tered up she used to go red all over, That supper was a very dreary sort of supper, with the baby crying, and Nancy getting up between the mouthfuls to walk up and down the room with him; he was a heavy little chap for a ten-month-old, and I think she must have been tuckered out with him all day. I did n't think about it then; a man does n't notice such things when he's angry, it is n't in him. I can't say but she would if I'd been in her place. I just eat up the fritters and the maple molasses, seems to me I told her she ought not to use the best chiny cup, but I'm not just sure, and then I took my pipe, and sat down in the corner. - I watched her putting the children to bed; they made her a great deal of bother, squirming off of her lap and running round barefoot. Sometimes I used to hold them and talk to them and help her a bit, when I felt goodnatured, but I just sat and smoked, and let them alone. I was all worked up about that lamp-wick, and I thought, you see, if she had n't had any feelings for me there was no need of my having any for her, if she had cut the wick, I'd have taken the babies; she had n't cut the wick, and I would n't take the babies; she might see it if she wanted to, and think what she pleased. I had been badly treated, and I meant to show it. It is strange, Johnny, it really does seem to me very strange, how easy it is in this world to be always taking care of our rights. I've thought a great deal about it since I've been growing old, and there seems to me a good many things we'd better look after fust. But you see I had n't found that out in '41, and so I sat in the corner, and felt very much abused. I can't say but what Nancy had pretty much the same idea; for when the young ones were all in bed at last, she took her knitting and sat down the other side of the fire, sort of turning her head round and 36 VOL. XX. -NO. 121. 561 she were looking up at the ceiling, as kept on looking at the ceiling, and no- "You're dreadful wasteful with the wood, Nancy," says I, bound to say something cross, and that was all I could think of. "Take care of your own fire, then," standing up as straight as she could says she, throwing the log down and stand. "I think it's a pity if you have n't anything better to do, the everything I do to pieces this way, and last night before going in, than to pick I tired enough to drop, carrying that great crying child in my arms all day. Aaron Hollis!" You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Now if she had cried a little, very would have been the end of it, for I like I should have given up, and that it goes against the grain. But your never could bear to see a woman cry; mother was n't one of the crying sort, and she didn't feel like it that night. place, as proud as Queen Victory, She just stood up there by the fireI don't blame her, Johnny,-O no, I don't blame her; she had the right of it there, I ought to have been ashamed of myself; but a man never likes to my pipe down on the chimney-shelf so hear that from other folks, and I put hard I heard it snap like ice, and I stood up too, and said—but no matter what I said, I guess. A man's quarrels with his wife always make me think of what the Scripture says about things, in my opinion, that don't conother folks not intermeddling. They're cern anybody else as a general thing, and I could n't tell what I said without telling what she said, and I'd rather not do that. and patient-tempered a woman as ever Your mother was as good lived, Johnny, and she did n't mean it, and it was I that set her on. Besides, my words were worst of the two. Well, well, I'll hurry along just here, for it's not a time I like to think about; but we had it back and forth there for half an hour, till we had angered each other up so I could n't stand it, and I lifted up my hand, I would have struck her if she had n't been a woman. 'Well," says I," Nancy Hollis, I'm sorry for the day I married you, and that's the truth, if ever I spoke a true word in my life!" 66 I would n't have told you that now if you could understand the rest without. I'd give the world, Johnny, — I'd give the world and all those coupon bonds Jedediah invested for me if I could anyway forget it; but I said it, and I can't. Well, I've seen your mother look 'most all sorts of ways in the course of her life, but I never saw her before, and I never saw her since, look as she looked that minute. All the blaze went out in her cheeks, as if somebody had thrown cold water on it, and she stood there stock still, so white I thought she would drop. "Aaron " she began, and stopped to catch her breath, "Aaron-" but she couldn't get any farther; she just caught hold of a little shawl she had on with both her hands, as if she thought she could hold herself up by it, and I knew walked right out of the room. she had gone to bed, for I heard her I stood go up and shut the door. there a few minutes with my hands in my pockets, whistling Yankee Doodle. Your mother used to say men were queer folks, Johnny; they always whistled up the gayest when they felt the wust. Then I went to the closet and got another pipe, and I didn't go up stairs till it was smoked out. When I was a young man, Johnny, I used to be that sort of fellow that couldn't bear to give up beat. I'd acted like a brute, and I knew it, but I was too spunky to say so. So I says to myself, "If she won't make up first, I won't, and that's the end on 't." Very likely she said the same thing, for your mother was a spirited sort It may seem very queer to you, Johnny, it did to me when I was your age, and did n't know any more than you do, how folks can work themselves up into great quarrels out of such little things; but they do, and into worse, if it's a man who likes his own way, and a woman that knows how to talk. It's my opinion, two thirds of all the divorce cases in the law-books just grow up out of things no bigger than that lamp-wick. But how people that ever loved each other could come to hard words like Well, ha, ha! that, you don't see? Johnny, that amuses me, that really does amuse me, for I never saw a young man nor a young woman either, - and young men and young women in general are very much like freshhatched chickens, to my mind, and know just about as much of the world, Johnny, well, I never saw one yet who did n't say that very thing. And what's more, I never saw one who could get it into his head that old folks knew better. We had But I say I had loved your mother true, Johnny, and she had loved me true, for more than fifteen years; and I loved her more the fifteenth year than I did the first, and we could n't have got along without each other, any more than you could get along if somebody cut your heart right out. laughed together and cried together; we had been sick, and we 'd been well together; we'd had our hard times and our pleasant times right along, side by side; we'd christened the babies, and we'd buried 'em, holding on to each other's hand; we had grown along year after year, through ups and downs and downs and ups, just like one person, and there was n't any more dividing But for all that we 'd been put of us. In the Gray Goth. out, and we'd had our two ways, and I tell you, Johnny, young folks they Well, I did n't sleep very well that night, dropping into naps and waking up. The baby was worrying over his teeth every half-hour, and Nancy getting up to walk him off to sleep in her arms, it was the only way you would be hushed up, and you'd lie and yell till somebody did it. Now, it was n't many times since we'd been married that I had let her do that thing all night long. I used to have a way of getting up to take my turn, and sending her off to sleep. It is n't a man's business, some folks say. I don't know anything about that; maybe, if I'd been broiling my brain in book learning all day till come night, and I was hard put to it to get my sleep anyhow, like the parson there, it wouldn't; but all I know is, what if I had been breaking my back in the potatopatch since morning? so she 'd broken her's over the oven; and what if I did need nine hours' sound sleep? I could chop and saw without it next day, just as well as she could do the ironing, to say nothing of my being a great stout fellow, there was n't a chap for ten 563 and she miles round with my muscle, Howsomever that may be, I was n't with those blue veins on her forehead. used to letting her do it by herself, and tended that I was asleep; for I did n't so I lay with my eyes shut, and prefeel like giving in, and speaking up gentle, not about that nor anything else. eyelashes, and I lay there, every time I I could see her though, between my woke up, and watched her walking back and forth, back and forth, up and down, all night long. with the heavy little fellow in her arms, Sometimes, Johnny, when I'm gone to bed now of a winter night, I think I see her in her white nightgown with her red-plaid shawl pinned over her shoulders and over the baby, walking up and down, and up and down. I shut them again, but I see her all the same. my eyes, but there she is, and I open I was off very early in the morning; I don't think it could have been much after three o'clock when I woke up. overnight, except the coffee, and we Nancy had my breakfast all laid out had fixed it that I was to make up the fire, and get off without waking her, if the baby was very bad. At least, that to it she should be up,- that was bewas the way I wanted it; but she stuck fore there 'd been any words between us. The room was very gray and still, - way out of the room, and looked round -- - see any more stir to her than if she had her breath held in. I wish I had done it, Johnny, I can't get over wishing I'd done it, yet. But I was just too proud, and I turned round and went out, and shut the door. We were going to meet down at the post-office, the whole gang of us, and I had quite a spell to walk. I was going in on Bob Stokes's team. I remember how fast I walked with my hands in my pockets, looking along up at the stars, the sun was putting them out pretty fast, and trying not to think of Nancy. But I did n't think of anything else. It was so early, that there was n't many folks about to see us off; but Bob Stokes's wife, she lived nigh the office, just across the road, — she was there to say good by, kissing of him, and crying on his shoulder. I don't know what difference that should make with Bob Stokes, but I snapped him up well, when he came along, and said good morning. There were twenty-one of us just, on that gang, in on contract for Dove and Beadle. Dove and Beadle did about the heaviest thing on woodland of anybody, about that time. Good, steady men we were, most of us,- none of your blundering Irish, that would n't know a maple from a hickory, with their ginbottles in their pockets,-but our solid, Down-East Yankee heads, owning their farms all along the river, with schooling enough to know what they were about 'lection day. You did n't catch any of us voting your new-fangled tickets when we had meant to go up on Whig, for want of knowing the difference, nor visa vussy. To say nothing of Bob Stokes, and Holt, and me, and another fellow,-I forget his name, -being members in good and reg'lar standing, and paying in our five dollars to the parson every quarter, charitable. Yes, though I say it that should n't say it, we were as fine a looking gang as any in the county, starting off that morning in our red uniform, Nancy took a sight of pains with my shirt, sewing it up stout, for fear it -- should bother me ripping, and I with nobody to take a stitch for me all winter. The boys went off in good spirits, singing till they were out of sight of town, and waving their caps at their wives and babies standing in the window along on the way. I did n't sing. I thought the wind blew too hard, — seems to me that was the reason, I'm sure there must have been a reason, for I had a voice of my own in those days, and had led the choir perpetual for five years. We weren't going in very deep; Dove and Beadle's lots lay about thirty miles from the nearest house; and a straggling, lonely sort of place that was too, five miles out of the village, with nobody but a dog and a dẽaf old woman in it. Sometimes, as I was telling you, we had been in a hundred miles from any human creature but ourselves. It took us two days to get there though, with the oxen; and the teams were loaded down well, with so many axes and the pork-barrels ; — I don't know anything like pork for hefting down more than you expect it to, reasonable. It was one of your ugly gray days, growing dark at four o'clock, with snow in the air, when we hauled up in the lonely place. The trees were blazed pretty thick, I remember, especially the pines; Dove and Beadle always had that done up prompt in October. It's pretty work going in blazing while the sun is warm, and the woods like a great bonfire with the maples. I used to like it, but your mother would n't hear of it when she could help herself, it kept me away so long. It's queer, Johnny, how we do remember things that ain't of no account; but I remember, as plainly as if it were yesterday morning, just how everything looked that night, when the teams came up, one by one, and we went to work spry to get to rights before the sun went down. two or There were three shanties, - they don't often have more than three in one place, they were empty, and the snow had drifted in; Bob Stokes's oxen were fagged out, with their heads hanging down, and the horses were whinnying for their supper. Holt had one of his great brush-fires going, there was nobody like Holt for making fires, and the boys were hurrying round in their red shirts, shouting at the oxen, and singing a little, some of them low, under their breath, to keep their spirits up. There was snow as far as you could see, down the cart-path, and all around, and away into the woods; and there was snow in the sky now, setting in for a regular nor'easter. The trees stood up straight all around without any leaves, and under the bushes it was as black as pitch. reason. up. did n't expect to, for we 'd laid in more than usual. We had two pretty rough weeks' work to begin with, for the worst storms of the season set in, and kept in, and I never saw their like, before or since. It seemed as if there 'd never be an end to them. Storm after storm, blow after blow, freeze after freeze; half a day's sunshine, and then at it again! We were well tired of it before they stopped; it made the boys homesick. However, we kept at work pretty brisk, lumbermen are n't the fellows to be put out for a snow-storm, — cutting and hauling and sawing, out in the sleet and wind. Bob Stokes froze his left foot that second week, and I was frost-bitten pretty badly myself. Cullen - he was the boss he was well out of sorts, I tell you, before the sun came out, and cross enough to bite a tenpenny nail in two. But when the sun is out, it is n't so bad a kind of life, after all. At work all day, with a good hot dinner in the middle; then back to the shanties at dark, to as rousing a fire and tiptop swagan as anybody could ask for. Holt was cook that season, and Holt could n't be beaten on his swagan. You see, I knew Nancy was just drawing up her little rocking-chair the one with the green cushion close by the fire, sitting there with the children to wait for the tea to boil. Now you don't mean to say you don't And I knew I could n't help know- know what swagan is? Well, well! ing, if I'd tried hard for it how she To think of it! All I have to say is, was crying away softly in the dark, you don't know what 's good then. so that none of them could see her, to Beans and pork and bread and molasthink of the words we'd said, and I ses, that 's swagan, - all stirred up gone in without ever making of them in a great kettle, and boiled together; I was sorry for them then. O and I don't know anything - not even Johnny, I was sorry, and she was thir-your mother's fritters - I'd give more ty miles away. I'd got to be sorry five for a taste of now. We just about months, thirty miles away, and could n't lived on that; there's nothing you can let her know. cut and haul all day on like swagan. Besides that, we used to have doughnuts, you don't know what doughnuts are here in Massachusetts; as big as a dinner-plate, those doughnuts were, and well, a little hard, perhaps. They used to have it about in Bangor that we used them for clock pendulums, but I don't know about that. The boys said I was poor company that first week, and I should n't wonder if I was. I could n't seem to get over it any way, to think I could n't let her know. If I could have sent her a scrap of a letter, or a message, or something, I should have felt better. But there was n't any chance of that this long time, unless we got out of pork or fodder, and had to send down,-which we I used to think a great deal about Nancy nights, when we were sitting up by the fire, we had our fire right |
