as that relative was often absent on mysterious journeys, from which he returned with an air of vast importance; as if he had bought up half the world to–day, and it would be delivered at ‘Blake’s Mills’ to–morrow. In connection with Baggs’ “office,” a small, ragged, unpainted shanty, there was a “store” to supply the hands at the mill. Uncle Boardman had stocked this emporium, and Baggs sold the goods on commission. Uncle Boardman sometimes thought that his profits were exceedingly small; though he knew that his “branch store,” as Baggs had pretentiously named it,could have very few customers. Some people had rashly asserted that liquor was sold at this store, but as a town–law forbade it, and as Boardman Blake’s principles forbade it also, the sale of liquor did not seem probable. For all that, something “mysterious” was sold there. It was at this “branch store” that Walter expected to serve, the afternoon of his return from his parents, as Chauncy wished to be away. The mail–wagon deposited Walter at the mill, and then clattered away. The mill was not running, as it was flood tide; and the water was rushing in from the sea, storing up the power that made all mill–running possible. No one seemed to be in the great barn–like mill, and few logs were accumulated there to feed the hungry saws when their sharp teeth might be set in motion.
“It looks quiet,” thought Walter.
It certainly was quiet in the big, deserted mill; in the narrow little road without; in the adjoining fields, so level and green; in the sky above, through which the sunshine was silently poured down. Nothing seemed to be stirring save the tide, racing up “Muskrat Creek,” and that went with an almost intelligent sound. As it rushed, and eddied, and gurgled, it seemed to say, “On hand, Boardman! We’ll start thatlazy mill, shortly.” Ah, there was one other object stirring, at the office, store, shanty door, and this was Chauncy. He looked out into the road, then up to the sky, and then over toward the mill, as if he expected an arrival from some quarter.
“Ha, Plympton!” he shouted.
“Here I am,” replied Walter. “Am I late, Aldrich?”
“Oh no, but this is one of the days when the market seems to be paralyzed. Haven’t had a customer, and not a log has been hauled to the mill. However, Uncle Baggs is off stirring ’em up somewhere, and trade will begin to move this way. He is a master hand to stir people up and there will be a movement soon.”
Here he shoved back his cap, and showed that bristling wall of hair behind which he seemed to be entrenched, and from that impregnable position was defying all the world. His air was that of a challenge to Walter to “come on” if he dared, and show that Bezaleel Baggs would not “stir people up”; yes, “stir ’em up,” and bring on an immense movement in “the market.”
“Well,” said Walter, dropping his traveling bag, “if there is little to be done, I can get a chance to read a book I have in my bag. Howlong do you want to be away? Suit yourself, you know. I am here to accommodate you, and sha’n’t be needed at my uncle’s before six.”
“Oh, I will be back by five. Besides, my uncle may come, and he will relieve you. He is a great hand to drop on folks sort of unexpected.”
“Well, when he drops, I don’t want to be exactly under him, for he looks like solid weight.”
“Ha—ha! When Uncle Bezaleeldoescome down on a man, he can drop heavy. Well, good–bye and good luck to you.”
Off swaggered Chauncy, his cap at one side of his head; his whole air that of some bragging money king, who had sallied forth to upset “the market” in behalf of himself; or to accomplish some other great feat of financial tumbling. Walter was left alone in the office. For awhile, he read a recent report of the life saving service; for the world that centered in the little building whose outlook and flags–taff he could see from Uncle Boardman’s storedoor, interested him exceedingly. Nobody appeared to interrupt him save a fly, that buzzed up to him vigorously, in Chauncy’s style, but buzzed back immediately at a wave of the hand, which wasnotChauncy’s style.
“Ah,” said Walter, after an hour’s fascinatingreading, “I hear a footstep. Somebody’s coming. A customer, probably.”
He let his book drop on the counter, and awaited this arrival. A young man entered, whom Walter thought he had seen before; but where, he could not readily say.
“He is not over twenty–one,” thought Walter. “He has a nice form.”
The young man had a frame of much symmetry, and the dress–coat that he wore, instead of the loose blouse common among the fishermen and farmers, brought out into distinct outline his well–shaped figure. Although his look was that of a rather strong excitement, which flushed his face, and gave it an unnatural eagerness, yet Walter was attracted toward him at once. A little girl, who bore some resemblance to the young man, closely followed him, clinging to the skirt of his coat. The young man appeared to be looking for something on one of the shelves, and with a twinkle of his blue eyes, and in musical, ringing tones, he called out, “In some stores, they say on a card, ‘If you don’t see a thing, ask for it.’”
“Well,” replied Walter, “Ask away. I would like to sell something to somebody.”
The young man did not lower his eyes to notice Walter, but continued to search withthem the objects on the three shelves behind the counter.
“He can’t want soap, or matches, or that pile of mittens for fishermen,” thought Walter.
The young man, himself, here expressed his wants.
“See here!” he said in a half–whisper, leaning forward. “Where’s that big bottle Baggs keeps on the upper shelf, generally behind a bundle of yarn?”
As he leaned forward, Walter noticed by his breath that he had been drinking an intoxicant of some kind. He noticed also that the little girl in the rear was now tugging at his coat, as if to pull him back from an exposed position. Did the child say, “Don’t!”
“Go way, Amy! Don’t pull so!” exclaimed the young man rather testily. Still he did not look round at this interferer, and he did not even glance at Walter. His eager eyes were fastened on those generally uninteresting objects, soap, yarn, and matches. Surely, there could be no snake’s eye up there to bewilder one.
“Ah, I see the top of it! Just above that big lot of yarn on the third shelf. That’s how I made my mistake—I was looking at the second shelf, you see, and—and it’s the third—don’tAmy! Keep quiet, Amy! There, if you’ll just get that down! A—my, stop!”
Was it a big sob, Walter heard behind this customer? The young man’s look was no more eager now than Walter’s. The desire to know, was as strong in the latter, as appetite was in the former, and Walter had now mounted a rickety, flag–bottomed chair, and was pulling aside the packages on the shelves. Reaching a big bundle of yarn on the uppermost shelf, he saw the object of the young man’s intense desire; an immense black bottle with an immense black stopper.
“There—there she is! Just hand her down; and if you have any water handy, I’ll mix it myself, you know. Amy, you stop pulling, or I’ll send you outdoors.”
The young man’s voice, though earnest, was not cross. Indeed, he had endured a constant twitching from his small companion.
“Just hand her down, please.”
“Well, no, I think not, if it is liquor,” was Walter’s reply.
This, to the young man, was an unexpected turn of affairs. For the first time, he now looked directly at Walter. Still, he stayed good–natured, and that attracted Walter the more strongly.
“Why—why—of course it is liquor. You don’t suppose Baggs would hide kerosene, say, behind his mothy old yarn, would he?” and the young man laughed.
“Well, no, I should say not,” and Walter laughed also.
“You are here to sell, are you not?” asked the young man.
“Yes, I suppose I am, for the afternoon; but I didn’t agree to sell everything Baggs might put into this old hole. I don’t know what your business is, though your face looks natural; but if the man that employed you, say to catch fish, should say some day, ‘There goes somebody’s sheep in the road. I am going to shear it, and keep the wool, and I want you to hold it, for I hired you to work for me,’ I guess you would let your fingers burn first, before you would touch the thing that was another man’s.” There was silence now in the little shanty. The young man began to drum on the counter with his fingers.
“Then, it is against the law to sell liquor in this town,” observed Walter.
“Oh, Baggs is cute to fix that,” replied the would–be customer in a whisper. “You need not take any money now. Baggsgivesus a glass of liquor to–day, and in a week from to–day,when we meet him, we say, ‘A present, Mr. Baggs,’ and wegivehim money enough to cover the worth of the liquor.”
The young man was no longer looking at Walter, but at the bottle on the shelf, as if addressing that.
“I should think,” said Walter, indignantly, “the devil himself would be ashamed of that mean, underhanded way. I believe in being aboveboard and honest. No, I am not going to have anything to do with this business,” and as he spoke, he very resolutely thrust back the yarn, hiding the bottle from the observation of all save those to whose sight their appetite gave unusual keenness. While he was doing this, he heard a noise at the door. It was only a slight stir at first, as of a lively brush from the wind pushing its way past the door. It was just such a “lively” effort of the wind, as at sea, may grow into a hurricane. Turning toward the door, Walter saw Baggs. It was Baggs indeed, and nobody else, but oh, what a change!
“Well, sir!” he roared.
How unlike that smooth–speaking, mild–tempered man, who usually went by the name of Baggs! His face was ruffled and darkened with rage. His skin seemed to be blown out;and as certain unnoticed pimples had grown also, it had a mottled, puffy look, like that of a frog. In the midst of this turgidity and discoloration, his twisted eye flashed and wriggled in a frightful manner, while his voice was hoarse and blatant as that of a fog–horn.
“You—you are a pretty—feller—in—in this store! Git—git—out of this!” he shouted, catching his breath.
As his peculiarity of sight made it difficult to always tell whom he might be looking at, both the young men glanced doubtfully at Baggs, and then inquiringly at one another; as if about to say, “Whom does he mean?”
“Git—git—out!” he roared again.
“Who—o—o?” asked the young man outside the counter.
“You—you—you!” said Baggs, with tremendous emphasis, advancing toward the young man inside the counter. “I meanyou, Walter Plympton. I—I—have heard your—talk—talk—for the last five minutes. I meanyou, sir, whose—whose uncle I have been striving—ving—to exalt to the—the—pin—pin—nack—ul of untold wealth. I meanyou, an ungrateful neph—neph—ew. I meanyou, who wouldn’t give to a fellow—that’s—that’s faint—a little sip—sip that would do him no harm. Will the—law—lawstop that work of—mer—mercy to the sick? You were not—asked—as I understand—it—to sell, but simp—simply to put—as I understand it—the bottlehere.”
With new and frightful energy, Baggs here pounded the counter, which he had struck several times before.
“You were not asked—asked—to do anything more. Will you—you not—befriend the—the—”
Although Baggs’ philanthropy did not fail him, and he could have talked an hour as the champion of the faint and weary, yet his breathdiddesert him; and he stood there, gasping, “the—the—the—the—”
Baggs had a great reputation as orator at town meetings, and he was declared by admirers “always to be equal to the occasion,” and it was mortifying now to be found so unequal to this emergency. There was no help for it, though. He could only gasp, “the—the—the—”
“Oh well,” remarked Walter, “I can go as well now, as any time. When you catch me selling liquor, you will be likely to find at the same time the Atlantic full of your mill–logs. Good–day, sir.”
This reference to Baggs’ logs, which were notnumerous enough that day to fill anything, so affected the orator, that he did succeed in making a new forensic effort.
“Go, boy!” he thundered.
The next moment, Walter was rushing out of the door, as indignant on the side of the clerk, as Baggs was on the side of the employer.
“Such impudence!” exclaimed Baggs, his wrath slowly subsiding. “If you don’t feel just right, I’ll ’tend to you,” he said to the customer. “I’ll trouble you to get down that bottle.”
The young man did not stir. He seemed to be in a stupor.
“What’s the matter?” asked Baggs. “Feel wuss?” and a sarcastic humor lighted up his twisted eye.
“I’m going,” said the young man.
“And not take a drink?”
“No, I’ve seen enough of it. That young fellow is right in not selling, and if he can’t sell, I won’t be fool enough to drink.”
“Come, come!” said a little voice behind him.
“Yes, Amy; I’m going,” and out of the store he went. Baggs was amazed. He could not understand it.
“Well, if that ain’t queer!” he muttered. He began to wonder if the recent scene werereal, whether it might not have been a dream. There was Walter, though, now almost out of sight; and the young man was moving in the same direction, his coat–skirts still clutched by Amy. These three were substantial witnesses to the reality of the affair; and Baggs, wiping his forehead with a very red, and a very dirty handkerchief, turned toward his desk in what was strictly the “office” part of the shanty.
Walter did not intend to take the road he was now traveling, but when he left Baggs, he was feeling so intensely, that the matter of a road was too trivial to be noticed. The road in which he was walking led him to The Harbor; and from this village, he could reach his uncle’s, though his walk would be a long one.
“I have started,” he reflected, “and I might as well keep on. Besides, if I turn back to take the right road, I shall have to pass Baggs’ office, and I don’t want to go near that rascal. I will walk a mile to avoid him.” He tramped forward with a kind of fierce energy, busily thinking.
“The idea! Wanting to exalt Uncle Boardman to a pinnacle of wealth! And he has been constantly befooling him. He has been pretending to buy up woodland far and near; and I don’t know but that he has bought it, inone way, but I don’t believe he has paid for it. Aunt Lydia saw through him all the time, and she was the sharpest of the lot. Then that liquor business! Wasn’t he cunning, giving away his whiskey! Well, he found one person who would neither sell, nor give for him.”
So intensely was Walter thinking, he did not notice how rapidly he was passing through the little fishing–village. There were not more than forty houses at The Harbor, and these were located anywhere along the crooked line of the one narrow street. The neighborhood was very rocky, and in and out among the ledges, wound this single street. Some of the houses were very old, and their roofs were patched with moss. Planted near the ledges, these ancient relics of domestic architecture seemed more like masses of lichen, that had fastened on the ledges, becoming a part of them; and resolute to maintain their rocky anchorage as long as the rough sea winds, and the driving rains, would let them. The village had a small store, whose proprietor considered himself as a dangerous competitor of Boardman Blake, and a box schoolhouse, capped with a rude little belfry, which never had entertained a bell as its guest. It had also an unpainted “hall,” where one evening a dance might bepounded out by the vigorous feet of the young men and women of the village; the next evening might witness an auction; and if the third evening belonged to Sunday, some kind of a religious service might be held there. These three public buildings, the store, the schoolhouse, the hall, Walter had passed. Chancing to look up, he said, “I am almost through the village. I have been so mad, I have made pretty quick time; and there is the road that goes up to Uncle Boardman’s; and—and—there’s the ‘Crescent’! I have a great mind to go home that way, by the Crescent.”
The Crescent was a peculiarity of rock and sand in the harbor. If it had been simply a shoal of sand, though shaped like a young moon this year, the shifting tides every day, the great storms of spring or autumn, would have worked it over into something very unlike a young moon another year. There were nubs of rocks at either end, and ledges were scattered along the sides of this marine scimeter, so that a measure of the restless sand was retained; and year after year, the Crescent kept substantially its form.
At low tide, the Crescent could be easily reached by any pedestrian. One in passing from The Harbor to Boardman Blake’s, couldleave the road, and at low tide cross over to the Crescent, pass along its ledges and sand, and leaving it, at its easterly extremity, regain the land without wetting the feet. This course would carry one not far from the lane that straggled from the life saving station up to Boardman Blake’s; and although a much longer route than by the road, it had its attractions for those who liked to see the surf tumble on the rocks. Walter was of this number, and instead of following any farther the crooked street that wound among the ledges, and then curved toward Boardman Blake’s store, he digressed at a point opposite the Crescent; and he took the longer, but more romantic way home.
“I will cross to those rocks half way down the Crescent, and sit down a while and watch the waves break over the rocks,” he said. “Splendid place there.”
It was a tempting outlook upon the somersets thrown by those acrobats of the ocean, the waves, when they reached the rocky line of the shore, and there made tumble after tumble. Walter sat a long time watching and thinking:
“Then I have run against Baggs,” he said, “and I didn’t anticipate that. Wasn’t he mad! I never thought that smooth–talking man couldrave like one of these waves. I am sorry for Uncle Boardman’s sake, for I imagine—poor man—he has enough to worry him, and my fuss with Baggs may make him some trouble. But I don’t see what else I could have done. That fellow—I wonder where I have seen him—had been drinking already, and a glass or two more might have just finished him. I could not do that; no, not even set down the bottle for him. And the law was against it; and I could not in any way help break the law. Baggs could not ask it of me, for I didn’t go there for any such purpose. No, sir! I think I did the right thing, and I’ll stick to it, and stand by it.”
In his earnestness, Walter rose, stamped on the ledges with his feet, as if to give emphasis to his opinion, and looked off on the wide ocean of blue, whose play was as restless as that of his thoughts. And as he looked, somehow it seemed to him as if he had the sympathy of that wide reach of nature he was watching. The sky seemed to bend down to him in an approval which the gently blowing wind whispered, and that great ocean had a voice, sounding in the thousands of waves pressing toward him, and saying in the roar of the surf, “You are right.” This secret sympathy between law innature and its keeper in the sphere of principle, is one of the rewards of right–doing. And above all, in his heart, Walter had the sense of satisfaction whose source he knew to be God. He did not know what might be the personal consequences of his difficulty with Baggs, but he felt that he was right; and he could plant his feet on that assurance solid as the ledges under him. He remained a long time watching the waves, till he was startled to see what a protracted shadow his form threw on the black ledges.
“Sun is getting low,” he said. “I must be going.”
He turned, and moved away a short distance, when he turned again, and looked back upon the rocks he had left.
“That is strange,” he said.
He noticed that this particular ledge, called the “Center Rock” by the fishermen, had a divided summit. The outline of the eastern half of this summit was curiously like that of a chair; as if placed there in anticipation of an arrival by sea. No one, though, came out of the great, empty waste of water, now rapidly blackening in the twilight.
“Sort of funny,” he exclaimed, and hurried away.
“Ho, what is this?” he asked. Looking toward the land, he noticed that while he had been watching the waves, the tide had turned, and covered the low, sandy flats with a floor of crystal.
“Well, it is not so very deep, and I can wade ashore,” said Walter. He was untying his shoes, when he heard the noise of oars. As he chanced to look up to see who might be coming, the boatman turned, and resting on his oars, faced Walter. A smile as from an old acquaintance overspread his features, and he called out, “Hold on there!”
A few more strokes, and the boat was on the sand at Walter’s feet.
“One good turn deserves another,” cried the boatman. “Jump in!”
“Oh, that you?” cried Walter. “Well, I will.” And into the boat he jumped.
This opportune arrival was the young man he had met in Baggs’ store that afternoon. He was dressed now for work, and wore a blue blouse. It could not hide, though, his broad shoulders, and when he rowed, one could but admire the easy, strong sweep of the arms.
“I was busy watching the waves,” explained Walter, “and I did not notice that the tide had turned.”
“You would have crossed without much difficulty to the shore, though in three hours from this time you might have done some swimming.”
“I am good for that.”
“Dare say. You would have got along, though they do tell some boogerish stories about those rocks. Did you notice the ‘Chair’? It is on the easterly side of what we call the ‘Center Rock.’”
“Oh yes, I saw that.”
“Well, they say a young girl was caught on the Crescent by the tide toward night, and a rain and fog set in. Oh, it was years ago, and we had no station here; and it was when the men folks used to go off fishing down to Banks—the Newfoundland—and of course there were few folks at home. I mean men folks. Some of the women thought they heard screams in the night; but then in a storm, the waves keep up such a pounding, you can hardly hear your own ears. The storm got worse all that night, and in the morning, it was bad enough outside the Crescent. Soon as the storm would let them cross over, some of the people went, they say; but they didn’t find the girl.”
“Well, how did they know she stayed there? Perhaps she went somewhere else.”
“They never heard of her anywhere else; and that reminds me of something I didn’t put in. There was a fishing–sloop running along the shore, and made harbor here. It passed by the Crescent in the afternoon, and the skipper saw a girl sitting in what we call the Chair, on the ocean side of Center Rock. That was the last seen of her, and the weather had not set in rainy then. Oh, I have heard my mother tell the story many times; and what was queer, there was a boy mixed up with the affair,—the girl’s brother. My mother used to say that the boy and girl had had some quarrel, and he asked her to go over to Center Rock and see a curious chair there, knowing of course that the tide would turn and bother her. I think he led her there, and left her there. I don’t know as he intended anything so serious as her drowning, but he was mad, and meant to punish her enough to frighten her. But it set in raining, and the fog you know is bewildering; and then the storm was pretty bad that night, and the waves wash clear over Center Rock in a storm. Then my mother used to say—my mother is not living now—the girl was a stranger here, and didn’t know what the Chair might do for one. She and her brother were visiting here, I believe; and isn’t it singular thattheir name should have been Baggs? Not singular that I know of, only we had something to do with somebody of the same name this afternoon, and one thing suggests another.”
The young man here rested on his oars, and looking into Walter’s face, said: “You did a good thing for me, this afternoon.”
“I am glad if I did.”
“What I call ‘the craze’ was on me then. I had one glass, and that is always enough to start me, and I thought I must have more. It was strong, you know, and I can’t touch the stuff safely. It’s too powerful for me. Our talk though, gave me a chance to think; and when Baggs came, I surprised him by refusing it,—he offered it to me, you see. Then I went home, and my sister—she is as good as she can be—gave me a hot supper and some coffee, and I am all right now.”
“That’s good. I expect Baggs will want to pitch into me.”
“No, he won’t. He knows that I know something about his style of handling that bottle, and I think that will hold him back. I believe that he will be very glad to keep on the right side of you. If he don’t, he will get on the wrong side of me. Baggs is a coward.He can blow and bluster worse than a nor’easter, but he is a coward at the end of it.”
“He must stop, though, his liquor business. If nothing more, it will get my uncle into trouble. You see he owns the goods in—”
“Does he? I didn’t know that.”
“Yes, he owns what is in that pen.”
“Though not the pig, or the two pigs, I should say; counting in that precious nephew of Baggs’. Ha–ha!”
“That selling, or giving, will give my uncle a bad name.”
“I see, I see, for it will come out and every body know it, sooner or later, of course.”
“As for the liquor business itself, I won’t have anything to do with it.”
“You are right, I know; and I want to do the right thing myself. I mean to do right, and I have just promised my sister I would try again.”
“Ask God to help you,” said Walter in a hearty, boy–fashion.
“Well, yes, I suppose I ought. But here we are ashore, and sooner than I thought for.”
The boat was in a little sand–cove where, affected by the Crescent, the roll of the surf was very gentle.
“You go up to your uncle’s, I s’pose, and I goto the life saving station. I am one of the crew there, and it was my turn to be off to–day.”
“There! I thought I had seen you somewhere before.”
“I have seen you there, and you would have known me quicker, perhaps, if I hadn’t shaved off my beard. That alters me somewhat.”
“But it seems to me as if I had seen you before I came this way.”
“Shouldn’t wonder. People meet, you know, under queer circumstances.”
“Hullo, Woodbury,” called out a man dressed like a fisherman, and waiting on the rocks above the strip of sand. “I’ve been here a–waitin’, some time.”
“Then his name is Woodbury,” thought Walter. “I know that much.”
The fisherman sprang into the boat vacated by Woodbury and Walter, and thrusting his oar into the sand, pushed off at once. Woodbury went to the left toward the station, while Walter took the lane to his uncle’s.
“I am very much surprised to know that Mr. Baggs would do anything of the kind,” said Uncle Boardman in his slow, meditative way, when Walter after supper related the affair of the day. Uncle Boardman, as he spoke, workedhis fingers nervously, as if they were pencils, with which he was working out a problem on a slate.
“Sur–prised, Boardman?” inquired Aunt Lydia, thrusting forward her sharp features. “You sur–prised? I am not. I don’t think there is anything that mean critter won’t be up to, or down to, rather. I ventur’ to say there’s been queer carryin’s on, if we only knew.” And Aunt Lydia’s sharp face suggested the beak of a bird that was after its prey; and woe be to that worm, the unhappy Baggs, if once before the beak!
“I thought I ought to speak of the matter,” said Walter apologetically. “I hate anything that looks like telling, but I knew you owned the goods up there in Baggs’ place, and you might be involved in trouble.”
“Walter, don’t you ’polergize one bit. I shan’t take it, if Boardman does. That mean critter don’t deserve nary a ’polergy.”
“Jingle, jingle!” went the warning bell in the store.
“I will go, uncle.”
“Oh, no! Somebody may want me.” When Uncle Boardman returned, he remarked, “I thought as much. It was—”
“Baggs?” said Aunt Lydia eagerly guessing.
“Yes, and I thought there must be some extenuating circumstances. He brought it in while we were talking together, saying he had had occasion to give a little liquor to some of the fishermen when sick and faint, and he allowed that he might have been mistaken, in other cases.”
“Why should he receive presents of money afterwards, and why not take it at the time, if everything was all right, uncle?”
“Now, Boardman, you mean to be charitable,” ejaculated Aunt Lydia, “and it says charity shall hide a multitude of sins, but sich a big sinner, you can’t kiver him up. His sinswillstick out.”
“Oh, well, Lydia, I only mean to say what can be said for him, and he allows he hasn’t always done just right, but he promises to stop.”
“But what will the poor, sick, faint fishermen do?” inquired Aunt Lydia solicitously, and in a sarcastic tone.
Uncle Boardman, though, had taken a candlestick from the mantel–piece, had lighted a long specimen of tallow manufacture, by Aunt Lydia, and was passing out of the door that led upstairs to his chamber.
“Well, I guess,” said Uncle Boardman good–naturedlylaughing, “we will send ’em round to you. I don’t know of a better hand to take care of tramps and paupers.”
Aunt Lydia had a peculiarity, and that was the indiscriminate relief of everybody who might ask for her charity. In that way, she had nourished some very deserving souls, behind the pitiful looks and shabby garments pleading at her door, and she had also nourished some who were not so deserving, but were frauds of the worst kind.
The tallow candle carried by Uncle Boardman had now withdrawn its diminutive rays, and his footsteps had ceased sounding on the uncarpeted stairway leading to the second story.
“There,” declared Aunt Lydia, “if that man wasn’t a saint, I wouldn’t take folks’ heads off like that ere Baggs’. There, they do set right down on him; and it jest riles me.”
“Aunt,” inquired Walter, “did you ever hear about an accident at the Chair, on the Crescent, when it was said a girl went there, and the tide cut her off from the land?”
“A storm comin’ up that night?”
“That’s the time.”
“Oh, yes, only it happened thirty years ago. But, Walter—” and Aunt Lydia looked at himwith her sharp, black eyes—“though it was so long since, I can see that ere gal now.”
“Did you see her?”
“Of course. She went by our winders right down that ’ere road. Poor thing! She never came back.”
“What was it her brother did?”
“Why, they was a–visitin’ here, and they had some quarrel, and he urged her to go there, they said, and he met her beyond the house and went with her. Then, they said, he left her there on purpose—told her suthin’ to keep her there, I s’pose—and she didn’t know ’bout the tides, and was caught. I b’lieve he ’lowed to somebody arterwards that he hadn’t done jest right.”
“Was his name Baggs?”
“Bagster.”
“Oh!”