The Light in the Clearing
By Irving Bacheller

Chapter VI

THE GREAT STRANGER

Some strangers came along the road those days–hunters, peddlers and the like–and their coming filled me with a joy which mostly went away with them, I regret to say. None of these, however, appealed to my imagination as did old Kate. But there was one stranger greater than she–greater, indeed, than any other who came into Rattleroad. He came rarely and would not be long detained. How curiously we looked at him, knowing his fame and power! This great stranger was Money.

I shall never forget the day that my uncle showed me a dollar bill and a little shiny, gold coin and three pieces of silver, nor can I forget how carefully he watched them while they lay in my hands and presently put them back into his wallet. That was long before the time of which I am writing. I remember hearing him say, one day of that year, when I asked him to take us to the Caravan of Wild Beasts which was coming to the village:

“I’m sorry, but it’s been a hundred Sundays since I had a dollar in my wallet for more than ten minutes.”

I have his old account book for the years of 1837 and 1838. Here are some of the entries:

     “Balanced accounts with J. Dorothy and gave him my note for $2.15,
     to be paid in salts January 1, 1838. Sold ten bushels of wheat to
     E. Miner at 90 cents, to be paid in goods.

     “Sold two sheep to Flavius Curtis and took his note for $6, payable
     in boots on or before March the first.”

Only one entry in more than a hundred mentions money, and this was the sum of eleven cents received in balance from a neighbor.

So it will be seen that a spirit of mutual accommodation served to help us over the rough going. Mr. Grimshaw, however, demanded his pay in cash and that I find was, mainly, the habit of the money-lenders.

We were poor but our poverty was not like that of these days in which I am writing. It was proud and cleanly and well-fed. We had in us the best blood of the Puritans. Our fathers had seen heroic service in the wars and we knew it.

There were no farmer-folk who thought more of the virtue of cleanliness. On this subject my aunt was a deep and tireless thinker. She kept a watchful eye upon us. In her view men-folks were like floors, furniture and dishes. They were in the nature of a responsibility–a tax upon women as it were. Every day she reminded me of the duty of keeping my body clean. Its members had often suffered the tyranny of the soaped hand at the side of the rain barrel. I suppose that all the waters of this world have gone up in the sky and come down again since those far days, but even now the thought of my aunt brings back the odor of soft soap and rain barrels.

She did her best, also, to keep our minds in a cleanly state of preservation–a work in which the teacher rendered important service. He was a young man from Canton.

One day when I had been kept after hours for swearing in a fight and then denying it, he told me that there was no reason why I shouldn’t be a great man if I stuck to my books and kept my heart clean. I heard with alarm that there was another part of me to be kept clean. How was it to be done?

“Well, just make up your mind that you’ll never lie, whatever else you do,” he said. “You can’t do anything bad or mean unless you intend to cover it up with lies.”

What a simple rule was this of the teacher!–and yet–well the very next thing he said was:

“Where did you hear all that swearing?”

How could I answer his question truthfully? I was old enough to know that the truth would disgrace my Uncle Peabody. I could not tell the truth, therefore, and I didn’t. I put it all on Dug Draper, although his swearing had long been a dim, indefinite and useless memory.

As a penalty I had to copy two maxims of Washington five times in my writing-book. In doing so I put them on the wall of my memory where I have seen them every day of my life and from which I read as I write.

“Speak no evil of the absent for it is unjust.”

     “Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial
     fire called conscience.”

The boys in the school were a sturdy big-boned lot with arms and legs like the springing bow. Full-lunged, great-throated fellows, they grew to be, calling the sheep and cattle in the land of far-reaching pastures. There was an undersized boy three years older who often picked on me and with whom I would have no peaceful commerce.

I copy from an old memorandum book a statement of my daily routine just as I put it down one of those days:

     “My hardest choar is to get up after uncle calls me. I scramble
     down stairs and pick up my boots and socks and put them on. Then I
     go into the setting room and put on my jacket. I get some brand
     for the sheep. Then I put on my cap and mittens and go out and feed
     the sheep. Then I get my breakfast. Then I put on my frock, cap,
     mittens and fetch in my wood. Then I feed the horses their oats.
     Then I lay away my old clothes until night. I put on my best coat
     and mittens and tippet and start for school. By the time I get to
     Joe’s my toes are cold and I stop and warm them. When I get to
     school I warm me at the stove. Then I go to my seat and study my
     reader, then I take out my arithmetic, then my spelling book, then
     comes the hardest study that ever landed on Plymouth Rock. It is
     called geography. After the spelling lesson comes noon. The teacher
     plays with me cos the other boys are so big. I am glad when I go
     home. Then I do my choars again, and hear my aunt read until
     bedtime.”

There were girls in the school, but none like Sally. They whispered together with shy glances in our direction, as if they knew funny secrets about us, and would then break into noisy jeers. They did not interest me, and probably because I had seen the lightness and grace and beauty of Sally Dunkelberg and tasted the sweetness of her fancies.

There were the singing and spelling schools and the lyceums, but those nights were few and far between. Not more than four or five in the whole winter were we out of the joyful candle-light of our own home. Even then our hands were busy making lighters or splint brooms, or paring and quartering and stringing the apples or cracking butternuts while Aunt Deel read.

After the sheep came we kept only two cows. The absence of cattle was a help to the general problem of cleanliness. The sheep were out in the fields and I kept away from them for fear the rams would butt me. I remember little of the sheep save the washing and shearing and the lambs which Uncle Peabody brought to our fireside to be warmed on cold mornings of the early spring. I remember asking where the lambs came from when I was a small boy, and that Uncle Peabody said they came from “over the river"–a place regarding which his merry ignorance provoked me. In the spring they were driven to the deep hole and dragged, one by one, into the cold water to have their fleeces washed. When the weather had warmed men came to shear them and their oily white fleeces were clipped close to the skin and each taken off in one piece like a coat and rolled up and put on the wool pile.

I was twelve years old when I began to be the reader for our little family. Aunt Deel had long complained that she couldn’t keep up with her knitting and read so much. We had not seen Mr. Wright for nearly two years, but he had sent us the novels of Sir Walter Scott and I had led them heart deep into the creed battles of Old Mortality.

Then came the evil days of 1837, when the story of our lives began to quicken its pace and excite our interest in its coming chapters. It gave us enough to think of, God knows.

Wild speculations in land and the American paper-money system had brought us into rough going. The banks of the city of New York had suspended payment of their notes. They could no longer meet their engagements. As usual, the burden fell heaviest on the poor. It was hard to get money even for black salts.

Uncle Peabody had been silent and depressed for a month or more. He had signed a note for Rodney Barnes, a cousin, long before and was afraid that he would have to pay it. I didn’t know what a note was and I remember that one night, when I lay thinking about it, I decided that it must be something in the nature of horse colic. My uncle told me that a note was a trouble which attacked the brain instead of the stomach. I was with Uncle Peabody so much that I shared his feeling but never ventured to speak of it or its cause. He didn’t like to be talked to when he felt badly. At such times he used to say that he had the brain colic. He told me that notes had an effect on the brain like that of green apples on the stomach.

One autumn day in Canton Uncle Peabody traded three sheep and twenty bushels of wheat for a cook stove and brought it home in the big wagon. Rodney Barnes came with him to help set up the stove. He was a big giant of a man with the longest nose in the township. I had often wondered how any one would solve the problem of kissing Mr. Barnes in the immediate region of his nose, the same being in the nature of a defense.

I remember that I regarded it with a kind of awe because I had been forbidden to speak of it. The command invested Mr. Barnes’ nose with a kind of sanctity. Indeed it became one of the treasures of my imagination.

That evening I was chiefly interested in the stove. What a joy it was to me with its damper and griddles and high oven and the shiny edge on its hearth! It rivaled, in its novelty and charm, any tin peddler’s cart that ever came to our door. John Axtell and his wife, who had seen it pass their house, hurried over for a look at it. Every hand was on the stove as we tenderly carried it into the house, piece by piece, and set it up. Then they cut a hole in the upper floor and the stone chimney and fitted the pipe. How keenly we watched the building of the fire! How quickly it roared and began to heat the room!

When the Axtells had gone away Aunt Deel said:

“It’s grand! It is sartin–but I’m ’fraid we can’t afford it–ayes I be!”

“We can’t afford to freeze any longer. I made up my mind that we couldn’t go through another winter as we have,” was my uncle’s answer.

“How much did it cost?” she asked.

“Not much differ’nt from thirty-four dollars in sheep and grain,” he answered.

Rodney Barnes stayed to supper and spent a part of the evening with us.

Like other settlers there, Mr. Barnes was a cheerful optimist. Everything looked good to him until it turned out badly. He stood over the stove with a stick of wood and made gestures with it as he told how he had come from Vermont with a team and a pair of oxen and some bedding and furniture and seven hundred dollars in money. He flung the stick of wood into the box with a loud thump as he told how he had bought his farm of Benjamin Grimshaw at a price which doubled its value. True it was the price which other men had paid in the neighborhood, but they had all paid too much. Grimshaw had established the price and called it fair. He had taken Mr. Barnes to two or three of the settlers on the hills above Lickitysplit.

“Tell this man what you think about the kind o’ land we got here," Grimshaw had demanded.

The tenant recommended it. He had to. They were all afraid of Grimshaw. Mr. Barnes picked up a flat iron and felt its bottom and waved it in the air as he alleged that it was a rocky, stumpy, rooty, God-forsaken region far from church or market or school on a rough road almost impassable for a third of the year. Desperate economy and hard work had kept his nose to the grindstone but, thank God, he had nose enough left.

Now and then Grimshaw (and others like him) loaned money to people, but he always had some worthless hay or a broken-down horse which you had to buy before you could get the money.

Mr. Barnes put down the flat iron and picked up the poker and tried its strength on his knee as he told how he had heard that it was a growing country near the great water highway of the St. Lawrence. Prosperous towns were building up in it. There were going to be great cities in Northern New York. What they called a railroad was coming. There were rich stores of lead and iron in the rocks. Mr. Barnes had bought two hundred acres at ten dollars an acre. He had to pay a fee of five per cent. to Grimshaw’s lawyer for the survey and the papers. This left him owing fourteen hundred dollars on his farm–much more than it was worth. One hundred acres of the land had been roughly cleared by Grimshaw and a former tenant. The latter had toiled and struggled and paid tribute and given up.

Our cousin twisted the poker in his great hands until it squeaked as he stood before my uncle and said:

“My wife and I have chopped and burnt and pried and hauled rocks an’ shoveled dung an’ milked an’ churned until we are worn out. For almost twenty years we’ve been workin’ days an’ nights an’ Sundays. My mortgage was over-due, I owed six hundred dollars on it. I thought it all over one day an’ went up to Grimshaw’s an’ took him by the back of the neck and shook him. He said he would drive me out o’ the country. He gave me six months to pay up. I had to pay or lose the land. I got the money on the note that you signed over in Potsdam. Nobody in Canton would ’a’ dared to lend it to me.”

The poker broke and he threw the pieces under the stove.

“Why?” my uncle asked.

Mr. Barnes got hold of another stick of wood and went on.

“’Fraid o’ Grimshaw. He didn’t want me to be able to pay it. The place is worth more than six hundred dollars now–that’s the reason. I intended to cut some timber an’ haul it to the village this winter so I could pay a part o’ the note an’ git more time as I told ye, but the roads have been so bad I couldn’t do any haulin’.”

My uncle went and took a drink at the water pail. I saw by his face that he was unusually wrought up.

“My heavens an’ earth!” he exclaimed as he sat down again.

“It’s the brain colic,” I said to myself as I looked at him.

Mr. Barnes seemed to have it also.

“Too much note,” I whispered.

“I’m awful sorry, but I’ve done everything I could,” said Mr. Barnes.

“Ain’t there somebody that’ll take another mortgage?–it ought to be safe now,” my uncle suggested.

“Money is so tight it can’t be done. The bank has got all the money an’ Grimshaw owns the bank. I’ve tried and tried, but I’ll make you safe. I’ll give you a mortgage until I can turn ’round.”

So I saw how Rodney Barnes, like other settlers in Lickitysplit, had gone into bondage to the landlord.

“How much do you owe on this place?” Barnes asked.

“Seven hundred an’ fifty dollars,” said my uncle.

“Is it due?”

“It’s been due a year an’ if I have to pay that note I’ll be short my interest.”

“God o’ Israel! I’m scairt,” said Barnes.

Down crashed the stick of wood into the box.

“What about?”

Mr. Barnes tackled a nail that stuck out of the woodwork and tried to pull it between his thumb and finger while I watched the process with growing interest.

“It would be like him to put the screws on you now,” he grunted, pulling at the nail. “You’ve got between him an’ his prey. You’ve taken the mouse away from the cat.”

I remember the little panic that fell on us then. I could see tears in the eyes of Aunt Deel as she sat with her head leaning wearily on her hand.

“If he does I’ll do all I can,” said Barnes, “whatever I’ve got will be yours.”

The nail came out of the wall.

“I had enough saved to pay off the mortgage,” my uncle answered. “I suppose it’ll have to go for the note.”

Mr. Barnes’ head was up among the dried apples on the ceiling. A movement of his hand broke a string of them. Then he dropped his huge bulk into a chair which crashed to the floor beneath him. He rose blushing and said:

“I guess I better go or I’ll break everything you’ve got here. I kind o’ feel that way.”

Rodney Barnes left us.

I remember how Uncle Peabody stood in the middle of the floor and whistled the merriest tune he knew.

“Stand right up here,” he called in his most cheerful tone. “Stand right up here before me, both o’ ye.”

I got Aunt Deel by the hand and led her toward my uncle. We stood facing him. “Stand straighter,” he demanded. “Now, altogether. One, two, three, ready, sing.”

He beat time with his hand in imitation of the singing master at the schoolhouse and we joined him in singing an old tune which began: “O keep my heart from sadness, God.”

This irresistible spirit of the man bridged a bad hour and got us off to bed in fairly good condition.

A few days later the note came due and its owner insisted upon full payment. There was such a clamor for money those days! I remember that my aunt had sixty dollars which she had saved, little by little, by selling eggs and chickens. She had planned to use it to buy a tombstone for her mother and father–a long-cherished ambition. My uncle needed the most of it to help pay the note. We drove to Potsdam on that sad errand and what a time we had getting there and back in deep mud and sand and jolting over corduroys!

“Bart,” my uncle said the next evening, as I took down the book to read. “I guess we’d better talk things over a little to-night. These are hard times. If we can find anybody with money enough to buy ’em I dunno but we better sell the sheep.”

“If you hadn’t been a fool,” my aunt exclaimed with a look of great distress–"ayes! if you hadn’t been a fool.”

“I’m just what I be an’ I ain’t so big a fool that I need to be reminded of it,” said my uncle.

“I’ll stay at home an’ work,” I proposed bravely.

“You ain’t old enough for that,” sighed Aunt Deel.

“I want to keep you in school,” said Uncle Peabody, who sat making a splint broom.

While we were talking in walked Benjamin Grimshaw–the rich man of the hills. He didn’t stop to knock but walked right in as if the house were his own. It was common gossip that he held a mortgage on every acre of the countryside. I had never liked him, for he was a stern-eyed man who was always scolding somebody, and I had not forgotten what his son had said of him.

“Good night!” he exclaimed curtly, as he sat down and set his cane between his feet and rested his hands upon it. He spoke hoarsely and I remember the curious notion came to me that he looked like our old ram. The stern and rugged face of Mr. Grimshaw and the rusty gray of his homespun and the hoarseness of his tone had suggested this thought to me. The long silvered tufts above his keen, gray eyes moved a little as he looked at my uncle. There were deep lines upon his cheeks and chin and forehead. He wore a thin, gray beard under his chin. His mouth was shut tight in a long line curving downward a little at the ends. My uncle used to say that his mouth was made to keep his thoughts from leaking and going to waste. He had a big body, a big chin, a big mouth, a big nose and big ears and hands. His eyes lay small in this setting of bigness.

“Why, Mr. Grimshaw, it’s years since you’ve been in our house–ayes!" said Aunt Deel.

“I suppose it is,” he answered rather sharply. “I don’t have much time to get around. I have to work. There’s some people seem to be able to git along without it.”

He drew in his breath quickly and with a hissing sound after every sentence.

“How are your folks?” my aunt asked.

“So’s to eat their allowance–there’s never any trouble about that," said Mr. Grimshaw. “I see you’ve got one o’ these newfangled stoves,” he added as he looked it over. “Huh! Rich folks can have anything they want.”

Uncle Peabody had sat splintering the long stick of yellow birch. I observed that the jackknife trembled in his hand. His tone had a touch of unnaturalness, proceeding no doubt from his fear of the man before him, as he said:

“When I bought that stove I felt richer than I do now. I had almost enough to settle with you up to date, but I signed a note for a friend and had to pay it.”

“Ayuh! I suppose so,” Grimshaw answered in a tone of bitter irony which cut me like a knife-blade, young as I was. “What business have you signin’ notes an’ givin’ away money which ain’t yours to give–I’d like to know? What business have you actin’ like a rich man when you can’t pay yer honest debts? I’d like to know that, too?”

“If I’ve ever acted like a rich man it’s been when I wa’n’t lookin’," said Uncle Peabody.

“What business have you got enlargin’ yer family–takin’ another mouth to feed and another body to spin for? That costs money. I ain’t no objection if a man can afford it, but the money it costs ain’t yours to give. It looks as if it belonged to me. You spend yer nights readin’ books when ye ought to be to work an’ you’ve scattered that kind o’ foolishness all over the neighborhood. I want to tell you one thing, Baynes, you’ve got to pay up or git out o’ here.”

He raised his cane and shook it in the air as he spoke.

“Oh, I ain’t no doubt o’ that,” said Uncle Peabody. “You’ll have to have yer money–that’s sure; an’ you will have it if I live, every cent of it. This boy is goin’ to be a great help to me–you don’t know what a good boy he is and what a comfort he’s been to us!”

I had understood that reference to me in Mr. Grimshaw’s complaint and these words of my beloved uncle uncovered my emotions so that I put my elbow on the wood-box and leaned my head upon it and sobbed.

“I tell ye I’d rather have that boy than all the money you’ve got, Mr. Grimshaw,” Uncle Peabody added.

My aunt came and patted my shoulder and said: “Sh–sh–sh! Don’t you care, Bart! You’re just the same as if you was our own boy–ayes!–you be.”

“I ain’t goin’ to be hard on ye, Baynes,” said Mr. Grimshaw as he rose from his chair; “I’ll give ye three months to see what you can do. I wouldn’t wonder if the boy would turn out all right. He’s big an’ cordy of his age an’ a purty likely boy they tell me. He’d ’a’ been all right at the county house until he was old enough to earn his livin’, but you was too proud for that–wasn’t ye? I don’t mind pride unless it keeps a man from payin’ his honest debts. You ought to have better sense.”

“An’ you ought to keep yer breath to cool yer porridge,” said Uncle Peabody.

Mr. Grimshaw opened the door and stood for a moment looking at us and added in a milder tone: “You’ve got one o’ the best farms in this town an’ if ye work hard an’ use common sense ye ought to be out o’ debt in five years–mebbe less.”

He closed the door and went away.

Neither of us moved or spoke as we listened to his footsteps on the gravel path that went down to the road and to the sound of his buggy as he drove away. Then Uncle Peabody broke the silence by saying:

“He’s the dam’dest–”

He stopped, set the half-splintered stick aside, closed his jackknife and went to the water-pail to cool his emotions with a drink.

Aunt Deel took up the subject where he had dropped it, as if no half-expressed sentiment would satisfy her, saying:

“–old skinflint that ever lived in this world, ayes! I ain’t goin’ to hold down my opinion o’ that man no longer, ayes! I can’t. It’s too powerful–ayes!”

Having recovered my composure I repeated that I should like to give up school and stay at home and work.

Aunt Deel interrupted me by saying:

“I have an idee that Sile Wright will help us–ayes! He’s comin’ home an’ you better go down an’ see him–ayes! Hadn’t ye?”

“Bart an’ I’ll go down to-morrer,” said Uncle Peabody.

I remember well our silent going to bed that night and how I lay thinking and praying that I might grow fast and soon be able to take the test of manhood–that of standing in a half-bushel measure and shouldering two bushels of corn. By and by a wind began to shake the popple leaves above us and the sound soothed me like the whispered “hush-sh” of a gentle mother.

We dressed with unusual care in the morning. After the chores were done and we had had our breakfast we went up-stairs to get ready.

Aunt Deel called at the bottom of the stairs in a generous tone:

“Peabody, if I was you I’d put on them butternut trousers–ayes! an’ yer new shirt an’ hat an’ necktie, but you must be awful careful of ’em–ayes.”

The hat and shirt and necktie had been stored in the clothes press for more than a year but they were nevertheless “new” to Aunt Deel. Poor soul! She felt the importance of the day and its duties. It was that ancient, Yankee dread of the poorhouse that filled her heart I suppose. Yet I wonder, often, why she wished us to be so proudly adorned for such a crisis.

Some fourteen months before that day my uncle had taken me to Potsdam and traded grain and salts for what he called a “rip roarin’ fine suit o’ clothes” with boots and cap and shirt and collar and necktie to match, I having earned them by sawing and cording wood at three shillings a cord. How often we looked back to those better days! The clothes had been too big for me and I had had to wait until my growth had taken up the “slack” in my coat and trousers before I could venture out of the neighborhood. I had tried them on every week or so for a long time. Now my stature filled them handsomely and they filled me with a pride and satisfaction which I had never known before. The collar was too tight, so that Aunt Deel had to sew one end of it to the neckband, but my tie covered the sewing.

Since that dreadful day of the petticoat trousers my wonder had been regarding all integuments, what Sally Dunkelberg would say to them. At last I could start for Canton with a strong and capable feeling. If I chanced to meet Sally Dunkelberg I need not hide my head for shame as I had done that memorable Sunday.

“Now may the Lord help ye to be careful–awful, terrible careful o’ them clothes every minute o’ this day,” Aunt Deel cautioned as she looked at me. “Don’t git no horse sweat nor wagon grease on ’em.”

To Aunt Deel wagon grease was the worst enemy of a happy and respectable home.

We hitched our team to the grasshopper spring wagon and set out on our journey. It was a warm, hazy Indian-summer day in November. My uncle looked very stiff and sober in his “new” clothes. Such breathless excitement as that I felt when we were riding down the hills and could see the distant spires of Canton, I have never known since that day. As we passed “the mill” we saw the Silent Woman looking out of the little window of her room above the blacksmith shop–a low, weather-stained, frame building, hard by the main road, with a narrow hanging stair on the side of it.

“She keeps watch by the winder when she ain’t travelin’,” said Uncle Peabody. “Knows all that’s goin’ on–that woman–knows who goes to the village an’ how long they stay. When Grimshaw goes by they say she hustles off down the road in her rags. She looks like a sick dog herself, but I’ve heard that she keeps that room o’ hers just as neat as a pin.”

Near the village we passed a smart-looking buggy drawn by a spry-footed horse in shiny harness. Then I noticed with a pang that our wagon was covered with dry mud and that our horses were rather bony and our harnesses a kind of lead color. So I was in an humble state of mind when we entered the village. Uncle Peabody had had little to say and I had kept still knowing that he sat in the shadow of a great problem.

There was a crowd of men and women in front of Mr. Wright’s office and through its open door I saw many of his fellow townsmen. We waited at the door for a few minutes. I crowded in while Uncle Peabody stood talking with a villager. The Senator caught sight of me and came to my side and put his hand on my head and said:

“Hello, Bart! How you’ve grown! and how handsome you look! Where’s your uncle?”

“He’s there by the door,” I answered.

“Well, le’s go and see him.”

Then I followed him out of the office.

Mr. Wright was stouter and grayer and grander than when I had seen him last. He was dressed in black broadcloth and wore a big beaver hat and high collar and his hair was almost white. I remember vividly his clear, kindly, gray eyes and ruddy cheeks.

“Baynes, I’m glad to see you,” he said heartily. “Did ye bring me any jerked meat?”

“Didn’t think of it,” said Uncle Peabody. “But I’ve got a nice young doe all jerked an’ if you’re fond o’ jerk I’ll bring ye down some to-morrer.”

“I’d like to take some to Washington but I wouldn’t have you bring it so far.”

“I’d like to bring it–I want a chance to talk with ye for half an hour or such a matter,” said my uncle. “I’ve got a little trouble on my hands.”

“There’s a lot of trouble here,” said the Senator. “I’ve got to settle a quarrel between two neighbors and visit a sick friend and make a short address to the Northern New York Conference at the Methodist Church and look over a piece of land that I’m intending to buy, and discuss the plans for my new house with the carpenter. I expect to get through about six o’clock and right after supper I could ride up to your place with you and walk back early in the morning. We could talk things over on the way up.”

“That’s first rate,” said my uncle. “The chores ain’t much these days an’ I guess my sister can git along with ’em.”

The Senator took us into his office and introduced us to the leading men of the county. There were: Minot Jenison, Gurdon Smith, Ephraim Butterfield, Lemuel Buck, Baron S. Doty, Richard N. Harrison, John L. Russell, Silas Baldwin, Calvin Hurlbut, Doctor Olin, Thomas H. Conkey and Preston King. These were names with which, the Republican had already made us familiar.

“Here,” said the Senator as he put his hand on my head, “is a coming man in the Democratic party.”

The great men laughed at my blushes and we came away with a deep sense of pride in us. At last I felt equal to the ordeal of meeting the Dunkelbergs. My uncle must have shared my feeling for, to my delight, he went straight to the basement store above which was the modest sign: “H. Dunkelberg, Produce.” I trembled as we walked down the steps and opened the door. I saw the big gold watch chain, the handsome clothes, the mustache and side whiskers and the large silver ring approaching us, but I was not as scared as I expected to be. My eyes were more accustomed to splendor.

“Well I swan!” said the merchant in the treble voice which I remembered so well. “This is Bart and Peabody! How are you?”

“Pretty well,” I answered, my uncle being too slow of speech to suit my sense of propriety. “How is Sally?”

The two men laughed heartily much to my embarrassment.

“He’s getting right down to business,” said my uncle.

“That’s right,” said Mr. Dunkelberg. “Why, Bart, she’s spry as a cricket and pretty as a picture. Come up to dinner with me and see for yourself.”

Uncle Peabody hesitated, whereupon I gave him a furtive nod and he said “All right,” and then I had a delicious feeling of excitement. I had hard work to control my impatience while they talked. I walked on some butter tubs in the back room and spun around on a whirling stool that stood in front of a high desk and succeeded in the difficult feat of tipping over a bottle of ink without getting any on myself. I covered the multitude of my sins on the desk with a newspaper and sat down quietly in a chair.

By and by I asked, “Are you ’most ready to go?”

“Yes–come on–it’s after twelve o’clock,” said Mr. Dunkelberg. “Sally will be back from school now.”

My conscience got the better of me and I confessed about the ink bottle and was forgiven.

So we walked to the big house of the Dunkelbergs and I could hear my heart beating when we turned in at the gate–the golden gate of my youth it must have been, for after I had passed it I thought no more as a child. That rude push which Mr. Grimshaw gave me had hurried the passing.

I was a little surprised at my own dignity when Sally opened the door to welcome us. My uncle told Aunt Deel that I acted and spoke like Silas Wright, “so nice and proper.” Sally was different, too–less playful and more beautiful with long yellow curls covering her shoulders.

“How nice you look!” she said as she took my arm and led me into her playroom.

“These are my new clothes,” I boasted. “They are very expensive and I have to be careful of them.”

I remember not much that we said or did but I could never forget how she played for me on a great shiny piano–I had never seen one before–and made me feel very humble with music more to my liking than any I have heard since–crude and simple as it was–while her pretty fingers ran up and down the keyboard.

O magic ear of youth! I wonder how it would sound to me now–the rollicking lilt of Barney Leave the Girls Alone–even if a sweet maid flung its banter at me with flashing fingers and well-fashioned lips.

I behaved myself with great care at the table–I remember that–and, after dinner, we played in the dooryard and the stable, I with a great fear of tearing my new clothes. I stopped and cautioned her more than once: “Be careful! For gracious sake! be careful o’ my new suit!”

As we were leaving late in the afternoon she said:

“I wish you would come here to school.”

“I suppose he will sometime,” said Uncle Peabody.

A new hope entered my breast, that moment, and began to grow there.

“Aren’t you going to kiss her?” said Mr. Dunkelberg with a smile.

I saw the color in her cheeks deepen as she turned with a smile and walked away two or three steps while the grown people laughed, and stood with her back turned looking in at the window.

“You’re looking the wrong way for the scenery,” said Mr. Dunkelberg.

She turned and walked toward me with a look Of resolution in her pretty face and said:

“I’m not afraid of him.”

We kissed each other and, again, that well-remembered touch of her hair upon my face! But the feel of her warm lips upon my own–that was so different and so sweet to remember in the lonely days that followed! Fast flows the river to the sea when youth is sailing on it. They had shoved me out of the quiet cove into the swift current–those dear, kindly, thoughtless people! Sally ran away into the house as their laughter continued and my uncle and I walked down the street. How happy I was!

We went to the Methodist Church where Mr. Wright was speaking but we couldn’t get in. There were many standing at the door who had come too late. We could hear his voice and I remember that he seemed to be talking to the people just as I had heard him talk to my aunt and uncle, sitting by our fireside, only louder. We were tired and went down to the tavern and waited for him on its great porch. We passed a number of boys playing three-old-cat in the school yard. How I longed to be among them!

I observed with satisfaction that the village boys did not make fun of me when I passed them as they did when I wore the petticoat trousers. Mr. and Mrs. Wright came along with the crowd, by and by, and Colonel Medad Moody. We had supper with them at the tavern and started away in the dark with the Senator on the seat with us. He and my uncle began to talk about the tightness of money and the banking laws and I remember a remark of my uncle, for there was that in his tone which I could never forget:

“We poor people are trusting you to look out for us–we poor people are trusting you to see that we get treated fair. We’re havin’ a hard time.”

This touched me a little and I was keen to hear the Senator’s answer. I remember so well the sacred spirit of democracy in his words. Long afterward I asked him to refresh my memory of them and so I am able to quote him as he would wish.

“I know it,” he answered. “I lie awake nights thinking about it. I am poor myself, almost as poor as my father before me. I have found it difficult to keep my poverty these late years but I have not failed. I’m about as poor as you are, I guess. I could enjoy riches, but I want to be poor so I may not forget what is due to the people among whom I was born–you who live in small houses and rack your bones with toil. I am one of you, although I am racking my brain instead of my bones in our common interest. There are so many who would crowd us down we must stand together and be watchful or we shall be reduced to an overburdened, slavish peasantry, pitied and despised. Our danger will increase as wealth accumulates and the cities grow. I am for the average man–like myself. They’ve lifted me out of the crowd to an elevation which I do not deserve. I have more reputation than I dare promise to keep. It frightens me. I am like a child clinging to its father’s hand in a place of peril. So I cling to the crowd. It is my father. I know its needs and wrongs and troubles. I had other things to do to-night. There were people who wished to discuss their political plans and ambitions with me. But I thought I would rather go with you and learn about your troubles. What are they?”

My uncle told him about the note and the visit of Mr. Grimshaw and of his threats and upbraidings.

“Did he say that in Bart’s hearing?” asked the Senator.

“Ayes!–right out plain.”

“Too bad! I’m going to tell you frankly, Baynes, that the best thing I know about you is your conduct toward this boy. I like it. The next best thing is the fact that you signed the note. It was bad business but it was good Christian conduct to help your friend. Don’t regret it. You were poor and of an age when the boy’s pranks were troublesome to both of you, but you took him in. I’ll lend you the interest and try to get another holder for the mortgage on one condition. You must let me attend to Bart’s schooling. I want to be the boss about that. We have a great schoolmaster in Canton and when Bart is a little older I want him to go there to school. I’ll try to find him a place where he can work for his board.”

“We’ll miss Bart but we’ll be tickled to death–there’s no two ways about that,” said Uncle Peabody.

I had been getting sleepy, but this woke me up. I no longer heard the monotonous creak of harness and whiffletrees and the rumble of wheels; I saw no longer the stars and the darkness of the night. My mind had scampered off into the future. I was playing with Sally or with the boys in the school yard.

The Senator tested my arithmetic and grammar and geography as we rode along in the darkness and said by and by:

“You’ll have to work hard, Bart. You’ll have to take your book into the field as I did. After every row of corn I learned a rule of syntax or arithmetic or a fact in geography while I rested, and my thought and memory took hold of it as I plied the hoe. I don’t want you to stop the reading, but from now on you must spend half of every evening on your lessons.”

We got home at half past eight and found my aunt greatly worried. She had done the chores and been standing in her hood and shawl on the porch listening for the sound of the wagon. She had kept our suppers warm but I was the only hungry one.

As I was going to bed the Senator called me to him and said:

“I shall be gone when you are up in the morning. It may be a long time before I see you; I shall leave something for you in a sealed envelope with your name on it. You are not to open the envelope until you go away to school. I know how you will feel that first day. When night falls you will think of your aunt and uncle and be very lonely. When you go to your room for the night I want you to sit down all by yourself and open the envelope and read what I shall write. They will be, I think, the most impressive words ever written. You will think them over but you will not understand them for a long time. Ask every wise man you meet to explain them to you, for all your happiness will depend upon your understanding of these few words in the envelope.”

In the morning Aunt Deel put it in my hands.

“I wonder what in the world he wrote there–ayes!” said she. “We must keep it careful–ayes!–I’ll put it in my trunk an’ give it to ye when ye go to Canton to school.”

“Has Mr. Wright gone?” I asked rather sadly.

“Ayes! Land o’ mercy! He went away long before daylight with a lot o’ jerked meat in a pack basket–ayes! Yer uncle is goin’ down to the village to see ’bout the mortgage this afternoon, ayes!”

It was a Saturday and I spent its hours cording wood in the shed, pausing now and then for a look into my grammar. It was a happy day, for the growing cords expressed in a satisfactory manner my new sense of obligation to those I loved. Imaginary conversations came into my brain as I worked and were rehearsed in whispers.

“Why, Bart, you’re a grand worker,” my uncle would say in my fancy. “You’re as good as a hired man.”

“Oh, that’s nothing,” I would answer modestly. “I want to be useful so you won’t be sorry you took me and I’m going to study just as Mr. Wright did and be a great man if I can and help the poor people. I’m going to be a better scholar than Sally Dunkelberg, too.”

What a day it was!–the first of many like it. I never think of those days without saying to myself: “What a God’s blessing a man like Silas Wright can be in the community in which his heart and soul are as an open book!”

As the evening came on I took a long look at my cords. The shed was nearly half full of them. Four rules of syntax, also, had been carefully stored away in my brain. I said them over as I hurried down into the pasture with old Shep and brought in the cows. I got through milking just as Uncle Peabody came. I saw with joy that his face was cheerful.

“Yip!” he shouted as he stopped his team at the barn door where Aunt Deel and I were standing. “We ain’t got much to worry about now. I’ve got the interest money right here in my pocket.”

We unhitched and went in to supper. I was hoping that Aunt Deel would speak of my work but she seemed not to think of it.

“Had a grand day!” said Uncle Peabody, as he sat down at the table and began to tell what Mr. Wright and Mr. Dunkelberg had said to him.

I, too, had had a grand day and probably my elation was greater than his. I tarried at the looking-glass hoping that Aunt Deel would give me a chance modestly to show my uncle what I had done. But the talk about interest and mortgages continued. I went to my uncle and tried to whisper in his ear a hint that he had better go and look into the wood-shed. He stopped me before I had begun by saying:

“Don’t bother me now, Bub. I’ll git that candy for ye the next time I go to the village.”

Candy! I was thinking of no such trivial matter as candy. He couldn’t know how the idea shocked me in the exalted state of mind into which I had risen. He didn’t know then of the spiritual change in me and how generous and great I was feeling and how sublime and beautiful was the new way in which I had set my feet.

I went out on the porch and stood looking down with a sad countenance. Aunt Deel followed me.

“W’y, Bart!” she exclaimed, “you’re too tired to eat–ayes! Be ye sick?”

I shook my head.

“Peabody,” she called, “this boy has worked like a beaver every minute since you left–ayes he has! I never see anything to beat it–never! I want you to come right out into the wood-shed an’ see what he’s done–this minute–ayes!”

I followed them into the shed.

“W’y of all things!” my uncle exclaimed. “He’s worked like a nailer, ain’t he?”

There were tears in his eyes when he took my hand in his rough palm and squeezed it and said:

“Sometimes I wish ye was little ag’in so I could take ye up in my arms an’ kiss ye just as I used to. Horace Dunkelberg says that you’re the best-lookin’ boy he ever see.”

“Stop!” Aunt Deel exclaimed with a playful tap on his shoulder. “W’y! ye mustn’t go on like that.”

“I’m tellin’ just what he said,” my uncle answered.

“I guess he only meant that Bart looked clean an’ decent–that’s all–ayes! He didn’t mean that Bart was purty. Land sakes!–no.”

I observed the note of warning in the look she gave my uncle.

“No, I suppose not,” he answered, as he turned away with a smile and brushed one of his eyes with a rough finger.

I repeated the rules I had learned as we went to the table.

“I’m goin’ to be like Silas Wright if I can,” I added.

“That’s the idee!” said Uncle Peabody. “You keep on as you’ve started an’ everybody’ll milk into your pail.”

I kept on–not with the vigor of that first day with its new inspiration–but with growing strength and effectiveness. Nights and mornings and Saturdays I worked with a will and my book in my pocket or at the side of the field and was, I know, a help of some value on the farm. My scholarship improved rapidly and that year I went about as far as I could hope to go in the little school at Leonard’s Corners.

“I wouldn’t wonder if ol’ Kate was right about our boy,” said Aunt Deel one day when she saw me with my book in the field.

I began to know then that ol’ Kate had somehow been at work in my soul–subconsciously as I would now put it. I was trying to put truth into the prophecy. As I look at the whole matter these days I can see that Mr. Grimshaw himself was a help no less important to me, for it was a sharp spur with which he continued to prod us.

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This eBook of “The Light in the Clearing - A Tale of the North Country in the Time of Silas Wright” (1917) by Irving Bacheller belongs to the public domain. Complete book.
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