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The Story of a Bad Boy

by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

November, 1999  [Etext #1948]


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The Story
of a Bad Boy

by

Thomas
Bailey
Aldrich




Chapter One

In Which I Introduce Myself



This is the story of a bad boy. Well, not such a very bad, but a pretty bad
boy; and I ought to know, for I am, or rather I was, that boy myself.

Lest the title should mislead the reader, I hasten to assure him here that I
have no dark confessions to make. I call my story the story of a bad boy,
partly to distinguish myself from those faultless young gentlemen who
generally figure in narratives of this kind, and partly because I really
was not a cherub. I may truthfully say I was an amiable, impulsive lad,
blessed with fine digestive powers, and no hypocrite. I didn't want to be
an angel and with the angels stand; I didn't think the missionary tracts
presented to me by the Rev. Wibird Hawkins were half so nice as Robinson
Crusoe; and I didn't send my little pocket-money to the natives of the
Feejee Islands, but spent it royally in peppermint-drops and taffy candy.
In short, I was a real human boy, such as you may meet anywhere in New
England, and no more like the impossible boy in a storybook than a sound
orange is like one that has been sucked dry. But let us begin at the
beginning.

Whenever a new scholar came to our school, I used to confront him at recess
with the following words: "My name's Tom Bailey; what's your name?" If the
name struck me favorably, I shook hands with the new pupil cordially; but
if it didn't, I would turn on my heel, for I was particular on this point.
Such names as Higgins, Wiggins, and Spriggins were deadly affronts to my
ear; while Langdon, Wallace, Blake, and the like, were passwords to my
confidence and esteem.

Ah me! some of those dear fellows are rather elderly boys by this
time-lawyers, merchants, sea-captains, soldiers, authors, what not? Phil
Adams (a special good name that Adams) is consul at Shanghai, where I
picture him to myself with his head closely shaved-he never had too much
hair-and a long pigtail banging down behind. He is married, I hear; and I
hope he and she that was Miss Wang Wang are very happy together, sitting
cross-legged over their diminutive cups of tea in a skyblue tower hung with
bells. It is so I think of him; to me he is henceforth a jewelled mandarin,
talking nothing but broken China. Whitcomb is a judge, sedate and wise,
with spectacles balanced on the bridge of that remarkable nose which, in
former days, was so plentifully sprinkled with freckles that the boys
christened him Pepper Whitcomb. just to think of little Pepper Whitcomb
being a judge! What would be do to me now, I wonder, if I were to sing out
"Pepper!" some day in court? Fred Langdon is in California, in the
native-wine business-he used to make the best licorice-water I ever tasted!
Binny Wallace sleeps in the Old South Burying-Ground; and Jack Harris, too,
is dead-Harris, who commanded us boys, of old, in the famous snow-ball
battles of Slatter's Hill. Was it yesterday I saw him at the head of his
regiment on its way to join the shattered Army of the Potomac? Not
yesterday, but six years ago. It was at the battle of the Seven Pines.
Gallant Jack Harris, that never drew rein until he had dashed into the
Rebel battery! So they found him-lying across the enemy's guns.

How we have parted, and wandered, and married, and died! I wonder what has
become of all the boys who went to the Temple Grammar School at Rivermouth
when I was a youngster? "All, all are gone, the old familiar faces!"

It is with no ungentle hand I summon them back, for a moment, from that Past
which has closed upon them and upon me. How pleasantly they live again in
my memory! Happy, magical Past, in whose fairy atmosphere even Conway, mine
ancient foe, stands forth transfigured, with a sort of dreamy glory
encircling his bright red hair!

With the old school formula I commence these sketches of my boyhood. My name
is Tom Bailey; what is yours, gentle reader? I take for granted it is
neither Wiggins nor Spriggins, and that we shall get on famously together,
and be capital friends forever.







Chapter Two

In Which I Entertain Peculiar Views



I was born at Rivermouth, but, before I had a chance to become very well
acquainted with that pretty New England town, my parents removed to New
Orleans, where my father invested his money so securely in the banking
business that be was never able to get any of it out again. But of this
hereafter.

I was only eighteen months old at the time of the removal, and it didn't
make much difference to me where I was, because I was so small; but several
years later, when my father proposed to take me North to be educated, I had
my own peculiar views on the subject. I instantly kicked over the little
Negro boy who happened to be standing by me at the moment, and, stamping my
foot violently on the floor of the piazza, declared that I would not be
taken away to live among a lot of Yankees!

You see I was what is called "a Northern man with Southern principles." I
had no recollection of New England: my earliest memories were connected
with the South, with Aunt Chloe, my old Negro nurse, and with the great
ill-kept garden in the centre of which stood our house-a whitewashed stone
house it was, with wide verandas-shut out from the street by lines of
orange, fig, and magnolia trees. I knew I was born at the North, but hoped
nobody would find it out. I looked upon the misfortune as something so
shrouded by time and distance that maybe nobody remembered it. I never told
my schoolmates I was a Yankee, because they talked about the Yankees in
such a scornful way it made me feel that it was quite a disgrace not to be
born in Louisiana, or at least in one of the Border States. And this
impression was strengthened by Aunt Chloe, who said, "dar wasn't no
gentl'men in the Norf no way," and on one occasion terrified me beyond
measure by declaring that, "if any of dem mean whites tried to git her away
from marster, she was jes'gwine to knock 'em on de head wid a gourd!"

The way this poor creature's eyes flashed, and the tragic air with which she
struck at an imaginary "mean white," are among the most vivid things in my
memory of those days.

To be frank, my idea of the North was about as accurate as that entertained
by the well-educated Englishmen of the present day concerning America. I
supposed the inhabitants were divided into two classes-Indians and white
people; that the Indians occasionally dashed down on New York, and scalped
any woman or child (giving the preference to children) whom they caught
lingering in the outskirts after nightfall; that the white men were either
hunters or schoolmasters, and that it was winter pretty much all the year
round. The prevailing style of architecture I took to be log-cabins.

With this delightful picture of Northern civilization in my eye, the reader
will easily understand my terror at the bare thought of being transported
to Rivermouth to school, and possibly will forgive me for kicking over
little black Sam, and otherwise misconducting myself, when my father
announced his determination to me. As for kicking little Sam-I always did
that, more or less gently, when anything went wrong with me.

My father was greatly perplexed and troubled by this unusually violent
outbreak, and especially by the real consternation which be saw written in
every line of my countenance. As little black Sam picked himself up, my
father took my hand in his and led me thoughtfully to the library.

I can see him now as he leaned back in the bamboo chair and questioned me.
He appeared strangely agitated on learning the nature of my objections to
going North, and proceeded at once to knock down all my pine log houses,
and scatter all the Indian tribes with which I had populated the greater
portion of the Eastern and Middle States.

"Who on earth, Tom, has filled your brain with such silly stories?" asked my
father, wiping the tears from his eyes.

"Aunt Chloe, sir; she told me."

"And you really thought your grandfather wore a blanket embroidered with
beads, and ornamented his leggins with the scalps of his enemies?"

"Well, sir, I didn't think that exactly."

"Didn't think that exactly? Tom, you will be the death of me."

He hid his face in his handkerchief, and, when he looked up, he seemed to
have been suffering acutely. I was deeply moved myself, though I did not
clearly understand what I had said or done to cause him to feel so badly.
Perhaps I had hurt his feelings by thinking it even possible that
Grandfather Nutter was an Indian warrior.

My father devoted that evening and several subsequent evenings to giving me
a clear and succinct account of New England; its early struggles, its
progress, and its present condition-faint and confused glimmerings of all
which I had obtained at school, where history had never been a favorite
pursuit of mine.

I was no longer unwilling to go North; on the contrary, the proposed journey
to a new world full of wonders kept me awake nights. I promised myself all
sorts of fun and adventures, though I was not entirely at rest in my mind
touching the savages, and secretly resolved to go on board the ship-the
journey was to be made by sea-with a certain little brass pistol in my
trousers-pocket, in case of any difficulty with the tribes when we landed
at Boston.

I couldn't get the Indian out of my head. Only a short time previously the
Cherokees-or was it the Camanches?-had been removed from their
hunting-grounds in Arkansas; and in the wilds of the Southwest the red men
were still a source of terror to the border settlers. "Trouble with the
Indians" was the staple news from Florida published in the New Orleans
papers. We were constantly hearing of travellers being attacked and
murdered in the interior of that State. If these things were done in
Florida, why not in Massachusetts?

Yet long before the sailing day arrived I was eager to be off. My impatience
was increased by the fact that my father had purchased for me a fine little
Mustang pony, 20and shipped it to Rivermouth a fortnight previous to the
date set for our own departure-for both my parents were to accompany me.
The pony (which nearly kicked me out of bed one night in a dream), and my
father's promise that he and my mother would come to Rivermouth every other
summer, completely resigned me to the situation. The pony's name was
Gitana, which is the Spanish for gypsy; so I always called her-she was a
lady pony-Gypsy.

At length the time came to leave the vine-covered mansion among the
orange-trees, to say goodby to little black Sam (I am convinced he was
heartily glad to get rid of me), and to part with simple Aunt Chloe, who,
in the confusion of her grief, kissed an eyelash into my eye, and then
buried her face in the bright bandana turban which she had mounted that
morning in honor of our departure.

I fancy them standing by the open garden gate; the tears are rolling down
Aunt Chloe's cheeks; Sam's six front teeth are glistening like pearls; I
wave my hand to him manfully. then I call out "goodby" in a muffled voice
to Aunt Chloe; they and the old home fade away. I am never to see them
again!







Chapter Three

On Board the Typhoon



I do not remember much about the voyage to Boston, for after the first few
hours at sea I was dreadfully unwell.

The name of our ship was the "A No. 1, fast-sailing packet Typhoon." I
learned afterwards that she sailed fast only in the newspaper
advertisements. My father owned one quarter of the Typhoon, and that is why
we happened to go in her. I tried to guess which quarter of the ship he
owned, and finally concluded it must be the hind quarter-the cabin, in
which we had the cosiest of state-rooms, with one round window in the roof,
and two shelves or boxes nailed up against the wall to sleep in.

There was a good deal of confusion on deck while we were getting under way.
The captain shouted orders (to which nobody seemed to pay any attention)
through a battered tin trumpet, and grew so red in the face that he
reminded me of a scooped-out pumpkin with a lighted candle inside. He swore
right and left at the sailors without the slightest regard for their
feelings. They didn't mind it a bit, however, but went on singing-



"Heave ho!

With the rum below,

And hurrah for the Spanish Main O!"



I will not be positive about "the Spanish Main," but it was hurrah for
something O. I considered them very jolly fellows, and so indeed they were.
One weather-beaten tar in particular struck my fancy-a thick-set, jovial
man, about fifty years of age, with twinkling blue eyes and a fringe of
gray hair circling his head like a crown. As he took off his tarpaulin I
observed that the top of his head was quite smooth and flat, as if somebody
had sat down on him when he was very young.

There was something noticeably hearty in this man's bronzed face, a
heartiness that seemed to extend to his loosely knotted neckerchief. But
what completely won my good-will was a picture of enviable loveliness
painted on his left arm. It was the head of a woman with the body of a
fish. Her flowing hair was of livid green, and she held a pink comb in one
hand. I never saw anything so beautiful. I determined to know that man. I
think I would have given my brass pistol to have had such a picture painted
on my arm.

While I stood admiring this work of art, a fat wheezy steamtug, with the
word AJAX in staring black letters on the paddlebox, came puffing up
alongside the Typhoon. It was ridiculously small and conceited, compared
with our stately ship. I speculated as to what it was going to do. In a few
minutes we were lashed to the little monster, which gave a snort and a
shriek, and commenced backing us out from the levee (wharf) with the
greatest ease.

I once saw an ant running away with a piece of cheese eight or ten times
larger than itself. I could not help thinking of it, when I found the
chubby, smoky-nosed tug-boat towing the Typhoon out into the Mississippi
River.

In the middle of the stream we swung round, the current caught us, and away
we flew like a great winged bird. Only it didn't seem as if we were moving.
The shore, with the countless steamboats, the tangled rigging of the ships,
and the long lines of warehouses, appeared to be gliding away from us.

It was grand sport to stand on the quarter-deck and watch all this. Before
long there was nothing to be seen on other side but stretches of low swampy
land, covered with stunted cypress trees, from which drooped delicate
streamers of Spanish moss-a fine place for alligators and Congo snakes.
Here and there we passed a yellow sand-bar, and here and there a snag
lifted its nose out of the water like a shark.

"This is your last chance to see the city, To see the city, Tom," said my
father, as we swept round a bend of the river.

I turned and looked. New Orleans was just a colorless mass of something in
the distance, and the dome of the St. Charles Hotel, upon which the sun
shimmered for a moment, was no bigger than the top of old Aunt Chloe's
thimble.

What do I remember next? The gray sky and the fretful blue waters of the
Gulf. The steam-tug had long since let slip her hawsers and gone panting
away with a derisive scream, as much as to say, "I've done my duty, now
look out for yourself, old Typhoon!"

The ship seemed quite proud of being left to take care of itself, and, with
its huge white sails bulged out, strutted off like a vain turkey. I had
been standing by my father near the wheel-house all this while, observing
things with that nicety of perception which belongs only to children; but
now the dew began falling, and we went below to have supper.

The fresh fruit and milk, and the slices of cold chicken, looked very nice;
yet somehow I had no appetite There was a general smell of tar about
everything. Then the ship gave sudden lurches that made it a matter of
uncertainty whether one was going to put his fork to his mouth or into his
eye. The tumblers and wineglasses, stuck in a rack over the table, kept
clinking and clinking; and the cabin lamp, suspended by four gilt chains
from the ceiling, swayed to and fro crazily. Now the floor seemed to rise,
and now it seemed to sink under one's feet like a feather-bed.

There were not more than a dozen passengers on board, including ourselves;
and all of these, excepting a bald-headed old gentleman-a retired
sea-captain-disappeared into their staterooms at an early hour of the
evening.

After supper was cleared away, my father and the elderly gentleman, whose
name was Captain Truck, played at checkers; and I amused myself for a while
by watching the trouble they had in keeping the men in the proper places.
just at the most exciting point of the game, the ship would careen, and
down would go the white checkers pell-mell among the black. Then my father
laughed, but Captain Truck would grow very angry, and vow that he would
have won the game in a move or two more, if the confounded old
chicken-coop-that's what he called the ship-hadn't lurched.

"I-I think I will go to bed now, please," I said, laying my band on my
father's knee, and feeling exceedingly queer.

It was high time, for the Typhoon was plunging about in the most alarming
fashion. I was speedily tucked away in the upper berth, where I felt a
trifle more easy at first. My clothes were placed on a narrow shelf at my
feet, and it was a great comfort to me to know that my pistol was so handy,
for I made no doubt we should fall in with Pirates before many hours. This
is the last thing I remember with any distinctness. At midnight, as I was
afterwards told, we were struck by a gale which never left us until we came
in sight of the Massachusetts coast.

For days and days I had no sensible idea of what was going on around me.
That we were being hurled somewhere upside-down, and that I didn't like it,
was about all I knew. I have, indeed, a vague impression that my father
used to climb up to the berth and call me his "Ancient Mariner," bidding me
cheer up. But the Ancient Mariner was far from cheering up, if I recollect
rightly; and I don't believe that venerable navigator would have cared much
if it had been announced to him, through a speaking-trumpet, that "a low,
black, suspicious craft, with raking masts, was rapidly bearing down upon
us!"

In fact, one morning, I thought that such was the case, for bang! went the
big cannon I had noticed in the bow of the ship when we came on board, and
which had suggested to me the idea of Pirates. Bang! went the gun again in
a few seconds. I made a feeble effort to get at my trousers-pocket! But the
Typhoon was only saluting Cape Cod-the first land sighted by vessels
approaching the coast from a southerly direction.

The vessel had ceased to roll, and my sea-sickness passed away as rapidly as
it came. I was all right now, "only a little shaky in my timbers and a
little blue about the gills," as Captain Truck remarked to my mother, who,
like myself, had been confined to the state-room during the passage.

At Cape Cod the wind parted company with us without saying as much as
"Excuse me"; so we were nearly two days in making the run which in
favorable weather is usually accomplished in seven hours. That's what the
pilot said.

I was able to go about the ship now, and I lost no time in cultivating the
acquaintance of the sailor with the green-haired lady on his arm. I found
him in the forecastle-a sort of cellar in the front part of the vessel. He
was an agreeable sailor, as I had expected, and we became the best of
friends in five minutes.

He had been all over the world two or three times, and knew no end of
stories. According to his own account, he must have been shipwrecked at
least twice a year ever since his birth. He had served under Decatur when
that gallant officer peppered the Algerines and made them promise not to
sell their prisoners of war into slavery; he had worked a gun at the
bombardment of Vera Cruz in the Mexican War, and he had been on Alexander
Selkirk's Island more than once. There were very few things he hadn't done
in a seafaring way.

"I suppose, sir," I remarked, "that your name isn't Typhoon?"

"Why, Lord love ye, lad, my name's Benjamin Watson, of Nantucket. But I'm a
true blue Typhooner," he added, which increased my respect for him; I don't
know why, and I didn't know then whether Typhoon was the name of a
vegetable or a profession.

Not wishing to be outdone in frankness, I disclosed to him that my name was
Tom Bailey, upon which he said be was very glad to hear it.

When we got more intimate, I discovered that Sailor Ben, as he wished me to
call him, was a perfect walking picturebook. He had two anchors, a star,
and a frigate in full sail on his right arm; a pair of lovely blue hands
clasped on his breast, and I've no doubt that other parts of his body were
illustrated in the same agreeable manner. I imagine he was fond of
drawings, and took this means of gratifying his artistic taste. It was
certainly very ingenious and convenient. A portfolio might be misplaced, or
dropped overboard; but Sailor Ben bad his pictures wherever he went, just
as that eminent person in the poem,



"With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes" -



was accompanied by music on all occasions.

The two bands on his breast, he informed me, were a tribute to the memory of
a dead messmate from whom he had parted years ago-and surely a more
touching tribute was never engraved on a tombstone. This caused me to think
of my parting with old Aunt Chloe, and I told him I should take it as a
great favor indeed if he would paint a pink hand and a black hand on my
chest. He said the colors were pricked into the skin with needles, and that
the operation was somewhat painful. I assured him, in an off-hand manner,
that I didn't mind pain, and begged him to set to work at once.

The simple-hearted fellow, who was probably not a little vain of his skill,
took me into the forecastle, and was on the point of complying with my
request, when my father happened to own the gangway-a circumstance that
rather interfered with the decorative art.

I didn't have another opportunity of conferring alone with Sailor Ben, for
the next morning, bright and early, we came in sight of the cupola of the
Boston State House.







Chapter Four

Rivermouth



It was a beautiful May morning when the Typhoon hauled up at Long Wharf.
Whether the Indians were not early risers, or whether they were away just
then on a war-path, I couldn't determine; but they did not appear in any
great force-in fact, did not appear at all.

In the remarkable geography which I never hurt myself with studying at New
Orleans, was a picture representing the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers at
Plymouth. The Pilgrim Fathers, in rather odd hats and coats, are seen
approaching the savages; the savages, in no coats or hats to speak of, are
evidently undecided whether to shake hands with the Pilgrim Fathers or to
make one grand rush and scalp the entire party. Now this scene had so
stamped itself on my mind, that, in spite of all my father had said, I was
prepared for some such greeting from the aborigines. Nevertheless, I was
not sorry to have my expectations unfulfilled. By the way, speaking of the
Pilgrim Fathers, I often used to wonder why there was no mention made of
the Pilgrim Mothers.

While our trunks were being hoisted from the hold of the ship, I mounted on
the roof of the cabin, and took a critical view of Boston. As we came up
the harbor, I had noticed that the houses were huddled together on an
immense bill, at the top of which was a large building, the State House,
towering proudly above the rest, like an amiable mother-hen surrounded by
her brood of many-colored chickens. A closer inspection did not impress me
very favorably. The city was not nearly so imposing as New Orleans, which
stretches out for miles and miles, in the shape of a crescent, along the
banks of the majestic river.

I soon grew tired of looking at the masses of houses, rising above one
another in irregular tiers, and was glad my father did not propose to
remain long in Boston. As I leaned over the rail in this mood, a
measly-looking little boy with no shoes said that if I would come down on
the wharf he'd lick me for two cents-not an exorbitant price. But I didn't
go down. I climbed into the rigging, and stared at him. This, as I was
rejoiced to observe, so exasperated him that he stood on his head on a pile
of boards, in order to pacify himself.

The first train for Rivermouth left at noon. After a late breakfast on board
the Typhoon, our trunks were piled upon a baggage-wagon, and ourselves
stowed away in a coach, which must have turned at least one hundred corners
before it set us down at the railway station.

In less time than it takes to tell it, we were shooting across the country
at a fearful rate-now clattering over a bridge, now screaming through a
tunnel; here we cut a flourishing village in two, like a knife, and here we
dived into the shadow of a pine forest. Sometimes we glided along the edge
of the ocean, and could see the sails of ships twinkling like bits of
silver against the horizon; sometimes we dashed across rocky pasture4ands
where stupid-eyed cattle were loafing. It was fun to scare lazy-looking
cows that lay round in groups under the newly budded trees near the
railroad track.

We did not pause at any of the little brown stations on the route (they
looked just like overgrown black-walnut clocks), though at every one of
them a man popped out as if he were worked by machinery, and waved a red
flag, and appeared as though he would like to have us stop. But we were an
express train, and made no stoppages, excepting once or twice to give the
engine a drink.
It is strange how the memory clings to some things. It is over twenty years
since I took that first ride to Rivermouth, and yet, oddly enough, I
remember as if it were yesterday, that, as we passed slowly through the
village of Hampton, we saw two boys fighting behind a red barn. There was
also a shaggy yellow dog, who looked as if he had commenced to unravel,
barking himself all up into a knot with excitement. We had only a hurried
glimpse of the battle-long enough, however, to see that the combatants were
equally matched and very much in earnest. I am ashamed to say how many
times since I have speculated as to which boy got licked. Maybe both the
small rascals are dead now (not in consequence of the set-to, let us hope),
or maybe they are married, and have pugnacious urchins of their own; yet to
this day I sometimes find myself wondering how that fight turned out.

We had been riding perhaps two hours and a half, when we shot by a tall
factory with a chimney resembling a church steeple; then the locomotive
gave a scream, the engineer rang his bell, and we plunged into the twilight
of a long wooden building, open at both ends. Here we stopped, and the
conductor, thrusting his head in at the car door, cried out, "Passengers
for Rivermouth!"

At last we had reached our journey's end. On the platform my father shook
hands with a straight, brisk old gentleman whose face was very serene and
rosy. He had on a white hat and a long swallow-tailed coat, the collar of
which came clear up above his cars. He didn't look unlike a Pilgrim Father.
This, of course, was Grandfather Nutter, at whose house I was born. My
mother kissed him a great many times; and I was glad to see him myself,
though I naturally did not feel very intimate with a person whom I had not
seen since I was eighteen months old.

While we were getting into the double-seated wagon which Grandfather Nutter
had provided, I took the opportunity of asking after the health of the
pony. The pony had arrived all right ten days before, and was in the stable
at home, quite anxious to see me. 20

As we drove through the quiet old town, I thought Rivermouth the prettiest
place in the world; and I think so still. The streets are long and wide,
shaded by gigantic American elms, whose drooping branches, interlacing here
and there, span the avenues with arches graceful enough to be the handiwork
of fairies. Many of the houses have small flower-gardens in front, gay in
the season with china-asters, and are substantially built, with massive
chimney-stacks and protruding eaves. A beautiful river goes rippling by the
town, and, after turning and twisting among a lot of tiny islands, empties
itself into the sea. 20

The harbor is so fine that the largest ships can sail directly up to the
wharves and drop anchor. Only they don't. Years ago it was a famous
seaport. Princely fortunes were made in the West India trade; and in 1812,
when we were at war with Great Britain, any number of privateers were
fitted out at Rivermouth to prey upon the merchant vessels of the enemy.
Certain people grew suddenly and mysteriously rich. A great many of "the
first families" of today do not care to trace their pedigree back to the
time when their grandsires owned shares in the Matilda Jane, twenty-four
guns. Well, well!

Few ships come to Rivermouth now. Commerce drifted into other ports. The
phantom fleet sailed off one day, and never came back again. The crazy old
warehouses are empty; and barnacles and eel-grass cling to the piles of the
crumbling wharves, where the sunshine lies lovingly, bringing out the faint
spicy odor that haunts the place-the ghost of the old dead West India
trade!
During our ride from the station, I was struck, of course, only by the
general neatness of the houses and the beauty of the elm-trees lining the
streets. I describe Rivermouth now as I came to know it afterwards.

Rivermouth is a very ancient town. In my day there existed a tradition among
the boys that it was here Christopher Columbus made his first landing on
this continent. I remember having the exact spot pointed out to me by
Pepper Whitcomb! One thing is certain, Captain John Smith, who afterwards,
according to the legend, married Pocahontas-whereby he got Powhatan for a
father-in-law-explored the river in 1614, and was much charmed by the
beauty of Rivermouth, which at that time was covered with wild
strawberry-vines.

Rivermouth figures prominently in all the colonial histories. Every other
house in the place has its tradition more or less grim and entertaining. If
ghosts could flourish anywhere, there are certain streets in Rivermouth
that would be full of them. I don't know of a town with so many old houses.
Let us linger, for a moment, in front of the one which the Oldest
Inhabitant is always sure to point out to the curious stranger.

It is a square wooden edifice, with gambrel roof and deep-set window-frames.
Over the windows and doors there used to be heavy carvings-oak-leaves and
acorns, and angels' heads with wings spreading from the ears, oddly jumbled
together; but these ornaments and other outward signs of grandeur have long
since disappeared. A peculiar interest attaches itself to this house, not
because of its age, for it has not been standing quite a century; nor on
account of its architecture, which is not striking - but because of the
illustrious men who at various periods have occupied its spacious chambers.

In 1770 it was an aristocratic hotel. At the left side of the entrance stood
a high post, from which swung the sign of the Earl of Halifax. The landlord
was a stanch loyalist-that is to say, be believed in the king, and when the
overtaxed colonies determined to throw off the British yoke, the adherents
to the Crown held private meetings in one of the back rooms of the tavern.
This irritated the rebels, as they were called; and one night they made an
attack on the Earl of Halifax, tore down the signboard, broke in the
window-sashes, and gave the landlord hardly time to make himself invisible
over a fence in the rear.

For several months the shattered tavern remained deserted. At last the
exiled innkeeper, on promising to do better, was allowed to return; a new
sign, bearing the name of William Pitt, the friend of America, swung
proudly from the door-post, and the patriots were appeased. Here it was
that the mail-coach from Boston twice a week, for many a year, set down its
load of travelers and gossip. For some of the details in this sketch, I am
indebted to a recently published chronicle of those times.

It is 1782.The French fleet is lying in the harbor of Rivermouth, and eight
of the principal officers, in white uniforms trimmed with gold lace, have
taken up their quarters at the sign of the William Pitt. Who is this young
and handsome officer now entering the door of the tavern? It is no less a
personage than the Marquis Lafayette, who has come all the way from
Providence to visit the French gentlemen boarding there. What a
gallant-looking cavalier he is, with his quick eyes and coal black hair!
Forty years later he visited the spot again; his locks were gray and his
step was feeble, but his heart held its young love for Liberty.

Who is this finely dressed traveler alighting from his coach and-four,
attended by servants in livery? Do you know that sounding name, written in
big valorous letters on the Declaration of Independence-written as if by
the hand of a giant? Can you not see it now? JOHN HANCOCK. This is he.

Three young men, with their valet, are standing on the doorstep of the
William Pitt, bowing politely, and inquiring in the most courteous terms in
the world if they can be accommodated. It is the time of the French
Revolution, and these are three sons of the Duke of Orleans-Louis Philippe
and his two brothers. Louis Philippe never forgot his visit to Rivermouth.
Years afterwards, when he was seated on the throne of France, he asked an
American lady, who chanced to be at his court, if the pleasant old mansion
were still standing.

But a greater and a better man than the king of the French has honored this
roof. Here, in 1789, came George Washington, the President of the United
States, to pay his final complimentary visit to the State dignitaries. The
wainscoted chamber where he slept, and the dining-hall where he entertained
his guests, have a certain dignity and sanctity which even the present
Irish tenants cannot wholly destroy.

During the period of my reign at Rivermouth, an ancient lady, Dame Jocelyn
by name, lived in one of the upper rooms of this notable building. She was
a dashing young belle at the time of Washington's first visit to the town,
and must have been exceedingly coquettish and pretty, judging from a
certain portrait on ivory still in the possession of the family. According
to Dame Jocelyn, George Washington flirted with her just a little bit-in
what a stately and highly finished manner can be imagined.

There was a mirror with a deep filigreed frame hanging over the mantel-piece
in this room. The glass was cracked and the quicksilver rubbed off or
discolored in many places. When it reflected your face you had the singular
pleasure of not recognizing yourself. It gave your features the appearance
of having been run through a mince-meat machine. But what rendered the
looking-glass a thing of enchantment to me was a faded green feather,
tipped with scarlet, which drooped from the top of the tarnished gilt
mouldings. This feather Washington took from the plume of his
three-cornered hat, and presented with his own hand to the worshipful
Mistress Jocelyn the day he left Rivermouth forever. I wish I could
describe the mincing genteel air, and the ill-concealed self-complacency,
with which the dear old lady related the incident.

Many a Saturday afternoon have I climbed up the rickety staircase to that
dingy room, which always had a flavor of snuff about it, to sit on a
stiff-backed chair and listen for hours together to Dame Jocelyn's stories
of the olden time. How she would prattle! She was bedridden-poor
creature!-and had not been out of the chamber for fourteen years. Meanwhile
the world had shot ahead of Dame Jocelyn. The changes that had taken place
under her very nose were unknown to this faded, crooning old gentlewoman,
whom the eighteenth century had neglected to take away with the rest of its
odd traps. She had no patience with newfangled notions. The old ways and
the old times were good enough for her. She had never seen a steam engine,
though she had heard "the dratted thing" screech in the distance. In her
day, when gentlefolk traveled, they went in their own coaches. She didn't
see how respectable people could bring themselves down to "riding in a car
with rag-tag and bobtail and Lord-knows-who." Poor old aristocrat The
landlord charged her no rent for the room, and the neighbors took turns in
supplying her with meals. Towards the close of her life-she lived to be
ninety-nine-she grew very fretful and capricious about her food. If she
didn't chance to fancy what was sent her, she had no hesitation in sending
it back to the giver with "Miss Jocelyn's respectful compliments."

But I have been gossiping too long-and yet not too long if I have impressed
upon the reader an idea of what a rusty, delightful old town it was to
which I had come to spend the next three or four years of my boyhood.

A drive of twenty minutes from the station brought us to the door-step of
Grandfather Nutter's house. What kind of house it was, and what sort of
people lived in it, shall be told in another chapter.



Chapter Five

The Nutter House and the Nutter Family



The Nutter House-all the more prominent dwellings in Rivermouth are named
after somebody; for instance, there is the Walford House, the Venner House,
the Trefethen House, etc., though it by no means follows that they are
inhabited by the people whose names they bear-the Nutter House, to resume,
has been in our family nearly a hundred years, and is an honor to the
builder (an ancestor of ours, I believe), supposing durability to be a
merit. If our ancestor was a carpenter, he knew his trade. I wish I knew
mine as well. Such timber and such workmanship don't often come together in
houses built nowadays.

Imagine a low-studded structure, with a wide hall running through the
middle. At your right band, as you enter, stands a tall black mahogany
clock, looking like an Egyptian mummy set up on end. On each side of the
hall are doors (whose knobs, it must be confessed, do not turn very
easily), opening into large rooms wainscoted and rich in wood-carvings
about the mantel-pieces and cornices. The walls are covered with pictured
paper, representing landscapes and sea-views. In the parlor, for example,
this enlivening figure is repeated all over the room. A group of English
peasants, wearing Italian hats, are dancing on a lawn that abruptly
resolves itself into a sea-beach, upon which stands a flabby fisherman
(nationality unknown), quietly hauling in what appears to be a small whale,
and totally regardless of the dreadful naval combat going on just beyond
the end of his fishing-rod. On the other side of the ships is the main-land
again, with the same peasants dancing. Our ancestors were very worthy
people, but their wall-papers were abominable.

There are neither grates nor stoves in these quaint chambers, but splendid
open chimney-places, with room enough for the corpulent back-log to turn
over comfortably on the polished andirons. A wide staircase leads from the
hall to the second story, which is arranged much like the first. Over this
is the garret. I needn't tell a New England boy what-a museum of
curiosities is the garret of a well-regulated New England house of fifty or
sixty years' standing. Here meet together, as if by some preconcerted
arrangement, all the broken-down chairs of the household, all the spavined
tables, all the seedy hats, all the intoxicated-looking boots, all the
split walking-sticks that have retired from business, "weary with the march
of life." The pots, the pans, the trunks, the bottles-who may hope to make
an inventory of the numberless odds and ends collected in this bewildering
lumber-room? But what a place it is to sit of an afternoon with the rain
pattering on the roof! 20What a place in which to read Gulliver's Travels,
or the famous adventures of Rinaldo Rinaldini!

My grandfather's house stood a little back from the main street, in the
shadow of two handsome elms, whose overgrown boughs would dash themselves
against the gables whenever the wind blew hard. In the rear was a pleasant
garden, covering perhaps a quarter of an acre, full of plum-trees and
gooseberry bushes. These trees were old settlers, and are all dead now,
excepting one, which bears a purple plum as big as an egg. This tree, as I
remark, is still standing, and a more beautiful tree to tumble out of never
grew anywhere. In the northwestern comer of the garden were the stables and
carriage-house opening upon a narrow lane. You may imagine that I made an
early visit to that locality to inspect Gypsy. Indeed, I paid her a visit
every half-hour during the first day of my arrival. At the twenty-fourth
visit she trod on my foot rather heavily, as a reminder, probably, that I
was wearing out my welcome. She was a knowing little pony, that Gypsy, and
I shall have much to say of her in the course of these pages.

Gypsy's quarters were all that could be wished, but nothing among my new
surroundings gave me more satisfaction than the cosey sleeping apartment
that had been prepared for myself. It was the hall room over the front
door.

I had never had a chamber all to myself before, and this one, about twice
the size of our state-room on board the Typhoon, was a marvel of neatness
and comfort. Pretty chintz curtains hung at the window, and a patch quilt
of more colors than were in Joseph's coat covered the little truckle-bed.
The pattern of the wall-paper left nothing to be desired in that line. On a
gray background were small bunches of leaves, unlike any that ever grew in
this world; and on every other bunch perched a yellow-bird, pitted with
crimson spots, as if it had just recovered from a severe attack of the
small-pox. That no such bird ever existed did not detract from my
admiration of each one. There were two hundred and sixty-eight of these
birds in all, not counting those split in two where the paper was badly
joined. I counted them once when I was laid up with a fine black eye, and
falling asleep immediately dreamed that the whole flock suddenly took wing
and flew out of the window. From that time I was never able to regard them
as merely inanimate objects.

A wash-stand in the corner, a chest of carved mahogany drawers, a
looking-glass in a filigreed frame, and a high-backed chair studded with
brass nails like a coffin, constituted the furniture. Over the head of the
bed were two oak shelves, holding perhaps a dozen books-among which were
Theodore, or The Peruvians; Robinson Crusoe; an odd volume of Tristram
Shandy; Baxter's Saints' Rest, and a fine English edition of the Arabian
Nights, with six hundred wood-cuts by Harvey.

Shall I ever forget the hour when I first overhauled these books? I do not
allude especially to Baxter's Saints' Rest, which is far from being a
lively work for the young, but to the Arabian Nights, and particularly
Robinson Crusoe. The thrill that ran into my fingers' ends then has not run
out yet. Many a time did I steal up to this nest of a room, and, taking the
dog's-eared volume from its shelf, glide off into an enchanted realm, where
there were no lessons to get and no boys to smash my kite. In a lidless
trunk in the garret I subsequently unearthed another motley collection of
novels and romances, embracing the adventures of Baron Trenck, Jack
Sheppard, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Charlotte Temple-all of which I fed
upon like a bookworm.

I never come across a copy of any of those works without feeling a certain
tenderness for the yellow-haired little rascal who used to lean above the
magic pages hour after hour, religiously believing every word he read, and
no more doubting the reality of Sindbad the Sailor, or the Knight of the
Sorrowful Countenance, than he did the existence of his own grandfather.

Against the wall at the foot of the bed hung a single-barrel shot-gun-placed
there by Grandfather Nutter, who knew what a boy loved, if ever a
grandfather did. As the trigger of the gun had been accidentally twisted
off, it was not, perhaps, the most dangerous weapon that could be placed in
the hands of youth. In this maimed condition its "bump of destructiveness"
was much less than that of my small brass pocket-pistol, which I at once
proceeded to suspend from one of the nails supporting the fowling-piece,
for my vagaries concerning the red man had been entirely dispelled.

Having introduced the reader to the Nutter House, a presentation to the
Nutter family naturally follows. The family consisted of my grandfather;
his sister, Miss Abigail Nutter; and Kitty Collins, the maid-of-all-work.

Grandfather Nutter was a hale, cheery old gentleman, as straight and as bald
as an arrow. He had been a sailor in early life; that is to say, at the age
of ten years he fled from the multiplication-table, and ran away to sea. A
single voyage satisfied him. There never was but one of our family who
didn't run away to sea, and this one died at his birth. My grandfather had
also been a soldier-a captain of militia in 1812. If I owe the British
nation anything, I owe thanks to that particular British soldier who put a
musket-ball into the fleshy part of Captain Nutter's leg, causing that
noble warrior a slight permanent limp, but offsetting the injury by
furnishing him with the material for a story which the old gentleman was
never weary of telling and I never weary of listening to. The story, in
brief, was as follows.

At the breaking out of the war, an English frigate lay for several days off
the coast near Rivermouth. A strong fort defended the harbor, and a
regiment of minute-men, scattered at various points along-shore, stood
ready to repel the boats, should the enemy try to effect a landing. Captain
Nutter had charge of a slight earthwork just outside the mouth of the
river. Late one thick night the sound of oars was heard; the sentinel tried
to fire off his gun at half-cock, and couldn't, when Captain Nutter sprung
upon the parapet in the pitch darkness, and shouted, "Boat ahoyl" A
musket-shot immediately embedded itself in the calf of his leg. The Captain
tumbled into the fort and the boat, which had probably come in search of
water, pulled back to the frigate.

This was my grandfather's only exploit during the war. That his prompt and
bold conduct was instrumental in teaching the enemy the hopelessness of
attempting to conquer such a people was among the firm beliefs of my
boyhood.

At the time I came to Rivermouth my grandfather had retired from active
pursuits, and was living at ease on his money, invested principally in
shipping. He bad been a widower many years; a maiden sister, the aforesaid
Miss Abigail, managing his household. Miss Abigail also managed her
brother, and her brother's servant, and the visitor at her brother's
gate-not in a tyrannical spirit, but from a philanthropic desire to be
useful to everybody. In person she was tall and angular; she had a gray
complexion, gray eyes, gray eyebrows, and generally wore a gray dress. Her
strongest weak point was a belief in the efficacy of "hot-drops" as a cure
for all known diseases.

If there were ever two people who seemed to dislike each other, Miss Abigail
and Kitty Collins were those people. If ever two people really loved each
other, Miss Abigail and Kitty Collins were those people also. They were
always either skirmishing or having a cup of tea lovingly together.

Miss Abigail was very fond of me, and so was Kitty; and in the course of
their disagreements each let me into the private history of the other.

According to Kitty, it was not originally my grandfather's intention to have
Miss Abigail at the head of his domestic establishment. She had swooped
down on him (Kitty's own words), with a band-box in one hand and a faded
blue cotton umbrella, still in existence, in the other. Clad in this
singular garb-I do not remember that Kitty alluded to-any additional
peculiarity of dress-Miss Abigail bad made her appearance at the door of
the Nutter House on the morning of my grandmother's funeral. The small
amount of baggage which the lady brought with her would have led the
superficial observer to infer that Miss Abigail's visit was limited to a
few days. I run ahead of my story in saying she remained seventeen years!
How much longer she would have remained can never be definitely known now,
as she died at the expiration of that period.

Whether or not my grandfather was quite pleased by this unlooked-for
addition to his family is a problem. He was very kind always to Miss
Abigail, and seldom opposed her; though I think she must have tried his
patience sometimes, especially when she interfered with Kitty.

Kitty Collins, or Mrs. Catherine, as she preferred to be called, was
descended in a direct line from an extensive family of kings who formerly
ruled over Ireland. In consequence of various calamities, among which the
failure of the potato-crop may be mentioned, Miss Kitty Collins, in company
with several hundred of her countrymen and countrywomen-also descended from
kings-came over to America in an emigrant ship, in the year eighteen
hundred and something.

I don't know what freak of fortune caused the royal exile to turn up at
Rivermouth; but turn up she did, a few months after arriving in this
country, and was hired by my grandmother to do "general housework" for the
sum of four shillings and six-pence a week.

Kitty had been living about seven years in my grandfather's family when she
unburdened her heart of a secret which had been weighing upon it all that
time. It may be said of people, as it is said of nations,  "Happy are they
that have no history." Kitty had a history, and a pathetic one, I think.

On board the emigrant ship that brought her to America, she became
acquainted with a sailor, who, being touched by Kitty's forlorn condition,
was very good to her. Long before the end of the voyage, which had been
tedious and perilous, she was heartbroken at the thought of separating from
her kindly protector; but they were not to part just yet, for the sailor
returned Kitty's affection, and the two were married on their arrival at
port. Kitty's husband-she would never mention his name, but kept it locked
in her bosom like some precious relic-had a considerable sum of money when
the crew were paid off; and the young couple-for Kitty was young then-lived
very happily in a lodging-house on South Street, near the docks. This was
in New York.

The days flew by like hours, and the stocking in which the little bride kept
the funds shrunk and shrunk, until at last there were only three or four
dollars left in the toe of it. Then Kitty was troubled; for she knew her
sailor would have to go to sea again unless he could get employment on
shore. This he endeavored to do, but not with much success. One morning as
usual he kissed her good day, and set out in search of work.

"Kissed me goodby, and called me his little Irish lass," sobbed Kitty,
telling the story, "kissed me goodby, and, Heaven help me, I niver set oi
on him nor on the likes of him again!"

He never came back. Day after day dragged on, night after night, and then
the weary weeks. What had become of him? Had be been murdered? Had be
fallen into the docks? Had he-deserted her? No! She could not believe that;
he was too brave and tender and true. She couldn't believe that. He was
dead, dead, or he'd come back to her.

Meanwhile the landlord of the lodging-house turned Kitty into the streets,
now that "her man" was gone, and the payment of the rent doubtful. She got
a place as a servant. The family she lived with shortly moved to Boston,
and she accompanied them; then they went abroad, but Kitty would not leave
America. Somehow she drifted to Rivermouth, and for seven long years never
gave speech to her sorrow, until the kindness of strangers, who had become
friends to her, unsealed the heroic lips.

Kitty's story, you may be sure, made my grandparents treat her more kindly
than ever. In time she grew to be regarded less as a servant than as a
friend in the home circle, sharing its joys and sorrows-a faithful nurse, a
willing slave, a happy spirit in spite of all. I fancy I hear her singing
over her work in the kitchen, pausing from time to time to make some witty
reply to Miss Abigail-for Kitty, like all her race, had a vein of
unconscious humor. Her bright honest face comes to me out from the past,
the light and life of the Nutter House when I was a boy at Rivermouth.



Chapter Six

Lights and Shadows



The first shadow that fell upon me in my new home was caused by the return
of my parents to New Orleans. Their visit was cut short by business which
required my father's presence in Natchez, where he was establishing a
branch of the bankinghouse. When they had gone, a sense of loneliness such
as I had never dreamed of filled my young breast. I crept away to the
stable, and, throwing my arms about Gypsy's neck, sobbed aloud. She too had
come from the sunny South, and was now a stranger in a strange land.

The little mare seemed to realize our situation, and gave me all the
sympathy I could ask, repeatedly rubbing her soft nose over my face and
lapping up my salt tears with evident relish.

When night came, I felt still more lonesome. My grandfather sat in his
arm-chair the greater part of the evening, reading the Rivermouth Bamacle,
the local newspaper. There was no gas in those days, and the Captain read
by the aid of a small block-tin lamp, which he held in one hand. I observed
that he had a habit of dropping off into a doze every three or four
minutes, and I forgot my homesickness at intervals in watching him. Two or
three times, to my vast amusement, he scorched the edges of the newspaper
with the wick of the lamp; and at about half past eight o'clock I had the
satisfactions am sorry to confess it was a satisfaction-of seeing the
Rivermouth Barnacle in flames.

My grandfather leisurely extinguished the fire with his hands, and Miss
Abigail, who sat near a low table, knitting by the light of an astral lamp,
did not even look up. She was quite used to this catastrophe.

There was little or no conversation during the evening. In fact, I do not
remember that anyone spoke at all, excepting once, when the Captain
remarked, in a meditative manner, that my parents "must have reached New
York by this time"; at which supposition I nearly strangled myself in
attempting to intercept a sob.

The monotonous "click click" of Miss Abigail's needles made me nervous after
a while, and finally drove me out of the sitting-room into the kitchen,
where Kitty caused me to laugh by saying Miss Abigail thought that what I
needed was "a good dose of hot-drops," a remedy she was forever ready to
administer in all emergencies. If a boy broke his leg, or lost his mother,
I believe Miss Abigail would have given him hot-drops.

Kitty laid herself out to be entertaining. She told me several funny Irish
stories, and described some of the odd people living in the town; but, in
the midst of her comicalities, the tears would involuntarily ooze out of my
eyes, though I was not a lad much addicted to weeping. Then Kitty would put
her arms around me, and tell me not to mind it-that it wasn't as if I had
been left alone in a foreign land with no one to care for me, like a poor
girl whom she had once known. I brightened up before long, and told Kitty
all about the Typhoon and the old seaman, whose name I tried in vain to
recall, and was obliged to fall back on plain Sailor Ben.

I was glad when ten o'clock came, the bedtime for young folks, and old folks
too, at the Nutter House. Alone in the hallchamber I had my cry out, once
for all, moistening the pillow to such an extent that I was obliged to turn
it over to find a dry spot to go to sleep on.

My grandfather wisely concluded to put me to school at once. If I had been
permitted to go mooning about the house and stables, I should have kept my
discontent alive for months. The next morning, accordingly, he took me by
the hand, and we set forth for the academy, which was located at the
farther end of the town.

The Temple School was a two-story brick building, standing in the centre of
a great square piece of land, surrounded by a high picket fence. There were
three or four sickly trees, but no grass, in this enclosure, which had been
worn smooth and hard by the tread of multitudinous feet. I noticed here and
there small holes scooped in the ground, indicating that it was the season
for marbles. A better playground for baseball couldn't have been devised.

On reaching the schoolhouse door, the Captain inquired for Mr. Grimshaw. The
boy who answered our knock ushered us into a side-room, and in a few
minutes-during which my eye took in forty-two caps hung on forty-two wooden
pegs-Mr. Grimshaw made his appearance. He was a slender man, with white,
fragile hands, and eyes that glanced half a dozen different ways at once-a
habit probably acquired from watching the boys.

After a brief consultation, my grandfather patted me on the head and left me
in charge of this gentleman, who seated himself in front of me and
proceeded to sound the depth, or, more properly speaking, the shallowness,
of my attainments. I suspect my historical information rather startled him.
I recollect I gave him to understand that Richard III was the last king of
England.

This ordeal over, Mr. Grimshaw rose and bade me follow him. A door opened,
and I stood in the blaze of forty-two pairs of upturned eyes. I was a cool
hand for my age, but I lacked the boldness to face this battery without
wincing. In a sort of dazed way I stumbled after Mr. Grimshaw down a narrow
aisle between two rows of desks, and shyly took the seat pointed out to me.

The faint buzz that had floated over the school-room at our entrance died
away, and the interrupted lessons were resumed. By degrees I recovered my
coolness, and ventured to look around me.

The owners of the forty-two caps were seated at small green desks like the
one assigned to me. The desks were arranged in six rows, with spaces
between just wide enough to prevent the boys' whispering. A blackboard set
into the wall extended clear across the end of the room; on a raised
platform near the door stood the master's table; and directly in front of
this was a recitation-bench capable of seating fifteen or twenty pupils. A
pair of globes, tattooed with dragons and winged horses, occupied a shelf
between two windows, which were so high from the floor that nothing but a
giraffe could have looked out of them.

Having possessed myself of these details, I scrutinized my new acquaintances
with unconcealed curiosity, instinctively selecting my friends and picking
out my enemies-and in only two cases did I mistake my man.

A sallow boy with bright red hair, sitting in the fourth row, shook his fist
at me furtively several times during the morning. I had a presentiment I
should have trouble with that boy some day-a presentiment subsequently
realized.

On my left was a chubby little fellow with a great many freckles (this was
Pepper Whitcomb), who made some mysterious motions to me. I didn't
understand them, but, as they were clearly of a pacific nature, I winked my
eye at him. This appeared to be satisfactory, for he then went on with his
studies. At recess he gave me the core of his apple, though there were
several applicants for it.

Presently a boy in a loose olive-green jacket with two rows of brass buttons
held up a folded paper behind his slate, intimating that it was intended
for me. The paper was passed skillfully from desk to desk until it reached
my hands. On opening the scrap, I found that it contained a small piece of
molasses candy in an extremely humid state. This was certainly kind. I
nodded my acknowledgments and hastily slipped the delicacy into my mouth.
In a second I felt my tongue grow red-hot with cayenne pepper.

My face must have assumed a comical expression, for the boy in the
olive-green jacket gave an hysterical laugh, for which he was instantly
punished by Mr. Grimshaw. I swallowed the fiery candy, though it brought
the water to my eyes, and managed to look so unconcerned that I was the
only pupil in the form who escaped questioning as to the cause of Marden's
misdemeanor. C. Marden was his name.

Nothing else occurred that morning to interrupt the exercises, excepting
that a boy in the reading class threw us all into convulsions by calling
Absalom A-bol'-som "Abolsom, O my son Abolsom!" I laughed as loud as
anyone, but I am not so sure that I shouldn't have pronounced it Abolsom
myself.

At recess several of the scholars came to my desk and shook hands with me,
Mr. Grimshaw having previously introduced me to Phil Adams, charging him to
see that I got into no trouble. My new acquaintances suggested that we
should go to the playground. We were no sooner out-of-doors than the boy
with the red hair thrust his way through the crowd and placed himself at my
side.

'I say, youngster, if you're comin' to this school you've got to toe the
mark."

I didn't see any mark to toe, and didn't understand what be meant; but I
replied politely, that, if it was the custom of the school, I should be
happy to toe the mark, if he would point it out to me.

"I don't want any of your sarse," said the boy, scowling.

"Look here, Conwayl" cried a clear voice from the other side of the
playground. "You let young Bailey alone. He's a stranger here, and might be
afraid of you, and thrash you. Why do you always throw yourself in the way
of getting thrashed?"

I turned to the speaker, who by this time had reached the spot where we
stood. Conway slunk off, favoring me with a parting scowl of defiance. I
gave my hand to the boy who had befriended me - his name was Jack
Harris-and thanked him for his good-will.

"I tell you what it is, Bailey," he said, returning my pressure
good-naturedly, "you'll have to fight Conway before the quarter ends, or
you'll have no rest. That fellow is always hankering after a licking, and
of course you'll give him one by and by; but what's the use of hurrying up
an unpleasant job? Let's have some baseball. By the way, Bailey, you were a
good kid not to let on to Grimshaw about the candy. Charley Marden would
have caught it twice as heavy. He's sorry he played the joke on you, and
told me to tell you so. Hallo, Blake! Where are the bats?"

This was addressed to a handsome, frank-looking lad of about my own age, who
was engaged just then in cutting his initials on the bark of a tree near
the schoolhouse. Blake shut up his penknife and went off to get the bats.

During the game which ensued I made the acquaintance of Charley Marden,
Binny Wallace, Pepper Whitcomb, Harry Blake, and Fred Langdon. These boys,
none of them more than a year or two older than I (Binny Wallace was
younger), were ever after my chosen comrades. Phil Adams and Jack Harris
were considerably our seniors, and, though they always treated us "kids"
very kindly, they generally went with another set. Of course, before long I
knew all the Temple boys more or less intimately, but the five I have named
were my constant companions.

My first day at the Temple Grammar School was on the whole satisfactory. I
had made several warm friends and only two permanent enemies-Conway and his
echo, Seth Rodgers; for these two always went together like a deranged
stomach and a headache.

Before the end of the week I had my studies well in hand. I was a little
ashamed at finding myself at the foot of the various classes, and secretly
determined to deserve promotion. The school was an admirable one. I might
make this part of my story more entertaining by picturing Mr. Grimshaw as a
tyrant with a red nose and a large stick; but unfortunately for the
purposes of sensational narrative, Mr. Grimshaw was a quiet, kindhearted
gentleman. Though a rigid disciplinarian, he had a keen sense of justice,
was a good reader of character, and the boys respected him. There were two
other teachers-a French tutor and a writing-master, who visited the school
twice a week. On Wednesdays and Saturdays we were dismissed at noon, and
these half-holidays were the brightest epochs of my existence.

Daily contact with boys who had not been brought up as gently as I worked an
immediate, and, in some respects, a beneficial change in my character. I
had the nonsense taken out of me, as the saying is-some of the nonsense, at
least. I became more manly and self-reliant. I discovered that the world
was not created exclusively on my account. In New Orleans I labored under
the delusion that it was. Having neither brother nor sister to give up to
at home, and being, moreover, the largest pupil at school there, my will
had seldom been opposed. At Rivermouth matters were different, and I was
not long in adapting myself to the altered circumstances. Of course I got
many severe rubs, often unconsciously given; but I bad the sense to see
that I was all the better for them.

My social relations with my new schoolfellows were the pleasantest possible.
There was always some exciting excursion on foot-a ramble through the pine
woods, a visit to the Devil's Pulpit, a high cliff in the neighborhood-or a
surreptitious low on the river, involving an exploration of a group of
diminutive islands, upon one of which we pitched a tent and played we were
the Spanish sailors who got wrecked there years ago. But the endless pine
forest that skirted the town was our favorite haunt. There was a great
green pond hidden somewhere in its depths, inhabited by a monstrous colony
of turtles. Harry Blake, who had an eccentric passion for carving his name
on everything, never let a captured turtle slip through his fingers without
leaving his mark engraved on its shell. He must have lettered about two
thousand from first to last. We used to call them Harry Blake's sheep.

These turtles were of a discontented and migratory turn of mind, and we
frequently encountered two or three of them on the cross-roads several
miles from their ancestral mud. Unspeakable was our delight whenever we
discovered one soberly walking off with Harry Blake's initials! I've no
doubt there are, at this moment, fat ancient turtles wandering about that
gummy woodland with H.B. neatly cut on their venerable backs.

It soon became a custom among my playmates to make our barn their
rendezvous. Gypsy proved a strong attraction. Captain Nutter bought me a
little two-wheeled cart, which she drew quite nicely, after kicking out the
dasher and breaking the shafts once or twice. With our lunch-baskets and
fishing-tackle stowed away under the seat, we used to start off early in
the afternoon for the sea-shore, where there were countless marvels in the
shape of shells, mosses, and kelp. Gypsy enjoyed the sport as keenly as any
of us, even going so far, one day, as to trot down the beach into the sea
where we were bathing. As she took the cart with her, our provisions were
not much improved. I shall never forget how squash-pie tastes after being
soused in the Atlantic Ocean. Soda-crackers dipped in salt water are
palatable, but not squash-pie.

There was a good deal of wet weather during those first six weeks at
Rivermouth, and we set ourselves at work to find some indoor amusement for
our half-holidays. It was all very well for Amadis de Gaul and Don Quixote
not to mind the rain; they had iron overcoats, and were not, from all we
can learn, subject to croup and the guidance of their grandfathers. Our
case was different.

"Now, boys, what shall we do?" I asked, addressing a thoughtful conclave of
seven, assembled in our barn one dismal rainy afternoon.

"Let's have a theatre," suggested Binny Wallace.

The very thing! But where? The loft of the stable was ready to burst with
hay provided for Gypsy, but the long room over the carriage-house was
unoccupied. The place of all places! My managerial eye saw at a glance its
capabilities for a theatre. I had been to the play a great many times in
New Orleans, and was wise in matters pertaining to the drama. So here, in
due time, was set up some extraordinary scenery of my own painting. The
curtain, I recollect, though it worked smoothly enough on other occasions,
invariably hitched during the performances; and it often required the
united energies of the Prince of Denmark, the King, and the Grave-digger,
with an occasional band from "the fair Ophelia" (Pepper Whitcomb in a
low-necked dress), to hoist that bit of green cambric.

The theatre, however, was a success, as far as it went. I retired from the
business with no fewer than fifteen hundred pins, after deducting the
headless, the pointless, and the crooked pins with which our doorkeeper
frequently got "stuck." From first to last we took in a great deal of this
counterfeit money. The price of admission to the "Rivermouth Theatre" was
twenty pins. I played all the principal parts myself-not that I was a finer
actor than the other boys, but because I owned the establishment.

At the tenth representation, my dramatic career was brought to a close by an
unfortunate circumstance. We were playing the drama of "William Tell, the
Hero of Switzerland." Of course I was William Tell, in spite of Fred
Langdon, who wanted to act that character himself. I wouldn't let him, so
he withdrew from the company, taking the only bow and arrow we had. I made
a cross-bow out of a piece of whalebone, and did very well without him. We
had reached that exciting scene where Gessler, the Austrian tyrant,
commands Tell to shoot the apple from his son's head. Pepper Whitcomb, who
played all the juvenile and women parts, was my son. To guard against
mischance, a piece of pasteboard was fastened by a handkerchief over the
upper portion of Whitcomb's face, while. the arrow to be used was sewed up
in a strip of flannel. I was a capital marksman, and the big apple, only
two yards distant, turned its russet cheek fairly towards me.

I can see poor little Pepper now, as he stood without flinching, waiting for
me to perform my great feat. I raised the crossbow amid the breathless
silence of the crowded audience consisting of seven boys and three girls,
exclusive of Kitty Collins, who insisted on paying her way in with a
clothes-pin. I raised the cross-bow, I repeat. Twang! went the whipcord;
but, alas! instead of hitting the apple, the arrow flew right into Pepper
Whitcomb's mouth, which happened to be open at the time, and destroyed my
aim.

I shall never be able to banish that awful moment from my memory. Pepper's
roar, expressive of astonishment, indignation, and pain, is still ringing
in my cars. I looked upon him as a corpse, and, glancing not far into the
dreary future, pictured myself led forth to execution in the presence of
the very same spectators then assembled.

Luckily poor Pepper was not seriously hurt; but Grandfather Nutter,
appearing in the midst of the confusion (attracted by the howls of young
Tell), issued an injunction against all theatricals thereafter, and the
place was closed; not, however, without a farewell speech from me, in which
I said that this would have been the proudest moment of my life if I hadn't
hit Pepper Whitcomb in the mouth. Whereupon the audience (assisted, I am
glad to state, by Pepper) cried "Hear! Hear!" I then attributed the
accident to Pepper himself, whose mouth, being open at the instant I fired,
acted upon the arrow much after the fashion of a whirlpool, and drew in the
fatal shaft. I was about to explain bow a comparatively small maelstrom
could suck in the largest ship, when the curtain fell of its own accord,
amid the shouts of the audience.

This was my last appearance on any stage. It was some time, though, before I
heard the end of the William Tell business. Malicious little boys who had
not been allowed to buy tickets to my theatre used to cry out after me in
the street,



"'Who killed Cock Robin?'

'I,' said the sparrer,

'With my bow and arrer,

I killed Cock Robini"'



The sarcasm of this verse was more than I could stand. And it made Pepper
Whitcomb pretty mad to be called Cock Robin, I can tell you!

So the days glided on, with fewer clouds and more sunshine than fall to the
lot of most boys. Conway was certainly a cloud. Within school-bounds he
seldom ventured to be aggressive; but whenever we met about town he never
failed to brush against me, or pull my cap over my eyes, or drive me
distracted by inquiring after my family in New Orleans, always alluding to
them as highly respectable colored people.

Jack Harris was right when he said Conway would give me no rest until I
fought him. I felt it was ordained ages before our birth that we should
meet on this planet and fight. With the view of not running counter to
destiny, I quietly prepared myself for the impending conflict. The scene of
my dramatic triumphs was turned into a gymnasium for this purpose, though I
did not openly avow the fact to the boys. By persistently standing on my
head, raising heavy weights, and going hand over hand up a ladder, I
developed my muscle until my little body was as tough as a hickory knot and
as supple as tripe. I also took occasional lessons in the noble art of
self-defence, under the tuition of Phil Adams.

I brooded over the matter until the idea of fighting Conway became a part of
me. I fought him in imagination during school-hours; I dreamed of fighting
with him at night, when he would suddenly expand into a giant twelve feet
high, and then as suddenly shrink into a pygmy so small that I couldn't hit
him. In this latter shape he would get into my hair, or pop into my
waistcoat-pocket, treating me with as little ceremony as the Liliputians
showed Captain Lemuel Gulliver - all of which was not pleasant, to be sure.
On the whole, Conway was a cloud.

And then I had a cloud at home. It was not Grandfather Nutter, nor Miss
Abigail, nor Kitty Collins, though they all helped to compose it. It was a
vague, funereal, impalpable something which no amount of gymnastic training
would enable me to knock over. It was Sunday. If ever I have a boy to bring
up in the way he should go, I intend to make Sunday a cheerful day to him.
Sunday was not a cheerful day at the Nutter House. You shall judge for
yourself.

It is Sunday morning. I should premise by saying that the deep gloom which
has settled over everything set in like a heavy fog early on Saturday
evening.

At seven o'clock my grandfather comes smilelessly downstairs. He is dressed
in black, and looks as if be had lost all his friends during the night.
Miss Abigail, also in black, looks as if she were prepared to bury them,
and not indisposed to enjoy the ceremony. Even Kitty Collins has caught the
contagious gloom, as I perceive when she brings in the coffee-um-a solemn
and sculpturesque urn at any time, but monumental now-and sets it down in
front of Miss Abigail. Miss Abigail gazes at the urn as if it held the
ashes of her ancestors, instead of a generous quantity of fine old Java
coffee. The meal progresses in silence.

Our parlor is by no means thrown open every day. It is open this June
morning, and is pervaded by a strong smell of centretable. The furniture of
the room, and the little China ornaments on the mantel-piece, have a
constrained, unfamiliar look. My grandfather sits in a mahogany chair,
reading a large Bible covered with green baize. Miss Abigail occupies one
end of the sofa, and has her hands crossed stiffly in her lap. I sit in the
comer, crushed. Robinson Crusoe and Gil Blas are in close confinement.
Baron Trenck, who managed to escape from the fortress of Clatz, can't for
the life of him get out of our sittingroom closet. Even the Rivermouth
Barnacle is suppressed until Monday. Genial converse, harmless books,
smiles, lightsome hearts, all are banished. If I want to read anything, I
can read Baxter's Saints' Rest. I would die first. So I sit there kicking
my heels, thinking about New Orleans, and watching a morbid blue-bottle fly
that attempts to commit suicide by butting his head against the
window-pane. Listen!-no, yes-it is-it is the robins singing in the
garden-the grateful, joyous robins singing away like mad, just as if it
wasn't Sunday. Their audacity tickles me.

My grandfather looks up, and inquires in a sepulchral voice if I am ready
for Sabbath school. It is time to go. I like the Sabbath school; there are
bright young faces there, at all events. When I get out into the sunshine
alone, I draw a long breath; I would turn a somersault up against Neighbor
Penhallow's newly painted fence if I hadn't my best trousers on, so glad am
I to escape from the oppressive atmosphere of the Nutter House.

Sabbath school over, I go to meeting, joining my grandfather, who doesn't
appear to be any relation to me this day, and Miss Abigail, in the porch.
Our minister holds out very little hope to any of us of being saved.
Convinced that I am a lost creature, in common with the human family, I
return home behind my guardians at a snail's pace. We have a dead cold
dinner. I saw it laid out yesterday.

There is a long interval between this repast and the second service, and a
still longer interval between the beginning and the end of that service;
for the Rev. Wibird Hawkins's sermons are none of the shortest, whatever
else they may be.

After meeting, my grandfather and I take a walk. We visit appropriately
enough-a neighboring graveyard. I am by this time in a condition of mind to
become a willing inmate of the place. The usual evening prayer-meeting is
postponed for some reason. At half past eight I go to bed.

This is the way Sunday was observed in the Nutter House, and pretty
generally throughout the town, twenty years ago.1 People who were
prosperous and natural and happy on Saturday became the most rueful of
human beings in the brief space of twelve hours. I don't think there was
any hypocrisy in this. It was merely the old Puritan austerity cropping out
once a week. Many of these people were pure Christians every day in the
seven-excepting the seventh. Then they were decorous and solemn to the
verge of moroseness. I should not like to be misunderstood on this point.
Sunday is a blessed day, and therefore it should not be made a gloomy one.
It is the Lord's day, and I do believe that cheerful hearts and faces are
not unpleasant in His sight.



"O day of rest! How beautiful, how fair,

How welcome to the weary and the old!

Day of the Lord! and truce to earthly cares!

Day of the Lord, as all our days should be!

Ah, why will man by his austerities

Shut out the blessed sunshine and the light,

And make of thee a dungeon of despair!"



1 About 1850.









Chapter Seven

One Memorable Night



Two months had elapsed since my arrival at Rivermouth, when the approach of
an important celebration produced the greatest excitement among the
juvenile population of the town.

There was very little hard study done in the Temple Grammar School the week
preceding the Fourth of July. For my part, my heart and brain were so full
of fire-crackers, Roman candles, rockets, pin-wheels, squibs, and gunpowder
in various seductive forms, that I wonder I didn't explode under Mr.
Grimshaw's very nose. I couldn't do a sum to save me; I couldn't tell, for
love or money, whether Tallahassee was the capital of Tennessee or of
Florida; the present and the pluperfect tenses were inextricably mixed in
my memory, and I didn't know a verb from an adjective when I met one. This
was not alone my condition, but that of every boy in the school.

Mr. Grimshaw considerately made allowances for our temporary distraction,
and sought to fix our interest on the lessons by connecting them directly
or indirectly with the coming Event. The class in arithmetic, for instance,
was requested to state how many boxes of fire-crackers, each box measuring
sixteen inches square, could be stored in a room of such and such
dimensions. He gave us the Declaration of Independence for a parsing
exercise, and in geography confined his questions almost exclusively to
localities rendered famous in the Revolutionary War.

"What did the people of Boston do with the tea on board the English
vessels?" asked our wily instructor.

"Threw it into the river!" shrieked the smaller boys, with an impetuosity
that made Mr. Grimshaw smile in spite of himself. One luckless urchin said,
"Chucked it," for which happy expression he was kept in at recess.

Notwithstanding these clever stratagems, there was not much solid work done
by anybody. The trail of the serpent (an inexpensive but dangerous
fire-toy) was over us all. We went round deformed by quantities of Chinese
crackers artlessly concealed in our trousers-pockets; and if a boy whipped
out his handkerchief without proper precaution, he was sure to let off two
or three torpedoes.

Even Mr. Grimshaw was made a sort of accessory to the universal
demoralization. In calling the school to order, he always rapped on the
table with a heavy ruler. Under the green baize table-cloth, on the exact
spot where he usually struck, certain boy, whose name I withhold, placed a
fat torpedo. The result was a loud explosion, which caused Mr. Grimshaw to
look queer. Charley Marden was at the water-pail, at the time, and directed
general attention to himself by strangling for several seconds and then
squirting a slender thread of water over the blackboard.

Mr. Grimshaw fixed his eyes reproachfully on Charley, but said nothing. The
real culprit (it wasn't Charley Marden, but the boy whose name I withhold)
instantly regretted his badness, and after school confessed the whole thing
to Mr. Grimshaw, who heaped coals of fire upon the nameless boy's head
giving him five cents for the Fourth of July. If Mr. Grimshaw had caned
this unknown youth, the punishment would not have been half so severe.

On the last day of June the Captain received a letter from my father,
enclosing five dollars "for my son Tom," which enabled that young gentleman
to make regal preparations for the celebration of our national
independence. A portion of this money, two dollars, I hastened to invest in
fireworks; the balance I put by for contingencies. In placing the fund in
my possession, the Captain imposed one condition that dampened my ardor
considerably-I was to buy no gunpowder. I might have all the
snapping-crackers and torpedoes I wanted; but gunpowder was out of the
question.

I thought this rather hard, for all my young friends were provided with
pistols of various sizes. Pepper Whitcomb had a horse-pistol nearly as
large as himself, and Jack Harris, though he, to be sure, was a big boy,
was going to have a real oldfashioned flintlock musket. However, I didn't
mean to let this drawback destroy my happiness. I had one charge of powder
stowed away in the little brass pistol which I brought from New Orleans,
and was bound to make a noise in the world once, if I never did again.

It was a custom observed from time immemorial for the towns-boys to have a
bonfire on the Square on the midnight before the Fourth. I didn't ask the
Captain's leave to attend this ceremony, for I had a general idea that he
wouldn't give it. If the Captain, I reasoned, doesn't forbid me, I break no
orders by going. Now this was a specious line of argument, and the mishaps
that befell me in consequence of adopting it were richly deserved.

On the evening of the 3d I retired to bed very early, in order to disarm
suspicion. I didn't sleep a wink, waiting for eleven o'clock to come round;
and I thought it never would come round, as I lay counting from time to
time the slow strokes of the ponderous bell in the steeple of the Old North
Church. At length the laggard hour arrived. While the clock was striking I
jumped out of bed and began dressing.

My grandfather and Miss Abigail were heavy sleepers, and I might have stolen
downstairs and out at the front door undetected; but such a commonplace
proceeding did not suit my adventurous disposition. I fastened one end of a
rope (it was a few yards cut from Kitty Collins's clothes-line) to the
bedpost nearest the window, and cautiously climbed out on the wide pediment
over the hall door. I had neglected to knot the rope; the result was, that,
the moment I swung clear of the pediment, I descended like a flash of
lightning, and warmed both my hands smartly. The rope, moreover, was four
or five feet too short; so I got a fall that would have proved serious had
I not tumbled into the middle of one of the big rose-bushes growing on
either side of the steps.

I scrambled out of that without delay, and was congratulating myself on my
good luck, when I saw by the light of the setting moon the form of a man
leaning over the garden gate. It was one of the town watch, who had
probably been observing my operations with curiosity. Seeing no chance of
escape, I put a bold face on the matter and walked directly up to him.

'What on airth air you a doin'?" asked the man, grasping the collar of my
jacket.

"I live here, sir, if you please," I replied, "and am going to the bonfire.
I didn't want to wake up the old folks, that's all."

The man cocked his eye at me in the most amiable manner, and released his
hold.

"Boys is boys," he muttered. He didn't attempt to stop me as I slipped
through the gate.

Once beyond his clutches, I took to my heels and soon reached the Square,
where I found forty or fifty fellows assembled, engaged in building a
pyramid of tar-barrels. The palms of my hands still tingled so that I
couldn't join in the sport. I stood in the doorway of the Nautilus Bank,
watching the workers, among whom I recognized lots of my schoolmates. They
looked like a legion of imps, coming and going in the twilight, busy in
raising some infernal edifice. What a Babel of voices it was, everybody
directing everybody else, and everybody doing everything wrong!

When all was prepared, someone applied a match to the sombre pile. A fiery
tongue thrust itself out here and there, then suddenly the whole fabric
burst into flames, blazing and crackling beautifully. This was a signal for
the boys to join hands and dance around the burning barrels, which they did
shouting like mad creatures. When the fire had burnt down a little, fresh
staves were brought and heaped on the pyre. In the excitement of the moment
I forgot my tingling palms, and found myself in the thick of the carousal.

Before we were half ready, our combustible material was expended, and a
disheartening kind of darkness settled down upon us. The boys collected
together here and there in knots, consulting as to what should be done. It
yet lacked four or five hours of daybreak, and none of us were in the humor
to return to bed. I approached one of the groups standing near the town
pump, and discovered in the uncertain light of the dying brands the figures
of Jack Harris, Phil Adams, Harry Blake, and Pepper Whitcomb, their faces
streaked with perspiration and tar, and, their whole appearance suggestive
of New Zealand chiefs.

"Hullo! Here's Tom Bailey!" shouted Pepper Whitcomb. "He'll join in!"

Of course he would. The sting had gone out of my hands, and I was ripe for
anything-none the less ripe for not knowing what was on the tapis. After
whispering together for a moment the boys motioned me to follow them.

We glided out from the crowd and silently wended our way through a
neighboring alley, at the head of which stood a tumble-down old barn, owned
by one Ezra Wingate. In former days this was the stable of the mail-coach
that ran between Rivermouth and Boston. When the railroad superseded that
primitive mode of travel, the lumbering vehicle was rolled in the barn, and
there it stayed. The stage-driver, after prophesying the immediate downfall
of the nation, died of grief and apoplexy, and the old coach followed in
his wake as fast as could by quietly dropping to pieces. The barn had the
reputation of being haunted, and I think we all kept very close together
when we found ourselves standing in the black shadow cast by the tall
gable. Here, in a low voice, Jack Harris laid bare his plan, which was to
burn the ancient stage-coach.

"The old trundle-cart isn't worth twenty-five cents," said Jack Harris, "and
Ezra Wingate ought to thank us for getting the rubbish out of the way. But
if any fellow here doesn't want to have a hand in it, let him cut and run,
and keep a quiet tongue in his head ever after."

With this he pulled out the staples that held the lock, and the big barn
door swung slowly open. The interior of the stable was pitch-dark, of
course. As we made a movement to enter, a sudden scrambling, and the sound
of heavy bodies leaping in all directions, caused us to start back in
terror.

"Rats!" cried Phil Adams.

"Bats!" exclaimed Harry Blake.

'Cats!" suggested Jack Harris. "Who's afraid?"

Well, the truth is, we were all afraid; and if the pole of the stage had not
been lying close to the threshold, I don't believe anything on earth would
have induced us to cross it. We seized hold of the pole-straps and
succeeded with great trouble in dragging the coach out. The two fore wheels
had rusted to the axle-tree, and refused to revolve. It was the merest
skeleton of a coach. The cushions had long since been removed, and the
leather hangings, where they had not crumbled away, dangled in shreds from
the worm-eaten frame. A load of ghosts and a span of phantom horses to drag
them would have made the ghastly thing complete.

Luckily for our undertaking, the stable stood at the top of a very steep
hill. With three boys to push behind, and two in front to steer, we started
the old coach on its last trip with. little or no difficulty. Our speed
increased every moment, and, the fore wheels becoming unlocked as we
arrived at the foot of the declivity, we charged upon the crowd like a
regiment of cavalry, scattering the people right and left. Before reaching
the bonfire, to which someone had added several bushels of shavings, Jack
Harris and Phil Adams, who were steering, dropped on the ground, and
allowed the vehicle to pass over them, which it did without injuring them;
but the boys who were clinging for dear life to the trunk-rack behind fell
over the prostrate steersman, and there we all lay in a heap, two or three
of us quite picturesque with the nose-bleed.

The coach, with an intuitive perception of what was expected of it, plunged
into the centre of the kindling shavings, and stopped. The flames sprung up
and clung to the rotten woodwork, which burned like tinder. At this moment
a figure was seen leaping wildly from the inside of the blazing coach. The
figure made three bounds towards us, and tripped over Harry Blake. It was
Pepper Whitcomb, with his hair somewhat singed, and his eyebrows completely
scorched off !

Pepper had slyly ensconced himself on the back seat before we started,
intending to have a neat little ride down hill, and a laugh at us
afterwards. But the laugh, as it happened, was on our side, or would have
been, if half a dozen watchmen had not suddenly pounced down upon us, as we
lay scrambling on the ground, weak with mirth over Pepper's misfortune. We
were collared and marched off before we well knew what had happened.

The abrupt transition from the noise and light of the Square to the silent,
gloomy brick room in the rear of the Meat Market seemed like the work of
enchantment. We stared at each other, aghast.

"Well," remarked Jack Harris, with a sickly smile, "this is a go!"

"No go, I should say," whimpered Harry Blake, glancing at the bare brick
walls and the heavy ironplated door.

"Never say die," muttered Phil Adams, dolefully.

The bridewell was a small low-studded chamber built up against the rear end
of the Meat Market, and approached from the Square by a narrow passage-way.
A portion of the rooms partitioned off into eight cells, numbered, each
capable of holding two persons. The cells were full at the time, as we
presently discovered by seeing several hideous faces leering out at us
through the gratings of the doors.

A smoky oil-lamp in a lantern suspended from the ceiling threw a flickering
light over the apartment, which contained no furniture excepting a couple
of stout wooden benches. It was a dismal place by night, and only little
less dismal by day, tall houses surrounding "the lock-up" prevented the
faintest ray of sunshine from penetrating the ventilator over the door-long
narrow window opening inward and propped up by a piece of lath.

As we seated ourselves in a row on one of the benches, I imagine that our
aspect was anything but cheerful. Adams and Harris looked very anxious, and
Harry Blake, whose nose had just stopped bleeding, was mournfully carving
his name, by sheer force of habit, on the prison bench. I don't think I
ever saw a more "wrecked" expression on any human countenance than Pepper
Whitcomb's presented. His look of natural astonishment at finding himself
incarcerated in a jail was considerably heightened by his lack of eyebrows.

As for me, it was only by thinking how the late Baron Trenck would have
conducted himself under similar circumstances that I was able to restrain
my tears.

None of us were inclined to conversation. A deep silence, broken now and
then by a startling snore from the cells, reigned throughout the chamber.
By and by Pepper Whitcomb glanced nervously towards Phil Adams and said,
"Phil, do you think they will-hang us?"

"Hang your grandmother!" returned Adams, impatiently. "What I'm afraid of is
that they'll keep us locked up until the Fourth is over."

"You ain't smart ef they do!" cried a voice from one of the cells. It was a
deep bass voice that sent a chill through me.

"Who are you?" said Jack Harris, addressing the cells in general; for the
echoing qualities of the room made it difficult to locate the voice.

"That don't matter," replied the speaker, putting his face close up to the
gratings of No. 3, "but ef I was a youngster like you, free an' easy
outside there, this spot wouldn't hold me long."

"That's so I" chimed several of the prison-birds, wagging their heads behind
the iron lattices.

"Hush!" whispered Jack Harris, rising from his seat and walking on tip-toe
to the door of  cell No. 3. "What would you do?"

"Do? Why, I'd pile them 'ere benches up agin that 'ere door, an' crawl out
of that 'erc winder in no time. That's my adwice."

"And werry good adwice it is, Jim," said the occupant of No. 5, approvingly.

Jack Harris seemed to be of the same opinion, for he hastily placed the
benches one on the top of another under the ventilator, and, climbing up on
the highest bench, peeped out into the passage-way.

"If any gent happens to have a ninepence about him," said the man in cell
No. 3, "there's a sufferin' family here as could make use of it. Smallest
favors gratefully received, an' no questions axed."

This appeal touched a new silver quarter of a dollar in my trousers-pocket;
I fished out the coin from a mass of fireworks, and gave it to the
prisoner. He appeared to be so good-natured a fellow that I ventured to ask
what he had done to get into jail.

"Intirely innocent. I was clapped in here by a rascally nevew as wishes to
enjoy my wealth afore I'm dead.'

"Your name, Sir?' I inquired, with a view of reporting the outrage to my
grandfather and having the injured person re instated in society.

"Git out, you insolent young reptyle!" shouted the man, in a passion.

I retreated precipitately, amid a roar of laughter from the other cells.

'Can't you keep still?" exclaimed Harris, withdrawing his head from the
window.

A portly watchman usually sat on a stool outside the door day and night; but
on this particular occasion, his services being required elsewhere, the
bridewell had been left to guard itself.

"All clear," whispered Jack Harris, as he vanished through the aperture and
dropped softly on the ground outside. We all followed him
expeditiously-Pepper Whitcomb and myself getting stuck in the window for a
moment in our frantic efforts not to be last.

"Now, boys, everybody for himself !"









Chapter Eight

The Adventures of a Fourth



The sun cast a broad column of quivering gold across the river at the foot
of our street, just as I reached the doorstep of the Nutter House. Kitty
Collins, with her dress tucked about her so that she looked as if she had
on a pair of calico trousers, was washing off the sidewalk.

"Arrah you bad boy!" cried Kitty, leaning on the mop. handle. "The Capen has
jist been askin' for you. He's gone up town, now. It's a nate thing you
done with my clothes-line, and, it's me you may thank for gettin' it out of
the way before the Capen come down."

The kind creature had hauled in the rope, and my escapade had not been
discovered by the family; but I knew very well that the burning of the
stage-coach, and the arrest of the boys concerned in the mischief, were
sure to reach my grandfathers ears sooner or later.

"Well, Thomas," said the old gentleman, an hour or so afterwards, beaming
upon me benevolently across the breakfast table, "you didn't wait to be
called this morning."

'No, sir," I replied, growing very warm, "I took a little run up town to see
what was going on."

I didn't say anything about the little run I took home again! "They had
quite a time on the Square last night," remarked Captain Nutter, looking up
from the Rivermouth Bamacle, which was always placed beside his coffee-cup
at breakfast.

I felt that my hair was preparing to stand on end.

"Quite a time," continued my grandfather. "Some boys broke into Ezra
Wingate's barn and carried off the old stagecoach. The young rascals! I do
believe they'd burn up the whole town if they had their way."

With this he resumed the paper. After a long silence he exclaimed, "Hullo!"
upon which I nearly fell off the chair.

"'Miscreants unknown,"' read my grandfather, following the paragraph with
his forefinger; "'escaped from the bridewell, leaving no clew to their
identity, except the letter H, cut on one of the benches.' 'Five dollars
reward offered for the apprehension of the perpetrators.' Sho! I hope
Wingate will catch them."

I don't see how I continued to live, for on hearing this the breath went
entirely out of my body. I beat a retreat from the room as soon as I could,
and flew to the stable with a misty intention of mounting Gypsy and
escaping from the place. I was pondering what steps to take, when Jack
Harris and Charley Marden entered the yard.

"I say," said Harris, as blithe as a lark, "has old Wingate been here?"

"Been here?" I cried, "I should hope not!"

"The whole thing's out, you know," said Harris, pulling Gypsy's forelock
over her eyes and blowing playfully into her nostrils.

"You don't mean it!" I gasped.

"Yes, I do, and we are to pay Wingate three dollars apiece. He'll make
rather a good spec out of it."

"But how did he discover that we were the-the miscreants?" I asked, quoting
mechanically from the Rivermouth Bamacle.

"Why, he saw us take the old ark, confound him! He's been trying to sell it
any time these ten years. Now he has sold it to us. When he found that we
had slipped out of the Meat Market, he went right off and wrote the
advertisement offering five dollars reward; though he knew well enough who
had taken the coach, for he came round to my father's house before the
paper was printed to talk the matter over. Wasn't the governor mad, though!
But it's all settled, I tell you. We're to pay Wingate fifteen dollars for
the old go-cart, which he wanted to sell the other day for seventy-five
cents, and couldn't. It's a downright swindle. But the funny part of it is
to come."

O, there's a funny part to it, is there?" I remarked bitterly.

"Yes. The moment Bill Conway saw the advertisement, he knew it was Harry
Blake who cut that letter H on the bench; so off he rushes up to
Wingate-kind of him, wasn't it?-and claims the reward. 'Too late, young
man,' says old Wingate, 'the culprits has been discovered.' You see
Sly-boots hadn't any intention of paying that five dollars."

Jack Harris's statement lifted a weight from my bosom. The article in the
Rivermouth Barnacle bad placed the affair before me in a new light. I had
thoughtlessly committed a grave offence. Though the property in question
was valueless, we were clearly wrong in destroying it. At the same time Mr.
Wingate had tacitly sanctioned the act by not preventing it when he might
easily have done so. He had allowed his property to be destroyed in order
that be might realize a large profit.

Without waiting to hear more, I went straight to Captain Nutter, and, laying
my remaining three dollars on his knee, confessed my share in the previous
night's transaction.

The Captain heard me through in profound silence, pocketed the bank-notes,
and walked off without speaking a word. He had punished me in his own
whimsical fashion at the breakfast table, for, at the very moment be was
harrowing up my soul by reading the extracts from the Rivermouth Barnacle,
he not only knew all about the bonfire, but had paid Ezra Wingate his three
dollars. Such was the duplicity of that aged impostor

I think Captain Nutter was justified in retaining my pocketmoney, as
additional punishment, though the possession of it later in the day would
have got me out of a difficult position, as the reader will see further on.
I returned with a light heart and a large piece of punk to my friends in
the stable-yard, where we celebrated the termination of our trouble by
setting off two packs of fire-crackers in an empty wine-cask. They made a
prodigious racket, but failed somehow to fully express my feelings. The
little brass pistol in my bedroom suddenly occurred to me. It had been
loaded I don't know how many months, long before I left New Orleans, and
now was the time, if ever, to fire it off. Muskets, blunderbusses, and
pistols were banging away lively all over town, and the smell of gunpowder,
floating on the air, set me wild to add something respectable to the
universal din.

When the pistol was produced, Jack Harris examined the rusty cap and
prophesied that it would not explode.

"Never mind," said I, "let's try it."

I had fired the pistol once, secretly, in New Orleans, and, remembering the
noise it gave birth to on that occasion, I shut both eyes tight as I pulled
the trigger. The hammer clicked on the cap with a dull, dead sound. Then
Harris tried it; then Charley Marden; then I took it again, and after three
or four trials was on the point of giving it up as a bad job, when the
obstinate thing went off with a tremendous explosion, nearly jerking my arm
from the socket. The smoke cleared away, and there I stood with the stock
of the pistol clutched convulsively in my hand-the barrel, lock, trigger,
and ramrod having vanished into thin air.

"Are you hurt?" cried the boys, in one breath.

"N-no," I replied, dubiously, for the concussion had bewildered me a little.

When I realized the nature of the calamity, my grief was excessive. I can't
imagine what led me to do so ridiculous a thing, but I gravely buried the
remains of my beloved pistol in our back garden, and erected over the mound
a slate tablet to the effect that "Mr. Barker formerly of new Orleans, was
killed accidentally on the Fourth of July, 18-- in the 2nd year of his
Age."1 Binny Wallace, arriving on the spot just after the disaster, and
Charley Marden (who enjoyed the obsequies immensely), acted with me as
chief mourners. I, for my part, was a very sincere one.

As I turned away in a disconsolate mood from the garden, Charley Marden
remarked that he shouldn't be surprised if the pistol-butt took root and
grew into a mahogany-tree or something. He said he once planted an old
musket-stock, and shortly afterwards a lot of shoots sprung up! Jack Harris
laughed; but neither I nor Binny Wallace saw Charley's wicked joke.

We were now joined by Pepper Whitcomb, Fred Langdon, and several other
desperate characters, on their way to the Square, which was always a busy
place when public festivities were going on. Feeling that I was still in
disgrace with the Captain, I thought it politic to ask his consent before
accompanying the boys.

He gave it with some hesitation, advising me to be careful not to get in
front of the firearms. Once he put his fingers mechanically into his
vest-pocket and half drew forth some dollar bills, then slowly thrust them
back again as his sense of justice overcame his genial disposition. I guess
it cut the old gentleman to the heart to be obliged to keep me out of my
pocket-money. I know it did me. However, as I was passing through the hall,
Miss Abigail, with a very severe cast of countenance, slipped a brand-new
quarter into my hand. We had silver currency in those days, thank Heaven!

Great were the bustle and confusion on the Square. By the way, I don't know
why they called this large open space a square, unless because it was an
oval-an oval formed by the confluence of half a dozen streets, now thronged
by crowds of smartly dressed towns-people and country folks; for Rivermouth
on the Fourth was the centre of attraction to the inhabitants of the
neighboring villages.

On one side of the Square were twenty or thirty booths arranged in a
semi-circle, gay with little flags and seductive with lemonade,
ginger-beer, and seedcakes. Here and there were tables at which could be
purchased the smaller sort of fireworks, such as pin-wheels, serpents,
double-headers, and punk warranted not to go out. Many of the adjacent
houses made a pretty display of bunting, and across each of the streets
opening on the Square was an arch of spruce and evergreen, blossoming all
over with patriotic mottoes and paper roses.

It was a noisy, merry, bewildering scene as we came upon the ground. The
incessant rattle of small arms, the booming of the twelve-pounder firing on
the Mill Dam, and the silvery clangor of the church-bells ringing
simultaneously-not to mention an ambitious brass-band that was blowing
itself to pieces on a balcony-were enough to drive one distracted. We
amused ourselves for an hour or two, darting in and out among the crowd and
setting off our crackers. At one o'clock the Hon. Hezekiah Elkins mounted a
platform in the middle of the Square and delivered an oration, to which his
"feller-citizens" didn't pay much attention, having all they could do to
dodge the squibs that were set loose upon them by mischievous boys
stationed on the surrounding housetops.

Our little party which had picked up recruits here and there, not being
swayed by eloquence, withdrew to a booth on the outskirts of the crowd,
where we regaled ourselves with root beer at two cents a glass. I recollect
being much struck by the placard surmounting this tent:



ROOT BEER

SOLD HERE



It seemed to me the perfection of pith and poetry. What could be more terse?
Not a word to spare, and yet everything fully expressed. Rhyme and rhythm
faultless. It was a delightful poet who made those verses. As for the beer
itself-that, I think, must have been made from the root of all evil! A
single glass of it insured an uninterrupted pain for twenty-four hours.

The influence of my liberality working on Charley Marden-for it was I who
paid for the beer-he presently invited us all to take an ice-cream with him
at Pettingil's saloon. Pettingil was the Delmonico of Rivermouth. He
furnished ices and confectionery for aristocratic balls and parties, and
didn't disdain to officiate as leader of the orchestra at the same; for
Pettingil played on the violin, as Pepper Whitcomb described it, "like Old
Scratch."

Pettingil's confectionery store was on the corner of Willow and High
Streets. The saloon, separated from the shop by a flight of three steps
leading to a door hung with faded red drapery, had about it an air of
mystery and seclusion quite delightful. Four windows, also draped, faced
the side-street, affording an unobstructed view of Marm Hatch's back yard,
where a number of inexplicable garments on a clothes-line were always to be
seen careering in the wind.

There was a lull just then in the ice-cream business, it being dinner-time,
and we found the saloon unoccupied. When we had seated ourselves around the
largest marble-topped table, Charley Marden in a manly voice ordered twelve
sixpenny icecreams, "strawberry and verneller mixed."

It was a magnificent sight, those twelve chilly glasses entering the room on
a waiter, the red and white custard rising from each glass like a
church-steeple, and the spoon-handle shooting up from the apex like a
spire. I doubt if a person of the nicest palate could have distinguished,
with his eyes shut, which was the vanilla and which the strawberry; but if
I could at this moment obtain a cream tasting as that did, I would give
five dollars for a very small quantity.

We fell to with a will, and so evenly balanced were our capabilities that we
finished our creams together, the spoons clinking in the glasses like one
spoon.

"Let's have some more!" cried Charley Marden, with the air of Aladdin
ordering up a fresh hogshead of pearls and rubies. "Tom Bailey, tell
Pettingil to send in another round."

Could I credit my ears? I looked at him to see if he were in earnest. He
meant it. In a moment more I was leaning over the counter giving directions
for a second supply. Thinking it would make no difference to such a
gorgeous young sybarite as Marden, I took the liberty of ordering ninepenny
creams this time.

On returning to the saloon, what was my horror at finding it empty!

There were the twelve cloudy glasses, standing in a circle on the sticky
marble slab, and not a boy to be seen. A pair of hands letting go their
hold on the window-sill outside explained matters. I had been made a
victim.

I couldn't stay and face Pettingil, whose peppery temper was well known
among the boys. I hadn't a cent in the world to appease him. What should I
do? I heard the clink of approaching glasses-the ninepenny creams. I rushed
to the nearest window. It was only five feet to the ground. I threw myself
out as if I had been an old hat.

Landing on my feet, I fled breathlessly down High Street, through Willow,
and was turning into Brierwood Place when the sound of several voices,
calling to me in distress, stopped my progress.

"Look out, you fool! The mine! The mine!" yelled the warning voices.

Several men and boys were standing at the head of the street, making insane
gestures to me to avoid something. But I saw no mine, only in the middle of
the road in front of me was a common flour-barrel, which, as I gazed at it,
suddenly rose into the air with a terrific explosion. I felt myself thrown
violently off my feet. I remember nothing else, excepting that, as I went
up, I caught a momentary glimpse of Ezra Wingate leering through is shop
window like an avenging spirit.

The mine that had wrought me woe was not properly a mine at all, but merely
a few ounces of powder placed under an empty keg or barrel and fired with a
slow-match. Boys who didn't happen to have pistols or cannon generally
burnt their powder in this fashion.

For an account of what followed I am indebted to hearsay, for I was
insensible when the people picked me up and carried me home on a shutter
borrowed from the proprietor of Pettingil's saloon. I was supposed to be
killed, but happily (happily for me at least) I was merely stunned. I lay
in a semi-unconscious state until eight o'clock that night, when I
attempted to speak. Miss Abigail, who watched by the bedside, put her ear
down to my lips and was saluted with these remarkable words: "Strawberry
and verneller mixed!"

"Mercy on us! What is the boy saying?" cried Miss Abigail.

"ROOTBEERSOLDHERE!"



1 This inscription is copied from a triangular-shaped piece of slate, still
preserved in the garret of the Nutter House, together with the pistol butt
itself, which was subsequently dug up for a postmortem examination.









Chapter Nine

I Become an R. M. C.



In the course of ten days I recovered sufficiently from my injuries to
attend school, where, for a little while, I was looked upon as a hero, on
account of having been blown up. What don't we make a hero of? The
distraction which prevailed in the classes the week preceding the Fourth
bad subsided, and nothing remained to indicate the recent festivities,
excepting a noticeable want of eyebrows on the part of Pepper Whitcomb and
myself.

In August we had two weeks' vacation. It was about this time that I became a
member of the Rivermouth Centipedes, a secret society composed of twelve of
the Temple Grammar School boys. This was an honor to which I had long
aspired, but, being a new boy, I was not admitted to the fraternity until
my character had fully developed itself.

It was a very select society, the object of which I never fathomed, though I
was an active member of the body during the remainder of my residence at
Rivermouth, and at one time held the onerous position of F. C., First
Centipede. Each of the elect wore a copper cent (some occult association
being established between a cent apiece and a centipedes suspended by a
string round his neck. The medals were worn next the skin, and it was while
bathing one day at Grave Point, with Jack Harris and Fred Langdon, that I
had my curiosity roused to the highest pitch by a sight of these singular
emblems. As soon as I ascertained the existence of a boys' club, of course
I was ready to die to join it. And eventually I was allowed to join.

The initiation ceremony took place in Fred Langdon's barn, where I was
submitted to a series of trials not calculated to soothe the nerves of a
timorous boy. Before being led to the Grotto of Enchantment-such was the
modest title given to the loft over my friend's wood-house-my hands were
securely pinioned, and my eyes covered with a thick silk handkerchief. At
the head of the stairs I was told in an unrecognizable, husky voice, that
it was not yet too late to retreat if I felt myself physically too weak to
undergo the necessary tortures. I replied that I was not too weak, in a
tone which I intended to be resolute, but which, in spite of me, seemed to
come from the pit of my stomach.

"It is well!" said the husky voice.

I did not feel so sure about that; but, having made up my mind to be a
Centipede, a Centipede I was bound to be. Other boys had passed through the
ordeal and lived, why should not I?

A prolonged silence followed this preliminary examination and I was
wondering what would come next, when a pistol fired off close by my car
deafened me for a moment. The unknown voice then directed me to take ten
steps forward and stop at the word halt. I took ten steps, and halted.

"Stricken mortal," said a second husky voice, more husky, if possible, than
the first, "if you had advanced another inch, you would have disappeared
down an abyss three thousand feet deep!"

I naturally shrunk back at this friendly piece of information. A prick from
some two-pronged instrument, evidently a pitchfork, gently checked my
retreat. I was then conducted to the brink of several other precipices, and
ordered to step over many dangerous chasms, where the result would have
been instant death if I had committed the least mistake. I have neglected
to say that my movements were accompanied by dismal groans from different
parts of the grotto.

Finally, I was led up a steep plank to what appeared to me an incalculable
height. Here I stood breathless while the bylaws were read aloud. A more
extraordinary code of laws never came from the brain of man. The penalties
attached to the abject being who should reveal any of the secrets of the
society were enough to make the blood run cold. A second pistol-shot was
heard, the something I stood on sunk with a crash beneath my feet and I
fell two miles, as nearly as I could compute it. At the same instant the
handkerchief was whisked from my eyes, and I found myself standing in an
empty hogshead surrounded by twelve masked figures fantastically dressed.
One of the conspirators was really appalling with a tin sauce-pan on his
head, and a tiger-skin sleigh-robe thrown over his shoulders. I scarcely
need say that there were no vestiges to be seen of the fearful gulfs over
which I had passed so cautiously. My ascent had been to the top of the
hogshead, and my descent to the bottom thereof. Holding one another by the
hand, and chanting a low dirge, the Mystic Twelve revolved about me. This
concluded the ceremony. With a merry shout the boys threw off their masks,
and I was declared a regularly installed member of the R. M. C.

I afterwards had a good deal of sport out of the club, for these
initiations, as you may imagine, were sometimes very comical spectacles,
especially when the aspirant for centipedal honors happened to be of a
timid disposition. If he showed the slightest terror, he was certain to be
tricked unmercifully. One of our subsequent devices-a humble invention of
my own-was to request the blindfolded candidate to put out his tongue,
whereupon the First Centipede would say, in a low tone, as if not intended
for the ear of the victim, "Diabolus, fetch me the red-hot iron!" The
expedition with which that tongue would disappear was simply ridiculous.

Our meetings were held in various barns, at no stated periods, but as
circumstances suggested. Any member had a right to call a meeting. Each boy
who failed to report himself was fined one cent. Whenever a member had
reasons for thinking that another member would be unable to attend, he
called a meeting. For instance, immediately on learning the death of Harry
Blake's great-grandfather, I issued a call. By these simple and ingenious
measures we kept our treasury in a flourishing condition, sometimes having
on hand as much as a dollar and a quarter.

I have said that the society had no special object. It is true, there was a
tacit understanding among us that the Centipedes were to stand by one
another on all occasions, though I don't remember that they did; but
further than this we had no purpose, unless it was to accomplish as a body
the same amount of mischief which we were sure to do as individuals. To
mystify the staid and slow-going Rivermouthians was our frequent pleasure.
Several of our pranks won us such a reputation among the townsfolk, that we
were credited with having a large finger in whatever went amiss in the
place.

One morning, about a week after my admission into the secret order, the
quiet citizens awoke to find that the signboards of all the principal
streets had changed places during the night. People who went trustfully to
sleep in Currant Square opened their eyes in Honeysuckle Terrace. Jones's
Avenue at the north end had suddenly become Walnut Street, and Peanut
Street was nowhere to be found. Confusion reigned. The town authorities
took the matter in hand without delay, and six of the Temple Grammar School
boys were summoned to appear before justice Clapbam.

Having tearfully disclaimed to my grandfather all knowledge of the
transaction, I disappeared from the family circle, and was not apprehended
until late in the afternoon, when the Captain dragged me ignominiously from
the haymow and conducted me, more dead than alive, to the office of justice
Clapham. Here I encountered five other pallid culprits, who had been fished
out of divers coal-bins, garrets, and chicken-coops, to answer the demands
of the outraged laws. (Charley Marden had hidden himself in a pile of
gravel behind his father's house, and looked like a recently exhumed
mummy.)

There was not the least evidence against us; and, indeed, we were wholly
innocent of the offence. The trick, as was afterwards proved, had been
played by a party of soldiers stationed at the fort in the harbor. We were
indebted for our arrest to Master Conway, who had slyly dropped a hint,
within the hearing of Selectman Mudge, to the effect that "young Bailey and
his five cronies could tell something about 20them signs." When he was
called upon to make good his assertion, he was considerably more terrified
than the Centipedes, though they were ready to sink into their shoes.

At our next meeting it was unanimously resolved that Conway's animosity
should not be quietly submitted to. He had sought to inform against us in
the stagecoach business; he had volunteered to carry Pettingil's "little
bill" for twenty-four icecreams to Charley Marden's father; and now he had
caused us to be arraigned before justice Clapham on a charge equally
groundless and painful. After much noisy discussion, a plan of retaliation
was agreed upon.

There was a certain slim, mild apothecary in the town, by the name of Meeks.
It was generally given out that Mr. Meeks had a vague desire to get
married, but, being a shy and timorous youth, lacked the moral courage to
do so. It was also well known that the Widow Conway had not buried her
heart with the late lamented. As to her shyness, that was not so clear.
Indeed, her attentions to Mr. Meeks, whose mother she might have been, were
of a nature not to be misunderstood, and were not misunderstood by anyone
but Mr. Meeks himself.

The widow carried on a dress-making establishment at her residence on the
comer opposite Meeks's drug-store, and kept a wary eye on all the young
ladies from Miss Dorothy Gibbs's Female Institute who patronized the shop
for soda-water, aciddrops, and slate-pencils. In the afternoon the widow
was usually seen seated, smartly dressed, at her window upstairs, casting
destructive glances across the street-the artificial roses in her cap and
her whole languishing manner saying as plainly as a label on a
prescription, "To be Taken Immediately!" But Mr. Meeks didn't take.

The lady's fondness, and the gentleman's blindness, were topics ably handled
at every sewing-circle in the town. It was through these two luckless
individuals that we proposed to strike a blow at the common enemy. To kill
less than three birds with one stone did not suit our sanguinary purpose.
We disliked the widow not so much for her sentimentality as for being the
mother of Bill Conway; we disliked Mr. Meeks, not because he was insipid,
like his own syrups, but because the widow loved him. Bill Conway we hated
for himself.

Late one dark Saturday night in September we carried our plan into effect.
On the following morning, as the orderly citizens wended their way to
church past the widow's abode, their sober faces relaxed at beholding over
her front door the well known gilt Mortar and Pestle which usually stood on
the top of a pole on the opposite corner; while the passers on that side of
the street were equally amused and scandalized at seeing a placard bearing
the following announcement tacked to the druggist's window-shutters:

Wanted, a Sempstress!

The naughty cleverness of the joke (which I should be sorry to defend) was
recognized at once. It spread like wildfire over the town, and, though the
mortar and the placard were speedily removed, our triumph was complete. The
whole community was on the broad grin, and our participation in the affair
seemingly unsuspected.

It was those wicked soldiers at the fort!





Chapter Ten

I Fight Conway



There was one person, however, who cherished a strong suspicion that the
Centipedes had had a hand in the business; and that person was Conway. His
red hair seemed to change to a livelier red, and his sallow cheeks to a
deeper sallow, as we glanced at him stealthily over the tops of our slates
the next day in school. He knew we were watching him, and made sundry
mouths and scowled in the most threatening way over his sums.

Conway had an accomplishment peculiarly his own-that of throwing his thumbs
out of joint at will. Sometimes while absorbed in study, or on becoming
nervous at recitation, he performed the feat unconsciously. Throughout this
entire morning his thumbs were observed to be in a chronic state of
dislocation, indicating great mental agitation on the part of the owner. We
fully expected an outbreak from him at recess; but the intermission passed
off tranquilly, somewhat to our disappointment.

At the close of the afternoon session it happened that Binny Wallace and
myself, having got swamped in our Latin exercise, were detained in school
for the purpose of refreshing our memories with a page of Mr. Andrews's
perplexing irregular verbs. Binny Wallace finishing his task first, was
dismissed. I followed shortly after, and, on stepping into the playground,
saw my little friend plastered, as it were, up against the fence, and
Conway standing in front of him ready to deliver a blow on the upturned,
unprotected face, whose gentleness would have stayed any arm but a
coward's.

Seth Rodgers, with both hands in his pockets, was leaning against the pump
lazily enjoying the sport; but on seeing me sweep across the yard, whirling
my strap of books in the air like a sling, he called out lustily, "Lay low,
Conwayl Here's young Baileyl"

Conway turned just in time to catch on his shoulder the blow intended for
his head. He reached forward one of his long arms-he had arms like a
windmill, that boy-and, grasping me by the hair, tore out quite a
respectable handful. The tears flew to my eyes, but they were not the tears
of defeat; they were merely the involuntary tribute which nature paid to
the departed tresses.

In a second my little jacket lay on the ground, and I stood on guard,
resting lightly on my right leg and keeping my eye fixed steadily on
Conway's-in all of which I was faithfully following the instructions of
Phil Adams, whose father subscribed to a sporting journal.

Conway also threw himself into a defensive attitude, and there we were,
glaring at each other motionless, neither of us disposed to risk an attack,
but both on the alert to resist one. There is no telling how long we might
have remained in that absurd position, had we not been interrupted.

It was a custom with the larger pupils to return to the play-ground after
school, and play baseball until sundown. The town authorities had
prohibited ball-playing on the Square, and, there being no other available
place, the boys fell back perforce on the school-yard. just at this crisis
a dozen or so of the Templars entered the gate, and, seeing at a glance the
belligerent status of Conway and myself, dropped bat and ball, and rushed
to the spot where we stood.

"Is it a fight?" asked Phil Adams, who saw by our freshness that we had not
yet got to work.

"Yes, it's a fight," I answered, "unless Conway will ask Wallace's pardon,
promise never to hector me in future-and put back my hair!"

This last condition was rather a staggerer.

"I sha'n't do nothing of the sort," said Conway, sulkily.

"Then the thing must go on," said Adams, with dignity. "Rodgers, as I
understand it, is your second, Conway? Bailey, come here. What's the row
about?"

"He was thrashing Binny Wallace."

"No, I wasn't," interrupted Conway; "but I was going to because he knows who
put Meeks's mortar over our door. And I know well enough who did it; it was
that sneaking little mulatter!" pointing at me.

"O, by George!" I cried, reddening at the insult.

"Cool is the word," said Adams, as he bound a handkerchief round my head,
and carefully tucked away the long straggling locks that offered a tempting
advantage to the enemy. "Who ever heard of a fellow with such a head of
hair going into action!" muttered Phil, twitching the handkerchief to
ascertain if it were securely tied. He then loosened my gallowses (braces),
and buckled them tightly above my hips. "Now, then, bantam, never say die!"

Conway regarded these business-like preparations with evident misgiving, for
he called Rodgers to his side, and had himself arrayed in a similar manner,
though his hair was cropped so close that you couldn't have taken hold of
it with a pair of tweezers.

"Is your man ready?" asked Phil Adams, addressing Rodgers.

"Ready!"

"Keep your back to the gate, Tom," whispered Phil in my car, "and you'll
have the sun in his eyes."

Behold us once more face to face, like David and the Philistine. Look at us
as long as you may; for this is all you shall see of the combat. According
to my thinking, the hospital teaches a better lesson than the battle-field.
I will tell you about my black eye, and my swollen lip, if you will; but
not a word of the fight.

You'll get no description of it from me, simply because I think it would
prove very poor reading, and not because I consider my revolt against
Conway's tyranny unjustifiable.

I had borne Conway's persecutions for many months with lamb-like patience. I
might have shielded myself by appealing to Mr. Grimshaw; but no boy in the
Temple Grammar School could do that without losing caste. Whether this was
just or not doesn't matter a pin, since it was so-a traditionary law of the
place. The personal inconvenience I suffered from my tormentor was nothing
to the pain he inflicted on me indirectly by his persistent cruelty to
little Binny Wallace. I should have lacked the spirit of a hen if I had not
resented it finally. I am glad that I faced Conway, and asked no favors,
and got rid of him forever. I am glad that Phil Adams taught me to box, and
I say to all youngsters: Learn to box, to ride, to pull an oar, and to
swim. The occasion may come round, when a decent proficiency in one or the
rest of these accomplishments will be of service to you.

In one of the best books1 ever written for boys are these words:

"Learn to box, then, as you learn to play cricket and football. Not one of
you will be the worse, but very much the better, for learning to box well.
Should you never have to use it in earnest there's no exercise in the world
so good for the temper, and for the muscles of the back and legs.

"As for fighting, keep out of it, if you can, by all means. When the time
comes, if ever it should, that you have to say 'Yes' or 'No' to a challenge
to fight, say 'No' if you can-only take care you make it plain to yourself
why you say 'No.' It's a proof of the highest courage, if done from true
Christian motives. It's quite right and justifiable, if done from a simple
aversion to physical pain and danger. But don't say 'No' because you fear a
licking and say or think it's because you fear God, for that's neither
Christian nor honest. And if you do fight, fight it out; and don't give in
while you can stand and see."

And don't give in when you can't! say 1. For I could stand very little, and
see not at all (having pommelled the school pump for the last twenty
seconds), when Conway retired from the field. As Phil Adams stepped up to
shake hands with me, he received a telling blow in the stomach; for all the
fight was not out of me yet, and I mistook him for a new adversary.

Convinced of my error, I accepted his congratulations, with those of the
other boys, blandly and blindly. I remember that Binny Wallace wanted to
give me his silver pencil-case. The gentle soul had stood throughout the
contest with his face turned to the fence, suffering untold agony.

A good wash at the pump, and a cold key applied to my eye, refreshed me
amazingly. Escorted by two or three of the schoolfellows, I walked home
through the pleasant autumn twilight, battered but triumphant. As I went
along, my cap cocked on one side to keep the chilly air from my eye, I felt
that I was not only following my nose, but following it so closely, that I
was in some danger of treading on it. I seemed to have nose enough for the
whole party. My left cheek, also, was puffed out like a dumpling. I
couldn't help saying to myself, "If this is victory, how about that other
fellow?"

"Tom," said Harry Blake, hesitating.

"Well?"

"Did you see Mr. Grimshaw looking out of the recitation-room window just as
we left the yard?"

"No was he, though?"

"I am sure of it."

"Then he must have seen all the row."

"Shouldn't wonder."

"No, he didn't," broke in Adams, "or he would have stopped it short metre;
but I guess be saw you pitching into the pump which you did uncommonly
strong-and of course be smelt mischief directly."

"Well, it can't be helped now," I reflected.

"-As the monkey said when he fell out of the cocoanut tree," added Charley
Marden, trying to make me laugh.

It was early candle-light when we reached the house. Miss Abigail, opening
the front door, started back at my hilarious appearance. I tried to smile
upon her sweetly, but the smile, rippling over my swollen cheek, and dying
away like a spent wave on my nose, produced an expression of which Miss
Abigail declared she had never seen the like excepting on the face of a
Chinese idol.

She hustled me unceremoniously into the presence of my grandfather in the
sitting-room. Captain Nutter, as the recognized professional warrior of our
family, could not consistently take me to task for fighting Conway; nor was
he disposed to do so; for the Captain was well aware of the long-continued
provocation I had endured.

"Ah, you rascal!" cried the old gentleman, after hearing my story. "Just
like me when I was young-always in one kind of trouble or another. I
believe it runs in the family."

"I think," said Miss Abigail, without the faintest expression) on her
countenance, "that a table-spoonful of hot-dro-" The Captain interrupted
Miss Abigail peremptorily, directing her to make a shade out of cardboard
and black silk to tie over my eye. Miss Abigail must have been possessed
with the idea that I had taken up pugilism as a profession, for she turned
out no fewer than six of these blinders.

"They'll be handy to have in the house," says Miss Abigail, grimly.

Of course, so great a breach of discipline was not to be passed over by Mr.
Grimshaw. He had, as we suspected, witnessed the closing scene of the fight
from the school-room window, and the next morning, after prayers, I was not
wholly unprepared when Master Conway and myself were called up to the desk
for examination. Conway, with a piece of court-plaster in the shape of a
Maltese cross on his right cheek, and I with the silk patch over my left
eye, caused a general titter through the room.

"Silence!" said Mr. Grimshaw, sharply.

As the reader is already familiar with the leading points in the case of
Bailey versus Conway, I shall not report the trial further than to say that
Adams, Marden, and several other pupils testified to the fact that Conway
had imposed on me ever since my first day at the Temple School. Their
evidence also went to show that Conway was a quarrelsome character
generally. Bad for Conway. Seth Rodgers, on the part of his friend, proved
that I had struck the first blow. That was bad for me.

"If you please, sir," said Binny Wallace, holding up his hand for permission
to speak, "Bailey didn't fight on his own account; he fought on my account,
and, if you please, sir, I am the boy to be blamed, for I was the cause of
the trouble."

This drew out the story of Conway's harsh treatment of the smaller boys. As
Binny related the wrongs of his playfellows, saying very little of his own
grievances, I noticed that Mr. Grimshaw's hand, unknown to himself perhaps,
rested lightly from time to time on Wallace's sunny hair. The examination
finished, Mr. Grimshaw leaned on the desk thoughtfully for a moment and
then said:

"Every boy in this school knows that it is against the rules to fight. If
one boy maltreats another, within school-bounds, or within school-hours,
that is a matter for me to settle. The case should be laid before me. I
disapprove of tale-bearing, I never encourage it in the slightest degree;
but when one pupil systematically persecutes a schoolmate, it is the duty
of some head-boy to inform me. No pupil has a right to take the law into
his own hands. If there is any fighting to be done, I am the person to be
consulted. I disapprove of boys' fighting; it is unnecessary and
unchristian. In the present instance, I consider every large boy in this
school at fault, but as the offence is one of omission rather than
commission, my punishment must rest only on the two boys convicted of
misdemeanor. Conway loses his recess for a month, and Bailey has a page
added to his Latin lessons for the next four recitations. I now request
Bailey and Conway to shake hands in the presence of the school, and
acknowledge their regret at what has occurred."

Conway and I approached each other slowly and cautiously, as if we were bent
upon another hostile collision. We clasped hands in the tamest manner
imaginable, and Conway mumbled, "I'm sorry I fought with you.'

"I think you are,' I replied, drily, "and I'm sorry I had to thrash you."

"You can go to your seats," said Mr. Grimshaw, turning his face aside to
hide a smile. I am sure my apology was a very good one.

I never had any more trouble with Conway. He and his shadow, Seth Rodgers,
gave me a wide berth for many months. Nor was Binny Wallace subjected to
further molestation. Miss Abigail's sanitary stores, including a bottle of
opodeldoc, were never called into requisition. The six black silk patches,
with their elastic strings, are still dangling from a beam in the garret of
the Nutter House, waiting for me to get into fresh difficulties.



1 "Tom Brown's School Days at Rugby"







Chapter Eleven

All About Gypsy



This record of my life at Rivermouth would be strangely incomplete did I not
devote an entire chapter to Gypsy. I had other pets, of course; for what
healthy boy could long exist without numerous friends in the animal
kingdom? I had two white mice that were forever gnawing their way out of a
pasteboard chateau, and crawling over my face when I lay asleep. I used to
keep the pink-eyed little beggars in my bedroom, greatly to the annoyance
of Miss Abigail, who was constantly fancying that one of the mice had
secreted itself somewhere about her person.

I also owned a dog, a terrier, who managed in some inscrutable way to pick a
quarrel with the moon, and on bright nights kept up such a ki-yi-ing in our
back garden, that we were finally forced to dispose of him at private sale.
He was purchased by Mr. Oxford, the butcher. I protested against the
arrangement and ever afterwards, when we had sausages from Mr. Oxford-s
shop, I made believe I detected in them certain evidences that Cato had
been foully dealt with.

Of birds I had no end-robins, purple-martins, wrens, bulfinches, bobolinks,
ringdoves, and pigeons. At one time I took solid comfort in the iniquitous
society of a dissipated old parrot, who talked so terribly, that the Rev.
Wibird Hawkins, happening to get a sample of Poll's vituperative powers,
pronounced him "a benighted heathen," and advised the Captain to get rid of
him. A brace of turtles supplanted the parrot in my affections; the turtles
gave way to rabbits; and the rabbits in turn yielded to the superior charms
of a small monkey, which the Captain bought of a sailor lately from the
coast of Africa.

But Gypsy was the prime favorite, in spite of many rivals. I never grew
weary of her. She was the most knowing little thing in the world. Her
proper sphere in life-and the one to which she ultimately attained-was the
saw-dust arena of a travelling circus. There was nothing short of the three
R's, reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic, that Gypsy couldn't be taught. The
gift of speech was not hers, but the faculty of thought was.

My little friend, to be sure, was not exempt from certain graceful
weaknesses, inseparable, perhaps, from the female character. She was very
pretty, and she knew it. She was also passionately fond of dress-by which I
mean her best harness. When she had this on, her curvetings and prancings
were laughable, though in ordinary tackle she went along demurely enough.
There was something in the enamelled leather and the silver-washed
mountings that chimed with her artistic sense. To have her mane braided,
and a rose or a pansy stuck into her forelock, was to make her too
conceited for anything.

She had another trait not rare among her sex. She liked the attentions of
young gentlemen, while the society of girls bored her. She would drag them,
sulkily, in the cart; but as for permitting one of them in the saddle, the
idea was preposterous. Once when Pepper Whitcomb's sister, in spite of our
remonstrances, ventured to mount her, Gypsy gave a little indignant neigh,
and tossed the gentle Emma heels over head in no time. But with any of the
boys the mare was as docile as a lamb.

Her treatment of the several members of the family was comical. For the
Captain she entertained a wholesome respect, and was always on her good
behavior when he was around. As to Miss Abigail, Gypsy simply laughed at
her-literally laughed, contracting her upper lip and displaying all her
snow-white teeth, as if something about Miss Abigail struck her, Gypsy, as
being extremely ridiculous.

Kitty Collins, for some reason or another, was afraid of the pony, or
pretended to be. The sagacious little animal knew it, of course, and
frequently, when Kitty was banging out clothes near the stable, the mare
being loose in the yard, would make short plunges at her. Once Gypsy seized
the basket of clothespins with her teeth, and rising on her hind legs,
pawing the air with her fore feet followed Kitty clear up to the scullery
steps.

That part of the yard was shut off from the rest by a gate; but no gate was
proof against Gypsy's ingenuity. She could let down bars, lift up latches,
draw bolts, and turn all sorts of buttons. This accomplishment rendered it
hazardous for Miss Abigail or Kitty to leave any eatables on the kitchen
table near the window. On one occasion Gypsy put in her head and lapped up
six custard pies that had been placed by the casement to cool.

An account of my young lady's various pranks would fill a thick volume. A
favorite trick of hers, on being requested to "walk like Miss Abigail," was
to assume a little skittish gait so true to nature that Miss Abigail
herself was obliged to admit the cleverness of the imitation.

The idea of putting Gypsy through a systematic course of instruction was
suggested to me by a visit to the circus which gave an annual performance
in Rivermouth. This show embraced among its attractions a number of trained
Shetland ponies, and I determined that Gypsy should likewise have the
benefit of a liberal education. I succeeded in teaching her to waltz, to
fire a pistol by tugging at a string tied to the trigger, to lie down dead,
to wink one eye, and to execute many other feats of a difficult nature. She
took to her studies admirably, and enjoyed the whole thing as much as
anyone.

The monkey was a perpetual marvel to Gypsy. They became bosom-friends in an
incredibly brief period, and were never easy out of each other's sight.
Prince Zany-that's what Pepper Whitcomb and I christened him one day, much
to the disgust of the monkey, who bit a piece out of Pepper's nose-resided
in the stable, and went to roost every night on the pony's back, where I
usually found him in the morning. Whenever I rode out, I was obliged to
secure his Highness the Prince with a stout cord to the fence, he
chattering all the time like a madman.

One afternoon as I was cantering through the crowded part of the town, I
noticed that the people in the street stopped, stared at me, and fell to
laughing. I turned round in the saddle, and there was Zany, with a great
burdock leaf in his paw, perched up behind me on the crupper, as solemn as
a judge.

After a few months, poor Zany sickened mysteriously, and died. The dark
thought occurred to me then, and comes back to me now with redoubled force,
that Miss Abigail must have given him some hot-drops. Zany left a large
circle of sorrowing friends, if not relatives. Gypsy, I think, never
entirely recovered from the shock occasioned by his early demise. She
became fonder of me, though; and one of her cunningest demonstrations was
to escape from the stable-yard, and trot up to the door of the Temple
Grammar School, where I would discover her at recess patiently waiting for
me, with her fore feet on the second step, and wisps of straw standing out
all over her, like quills upon the fretful porcupine.

I should fail if I tried to tell you how dear the pony was to me. Even hard,
unloving men become attached to the horses they take care of; so I, who was
neither unloving nor hard, grew to love every glossy hair of the pretty
little creature that depended on me for her soft straw bed and her daily
modicum of oats. In my prayer at night I never forgot to mention Gypsy with
the rest of the family-generally setting forth her claims first.

Whatever relates to Gypsy belongs properly to this narrative; therefore I
offer no apology for rescuing from oblivion, and boldly printing here a
short composition which I wrote in the early part of my first quarter at
the Temple Grammar School. It is my maiden effort in a difficult art, and
is, perhaps, lacking in those graces of thought and style which are reached
only after the severest practice.

Every Wednesday morning, on entering school, each pupil was expected to lay
his exercise on Mr. Grimshaw's desk; the subject was usually selected by
Mr. Grimshaw himself, the Monday previous. With a humor characteristic of
him, our teacher had instituted two prizes, one for the best and the other
for the worst composition of the month. The first prize consisted of a
penknife, or a pencil-case, or some such article dear to the heart of
youth; the second prize entitled the winner to wear for an hour or two a
sort of conical paper cap, on the front of which was written, in tall
letters, this modest admission: I AM A DUNCE! The competitor who took prize
No. 2. wasn't generally an object of envy.

My pulse beat high with pride and expectation that Wednesday morning, as I
laid my essay, neatly folded, on the master's table. I firmly decline to
say which prize I won; but here's the composition to speak for itself.

It is no small-author vanity that induces me to publish this stray leaf of
natural history. I lay it before our young folks, not for their admiration,
but for their criticism. Let each reader take his lead-pencil and
remorselessly correct the orthography, the capitalization, and the
punctuation of the essay. I shall not feel hurt at seeing my treatise cut
all to pieces; though I think highly of the production, not on account of
its literary excellence, which I candidly admit is not overpowering, but
because it was written years and years ago about Gypsy, by a little fellow
who, when I strive to recall him, appears to me like a reduced ghost of my
present self.

I am confident that any reader who has ever had pets, birds or animals, will
forgive me for this brief digression.









Chapter Twelve

Winter at Rivermouth



"I guess we're going to have a regular old-fashioned snowstorm," said
Captain Nutter, one bleak December morning, casting a peculiarly nautical
glance skyward.

The Captain was always hazarding prophecies about the weather, which somehow
never turned out according to his prediction. The vanes on the
church-steeples seemed to take fiendish pleasure in humiliating the dear
old gentleman. If he said it was going to be a clear day, a dense sea-fog
was pretty certain to set in before noon. Once he caused a protracted
drought by assuring us every morning, for six consecutive weeks, that it
would rain in a few hours. But, sure enough, that afternoon it began
snowing.

Now I had not seen a snow-storm since I was eighteen months old, and of
course remembered nothing about it. A boy familiar from his infancy with
the rigors of our New England winters can form no idea of the impression
made on me by this natural phenomenon. My delight and surprise were as
boundless as if the heavy gray sky had let down a shower of pond lilies and
white roses, instead of snow-flakes. It happened to be a half-holiday, so I
had nothing to do but watch the feathery crystals whirling hither and
thither through the air. I stood by the sitting-room window gazing at the
wonder until twilight shut out the novel scene.

We had had several slight flurries of hail and snow before, but this was a
regular nor'easter.

Several inches of snow had already fallen. The rose-bushes at the door
drooped with the weight of their magical blossoms, and the two posts that
held the garden gate were transformed into stately Turks, with white
turbans, guarding the entrance to the Nutter House.

The storm increased at sundown, and continued with unabated violence through
the night. The next morning, when I jumped out of bed, the sun was shining
brightly, the cloudless heavens wore the tender azure of June, and the
whole earth lay muffled up to the eyes, as it were, in a thick mantle of
milk-white down.

It was a very deep snow. The Oldest Inhabitant (what would become of a New
England town or village without its oldest Inhabitant?) overhauled his
almanacs, and pronounced it the deepest snow we had bad for twenty years.
It couldn't have been much deeper without smothering us all. Our street was
a sight to be seen, or, rather, it was a sight not to be seen; for very
little street was visible. One huge drift completely banked up our front
door and half covered my bedroom window.

There was no school that day, for all the thoroughfares were impassable. By
twelve o'clock, however, the great snowploughs, each drawn by four yokes of
oxen, broke a wagon-path through the principal streets; but the
foot-passengers had a hard time of it floundering in the arctic drifts.

The Captain and I cut a tunnel, three feet wide and six feet high, from our
front door to the sidewalk opposite. It was a beautiful cavern, with its
walls and roof inlaid with mother-of-pearl and diamonds. I am sure the ice
palace of the Russian Empress, in Cowper's poem, was not a more superb
piece of architecture.

The thermometer began falling shortly before sunset and we had the bitterest
cold night I ever experienced. This brought out the Oldest Inhabitant again
the next day-and what a gay old boy he was for deciding everything! Our
tunnel was turned into solid ice. A crust thick enough to bear men and
horses had formed over the snow everywhere, and the air was alive with
merry sleigh-bells. Icy stalactites, a yard long, bung from the eaves of
the house, and the Turkish sentinels at the gate looked as if they had
given up all hopes of ever being relieved from duty.

So the winter set in cold and glittering. Everything out-of-doors was
sheathed in silver mail. To quote from Charley Marden, it was "cold enough
to freeze the tail off a brass monkey,"-an observation which seemed to me
extremely happy, though I knew little or nothing concerning the endurance
of brass monkeys, having never seen one.

I had looked forward to the advent of the season with grave apprehensions,
nerving myself to meet dreary nights and monotonous days; but summer itself
was not more jolly than winter at Rivermouth. Snow-balling at school,
skating on the Mill Pond, coasting by moonlight, long rides behind Gypsy in
a brand-new little sleigh built expressly for her, were sports no less
exhilarating than those which belonged to the sunny months. And then
Thanksgiving! The nose of Memory-why shouldn't Memory have a nose?-dilates
with pleasure over the rich perfume of Miss Abigail's forty mince-pies,
each one more delightful than the other, like the Sultan's forty wives.
Christmas was another red-letter day, though it was not so generally
observed in New England as it is now.

The great wood-fire in the tiled chimney-place made our sitting-room very
cheerful of winter nights. When the north-wind howled about the eaves, and
the sharp fingers of the sleet tapped against the window-panes, it was nice
to be so warmly sheltered from the storm. A dish of apples and a pitcher of
chilly cider were always served during the evening. The Captain had a funny
way of leaning back in the chair, and eating his apple with his eyes
closed. Sometimes I played dominos with him, and sometimes Miss Abigail
read aloud to us, pronouncing "to" toe, and sounding all the eds.

In a former chapter I alluded to Miss Abigail's managing propensities. She
had affected many changes in the Nutter House before I came there to live;
but there was one thing against which she bad long contended without being
able to overcome. This was the Captain's pipe. On first taking command of
the household, she prohibited smoking in the sitting-room, where it had
been the old gentleman's custom to take a whiff or two of the fragrant weed
after meals. The edict went forth-and so did the pipe. An excellent move,
no doubt; but then the house was his, and if he saw fit to keep a tub of
tobacco burning in the middle of the parlor floor, he had a perfect right
to do so. However, be humored her in this as in other matters, and smoked
by stealth, like a guilty creature, in the barn, or about the gardens. That
was practicable in summer, but in winter the Captain was hard put to it.
When he couldn't stand it longer, he retreated to his bedroom and
barricaded the door. Such was the position of affairs at the time of which
I write.

One morning, a few days after the great snow, as Miss Abigail was dusting
the chronometer in the ball, she beheld Captain Nutter slowly descending
the staircase, with a long clay pipe in his mouth. Miss Abigail could
hardly credit her own eyes.

"Dan'el!" she gasped, retiring heavily on the hat-rack.

The tone of reproach with which this word was uttered failed to produce the
slightest effect on the Captain, who merely removed the pipe from his lips
for an instant, and blew a cloud into the chilly air. The thermometer stood
at two degrees below zero in our hall.

"Dan'el!" cried Miss Abigail, hysterically-"Dan'el, don't come near me!"
Whereupon she fainted away; for the smell of tobacco-smoke always made her
deadly sick.

Kitty Collins rushed from the kitchen with a basin of water, and set to work
bathing Miss Abigail's temples and chafing her hands. I thought my
grandfather rather cruel, as be stood there with a half-smile on his
countenance, complacently watching Miss Abigail's sufferings. When she was
"brought to," the Captain sat down beside her, and, with a lovely twinkle
in his eye, said softly:

"Abigail, my dear, there wasn't any tobacco in that Pipe! It was a new pipe.
I fetched it down for Tom to blow soap-bubbles with."

At these words Kitty Collins hurried away, her features-working strangely.
Several minutes later I came upon her in the scullery with the greater
portion of a crash towel stuffed into her mouth. "Miss Abygil smelt the
terbacca with her oi!" cried Kitty, partially removing the cloth, and then
immediately stopping herself up again.

The Captain's joke furnished us-that is, Kitty and me-with mirth for many a
day; as to Miss Abigail, I think she never wholly pardoned him. After this,
Captain Nutter gradually gave up smoking, which is an untidy, injurious,
disgraceful, and highly pleasant habit.

A boy's life in a secluded New England town in winter does not afford many
points for illustration. Of course he gets his ears or toes frost-bitten;
of course he smashes his sled against another boy's; of course be bangs his
bead on the ice; and he's a lad of no enterprise whatever, if be doesn't
manage to skate into an eel-hole, and be brought home half drowned. All
these things happened to me; but, as they lack novelty, I pass them over,
to tell you about the famous snow-fort which we built on Slatter's Hill.







Chapter Thirteen

The Snow Fort on Slatter's Hill



The memory of man, even that of the Oldest Inhabitant, runneth not back to
the time when there did not exist a feud between the North End and the
South End boys of Rivermouth.

The origin of the feud is involved in mystery; it is impossible to say which
party was the first aggressor in the far-off anterevolutionary ages; but
the fact remains that the youngsters of those antipodal sections
entertained a mortal hatred for each other, and that this hatred had been
handed down from generation to generation, like Miles Standish's
punch-bowl.

I know not what laws, natural or unnatural, regulated the warmth of the
quarrel; but at some seasons it raged more violently than at others. This
winter both parties were unusually lively and antagonistic. Great was the
wrath of the South-Enders, when they discovered that the North-Enders bad
thrown up a fort on the crown of Slatter's Hill.

Slatter's Hill, or No-man's-land, as it was generally called, was a rise of
ground covering, perhaps, an acre and a quarter, situated on an imaginary
line, marking the boundary between the two districts. An immense stratum of
granite, which here and there thrust out a wrinkled boulder, prevented the
site from being used for building purposes. The street ran on either side
of the hill, from one part of which a quantity of rock had been removed to
form the underpinning of the new jail. This excavation made the approach
from that point all but impossible, especially when the ragged ledges were
a-glitter with ice. You see what a spot it was for a snow-fort.

One evening twenty or thirty of the North-Enders quietly took possession of
Slatter's Hill, and threw up a strong line of breastworks, something after
this shape:



Ft Slatter graphic



The rear of the entrenchment, being protected by the quarry, was left open.
The walls were four feet high, and twenty-two inches thick, strengthened at
the angles by stakes driven firmly into the ground.

Fancy the rage of the South-Enders the next day, when they spied our snowy
citadel, with Jack Harris's red silk pocket handkerchief floating defiantly
from the flag-staff.

In less than an hour it was known all over town, in military circles at
least, that the "Puddle-dockers" and the "River-rats' (these were the
derisive sub-titles bestowed on our South-End foes) intended to attack the
fort that Saturday afternoon.

At two o'clock all the fighting boys of the Temple Grammar School, and as
many recruits as we could muster, lay behind the walls of Fort Slatter,
with three hundred compact snowballs piled up in pyramids, awaiting the
approach of the enemy. The enemy was not slow in making his approach-fifty
strong, headed by one Mat Ames. Our forces were under the command of
General J. Harris.

Before the action commenced, a meeting was arranged between the rival
commanders, who drew up and signed certain rules and regulations respecting
the conduct of the battle. As it was impossible for the North-Enders to
occupy the fort permanently, it was stipulated that the South-Enders should
assault it only on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons between the hours of
two and six. For them to take possession of the place at any other time was
not to constitute a capture, but on the contrary was to be considered a
dishonorable and cowardly act.

The North-Enders, on the other hand, agreed to give up the fort whenever ten
of the storming party succeeded in obtaining at one time a footing on the
parapet, and were able to hold the same for the space of two minutes. Both
sides were to abstain from putting pebbles into their snow-balls, nor was
it permissible to use frozen ammunition. A snow-ball soaked in water and
left out to cool was a projectile which in previous years had been resorted
to with disastrous results.

These preliminaries settled, the commanders retired to their respective
corps. The interview had taken place on the hillside between the opposing
lines.

General Harris divided his men into two bodies; the first comprised the most
skilful marksmen, or gunners; the second, the reserve force, was composed
of the strongest boys, whose duty it was to repel the scaling parties, and
to make occasional sallies for the purpose of capturing prisoners, who were
bound by the articles of treaty to faithfully serve under our flag until
they were exchanged at the close of the day.

The repellers were called light infantry; but when they carried on
operations beyond the fort they became cavalry. It was also their duty, 20w

hen not otherwise engaged, to manufacture snow-balls. The General's staff
consisted of five Templars (I among the number, with the rank of Major),
who carried the General's orders and looked after the wounded.

General Mat Ames, a veteran commander, was no less wide-awake in the
disposition of his army. Five companies, each numbering but six men, in
order not to present too big a target to our sharpshooters, were to charge
the fort from different points, their advance being covered by a heavy fire
from the gunners posted in the rear. Each scaler was provided with only two
rounds of ammunition, which were not to be used until he had mounted the
breastwork and could deliver his shots on our heads.

The drawing below represents the interior of the fort just previous to the
assault. Nothing on earth could represent the state of things after the
first volley.



Fort Slatter detail graphic



The thrilling moment had now arrived. If I had been going into a real
engagement I could not have been more deeply impressed by the importance of
the occasion.

The fort opened fire first-a single ball from the dexterous band of General
Harris taking General Ames in the very pit of his stomach. A cheer went up
from Fort Slatter. In an instant the air was thick with flying missiles, in
the midst of which we dimly descried the storming parties sweeping up the
hill, shoulder to shoulder. The shouts of the leaders, and the snowballs
bursting like shells about our ears, made it very lively.

Not more than a dozen of the enemy succeeded in reaching the crest of the
hill; five of these clambered upon the icy walls, where they were instantly
grabbed by the legs and jerked into the fort. The rest retired confused and
blinded by our well-directed fire.

When General Harris (with his right eye bunged up) said, 'Soldiers, I am
proud of you!" my heart swelled in my bosom.

The victory, however, had not been without its price. Six North-Enders,
having rushed out to harass the discomfited enemy, were gallantly cut off
by General Ames and captured. Among these were Lieutenant P. Whitcomb (who
had no business to join in the charge, being weak in the knees), and
Captain Fred Langdon, of General Harris's staff. Whitcomb was one of the
most notable shots on our side, though he was not much to boast of in a
rough-and-tumble fight, owing to the weakness before mentioned. General
Ames put him among the gunners, and we were quickly made aware of the loss
we had sustained, by receiving a frequent artful ball which seemed to light
with unerring instinct on any nose that was the least bit exposed. I have
known one of Pepper's snow-balls, fired pointblank, to turn a comer and hit
a boy who considered himself absolutely safe.

But we had no time for vain regrets. The battle raged. Already there were
two bad cases of black eye, and one of nosebleed, in the hospital.

It was glorious excitement, those pell-mell onslaughts and hand-to-hand
struggles. Twice we were within an ace of being driven from our stronghold,
when General Harris and his staff leaped recklessly upon the ramparts and
hurled the besiegers heels over head down hill.

At sunset, the garrison of Fort Slatter was still unconquered, and the
South-Enders, in a solid phalanx, marched off whistling "Yankee Doodle,"
while we cheered and jeered them until they were out of hearing.

General Ames remained behind to effect an exchange of prisoners. We held
thirteen of his men, and he eleven of ours. General Ames proposed to call
it an even thing, since many of his eleven prisoners were officers, while
nearly all our thirteen captives were privates. A dispute arising on this
point, the two noble generals came to fisticuffs, and in the-fracas our
brave commander got his remaining well eye badly damaged. This didn't
prevent him from writing a general order the next day, on a slate, in which
he complimented the troops on their heroic behavior.

On the following Wednesday the siege was renewed. I forget whether it was on
that afternoon or the next that we lost Fort Slatter; but lose it we did,
with much valuable ammunition and several men. After a series of desperate
assaults, we forced General Ames to capitulate; and he, in turn, made the
place too hot to hold us. So from day to day the tide of battle surged to
and fro, sometimes favoring our arms, and sometimes those of the enemy.

General Ames handled his men with great skill; his deadliest foe could not
deny that. Once he outgeneralled our commander in the following manner: He
massed his gunners on our left and opened a brisk fire, under cover of
which a single company (six men) advanced on that angle of the fort. Our
reserves on the right rushed over to defend the threatened point.
Meanwhile, four companies of the enemy's scalers made a detour round the
foot of the hill, and dashed into Fort Slatter without opposition. At the
same moment General Ames's gunners closed in on our left, and there we were
between two fires. Of course we had to vacate the fort. A cloud rested on
General Harris's military reputation until his superior tactics enabled him
to dispossess the enemy.

As the winter wore on, the war-spirit waxed fiercer and fiercer. At length
the provision against using heavy substances in the snow-balls was
disregarded. A ball stuck full of sand-bird shot came tearing into Fort
Slatter. In retaliation, General Harris ordered a broadside of shells; i.
e. snow-balls containing marbles. After this, both sides never failed to
freeze their ammunition.

It was no longer child's play to march up to the walls of Fort Slatter, nor
was the position of the besieged less perilous. At every assault three or
four boys on each side were disabled. It was not an infrequent occurrence
for the combatants to hold up a flag of truce while they removed some
insensible comrade.

Matters grew worse and worse. Seven North-Enders had been seriously wounded,
and a dozen South-Enders were reported on the sick list. The selectmen of
the town awoke to the fact of what was going on, and detailed a posse of
police to prevent further disturbance. The boys at the foot of the hill,
South-Enders as it happened, finding themselves assailed in the rear and on
the flank, turned round and attempted to beat off the watchmen. In this
they were sustained by numerous volunteers from the fort, who looked upon
the interference as tyrannical.

The watch were determined fellows, and charged the boys valiantly, driving
them all into the fort, where we made common cause, fighting side by side
like the best of friends. In vain the four guardians of the peace rushed up
the hill, flourishing their clubs and calling upon us to surrender. They
could not get within ten yards of the fort, our fire was so destructive. In
one of the onsets a man named Mugridge, more valorous than his peers, threw
himself upon the parapet, when he was seized by twenty pairs of hands, and
dragged inside the breastwork, where fifteen boys sat down on him to keep
him quiet.

Perceiving that it was impossible with their small number to dislodge us,
the watch sent for reinforcements. Their call was responded to, not only by
the whole constabulary force (eight men), but by a numerous body of
citizens, who had become alarmed at the prospect of a riot. This formidable
array brought us to our senses: we began to think that maybe discretion was
the better part of valor. General Harris and General Ames, with their
respective staffs, held a council of war in the hospital, and a backward
movement was decided on. So, after one grand farewell volley, we fled,
sliding, jumping, rolling, tumbling down the quarry at the rear of the
fort, and escaped without losing a man.

But we lost Fort Slatter forever. Those battle-scarred ramparts were razed
to the ground, and humiliating ashes sprinkled over the historic spot, near
which a solitary lynx-eyed policeman was seen prowling from time to time
during the rest of the winter.

The event passed into a legend, and afterwards, when later instances of
pluck and endurance were spoken of, the boys would say, "By golly! You
ought to have been at the fights on Slatter's Hill!"







Chapter Fourteen

The Cruise of the Dolphin



It was spring again. The snow had faded away like a dream, and we were
awakened, so to speak, by the sudden chirping of robins in our back garden.
Marvellous transformation of snowdrifts into lilacs, wondrous miracle of
the unfolding leaf! We read in the Holy Book how our Saviour, at the
marriage-feast, changed the water into wine; we pause and wonder; but every
hour a greater miracle is wrought at our very feet, if we have but eyes to
see it.

I had now been a year at Rivermouth. If you do not know what sort of boy I
was, it is not because I haven't been frank with you. Of my progress at
school I say little; for this is a story, pure and simple, and not a
treatise on education. Behold me, however, well up in most of the classes.
I have worn my Latin grammar into tatters, and am in the first book of
Virgil. I interlard my conversation at home with easy quotations from that
poet, and impress Captain Nutter with a lofty notion of my learning. I am
likewise translating Les Aventures de Telemaque from the French, and shall
tackle Blair's Lectures the next term. I am ashamed of my crude composition
about The Horse, and can do better now. Sometimes my head almost aches with
the variety of my knowledge. I consider Mr. Grimshaw the greatest scholar
that ever lived, and I don't know which I would rather be-a learned man
like him, or a circus rider.

My thoughts revert to this particular spring more frequently than to any
other period of my boyhood, for it was marked by an event that left an
indelible impression on my memory. As I pen these pages, I feel that I am
writing of something which happened yesterday, so vividly it all comes back
to me.

Every Rivermouth boy looks upon the sea as being in some way mixed up with
his destiny. While he is yet a baby lying in his cradle, he hears the dull,
far-off boom of the breakers; when be is older, he wanders by the sandy
shore, watching the waves that come plunging up the beach like white-maned
seahorses, as Thoreau calls them; his eye follows the lessening sail as it
fades into the blue horizon, and he burns for the time when he shall stand
on the quarter-deck of his own ship, and go sailing proudly across that
mysterious waste of waters.

Then the town itself is full of hints and flavors of the sea. The gables and
roofs of the houses facing eastward are covered with red rust, like the
flukes of old anchors; a salty smell pervades the air, and dense gray fogs,
the very breath of Ocean, periodically creep up into the quiet streets and
envelop everything. The terrific storms that lash the coast; the kelp and
spars, and sometimes the bodies of drowned men, tossed on shore by the
scornful waves; the shipyards, the wharves, and the tawny fleet of
fishing-smacks yearly fitted out at Rivermouth-these things, and a hundred
other, feed the imagination and fill the brain of every healthy boy with
dreams of adventure. He learns to swim almost as soon as he can walk; he
draws in with his mother's milk the art of handling an oar: he is born a
sailor, whatever he may turn out to be afterwards.

To own the whole or a portion of a row-boat is his earliest ambition. No
wonder that I, born to this life, and coming back to it with freshest
sympathies, should have caught the prevailing infection. No wonder I longed
to buy a part of the trim little sailboat Dolphin, which chanced just then
to be in the market. This was in the latter part of May.

Three shares, at five or six dollars each, I forget which, had already been
taken by Phil Adams, Fred Langdon, and Binny Wallace. The fourth and
remaining share hung fire. Unless a purchaser could be found for this, the
bargain was to fall through.

I am afraid I required but slight urging to join in the investment. I had
four dollars and fifty cents on hand, and the treasurer of the Centipedes
advanced me the balance, receiving my silver pencil-case as ample security.
It was a proud moment when I stood on the wharf with my partners,
inspecting the Dolphin, moored at the foot of a very slippery flight of
steps. She was painted white with a green stripe outside, and on the stern
a yellow dolphin, with its scarlet mouth wide open, stared with a surprised
expression at its own reflection in the water. The boat was a great
bargain.

I whirled my cap in the air, and ran to the stairs leading down from the
wharf, when a hand was laid gently on my shoulder. I turned and faced
Captain Nutter. I never saw such an old sharp-eye as he was in those days.

I knew he wouldn't be angry with me for buying a rowboat; but I also knew
that the little bowsprit suggesting a jib, and the tapering mast ready for
its few square feet of canvas, were trifles not likely to meet his
approval. As far as rowing on the river, among the wharves, was concerned,
the Captain had long since withdrawn his decided objections, having
convinced him-self, by going out with me several times, that I could manage
a pair of sculls as well as anybody.

I was right in my surmises. He commanded me, in the most emphatic terms,
never to go out in the Dolphin without leaving the mast in the boat-house.
This curtailed my anticipated sport, but the pleasure of having a pull
whenever I wanted it remained. I never disobeyed the Captain's orders
touching the sail, though I sometimes extended my row beyond the points he
had indicated.

The river was dangerous for sailboats. Squalls, without the slightest
warning, were of frequent occurrence; scarcely a year passed that six or
seven persons were not drowned under the very windows of the town, and
these, oddly enough, were generally sea-captains, who either did not
understand the river, or lacked the skill to handle a small craft.

A knowledge of such disasters, one of which I witnessed, consoled me
somewhat when I saw Phil Adams skimming over the water in a spanking breeze
with every stitch of canvas set. There were few better yachtsmen than Phil
Adams. He usually went sailing alone, for both Fred Langdon and Binny
Wallace were under the same restrictions I was.

Not long after the purchase of the boat, we planned an excursion to Sandpeep
Island, the last of the islands in the harbor. We proposed to start early
in the morning, and return with the tide in the moonlight. Our only
difficulty was to obtain a whole day's exemption from school, the customary
half-holiday not being long enough for our picnic. Somehow, we couldn't
work it; but fortune arranged it for us. I may say here, that, whatever
else I did, I never played truant ("hookey" we called it) in my life.

One afternoon the four owners of the Dolphin exchanged significant glances
when Mr. Grimshaw announced from the desk that there would be no school the
following day, he having just received intelligence of the death of his
uncle in Boston I was sincerely attached to Mr. Grimshaw, but I am afraid
that the death of his uncle did not affect me as it ought to have done.

We were up before sunrise the next morning, in order to take advantage of
the flood tide, which waits for no man. Our preparations for the cruise
were made the previous evening. In the way of eatables and drinkables, we
had stored in the stem of the Dolphin a generous bag of hard-tack (for the
chowder), a piece of pork to fry the cunners in, three gigantic apple-pies
(bought at Pettingil's), half a dozen lemons, and a keg of spring-water-the
last-named article we slung over the side, to keep it cool, as soon as we
got under way. The crockery and the bricks for our camp-stove we placed in
the bows, with the groceries, which included sugar, pepper, salt, and a
bottle of pickles. Phil Adams contributed to the outfit a small tent of
unbleached cotton cloth, under which we intended to take our nooning.

We unshipped the mast, threw in an extra oar, and were ready to embark. I do
not believe that Christopher Columbus, when he started on his rather
successful voyage of discovery, felt half the responsibility and importance
that weighed upon me as I sat on the middle seat of the Dolphin, with my
oar resting in the row-lock. I wonder if Christopher Columbus quietly
slipped out of the house without letting his estimable family know what he
was up to?

Charley Marden, whose father had promised to cane him if he ever stepped
foot on sail or rowboat, came down to the wharf in a sour-grape humor, to
see us off. Nothing would tempt him to go out on the river in such a crazy
clam-shell of a boat. He pretended that he did not expect to behold us
alive again, and tried to throw a wet blanket over the expedition.

"Guess you'll have a squally time of it," said Charley, casting off the
painter. "I'll drop in at old Newbury's" (Newbury was the parish
undertaker) "and leave word, as I go along!"

'Bosh!" muttered Phil Adams, sticking the boat-hook into the string-piece of
the wharf, and sending the Dolphin half a dozen yards towards the current.

How calm and lovely the river was! Not a ripple stirred on the glassy
surface, broken only by the sharp cutwater of our tiny craft. The sun, as
round and red as an August moon, was by this time peering above the
water-line.

The town had drifted behind us, and we were entering among the group of
islands. Sometimes we could almost touch with our boat-hook the shelving
banks on either side. As we neared the mouth of the harbor a little breeze
now and then wrinkled the blue water, shook the spangles from the foliage,
and gently lifted the spiral mist-wreaths that still clung along shore. The
measured dip of our oars and the drowsy twitterings of the birds seemed to
mingle with, rather than break, the enchanted silence that reigned about
us.

The scent of the new clover comes back to me now, as I recall that delicious
morning when we floated away in a fairy boat down a river like a dream!

The sun was well up when the nose of the Dolphin nestled against the
snow-white bosom of Sandpeep Island. This island, as I have said before,
was the last of the cluster, one side of it being washed by the sea. We
landed on the river-side, the sloping sands and quiet water affording us a
good place to moor the boat.

It took us an hour or two to transport our stores to the spot selected for
the encampment. Having pitched our tent, using the five oars to support the
canvas, we got out our lines, and went down the rocks seaward to fish. It
was early for cunners, but we were lucky enough to catch as nice a mess as
ever you saw. A cod for the chowder was not so easily secured. At last
Binny Wallace hauled in a plump little fellow crusted all over with flaky
silver.

To skin the fish, build our fireplace, and cook the chowder kept us busy the
next two hours. The fresh air and the exercise had given us the appetites
of wolves, and we were about famished by the time the savory mixture was
ready for our clamshell saucers.

I shall not insult the rising generation on the seaboard by telling them how
delectable is a chowder compounded and eaten in this Robinson Crusoe
fashion. As for the boys who live inland, and know naught of such marine
feasts, my heart is full of pity for them. What wasted lives! Not to know
the delights of a clam-bake, not to love chowder, to be ignorant of
lob-scouse!

How happy we were, we four, sitting crosslegged in the crisp salt grass,
with the invigorating sea-breeze blowing gratefully through our hair! What
a joyous thing was life, and how far off seemed death-death, that lurks in
all pleasant places, and was so near!

The banquet finished, Phil Adams drew from his pocket a handful of
sweet-fern cigars; but as none of the party could indulge without imminent
risk of becoming sick, we all, on one pretext or another, declined, and
Phil smoked by himself.

The wind had freshened by this, and we found it comfortable to put on the
jackets which had been thrown aside in the heat of the day. We strolled
along the beach and gathered large quantities of the fairy-woven Iceland
moss, which, at certain seasons, is washed to these shores; then we played
at ducks and drakes, and then, the sun being sufficiently low, we went in
bathing.

Before our bath was ended a slight change had come over the sky and sea;
fleecy-white clouds scudded here and there, and a muffled moan from the
breakers caught our ears from time to time. While we were dressing, a few
hurried drops of rain came lisping down, and we adjourned to the tent to
await the passing of the squall.

"We're all right, anyhow," said Phil Adams. "It won't be much of a blow, and
we'll be as snug as a bug in a rug, here in the tent, particularly if we
have that lemonade which some of you fellows were going to make."

By an oversight, the lemons had been left in the boat. Binny Wallace
volunteered to go for them.

"Put an extra stone on the painter, Binny," said Adams, calling after him;
"it would be awkward to have the Dolphin give us the slip and return to
port minus her passengers."

"That it would," answered Binny, scrambling down the rocks.

Sandpeep Island is diamond-shaped-one point running out into the sea, and
the other looking towards the town. Our tent was on the river-side. Though
the Dolphin was also on the same side, it lay out of sight by the beach at
the farther extremity of the island.

Binny Wallace had been absent five or six minutes, when we heard him calling
our several names in tones that indicated distress or surprise, we could
not tell which. Our first thought was, "The boat has broken adrift I"

We sprung to our feet and hastened down to the beach. On turning the bluff
which hid the mooring-place from our view, we found the conjecture correct.
Not only was the Dolphin afloat, but poor little Binny Wallace was standing
in the bows with his arms stretched helplessly towards us-drifting out to
sea!

"Head the boat in shore!" shouted Phil Adams.

Wallace ran to the tiller; but the slight cockle-shell merely swung round
and drifted broadside on. O, if we bad but left a single scull in the
Dolphin!

"Can you swim it?" cried Adams, desperately, using his hand as a
speaking-trumpet, for the distance between the boat and the island widened
momentarily.

Binny Wallace looked down at the sea, which was covered with white caps, and
made a despairing gesture. He knew, and we knew, that the stoutest swimmer
could not live forty seconds in those angry waters.

A wild, insane light came into Phil Adams's eyes, as he stood knee-deep in
the boiling surf, and for an instant I think he meditated plunging into the
ocean after the receding boat.

The sky darkened, and an ugly look stole rapidly over the broken surface of
the sea.

Binny Wallace half rose from his seat in the stem, and waved his hand to us
in token of farewell. In spite of the distance, increasing every instant we
could see his face plainly. The anxious expression it wore at first bad
passed. It was pale and meek now, and I love to think there was a kind of
halo about it, like that which painters place around the forehead of a
saint. So he drifted away.

The sky grew darker and darker. It was only by straining our eyes through
the unnatural twilight that we could keep the Dolphin in sight. The figure
of Binny Wallace was no longer visible, for the boat itself had dwindled to
a mere white dot on the black water. Now we lost it, and our hearts stopped
throbbing; and now the speck appeared again, for an instant, on the crest
of a high wave.

Finally, it went out like a spark, and we saw it no more. Then we gazed at
each other, and dared not speak.

Absorbed in following the course of the boat, we had scarcely noticed the
huddled inky clouds that sagged down all around us. From these threatening
masses, seamed at intervals with pale lightning, there now burst a heavy
peal of thunder that shook the ground under our feet. A sudden squall
struck the sea, ploughing deep white furrows into it, and at the same
instant a single piercing shriek rose above the tempest-the frightened cry
of a gull swooping over the island. How it startled us!

It was impossible any longer to keep our footing on the beach. The wind and
the breakers would have swept us into the ocean if we had not clung to each
other with the desperation of drowning men. Taking advantage of a momentary
lull, we crawled up the sands on our hands and knees, and, pausing in the
lee of the granite ledge to gain breath, returned to the camp, where we
found that the gale had snapped all the fastenings of the tent but one.
Held by this, the puffed-out canvas swayed in the wind like a balloon. It
was a task of some difficulty to secure it, which we did by beating down
the canvas with the oars.

After several trials, we succeeded in setting up the tent on the leeward
side of the ledge. Blinded by the vivid flashes of lightning, and drenched
by the rain, which fell in torrents, we crept, half dead with fear and
anguish, under our flimsy shelter. Neither the anguish nor the fear was on
our own account, for we were comparatively safe, but for poor little Binny
Wallace, driven out to sea in the merciless gale. We shuddered to think of
him in that frail shell, drifting on and on to his grave, the sky rent with
lightning over his head, and the green abysses yawning beneath him. We fell
to crying, the three of us, and cried I know not how long.

Meanwhile the storm raged with augmented fury. We were obliged to hold on to
the ropes of the tent to prevent it blowing away. The spray from the river
leaped several yards up the rocks and clutched at us malignantly. The very
island trembled with the concussions of the sea beating upon it, and at
times I fancied that it had broken loose from its foundation, and was
floating off with us. The breakers, streaked with angry phosphorus, were
fearful to look at.

The wind rose higher and higher, cutting long slits in the tent, through
which the rain poured incessantly. To complete the sum of our miseries, the
night was at hand. It came down suddenly, at last, like a curtain, shutting
in Sandpeep island from all the world.

It was a dirty night, as the sailors say. The darkness was something that
could be felt as well as seen-it pressed down upon one with a cold, clammy
touch. Gazing into the hollow blackness, all sorts of imaginable shapes
seemed to start forth from vacancy-brilliant colors, stars, prisms, and
dancing lights. What boy, lying awake at night, has not amused or terrified
himself by peopling the spaces around his bed with these phenomena of his
own eyes?

"I say," whispered Fred Langdon, at length, clutching my hand, "don't you
see things-out there-in the dark?' 20

"Yes, yes-Binny Wallace's face!"

I added to my own nervousness by making this avowal; though for the last ten
minutes I had seen little besides that star-pale face with its angelic hair
and brows. First a slim yellow circle, like the nimbus round the moon, took
shape and grew sharp against the darkness; then this faded gradually, and
there was the Face, wearing the same sad, sweet look it wore when he waved
his hand to us across the awful water. This optical illusion kept repeating
itself.

"And I too," said Adams. "I see it every now and then, outside there. What
wouldn't I give if it really was poor little Wallace looking in at us! O
boys, how shall we dare to go back to the town without him? I've wished a
hundred times, since we've been sitting here, that I was in his place,
alive or dead!"

We dreaded the approach of morning as much as we longed for it. The morning
would tell us all. Was it possible for the Dolphin to outride such a storm?
There was a light-house on Mackerel Reef, which lay directly in the course
the boat bad taken, when it disappeared. If the Dolphin had caught on this
reef, perhaps Binny Wallace was safe. Perhaps his cries had been heard by
the keeper of the light. The man owned a lifeboat, and had rescued several
people. Who could tell?

Such were the questions we asked ourselves again and again, as we lay in
each other's arms waiting for daybreak. What an endless night it was! I
have known months that did not seem so long.

Our position was irksome rather than perilous; for the day was certain to
bring us relief from the town, where our prolonged absence, together with
the storm, had no doubt excited the liveliest alarm for our safety. But the
cold, the darkness, and the suspense were hard to bear.

Our soaked jackets bad chilled us to the bone. To keep warm, we lay huddled
together so closely that we could bear our hearts beat above the tumult of
sea and sky.

After a while we grew very hungry, not having broken our fast since early in
the day. The rain had turned the hard-tack into a sort of dough; but it was
better than nothing.

We used to laugh at Fred Langdon for always carrying in his pocket a small
vial of essence of peppermint or sassafras, a few drops of which, sprinkled
on a lump of loaf-sugar, he seemed to consider a great luxury. I don't know
what would have become of us at this crisis, if it hadn't been for that
omnipresent bottle of hot stuff. We poured the stinging liquid over our
sugar, which bad kept dry in a sardine-box, and warmed ourselves with
frequent doses.

After four or five hours the rain ceased, the wind died away to a moan, and
the sea-no longer raging like a maniac-sobbed and sobbed with a piteous
human voice all along the coast. And well it might, after that night's
work. Twelve sail of the Gloucester fishing fleet had gone down with every
soul on board, just outside of Whale's-back Light. Think of the wide grief
that follows in the wake of one wreck; then think of the despairing women
who wrung their hands and wept, the next morning, in the streets of
Gloucester, Marblehead, and Newcastle!

Though our strength was nearly spent, we were too cold to sleep. Once I sunk
into a troubled doze, when I seemed to bear Charley Marden's parting words,
only it was the Sea that said them. After that I threw off the drowsiness
whenever it threatened to overcome me.

Fred Langdon was the earliest to discover a filmy, luminous streak in the
sky, the first glimmering of sunrise.

"Look, it is nearly daybreak!"

While we were following the direction of his finger, a sound of distant oars
fell on our ears.

We listened breathlessly, and as the dip of the blades became more audible,
we discerned two foggy lights, like will-o'the-wisps, floating on the
river.

Running down to the water's edge, we hailed the boats with all our might.
The call was heard, for the oars rested a moment in the row-locks, and then
pulled in towards the island.

It was two boats from the town, in the foremost of which we could now make
out the figures of Captain Nutter and Binny Wallace's father. We shrunk
back on seeing him.

'Thank God!" cried Mr. Wallace, fervently, as he leaped from the wherry
without waiting for the bow to touch the beach.

But when he saw only three boys standing on the sands, his eye wandered
restlessly about in quest of the fourth; then a deadly pallor overspread
his features.

Our story was soon told. A solemn silence fell upon the crowd of rough
boatmen gathered round, interrupted only by a stifled sob from one poor old
man, who stood apart from the rest.

The sea was still running too high for any small boat to venture out; so it
was arranged that the wherry should take us back to town, leaving the yawl,
with a picked crew, to hug the island until daybreak, and then set forth in
search of the Dolphin.

Though it was barely sunrise when we reached town, there were a great many
people assembled at the landing eager for intelligence from missing boats.
Two picnic parties had started down river the day before, just previous to
the gale, and nothing had been beard of them. It turned out that the
pleasure-seekers saw their danger in time, and ran ashore on one of the
least exposed islands, where they passed the night. Shortly after our own
arrival they appeared off Rivermouth, much to the joy of their friends, in
two shattered, dismasted boats.

The excitement over, I was in a forlorn state, physically and mentally.
Captain Nutter put me to bed between hot blankets, and sent Kitty Collins
for the doctor. I was wandering in my mind, and fancied myself still on
Sandpeep Island: now we were building our brick-stove to cook the chowder,
and, in my delirium, I laughed aloud and shouted to my comrades; now the
sky darkened, and the squall struck the island: now I gave orders to
Wallace how to manage the boat, and now I cried because the rain was
pouring in on me through the holes in the tent. Towards evening a high
fever set in, and it was many days before my grandfather deemed it prudent
to tell me that the Dolphin had been found, floating keel upwards, four
miles southeast of Mackerel Reef.

Poor little Binny Wallace! How strange it seemed, when I went to school
again, to see that empty seat in the fifth row! How gloomy the playground
was, lacking the sunshine of his gentle, sensitive face! One day a folded
sheet slipped from my algebra; it was the last note he ever wrote me. I
couldn't read it for the tears.

What a pang shot across my heart the afternoon it was whispered through the
town that a body had been washed ashore at Grave Point-the place where we
bathed. We bathed there no more! How well I remember the funeral, and what
a piteous sight it was afterwards to see his familiar name on a small
headstone in the Old South Burying Ground!

Poor little Binny Wallace! Always the same to me. The rest of us have grown
up into hard, worldly men, fighting the fight of life; but you are forever
young, and gentle, and pure; a part of my own childhood that time cannot
wither; always a little boy, always poor little Binny Wallace!







Chapter Fifteen

An Old Acquaintance Turns Up



A year had stolen by since the death of Binny Wallace-a year of which I have
nothing important to record.

The loss of our little playmate threw a shadow over our young lives for many
and many a month. The Dolphin rose and fell with the tide at the foot of
the slippery steps, unused, the rest of the summer. At the close of
November we hauled her sadly into the boat-house for the winter; but when
spring came round we launched the Dolphin again, and often went down to the
wharf and looked at her lying in the tangled eel-grass, without much
inclination to take a row. The associations connected with the boat were
too painful as yet; but time, which wears the sharp edge from everything,
softened this feeling, and one afternoon we brought out the cobwebbed oars.

The ice once broken, brief trips along the wharves-we seldom cared to go out
into the river now-became one of our chief amusements. Meanwhile Gypsy was
not forgotten. Every clear morning I was in the saddle before breakfast,
and there are few roads or lanes within ten miles of Rivermouth that have
not borne the print of her vagrant hoof.

I studied like a good fellow this quarter, carrying off a couple of first
prizes. The Captain expressed his gratification by presenting me with a new
silver dollar. If a dollar in his eyes was smaller than a cart-wheel, it
wasn't so very much smaller. I redeemed my pencil-case from the treasurer
of the Centipedes, and felt that I was getting on in the world.

It was at this time I was greatly cast down by a letter from my father
saying that he should be unable to visit Rivermouth until the following
year. With that letter came another to Captain Nutter, which he did not
read aloud to the family, as usual. It was on business, he said, folding it
up in his wallet. He received several of these business letters from time
to time, and I noticed that they always made him silent and moody.

The fact is, my father's banking-house was not thriving. The unlooked-for
failure of a firm largely indebted to him had crippled "the house." When
the Captain imparted this information to me I didn't trouble myself over
the matter. I supposed-if I supposed anything-that all grown-up people had
more or less money, when they wanted it. Whether they inherited it, or
whether government supplied them, was not clear to me. A loose idea that my
father had a private gold-mine somewhere or other relieved me of all
uneasiness.

I was not far from right. Every man has within himself a gold-mine whose
riches are limited only by his own industry. It is true, it sometimes
happens that industry does not avail, if a man lacks that something which,
for want of a better name, we call Luck. My father was a person of untiring
energy and ability; but he had no luck. To use a Rivermouth saying, he was
always catching sculpins when everyone else with the same bait was catching
mackerel.

It was more than two years since I had seen my parents. I felt that I could
not bear a longer separation. Every letter from New Orleans-we got two or
three a month-gave me a fit of homesickness; and when it was definitely
settled that my father and mother were to remain in the South another
twelvemonth, I resolved to go to them.

Since Binny Wallace's death, Pepper Whitcomb had been my fidus Achates; we
occupied desks near each other at school, and were always together in play
hours. We rigged a twine telegraph from his garret window to the scuttle of
the Nutter House, and sent messages to each other in a match-box. We shared
our pocket-money and our secrets-those amazing secrets which boys have. We
met in lonely places by stealth, and parted like conspirators; we couldn't
buy a jackknife or build a kite without throwing an air of mystery and
guilt over the transaction.

I naturally hastened to lay my New Orleans project before Pepper Whitcomb,
having dragged him for that purpose to a secluded spot in the dark pine
woods outside the town. Pepper listened to me with a gravity which he will
not be able to surpass when he becomes Chief Justice, and strongly advised
me to go.

"The summer vacation," said Pepper, "lasts six weeks; that will give you a
fortnight to spend in New Orleans, allowing two weeks each way for the
journey."

I wrung his hand and begged him to accompany me, offering to defray all the
expenses. I wasn't anything if I wasn't princely in those days. After
considerable urging, he consented to go on terms so liberal. The whole
thing was arranged; there was nothing to do now but to advise Captain
Nutter of my plan, which I did the next day.

The possibility that he might oppose the tour never entered my head. I was
therefore totally unprepared for the vigorous negative which met my
proposal. I was deeply mortified, moreover, for there was Pepper Whitcomb
on the wharf, at the foot of the street, waiting for me to come and let him
know what day we were to start.

"Go to New Orleans? Go to Jericho I" exclaimed Captain Nutter. "You'd look
pretty, you two, philandering off, like the babes in the wood, twenty-five
hundred miles, 'with all the world before-you where to choose!'"

And the Captain's features, which had worn an indignant air as he began the
sentence, relaxed into a broad smile. Whether it was at the felicity of his
own quotation, or at the mental picture he drew of Pepper and myself on our
travels

I couldn't tell, and I didn't care. I was heart-broken. How could I face my
chum after all the dazzling inducements I had held out to him?

My grandfather, seeing that I took the matter seriously, pointed out the
difficulties of such a journey and the great expense involved. He entered
into the details of my father's money troubles, and succeeded in making it
plain to me that my wishes, under the circumstances, were somewhat
unreasonable. It was in no cheerful mood that I joined Pepper at the end of
the wharf.

I found that young gentleman leaning against the bulkhead gazing intently
towards the islands in the harbor. He had formed a telescope of his hands,
and was so occupied with his observations as to be oblivious of my
approach.

"Hullo!" cried Pepper, dropping his hands. "Look there! Isn't that a bark
coming up the Narrows?"

"Where?"

"Just at the left of Fishcrate Island. Don't you see the foremast peeping
above the old derrick?"

Sure enough it was a vessel of considerable size, slowly beating up to town.
In a few moments more the other two masts were visible above the green
hillocks.

"Fore-topmasts blown away," said Pepper. "Putting in for repairs, I guess."

As the bark lazily crept from behind the last of the islands, she let go her
anchors and swung round with the tide. Then the gleeful chant of the
sailors at the capstan came to us pleasantly across the water. The vessel
lay within three quarters of a mile of us, and we could plainly see the men
at the davits lowering the starboard long-boat. It no sooner touched the
stream than a dozen of the crew scrambled like mice over the side of the
merchantman.

In a neglected seaport like Rivermouth the arrival of a large ship is an
event of moment. The prospect of having twenty or thirty jolly tars let
loose on the peaceful town excites divers emotions among the inhabitants.
The small shopkeepers along the wharves anticipate a thriving trade; the
proprietors of the two rival boarding-houses-the "Wee Drop" and the
"Mariner's Home"-hasten down to the landing to secure lodgers; and the
female population of Anchor Lane turn out to a woman, for a ship fresh from
sea is always full of possible husbands and long-lost prodigal sons.

But aside from this there is scant welcome given to a ship's crew in
Rivermouth. The toil-worn mariner is a sad fellow ashore, judging him by a
severe moral standard.

Once, I remember, a United States frigate came into port for repairs after a
storm. She lay in the river a fortnight or more, and every day sent us a
gang of sixty or seventy of our country's gallant defenders, who spread
themselves over the town, doing all sorts of mad things. They were
good-natured enough, but full of old Sancho. The "Wee Drop" proved a drop
too much for many of them. They went singing through the streets at
midnight, wringing off door-knockers, shinning up water-spouts, and
frightening the Oldest Inhabitant nearly to death by popping their heads
into his second-story window, and shouting "Fire!" One morning a
blue-jacket was discovered in a perilous plight, half-way up the steeple of
the South Church, clinging to the lightning-rod. How he got there nobody
could tell, not even blue-jacket himself. All he knew was, that the leg of
his trousers had caught on a nail, and there he stuck, unable to move
either way. It cost the town twenty dollars to get him down again. He
directed the workmen how to splice the ladders brought to his assistance,
and called his rescuers "butter-fingered land-lubbers" with delicious
coolness.

But those were man-of-war's men: The sedate-looking craft now lying off
Fishcrate Island wasn't likely to carry any such cargo. Nevertheless, we
watched the coming in of the long-boat with considerable interest.

As it drew near, the figure of the man pulling the bow-oar seemed oddly
familiar to me. Where could I have seen him before? When and where? His
back was towards me, but there was something about that closely cropped
head that I recognized instantly.

"Way enough!" cried the steersman, and all the oars stood upright in the
air. The man in the bow seized the boat-hook, and, turning round quickly,
showed me the honest face of Sailor Ben of the Typhoon.

"It's Sailor Ben!" I cried, nearly pushing Pepper Whitcomb overboard in my
excitement.

Sailor Ben, with the wonderful pink lady on his arm, and the ships and stars
and anchors tattooed all over him, was a well-known hero among my
playmates. And there he was, like something in a dream come true!

I didn't wait for my old acquaintance to get firmly on the wharf, before I
grasped his hand in both of mine.

"Sailor Ben, don't you remember me?"

He evidently did not. He shifted his quid from one cheek to the other, and
looked at me meditatively.

"Lord love ye, lad, I don't know you. I was never here afore in my life."

"What!" I cried, enjoying his perplexity. "Have you forgotten the voyage
from New Orleans in the Typhoon, two years ago, you lovely old
picture-book?"

Ah! then he knew me, and in token of the recollection gave my hand such a
squeeze that I am sure an unpleasant change came over my countenance.

"Bless my eyes, but you have growed so. I shouldn't have knowed you if I had
met you in Singapore!"

Without stopping to inquire, as I was tempted to do, why he was more likely
to recognize me in Singapore than anywhere else, I invited him to come at
once up to the Nutter House, where I insured him a warm welcome from the
Captain.

"Hold steady, Master Tom," said Sailor Ben, slipping the painter through the
ringbolt and tying the loveliest knot you ever saw; "hold steady till I see
if the mate can let me off. If you please, sir," he continued, addressing
the steersman, a very red-faced, bow-legged person, "this here is a little
shipmate o' mine as wants to talk over back times along of me, if so it's
convenient."

"All right, Ben," returned the mate; "sha'n't want you for an hour."

Leaving one man in charge of the boat, the mate and the rest of the crew
went off together. In the meanwhile Pepper Whitcomb had got out his
cunner-line, and was quietly fishing at the end of the wharf, as if to give
me the idea that he wasn't so very much impressed by my intimacy with so
renowned a character as Sailor Ben. Perhaps Pepper was a little jealous. At
any rate, he refused to go with us to the house.

Captain Nutter was at home reading the Rivennouth Barnacle. He was a reader
to do an editor's heart good; he never skipped over an advertisement, even
if he had read it fifty times before. Then the paper went the rounds of the
neighborhood, among the poor people, like the single portable eye which the
three blind crones passed to each other in the legend of King Acrisius. The
Captain, I repeat, was wandering in the labyrinths of the Rivermouth
Barnacle when I led Sailor Ben into the sitting-room.

My grandfather, whose inborn courtesy knew no distinctions, received my
nautical friend as if he had been an admiral instead of a common
forecastle-hand. Sailor Ben pulled an imaginary tuft of hair on his
forehead, and bowed clumsily. Sailors have a way of using their forelock as
a sort of handle to bow with.

The old tar had probably never been in so handsome an apartment in all his
days, and nothing could induce him to take the inviting mahogany chair
which the Captain wheeled out from the corner.

The abashed mariner stood up against the wall, twirling his tarpaulin in his
two hands and looking extremely silly. He made a poor show in a gentleman's
drawing-room, but what a fellow he had been in his day, when the gale blew
great guns and the topsails wanted reefing! I thought of him with the
Mexican squadron off Vera Cruz, where,

'The rushing battle-bolt sung from the three-decker out of the

foam,"

and he didn't seem awkward or ignoble to me, for all his shyness.

As Sailor Ben declined to sit down, the Captain did not resume his seat; so
we three stood in a constrained manner until my grandfather went to the
door and called to Kitty to bring in a decanter of Madeira and two glasses.

"My grandson, here, has talked so much about you," said the Captain,
pleasantly, "that you seem quite like an old acquaintance to me."

"Thankee, sir, thankee," returned Sailor Ben, looking as guilty as if he had
been detected in picking a pocket.

"And I'm very glad to see you, Mr.-Mr.-"

"Sailor Ben," suggested that worthy.

"Mr. Sailor Ben," added the Captain, smiling. "Tom, open the door, there's
Kitty with the glasses."

I opened the door, and Kitty entered the room bringing the things on a
waiter, which she was about to set on the table, when suddenly she uttered
a loud shriek; the decanter and glasses fell with a crash to the floor, and
Kitty, as white as a sheet, was seen flying through the hall.

"It's his wraith! It's his wraith!"' we heard Kitty shrieking in the
kitchen.

My grandfather and I turned with amazement to Sailor Ben. His eyes were
standing out of his head like a lobster's.

"It's my own little Irish lass!" shouted the sailor, and he darted into the
hall after her.

Even then we scarcely caught the meaning of his words, but when we saw
Sailor Ben and Kitty sobbing on each other's shoulder in the kitchen, we
understood it all.

"I begs your honor's parden, sir," said Sailor Ben, lifting his tear-stained
face above Kitty's tumbled hair; "I begs your honor's parden for kicking up
a rumpus in the house, but it's my own little Irish lass as I lost so long
ago!"

"Heaven preserve us!" cried the Captain, blowing his nose violently-a
transparent ruse to hide his emotion.

Miss Abigail was in an upper chamber, sweeping; but on hearing the unusual
racket below, she scented an accident and came ambling downstairs with a
bottle of the infallible hot-drops in her hand. Nothing but the firmness of
my grandfather prevented her from giving Sailor Ben a table-spoonful on the
spot. But when she learned what had come about-that this was Kitty's
husband, that Kitty Collins wasn't Kitty Collins now, but Mrs. Benjamin
Watson of Nantucket-the good soul sat down on the meal-chest and sobbed as
if-to quote from Captain Nutter-as if a husband of her own had turned up!

A happier set of people than we were never met together in a dingy kitchen
or anywhere else. The Captain ordered a fresh decanter of Madeira, and made
all hands, excepting myself, drink a cup to the return of "the prodigal
sea-son," as he persisted in calling Sailor Ben.

After the first flush of joy and surprise was over Kitty grew silent and
constrained. Now and then she fixed her eyes thoughtfully on her husband.
Why had he deserted her all these years? What right had he to look for a
welcome from one he had treated so cruelly? She had been true to him, but
had he been true to her? Sailor Ben must have guessed what was passing in
her mind, for presently he took her hand and said- "Well, lass, it's a long
yarn, but you shall have it all in good time. It was my hard luck as made
us part company, an' no will of mine, for I loved you dear."

Kitty brightened up immediately, needing no other assurance of Sailor Ben's
faithfulness.

When his hour had expired, we walked with him down to the wharf, where the
Captain held a consultation with the mate, which resulted in an extension
of Mr. Watson's leave of absence, and afterwards in his discharge from his
ship. We then went to the "Mariner's Home" to engage a room for him, as he
wouldn't hear of accepting the hospitalities of the Nutter House.

"You see, I'm only an uneddicated man," he remarked to my grandfather, by
way of explanation.







Chapter Sixteen

In Which Sailor Ben Spins a Yarn



Of course we were all very curious to learn what had befallen Sailor Ben
that morning long ago, when he bade his little bride goodby and disappeared
so mysteriously.

After tea, that same evening, we assembled around the table in the
kitchen-the only place where Sailor Ben felt at home3/4to hear what he had
to say for himself.

The candles were snuffed, and a pitcher of foaming nut-brown ale was set at
the elbow of the speaker, who was evidently embarrassed by the
respectability of his audience, consisting of Captain Nutter, Miss Abigail,
myself, and Kitty, whose face shone with happiness like one of the polished
tin platters on the dresser.

"Well, my hearties," commenced Sailor Ben-then he stopped short and turned
very red, as it struck him that maybe this was not quite the proper way to
address a dignitary like the Captain and a severe elderly lady like Miss
Abigail Nutter, who sat bolt upright staring at him as she would have
stared at the Tycoon of Japan himself.

"I ain't much of a hand at spinnin' a yarn," remarked Sailor Ben,
apologetically, "'specially when the yarn is all about a man as has made a
fool of hisself, an' 'specially when that man's name is Benjamin Watson."

"Bravo!" cried Captain Nutter, rapping on the table encouragingly.

"Thankee, sir, thankee. I go back to the time when Kitty an' me was livin'
in lodgin's by the dock in New York. We was as happy, sir, as two
porpusses, which they toil not neither do they spin. But when I seed the
money gittin' low in the locker-Kitty's starboard stockin', savin' your
presence, marm-I got down-hearted like, seem' as I should be obleeged to
ship agin, for it didn't seem as I could do much ashore. An' then the sea
was my nat'ral spear of action. I wasn't exactly born on it, look you, but
I fell into it the fust time I was let out arter my birth. My mother
slipped her cable for a heavenly port afore I was old enough to hail her;
so I larnt to look on the ocean for a sort of step-mother-an' a precious
hard one she has been to me.

"The idee of leavin' Kitty so soon arter our marriage went agin my grain
considerable. I cruised along the docks for some-thin' to do in the way of
stevedore: an' though I picked up a stray job here and there, I didn't am
enough to buy ship-bisket for a rat; let alone feedin' two human mouths.
There wasn't nothin' honest I wouldn't have turned a hand to; but the
'longshoremen gobbled up all the work, an' a outsider like me didn't stand
a show.

"Things got from bad to worse; the month's rent took all our cash except a
dollar or so, an' the sky looked kind o' squally fore an' aft. Well, I set
out one mornin'-that identical unlucky mornin'-determined to come back an'
toss some pay into Kitty's lap, if I had to sell my jacket for it. I spied
a brig unloadin' coal at pier No. 47-how well I remembers it! I hailed the
mate, an' offered myself for a coal-heaver. But I wasn't wanted, as he told
me civilly enough, which was better treatment than usual. As I turned off
rather glum I was signalled by one of them sleek, smooth-spoken rascals
with a white hat an' a weed on it, as is always goin' about the piers
a-seekin' who they may devower.

"We sailors know 'em for rascals from stem to starn, but somehow every fresh
one fleeces us jest as his mate did afore him. We don't lam nothin' by
exper'ence; we're jest no better than a lot of babys with no brains.

"'Good mornin', my man,' sez the chap, as iley as you please.

"'Mornin', sir,' sez I.

"'Lookin' for a job?' sez he.

"'Through the big end of a telescope,' sez 1-meanin' that the chances for a
job looked very small from my pint of view.

"'You're the man for my money,' sez the sharper, smilin' as innocent as a
cherubim; 'jest step in here, till we talk it over.'

"So I goes with him like a nat'ral-born idiot, into a little grocery-shop
near by, where we sets down at a table with a bottle atween us. Then it
comes out as there is a New Bedford whaler about to start for the fishin'
grounds, an' jest one able-bodied sailor like me is wanted to make up the
crew. Would I go? Yes, I wouldn't on no terms.

"'I'll bet you fifty dollars,' sez he, 'that you'll come back fust mate.'

"'I'll bet you a hundred,' sez I, 'that I don't, for I've signed papers as
keeps me ashore, an' the parson has witnessed the deed.'

"So we sat there, he urgin' me to ship, an' I chaffin' him cheerful over the
bottle.

"Arter a while I begun to feel a little queer; things got foggy in my upper
works, an' I remembers, faint-like, of signin' a paper; then I remembers
bein' in a small boat; an' then I remembers nothin' until I heard the
mate's whistle pipin' all hands on deck. I tumbled up with the rest; an'
there I was-on board of a whaler outward bound for a three years' cruise,
an' my dear little lass ashore awaitin' for me."

"Miserable wretch!" said Miss Abigail, in a voice that vibrated among the
tin platters on the dresser. This was Miss Abigail's way of testifying her
sympathy.

"Thankee, marm," returned Sailor Ben, doubtfully.

"No talking to the man at the wheel," cried the Captain. Upon which we all
laughed. "Spin!" added my grandfather.

Sailor Ben resumed:

"I leave you to guess the wretchedness as fell upon me, for I've not got the
gift to tell you. There I was down on the ship's books for a three years'
viage, an' no help for it. I feel nigh to six hundred years old when I
think how long that viage was. There isn't no hour-glass as runs slow
enough to keep a tally of the slowness of them fust hours. But I done my
duty like a man, seem' there wasn't no way of gettin' out of it. I told my
shipmates of the trick as had been played on me, an they tried to cheer me
up a bit; but I was sore sorrowful for a long spell. Many a night on watch
I put my face in my hands and sobbed for thinkin' of the little woman left
among the land-sharks, an' no man to have an eye on her, God bless her!"

Here Kitty softly drew her chair nearer to Sailor Ben, and rested one hand
on his arm.

"Our adventures among the whales, I take it, doesn't consarn the present
company here assembled. So I give that the go by. There's an end to
everythin', even to a whalin' viage. My heart all but choked me the day we
put into New Bedford with our cargo of ile. I got my three years' pay in a
lump, an' made for New York like a flash of lightuin'. The people hove to
and looked at me, as I rushed through the streets like a madman, until I
came to the spot where the lodgin'-house stood on West Street. But, Lord
love ye, there wasn't no sech lodgin'-house there, but a great new brick
shop.

"I made bold to go in an' ask arter the old place, but nobody knowed nothin'
about it, save as it had been torn down two years or more. I was adrift
now, for I had reckoned all them days and nights on gittin' word of Kitty
from Dan Shackford, the man as kept the lodgin'.

"As I stood there with all the wind knocked out of my sails, the idee of
runnin' alongside the perlice-station popped into my head. The perlice was
likely to know the latitude of a man like Dan Shackford, who wasn't over
an' above respecktible. They did know-he had died in the Tombs jail that
day twelvemonth. A coincydunce, wasn't it? I was ready to drop when they
told me this; howsomever, I bore up an' give the chief a notion of the fix
I was in. He writ a notice which I put into the newspapers every day for
three months; but nothin' come of it. I cruised over the city week in and
week out I went to every sort of place where they hired women hands; I
didn't leave a think undone that a uneddicated man could do. But nothin'
come of it. I don't believe there was a wretcheder soul in that big city of
wretchedness than me. Sometimes I wanted to lay down in the sheets and die.

"Drif tin' disconsolate one day among the shippin', who should I overhaul
but the identical smooth-spoken chap with a white hat an' a weed on it! I
didn't know if there was any spent left in me, till I clapped eye on his
very onpleasant countenance. 'You villain!' sez I, 'where's my little Irish
lass as you dragged me away from?' an' I lighted on him, hat and all, like
that!"

Here Sailor Ben brought his fist down on the deal table with the force of a
sledge-hammer. Miss Abigail gave a start, and the ale leaped up in the
pitcher like a miniature fountain.

"I begs your parden, ladies and gentlemen all; but the thought of that
feller with his ring an' his watch-chain an' his walrus face, is alus too
many for me. I was for pitchin' him into the North River, when a perliceman
prevented me from benefitin' the human family. I had to pay five dollars
for hittin' the chap (they said it was salt and buttery), an' that's what I
call a neat, genteel luxury. It was worth double the money jest to see that
white hat, with a weed on it, layin' on the wharf like a busted accordiun.

"Arter months of useless sarch, I went to sea agin. I never got into a foren
port but I kept a watch out for Kitty. Once I thought I seed her in
Liverpool, but it was only a gal as looked like her. The numbers of women
in different parts of the world as looked like her was amazin'. So a good
many years crawled by, an' I wandered from place to place, never givin' up
the sarch. I might have been chief mate scores of times, maybe master; but
I hadn't no ambition. I seed many strange things in them years-outlandish
people an' cities, storms, shipwracks, an' battles. I seed many a true mate
go down, an' sometimes I envied them what went to their rest. But these
things is neither here nor there.

"About a year ago I shipped on board the Belphcebe yonder, an' of all the
strange winds as ever blowed, the strangest an' the best was the wind as
blowed me to this here blessed spot. I can't be too thankful. That I'm as
thankful as it is possible for an uneddicated man to be, He knows as reads
the heart of all."

Here ended Sailor Ben's yarn, which I have written down in his own homely
words as nearly as I can recall them. After he had finished, the Captain
shook hands with him and served out the ale.

As Kitty was about to drink, she paused, rested the cup on her knee, and
asked what day of the month it was.

"The twenty-seventh," said the Captain, wondering what she was driving at.

"Then," cried Kitty, "it's ten years this night sence-"

"Since what?" asked my grandfather.

"Sence the little lass and I got spliced!" roared Sailor Ben. "There's
another coincydunce for you!"

On hearing this we all clapped hands, and the Captain, with a degree of
ceremony that was almost painful, drank a bumper to the health and
happiness of the bride and bridegroom.

It was a pleasant sight to see the two old lovers sitting side by side, in
spite of all, drinking from the same little cup-a battered zinc dipper
which Sailor Ben had unslung from a strap round his waist. I think I never
saw him without this dipper and a sheath-knife suspended just back of his
hip, ready for any convivial occasion.

We had a merry time of it. The Captain was in great force this evening, and
not only related his famous exploit in the War of 1812, but regaled the
company with a dashing sea-song from Mr. Shakespeare's play of The Tempest.
He had a mellow tenor voice (not Shakespeare, but the Captain), and rolled
out the verse with a will:



"The master, the swabber, the boatswain, and I,

The gunner, and his mate,

Lov'd Mall, Meg, and Marian, and Margery,

But none of us car'd for Kate."



"A very good song, and very well sung," says Sailor Ben; "but some of us
does care for Kate. Is this Mr. Shawkspear a seafarm' man, sir?"
"Not at present," replied the Captain, with a monstrous twinkle in his eye.

The clock was striking ten when the party broke up. The Captain walked to
the "Mariner's Home" with his guest, in order to question him regarding his
future movements.

"Well, sir," said he, "I ain't as young as I was, an' I don't cal'ulate to
go to sea no more. I proposes to drop anchor here, an' hug the land until
the old hulk goes to pieces. I've got two or three thousand dollars in the
locker, an' expects to get on uncommon comfortable without askin' no odds
from the Assylum for Decayed Mariners."

My grandfather indorsed the plan warmly, and Sailor Ben did drop anchor in
Rivermouth, where he speedily became one of the institutions of the town.

His first step was to buy a small one-story cottage located at the head of
the wharf, within gun-shot of the Nutter House. To the great amusement of
my grandfather, Sailor Ben painted the cottage a light sky-blue, and ran a
broad black stripe around it just under the eaves. In this stripe he
painted white port-holes, at regular distances, making his residence look
as much like a man-of-war as possible. With a short flag-staff projecting
over the door like a bowsprit, the effect was quite magical. My description
of the exterior of this palatial residence is complete when I add that the
proprietor nailed a horseshoe against the front door to keep off the
witches-a very necessary precaution in these latitudes.

The inside of Sailor Ben's abode was not less striking than the outside. The
cottage contained two rooms; the one opening on the wharf he called his
cabin; here he ate and slept. His few tumblers and a frugal collection of
crockery were set in a rack suspended over the table, which had a cleat of
wood nailed round the edge to prevent the dishes from sliding off in case
of a heavy sea. Hanging against the walls were three or four highly colored
prints of celebrated frigates, and a lithograph picture of a rosy young
woman insufficiently clad in the American flag. This was labelled "Kitty,"
though I'm sure it looked no more like her than I did. A walrus-tooth with
an Esquimaux engraved on it, a shark's jaw, and the blade of a sword-fish
were among the enviable decorations of this apartment. In one corner stood
his bunk, or bed, and in the other his well-worn sea-chest, a perfect
Pandora's box of mysteries. You would have thought yourself in the cabin of
a real ship.

The little room aft, separated from the cabin by a sliding door, was the
caboose. It held a cooking-stove, pots, pans, and groceries; also a lot of
fishing-lines and coils of tarred twine, which made the place smell like a
forecastle, and a delightful smell it is-to those who fancy it.

Kitty didn't leave our service, but played housekeeper for both
establishments, returning at night to Sailor Ben's. He shortly added a
wherry to his worldly goods, and in the fishing season made a very handsome
income. During the winter he employed himself manufacturing crab-nets, for
which he found no lack of customers.

His popularity among the boys was immense. A jackknife in his expert hand
was a whole chest of tools. He could whittle out anything from a wooden
chain to a Chinese pagoda, or a full-rigged seventy-four a foot long. To
own a ship of Sailor Ben's building was to be exalted above your
fellow-creatures. He didn't carve many, and those he refused to sell,
choosing to present them to his young friends, of whom Tom Bailey, you may
be sure, was one.

How delightful it was of winter nights to sit in his cosey cabin, close to
the ship's stove (he wouldn't hear of having a fireplace), and listen to
Sailor Ben's yarns! In the early summer twilights, when he sat on the
door-step splicing a rope or mending a net, he always had a bevy of
blooming young faces alongside.

The dear old fellow! How tenderly the years touched him after this-all the
more tenderly, it seemed, for having roughed him so cruelly in other days!







Chapter Seventeen

How We Astonished the Rivermouthians



Sailor Ben's arrival partly drove the New Orleans project from my brain.
Besides, there was just then a certain movement on foot by the Centipede
Club which helped to engross my attention.

Pepper Whitcomb took the Captain's veto philosophically, observing that he
thought from the first the governor wouldn't let me go. I don't think
Pepper was quite honest in that.

But to the subject in hand.

Among the few changes that have taken place in Rivermouth during the past
twenty years there is one which I regret. I lament the removal of all those
varnished iron cannon which used to do duty as posts at the corners of
streets leading from the river. They were quaintly ornamental, each set
upon end with a solid shot soldered into its mouth, and gave to that part
of the town a picturesqueness very poorly atoned for by the conventional
wooden stakes that have deposed them.

These guns ("old sogers" the boys called them) had their story, like
everything else in Rivermouth. When that everlasting last war-the War of
1812, I mean-came to an end, all the brigs, schooners, and barks fitted out
at this port as privateers were as eager to get rid of their useless
twelve-pounders and swivels as they had previously been to obtain them.
Many of the pieces had cost large sums, and now they were little better
than so much crude iron-not so good, in fact, for they were clumsy things
to break up and melt over. The government didn't want them; private
citizens didn't want them; they were a drug in the market.

But there was one man, ridiculous beyond his generation, who got it into his
head that a fortune was to be made out of these same guns. To buy them all,
to hold on to them until war was declared again (as he had no doubt it
would be in a few months), and then sell out at fabulous prices-this was
the daring idea that addled the pate of Silas Trefethen, "Dealer in E. & W.
I. Goods and Groceries," as the faded sign over his shop-door informed the
public.

Silas went shrewdly to work, buying up every old cannon he could lay hands
on. His back-yard was soon crowded with broken-down gun-carriages, and his
barn with guns, like an arsenal. When Silas's purpose got wind it was
astonishing how valuable that thing became which just now was worth nothing
at all.

"Ha, ha!" thought Silas. "Somebody else is tryin' hi git control of the
market. But I guess I've got the start of him."

So he went on buying and buying, oftentimes paying double the original price
of the article. People in the neighboring towns collected all the worthless
ordnance they could find, and sent it by the cart-load to Rivermouth.

When his barn was full, Silas began piling the rubbish in his cellar, then
in his parlor. He mortgaged the stock of his grocery store, mortgaged his
house, his barn, his horse, and would have mortgaged himself, if anyone
would have taken him as security, in order to carry on the grand
speculation. He was a ruined man, and as happy as a lark.

Surely poor Silas was cracked, like the majority of his own cannon. More or
less crazy he must have been always. Years before this he purchased an
elegant rosewood coffin, and kept it in one of the spare rooms in his
residence. He even had his name engraved on the silver-plate, leaving a
blank after the word "Died."

The blank was filled up in due time, and well it was for Silas that he
secured so stylish a coffin in his opulent days, for when he died his
worldly wealth would not have bought him a pine box, to say nothing of
rosewood. He never gave up expecting a war with Great Britain. Hopeful and
radiant to the last, his dying words were, England-war - few days-great
profits!

It was that sweet old lady, Dame Jocelyn, who told me the story of Silas
Trefethen; for these things happened long before my day. Silas died in
1817.

At Trefethen's death his unique collection came under the auctioneer's
hammer. Some of the larger guns were sold to the town, and planted at the
corners of divers streets; others went off to the iron-foundry; the
balance, numbering twelve, were dumped down on a deserted wharf at the foot
of Anchor Lane, where, summer after summer, they rested at their ease in
the grass and fungi, pelted in autumn by the rain and annually buried by
the winter snow. It is with these twelve guns that our story has to deal.

The wharf where they reposed was shut off from the street by a high fence-a
silent dreamy old wharf, covered with strange weeds and mosses. On account
of its seclusion and the good fishing it afforded, it was much frequented
by us boys.

There we met many an afternoon to throw out .our lines, or play leap-frog
among the rusty cannon. They were famous fellows in our eyes. What a racket
they had made in the heyday of their unchastened youth! What stories they
might tell now, if their puffy metallic lips could only speak! Once they
were lively talkers enough; but there the grim sea-dogs lay, silent and
forlorn in spite of all their former growlings.

They always seemed to me like a lot of venerable disabled tars, stretched
out on a lawn in front of a hospital, gazing seaward, and mutely lamenting
their lost youth.

But once more they were destined to lift up their dolorous voices-once more
ere they keeled over and lay speechless for all time. And this is how it
befell.

Jack Harris, Charley Marden, Harry Blake, and myself were fishing off the
wharf one afternoon, when a thought flashed upon me like an inspiration.

"I say, boys!" I cried, hauling in my line hand over hand, "I've got
something!"

"What does it pull like, youngster?" asked Harris, looking down at the taut
line and expecting to see a big perch at least.

"O, nothing in the fish way," I returned, laughing; "it's about the old
guns."

"What about them?"

"I was thinking what jolly fun it would be to set one of the old sogers on
his legs and serve him out a ration of gunpowder."

Up came the three lines in a jiffy. An enterprise better suited to the
disposition of my companions could not have been proposed.

In a short time we had one of the smaller cannon over on its back and were
busy scraping the green rust from the touch-hole. The mould had spiked the
gun so effectually, that for a while we fancied we should have to give up
our attempt to resuscitate the old soger.

"A long gimlet would clear it out," said Charley Marden, "if we only had
one."

I looked to see if Sailor Ben's flag was flying at the cabin door, for he
always took in the colors when he went off fishing.

"When you want to know if the Admiral's aboard, jest cast an eye to the
buntin', my hearties," says Sailor Ben.

Sometimes in a jocose mood he called himself the Admiral, and I am sure he
deserved to be one. The Admiral's flag was flying, and I soon procured a
gimlet from his carefully kept tool-chest.

Before long we had the gun in working order. A newspaper lashed to the end
of a lath served as a swab to dust out the bore. Jack Harris blew through
the touch-hole and pronounced all clear.

Seeing our task accomplished so easily, we turned our attention to the other
guns, which lay in all sorts of postures in the rank grass. Borrowing a
rope from Sailor Ben, we managed with immense labor to drag the heavy
pieces into position and place a brick under each muzzle to give it the
proper elevation. When we beheld them all in a row, like a regular battery,
we simultaneously conceived an idea, the magnitude of which struck us dumb
for a moment.

Our first intention was to load and fire a single gun. How feeble and
insignificant was such a plan compared to that which now sent the light
dancing into our eyes!

"What could we have been thinking of?" cried Jack Harris. "We'll give 'em a
broadside, to be sure, if we die for it!"

We turned to with a will, and before nightfall had nearly half the battery
overhauled and ready for service. To keep the artillery dry we stuffed wads
of loose hemp into the muzzles, and fitted wooden pegs to the touch-holes.

At recess the next noon the Centipedes met in a corner of the school-yard to
talk over the proposed lark. The original projectors, though they would
have liked to keep the thing secret, were obliged to make a club matter of
it, inasmuch as funds were required for ammunition. There had been no
recent drain on the treasury, and the society could well afford to spend a
few dollars in so notable an undertaking.

It was unanimously agreed that the plan should be carried out in the
handsomest manner, and a subscription to that end was taken on the spot.
Several of the Centipedes hadn't a cent, excepting the one strung around
their necks; others, however, were richer. I chanced to have a dollar, and
it went into the cap quicker than lightning. When the club, in view of my
munificence, voted to name the guns Bailey's Battery I was prouder than I
have ever been since over anything.

The money thus raised, added to that already in the treasury, amounted to
nine dollars-a fortune in those days; but not more than we had use for.
This sum was divided into twelve parts, for it would not do for one boy to
buy all the powder, nor even for us all to make our purchases at the same
place. That would excite suspicion at any time, particularly at a period so
remote from the Fourth of July.

There were only three stores in town licensed to sell powder; that gave each
store four customers. Not to run the slightest risk of remark, one boy
bought his powder on Monday, the next boy on Tuesday, and so on until the
requisite quantity was in our possession. This we put into a keg and
carefully hid in a dry spot on the wharf.

Our next step was to finish cleaning the guns, which occupied two
afternoons, for several of the old sogers were in a very congested state
indeed. Having completed the task, we came upon a difficulty. To set off
the battery by daylight was out of the question; it must be done at night;
it must be done with fuses, for no doubt the neighbors would turn out after
the first two or three shots, and it would not pay to be caught in the
vicinity.

Who knew anything about fuses? Who could arrange it so the guns would go off
one after the other, with an interval of a minute or so between?

Theoretically we knew that a minute fuse lasted a minute; double the
quantity, two minutes; but practically we were at a stand-still. There was
but one person who could help us in this extremity-Sailor Ben. To me was
assigned the duty of obtaining what information I could from the ex-gunner,
it being left to my discretion whether or not to intrust him with our
secret.

So one evening I dropped into the cabin and artfully turned the conversation
to fuses in general, and then to particular fuses, but without getting much
out of the old boy, who was busy making a twine hammock. Finally, I was
forced to divulge the whole plot.

The Admiral had a sailor's love for a joke, and entered at once and heartily
into our scheme. He volunteered to prepare the fuses himself, and I left
the labor in his hands, having bound him by several extraordinary
oaths-such as "Hope-Imay-die" and "Shiver-my-timbers"-not to betray us,
come what would.

This was Monday evening. On Wednesday the fuses were ready. That night we
were to unmuzzle Bailey's Battery. Mr. Grimshaw saw that something was
wrong somewhere, for we were restless and absent-minded in the classes, and
the best of us came to grief before the morning session was over. When Mr.
Grimshaw announced "Guy Fawkes" as the subject for our next composition,
you might have knocked down the Mystic Twelve with a feather.

The coincidence was certainly curious, but when a man has committed, or is
about to commit an offence, a hundred trifles, which would pass unnoticed
at another time, seem to point at him with convicting fingers. No doubt Guy
Fawkes himself received many a start after he had got his wicked kegs of
gunpowder neatly piled up under the House of Lords.

Wednesday, as I have mentioned, was a half-holiday, and the Centipedes
assembled in my barn to decide on the final arrangements. These were as
simple as could be. As the fuses were connected, it needed but one person
to fire the train. Hereupon arose a discussion as to who was the proper
person. Some argued that I ought to apply the match, the battery being
christened after me, and the main idea, moreover, being mine. Others
advocated the claim of Phil Adams as the oldest boy. At last we drew lots
for the post of honor.

Twelve slips of folded paper, upon one of which was written "Thou art the
man," were placed in a quart measure, and thoroughly shaken; then each
member stepped up and lifted out his destiny. At a given signal we opened
our billets. "Thou art the man," said the slip of paper trembling in my
fingers. The sweets and anxieties of a leader were mine the rest of the
afternoon.

Directly after twilight set in Phil Adams stole down to the wharf and fixed
the fuses to the guns, laying a train of powder from the principal fuse to
the fence, through a chink of which I was to drop the match at midnight.

At ten o'clock Rivermouth goes to bed. At eleven o'clock Rivermouth is as
quiet as a country churchyard. At twelve o'clock there is nothing left with
which to compare the stillness that broods over the little seaport.

In the midst of this stillness I arose and glided out of the house like a
phantom bent on an evil errand; like a phantom. I flitted through the
silent street, hardly drawing breath until I knelt down beside the fence at
the appointed place.

Pausing a moment for my heart to stop thumping, I lighted the match and
shielded it with both hands until it was well under way, and then dropped
the blazing splinter on the slender thread of gunpowder.

A noiseless flash instantly followed, and all was dark again. I peeped
through the crevice in the fence, and saw the main fuse spitting out sparks
like a conjurer. Assured that the train had not failed, I took to my heels,
fearful lest the fuse might burn more rapidly than we calculated, and cause
an explosion before I could get home. This, luckily, did not happen.
There's a special Providence that watches over idiots, drunken men, and
boys.

I dodged the ceremony of undressing by plunging into bed, jacket, boots, and
all. I am not sure I took off my cap; but I know that I had hardly pulled
the coverlid over me, when "BOOM!" sounded the first gun of Bailey's
Battery.

I lay as still as a mouse. In less than two minutes there was another burst
of thunder, and then another. The third gun was a tremendous fellow and
fairly shook the house.

The town was waking up. Windows were thrown open here and there and people
called to each other across the streets asking what that firing was for.

"BOOM!" went gun number four.

I sprung out of bed and tore off my jacket, for I heard the Captain feeling
his way along the wall to my chamber. I was half undressed by the time he
found the knob of the door.

"I say, sir," I cried, "do you hear those guns?"

"Not being deaf, I do," said the Captain, a little tartly-any reflection on
his hearing always nettled him; "but what on earth they are for I can't
conceive. You had better get up and dress yourself."
"I'm nearly dressed, sir."

"BOOM! BOOM!"-two of the guns had gone off together.

The door of Miss Abigail's bedroom opened hastily, and that pink of maidenly
propriety stepped out into the hail in her night-gown-the only indecorous
thing I ever knew her to do. She held a lighted candle in her hand and
looked like a very aged Lady Macbeth.

"O Dan'el, this is dreadful! What do you suppose it means?"

"I really can't suppose," said the Captain, rubbing his ear; "but I guess
it's over now."

"BOOM!" said Bailey's Battery.

Rivermouth was wide awake now, and half the male population were in the
streets, running different ways, for the firing seemed to proceed from
opposite points of the town. Everybody waylaid everybody else with
questions; but as no one knew what was the occasion of the tumult, people
who were not usually nervous began to be oppressed by the mystery.

Some thought the town was being bombarded; some thought the world was coming
to an end, as the pious and ingenious Mr. Miller had predicted it would;
but those who couldn't form any theory whatever were the most perplexed.

In the meanwhile Bailey's Battery bellowed away at regular intervals. The
greatest confusion reigned everywhere by this time. People with lanterns
rushed hither and thither. The town watch had turned out to a man, and
marched off, in admirable order, in the wrong direction. Discovering their
mistake, they retraced their steps, and got down to the wharf just as the
last cannon belched forth its lightning.

A dense cloud of sulphurous smoke floated over Anchor Lane, obscuring the
starlight. Two or three hundred people, in various stages of excitement,
crowded about the upper end of the wharf, not liking to advance farther
until they were satisfied that the explosions were over. A board was here
and there blown from the fence, and through the openings thus afforded a
few of the more daring spirits at length ventured to crawl.

The cause of the racket soon transpired. A suspicion that they had been sold
gradually dawned on the Rivermouthians. Many were exceedingly indignant,
and declared that no penalty was severe enough for those concerned in such
a prank; others-and these were the very people who had been terrified
nearly out of their wits-had the assurance to laugh, saying that they knew
all along it was only a trick.

The town watch boldly took possession of the ground, and the crowd began to
disperse. Knots of gossips lingered here and there near the place,
indulging in vain surmises as to who the invisible gunners could be.

There was no more noise that night, but many a timid person lay awake
expecting a renewal of the mysterious cannonading. The Oldest Inhabitant
refused to go to bed on any terms, but persisted in sitting up in a
rocking-chair, with his hat and mittens on, until daybreak.

I thought I should never get to sleep. The moment I drifted off in a doze I
fell to laughing and woke myself up. But towards morning slumber overtook
me, and I had a series of disagreeable dreams, in one of which I was waited
upon by the ghost of Silas Trefethen with an exorbitant bill for the use of
his guns. In another, I was dragged before a court-martial and sentenced by
Sailor Ben, in a frizzled wig and three-cornered cocked hat, to be shot to
death by Bailey's Battery-a sentence which Sailor Ben was about to execute
with his own hand, when I suddenly opened my eyes and found the sunshine
lying pleasantly across my face. I tell you I was glad!

That unaccountable fascination which leads the guilty to hover about the
spot where his crime was committed drew me down to the wharf as soon as I
was dressed. Phil Adams, Jack Harris, and others of the conspirators were
already there, examining with a mingled feeling of curiosity and
apprehension the havoc accomplished by the battery.

The fence was badly shattered and the ground ploughed up for several yards
round the place where the guns formerly lay-formerly lay, for now they were
scattered every which way. There was scarcely a gun that hadn't burst. Here
was one ripped open from muzzle to breech, and there was another with its
mouth blown into the shape of a trumpet. Three of the guns had disappeared
bodily, but on looking over the edge of the wharf we saw them standing on
end in the tide-mud. They had popped overboard in their excitement.

"I tell you what, fellows," whispered Phil Adams, "it is lucky we didn't try
to touch 'em off with punk. They'd have blown us all to finders."

The destruction of Bailey's Battery was not, unfortunately, the only
catastrophe. A fragment of one of the cannon had earned away the chimney of
Sailor Ben's cabin. He was very mad at first, but having prepared the fuse
himself he didn't dare complain openly.

"I'd have taken a reef in the blessed stove-pipe," said the Admiral, gazing
ruefully at the smashed chimney, "if I had known as how the Flagship was
agoin' to be under fire."

The next day he rigged out an iron funnel, which, being in sections, could
be detached and taken in at a moment's notice. On the whole, I think he was
resigned to the demolition of his brick chimney. The stove-pipe was a great
deal more shipshape.

The town was not so easily appeased. The selectmen determined to make an
example of the guilty parties, and offered a reward for their arrest,
holding out a promise of pardon to anyone of the offenders who would
furnish information against the rest. But there were no faint hearts among
the Centipedes. Suspicion rested for a while on several persons-on the
soldiers at the fort; on a crazy fellow, known about town as "BottleNose";
and at last on Sailor Ben.

"Shiver my timbers!" cries that deeply injured individual. "Do you suppose,
sir, as I have lived to sixty year, an' ain't got no more sense than to go
for to blaze away at my own upper riggin'? It doesn't stand to reason."

It certainly did not seem probable that Mr. Watson would maliciously knock
over his own chimney, and Lawyer Hackett, who had the case in hand, 'bowed
himself out of the Admiral's cabin convinced that the right man had not
been discovered.

People living by the sea are always more or less superstitious. Stories of
spectre ships and mysterious beacons, that lure vessels out of their course
and wreck them on unknown reefs, were among the stock legends of
Rivermouth; and not a few people in the town were ready to attribute the
firing of those guns to some supernatural agency. The Oldest Inhabitant
remembered that when he was a boy a dim-looking sort of schooner hove to in
the offing one foggy afternoon, fired off a single gun that didn't make any
report, and then crumbled to nothing, spar, mast, and hulk, like a piece of
burnt paper.

The authorities, however, were of the opinion that human hands had something
to do with the explosions, and they resorted to deep-laid stratagems to get
hold of the said hands. One of their traps came very near catching us. They
artfully caused an old brass fieldpiece to be left on a wharf near the
scene of our late operations. Nothing in the world but the lack of money to
buy powder saved us from falling into the clutches of the two watchmen who
lay secreted for a week in a neighboring sail-loft.

It was many a day before the midnight bombardment ceased to be the
town-talk. The trick was so audacious and on so grand a scale that nobody
thought for an instant of connecting us lads with it. Suspicion at length
grew weary of lighting on the wrong person, and as conjecture-like the
physicians in the epitaph-was in vain, the Rivermouthians gave up the idea
of finding out who had astonished them.

They never did find out, and never will, unless they read this veracious
history. If the selectmen are still disposed to punish the malefactors, I
can supply Lawyer Hackett with evidence enough to convict Pepper Whitcomb,
Phil Adams, Charley Marden, and the other honorable members of the
Centipede Club. But really I don't think it would pay now.







Chapter 18

A Frog He Would A-Wooing Go



If the reader supposes that I lived all this while in Rivermouth without
falling a victim to one or more of the young ladies attending Miss Dorothy
Gibbs's Female Institute, why, then, all I have to say is the reader
exhibits his ignorance of human nature.

Miss Gibbs's seminary was located within a few minutes' walk of the Temple
Grammar School, and numbered about thirty-five pupils, the majority of whom
boarded at the Hall-Primrose Hall, as Miss Dorothy prettily 20called it.
The Prim-roses, as we called them, ranged from seven years of age to sweet
seventeen, and a prettier group of sirens never got together even in
Rivermouth, for Rivermouth, you should know, is famous for its pretty
girls.

There were tall girls and short girls, rosy girls and pale girls, and girls
as brown as berries; girls like Amazons, slender girls, weird and winning
like Undine, girls with black tresses, girls with auburn ringlets, girls
with every tinge of golden hair. To behold Miss Dorothy's young ladies of a
Sunday morning walking to church two by two, the smallest toddling at the
end of the procession, like the bobs at the tail of a kite, was a spectacle
to fill with tender emotion the least susceptible heart. To see Miss
Dorothy marching grimly at the head of her light infantry, was to feel the
hopelessness of making an attack on any part of the column.

She was a perfect dragon of watchfulness. The most unguarded lifting of an
eyelash in the fluttering battalion was sufficient to put her on the
lookout. She had had experiences with the male sex, this Miss Dorothy so
prim and grim. It was whispered that her heart was a tattered album
scrawled over with love-lines, but that she had shut up the volume long
ago.

There was a tradition that she had been crossed in love; but it was the
faintest of traditions. A gay young lieutenant of marines had flirted with
her at a country ball (A.D. 1811), and then marched carelessly away at the
head of his company to the shrill music of the fife, without so much as a
sigh for the girl he left behind him. The years rolled on, the gallant gay
Lothario-which wasn't his name-married, became a father, and then a
grandfather; and at the period of which I am speaking his grandchild was
actually one of Miss Dorothy's young ladies. So, at least, ran the story.

The lieutenant himself was dead these many years; but Miss Dorothy never got
over his duplicity. She was convinced that the sole aim of mankind was to
win the unguarded affection of maidens, and then march off treacherously
with flying colors to the heartless music of the drum and fife. To shield
the inmates of Primrose Hall from the bitter influences that had blighted
her own early affections was Miss Dorothy's mission in life.

"No wolves prowling about my lambs, if you please," said

Miss Dorothy. "I will not allow it."

She was as good as her word. I don't think the boy lives who ever set foot
within the limits of Primrose Hall while the seminary was under her charge.
Perhaps if Miss Dorothy had given her young ladies a little more liberty,
they would not have thought it "such fun" to make eyes over the white
lattice fence at the young gentlemen of the Temple Grammar School. I say
perhaps; for it is one thing to manage thirty-five young ladies and quite
another thing to talk about it.

But all Miss Dorothy's vigilance could not prevent the young folks from
meeting in the town now and then, nor could her utmost ingenuity interrupt
postal arrangements. There was no end of notes passing between the students
and the Primroses. Notes tied to the heads of arrows were shot into
dormitory windows; notes were tucked under fences, and hidden in the trunks
of decayed trees. Every thick place in the boxwood hedge that surrounded
the seminary was a possible post-office.

It was a terrible shock to Miss Dorothy the day she unearthed a nest of
letters in one of the huge wooden urns surmounting the gateway that led to
her dovecot. It was a bitter moment to Miss Phoebe and Miss Candace and
Miss Hesba, when they had their locks of hair grimly handed back to them by
Miss Gibbs in the presence of the whole school. Girls whose locks of hair
had run the blockade in safety were particularly severe on the offenders.
But it didn't stop other notes and other tresses, and I would like to know
what can stop them while the earth holds together.

Now when I first came to Rivermouth I looked upon girls as rather tame
company; I hadn't a spark of sentiment concerning them; but seeing my
comrades sending and receiving mysterious epistles, wearing bits of ribbon
in their button-holes and leaving packages of confectionery (generally
lemon-drops) in the hollow trunks of trees-why, I felt that this was the
proper thing to do. I resolved, as a matter of duty, to fall in love with
somebody, and I didn't care in the least who it was. In much the same mood
that Don Quixote selected the Dulcinea del Toboso for his lady-love, I
singled out one of Miss Dorothy's incomparable young ladies for mine.

I debated a long while whether I should not select two, but at last settled
down on one-a pale little girl with blue eyes, named Alice. I shall not
make a long story of this, for Alice made short work of me. She was
secretly in love with Pepper Whitcomb. This occasioned a temporary coolness
between Pepper and myself.

Not disheartened, however, I placed Laura Rice-I believe it was Laura
Rice-in the vacant niche. The new idol was more cruel than the old. The
former frankly sent me to the right about, but the latter was a deceitful
lot. She wore my nosegay in her dress at the evening service (the Primroses
were marched to church three times every Sunday), she penned me the
daintiest of notes, she sent me the glossiest of ringlets (cut, as I
afterwards found out, from the stupid head of Miss Gibbs's chamber-maid),
and at the same time was holding me and my pony up to ridicule in a series
of letters written to Jack Harris. It was Harris himself who kindly opened
my eyes.

"I tell you what, Bailey," said that young gentleman, "Laura is an old
veteran, and carries too many guns for a youngster. She can't resist a
flirtation; I believe she'd flirt with an infant in arms. There's hardly a
fellow in the school that hasn't worn her colors and some of her hair. She
doesn't give out any more of her own hair now. It's been pretty well used
up. The demand was greater than the supply, you see. It's all very well to
correspond with Laura, but as to looking for anything serious from her, the
knowing ones don't. Hope I haven't hurt your feelings, old boy," (that was
a soothing stroke of flattery to call me "old boy,") "but it was my duty as
a friend and a Centipede to let you know who you were dealing with."

Such was the advice given me by that time-stricken, careworn, and embittered
man of the world, who was sixteen years old if he was a day.

I dropped Laura. In the course of the next twelve months I had perhaps three
or four similar experiences, and the conclusion was forced upon me that I
was not a boy likely to distinguish myself in this branch of business.

I fought shy of Primrose Hall from that moment. Smiles were smiled over the
boxwood hedge, and little hands were occasionally kissed to me; but I only
winked my eye patronizingly, and passed on. I never renewed tender
relations with Miss Gibbs's young ladies. All this occurred during my first
year and a half at Rivermouth.

Between my studies at school, my out-door recreations, and the hurts my
vanity received, I managed to escape for the time being any very serious
attack of that love fever which, like the measles, is almost certain to
seize upon a boy sooner or later. I was not to be an exception. I was
merely biding my time. The incidents I have now to relate took place
shortly after the events described in the last chapter.



In a life so tranquil and circumscribed as ours in the Nutter House, a
visitor was a novelty of no little importance. The whole household awoke
from its quietude one morning when the Captain announced that a young niece
of his from New York was to spend a few weeks with us.

The blue-chintz room, into which a ray of sun was never allowed to
penetrate, was thrown open and dusted, and its mouldy air made sweet with a
bouquet of pot-roses placed on the old-fashioned bureau. Kitty was busy all
the forenoon washing off the sidewalk and sand-papering the great brass
knocker on our front-door; and Miss Abigail was up to her elbows in a
pigeon-pie.

I felt sure it was for no ordinary person that all these preparations were
in progress; and I was right. Miss Nelly Glentworth was no ordinary person.
I shall never believe she was. There may have been lovelier women, though I
have never seen them; there may have been more brilliant women, though it
has not been my fortune to meet them; but that there was ever a more
charming one than Nelly Glentworth is a proposition against which I
contend.

I don't love her now. I don't think of her once in five years; and yet it
would give me a turn if in the course of my daily walk I should suddenly
come upon her eldest boy. I may say that her eldest boy was not playing a
prominent part in this life when I first made her acquaintance.

It was a drizzling, cheerless afternoon towards the end of summer that a
hack drew up at the door of the Nutter House. The Captain and Miss Abigail
hastened into the hall on hearing the carriage stop. In a moment more Miss
Nelly Glentworth was seated in our sitting-room undergoing a critical
examination at the hands of a small boy who lounged uncomfortably on a
settee between the windows.

The small boy considered himself a judge of girls, and he rapidly came to
the following conclusions: That Miss Nelly was about nineteen; that she had
not given away much of her back hair, which hung in two massive chestnut
braids over her shoulders; that she was a shade too pale and a trifle too
tall; that her hands were nicely shaped and her feet much too diminutive
for daily use. He furthermore observed that her voice was musical, and that
her face lighted up with an indescribable brightness when she smiled.

On the whole, the small boy liked her well enough; and, satisfied that she
was not a person to be afraid of, but, on the contrary, one who might be
made quite agreeable, he departed to keep an appointment with his friend
Sir Pepper Whitcomb.

But the next morning when Miss Glentworth came down to breakfast in a purple
dress, her face 20as fresh as one of the moss-roses on the bureau upstairs,
and her laugh as contagious as the merriment of a robin, the small boy
experienced a strange sensation, and mentally compared her with the
loveliest of Miss Gibbs's young ladies, and found those young ladies
wanting in the balance.

A night's rest had wrought a wonderful change in Miss Nelly. The pallor and
weariness of the journey had passed away. I looked at her through the
toast-rack and thought I had never seen anything more winning than her
smile.

After breakfast she went out with me to the stable to see Gypsy, and the
three of us became friends then and there. Nelly was the only girl that
Gypsy ever took the slightest notice of.

It chanced to be a half-holiday, and a baseball match of unusual interest
was to come off on the school ground that afternoon; but, somehow, I didn't
go. I hung about the house abstractedly. The Captain went up town, and Miss
Abigail was busy in the kitchen making immortal gingerbread. I drifted into
the sitting-room, and had our guest all to myself for I don't know how many
hours. It was twilight, I recollect, when the Captain returned with letters
for Miss Nelly.

Many a time after that I sat with her through the dreamy September
afternoons. If I had played baseball it would have been much better for me.

Those first days of Miss Nelly's visit are very misty in my remembrance. I
try in vain to remember just when I began to fall in love with her.
'Whether the spell worked upon me gradually or fell upon me all at once, I
don't know. I only know that it seemed to me as if I had always loved her.
Things that took place before she came were dim to me, like events that had
occurred in the Middle Ages.

Nelly was at least five years my senior. But what of that? Adam is the only
man I ever heard of who didn't in early youth fall in love with a woman
older than himself, and I am convinced that he would have done so if he had
had the opportunity.

I wonder if girls from fifteen to twenty are aware of the glamour they cast
over the straggling, awkward boys whom they regard and treat as mere
children? I wonder, now. Young women are so keen in such matters. I wonder
if Miss Nelly Glentworth never suspected until the very last night of her
visit at Rivermouth that I was over ears in love with her pretty self, and
was suffering pangs as poignant as if I had been ten feet high and as old
as Methuselah? For, indeed, I was miserable throughout all those five
weeks. I went down in the Latin class at the rate of three boys a day. Her
fresh young eyes came between me and my book, and there was an end of
Virgil.



"O love, love, love!

Love is like a dizziness,

It winna let a body

Gang aboot his business."



I was wretched away from her, and only less wretched in her presence. The
special cause of my woe was this: I was simply a little boy to Miss
Glentworth. I knew it. I bewailed it. I ground my teeth and wept in secret
over the fact. If I had been aught else in her eyes would she have smoothed
my hair so carelessly, sending an electric shock through my whole system?
Would she have walked with me, hand in hand, for hours in the old garden,
and once when I lay on the sofa, my head aching with love and
mortification, would she have stooped down and kissed me if I hadn't been a
little boy? How I despised little boys! How I hated one particular little
boy-too little to be loved!

I smile over this very grimly even now. My sorrow was genuine and bitter. It
is a great mistake on the part of elderly people, male and female, to tell
a child that he is seeing his happiest days. Don't you believe a word of
it, my little friend. The burdens of childhood are as hard to bear as the
crosses that weigh us down later in life, while the happinesses of
childhood are tame compared with those of our maturer years. And even if
this were not so, it is rank cruelty to throw shadows over the young heart
by croaking, "Be merry, for to-morrow you die!"

As the last days of Nelly's visit drew near, I fell into a very unhealthy
state of mind. To have her so frank and unconsciously coquettish with me
was a daily torment; to be looked upon and treated as a child was bitter
almonds; but the thought of losing her altogether was distraction.

The summer was at an end. The days were perceptibly shorter, and now and
then came an evening when it was chilly enough to have a wood-fire in our
sitting-room. The leaves were beginning to take hectic tints, and the wind
was practising the minor pathetic notes of its autumnal dirge. Nature and
myself appeared to be approaching our dissolution simultaneously-

One evening, the evening previous to the day set for Nelly's departure-how
well I remember it-I found her sitting alone by the wide chimney-piece
looking musingly at the crackling back log. There were no candles in the
room. On her face and hands, and on the small golden cross at her throat,
fell the flickering firelight-that ruddy, mellow firelight in which one's
grandmother would look poetical.

I drew a low stool from the corner and placed it by the side of her chair.
She reached out her hand to me, as was her pretty fashion, and so we sat
for several moments silently in the changing glow of the burning logs. At
length I moved back the stool so that I could see her face in profile
without being seen by her. I lost her hand by this movement, but I couldn't
have spoken with the listless touch of her fingers on mine. After two or
three attempts I said "Nelly" a good deal louder than I intended.

Perhaps the effort it cost me was evident in my voice. She raised herself
quickly in the chair and half turned towards me.

"W'ell, Tom?"

"I-I am very sorry you are going away."

"So am I. I have enjoyed every hour of my visit."

"Do you think you will ever come back here?"

"Perhaps," said Nelly, and her eyes wandered off into the fitful firelight.

"I suppose you will forget us all very quickly."

"Indeed I shall not. I shall always have the pleasantest memories of
Rivermouth."

Here the conversation died a natural death. Nelly sank into a sort of dream,
and I meditated. Fearing every moment to be interrupted by some member of
the family, I nerved myself to make a bold dash.

"Nelly."

"Well."

"Do you-" I hesitated.

"Do I what?"

"Love anyone very much?"

"Why, of course I do," said Nelly, scattering her revery with a merry laugh.
"I love Uncle Nutter, and Aunt Nutter, and you-and Towser."

Towser, our new dog! I couldn't stand that. I pushed back the stool
impatiently and stood in front of her.

"That's not what I mean," I said angrily.

"Well, what do you mean?"

"Do you love anyone to marry him?"

"The idea of it," cried Nelly, laughing.

"But you must tell me."

"Must, Tom?"

"Indeed you must, Nelly."

She had risen from the chair with an amused, perplexed look in her eyes. I
held her an instant by the dress.

"Please tell me."

"O you silly boy!" cried Nelly. Then she rumpled my hair all over my
forehead and ran laughing out of the room.

Suppose Cinderella had rumpled the prince's hair all over his forehead, how
would he have liked it? Suppose the Sleeping Beauty, when the king's son
with a kiss set her and all the old clocks agoing in the spell-bound
castle-suppose the young minx had looked up and coolly laughed in his eye,
I guess the king's son wouldn't have been greatly pleased.

I hesitated a second or two and then rushed after Nelly just in time to run
against Miss Abigail, who entered the room with a couple of lighted
candles.

"Goodness gracious, Tom!" exclaimed Miss Abigail. "Are you possessed?"

I left her scraping the warm spermaceti from one of her thumbs.

Nelly was in the kitchen talking quite unconcernedly with Kitty Collins.
There she remained until supper-time. Supper over, we all adjourned to the
sitting-room. I planned and plotted, but could manage in no way to get
Nelly alone. She and the Captain played cribbage all the evening.

The next morning my lady did not make her appearance until we were seated at
the breakfast-table. I had got up at daylight myself. Immediately after
breakfast the carriage arrived to take her to the railway station. A
gentleman stepped from this carriage, and greatly to my surprise was warmly
welcomed by the Captain and Miss Abigail, and by Miss Nelly herself, who
seemed unnecessarily glad to see him. From the hasty conversation that
followed I learned that the gentleman had come somewhat unexpectedly to
conduct Miss Nelly to Boston. But how did he know that she was to leave
that morning? Nelly bade farewell to the Captain and Miss Abigail, made a
little rush and kissed me on the nose, and was gone.

As the wheels of the hack rolled up the street and over my finer feelings, I
turned to the Captain.

"Who was that gentleman, sir?"

"That was Mr. Waldron."

"A relation of yours, sir?" I asked craftily.

"No relation of mine-a relation of Nelly's," said the Captain, smiling.

"A cousin," I suggested, feeling a strange hatred spring up in my bosom for
the unknown.

"Well, I suppose you might call him a cousin for the present. He's going to
marry little Nelly next summer."

In one of Peter Parley's valuable historical works is a description of an
earthquake at Lisbon. "At the first shock the inhabitants rushed into the
streets; the earth yawned at their feet and the houses tottered and fell on
every side." I staggered past the Captain into the street; a giddiness came
over me; the earth yawned at my feet, and the houses threatened to fall in
on every side of me. How distinctly I remember that momentary sense of
confusion when everything in the world seemed toppling over into ruins.

As I have remarked, my love for Nelly is a thing of the past. I had not
thought of her for years until I sat down to write this chapter, and yet,
now that all is said and done, I shouldn't care particularly to come across
Mrs. Waldron's eldest boy in my afternoon's walk. He must be fourteen or
fifteen years old by this time-the young villain!







Chapter Nineteen

I Become A Blighted Being



When a young boy gets to be an old boy, when the hair is growing rather thin
on the top of the old boy's head, and he has been tamed sufficiently to
take a sort of chastened pleasure in allowing the baby to play with his
watch-seals-when, I say, an old boy has reached this stage in the journey
of life, he is sometimes apt to indulge in sportive remarks concerning his
first love.

Now, though I bless my stars that it wasn't in my power to marry Miss Nelly,
I am not going to deny my boyish regard for her nor laugh at it. As long as
it lasted it was a very sincere and unselfish love, and rendered me
proportionately wretched. I say as long as it lasted, for one's first love
doesn't last forever.

I am ready, however, to laugh at the amusing figure I cut after I had really
ceased to have any deep feeling in the matter. It was then I took it into
my head to be a Blighted Being. This was about two weeks after the spectral
appearance of Mr. Waldron.

For a boy of a naturally vivacious disposition the part of a blighted being
presented difficulties. I had an excellent appetite, I liked society, I
liked out-of-door sports, I was fond of handsome clothes. Now all these
things were incompatible with the doleful character I was to assume, and I
proceeded to cast them from me. I neglected my hair. I avoided my
playmates. I frowned abstractedly. I didn't eat as much as was good for me.
I took lonely walks. 1 brooded in solitude. I not only committed to memory
the more turgid poems of the late Lord Byron-"Fare thee well, and if
forever," &c.-but I became a despondent poet on my own account, and
composed a string of "Stanzas to One who will understand them." 1 think I
was a trifle too hopeful on that point; for I came across the verses
several years afterwards, and was quite unable to understand them myself.

It was a great comfort to be so perfectly miserable and yet not suffer any.
I used to look in the glass and gloat over the amount and variety of
mournful expression I could throw into my features. If I caught myself
smiling at anything, I cut the smile short with a sigh. The oddest thing
about all this is, I never once suspected that I was not unhappy. No one,
not even Pepper Whitcomb, was more deceived than I.

Among the minor pleasures of being blighted were the interest and perplexity
I excited in the simple souls that were thrown in daily contact with me.
Pepper especially. I nearly drove him into a corresponding state of mind.

I had from time to time given Pepper slight but impressive hints of my
admiration for Some One (this was in the early part of Miss Glentworth's
visit); I had also led him to infer that my admiration was not altogether
in vain. He was therefore unable to explain the cause of my strange
behavior, for I had carefully refrained from mentioning to Pepper the fact
that Some One had turned out to be Another's.

I treated Pepper shabbily. I couldn't resist playing on his tenderer
feelings. He was a boy bubbling over with sympathy for anyone in any kind
of trouble. Our intimacy since Binny Wallace's death had been
uninterrupted; but now I moved in a sphere apart, not to be profaned by the
step of an outsider.

I no longer joined the boys on the playground at recess. I stayed at my desk
reading some lugubrious volume-usually The Mysteries of Udolpho, by the
amiable Mrs. Radcliffe. A translation of The Sorrows of Werter fell into my
hands at this period, and if I could have committed suicide without killing
myself, I should certainly have done so.

On half-holidays, instead of fraternizing with Pepper and the rest of our
clique, I would wander off alone to Grave Point.

Grave Point-the place where Binny Wallace's body came ashore-was a narrow
strip of land running out into the river. A line of Lombardy poplars, stiff
and severe, like a row of grenadiers, mounted guard on the water-side. On
the extreme end of the peninsula was an old disused graveyard, tenanted
principally by the early settlers who had been scalped by the Indians. In a
remote corner of the cemetery, set apart from the other mounds, was the
grave of a woman who had been hanged in the old colonial times for the
murder of her infant. Goodwife Polly Haines had denied the crime to the
last, and after her death there had arisen strong doubts as to her actual
guilt. It was a belief current among the lads of the town, that if you went
to this grave at nightfall on the 10th of November-the anniversary of her
execution-and asked, "For what did the magistrates hang you?" a voice would
reply, "Nothing."

Many a Rivermouth boy has tremblingly put this question in the dark, and,
sure enough, Polly Haines invariably answered nothing!

A low red-brick wall, broken down in many places and frosted over with
silvery moss, surrounded this burial-ground of our Pilgrim Fathers and
their immediate descendants. The latest date on any of the headstones was
1780. A crop of very funny epitaphs sprung up here and there among the
overgrown thistles and burdocks, and almost every tablet had a death's-head
with cross-bones engraved upon it, or else a puffy round face with a pair
of wings stretching out from the ears, like this:



Cherub Graphic



These mortuary emblems furnished me with congenial food for reflection. I
used to lie in the long grass, and speculate on the advantages and
disadvantages of being a cherub.

I forget what I thought the advantages were, but I remember distinctly of
getting into an inextricable tangle on two points: How could a cherub,
being all head and wings, manage to sit down when he was tired? To have to
sit down on the back of his head struck me as an awkward alternative.
Again: Where did a cherub carry those indispensable articles (such as
jack-knives, marbles, and pieces of twine) which boys in an earthly state
of existence usually stow away in their trousers-pockets?

These were knotty questions, and I was never able to dispose of them
satisfactorily.

Meanwhile Pepper Whitcomb would scour the whole town in search of me. He
finally discovered my retreat, and dropped in on me abruptly one afternoon,
while I was deep in the cherub problem.

"Look here, Tom Bailey!" said Pepper, shying a piece of clam-shell
indignantly at the file jacet on a neighboring gravestone. "You are just
going to the dogs! Can't you tell a fellow what in thunder ails you,
instead of prowling round among the tombs like a jolly old vampire?"

"Pepper," I replied, solemnly, "don't ask me. All is not well here"-touching
my breast mysteriously. If I had touched my head instead, I should have
been nearer the mark.

Pepper stared at me.

"Earthly happiness," I continued, "is a delusion and a snare. You will never
be happy, Pepper, until you are a cherub."

Pepper, by the by, would have made an excellent cherub, he was so chubby.
Having delivered myself of these gloomy remarks, I arose languidly from the
grass and moved away, leaving Pepper staring after me in mute astonishment.
I was Hamlet and Werter and the late Lord Byron all in one.

You will ask what my purpose was in cultivating this factitious despondency.
None whatever. Blighted beings never have any purpose in life excepting to
be as blighted as possible.

Of course my present line of business could not long escape the eye of
Captain Nutter. I don't know if the Captain suspected my attachment for
Miss Glentworth. He never alluded to it; but he watched me. Miss Abigail
watched me, Kitty Collins watched me, and Sailor Ben watched me.

"I can't make out his signals," I overheard the Admiral remark to my
grandfather one day. "I hope he ain't got no kind of sickness aboard."

There was something singularly agreeable in being an object of so great
interest. Sometimes I had all I could do to preserve my dejected aspect, it
was so pleasant to be miserable. I incline to the opinion that people who
are melancholy without any particular reason, such as poets, artists, and
young musicians with long hair, have rather an enviable time of it. In a
quiet way I never enjoyed myself better in my life than when I was a
Blighted Being.







Chapter Twenty

In Which I Prove Myself
To Be the Grandson of My Grandfather



It was not possible for a boy of my temperament to be a blighted being
longer than three consecutive weeks.

I was gradually emerging from my self-imposed cloud when events took place
that greatly assisted in restoring me to a more natural frame of mind. I
awoke from an imaginary trouble to face a real one.

I suppose you don't know what a financial crisis is? I will give you an
illustration.

You are deeply in debt-say to the amount of a quarter of a dollar-to the
little knicknack shop round the corner, where they sell picture-papers,
spruce-gum, needles, and Malaga raisins. A boy owes you a quarter of a
dollar, which he promises to pay at a certain time. You are depending on
this quarter to settle accounts with the small shop-keeper. The time
arrives-and the quarter doesn't. That's a financial crisis, in one
sense-twenty-five senses, if I may say so.

When this same thing happens, on a grander scale, in the mercantile world,
it produces what is called a panic. One man's inability to pay his debts
ruins another man, who, in turn, ruins someone else, and so on, until
failure after failure makes even the richest capitalists tremble. Public
confidence is suspended, and the smaller fry of merchants are knocked over
like tenpins.

These commercial panics occur periodically, after the fashion of comets and
earthquakes and other disagreeable things.

Such a panic took place in New Orleans in the year 18-, and my father's
banking-house went to pieces in the crash.

Of a comparatively large fortune nothing remained after paying his debts
excepting a few thousand dollars, with which he proposed to return North
and embark in some less hazardous enterprise. In the meantime it was
necessary for him to stay in New Orleans to wind up the business.

My grandfather was in some way involved in this failure, and lost, I fancy,
a considerable sum of money; but he never talked much on the subject. He
was an unflinching believer in the spilt-milk proverb.

"It can't be gathered up," he would say, "and it's no use crying over it.
Pitch into the cow and get some more milk, is my motto."

The suspension of the banking-house was bad enough, but there was an
attending circumstance that gave us, at Rivermouth, a great deal more
anxiety. The cholera, which someone predicted would visit the country that
year, and which, indeed, had made its appearance in a mild form at several
points along the Mississippi River, had broken out with much violence at
New Orleans.

The report that first reached us through the newspapers was meagre and
contradictory; many people discredited it; but a letter from my mother left
us no room for doubt. The sickness was in the city. The hospitals were
filling up, and hundreds of the citizens were flying from the stricken
place by every steamboat. The unsettled state of my father's affairs made
it imperative for him to remain at his post; his desertion at that moment
would have been at the sacrifice of all he had saved from the general
wreck.

As he would be detained in New Orleans at least three months, my mother
declined to come North without him.

After this we awaited with feverish impatience the weekly news that came to
us from the South. The next letter advised us that my parents were well,
and that the sickness, so far, had not penetrated to the faubourg, or
district, where they lived. The following week brought less cheering
tidings. My father's business, in consequence of the flight of the other
partners, would keep him in the city beyond the period he had mentioned.
The family had moved to Pass Christian, a favorite watering-place on Lake
Pontchartrain, near New Orleans, where he was able to spend part of each
week. So the return North was postponed indefinitely.

It was now that the old longing to see my parents came back to me with
irresistible force. I knew my grandfather would not listen to the idea of
my going to New Orleans at such a dangerous time, since he had opposed the
journey so strongly when the same objection did not exist. But I determined
to go nevertheless.

I think I have mentioned the fact that all the male members of our family,
on my father's side-as far back as the Middle Ages-have exhibited in early
youth a decided talent for running away. It was an hereditary talent. It
ran in the blood to run away. I do not pretend to explain the peculiarity.
I simply admit it.

It was not my fate to change the prescribed order of things. I, too, was to
run away, thereby proving, if any proof were needed, that I was the
grandson of my grandfather. I do not hold myself responsible for the step
any more than I do for the shape of my nose, which is said to be a
facsimile of Captain Nutter's.

I have frequently noticed how circumstances conspire to help a man, or a
boy, when he has thoroughly resolved on doing a thing. That very week the
Rivermouth Barnacle printed an advertisement that seemed to have been
written on purpose for me. It read as follows:

WANTED. A Few Able-bodied Seamen and a Cabin-Boy, for the ship Rawlings, now
loading for New Orleans at Johnson's Wharf, Boston. Apply in person, within
four days, at the office of Messrs.- & Co., or on board the Ship.

How I was to get to New Orleans with only $4.62 was a question that had been
bothering me. This advertisement made it as clear as day. I would go as
cabin-boy.

I had taken Pepper into my confidence again; I had told him the story of my
love for Miss Glentworth, with all its harrowing details; and now conceived
it judicious to confide in him the change about to take place in my life,
so that, if the Rawlings went down in a gale, my friends might have the
limited satisfaction of knowing what had become of me.

Pepper shook his head discouragingly, and sought in every way to dissuade me
from the step. He drew a disenchanting picture of the existence of a
cabin-boy, whose constant duty (according to Pepper) was to have dishes
broken over his head whenever the captain or the mate chanced to be out of
humor, which was mostly all the time. But nothing Pepper said could turn me
a hair's-breadth from my purpose.

I had little time to spare, for the advertisement stated explicitly that
applications were to be made in person within four days. I trembled to
think of the bare possibility of some other boy snapping up that desirable
situation.

It was on Monday that I stumbled upon the advertisement. On Tuesday my
preparations were completed. My baggage-consisting of four shirts, half a
dozen collars, a piece of shoemaker's wax, (Heaven knows what for!) and
seven stockings, wrapped in a silk handkerchief-lay hidden under a loose
plank of the stable floor. This was my point of departure.

My plan was to take the last train for Boston, in order to prevent the
possibility of immediate pursuit, if any should be attempted. The train
left at 4 P.M.

I ate no breakfast and little dinner that day. I avoided the Captain's eye,
and wouldn't have looked Miss Abigail or Kitty in the face for the wealth
of the Indies.

When it was time to start for the station I retired quietly to the stable
and uncovered my bundle. I lingered a moment to kiss the white star on
Gypsy's forehead, and was nearly unmanned when the little animal returned
the caress by lapping my cheek. Twice I went back and patted her.

On reaching the station I purchased my ticket with a bravado air that ought
to have aroused the suspicion of the ticket-master, and hurried to the car,
where I sat fidgeting until the train shot out into the broad daylight.

Then I drew a long breath and looked about me. The first object that saluted
my sight was Sailor Ben, four or five seats behind me, reading the
Rivermouth Barnacle!

Reading was not an easy art to Sailor Ben; he grappled with the sense of a
paragraph as if it were a polar-bear, and generally got the worst of it. On
the present occasion he was having a hard struggle, judging by the way he
worked his mouth and rolled his eyes. He had evidently not seen me. But
what was he doing on the Boston train?

Without lingering to solve the question, I stole gently from my seat and
passed into the forward car.

This was very awkward, having the Admiral on board. I couldn't understand it
at all. Could it be possible that the old boy had got tired of land and was
running away to sea himself? That was too absurd. I glanced nervously
towards the car door now and then, half expecting to see him come after me.

We had passed one or two way-stations, and I had quieted down a good deal,
when I began to feel as if somebody was looking steadily at the back of my
head. I turned round involuntarily, and there was Sailor Ben again, at the
farther end of the car, wrestling with the Rivermouth Barnacle as before.

I began to grow very uncomfortable indeed. Was it by design or chance that
he thus dogged my steps? If he was aware of my presence, why didn't he
speak to me at once? 'Why did he steal round, making no sign, like a
particularly unpleasant phantom? Maybe it wasn't Sailor Ben. I peeped at
him slyly. There was no mistaking that tanned, genial phiz of his. Very odd
he didn't see me!

Literature, even in the mild form of a country newspaper, always had the
effect of poppies on the Admiral. 'When I stole another glance in his
direction his hat was tilted over his right eye in the most dissolute
style, and the Rivermouth Barnacle lay in a confused heap beside him. He
had succumbed. He was fast asleep. If he would only keep asleep until we
reached our destination!

By and by I discovered that the rear car had been detached from the train at
the last stopping-place. This accounted satisfactorily for Sailor Ben's
singular movements, and considerably calmed my fears. Nevertheless, I did
not like the aspect of things.

The Admiral continued to snooze like a good fellow, and was snoring
melodiously as we glided at a slackened pace over a bridge and into Boston.

I grasped my pilgrim's bundle, and, hurrying out of the car, dashed up the
first street that presented itself.

It was a narrow, noisy, zigzag street, crowded with trucks and obstructed
with bales and boxes of merchandise. I didn't pause to breathe until I had
placed a respectable distance between me and the railway station. By this
time it was nearly twilight.

I had got into the region of dwelling-houses, and was about to seat myself
on a doorstep to rest, when, lo! there was the Admiral trundling along on
the opposite sidewalk, under a full spread of canvas, as he would have
expressed it.

I was off again in an instant at a rapid pace; but in spite of all I could
do he held his own without any perceptible exertion. He had a very ugly
gait to get away from, the Admiral. I didn't dare to run, for fear of being
mistaken for a thief, a suspicion which my bundle would naturally lend
color to.

I pushed ahead, however, at a brisk trot, and must have got over one or two
miles-my pursuer neither gaining nor losing ground-when I concluded to
surrender at discretion. I saw that Sailor Ben was determined to have me,
and, knowing my man, I knew that escape was highly improbable.

So I turned round and waited for him to catch up with me, which he did in a
few seconds, looking rather sheepish at first.

"Sailor Ben," said I, severely, "do I understand that you are dogging my
steps?"

"'Well, little mess-mate," replied the Admiral, rubbing his nose, which he
always did when he was disconcerted, "I am kind o' followin' in your wake."

"Under orders?"

"Under orders."

"Under the Captain's orders?"

"Sure-ly."

"In other words, my grandfather has sent you to fetch me back to
Rivermouth?"

"That's about it," said the Admiral, with a burst of frankness.

"And I must go with you whether I want to or not?"

"The Capen's very identical words!"

There was nothing to be done. I bit my lips with suppressed anger, and
signified that I was at his disposal, since I couldn't help it. The
impression was very strong in my mind that the Admiral wouldn't hesitate to
put me in irons if I showed signs of mutiny.

It was too late to return to Rivermouth that night-a fact which I
communicated to the old boy sullenly, inquiring at the same time what he
proposed to do about it.

He said we would cruise about for some rations, and then make a night of it.
I didn't condescend to reply, though I hailed the suggestion of something
to eat with inward enthusiasm, for I had not taken enough food that day to
keep life in a canary.

'We wandered back to the railway station, in the waiting room of which was a
kind of restaurant presided over by a severe-looking young lady. Here we
had a cup of coffee apiece, several tough doughnuts, and some blocks of
venerable spongecake. The young lady who attended on us, whatever her age
was then, must have been a mere child when that sponge-cake was made.

The Admiral's acquaintance with Boston hotels was slight; but he knew of a
quiet lodging-house near by, much patronized by sea-captains, arid kept by
a former friend of his.

In this house, which had seen its best days, we were accommodated with a
mouldy chamber containing two cot-beds, two chairs, and a cracked pitcher
on a washstand. The mantel-shelf was ornamented with three big pink
conch-shells, resembling pieces of petrified liver; and over these hung a
cheap lurid print, in which a United States sloop-of-war was giving a
British frigate particular fits. It is very strange how our own ships never
seem to suffer any in these terrible engagements. It shows what a nation we
are.

An oil-lamp on a deal-table cast a dismal glare over the apartment, which
was cheerless in the extreme. I thought of our sitting-room at home, with
its flowery wall-paper and gay curtains and soft lounges; I saw Major
Elkanah Nutter (my grandfather's father) in powdered wig and Federal
uniform, looking down benevolently from his gilt frame between the
bookcases; I pictured the Captain and Miss Abigail sitting at the cosey
round table in the moon-like glow of the astral lamp; and then I fell to
wondering how they would receive me when 1 came back. I wondered if the
Prodigal Son had any idea that his father was going to kill the fatted calf
for him, and how he felt about it, on the whole.

Though I was very low in spirits, I put on a bold front to Sailor Ben, you
will understand. To be caught and caged in this manner was a frightful
shock to my vanity. He tried to draw me into conversation; but I answered
in icy monosyllables. He again suggested we should make a night of it, and
hinted broadly that he was game for any amount of riotous dissipation, even
to the extent of going to see a play if I wanted to. I declined haughtily.
I was dying to go.

He then threw out a feeler on the subject of dominos and checkers, and
observed in a general way that "seven up" was a capital game; but I
repulsed him at every point.

I saw that the Admiral was beginning to feel hurt by my systematic coldness.
'We had always been such hearty friends until now. It was too bad of me to
fret that tender, honest old heart even for an hour. I really did love the
ancient boy, and when, in a disconsolate way, he ordered up a pitcher of
beer, I unbent so far as to partake of some in a teacup. He recovered his
spirits instantly, and took out his cuddy clay pipe for a smoke.

Between the beer and the soothing fragrance of the navy-plug, I fell into a
pleasanter mood myself, and, it being too late now to go to the theatre, I
condescended to say-addressing the northwest corner of the ceiling-that
"seven up" was a capital game. Upon this hint the Admiral disappeared, and
returned shortly with a very dirty pack of cards.

As we played, with varying fortunes, by the flickering flame of the lamp, he
sipped his beer and became communicative. He seemed immensely tickled by
the fact that I had come to Boston. It leaked out presently that he and the
Captain had had a wager on the subject.

The discovery of my plans and who had discovered them were points on which
the Admiral refused to throw any light. They had been discovered, however,
and the Captain had laughed at the idea of my running away. Sailor Ben, on
the contrary, had stoutly contended that I meant to slip cable and be off.
Whereupon the Captain offered to bet him a dollar that I wouldn't go. And
it was partly on account of this wager that Sailor Ben refrained from
capturing me when he might have done so at the start.

Now, as the fare to and from Boston, with the lodging expenses, would cost
him at least five dollars, I didn't see what he gained by winning the
wager. The Admiral rubbed his nose violently when this view of the case
presented itself.

I asked him why he didn't take me from the train at the first stopping-place
and return to Rivermouth by the down train at 4.30. He explained having
purchased a ticket for Boston, he considered himself bound to the owners
(the stockholders of the road) to fulfil his part of the contract! To use
his own words, he had "shipped for the viage."

This struck me as being so deliciously funny, that after I was in bed and
the light was out, I couldn't help laughing aloud once or twice. I suppose
the Admiral must have thought I was meditating another escape, for he made
periodical visits to my bed throughout the night, satisfying himself by
kneading me all over that I hadn't evaporated.

I was all there the next morning, when Sailor Ben half awakened me by
shouting merrily, "All hands on deck!" The words rang in my ears like a
part of my own dream, for I was at that instant climbing up the side of the
Rawlings to offer myself as cabin-boy.

The Admiral was obliged to shake me roughly two or three times before he
could detach me from the dream. I opened my eyes with effort, and stared
stupidly round the room. Bit by bit my real situation dawned on me. 'What a
sickening sensation that is, when one is in trouble, to wake up feeling
free for a moment, and then to find yesterday's sorrow all ready to go on
again!

"'Well, little messmate, how fares it?"

I was too much depressed to reply. The thought of returning to Rivermouth
chilled me. How could I face Captain Nutter, to say nothing of Miss Abigail
and Kitty? How the Temple Grammar School boys would look at me! How Conway
and Seth Rodgers would exult over my mortification! And what if the Rev.
'Wibird Hawkins should allude to me in his next Sunday's sermon?

Sailor Ben was wise in keeping an eye on me, for after these thoughts took
possession of my mind, I wanted only the opportunity to give him the slip.

The keeper of the lodgings did not supply meals to his guests; so we
breakfasted at a small chophouse in a crooked street on our way to the
cars. The city was not astir yet, and looked glum and careworn in the damp
morning atmosphere.

Here and there as we passed along was a sharp-faced shop-boy taking down
shutters; and now and then we met a seedy man who had evidently spent the
night in a doorway. Such early birds and a few laborers with their tin
kettles were the only signs of life to be seen until we came to the
station, where I insisted on paying for my own ticket. I didn't relish
being conveyed from place to place, like a felon changing prisons, at
somebody else's expense.

On entering the car I sunk into a seat next the window, and Sailor Ben
deposited himself beside me, cutting off all chance of escape.

The car filled up soon after this, and I wondered if there was anything in
my mien that would lead the other passengers to suspect I was a boy who had
run away and was being brought back.

A man in front of us-he was near-sighted, as I discovered later by his
reading a guide-book with his nose-brought the blood to my cheeks by
turning round and peering at me steadily. I rubbed a clear spot on the
cloudy window-glass at my elbow, and looked out to avoid him.

There, in the travellers' room, was the severe-looking young lady piling up
her blocks of sponge-cake in alluring pyramids and industriously
intrenching herself behind a breastwork of squash-pie. I saw with cynical
pleasure numerous victims walk up to the counter and recklessly sow the
seeds of death in their constitutions by eating her doughnuts. I had got
quite interested in her, when the whistle sounded and the train began to
move.

The Admiral and I did not talk much on the journey. I stared out of the
window most of the time, speculating as to the probable nature of the
reception in store for me at the terminus of the road.

'What would the Captain say? and Mr. Grimshaw, what would he do about it?
Then I thought of Pepper Whitcomb. Dire was the vengeance I meant to wreak
on Pepper, for who but he had betrayed me? Pepper alone had been the
repository of my secret-perfidious Pepper!

As we left station after station behind us, I felt less and less like
encountering the members of our family. Sailor Ben fathomed what was
passing in my mind, for he leaned over and said:

"I don't think as the Capen will bear down very hard on you."

But it wasn't that. It wasn't the fear of any physical punishment that might
be inflicted; it was a sense of my own folly that was creeping over me; for
during the long, silent ride I had examined my conduct from every
stand-point, and there was no view I could take of myself in which I did
not look like a very foolish person indeed.

As we came within sight of the spires of Rivermouth, I wouldn't have cared
if the up train, which met us outside the town, had run into us and ended
me.

Contrary to my expectation and dread, the Captain was not visible when we
stepped from the cars. Sailor Ben glanced among the crowd of faces,
apparently looking for him too. Conway was there-he was always hanging
about the station-and if he had intimated in any way that he knew of my
disgrace and enjoyed it, I should have walked into him, I am certain.

But this defiant feeling entirely deserted me by the time we reached the
Nutter House. The Captain himself opened the door.

"Come on board, sir," said Sailor Ben, scraping his left foot and touching
his hat sea-fashion.

My grandfather nodded to Sailor Ben, somewhat coldly I thought, and much to
my astonishment kindly took me by the hand.

I was unprepared for this, and the tears, which no amount of severity would
have wrung from me, welled up to my eyes.

The expression of my grandfather's face, as I glanced at it hastily, was
grave and gentle; there was nothing in it of anger or reproof. I followed
him into the sitting-room, and, obeying a motion of his hand, seated myself
on the sofa. He remained standing by the round table for a moment, lost in
thought, then leaned over and picked up a letter.

It was a letter with a great black seal.







Chapter Twenty-One

In Which I Leave Rivermouth



A letter with a great black seal!

I knew then what had happened as well as I know it now. But which was it,
father or mother? I do not like to look back to the agony and suspense of
that moment.

My father had died at New Orleans during one of his weekly visits to the
city. The letter bearing these tidings had reached Rivermouth the evening
of my flight-had passed me on the road by the down train.

I must turn back for a moment to that eventful evening. When I failed to
make my appearance at supper, the Captain began to suspect that I had
really started on my wild tour southward-a conjecture which Sailor Ben's
absence helped to confirm. I had evidently got off by the train and Sailor
Ben had followed me.

There was no telegraphic communication between Boston and Rivermouth in
those days; so my grandfather could do nothing but await the result. Even
if there had been another mail to Boston, he could not have availed himself
of it, not knowing how to address a message to the fugitives. The
post-office was naturally the last place either I or the Admiral would
think of visiting.

My grandfather, however, was too full of trouble to allow this to add to his
distress. He knew that the faithful old sailor would not let me come to any
harm, and even if I had managed for the time being to elude him, was sure
to bring me back sooner or later.

Our return, therefore, by the first train on the following day did not
surprise him.

I was greatly puzzled, as I have said, by the gentle manner of his
reception; but when we were alone together in the sitting-room, and he
began slowly to unfold the letter, I understood it all. I caught a sight of
my mother's handwriting in the superscription, and there was nothing left
to tell me.

My grandfather held the letter a few seconds irresolutely, and then
commenced reading it aloud; but he could get no further than the date.

"I can't read it, Tom," said the old gentleman, breaking down. "I thought I
could."

He handed it to me. I took the letter mechanically, and hurried away with it
to my little room, where I had passed so many happy hours.

The week that followed the receipt of this letter is nearly a blank in my
memory. I remember that the days appeared endless; that at times I could
not realize the misfortune that had befallen us, and my heart upbraided me
for not feeling a deeper grief; that a full sense of my loss would now and
then sweep over me like an inspiration, and I would steal away to my
chamber or wander forlornly about the gardens. I remember this, but little
more.

As the days went by my first grief subsided, and in its place grew up a want
which I have experienced at every step in life from boyhood to manhood.
Often, even now, after all these years, when I see a lad of twelve or
fourteen walking by his father's side, and glancing merrily up at his face,
I turn and look after them, and am conscious that I have missed
companionship most sweet and sacred.

I shall not dwell on this portion of my story. There were many tranquil,
pleasant hours in store for me at that period, and I prefer to turn to
them.



One evening the Captain came smiling into the sitting-room with an open
letter in his hand. My mother had arrived at New York, and would be with us
the next day. For the first time in weeks-years, it seemed to me-something
of the old cheerfulness mingled with our conversation round the evening
lamp. I was to go to Boston with the Captain to meet her and bring her
home. I need not describe that meeting. With my mother's hand in mine once
more, all the long years we had been parted appeared like a dream. Very
dear to me was the sight of that slender, pale woman passing from room to
room, and lending a patient grace and beauty to the saddened life of the
old house.

Everything was changed with us now. There were consultations with lawyers,
and signing of papers, and correspondence; for my father's affairs had been
left in great confusion. And when these were settled, the evenings were not
long enough for us to hear all my mother had to tell of the scenes she had
passed through in the ill-fated city.

Then there were old times to talk over, full of reminiscences of Aunt Chloe
and little Black Sam. Little Black Sam, by the by, had been taken by his
master from my father's service ten months previously, and put on a
sugar-plantation near Baton Rouge. Not relishing the change, Sam had run
away, and by some mysterious agency got into Canada, from which place he
had sent back several indecorous messages to his late owner. Aunt Chloe was
still in New Orleans, employed as nurse in one of the cholera hospital
wards, and the Desmoulins, near neighbors of ours, had purchased the pretty
stone house among the orange-trees.

How all these simple details interested me will be readily understood by any
boy who has been long absent from home.

I was sorry when it became necessary to discuss questions more nearly
affecting myself. I had been removed from school temporarily, but it was
decided, after much consideration, that I should not return, the decision
being left, in a manner, in my own hands.

The Captain wished to carry out his son's intention and send me to college,
for which I was nearly fitted; but our means did not admit of this. The
Captain, too, could ill afford to bear the expense, for his losses by the
failure of the New Orleans business had been heavy. Yet he insisted on the
plan, not seeing clearly what other disposal to make of me.

In the midst of our discussions a letter came from my Uncle Snow, a merchant
in New York, generously offering me a place in his counting-house. The case
resolved itself into this: If I went to college, I should have to be
dependent on Captain Nutter for several years, and at the end of the
collegiate course would have no settled profession. If I accepted my
uncle's offer, I might hope to work my way to independence without loss of
time. It was hard to give up the long-cherished dream of being a Harvard
boy; but I gave it up.

The decision once made, it was Uncle Snow's wish that I should enter his
counting-house immediately. The cause of my good uncle's haste was this-he
was afraid that I would turn out to be a poet before he could make a
merchant of me. His fears were based upon the fact that I had published in
the Rivermouth Barnacle some verses addressed in a familiar manner "To the
Moon." Now, the idea of a boy, with his living to get, placing himself in
communication with the Moon, struck the mercantile mind as monstrous. It
was not only a bad investment, it was lunacy.

'We adopted Uncle Snow's views so far as to accede to his proposition
forthwith. My mother, I neglected to say, was also to reside in New York.

I shall not draw a picture of Pepper Whitcomb's disgust when the news was
imparted to him, nor attempt to paint Sailor Ben's distress at the prospect
of losing his little messmate.

In the excitement of preparing for the journey I didn't feel any very deep
regret myself. But when the moment came for leaving, and I saw my small
trunk lashed up behind the carriage, then the pleasantness of the old life
and a vague dread of the new came over me, and a mist filled my eyes,
shutting out the group of schoolfellows, including all the members of the
Centipede Club, who had come down to the house to see me off.

As the carriage swept round the corner, I leaned out of the window to take a
last look at Sailor Ben's cottage, and there was the Admiral's flag flying
at half-mast.

So I left Rivermouth, little dreaming that I was not to see the old place
again for many and many a year.







Chapter Twenty-Two

Exeunt Omnes

With the close of my school-days at Rivermouth this modest chronicle ends.

The new life upon which I entered, the new friends and foes I encountered on
the road, and what I did and what I did not, are matters that do not come
within the scope of these pages. But before I write Finis to the record as
it stands, before I leave it-feeling as if I were once more going away from
my boyhood-I have a word or two to say concerning a few of the personages
who have figured in the story, if you will allow me to call Gypsy a
personage.

I am sure that the reader who has followed me thus far will be willing to
hear what became of her, and Sailor Ben and Miss Abigail and the Captain.

First about Gypsy. A month after my departure from Rivemouth the Captain
informed me by letter that he had parted with the little mare, according to
agreement. She had been sold to the ring-master of a travelling circus (I
had stipulated on this disposal of her), and was about to set out on her
travels. She did not disappoint my glowing anticipations, but became quite
a celebrity in her way-by dancing the polka to slow music on a pine-board
ball-room constructed for the purpose.

I chanced once, a long while afterwards, to be in a country town where her
troupe was giving exhibitions; I even read the gaudily illumined show-bill,
setting forth the accomplishments of Zuleika, the famed Arabian Trick
Pony-but I failed to recognize my dear little Mustang girl behind those
high-sounding titles, and so, alas, did not attend the performance! I hope
all the praises she received and all the spangled trappings she wore did
not spoil her; but I am afraid they did, for she was always over much given
to the vanities of this world!

Miss Abigail regulated the domestic destinies of my grandfather's household
until the day of her death, which Dr. Theophilus Tredick solemnly averred
was hastened by the inveterate habit she had contracted of swallowing
unknown quantities of hot-drops whenever she fancied herself out of sorts.
Eighty-seven empty phials were found in a bonnet-box on a shelf in her
bedroom closet.

The old house became very lonely when the family got reduced to Captain
Nutter and Kitty; and when Kitty passed away, my grandfather divided his
time between Rivermouth and New York.

Sailor Ben did not long survive his little Irish lass, as he always fondly
called her. At his demise, which took place about six years since, he left
his property in trust to the managers of a "Home for Aged Mariners." In his
will, which was a very whimsical document-written by himself, and worded
with much shrewdness, too-he warned the Trustees that when he got "aloft"
he intended to keep his "weather eye" on them, and should send "a speritual
shot across their bows" and bring them to, if they didn't treat the Aged
Mariners handsomely.

He also expressed a wish to have his body stitched up in a shotted hammock
and dropped into the harbor; but as he did not strenuously insist on this,
and as it was not in accordance with my grandfather's preconceived notions
of Christian burial, the Admiral was laid to rest beside Kitty, in the Old
South Burying Ground, with an anchor that would have delighted him neatly
carved on his headstone.

I am sorry the fire has gone out in the old ship's stove in that sky-blue
cottage at the head of the wharf; I am sorry they have taken down the
flag-staff and painted over the funny port-holes; for I loved the old cabin
as it was. They might have let it alone!

For several months after leaving Rivermouth I carried on a voluminous
correspondence with Pepper Whitcomb; but it gradually dwindled down to a
single letter a month, and then to none at all. But while he remained at
the Temple Grammar School he kept me advised of the current gossip of the
town and the doings of the Centipedes.

As one by one the boys left the academy-Adams, Harris, Marden, Blake, and
Langdon-to seek their fortunes elsewhere, there was less to interest me in
the old seaport; and when Pepper himself went to Philadelphia to read law,
I had no one to give me an inkling of what was going on.

There wasn't much to go on, to be sure. Great events no longer considered it
worth their while to honor so quiet a place.

One Fourth of July the Temple Grammar School burnt down-set on fire, it was
supposed, by an eccentric squib that was seen to bolt into an upper
window-and Mr. Grimshaw retired from public life, married, "and lived
happily ever after," as the story-books say.

The Widow Conway, I am able to state, did not succeed in enslaving Mr.
Meeks, the apothecary, who united himself clandestinely to one of Miss
Dorothy Gibbs's young ladies, and lost the patronage of Primrose Hall in
consequence.

Young Conway went into the grocery business with his ancient chum,
Rodgers-RODGERS & CONWAY! I read the sign only last summer when I was down
in Rivermouth, and had half a mind to pop into the shop and shake hands
with him, and ask him if he wanted to fight. I contented myself, however,
with flattening my nose against his dingy shop-window, and beheld Conway,
in red whiskers and blue overalls, weighing out sugar for a customer-giving
him short weight, I'll bet anything!

I have reserved my pleasantest word for the last. It is touching the
Captain. The Captain is still hale and rosy, and if he doesn't relate his
exploit in the War of 1812 as spiritedly as he used to, he makes up by
relating it more frequently and telling it differently every time! He
passes his winters in New York and his summers in the Nutter House, which
threatens to prove a hard nut for the destructive gentleman with the scythe
and the hour-glass, for the seaward gable has not yielded a clapboard to
the eastwind these twenty years. The Captain has now become the Oldest
Inhabitant in Rivermouth, and so I don't laugh at the Oldest Inhabitant any
more, but pray in my heart that he may occupy the post of honor for half a
century to come!

So ends the Story of a Bad Boy-but not such a very bad boy, as I told you to
begin with.





End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Story of a Bad Boy, by Aldrich