The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Busy Year at the Old Squire's, by Charles Asbury Stephens This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: A Busy Year at the Old Squire's Author: Charles Asbury Stephens Release Date: November 29, 2006 [eBook #19968] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A BUSY YEAR AT THE OLD SQUIRE'S*** E-text prepared by the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/) A Busy Year at the Old Squire's BY C. A. STEPHENS PUBLISHED BY THE OLD SQUIRE'S BOOKSTORE NORWAY, MAINE Copyright, 1922 By C. A. Stephens All rights reserved Electrotyped and Printed by THE COLONIAL PRESS Clinton, Mass., U. S. A. DEDICATED WITH CORDIAL BEST WISHES TO THE THOUSANDS OF READERS WHO HAVE REQUESTED THIS Memorial Edition OF THE C. A. STEPHENS BOOKS Contents CHAPTER I. Master Pierson Comes Back CHAPTER II. Cutting Ice at 14° Below Zero CHAPTER III. A Bear's "Pipe" in Winter CHAPTER IV. White Monkey Week CHAPTER V. When Old Zack Went to School CHAPTER VI. The Sad Abuse of Old Mehitable CHAPTER VII. Bear-Tone CHAPTER VIII. When We Hunted the Striped Catamount CHAPTER IX. The Lost Oxen CHAPTER X. Bethesda CHAPTER XI. When We Walked the Town Lines CHAPTER XII. The Rose-Quartz Spring CHAPTER XIII. Fox Pills CHAPTER XIV. The Unpardonable Sin CHAPTER XV. The Cantaloupe Coaxer CHAPTER XVI. The Strange Disappearance of Grandpa Edwards CHAPTER XVII. Our Fourth of July at the Den CHAPTER XVIII. Jim Doane's Bank Book CHAPTER XIX. Grandmother Ruth's Last Load of Hay CHAPTER XX. When Uncle Hannibal Spoke at the Chapel CHAPTER XXI. That Mysterious Daguerreotype Saloon CHAPTER XXII. "Rainbow in the Morning" CHAPTER XXIII. When I Went After the Eyestone CHAPTER XXIV. Borrowed for a Bee Hunt CHAPTER XXV. When the Lion Roared CHAPTER XXVI. Uncle Solon Chase Comes Along CHAPTER XXVII. On the Dark of the Moon CHAPTER XXVIII. Halstead's Gobbler CHAPTER XXIX. Mitchella Jars CHAPTER XXX. When Bears Were Denning Up CHAPTER XXXI. Czar Brench CHAPTER XXXII. When Old Peg Led the Flock CHAPTER XXXIII. Witches' Brooms CHAPTER XXXIV. The Little Image Peddlers CHAPTER XXXV. A January Thaw CHAPTER XXXVI. Uncle Billy Murch's Hair-Raiser CHAPTER XXXVII. Addison's Pocketful of Auger Chips A Busy Year at the Old Squire's CHAPTER I MASTER PIERSON COMES BACK Master Joel Pierson arrived the following Sunday afternoon, as he had promised in his letter of Thanksgiving Day eve, and took up his abode with us at the old Squire's for the winter term of school. Cousin Addison drove to the village with horse and pung to fetch him; and the pung, I remember, was filled with the master's belongings, including his school melodeon, books and seven large wall maps for teaching geography. For Master Pierson brought a complete outfit, even to the stack of school song-books which later were piled on the top of the melodeon that stood in front of the teacher's desk at the schoolhouse. Every space between the windows was covered by those wall maps. No other teacher had ever made the old schoolhouse so attractive. No other teacher had ever entered on the task of giving us instruction with such zeal and such enthusiasm. It was a zeal, too, and an enthusiasm which embraced every pupil in the room and stopped at nothing short of enlisting that pupil's best efforts to learn. Master Pierson put life and hard work into everything that went on at school—even into the old schoolhouse itself. Every morning he would be off from the old Squire's at eight o'clock, to see that the schoolhouse was well warmed and ready to begin lessons at nine; and if there had been any neglect in sweeping or dusting, he would do it himself, and have every desk and bench clean and tidy before school time. What was more, Master Pierson possessed the rare faculty of communicating his own zeal for learning to his pupils. We became so interested, as weeks passed, that of our own accord we brought our school books home with us at night, in order to study evenings; and we asked for longer lessons that we might progress faster. My cousin Halstead was one of those boys (and their name is Legion) who dislike study and complain of their lessons that they are too long and too hard. But strange to say, Master Joel Pierson somehow led Halse to really like geography that winter. Those large wall maps in color were of great assistance to us all. In class we took turns going to them with a long pointer, to recite the lesson of the day. I remember just how the different countries looked and how they were bounded—though many of these boundaries are now, of course, considerably changed. When lessons dragged and dullness settled on the room, Master Joel was wont to cry, "Halt!" then sit down at the melodeon and play some school song as lively as the instrument admitted of, and set us all singing for five or ten minutes, chanting the multiplication tables, the names of the states, the largest cities of the country, or even the Books of the Bible. At other times he would throw open the windows and set us shouting Patrick Henry's speech, or Byron's Apostrophe to the Ocean. In short, "old Joel" was what now would be called a "live wire." He was twenty-two then and a student working his own way through Bates College. After graduating he migrated to a far western state where he taught for a year or two, became supervisor of schools, then State Superintendent, and afterwards a Representative to Congress. He is an aged man now and no word of mine can add much to the honors which have worthily crowned his life. None the less I want to pay this tribute to him—even if he did rub my ears at times and cry, "Wake up, Round- head! Wake up and find out what you are in this world for." (More rubs!) "You don't seem to know yet. Wake up and find out about it. We have all come into the world to do something. Wake up and find out what you are here for!"—and then more rubs! It wasn't his fault if I never fairly waked up to my vocation—if I really had one. For the life of me I could never feel sure what I was for! Cousin Addison seemed to know just what he was going to do, from earliest boyhood, and went straight to it. Much the same way, cousin Theodora's warm, generous heart led her directly to that labor of love which she has so faithfully performed. As for Halstead, he was perfectly sure, cock-sure, more than twenty times, what he was going to do in life; but always in the course of a few weeks or months, he discovered he was on the wrong trail. What can be said of us who either have no vocation at all, or too many? What are we here for? In addition to our daily studies at the schoolhouse, we resumed Latin, in the old sitting-room, evenings, Thomas and Catherine Edwards coming over across the field to join us. To save her carpet, grandmother Ruth put down burlap to bear the brunt of our many restless feet—for there was a great deal of trampling and sometimes outbreaks of scuffling there. Thomas and I, who had forgotten much we had learned the previous winter, were still delving in Æsop's Fables. But Addison, Theodora and Catherine were going on with the first book of Cæsar's Gallic War. Ellen, two years younger, was still occupied wholly by her English studies. Study hours were from seven till ten, with interludes for apples and pop-corn. Halstead, who had now definitely abandoned Latin as something which would never do him any good, took up Comstock's Natural Philosophy, or made a feint of doing so, in order to have something of his own that was different from the rest of us. Natural philosophy, he declared, was far and away more important than Latin. Memory goes back very fondly to those evenings in the old sitting-room, they were so illumined by great hopes ahead. Thomas and I, at a light-stand apart from the others, were usually puzzling out a Fable—The Lion, The Oxen, The Kid and the Wolf, The Fox and the Lion, or some one of a dozen others—holding noisy arguments over it till Master Pierson from the large center table, called out, "Less noise over there among those Latin infants! Cæsar is building his bridge over the Rhine. You are disturbing him." Addison, always very quiet when engrossed in study, scarcely noticed or looked up, unless perhaps to aid Catherine and Theodora for a moment, with some hard passage. It was Tom and I who made Latin noisy, aggravated at times by pranks from Halstead, whose studies in natural philosophy were by no means diligent. At intervals of assisting us with our translations of Cæsar and the Fables, Master Pierson himself was translating the Greek of Demosthenes' Orations, and also reviewing his Livy—to keep up with his Class at College. But, night or day, he was always ready to help or advise us, and push us on. "Go ahead!" was "old Joel's" motto, and "That's what we're here for." He appeared to be possessed by a profound conviction that the human race has a great destiny before it, and that we ought all to work hard to hurry it up and realize it. It is quite wonderful what an influence for good a wide-awake teacher, like Master Pierson, can exert in a school of forty or fifty boys and girls like ours in the old Squire's district, particularly where many of them "don't know what they are in the world for," and have difficulty in deciding on a vocation in life. At that time there was much being said about a Universal Language. As there are fifty or more diverse languages, spoken by mankind, to say nothing of hundreds of different dialects, and as people now travel freely to all parts of the earth, the advantages of one common language for all nations are apparent to all who reflect on the subject. At present, months and years of our short lives are spent learning foreign languages. A complete education demands that the American whose mother tongue is the English, must learn French, German, Spanish and Italian, to say nothing of the more difficult languages of eastern Europe and the Orient. Otherwise the traveler, without an interpreter, cannot make himself understood, and do business outside his own country. The want of a common means of communication therefore has long been recognized; and about that time some one had invented a somewhat imperfect method of universal speech, with the idea of having everybody learn it, and so be able to converse with the inhabitants of all lands without the well-nigh impossible task of learning five, or ten, or fifty different languages. The idea impressed everybody as a good one, and enjoyed a considerable popularity for a time. But practically this was soon found to be a clumsy and inadequate form of speech, also that many other drawbacks attended its adoption. But the main idea held good; and since that time Volapuk, Bolak, Esperanto and Ido have appeared, but without meeting with great success. The same disadvantages attend them, each and all. In thinking the matter over and talking of it, one night at the old Squire's, that winter, Master Pierson hit on the best, most practical plan for a universal language which I have ever heard put forward. "Latin is the foundation of all the modern languages of Christendom," he said. "Or if not the foundation, it enters largely into all of them. Law, theology, medicine and philosophy are dependent on Latin for their descriptive terms. Without Latin words, modern science would be a jargon which couldn't be taught at all. Without Latin, the English language, itself, would relapse to the crude, primitive Saxon speech of our ancestors. No one can claim to be well educated till he has studied Latin. "Now as we have need to learn Latin anyway, why not kill two birds with one stone, and make Latin our universal language? Why not have a colloquial, every-day Latin, such as the Romans used to speak in Italy? In point of fact, Latin was the universal language with travelers and educated people all through the Middle Ages. We need to learn it anyhow, so why not make it our needed form of common speech?" I remember just how earnest old Joel became as he set forth this new idea of his. He jumped up and tore round the old sitting-room. He rubbed my ears again, rumpled Tom's hair, caught Catherine by both her hands and went ring-round- the-rosy with her, nearly knocking down the table, lamp and all! "The greatest idea yet!" he shouted. "Just what's wanted for a Universal Language!" He went and drew in the old Squire to hear about it; and the old Squire admitted that it sounded reasonable. "For I can see," he said, "that it would keep Latin, and the derivation of words from it, fresh in our minds. It would prove a constant review of the words from which our language has been formed. "But Latin always looked to me rather heavy and perhaps too clumsy for every-day talk," the old gentleman remarked. "Think you could talk it?" "Sure!" Master Pierson cried. "The old Romans spoke it. So can we. And that's just what I will do. I will get up a book of conversational Latin—enough to make a Common Language for every-day use." And in point of fact that was what old Joel was doing, for four or five weeks afterwards. He had Theodora and Catherine copy out page after page of it— as many as twenty pages. He wanted us each to have a copy of it; and for a time at least, he intended to have it printed. A few days ago I came upon some of those faded, yellow pages, folded up in an old text book of Æsop's Latin Fables —the one Tom and I were then using; and I will set down a few of the sentences here, to illustrate what Master Pierson thought might be done with Latin as a universal language. Master Pierson's Universal Language in Latin, which he named Dic from dico, meaning to speak. 1 It is time to get up. = Surgendi tempus est. 2 The sun is up already. = Sol jamdudum ortus. 3 Put on your shoes. = Indue tibi ocreas. 4 Comb your head. = Pecte caput tuum. 5 Light a candle and build a fire. = Accende lucernum, et fac ut luceat faculus. 6 Carry the lantern. We must water the horses. = Vulcanum in cornu geras. Equi aquatum agenda sunt. 7 It is a very hot day. = Dies est ingens æstus. 8 Let's go to the barn. = Jam imus horreum. 9 Grind the axes. = Acuste ascias. 10 It is near twelve o'clock. = Instat hora duodecima. 11 It is time for dinner. = Prandenti tempus adest. 12 Please take dinner with us. = Quesso nobiscum hodie sumas prandiolum. 13 Make a good fire. = Instruas optimum focum. 14 This chimney smokes. = Male fumat hic caminus. 15 The wood is green. = Viride est hoc lignum. 16 Fetch kindling wood. = Affer fomitem. 17 Lay the table cloth. = Sterne mappam. 18 Dinner is ready. = Cibus est appositus. 19 Don't spoil it by delay. = Ne corrumpatur mora vestra. 20 Sit down. = Accumbe. 21 This is my place. = Hic mihi locus. 22 Let him sit next me. = Assideat mihi. 23 Say grace, or ask a blessing. = Recita consecrationem. 24 Give me brown bread. = Da mihi panem atrum. 25 I am going to school. = Eo ad scholam. 26 What time is it? = Quota est hora? 27 It is past seven. = Præteriit hora septima. 28 The bell has rung. = Sonuit tintinnabulum. 29 Go with me. = Vade mecum. 30 The master will soon be here. = Brevi præceptor aderit. 31 I am very cold. = Valde frigeo. 32 My hands are numb. = Obtorpent manus. 33 Mend the fire. = Apta ignem. I have copied out only a few of the shorter sentences. There were, as I have said, fully twenty pages of it, enough for quite a respectable "Universal Language," or at least the beginnings of one. Perhaps some ambitious linguist will yet take it up in earnest. CHAPTER II CUTTING ICE AT 14° BELOW ZERO Generally speaking, young folks are glad when school is done. But it wasn't so with us that winter in the old Squire's district, when Master Pierson was teacher. We were really sad, in fact quite melancholy, and some of the girls shed tears, when the last day of school came and "old Joel" tied up the melodeon, took down the wall maps, packed up his books and went back to his Class in College. He was sad himself—he had taken such interest in our progress. "Now don't forget what you have learned!" he exclaimed. "Hang on to it. Knowledge is your best friend. You must go on with your Latin, evenings." "You will surely come back next winter!" we shouted after him as he drove away. "Maybe," he said, and would not trust himself to look back. The old sitting-room seemed wholly deserted that Friday night after he went away. "We are like sheep without a shepherd," Theodora said. Catherine and Tom came over. We opened our Latin books and tried to study awhile; but 'twas dreary without "old Joel." Other things, however, other duties and other work at the farm immediately occupied our attention. It was now mid- January and there was ice to be cut on the lake for our new creamery. For three years the old Squire had been breeding a herd of Jerseys. There were sixteen of them: Jersey First, Canary, Jersey Second, Little Queen, Beauty, Buttercup, and all the rest. Each one had her own little book that hung from its nail on a beam of the tie-up behind her stall. In it were recorded her pedigree, dates, and the number of pounds of milk she gave at each milking. The scales for weighing the milk hung from the same beam. We weighed each milking, and jotted down the weight with the pencil tied to each little book. All this was to show which of the herd was most profitable, and which calves had better be kept for increase. This was a new departure in Maine farming. Cream-separators were as yet undreamed of. A water-creamery with long cans and ice was then used for raising the cream; and that meant an ice-house and the cutting and hauling home of a year's stock of ice from the lake, nearly two miles distant. We built a new ice-house near the east barn in November; and in December the old Squire drove to Portland and brought home a complete kit of tools—three ice-saws, an ice-plow or groover, ice-tongs, hooks, chisels, tackle and block. Everything had to be bought new, but the old Squire had visions of great profits ahead from his growing herd of Jerseys. Grandmother, however, was less sanguine. It was unusually cold in December that year, frequently ten degrees below zero, and there were many high winds. Consequently, the ice on the lake thickened early to twelve inches, and bade fair to go to two feet. For use in a water- creamery, ice is most conveniently cut and handled when not more than fifteen or sixteen inches thick. That thickness, too, when the cakes are cut twenty-six inches square, as usual, makes them quite heavy enough for hoisting and packing in an ice-house. Half a mile from the head of the lake, over deep, clear water, we had been scraping and sweeping a large surface after every snow, in order to have clear ice. Two or three times a week Addison ran down and tested the thickness; and when it reached fifteen inches, we bestirred ourselves at our new work. None of us knew much about cutting ice; but we laid off a straight base-line of a hundred feet, hitched old Sol to the new groover, and marked off five hundred cakes. Addison and I then set to work with two of our new ice-saws, and hauled out the cakes with the ice-tongs, while Halstead and the old Squire loaded them on the long horse-sled,— sixteen cakes to the load,—drew the ice home, and packed it away in the new ice-house. Although at first the sawing seemed easy, we soon found it tiresome, and learned that two hundred cakes a day meant a hard day's work, particularly after the saws lost their keen edge—for even ice will dull a saw in a day or two. We had also to be pretty careful, for it was over deep black water, and a cake when nearly sawed across is likely to break off suddenly underfoot. Hauling out the cakes with tongs, too, is somewhat hazardous on a slippery ice margin. We beveled off a kind of inclined "slip" at one end of the open water, and cut heel holes in the ice beside it, so that we might stand more securely as we pulled the cakes out of the water. For those first few days we had bright, calm weather, not very cold; we got out five hundred cakes and drew them home to the ice-house without accident. The hardship came the next week, when several of our neighbors—who always kept an eye on the old Squire's farming, and liked to follow his lead—were beset by an ambition to start ice-houses. None of them had either experience or tools. They wanted us to cut the ice for them. We thought that was asking rather too much. Thereupon fourteen or fifteen of them offered us two cents a cake to cut a year's supply for each of them. Now no one will ever get very rich cutting ice, sixteen inches thick, at two cents a cake. But Addison and I thought it over, and asked the old Squire's opinion. He said that we might take the new kit, and have all we could make. On that, we notified them all to come and begin drawing home their cakes the following Monday morning, for the ice was growing thicker all the while; and the thicker it got, the harder our work would be. They wanted about four thousand cakes; and as we would need help, we took in Thomas Edwards and Willis Murch as partners. Both were good workers, and we anticipated having a rather fine time at the lake. In the woods on the west shore, nearly opposite where the ice was to be cut, there was an old "shook" camp, where we kept our food and slept at night, in order to avoid the long walk home to meals. On Sunday it snowed, and cleared off cold and windy again. It was eight degrees below zero on Monday morning, when we took our outfit and went to work. Everything was frozen hard as a rock. The wind, sweeping down the lake, drove the fine, loose snow before it like smoke from a forest fire. There was no shelter. We had to stand out and saw ice in the bitter wind, which seemed to pierce to the very marrow of our bones. It was impossible to keep a fire; and it always seems colder when you are standing on ice. It makes me shiver now to think of that week, for it grew colder instead of warmer. A veritable "cold snap" set in, and never for an hour, night or day, did that bitter wind let up. We would have quit work and waited for calmer weather,—the old Squire advised us to do so,—but the ice was getting thicker every day. Every inch added to the thickness made the work of sawing harder—at two cents a cake. So we stuck to it, and worked away in that cruel wind. On Thursday it got so cold that if we stopped the saws even for two seconds, they froze in hard and fast, and had to be cut out with an ax; thus two cakes would be spoiled. It was not easy to keep the saws going fast enough not to catch and freeze in; and the cakes had to be hauled out the moment they were sawed, or they would freeze on again. Moreover, the patch of open water that we uncovered froze over in a few minutes, and had to be cleared a dozen times a day. During those nights it froze five inches thick, and filled with snowdrift, all of which had to be cleared out every morning. Although we had our caps pulled down over our ears and heavy mittens on, and wore all the clothes we could possibly work in, it yet seemed at times that freeze we must—especially toward night, when we grew tired from the hard work of sawing so long and so fast. We became so chilled that we could hardly speak; and at sunset, when we stopped work, we could hardly get across to the camp. The farmers, who were coming twice a day with their teams for ice, complained constantly of the cold; several of them stopped drawing altogether for the time. Willis also stopped work on Thursday at noon. The people at home knew that we were having a hard time. Grandmother and the girls did all they could for us; and every day at noon and again at night the old Squire, bundled up in his buffalo-skin coat, drove down to the lake with horse and pung, and brought us a warm meal, packed in a large box with half a dozen hot bricks. Only one who has been chilled through all day can imagine how glad we were to reach that warm camp at night. Indeed, except for the camp, we could never have worked there as we did. It was a log camp, or rather two camps, placed end to end, and you went through the first in order to get into the second, which had no outside door. The second camp had been built especially for cold weather. It was low, and the chinks between the logs were tamped with moss. At this time, too, snow lay on it, and had banked up against the walls. Inside the camp, across one end, there was a long bunk; at the opposite end stood an old cooking-stove, that seemed much too large for so small a camp. At dusk we dropped work, made for the camp, shut all the doors, built the hottest fire we could make, and thawed ourselves out. It seemed as though we could never get warmed through. For an hour or more we hovered about the stove. The camp was as hot as an oven; I have no doubt that we kept the temperature at 110°; and yet we were not warm. "Put in more wood!" Addison or Thomas would exclaim. "Cram that stove full again! Let's get warm!" We thought so little of ventilation that we shut the camp door tight and stopped every aperture that we could find. We needed heat to counteract the effect of those long hours of cold and wind. By the time we had eaten our supper and thawed out, we grew sleepy, and under all our bedclothing, curled up in the bunk. So fearful were we lest the fire should go out in the night that we gathered a huge heap of fuel, and we all agreed to get up and stuff the stove whenever we waked and found the fire abating. Among the neighbors for whom we were cutting ice was Rufus Sylvester. He was not a very careful or prosperous farmer, and not likely to be successful at dairying. But because the old Squire and others were embarking in that business, Rufus wished to do so, too. He had no ice-house, but thought he could keep ice buried in sawdust, in the shade of a large apple-tree near his barn; and I may add here that he tried it with indifferent success for three years, and that it killed the apple-tree. On Saturday of that cold week he came to the lake with his lame old horse and a rickety sled, and wanted us to cut a hundred cakes of ice for him. The prospect of our getting our pay was poor. Saturday, moreover, was the coldest, windiest day of the whole week; the temperature was down to fourteen degrees below. Halse and Thomas said no; but he hung round, and teased us, while his half-starved old horse shivered in the wind; and we finally decided to oblige him, if he would take the tongs and haul out the cakes himself, as we sawed them. It would not do to stop the saws that day, even for a moment. Rufus had on an old blue army overcoat, the cape of which was turned up over his head and ears, and a red woolen "comforter" round his neck. He wore long-legged, stiff cowhide boots, with his trousers tucked into the tops. Addison, Thomas and I were sawing, with our backs turned to Rufus and to the wind, and Rufus was trying to haul out a cake of ice, when we heard a clatter and a muffled shout. Rufus had slipped in! We looked round just in time to see him go down into that black, icy water. Addison let go the saw and sprang for one of the ice-hooks. I did the same. The hook I grabbed was frozen down; but Addison got his free, and stuck it into Rufus's blue overcoat. It tore out, and down Rufus went again, head and ears under. His head, in fact, slid beneath the edge of the ice, but his back popped up. Addison struck again with the hook—struck harder. He hooked it through all Rufus's clothes, and took a piece of his skin. It held that time, and we hauled him out. He lay quite inert on the ice, choking and coughing. "Get up! Get up!" we shouted to him. "Get up and run, or you'll freeze!" He tried to rise, but failed to regain his feet, and collapsed. Thereupon Addison and Thomas laid hold of him, and lifted him to his feet by main strength. "Now run!" they cried. "Run before your clothes freeze stiff!" The man seemed lethargic—I suppose from the deadly chill. He made an effort to move his feet, as they bade him, but fell flat again; and by that time his clothes were stiffening. "He will freeze to death!" Addison cried. "We must put him on his sled and get him home!" Thereupon we picked him up like a log of wood, and laid him on his horse-sled. "But he will freeze before we can get this old lame horse home with him!" exclaimed Thomas. "Better take him to our camp over there." Addison thought so, too, and seizing the reins and whip, started for the shore. The old horse was so chilled that we could hardly get him to hobble; but we did not spare the whip. From the shore we had still fifteen or twenty rods to go, in order to reach the camp back in the woods. Rufus's clothes were frozen as stiff as boards; apparently he could not move. We feared that the man would die on our hands. We snatched off one of the side boards of his sled, laid him on it, and, taking it up like a stretcher, started to carry him up through the woods to the camp. By that time his long overcoat and all the rest of his clothes were frozen so stiff and hard that he rolled round more like a log than a human body. The path was rough and snowy. In our haste we stumbled, and dropped him several times, but we rolled him on the board again, rushed on, and at last got him inside the camp. Our morning fire had gone out. Halse kindled it again, while Addison, Thomas and I tried to get off the frozen overcoat and long cowhide boots. The coat was simply a sheet of ice; we could do nothing with it. At last we took our knives and cut it down the back, and after cutting open both sleeves, managed to peel it off. We had to cut open his boots in the same way. His under- coat and all his clothes were frozen. There appeared to be little warmth left in him; he was speechless. But just then we heard some one coming in through the outside camp. It was the old Squire. Our farmhouse, on the higher ground to the northwest, afforded a view of the lake; and the old gentleman had been keeping an eye on what went on down there, for he was quite far-sighted. He saw Sylvester arrive with his team, and a few minutes later saw us start for the shore, lashing the horse. He knew that something had gone wrong, and hitching up old Sol, he had driven down in haste. "Hot water, quick!" he said. "Make some hot coffee!" And seizing a towel, he gave Sylvester such a rubbing as it is safe to say he had never undergone before. Gradually signs of life and color appeared. The man began to speak, although rather thickly. By this time the little camp was like an oven; but the old Squire kept up the friction. We gave Rufus two or three cups of hot coffee, and in the course of an hour he was quite himself again. We kept him at the camp until the afternoon, however, and then started him home, wrapped in a horse-blanket instead of his army overcoat. He was none the worse for his misadventure, although he declared we tore off two inches of his skin! On Sunday the weather began to moderate, and the last four days of our ice-cutting were much more comfortable. It had been a severe ordeal, however; the eighty-one dollars that we collected for it were but scanty recompense for the misery we had endured. CHAPTER III A BEAR'S "PIPE" IN WINTER After ice-cutting came wood-cutting. It was now the latter part of January with weather still unusually cold. There were about three feet of snow on the ground, crusted over from a thaw which had occurred during the first of the month. In those days we burned from forty to fifty cords of wood in a year. There was a wood-lot of a hundred acres along the brook on the east side of the farm, and other forest lots to the north of it. Only the best old-growth maple, birch and beech were cut for fuel—great trees two and three feet in diameter. The trunks were cut into eight-foot lengths, rolled on the ox-sleds with levers, and then hauled home to the yard in front of the wood-house, where they lay in four huge piles till March, when all hands turned to, with axes and saws, and worked it up. It was zero weather that week, but bright and clear, with spicules of frost glistening on every twig; and I recollect how sharply the tree trunks snapped—those frost snaps which make "shaky" lumber in Maine. Addison, Halstead and I, with one of the old Squire's hired men, Asa Doane, went to the wood-lot at eight o'clock that morning and chopped smartly till near eleven. Indeed, we were obliged to work fast to keep warm. Addison and I then stuck our axes in a log and went on the snow crust up to the foot of a mountain, about half a mile distant, where the hardwood growth gave place to spruce. We wanted to dig a pocketful of spruce gum. For several days Ellen and Theodora had been asking us to get them some nice "purple" gum. As we were going from one spruce to another, Addison stopped suddenly and pointed to a little round hole with hard ice about it, near a large, overhanging rock across which a tree had fallen. "Sh!" he exclaimed. "I believe that's a bear's breath-hole!" We reconnoitered the place at a safe distance. "That may be Old Three Paws himself," Addison said. "If it is, we must put an end to him." For "Old Three Paws" was a bear that had given trouble in the sheep pastures for years. After a good look all round, we went home to dinner, and at table talked it over. The old Squire was a little incredulous, but admitted that there might be a bear there. "I will tell you how you can find out," he said. "Take a small looking-glass with you and hold it to the hole. If there is a bear down there, you will see just a little film of moisture on the glass from his breath." We loaded two guns with buckshot. Our plan was to wake the bear up, and shoot him when he broke out through the snow. Bears killed a good many sheep at that time; the farmers did not regard them as desirable neighbors. The ruse which Addison hit on for waking the bear was to blow black pepper down the hole through a hollow sunflower stalk. He had an idea that this would set the bear sneezing. In view of what happened, I laugh now when I remember our plans for waking that bear. Directly after dinner we set off for the wood-lot with our guns and pepper. Cold as it was, Ellen and Theodora went with us, intending to stand at a very safe distance. Even grandmother Ruth would have gone, if it had not been quite so cold and snowy. Although minus one foot, Old Three Paws was known to be a savage bear, that had had more than one encounter with mankind. While the rest stood back, Addison approached on tiptoe with the looking-glass, and held it to the hole for some moments. Then he examined it and looked back at us, nodding. There was moisture on it. The girls climbed upon a large rock among the spruces. The old Squire, with one of the guns, took up a position beside a tree about fifty feet from the "hole." He posted Asa, who was a pretty good shot, beside another tree not far away. Halstead and I had to content ourselves with axes for weapons, and kept pretty well to the rear. Addison was now getting his pepper ready. Expectancy ran high when at last he blew it down the hole and rushed back. We had little doubt that an angry bear would break out, sneezing and growling. But nothing of the sort occurred. Some minutes passed. Addison could not even hear the faintest sneeze from below. He tiptoed up and blew in more pepper. No response. Cutting a pole, Addison then belabored the snow crust about the hole with resounding whacks—still with no result. After this we approached less cautiously. Asa broke up the snow about the hole and cleared it away, uncovering a considerable cavity which extended back under the partially raised root of the fallen tree. Halstead brought a shovel from the wood-piles; and Addison and Asa cut away the roots of the old tree, and cleared out the frozen turf and leaves to a depth of four or five feet, gradually working down where they could look back beneath the root. We had begun to doubt whether we would find anything there larger than a woodchuck. At last Addison got down on hands and knees, crept in under the root, and lighted several matches. "There's something back in there," he said. "Looks black, but I cannot see that it moves." Asa crawled in and struck a match or two, then backed out. "I believe it's a bear!" he exclaimed, and he wanted to creep in with a gun and fire; but the old Squire advised against that on account of the heavy charge in so confined a space. Addison had been peeling dry bark from a birch, and crawling in again, lighted a roll of it. The smoke drove him out, but he emerged in excitement. "Bears!" he cried. "Two bears in there! I saw them!" Asa took a pole and poked the bears cautiously. "Dead, I guess," said he, at last. "They don't move." Addison crept in again, and actually passed his hand over the bears, then backed out, laughing. "No, they are not dead!" he exclaimed. "They are warm. But they are awfully sound asleep." "Let's haul them out!" cried Asa; and they now sent me to the wood-sled for two or three small trace-chains. Asa then crawled in and slipped a chain about the body of one of the bears. The other two chains were hooked on; and then they slowly hauled the bear out, the old Squire standing by with gun cocked—for we expected every moment that the animal would wake. But even when out on the snow crust the creature lay as inert as a dead bear. It was small. "Only a yearling," the old Squire said. None of us were now much afraid of them, and the other one was drawn out in the same way. Their hair was glossy and as black as jet. Possibly they would have weighed seventy-five pounds each. Evidently they were young bears that had never been separated, and that accounted for their denning up together; old bears rarely do this. We put them on the wood-sled and hauled them home. They lay in a pile of hay on the stable floor all night, without a sign of waking up; and the next morning we hauled them to the cellar of the west barn. Under this barn, which was used mainly for sheep and young cattle, there were several pigsties, now empty. The dormant young bears were rolled into one of these sties and the sty filled with dry leaves, such as we used for bedding in the barns. About a fortnight afterward a young doctor named Truman, from the village, desired very much to see the bears in their winter sleep. He got into the sty, uncovered them, and repeatedly pricked one of them with a needle, or penknife, without fairly waking it. But salts of ammonia, held to the nostrils of the other one, produced an unexpected result. The creature struck out spasmodically with one paw and rolled suddenly over. Doctor Truman jumped out of the sty quite as suddenly. "He's alive, all right," said the doctor. The bears were not disturbed again, and remained there so quietly that we nearly forgot them. It was now the second week of March, and up to this time the weather had continued cold; but a thaw set in, with rain for two or three days, the temperature rising to sixty degrees, and even higher. On the third night of the thaw, or rather, in the early morning, a great commotion broke out at the west barn. It waked the girls first, their room being on that side of the farmhouse. At about two o'clock in the morning Ellen came to our door to rouse Addison and me. "There's a fearful racket up at the west barn," she said, in low tones. "You had better see what's wrong." Addison and I threw on our clothes, went down quietly, so as not to disturb the old Squire, and were getting our lanterns ready, when he came from his room; for he, too, had heard the disturbance. We then sallied forth and approached the end door of the barn. Inside, the young cattle were bellowing and bawling. Below, in the barn cellar, sheep were bleating, and a shoat was adding its raucous voice to the uproar. Above it all, however, we could hear eight old turkeys and a peacock that were wintering in the west barn, "quitting" and "quuttering" aloft, where they roosted on the high beams. The young cattle, seventeen head, were tied facing the barn floor. All of them were on their feet, pulling back at their stanchions in a great state of alarm. But the real trouble seemed now to be aloft in the dark roof of the barn, among the turkeys. Addison held up the lantern. Nothing could be seen so far up there in the dark, but feathers came fluttering down, and the old peacock was squalling, "Tap-pee-yaw!" over and over. We fixed a lantern on the end of a long bean-pole and thrust it high up. Its light revealed those two young bears on one of the high beams of the barn! One of them had the head of a turkey in his mouth, and was apparently trying to bolt it; and we discovered later that they had had trouble with the shoat down in the cellar. The shoat was somewhat scratched, but had stood them off. Several of the sheep had their fleeces torn, particularly one old Cotswold ram, which also had a bleeding nose. Evidently the barn had been the scene of a protracted fracas. The bears must have climbed for the turkeys as a last resort. How they reached the beam we did not know, unless by swarming up one of the bare posts of the barn. To drive them down, Addison climbed on a scaffold and thrust the lantern close up to the one with the turkey's head in its mouth. The bear struck at the lantern with one paw, started back, but lost its claw-hold on the beam and fell, turkey and all, eighteen or twenty feet to the barn floor. The old Squire and I sprang aside in great haste; but so far as we could see, the bear never stirred after it struck the floor. Either the fall broke its neck, or else the turkey's head choked it to death. When menaced with the lantern, the other bear slid down one of the barn posts, tail first, and was driven into a horse stall at the far end of the barn. There we succeeded in shutting it up, and in the morning gave it a breakfast of corn-meal dough and apples, which it devoured with great avidity. We had no particular use for a bear, and a week later sold this youngster to Doctor Truman. He soon tired of his new pet, however, and parted with it to a friend who kept a summer hotel in the White Mountains. The other bear—the one that fell from the high beam—had the handsomest black, glossy pelt I have ever seen. Grandmother Ruth insisted on having it tanned and made into a rug. She declared jocosely that it should be given to the first one of our girls who married. Ellen finally fell heir to it, and carried it with her to Dakota. CHAPTER IV WHITE MONKEY WEEK Cutting and drawing the year's supply of firewood to the door occupied us for a week; and following this we boys had planned to take matters easy awhile, for the old Squire was to be away from home. Asa Doane had left us, too, for a visit to his folks. As it chanced, however, a strenuous emergency arose. A year previously the old Squire had made an agreement with a New York factory, to furnish dowels and strips of clear white birch wood, for piano keys and passementerie. At that time passementerie was coming into use for ladies' dresses. The fine white-birch dowels were first turned round on small lathes and afterwards into little bugle and bottle-shaped ornaments, then dyed a glistening black and strung on linen threads. On our own forest lots we had no birch which quite met the requirements. But another lumberman, an acquaintance of the old Squire's, named John Lurvey (a brother of old Zachary Lurvey), who owned lots north of ours, had just what we needed to fill the order. Lumbermen are often "neighborly" with each other in such matters, and with John Lurvey the old Squire made a kind of running contract for three hundred cords of white-birch "bolts" from a lakeside lot. Each one made a memorandum of the agreement in his pocket note-book; and as each trusted the other, nothing more exact or formal was thought necessary. The white birch was known to be valuable lumber. We were to pay two thousand dollars for it on the stump,—one thousand down,—and have two "winters" in which to get it off and pay the balance of the money. And here it may be said that in the Maine woods a winter is supposed to mean the snowy season from November till April. Meanwhile other ventures were pressing. In company with a Canadian partner, the old Squire was then getting spruce lumber down the St. Maurice River at Three Rivers, in the Province of Quebec. This New York birch contract was deferred a year, the plan being finally to get off the birch in March of the second winter, when the crews and teams from two other lumber-camps could conveniently be sent to the lake, and make a quick job of it. But in December of that second winter John Lurvey died suddenly of pneumonia. His property passed into the hands of his wife, who was by no means easy-going. She overhauled this note-book agreement, took legal advice of a sharp lawyer, and on February 21st sent us legal notification that the agreement would expire on February 28th, the last day of winter, according to the calendar. The notification also demanded payment of the second thousand dollars. Her scheme, of course, was to get the money in full and cut us off, in default, from removing the birch lumber from the lot. The old Squire himself had gone to Canada. The notification came by letter, and as usual when the old Squire was away, grandmother Ruth opened his mail to see what demanded our attention. We were all in the sitting-room, except Halstead, who was away that evening. "What can this mean?" grandmother suddenly exclaimed, and handed the letter to Addison. He saw through it instantly, and jumped up in excitement. "We're trapped!" he cried. "If we don't get that birch off next week we shall lose two thousand dollars!" Grandmother was dismayed. "Oh, that wicked woman!" she cried. "Why, winter always means through sledding!" "I'm afraid not, in law," said Addison, looking puzzled. "Winter ends either the first or the twenty-first of March. I think a good argument could be made in court for the twenty-first. But she may be right, and it's too late to take chances. The only thing to do is to get that lumber off right away." Addison and I went out to the stable to talk the matter over; we did not want to excite grandmother any further. At best, she had a good deal to worry her that winter. "Now what can we do?" Addison exclaimed. Five or six days would be required to get the old Squire home from Canada. "And what could he do after he got here?" Addison asked. "The teams and the choppers are all off at the lumber- camps." "Let's take our axes and go up there and cut what birch we can next week," said I, in desperation. "Oh, we boys couldn't do much alone in so short a time," replied Addison. Still, we could think of nothing else; and with the loss of two thousand dollars staring us in the face, we began planning desperately how much of that birch we could save in a week's time. In fact, we scarcely slept at all that night, and early the next morning started out to rally what help we could. Willis Murch and Thomas Edwards volunteered to work for us, and take each a yoke of oxen. After much persuasion our neighbor Sylvester promised to go with a team, and to take his son Rufus, Jr. Going on to the post-office at the Corners, we succeeded in hiring two other young men. But even with the help of these men we could account for scarcely a seventh part of the contract, since one chopper could cut not more than a cord and a half of birch bolts in a day; and moreover, the bolts had to be removed from the lot. But as we rushed round that forenoon, it occurred to Addison to hire a horse-power and circular saw that was owned by a man named Morefield, who lived near the wood-sheds of the railway-station, six miles from the old Squire's. It was a rig used for sawing wood for the locomotives. Hurrying home, we hitched up, drove to the station, and succeeded in engaging Morefield and his saw, with two spans of heavy horses. But other cares had now loomed up, not the least among them being the problem of feeding our hastily collected crew of helpers and their teams sixteen miles off in the woods. Just across the lake from the lot where the birch grew there was a lumber-camp where we could set up a stove and do our cooking; and during the afternoon we packed up supplies of pork, beans and corned beef, while in the house grandmother and the girls were baking bread. I had also to go to the mill, to get corn ground for the teams. Theodora and Ellen were eager to go and do the cooking at the camp; but grandmother knew that an older woman of greater experience was needed in such an emergency, and had that morning sent urgent word to Olive Witham,—"Aunt Olive," as we called her,—who was always our mainstay in times of trouble at the old farm. She was about fifty-five years old, tall, austere, not wholly attractive, but of upright character and undaunted courage. By nine that evening everything was ready for a start; and sunrise the next morning saw us on the way up to the birch lot, Aunt Olive riding in the "horse-power" on a sled, which bore also a firkin of butter, a cheese, a four-gallon can of milk, a bag of bread and a large basket of eggs. One team did not get off so early, neighbor Sylvester's. He was to start two hours later and draw up to camp the heaviest part of our supplies, consisting of half a barrel of pork, two bushels of potatoes, a peck of dry beans, a hundredweight of corned beef and two gallons of molasses. Twelve miles of our way that morning was by a trodd...