The Early ApplesTHE EARLY APPLES.
THE EARLY APPLES.
Theodora's was the only hoard that escaped detection during the entire summer and autumn. She had her apples hidden in an empty bee-hive, which stood out in the garden under the "bee-shed" about midway in the row of thirteen hives. The most of us were a little afraid of the bees, but Theodora was one of those persons whom bees seem never to sting. She was accustomed to care for them, and thus to be about the hives a great deal. Not one of us happened to think of that empty bee-hive. The shed and some lilac shrubs concealed the place from the house; and Doad went unsuspected to and from the hive, which she kept filled with apples. We spent hours in searching for her hoard, but did not learn where she had concealed it until she told us herself, two years afterwards.
Ellen had the worst fortune of us all. We found her hoard regularly every few days. At first she hid it in the wagon-house, then up garret, and afterward in the wood-shed; but no sooner would she accumulate a little stock of apples than some one of us, who had spied on her goings and comings, would rob her. Even Wealthy found Nell's hoard once, and robbed it of nearly a half-bushel of apples. Nell always bore her losses good-denature, and obtained satisfaction occasionally by plundering Halse and me.
I remember that my first hoard was placed in the very high, thick "double" wall of the orchard. I loosened and removed a stone from the orchard side of the wall, and then took out the small inside stones from behind it until I had made a cavity sufficient to hold nearly a bushel. Into this cavity I put my apples, and then fitted the outer stone back into its place, thus making the wall look as if it had not beendisturbed. This device protected my apples for nearly a fortnight; but at length Ellen, who was on my track, observed me disappear suspiciously behind the wall one day, and an hour or two later took occasion to reconnoiter the place where I had disappeared.
She passed the hidden cavity several times, and would not have discovered it, if she had not happened to smell the mellow August Pippins of my hoard. Guided by the fragrance which they emitted, she examined the wall more closely, and finally found the loose stone. When I went to my preserve, after we had milked the cows that evening, I found only the empty hole in the wall.
I next essayed to conceal my hoard in the ground. In the side of a knoll, screened from the house by the orchard wall and a thick nursery of little apple trees, I secretly dug a hole which I lined with new cedar shingles. For a lid to the orifice leading into it, I fitted a sod. A little wild gooseberry bush overhung the spot, and I fancied that I had my apples safely hidden.
But never was self-confidence worse misplaced! It was a cloudy, wet afternoon in which I had thus employed myself. Halse had gone fishing; but Addison chanced to be up garret, reading over a pile of old magazines, as was his habit on wet days. From the attic window he espied the top of my straw hat bobbing up and down beyond the wall, and as he read, he marked my operations.
With cool, calculating shrewdness he remained quiet for three or four days, till I had my new hoard well stocked with "Sweet Harveys," then made a descent upon it and cleared it out. Next morning, when, with great stealth and caution, I had stolen to the place, I found my miniature cavern empty except for a bit of paper, on which, with a lead-pencil, had been hastily inscribed the following tantalizing bit of doggerel:
"He hid his hoard in the groundAnd thought it couldn't be found;But forgot, as indeed he should not,That the attic window overlooked the spot."
"He hid his hoard in the groundAnd thought it couldn't be found;But forgot, as indeed he should not,That the attic window overlooked the spot."
"He hid his hoard in the groundAnd thought it couldn't be found;But forgot, as indeed he should not,That the attic window overlooked the spot."
For about three minutes I felt very angry, then I managed to summon a grin, along with a resolve to get even with Addison—for I recognized his handwriting—by plundering his hoard, if by any amount of searching it were possible to find it. Addison was supposed to have the best and biggest hoard of all, and thus far none of us had got even an inkling as to where it was hidden.
I watched him as a cat might watch a mouse for two days, and made pretty sure that he did not go to his hoard in the daytime. Then I bethought myself that he always had a pocketful of apples every morning, and concluded that he must visit his preserve sometime "between days," most likely directly after he appeared to retire to his room at night.
So on the following night I lay awake and listened. After about half an hour of silence, I heard the door of his room open softly. With equal softness I stole out, and followed Addison through the open chamber of the ell, down a flight of stairs into the wagon-house, and then down another flight into the carriage-house cellar.
He had a lamp in his hand. When he entered the cellar the door closed after him, so that I did not dare go farther. I went back into the chamber, concealing myself, and waited to observe his return. He soon made his appearance, eating an apple; there was a smile on his face, and his pockets were protuberant.
Next day I proceeded to search the wagon-house cellar, but for some time my search was in vain.
There was in the cellar a large box-stove, into which I had often looked, but had seen only a mass of old brown paper and corn-husks. On this dayI went to the stove and pulled out the rubbish, when lo! in the farther end I saw three salt boxes, all full of Pippins and August Sweetings.
I was not long in emptying those boxes, but I wanted to leave in the place of the apples a particularly exasperating bit of rhyme. I studied and rhymed all that forenoon, and at last, with much mental travail, I got out the following skit, which I left in the topmost box:
"He was a cunning coveWho hid his hoard in the stove;And he was so awful brightThat he went to it only by night.But there was still another fellowWhose head was not always on his pillow."
"He was a cunning coveWho hid his hoard in the stove;And he was so awful brightThat he went to it only by night.But there was still another fellowWhose head was not always on his pillow."
I knew by the sickly grin on Ad's face when we went out to milk the cows next morning that my first effort at poetry had nauseated him; he could not hold his head up all day, to look me in the face, without the same, sheepish, sick look.
Where to put my next hoard was a question over which I pondered long. I tried the hay-mow and several old sleighs set away for the summer, but Addison was now on my trail and speedily relieved me of my savings.
There were many obstacles to the successful concealment of apples. If I were to choose an unfrequented spot, the others, who were always on the lookout, would be sure to spy out my goings to and fro. It was necessary, I found, that the hoard should be placed where I could visit it as I went about my ordinary business, without exciting suspicion.
We had often to go into the granary after oats and meal, and the place that I at last hit on was a large bin of oats. I put my apples in a bag, and buried them to a depth of over two feet in the oats in one corner of the bin. I knew that Addison and Halse would look among the oats, but I did notbelieve that they would dig deeply enough to find the apples, and my confidence was justified.
It was a considerable task to get at my hoard to put apples into it, or to get them out; but the sense of exultation which I felt, as days and weeks passed and my hoard remained safe, amply repaid me. I was particularly pleased when I saw from the appearance of the oats that they had been repeatedly dug over.
As I had to go to the granary every night and morning for corn, or oats, I had an opportunity to visit my store without roundabout journeys or suspicious trips, which my numerous and vigilant enemies would have been certain to note.
The hay-mow was Halse's hoarding-place throughout the season, and although I was never but once able to find his preserve, Addison could always discover it whenever he deemed it worth while to make the search.
To ensure fair play with the early apples, the Old Squire had made a rule that none of us should shake the trees, or knock off apples with poles or clubs. So we all had equal chances to secure those apples which fell off, and the prospect of finding them beneath the trees was a great premium on early rising in the months of August and September.
I will go on in advance of my story proper to relate a queer incident which happened in connection with those early apples and our rivalry to get them, the following year. The August Sweeting tree stood apart from the other trees, near the wall between the orchard and the field, so that fully half of the apples that dropped from it fell into the field instead of into the orchard.
We began to notice early in August that no apples seemed to drop off in the night on the field side of the wall.
For a long time every one of us supposed thatsome of the others had got out ahead of the rest and picked them up. But one morning Addison mentioned the circumstance at the breakfast table, as being rather singular; and when we came to compare notes, it transpired that none of us had been getting any apples, mornings, on the field side of the wall.
"Somebody's hooking those apples, then!" exclaimed Addison. "Now who can it be?" For we all knew that a good many apples must fall into the field.
"I'll bet it's Alf Batchelder!" Halse exclaimed. But it did not seem likely that Alfred would come a mile, in the night, to "hook" a few August Sweets, when he had plenty of apples at home.
Nor could we think of any one among our young neighbors who would be likely to come constantly to take the apples, although any one of them in passing might help himself, for fall apples were regarded much as common property in our neighborhood.
Yet every morning, while there would be a peck or more of Sweetings on the orchard side of the wall, scarcely an apple would be found in the field.
Addison confessed that he could not understand the matter; Theodora also thought it a very mysterious thing. The oddity of the circumstance seemed to make a great impression on her mind. At last she declared that she was determined to know what became of those Sweets, and asked me to sit up with her one night and watch, as she thought it would be too dark and lonesome an undertaking to watch alone.
I agreed to get up at two o'clock on the following morning, if she would call me, for we wisely concluded that the pilferer came early in the morning, rather than early in the night, else many apples would have fallen off into the field after his visit, and have been found by us in our early visits.
I did not half believe that Theodora would wakein time to carry out our plan, but at half-past two she knocked softly at the door of my room. I hastily dressed, and each of us put on an old Army over-coat, for the morning was foggy and chilly. It was still very dark. We went out into the garden, felt our way along to a point near the August Sweeting tree, and sat down on two old squash-bug boxes under the trellis of a Concord grape-vine, which made a thick shelter and a complete hiding-place.
For a mortal long while we sat there and watched and listened in silence, not wishing to talk, lest the rogue whom we were trying to surprise should overhear us. At intervals Theodora gave me a pinch, to make sure that I was not asleep. An hour passed, but it was still dark when suddenly we heard, on the other side of the wall, a slight noise resembling the sound of footsteps.
Instantly Doad shook my arm. "Sh!" she breathed. "Some one's come! Creep along and peep over."
I stole to the wall, and then, rising, slowly parted the vine leaves, and tried to see what it was there. Presently I discerned one, then another dim object on the ground beyond the wall. They were creeping about, and I could plainly hear them munch the apples.
Then Theodora peeped. "It's two little bears, I believe," she breathed in my ear, with her lightest whisper, yet in considerable excitement. "What shall we do?"
I peeped again. If bears, they were very little ones.
I mustered my courage. As a weapon I had brought an old pitchfork handle. Scrambling suddenly over the wall, I uttered a shout, and the dark objects scudded away across the field, making a great scurry over the stubble of the wheat-field, but they were not very fleet. I came up with one of them after a hundred yards' chase, when it suddenly turned and faced me with a strange loud squeak! Drawing back,I belabored it with my fork handle until the creature lay helpless, quite dead, in fact.
Theodora came after me in alarm. "Oh, my, you have killed it!" she exclaimed. "What can it be?"
I put my hand cautiously down upon its hair, which was coarser than bristles and sharp-pointed. Turning the body over with the fork handle, I found that it was really heavy.
We could not, in the darkness, even guess what the animal was, and went back to the house much mystified. The Old Squire had just arisen, and we told him the story of our early vigil. "Wood-chucks, I guess," was his comment, but we knew that they were not wood-chucks. Addison was then called up, to get his opinion, and when told of the animal's exceedingly coarse, sharp-pointed hair, he exclaimed, "I know what it is! It's a hedgehog!"
He bustled around, got on his boots, and went out into the field with me. It was now light, and he had no sooner bent down over it than he pronounced it to be a hedgehog fast enough, or rather a Canada porcupine. Its weight was over thirty pounds, and some of the quills on its back were four or five inches in length, with needle-like, finely barbed points.
The other hedgehog escaped to the woods, and did not again trouble us. The next summer the August Sweetings that fell into the field from the same tree were quite as mysteriously taken at night by a cosset sheep, which for more than a fortnight escaped nightly from the farm-yard, and returned thither of its own accord after it had stolen the apples. Again Theodora and I watched for the pilferer, and captured the cunning creature in the act.
During that first year at the farm, the old folks did not pay much attention to our apple-hoards, but by the time our contests were under way the second season, they, too, caught the contagion of it, from hearing us talk so much about it at the breakfast table.At first the Old Squire merely dropped some remarks to the effect that, when he was a boy, he could have hidden a hoard where nobody could find it.
"Well, sir, we would like to see you do it!" cried Halse.
The old gentleman did not say at the time that he would, or would not, attempt such an exploit. Moved by Ellen's serio-comic lamentations over her losses, Gram also insinuated that she knew of places in the house in which she could make a hoard that would be hard for us to find; but the girls declared that they would like to see her try to hide a hoard away from them.
Not many days after these conversations had occurred, the Old Squire rather ostentatiously took a very fine August Pippin from his pocket, as we were gathering round the breakfast table, and, after thumbing it approvingly, set it beside his plate, remarking, incidentally, that if one wanted his apples to ripen well, and have just the right flavor, it was necessary that he should place his hoard in some dry, clean, perfectly sweet place.
Of course we were not long in taking so broad a hint as that. Several sly nudges and winks went around the table.
"He's got one!" Addison whispered to me, as Gram poured the coffee, and from that time the Old Squire, in all his goings and comings, was a marked man. He had thrown down a challenge to us, and we were determined to prove that we were as smart as he had been in his youthful days. But for more than a week we were unable to gain the slightest hint as to where his preserve was situated. Meantime Gram had also begun to place a nice August Sweet beside her own plate every morning, as she glanced with a twinkle in her eye over to the Old Squire.
We rummaged everywhere that week, and even forgot to carry on mutual injury and reprisal, in ourdesire to humble the pride of our elders. We even bethought ourselves of the words "perfectly sweet," which the old gentleman had used in connection with hoards, and looked in the sugar barrel, but quite in vain. Yet all the while we were daily going by the place where the Old Squire's hoard was concealed; passing so near it that we might have laid hands on it without stepping out of our way, for it was in the wood-house beside the walk which led past the tiered up stove wood into the wagon-house and stable.
Ten or twelve cords of wood, sawed short and split, had been piled loosely into the back part of the wood-house, but in front of this loose pile, and next the plank walk, the wood had been tiered up evenly and closely to a height of ten feet. The Old Squire managed to pull from this tier, at a height of about four feet, a good-sized block, and then, reaching in behind it, had made a considerable cavity. Here he deposited his apples, replacing the block, which fitted to its place in the tier so well that the woodpile appeared as if it had not been disturbed. Shrewdly mindful of the fact that our keen nostrils might smell out his preserve, he cunningly set an old pan with a few refuse pippins in it on a bench close beside the place.
Gram's hoard was hidden, with equal cunning, in the "yarn cupboard," where were kept the woollen balls and yarn hanks, used in darning and knitting,—a small, high cupboard, with a little panel door, set in the wall of the sitting-room next to the fireplace and chimney. The bottom of this cupboard was formed of one broad piece of pine board, which seemed to be nailed down hard and fast; but the old lady, who knew that this board was loose, had raised it and kept her apples in a yarn-ball basket beneath it.
She often had occasion to go to the cupboard to get or replace her knitting, and for a long time noneof the girls suspected her hiding-place. The plain fact was that those girls, as a rule, steered clear of the yarn cupboard, for they none of them very much liked to knit or darn. But at last Ellen happened to go to it one day for a darning-needle, and smelled the apples. Even then she could not discover the hoard, but she went in search of Theodora, who penetrated the secret of the loose bottom board.
They came with great glee to tell us of their discovery, and we were thereby stimulated to renewed efforts to unearth the Old Squire's preserve. The girls promised to say nothing of their discovery for a day or two, and at Ellen's suggestion we agreed that if we could find Gramp's hoard, we would rob both hoarding-places at once and have the laugh on them both at the same time.
We had watched the Old Squire closely, and felt sure that he did not go to his hoard at any time during the day. As he was an early riser, it seemed probable to us that he did his apple-hoarding before we were astir. Addison and I accordingly agreed to get up at three o'clock the following morning and secretly watch all his movements. By a great effort we rose long before light, and dressing, stole out through the wood-house chamber and down the wagon-house stairs into the stable. Here I concealed myself behind an old sleigh, while Addison went back into the wood-house and posted himself on the high tier of wood that fronted on the passageway, lying there in such a posture that he could get a peep of the long walk.
It had hardly begun to grow light, when we heard the old gentleman astir in the kitchen. Presently he came out through the stable and fed the horses, then returned. As he went back through the wood-house, he stopped on the walk beside the high tier of wood on which Addison lay. After listening and looking about him, he removed the block of wood,took out a fine pippin from his hoard, and carefully replaced the block.
This amused Ad so greatly that he nearly shook the tier of wood down in his efforts to repress laughter, and after the old gentleman had gone into the house, he came tiptoeing out into the stable to tell me, with much elation, what he had seen.
During the forenoon we examined the hoard and told the girls about it. We arranged to rob both the old folks' hoards late that evening, and fill our own with the plunder. To emphasize the exploit, we agreed to take some of the largest apples to the breakfast-table next morning. We fancied that when the old folks saw those apples, and found out where we got them, they would think there were young people living nearly as bright as those of fifty years ago.
Theodora did not really promise that she would assist in the scheme, but she laughed a good deal over it, and seemed to concur with the rest of us.
That evening as soon as the old folks had retired and the house had become quiet, Addison and I cleared out the Old Squire's preserve; and, meantime, Ellen and Theodora had slipped down-stairs into the sitting-room and emptied Gram's hoard in the yarn cupboard. We met out in the garden and divided the spoils; then not liking to trust each other to go directly to our respective hoards, we deposited our shares of the plunder in three different boxes in the wagon-house, and looked forward with no little zest to the fun next morning at the breakfast-table.
But on visiting the boxes next morning, they were all empty! Some one had made a clean sweep. Not an apple was left in them! Addison and I were astounded when we compared notes a few minutes before breakfast. "Who on earth could have done it?" he whispered, after he found out that I was not the traitor.
We hurried to the wood-house and peeped into theOld Squire's hoarding-place. It was brimful of apples! A light began to dawn upon us. Had the old gentleman watched our performance on the previous evening and outwitted us all? It looked so, for on going in to breakfast, there beside the plates of each of the old folks stood a great nappy dish, heaped full of choice Pippins and Sweets! Addison stole a look around and then dropped his eyes; I did the same, while Ellen looked equally amazed and disconcerted. Theodora, too, remained very quiet.
We concluded that our elders had completely outdone us, and that they were enjoying their victory in a manner intended to convey their ironical appreciation of our small effort to rob them. The more we considered the matter, the more sheepish we felt.
"These are charming good pippins, aren't they, Ruth?" said the old gentleman to Gram.
"Charming," answered she.
Addison gave me a punch under the table, as if to say, "Now they are giving us the laugh."
"And I'm sure we're much obliged for them," the Old Squire continued.
"Indeed, we are obliged," said Gram.
Their remarks seemed to me a little odd, but I didn't look up.
Not another word was spoken at the table, but afterwards Addison and Ellen and I got together in the garden and mutually agreed that we had been badly beaten at our own game.
"They are too old and long-headed for us to meddle with," said Addison. "I cannot even imagine how they did it. I guess we had better let their hoards alone in the future." None the less we could not help thinking that there had been something a little queer about our defeat.
It was nearly two years later before the truth about that night's frolic came to light. Theodora did it. She could not bear to have the old folks beaten andhumiliated by us, for whom they were doing so much. After we had robbed their hoarding-places, she sallied forth again and took all of our shares as well as her own, and then having replenished the looted hoarding-places, she filled the two nappy dishes from her own hoard and set them beside their plates.
The best part of the joke was that the Old Squire and Gram never knew that they had been robbed, and thought only that we had made them a present of some excellent apples. When Theodora saw how chagrined the rest of us were, she kept the whole matter a secret.
After haying came grain harvest. There were three acres of wheat, four of oats, an acre of barley, an acre of buckwheat and an acre and three-fourths of rye to get in. The rye, however, had been harvested during the last week of haying. It ripened early, for it was the Old Squire's custom to sow his rye very early in the spring. The first work which we did on the land, after the snow melted, was to plough and harrow for rye. With the rye we always sowed clover and herdsgrass seed for a hay crop the following year. This we termed "seeding down;" and the Old Squire liked rye the best of all grain crops for this purpose. "Grass seed 'catches' better with rye than oats, or barley, or even wheat," he was accustomed to say.
When we harvested the grain, he would be seen peering into the stubble with an observant eye, and would then be heard to say, "A pretty good 'catch' this year," or, "It hasn't 'caught' worth a cent."
It was not on more than half the years that we secured a fair wheat crop. Maine is not a State wholly favorable for wheat; yet the Old Squire persisted in sowing it, year by year, although Addison often demonstrated to him that oats were more profitable and could be exchanged for flour. "But a farmer ought to raise his bread-stuff," the old gentleman would rejoin stoutly. "How do we know, too, that some calamity may not cut off the Western wheat crop; then where should we be?"
It is a pity, perhaps, that Eastern farmers do not generally display the same independent spirit.
But the Old Squire himself finally gave up wheat raising. Gram and the girls found fault with our Maine grown wheat flour, because the bread from it was not very white and did not "rise" well. The neighbors had Western flour and their bread was white and light, while ours was darker colored and sometimes heavy, in spite of their best efforts.
No farmer can hold out long against such indoor repinings, but the Old Squire never came to look with favor on Western flour; he admitted that it made whiter bread, but he always declared that it was not as wholesome! The fact was that it seemed to him to be an unfarmerlike proceeding, to buy his flour. For the same reason he would never buy Western corn for his cattle.
"When I cannot raise fodder enough for my stock, I'll quit farming," he would exclaim, when his neighbors told him of the corn they were buying. As a matter of fact, the old gentleman lived to see a good many of his neighbors' farms under mortgage, and held a number of these papers himself. It was not a wholly propitious day for New England farmers when they began buying Western corn, on the theory that they could buy it cheaper than they could raise it themselves. The net result has been that their profits have often gone West, or into the pockets of the railway companies which draw the corn to them.
Another drawback to wheat raising in Maine is the uncertain weather at harvest time. Despite our shrewdest inspection of the weather signs, the wheat as well as the other grain would often get wet in the field, and sometimes it would lie wet so long as to sprout. Sprouted wheat flour makes a kind of bread which drives the housewife to despair.
"Oh, this dog-days weather!" the Old Squire would exclaim, as the grain lay wet in the field, dayafter day, or when an August shower came rumbling over the mountains just as we were raking it up into windrows and tumbles.
I had never heard of "dog days" before and was curious to know what sort of days they were. "They set in," the Old Squire informed me, "on the twenty-fifth of July and last till the fifth of September. Then is when the Dog-star rages, and it is apt to be 'catching' weather. Dogs are more liable to run mad at this time of year, and snakes are most venomous then." Such is the olden lore, and I gained an impression that those forty-two days were after a manner unhealthy for man and beast.
Near the middle of August that summer there came the most terrific thunder shower which I had ever witnessed. Halse, Addison and Asa Doane had mowed the acre of barley that morning, and after dinner we three boys went out into the field to turn the swaths, for the sun had been very hot all day. It was while thus employed that we saw the shower rising over the mountains to the westward and soon heard the thunder. It rose rapidly, and the clouds took on, as they rolled upward, a peculiar black, greenish tint.
It was such a tempest as Lucretius describes when he says,—
"So dire and terrible is the aspect of Heaven, that one might think all the Darkness had left Acheron, to be poured out across the sky, as the drear gloom of the storm collects and the Tempest, forging loud thunderbolts, bends down its black face of terror over the affrighted earth."
Gramp called us in, to carry a few cocks of late-made hay into the barn from the orchard, and then bade us shut all the barn doors and make things snug. "For there's a tremendous shower coming, boys," he said. "There's hail in those clouds."
We ran to do as he advised, and had no more thantaken these precautions when the shower struck. Such awful thunder and such bright, vengeful lightning had, the people of the vicinity declared, never been observed in that town, previously. A bolt came down one of the large Balm o' Gilead trees near the house, and the thunder peal was absolutely deafening. Wealthy hid herself in the parlor clothes-closet, and Gram sat with her hands folded in the middle of the sitting-room. Just before the clouds burst, it was so dark in the house that we could scarcely see each others' faces. A moment later the lightning struck a large butternut tree near the calf-pasture wall, across the south field, shivering it so completely that nearly all the top fell; the trunk, too, was split open from the heart.
In fact, the terrific flashes and peals indicated that the lightning was descending to the earth all about us. Two barns were struck and burned in the school district adjoining ours. Rain then fell in sheets, and also hail, which cut the garden vegetables to strings and broke a number of windows. This tempest lasted for nearly an hour, and prostrated the corn and standing grain very badly. An apple tree was also up-rooted, for there was violent wind as well as lightning and thunder.
Next morning we were obliged to leave our farm work and repair the roads throughout that highway district, for the shower had gullied the hills almost beyond belief. Altogether it had done a great amount of damage on every hand.
At supper that night, after returning from work on the highway, the Old Squire suddenly asked whether any of us had seen the colts, in the pasture beyond the west field, that day.
No one remembered having seen them since the shower, though we generally noticed them running around the pasture every day. There were three of them, two bays and a black one. The two formerwere the property of men in the village, but Black Hawk, as we called him, belonged to us.
"After supper, you had better go see where they are," the Old Squire said to us.
Addison and I set off accordingly. The pasture was partly cleared, with here and there a pine stub left standing, and was of about twenty acres extent. We went up across it to the top of the hill, but could not find the colts. Then we walked around by the farther fence, but discovered no breach in it and no traces where truant hoofs had jumped over it. It was growing dark, and we at length went home to report our ill-success.
"Strange!" the Old Squire said. "We must look them up." But no further search was made that night.
"Is that a hawk?" Halstead said to me, while he and I were out milking a little before sunrise next morning. "Don't you see it? Sailing round over the colt pasture. Too big for a hawk, isn't it?"
A large bird was wheeling slowly above the pasture, moving in lofty circles, on motionless wings.
"I'll bet that's an eagle!" Halse cried. "Can't be a hawk. We couldn't see a hawk so far off."
Suddenly the bird seemed to pause on wing a moment, then descended through the air and disappeared just over the crest of the ridge. Perhaps it was fancy, but we thought we heard the roar of its wings.
"Came down by that high stub!" exclaimed Halstead. "Pounced upon something there! I'll run in and get the shotgun. The folks aren't up yet. We'll go over. Perhaps we can get a shot at it."
Addison had gone on an errand to the Corners that morning. Halstead got the gun, and setting down our milk pails, we ran across the field, and so onward to the pasture. "'Twas near that stub," whispered Halse, as we began to see the top of it over the crest of the ridge. We peeped over. Down in the hollowat the foot of the stub was the great bird, flapping and tugging at something—one, two, three animals, lying stretched out on the ground! The sight gave us a sudden shock.
"The colts!" exclaimed Halse, forgetting the eagle. "Dead!"
The big bird raised its head, then rose into the air with mighty flaps and sailed away. We watched it glide off along the ridge, and saw it alight in an oak, the branches of which bent and swayed beneath its weight.
"All dead!" cried Halstead, gazing around. "Isn't that hard!"
The eagle had been tearing at their tongues, which protruded as they lay on the ground. There was a strong odor from the carcasses.
"Been dead some time," Halse exclaimed. "What killed them?"
We examined them attentively. Not the slightest mark, nor wound, could be detected. But a lot of fresh splinters lay at the foot of the pine stub, close by them.
"Must have been lightning," I said, glancing up. "That's just what it was! They were struck during that big shower."
We went to the house with the unwelcome tidings. At first the folks would scarcely believe our account. Then there were rueful looks.
"Ah, those pine stubs ought to have been cut down," exclaimed the Old Squire. "Dangerous things to be left standing in pastures!"
Later in the day we took shovels and went to the pasture, with Asa Doane, to bury the dead animals. While this was going on, the eagle came back and sailed about, high overhead.
"Leave one carcass above ground," said Asa. "That old chap will light here again. You can shoot him then, or catch him in a trap."
So we left Black Hawk unburied, and bringing over an old fox-trap, fastened a large stick of wood to it and set it near. During the day we saw the eagle hovering about the spot, also a great flock of crows, cawing noisily, and next morning when we went over to see if any of them had got into the trap, both trap and stick were gone.
"Must have been the eagle," said Addison. "A crow could never have carried off that trap!" But as neither trap nor eagle was anywhere in sight, we concluded that we had lost the game.
Several days passed, when one morning we heard a pow-wow of crows down in the valley beyond the Little Sea. A flock of them were circling about a tree-top, charging into it.
"Owl, or else a raccoon, I guess," said Addison. "Crows are always hectoring owls and 'coons whenever they happen to spy one out by day."
Thinking that perhaps we might get a 'coon, we took the gun and went down there. But on coming near, instead of a raccoon, lo! there was our lost eagle, perched in the tree-top, with a hundred crows scolding and flapping him. He saw us, and started up as if to fly off, but fell back, and we heard a chain clank.
"Hard and fast in that trap!" exclaimed Addison. The stick and trap had caught among the branches. The big bird was a prisoner. We wished to take him alive, but to climb a tall basswood, and bring down an eagle strong enough to carry off a twelve-pound clog and trap, was not a feat to be rashly undertaken. Addison was obliged to shoot the bird before climbing after him. It was a fine, fierce-looking eagle, measuring nearly six feet from tip to tip of its wings. Its beak was hooked and very strong, and its claws an inch and a half long, curved and exceedingly sharp.
Addison deemed it a great prize, for it was not acommon bald eagle, but a much darker bird. After reading his Audubon, he pronounced it a Golden Eagle and wrote a letter describing its capture, which was published in several New York papers. Gramp gave him all the following day to "mount" the eagle as a specimen. In point of fact, he was nearer three days preparing it. It looked very well when he had it done. I remember only that its legs were feathered down to the feet.
It was a part of Gram's household creed, that the wood-house and carriage-house could be properly swept only with a cedar broom. Brooms made of cedar boughs, bound to a broom-stick with a gray tow string, were the kind in use when she and Gramp began life together; and although she had accepted corn brooms in due course, for house work, the cedar broom still held a warm corner in her heart. "A nice new cedar broom is the best thing in the world to take up all the dust and to brush out all the nooks and corners," she used to say to Theodora and Ellen; and when, at stated intervals, it became necessary, in her opinion, to clean the wood-house and other out-buildings, or the cellar, she would generally preface the announcement by saying to them at the breakfast table, "You must get me some broom-stuff, to-day, some of that green cedar down in the swamp below the pasture. I want enough for two or three brooms. Sprig off a good lot of it and get the sprigs of a size to tie on good."
The girls liked the trip, for it gave them an opportunity to gather checkerberries, pull "young ivies," search for "twin sisters" and see the woods, birds and squirrels, with a chance of espying an owl in the swamp, or a hawk's nest in some big tree; or perhaps a rabbit, or a mink along the brook.
If they could contrive to get word of their trip to Catherine Edwards and she could find time toaccompany them, so much the more pleasant; for Catherine was better acquainted with the woods and possessed that practical knowledge of all rural matters which only a bright girl, bred in the country with a taste for rambling about, ever acquires.
A morning proclamation to gather broom-stuff having been issued at about this time, the three girls set off an hour or two after dinner for the east pasture; Mrs. Edwards, who was a very kind, easy-going woman, nearly always allowed Catherine to accompany our girls. Kate, in fact, did about as she liked at home, not from indulgence on the part of her mother so much as from being a leading spirit in the household. She was very quick at work; and her mother, instead of having to prompt her, generally found her going ahead, hurrying about to get everything done early in the day. Then, too, she was quick-witted and knew how to take care of herself when out from home. Mrs. Edwards always appeared to treat Kate more as an equal than a daughter. There are children who are spoiled if allowed to have their own way, and others who can be trusted to take their own way without the least danger of injury, and whom it is but an ill-natured exercise of authority to restrict to rules.
The Old Squire was breaking greensward in the south field that afternoon with Addison and Halse driving the team which consisted of a yoke of oxen and two yokes of steers, the latter not as yet very well "broken" to work. My inexperienced services were not required; but to keep me out of hurtful idleness, the old gentleman bade me pick up four heaps of stones on a stubble field near the east pasture wall. It was a kind of work which I did not enjoy very well, and I therefore set about it with a will to get it done as soon as possible.
I had nearly completed the fourth not very large stone pile, when I heard one of the girls calling me from down in the pasture, below the field. It wasEllen. She came hurriedly up nearer the wall. "Run to the house and get Addison's fish-hook and line and something for bait!" she exclaimed. "For there is the greatest lot of trout over at the Foy mill-pond you ever saw! There's more than fifty of them. Such great ones!"
"Why, how came you to go over there?" said I; for the Foy mill-pond was fully a mile distant, in a lonely place where formerly a saw-mill had stood, and where an old stone dam still held back a pond of perhaps four acres in extent. The ruins of the mill with several broken wheels and other gear were lying on the ledges below the dam; and two curiously gnarled trees overhung the bed of the hollow-gurgling stream. Alders had now grown up around the pond; and there were said to be some very large water snakes living in the chinks of the old dam. It was one of those ponds the shores of which are much infested by dragon-flies, or "devil's darn-needles," as they are called by country boys,—the legend being that with their long stiff bodies, used as darning needles, they have a mission, to sew up the mouths of those who tell falsehoods.
"Oh, Kate wanted to go," replied Ellen. "We went by the old logging road through the woods from the cedar swamp. She thought we would see a turtle on that sand bank across from the old dam, if we sat down quietly and waited awhile. The turtles sometimes come out on that sand bank to sun themselves, she said. So we went over and sat down, very still, in the little path at the top of the dam wall. The sun shone down into the water. We could see the bottom of the pond for a long way out. Kate was watching the sand bank: and so was I; but after a minute or two, Theodora whispered, 'Only see those big fish!' Then we looked down into the water and saw them, great lovely fish with spots of red on their sides, swimming slowly along, all together, circling around the foot of the pond as if they were exploring. Oh, how pretty theylooked as they turned; for they kept together and then swam off up the pond again.
"Kate whispered that they were trout. 'But I never saw so many,' she said, 'nor such large ones before; and I never heard Tom nor any of the boys say there were trout here.'
"We thought they had gone perhaps and would not come again," Ellen continued. "But in about ten minutes they all came circling back down the other shore of the pond, keeping in a school together just as when we first saw them. We sat and watched them till they came around the third time, and then Kate said, 'One of us must run home and tell the boys to come with their hooks.' I said that I would go, and I've run almost all the way. Now hurry. I'll rest here till you come. Then we will scamper back."
In a corner of the vegetable garden where I had dug horse-radish a few mornings before, I had seen some exceedingly plethoric angle-worms; and after running to the wood-house and securing a fish-hook, pole and line which Addison kept there, ready strung, I seized an old tin quart, and going to the garden, with a few deep thrusts of the shovel, turned out a score or two of those great pale-purple, wriggling worms. These I as hastily hustled into the quart along with a pint or more of the dirt, then snatching up my pole, ran down to the field where Nell was waiting for me, seated on one of my lately piled stone heaps.
"Come, hurry now," said she; and away we went over the wall and through brakes and bushes, down into the swamp, and then along the old road in the woods, till we came out at the high conical knoll, covered with sapling pines, to the left of the old mill dam. There we espied Kate and Theodora sitting quietly on a log.
"Oh, we thought that you never would come," said the former in a low tone. "But creep along here. Don't make a noise. They've come around six times,Ellen, since you went away. I never saw trout do so before. I believe they are lost and are exploring, or looking for some way out of this pond. I guess they came down out of North Pond along the Foy Brook; for they are too large for brook trout. They will be back here in a few minutes, again. Now bait the hook and drop in before they come back. Then sit still, and when they come, just move the bait a little and I think you'll get a bite."
I followed this advice and sat for some minutes, dangling a big angle-worm out in the deep water, off the inner wall of the dam, while my three companions watched the water. Presently Theodora whispered that they were coming again; and then I saw what was, indeed, from a piscatorial point of view, a rare spectacle. First the water waved deep down, near the bottom, and seemed filled with dark moving objects, showing here and there the sheen of light brown and a glimmer of flashing red specks, as the sunlight fell in among them. For an instant I was so intent on the sight, that I quite forgot my hook. "Bob it now," whispered Kate, excitedly.
I had scarcely given my hook a bob up and down when, with a grand rush and snap, a big trout grabbed worm, hook and all. Instinctively I gave a great yank and swung him heavily out of the water, my pole bending half double. The trout was securely hooked, or I should have lost him, for he fell first on some drift logs and slid down betwixt them into the water again. Seizing the line in my hands, since the pole was too light for the fish, I contrived to lift him up and land him high and dry on the dam, close at the feet of the girls.
"Well done!" Theodora whispered. "Oh, isn't he a noble great one, and how like sport he jumps about! Too bad to take his life when he's so handsome and was having such a good time among his mates!"
"Unhook him quick and throw in again!" criedKate. "Be careful he don't snap your fingers. He's got sharp teeth. Don't let him leap into the water. That's good! We'll keep him behind this log. Now bait again with a good new worm."
"But they've gone," said Theodora. "They darted away when you pulled this one out. It scared them."
I had experienced some difficulty in disengaging my hook from the trout's jaw, but at length put on another worm and dropped in again, not a little excited over my catch.
"I'm afraid they will not come around again," said Ellen. Kate, too, thought it doubtful whether we would see anything more of the school. "I guess they will beat a retreat up to North Pond," said she.
We sat quietly waiting for eight or ten minutes and were losing hope fast, when lo! there they all came again—swimming evenly around the foot of the pond in the deep part, as before, winnowing the water slowly with their fins.
Again I waited till my hook was in the midst of the school; and this time I had scarcely moved it, when another snapped it. I had resolved not to jerk quite so hard this time; but in my excitement I pulled much harder than was necessary to hook the trout and again swung it out and against the wall of the dam. With a vigorous squirm the fish threw himself clean off the hook; but by chance I grabbed him in my hands, as he did so, and threw him over the dam among the raspberry briars—safe.
"Well done again," said Theodora.
In a trice I had rebaited my hook and dropped in a third time; but as before the vagrant school had moved on. They had seemed alarmed for the moment by the commotion, and darted off with accelerated speed. But we now had more confidence that they would return and again settled ourselves to wait.
"Oh, I want to catch one!" exclaimed Ellen.
"I wish we had more hooks," said Kate. "We would fish at different points around the pond."
After about the same interval of time and in the same odd, migratory manner, the beautiful school came around four times more in succession; and every time I swung out a handsome one. Kate then took the pole and caught one. Then Ellen caught one; and afterwards Theodora took her turn and succeeded in landing a fine fellow which flopped off the dam once, but was finally secured. In the scramble to save this last one, however, I rolled a loose stone off the dam into the water; and either owing to the splash made by the stone, or because the trout had completed their survey of the pond, they did not return. We saw nothing more of the school although we had not caught a fifth part of them.
After waiting fifteen or twenty minutes we went along the shore on both sides of the pond but could not discern them anywheres. It is likely that they had gone back to the larger pond, two miles distant.
At that time, the very odd circumstances attending the capture of these trout did not greatly surprise me; for I knew almost nothing of fishing. But within a considerable experience since, I have never seen anything like it.
We laid the nine large trout in a row on the dam, side by side, and then strung them on a forked maple branch. They were indeed beauties! The largest was found that night to weigh three pounds and three quarters; and the smallest two pounds and an ounce. The whole string weighed over twenty-two pounds. Going homeward, we first took turns carrying them, then hung them on a pole for two to carry.
Our folks were at supper when we arrived at the house door with our cedar and our fish. When they saw those trout, they all jumped up from the table. Addison and Halse had never caught anything whichcould compare with them for size; both of the boys stared in astonishment.
"Where in the world did you catch those whopping trout?" was then the question which we had to answer in detail.
Kate carried three of them home with her; and we had six for our share. The Old Squire dressed two of the largest; and grandmother rolled them in meal and fried them with pork for our supper. I thought at the time that I had never tasted anything one half as good in my life!
Next morning Addison got up at half past four and having hastily milked his two cows, went over to the old mill-pond, to try his own hand at fishing there. He found Tom Edwards there already; but neither of them caught a trout, nor saw one. Addison went again a day or two after; and the story having got abroad, more than twenty persons fished there during the next fortnight, but caught no trout.
Evidently it was a transient school. I never caught a trout in the mill-pond, afterwards; although the following year Addison made a great catch in a branch of the Foy stream below the dam under somewhat peculiar circumstances.
At the far end of the dam, a hundred feet from the flume, there was an "apron," beneath a waste-way, where formerly the overflow of water went out and found its way for a hundred and fifty yards, perhaps, by another channel along the foot of a steep bank; then, issuing through a dense willow thicket, it joined the main stream from the flume.
Water rarely flowed here now, except in time of freshets, or during the spring and fall rains; and there was such a prodigious tangle of alder, willow, clematis and other vines that for years no one had penetrated it. From a fisherman's point of view there seemed no inducement to do so, since this secondary channel appeared to be dry for most of the time.
In point of fact, however, and unknown to us, there was a very deep hole at the foot of the high bank where the channel was obstructed by a ledge. The hole thus formed was thirty or forty feet in length, and at the deepest place under the bank the water was six or seven feet in depth; but such was the tangle of brush above, below and all about it that one would never have suspected its existence.
An experienced and observing fisherman would have noted, however, that always, even in midsummer, there was a tiny rill of water issuing through the willows to join the main stream; and that, too, when not a drop of water was running over the waste-way of the dam. He would have noted also that this was unusually clear, cold water, like water from a spring. There was, in fact, a copious spring at the foot of the bank near the deep hole; and this hole was maintained by the spring, and not by the water from above the dam.
Addison was a born observer, a naturalist by nature; and on one of these hopeful trips to the mill-pond, he had searched out and found that hidden hole on the old waste-way channel, below the dam. When he had forced his way through the tangled mass of willows, alders and vines and discovered the pool, he found eighteen or nineteen splendid speckled trout in it.
Either these trout had come over the waste-way of the dam in time of freshet, and had been unable to get out through the rick of small drift stuff at the foot of the hole; or else perhaps they were trout that had come in there as small fry and had been there for years, till they had grown to their present size. Certain it is that they were now two-and three-pound trout.
Did Addison come home in haste to tell us of his discovery? Not at all. He did not even allow himself to catch one of the trout at that time, for he knew that Halstead and I had seen him set off for the old mill-pond. He came home without a fish, andremarked at the dinner-table that it was of no use to fish for trout in that old pond—which was true enough.
The next wet day, however, he said at breakfast to the Old Squire, "If you don't want me, sir, for an hour or two this morning, I guess I'll go down the Horr Brook and see if I can catch a few trout."
Gramp nodded, and we saw Addison dig his worms and set off. The Horr Brook was on the west side of the farm, while the old mill-pond lay to the southeast. What Addison did was to fish down the Horr Brook for about a mile, to the meadows where the lake woods began. He then made a rapid detour around through the woods to the Foy Brook, and caught four trout out of the hidden preserve below the old dam. Afterwards he went back as he had come to the Horr Brook, then strolled leisurely home with eight pounds of trout.
Of course there was astonishment and questions. "You never caught those trout in the Horr Brook!" Halstead exclaimed. But Addison only laughed.
"Ad, did you get those beauties out of the old mill-pond?" demanded Ellen.
"No," said Addison, but he would answer no more questions.
About two weeks after that he set off fishing to the Horr Brook again, and again returned with two big trout. Nobody else who fished there had caught anything weighing more than half a pound; and in the lake, at that time, there was nothing except pickerel. But all that Addison would say was that he did not have any trouble in catching such trout.
The mystery of those trout puzzled us deeply. Not only Halstead and I, but Thomas Edwards, Edgar Wilbur and the Murch boys all did our best to find out where and how Addison fished, but quite without success.
Cold weather was now at hand and the fishing over; Addison astonished us, however, by bringing home two noble trout for Thanksgiving day.