[Illustration: PINCHER DECLARED “... SHE WAS ON HER HIND LEGS CARRYING
HER BABY IN HER ARMS LIKE ANYBODY.” Page 25.]
THE CHILDREN OF THE VALLEY
BY
HARRIET
PRESCOTT
SPOFFORD
_New York._
_Thomas Y. Crowell & Co._
_Publishers._
THE CHILDREN OF THE VALLEY
BY
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
AUTHOR OF THE “HESTER STANLEY” BOOKS,
“A LOST JEWEL,” ETC.
FIFTH THOUSAND
NEW YORK:
THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT, 1901,
BY T. Y. CROWELL & CO.
CONTENTS.
I. PAGE
ALLY AND THE CHILDREN OF THE HILL 5
II.
ALL THE PEOPLE 9
III.
WHAT THE TWINS FOUND 15
IV.
MOTHER BEAR’S CALL 21
V.
TWO LITTLE CONSCIENCES 26
VI.
AFTER DARK ON THE ICE 35
VII.
THE SNOW HUT 41
VIII.
A WILFUL BOY 49
IX.
THE NIGHT-STORM IN THE WOODS 57
X.
THE CHRISTMAS TREE ON THE CLIFF 63
XI.
AUNT ROSE AND THE CHILDREN 68
XII.
THE FLIGHT ON THE STREET CAR 71
XIII.
SALLY’S VOYAGE 75
XIV.
SALLY’S HILL JOURNEY 78
XV.
THAT DAY WHEN ALLY WAS LOST 85
XVI.
AUNT SUSAN’S BABY 89
The Children of the Valley.
I.
ALLY AND THE CHILDREN OF THE HILL.
ALLY was lost—the little blue-eyed dear! That is to say, she was
nowhere to be found. And of course there was commotion in the Valley.
Michael, the gardener, was going one way; and John, the house-man,
another; and Pincher, one of the loggers, was making for the hills with
Uncle Billy in one direction, and Old Uncle and Will and Charlie had
gone up in another; and Aunt Rose and Aunt Susan were hunting through
the house; and Janet and Essie were running this way and that—and it
was noon, and still they hadn’t found her.
Will was sure Ally would be found in the strawberry-patch on the
farther edge of the intervale across the river, and as the boat was on
the other side he had offered to swim over and fetch it.
Charlie had been equally sure that she was looking for bear-cubs again
in the hollow half-way up Blue Top.
Aunt Susan was convinced that she had fallen asleep somewhere under a
bush, when she could not be found in the house.
Aunt Rose thought she might have been taken to drive by people passing
through the Valley—sometimes some of them were—and they would bring her
back.
“Of course,” said Old Uncle, “they’ll bring her back! Ally’ll turn up
all right—she makes more noise, when she sets about it, than all the
rest of you put together!” Nevertheless, Old Uncle—who believed in
whipping, at least he said he did—was making for the hollows of Blue
Top as he said it. For Ally was really the darling of the household,
always bright and sweet-tempered, and daring and ready for anything.
Essie, who was Ally’s twin, felt indignant with Old Uncle for talking
so when no one knew what had become of Ally; she gave it as her opinion
that the fairies had taken her into their own invisible country—the
fairies who haunted the Valley, as every one knew, or else why should
they be seen sailing away on the early breeze in chariots like cobwebs,
leaving their coverlets, long spreads of jewels, shining on the sides
of all the slopes of Blue Top and Green Ridge. But Essie was always
imagining something that wasn’t so, Will said.
Janet said nothing. In her own mind, although she didn’t like to speak
of it, she believed Ally had gone up into the clouds round Blue Top
to find Aunt Susan’s baby who, they understood, had been taken away by
the Children of the Hill. Janet knew that Ally had carried a sore spot
in her tender heart ever since that day last fall when Aunt Susan was
up in the garret, and not knowing that the twins were there, had kissed
the tiny shirt. Janet was a little older than the twins, and she was
not quite sure that they had understood correctly what Aunt Rose had
said one day after Aunt Susan had come home from a long walk, trying to
hide that she had been crying—Aunt Rose had whispered that Aunt Susan
had been up to the Children of the Hill. Yes, plainly, to Janet’s mind,
Ally had taken it into her own hands to discover if they were right
or wrong. For it was brave little Ally who, if there was anything to
adventure about, always adventured. It was Ally to whom things were
always happening. If there was a scrape round, Ally was always the one
sure to get into it, although she usually contrived to come out on
top—except on those two dreadful times of which you shall hear—for she
had a courageous little spirit and a loving little heart. And it was
this courageous spirit, and this loving heart full of childish sympathy
for Aunt Susan, that had taken Ally away now all by herself. She loved
everything so much that she had no thought of being harmed by anything.
So Janet reasoned.
And when, by and by, you learn where she had really gone, and what it
was she brought home, perhaps you will think that the result of this
particular adventure of Ally’s was one of the pleasantest things that
ever befell the Children of the Valley.
II.
ALL THE PEOPLE.
THE children had not always lived in this northern valley.
Janet and Jack and Essie and Ally had come from the far south—where no
snow fell, and the only ice they ever saw was made by a machine—to the
home of Old Uncle and Aunt Susan, who had lost all their own children.
Uncle Billy and Aunt Rose had journeyed down to bring them, after their
father and mother had gone into the country from which they never came
back. Uncle Billy was a great comfort to them at that time; he was Old
Uncle’s brother, and Aunt Rose was Old Uncle’s sister. Aunt Rose was
young and pretty—at least as young and pretty as grown people can be,
and wherever she was she made everything bright and happy.
It was a queer thing, that although Ally had great blue eyes, and
fluffy yellow hair, and dimples all over her rosy face, and Essie had
brown eyes, and dark smooth braids, and was a trifle the taller, people
should always be taking them for each other, and often had to stop and
think: “Oh, no, oh, no, the brown-haired one is the other one!”
Janet’s hair was the most beautiful thing you ever saw; although if
you heard anyone call it red, you might not think so till you saw that
really there was no red about it. She wore it in long braids, and when
it was combed out, it fell round her like a cloud of chestnut overlaid
with gold; and her eyes were the very same color. “It isn’t healthy,”
said Old Uncle. “That hair really ought to be cut.” But it never was
cut.
Jack’s hair was short enough to make up for it, however, for it stood
up like a stiff hair-brush above his honest little freckled face. Poor
Jack, in those days, was usually to be seen going round with a string
tied to one of his front teeth, which he was going to fasten to an
open door and then slam the door, so that the tooth would come out
quickly—just as soon as he could make up his mind to it.
The four children from the south had missed their own dear people
exceedingly at first; Ally and Essie crying themselves to sleep in each
other’s arms, and Janet getting up several times to see that they were
covered, like a little mother herself, and Jack creeping into Will’s
bed, because he had a lump in his throat, he said.
But the novelty of new surroundings had gradually worn away their
sorrow and homesickness. Charlie and Will were very condescending and
kind—they were Aunt Susan’s nephews, and had lived here ever since
they became orphans—and Aunt Susan had said that where there was room
for her people there was room for all of Old Uncle’s. Michael was
delightful with fairy stories out of Ireland. Pincher told them of
blood-curdling happenings in the woods. And the maids were very choice
people. Aunt Susan always had sweeties and dainties for them. Uncle
Billy was great fun when he chose.
It was only Old Uncle who was a drawback. For _this_ sound disturbed
Old Uncle’s nap, and _that_ sound hindered Old Uncle’s work, and the
_other_ sound irritated Old Uncle’s nerves; and the children tiptoed
and held their breath as they went past his office-door, and everybody
hushed them down and hushed them down on account of Old Uncle, until
Jack said one day, “They don’t really like children here at all!”
“It is very unfortunate to be children, anyway,” said Janet, with a
sigh.
“Yes,” said Ally. “They always send you to bed if there’s anything
going on; and they say it isn’t good for you if there’s anything nice
to eat; and they send you out of the room if there are secrets, or else
they spell or talk French or something.”
“They say, ‘Do-grey they-grey hear-grey,’” said Essie.
“And ‘Do-hoolty they-aylty hear-ealty,’” said Janet.
“It’s very, very exsulting to children,” said Ally.
“But we can’t help being children,” said Jack.
“And they can’t help not liking children,” said Essie. “I suppose the
reason we’re called children is because it gives people a cold chill to
hear us coming.”
“Well,” said Janet, repenting, “I suppose we could _make_ them stop not
liking us. I suppose we _could_ be so careful and so quiet that they’d
think it lovely to have us round.”
“Let’s, then!” cried Ally.
But Jack said Janet was too good to live.
However, for a little while they all went about softly, till Michael
called them to see a little furry brown bat clinging to the under-side
of an apple-bough, at which strange sight, and with subsequent
endeavors to capture the sleepy thing that woke and fluttered just a
bough higher every time, the little knot of southerners forgot their
good resolution.
There was always a time of comparative peace, though, after breakfast,
when Aunt Rose kept school, and also another hour, after their dinner.
But when the restraint of lessons was removed, they poured forth to
play again with such a joyous outcry that Old Uncle always rose and
closed his door.
There was another rapturous season of peace,—on Sunday mornings when
they were waiting for the carryalls to take them to church. Janet
stepped about the gardens, with the others at her heels, getting as
pale and delicate a zinnia as she could find, to pin in the ruffle of
her pretty white gown, and a stem of thyme for Jack, and a sprig of
southernwood for Will, and a bit of citronella for Charlie; the twins
foraging for themselves among the late honeysuckles and early cosmos.
They enjoyed the drive to church. They went in the carryalls, drawn by
the three span of farm-horses in the driving harnesses. Janet felt it
was like a picnic when they drove away from the piazza in the three
carriages, one after the other. It was wrong of Janet, no doubt, to
think of a picnic on a Sunday morning; but there certainly was a gala
air about the little procession, with so many children in their flowers
and ribbons, and their beautiful hair.
They enjoyed the day at church; they enjoyed seeing the people; they
enjoyed rambling in the old neglected, bramble-covered graveyard near
by, if they arrived too early; they enjoyed tuning up their own little
pipes in the singing of the hymns.
There was room for them all in Old Uncle’s big square pew, but part of
them sat across the aisle. Six children were too many for one pew. Six
turning young heads! six pairs of knocking young heels! twelve restless
elbows! It was not to be thought of. Old Uncle sat in one pew with
three of them, and Aunt Susan across the aisle with the rest. Uncle
Billy and Aunt Rose sat farther back, and were able to report on the
general behavior when all reached home.
III.
WHAT THE TWINS FOUND.
THE mountains had been a great source of interest at first to the
children, who had never before seen anything but boundless savannas.
The vast blue and purple shapes seemed to be some strange sort of great
live creatures lying crouched against the sky; and they had a little
awe if not fear of them.
Even when they became familiar enough to perceive that one pasture
led to another up their sides, and to know various of the tumbling
black and white brooks by name, they still felt that the mountains
were alive, in some mysterious way. And the fact that there were bears
and panthers in the caves and recesses of the purplest of the hills,
lent a shivery sense of danger, particularly for Essie; for, reasoned
Essie, how could the mountains be kind to bears and wolves, and kind
to children also? Yet at the same time the fact that Old Uncle owned
great tracts of their heights and depths, and had his logging teams and
men in the forests in winter getting out the lumber, gave the children
a cosy feeling as if they, too, had a sort of proprietorship in them,
and even in the remote wild beasts.
The late summer of their first year north had brought the little people
a great deal of pleasure. More than once Uncle Billy had taken them
all in a skiff down the river, slipping along on the current, and then
poling in shore. They had kindled a fire on the bank, and joyously
cooked their own dinner. Uncle Billy had caught trout, and Aunt Rose
had broiled them, while they picked the berries. After dinner they had
burned the remnant, and washed the dishes together.
They had gone up the hills, too, on so many picnics, and seen what had
looked so blue and so far turn into woods and fields and lonely farms
that they had left off expecting to see a big bear reach over their
shoulders for their bread and honey. In fact, by this time they almost
wished they might see one, and Essie and Ally had many a delightful
bear-talk with Pincher.
One day Ally and Essie were out by themselves gathering autumn leaves,
which had come as a great surprise to their southern eyes; first making
them think the woods afire, and then that the world would not be a
green world any more.
They had a large basket with them, with a handle at either end, so that
they might lay in twigs and small branches as well as single leaves;
and afterwards they were glad that they had brought that peculiar,
particular basket.
They had it nearly half filled when they began to feel tired. They had
been over the ground before and so were familiar with it; and Ally
pointed out their favorite resting-log, and they made their way to it
and sat down. It was covered with thick, velvet-green moss, and Ally
sank into the deep cushion with a luxurious coo.
At the same moment she felt her feet touching something very soft. It
was a dim, shady place, and she peered down curiously. The next minute
she was on her knees in the grassy hollow, and Essie saw her with both
arms round the very dearest, softest, hairiest little creature alive!
“Oh, Essie,” cried Ally, “just see what we’ve found! Oh, what do you
suppose it is?”
“Oh, oh!” cried Essie, “isn’t it a dear!”
“Isn’t it a dear!” echoed Ally. “I just love it!”
“So do _I_ love it! Let _me_ feel it!” cried Essie, down in the hollow
too, and half crowding Ally away, to get her own arms round the little
animal. “Do you think it is a little fox?”
“Oh, no! Essie—foxes are yellowish. And it can’t be a
wild-cat—wild-cats have blazing eyes, and they scratch. This is a soft
sleepy baby, and it isn’t a panther—it isn’t anything cruel—oh, isn’t
it cunning?”
“Perhaps it’s a quite new sort of animal,” said Essie, “and we have
found it first of anybody; maybe it is one of the Bible animals—a
leviathan, maybe, Ally.”
Ally didn’t answer. She was holding the little warm flat foot in her
hand, and looking the little creature over. “I guess it’s a baby bear,
Essie,” she said. “Bears don’t have tails, you know, and this hasn’t.
Uncle Billy’ll know. Essie, if it is a bear, it’s our very own bear,
and we can have it.”
“Yes, we can, and take it home! Oh, _dear_ little bear!” cried Essie.
The children sat down by the little fellow in the leaves, and gave
themselves up to perfect delight. They examined his ears, and his paws
with the long claws, and they smoothed and poored his thick fur, and
put their faces down to his; and then they rubbed his little stomach
while he lay on his back with his feet curled up in the air, enjoying
it all, winking and blinking—the most lovable little brown rogue ever
to be seen! Sometimes he lay still, then again he moved in the leaves,
sleepy, snuffling, nuzzling.
“Is he too heavy for us to carry?” asked Ally. “If I stoop, and you put
his arms round my neck, and I take him pick-a-back?”
Essie shook her head. “I don’t believe he would like to be carried that
way. What if we put him in our basket? He’d like lying on the leaves.”
“Why, yes,” said Ally. “He’s always lying on leaves and grass. Let’s do
it. We oughtn’t to let him stay out here in the woods all night, all
alone.”
“Of course not,” said Essie. “What a bad mother he must have had to go
and leave him here!”
“Perhaps some hunter shot her,” said Ally.
Pitiful, the twins stroked him again and put their dear little faces
close to his; and the little bear cuddled and snuggled and uttered a
soft sound of pleasure.
But the soft sound quite changed its character when they began to
try and lift the little fat lump into the basket. “Oh, Ally! he’s
growling!” Essie cried. “Hear him!” and she went off in gales of
laughter; it really was amusing—that little ineffectual growl.
The children tugged and lugged and lifted and hauled him till they had
him on the side of the half-tipped basket, then they tipped it back,
and he rolled in, on the leaves. Next they stripped off their aprons
and tied them across the basket so that he might neither spill out nor
jump out.
It seemed as if they never would get home. One on each side they took
the basket a little way, and then they sat down to rest. Again they
lugged and tugged it a short way farther; and sometimes the little
creature inside made queer, uncouth sounds, and they had to stop and
soothe and stroke him.
“Oh, he’s sucking my fingers,” suddenly said Ally, snatching her hand
away.
“That’s how Pincher teaches the calves to drink,” cried Essie,
joyously, “and we can give him his dinner just that way.”
Again and again it seemed as if they never would reach home.
Fortunately it didn’t occur to them that there might be any mother-bear
alive to follow them through the wood, and express her fear and
anger in savage sort, with great cuffs of tremendous paws and cruel,
murderous hugs. Cheerfully they dragged their burden along under the
warm noonday sun, pink and perspiring, every now and again stopping
for breath and strength, and taking a peep under the aprons. As for
the little animal, he spent his own time sleeping for the most part.
He seemed so warm in his fur, that seized with a sudden fear lest he
should suffocate, they uncovered him, just as they came out at the foot
of their lawn.
IV.
MOTHER BEAR’S CALL.
MARIA, from an upper window, spied the children coming, tugging the
basket along.
She called down to Old Uncle and Aunt Susan on the piazza.
“If them children ar’n’t bringing home a cub!”
Old Uncle stirred in his hammock. Aunt Susan went down the steps. “What
will they do next?” said Old Uncle. As the twins came up with a joyful
outcry, to exhibit their treasure, he rose and peered into the basket.
“’Tis a cub surely,” he said. He looked at the children from under his
shaggy eyebrows. “Will you fetch in a catamount to-morrow?” he asked
sternly.
“We—we thought you would be pleased,” Essie faltered.
“Why, Uncle,” cried Ally, “why, Old Uncle, don’t you love a baby bear?
I just want you to see him suck my fingers! You can’t help loving him!”
“I love you,” teased Old Uncle, catching her up to a place in the
hammock beside himself. “But you can’t keep him alive on your fingers,
even if he only sucked up one a day.”
“You’re just funning!” said Ally. “Pincher knows how to feed him, and
so does Michael. I reckon Essie and I could too.”
“Old Uncle, we won’t let him be a bit of trouble,” said Essie.
“Of course he won’t be any trouble,” said Aunt Susan. She and Aunt Rose
had brought a bottle of warm milk with a rag over the top of it. They
put it into the little bear’s mouth, and the whole family gathered
round to see him take his dinner. His grunts of satisfaction were very
funny. At last the little fellow let go the bottle, stretched himself,
and rolled over on the grass, and looked so good-natured you would
almost have said he was laughing; and Aunt Susan said, “A little bear
is a little dear!”
The cub must have been pretty tired with all the attention and
endearments he received that day, not to say anything about Master
Will’s efforts to make him stand on his hind legs, when he tumbled over
every time like a mould of jelly.
But at last, and after his supper, he was put to sleep in the shed on
a little truss of hay, under an old blanket, where, as soon as he was
alone, he began to whimper for his mother. But the children did not
hear him; they had trooped up-stairs to their own beds, all of them as
tired as the cub himself, and were presently sound asleep.
The great moon rose white and solemn above the hills, and poured her
silver over the forests, and the whole world seemed asleep too.
It was just in their first sweet slumber that everyone in that house
was waked by the strangest, the most melancholy, the most frightful
sound they had ever heard. Now it was loud, high, and shrill. “Hoo!
Hoo! Hoo!” it came. Now it was a long, low growl. Now again it was a
series of sharp cries like barks. Now it was a roar; and something
was knocking about the chairs on the piazzas, scratching at the
windows, lumbering down the steps and plowing and plunging over the
grass—something with heavy jaws and coming clap, clap, along the front
of the house. Finally it made off clumsily in the direction of the
shed, and raised such an uproar there that the sky rang with it.
Every one was out of bed and at the windows. The twins, half hiding
behind the curtains in fright, shivered as they saw plainly in the
moonlight a big creature standing erect, cuffing away at the side of
the shed, and whining and growling all the more when a little whine and
a little yelp answered from within.
Pincher saw the children, and laughed. He was standing at the window at
the other end of the long hall.
“It’s Mother Bear,” he called. “Hear her! ‘Where’s my little bear?’
she’s askin’. ‘Where’s my baby? You folks, give him back or I’ll eat
_your_ babies. Little Bruin, I’m a-hearin’ of ye. Ye want your mammy,
don’t you? She’s smelled ye all the way here. How ’m I goin’ ter fetch
ye out blest ef I know! But I’m _goin’_ ter fetch ye! I say! Give me
my little bear! He’s a dreffle bright bear! Ef you folks only seen
him eatin’ of blackberries you’d know how smart he wuz. Say, I jest
can’t lend him! I’ve got to get him real fat ’fore we go into winter
quarters. How’d ye get here, any way, ye little scamp? Can’t I leave ye
five minutes? Ye was safe asleep in a soft holler, an’ then w’en I was
wadin’ inter the river with a bee-hive in my arms, so’s to drown the
bees an’ git the honey, off ye go! Don’t ye know little bears should
mind their mother? Oh, somebody tuk ye. Br-r-r! I won’t leave so much
as their aprons if I can lay paws on them! that is, onless so be it’s
Ally and Essie. But I’ll hev to box their ears for ’em, I guess. I say,
now, folks! Br-r-r! Br-r-r! I’ll tear the place down if ye don’t give
me my cub!’”
“Oh, Pincher! does she say all that?” asked Ally.
“Pincher! would she tear the house down?” cried Essie.
“The poor mother!” Aunt Susan was exclaiming, hurrying into her
dressing-gown and slippers. And then she and Old Uncle ran down the
back way, followed by Pincher; and they took up the cub, and opened the
shed-door a crack, and pushed him through, and banged and bolted the
door behind him.
Everybody looked out that could. The mother bear stood off a moment on
her hind legs. Then she fell on the cub like an avalanche, and held him
in her arms as any mother holds her baby, and licked him from top to
toe, and lay down and gave him his dinner. After that, gazing back at
the house every step or two with a growl, she lurched off, little Bruin
laboriously following. But Pincher declared that the last he saw, as he
watched her out of sight, she was up on her hind legs carrying her baby
in her arms like anybody.
The twins watched as long as they could see her. Then Essie began to
cry. “I wanted to keep him,” she said, “I—I loved him so.”
“So did I,” said Ally, with her arms round Essie. “But I guess, Essie,
we’ll have to get along with Bobbo. I wonder how Pincher knew his name
was Bruin. Some day we’ll go into the woods, and call ‘Bruin, Bruin,’
and perhaps he will remember us. His mother loved him, you know, Essie.
I suppose she was so sorry when she found him gone. Mothers must have
their babies, you know, Essie; why, they belong to them!”
“If you foolish children don’t go to sleep,” cried Uncle Billy from
some remote quarter, “I’ll call Mother Bear back!”
“Oh! do you believe you could?” answered Ally. “Oh, Uncle Billy! I wish
you would.”
V.
TWO LITTLE CONSCIENCES.
THE garret was a great resort for the children whenever they were shut
in by storm or chilly weather, the big chimneys making it quite warm
enough to play in.
Essie used to go there, every now and then, and sit with Bobbo, Ally’s
tabby kitten, in her lap, or with Erminie, the white angora, and dream
her dreams among the warm chimneys.
Often Ally would come up, too, with her dolls. Sometimes Will was
there, when he had not learned his Latin, sent partly as punishment,
and partly that he might study away from disturbances, for at the rate
he was going on he would never be ready for college.
But Will was not there that day when Essie had been telling Ally her
dreams, and Aunt Susan came up to put something away, not observing
them at all, as both sat among the chests, silent for the moment.
Aunt Susan had turned about to go down again, when an old bureau caught
her eye. She seemed to hesitate a moment, then stopped, and opened a
low drawer. She snatched something up to her lips; and then she sank
down upon the floor, and sat there, holding a little yellow shirt to
her face, and crying bitterly.
For an instant the two children were frightened to see Aunt Susan
cry—that very grave and serene person!
“Oh, it’s her baby’s!” Essie whispered to Ally. But though she would
have liked to comfort Aunt Susan, she sat still.
But the next moment little Ally sprang up, ran to Aunt Susan, and threw
her arms about her neck, and brought her little face round upon Aunt
Susan’s cheek till the tears wet it. “Oh, I know just how you feel!”
she whispered. “I’m _so_ sorry for you! was it a dear baby?”
“Oh, _you_ are a dear baby!” cried Aunt Susan, taking her in her arms.
And perhaps that was the beginning of the strong friendship between
Aunt Susan and Ally.
For Aunt Susan remembered very vividly that morning in the garret on
the day long after—away over near the end of this story—when Ally was
found, after the time when she had gone up, as Janet had suspected, to
see the Children of the Hill.
But there were sunny days as well as stormy ones, along through that
first autumn, and often all the children in the house would be gone out
nutting.
At last came the great frost, to open the burrs, and Pincher said next
morning that if they didn’t make haste that very day the squirrels
would gather all the rest of the nuts.
John and Michael were spared to beat the trees, and down below the
children filled baskets and bags. Squirrels ran everywhere, indignant,
darting aloft like streaks of light, scolding as they sat with their
tails over their heads among the few golden leaves left, and chattering
at the children below.
Ally and Essie, as usual, went off by themselves, Pincher following
them. “The oxens,” said he, “allus go together, yoke-fellows, same ez
you two do!”
“Pincher!” suddenly called Essie, “look here!”
“Oh, Pincher, do!” cried Ally. “Please do look here!”
“Well, that’s what I call luck,” said Pincher, coming up and stooping
over the find—a hoard of nuts that some industrious squirrel, whose
nest was probably in a hollow of the tree above, had stored among the
roots and dead leaves—an enormous quantity.
“Wal, these had orter do ye!” said Pincher. “Ye couldn’t eat more nuts
’n them.”
Ally and Essie scooped up the nuts by double-handfuls into their
baskets, and Pincher filled his bag.
“Oh! isn’t this great, Ally?” said Essie. “Just think of the nut-candy!”
“And the nut-cake!” added Ally.
“And the nuts toasted on the end of a hat-pin—oh, we mustn’t lose one!”
said Essie.
And full of glee, full of eager greed, too, if it must be told, they
didn’t lose one.
Pincher hung the bag on his back, and carried the baskets, and the
three hurried home together. Pincher took the nuts up and spread them
out on the garret floor to dry. Ally and Essie fenced them off from
other stores that might be poured out there later, with a dozen or so
of old bricks that happened to be there, Pincher dragging up to one end
the big hair trunk full of gold-laced soldier’s jackets; then the twins
completed the barricade with a row of old school-books along the front.
The little girls stood up and viewed their possessions like two happy
misers, and counted up the good things they would do with them like two
great philanthropists—so many to stuff the next turkey for Diane, the
cook, so many more for the minister’s wife, and a lot for the old woman
in the hollow across the mountain.
Ally and Essie awoke the next morning to find all the lovely breezes
and melting weather of yesterday had vanished in a fierce storm that
was beating up from the coast, tossing the trees, and lashing the panes
with rivers of rain and cold sleet.
Home never seemed any sweeter to the Children of the Valley than it did
that morning as they basked in the warmth of the great fire roaring
up the chimney, and rosy with well-being, planned out their play over
their breakfast of dainty sausages, and buckwheat-cakes and maple-syrup.
It was while making sure of the very last drops of the sweetness on her
plate, and looking up, startled by a fresh fury of the rain and sleet
against the window-panes, that some sudden disturbing thought struck
Essie.
Essie had remembered the little cub, and wondered if his mother
had made him comfortable anywhere! And then, immediately, she saw
in her mind’s eye a beautiful great squirrel scratching at the big
heap of autumn leaves at the foot of his tree, and stopping, full
of consternation, to find his winter’s store of food gone, with no
dinner to-day—no dinner to-morrow—starvation afterwards! And all his
family! Oh! And she had done it! She and Ally had done it! They had
robbed him, they had left him nothing to eat all winter! She saw his
angry surprise; she saw him scamper up the tree to tell his wife; she
heard him chattering over his loss; she saw him sitting dejected and
bewildered, not knowing which way to turn, and hungry! And she and Ally
had had such a nice breakfast.
Then Essie began to sob; she slipped down and away from the table, and
out of the room.
Ally followed her in amazement, calling and trying to overtake her,
as she ran up-stairs and up-stairs to the garret itself, and threw
herself, sobbing still, on the floor beside the nuts.
“Oh, Essie! what is it? What is the matter?” cried Ally, throwing
herself beside her. “Does your tooth ache?”
“Oh, it’s the squirrel! the squirrel!” Essie moaned.
“The squirrel?”
“Oh, Ally! you and I robbed him! We took all he had! Oh, just think of
him out in this storm and with nothing to eat, and his wife and the
little squirrels—and they’ll all die—they’ll starve!”
By this time Ally felt it too, and sat silent, staring at Essie.
“Don’t you suppose there’s anything we can do?” asked Essie. “I never
thought we were so wicked! Oh! don’t you think we might carry the nuts
back?” she implored.
Ally sprang up. “Oh, yes, we might, if Pincher helped us! But Pincher’s
gone round the mountain to the blacksmith’s with the horses. Uncle
Billy is away too. Perhaps—perhaps Old Uncle”—
“Oh, I would be afraid!” said Essie.
“So am I afraid,” said Ally stoutly. “But you stay here, Essie. Oh, I
wish Uncle Billy wasn’t always going away!”
There was a noise of discussion in Old Uncle’s office when Ally timidly
turned the handle of the door, and paused there, ready to fly.
Old Uncle was looking over some accounts, and taking certain of his
head-men to task for their short-comings. “What is it?” he cried
sharply, as Ally hesitated.
“I—I—wanted to speak to you,” said Ally, and Old Uncle saw the tear
still lying on her cheek.
“Well, then,” said Old Uncle to the two men whom he had been
arraigning—some would say blowing up—a moment before, “you go out to
the kitchen, and tell Diane to give you some of her buckwheat cakes and
maple-syrup—Diane makes a good cup of coffee, too—and we’ll see to this
later. But I’m not going to let any such carelessness pass! Now, little
one!”
For a moment Ally hung back—and then, like a burst of the gale itself,
she ran and climbed Old Uncle’s knee, and threw her arms about his
neck, and told him every word of her story, her little face hidden
under his chin.
“Well, well,” said Old Uncle, “that is bad. But it isn’t so bad it
can’t be mended, maybe. Pretty tough on the squirrel. Yes, Ally, I,
too, call it cruel.”
“Oh, it is, it is!” sobbed Ally. “We know it is! And Essie wants to
take the nuts back.”
“In this storm?”
“Oh, we wouldn’t mind!”
“But you’d be drenched. And you’d take cold.”
“We’d rather!” persisted Ally, sitting up.
“And have to take medicine, and stay up-stairs in bed all day? And you
couldn’t remember the place!”
“Oh, yes we could!” she cried eagerly. “We know the very tree—the old
pine that Pincher said was as old as a pine can be, and that has been
struck by lightning so often. The squirrel has his nest up there, and
the nuts were in a great hollow at the root. Oh, we know the very
spot!” And Ally’s smile now was so bright that it made her tears look
like sparks of fire.
“And you want to take the nuts back,” said Old Uncle. “What for?
Because you took what wasn’t yours, or because you pity the squirrel?”
“Oh, both, Uncle! both! And we haven’t eaten one!”
“Well, I’m glad you’ve found your consciences. Almost all the nuts on
the trees and lying on the ground are yours, if you choose to take
them. But the nuts that the squirrels have laid away—why, that’s
another story! Let’s see. It’s a rather tough storm. Aunt Susan will be
sure you’ll be made sick—I tell you what we’ll do. We won’t tell her!”
said Old Uncle. “Where’s the bag and the baskets? In the garret? Run
up and put the nuts in, and then get on your cloaks and leggings and
overshoes, and your hooded waterproofs, and come down here, both of
you. Quietly now, quietly.”
Ally danced back to Essie. And presently the twins, and Old
Uncle—loaded down with bag and baskets—stole out of the side-door, like
conspirators.
They found the hickory-wood without any difficulty, and the old
pine-tree on its farther edge, with two scolding squirrels far aloft in
it. The children put back the nuts, and joyously pulled and piled over
them the wet leaves and moss, scattering about a few particularly fat
ones, while Old Uncle pictured to them the bewilderment of Mr. Squirrel
when he should find his nuts there after all. He said Mrs. Squirrel
would declare they must have been dreaming, or else had a bad nightmare.
Never did rosier and happier little women come dripping out of a storm
than Essie and Ally that day.
“Oh!” cried Aunt Susan, meeting them in the hall “where have you three
been? I’m afraid you’ve caught”—
“Give them hot baths at once, and let Maria and Aunt Rose rub them down
hard, and put them to bed till dinner-time,” said Old Uncle. “They
went off without asking you, and must be punished!” But how his eyes
twinkled!
“Oh! I just love Old Uncle, don’t you?” asked Essie, as they slipped
into the warm bed.
“And I guess he loves us now,” said Ally. And they chattered until they
fell asleep, and woke only in time for dinner and dumplings.
VI.
AFTER DARK ON THE ICE.
THE nuts had not been spread a great while, and the crew of loggers had
gone up into the woods, when one day, well-clad for cold weather—the
girls in their red cloaks and hoods and mittens, the boys in reefers
and high boots and ear-laps—Charlie and Will swinging a parcel of
glittering steel things led all the little southerners down to the lake.
“Oh!” cried Essie, “your Jack Frost has been here too, and has turned
our blue lake into silver!”
“It’s like Achilles’ shield,” said Janet, who was tumbling round by
herself, trying to slide.
“What do you know about Achilles?’ laughed Will.
“I’ve heard you reading to Uncle Billy. Perhaps I know as much as you
do,” said Janet slyly.
“Well, then you don’t know much,” retorted Will, buckling his last
strap.
What witchcraft it seemed to the younger children, when they themselves
tottered this way and that, trying to keep their balance, falling and
bumping and bruising themselves continually, to see Charlie and Will
wheeling in figure-eights, leaning far over on the outer roll, cutting
their names in the ice, and sliding off like flying-fish!
“Ho! I can do that!” cried Jack, stamping his skate into the ice. And
over he went!
Aunt Rose took Ally and Essie by either hand, and swept off with them,
their little feet close together, so that they really thought they were
skating!
“It’s most like flying,” said Essie, delight in her eyes, her cheeks
like red apples, while Ally, looking straight ahead, was silent with
joy, her yellow hair streaming out behind her.
Janet went blundering about alone a long time, somehow, anyhow, and all
at once finding herself firm on her feet, and making a stroke. Then
the dinner-bell rang, and the skates had to come off. But after the
lesson-hour they were out again, for the afternoon—except Will, who was
behind with his Greek. And after they had spent all the spare hours of
a week’s time on the ice, they were so expert that they felt like a
flock of birds.
It was dark early at that time of the year, and one afternoon what was
their surprise to see Uncle Billy and Charlie building a fire on the
lake. “Oh, they are going to melt the ice!” cried Jack; and all the
others echoed his words in alarm, and started for the shore.
“Pooh!” said Charlie. “How thick do you suppose this ice is?”
“An inch? Two inches?” inquired Janet.
“Will measured it at the outlet, and he says it’s twenty-four.”
“I wish Will knew his Greek as well as he knows a lot of other things,”
said Uncle Billy.
“I don’t, though!” said Will. “And I don’t know that I want to, anyway.
I don’t want to go to college. I want to go logging in the woods.”
“He wants to be a dunce. Would you believe it?” said Uncle Billy.
“Essie, what do you suppose we are building this fire for? For fun,
Ally? To warm your toes, Janet? Jack, what do you suppose lives under
this ice?”
Near the fire Uncle Billy’s big chisel was cutting a hole through the
solid floor, and Charlie was cutting another a little bigger.
“The most onluckiest hole ye iver cut, so it is,” Michael said
afterward to Charlie.
When the holes were ready Uncle Billy began to bob strings in the dark
unseen water. In a moment more Janet was bobbing one too.
“He’ll pull me under! Oh, he’ll pull me under!” she suddenly cried out,
as she felt a big twitch on her hook. “Come help me, somebody! He’ll
pull me down into the hole!”
Uncle Billy put his hands over Janet’s, and together they brought up a
royal fighting pickerel.
All the other children, still flourishing round on their skates,
swarmed up then to see the big creature Janet had caught, and to beg
for hooks and lines themselves. And in a moment—oh, horror! what was
this? Essie had skated straight into the hole Charlie had cut. There
was a wild cry from Essie, as she plunged, a wilder one from all the
others.
But on the instant Uncle Billy had flung himself across the hole, and
with both arms down in the still cold water had caught hold of her.
Then crawling away, with Charlie’s help he lifted her to the top and
out upon the ice, quite conscious, but terribly scared, and as wet as
any seal.
Accidents never come alone, says an old proverb; and it was not to be
expected that Ally should not have her share in any dangers going.
Before Essie, shivering in every atom of her, had fairly been set upon
her feet, another shriek rang upon the air.
“I’m all afire! Uncle Billy, I’m afire!”
And there was Ally wrapped in a blaze, that made every one, for a
single heartbeat, stone still with terror!
For in moving quickly on her skates away from the hole where Uncle
Billy was drawing poor little Essie out of the water, Ally had backed
straight into the fire, which caught her skirts instantly; and no one
knows what might have happened if Charlie had not rushed and thrown her
down, and tossed his coat over her, and rolled and pressed and stamped
out the flame, although not till it had scorched his good hands and
burned poor Ally’s little legs. Perhaps he was not very much helped by
Essie’s running and precipitating herself and all her wetness on them
both.
“Well,” said Uncle Billy, “here’s a chapter of accidents!” And Essie,
wet and freezing, and Ally with her two blistered legs and burned and
ragged woolens, were huddled in the greatcoats and mounted one on each
shoulder, and Uncle Billy ran with them as if he wore seven-league
boots.
“I never cried at all!” exclaimed Ally, while Aunt Susan dressed and
bandaged her burns—which, however, were not very severe.
Soon the poor twins were lying snugly in bed, Essie in an extra
flannel-wrap, with hot-water bottles all around her, and hot catnip-tea
inside her.
“But you screamed, Ally,” said Essie, “if you didn’t cry.”
“And so did you! But that was not crying! I was so exprised. I didn’t
scream because it _hurt_. It hurt me more when you went down that hole!”
“And I thought I was afire when I saw you, for all I was so wet and
cold,” said Essie. “O Ally! I’m so glad you’re saved all but the backs
of your ankles! And they’ll grow again, you know.”
“Isn’t it good we’re both saved?” said Ally cosily. “Oh, Essie, keep
your feet right on the hot soap-stone! Only, please don’t touch the
back of my legs! They do smart a little. What you going to dream about?
Are you awake? I’m going to dream I went into the garden and there—atop
of a—big rose—I saw”—And Ally slipped away into dreamland, where Essie
had gone before her.
VII.
THE SNOW HUT.
IT was December, but all thoughts of Santa Claus were kept out of mind
by the preparation of the blocks of snow for the building of the snow
hut in the garden. This structure the children from the south could
not actually believe in till they saw it rising. But it was a real
hut, with a roof, with a low doorway, with a window of thin ice, with
a chimney—a chimney that could have a fire in it! It seemed to the
children from the south that they were living in a wonder-world!
But, either owing to the fire in the chimney or to a short season
of thaw, the roof of their hut one day fell in. It then, almost
immediately, became a fort to attack and to defend over the
battlements. The children organized into two parties, for assault and
repulse, with soft snow-balls, broken icicles for spears, and baskets
for shields.
It was a little hard for them to divide into two parties. It was hard
for Ally that Jane took Bobbo inside the fortification—Ally’s cat,
you remember. It was just as hard for Janet that Bose and Diamond—her
dogs—belonged to the attacking party, and were always its most furious
members, their bark as good as a war-whoop. And Essie might not have
forgiven Janet at all for belonging to the other side had not it been
for the sappers and miners later.
Will and Jack and Janet were the colonists, inside the fort. Charlie
and Essie and Ally were the Indians. Puss Bobbo was an Indian captive
in the fort. The dogs were allies of the Indians; and the Indians were
continually being repulsed with great slaughter, although presently
very active again, for dead and wounded.
One morning during the siege, Bose happened to find a rabbit-hole. The
snow had been blown or scuffed away from it, and into the little tunnel
of frozen earth Bose plunged, and of course Diamond after him; and
along it both made their way, scratching and burrowing and yelping with
all their might. Suddenly their movements were heard inside the fort,
which had been built, it seems, directly over the rabbit burrow. Will
gave the alarm.
“Sappers and miners! sappers and miners! The enemy are upon us!”
“Oh! we are lost!” cried the garrison.
And then Bose’s head emerged in the very middle of the snow fort’s
floor, and the colonists seized the dogs with tremendous cheering and
also, it must be owned, with any amount of hugging, and held them
captive.
This unwarrior-like conduct so displeased Bobbo that he sprang upon the
battlements and deserted to the enemy on the instant, to the great
relief of Ally and Essie.
“Oh, Aunt Rose!” cried Essie, when they went in at night, “do you
believe the little Esquimau children in their snow huts have any better
time than we do?”
The battles were renewed morning after morning, the weather being
bright. Hostilities were sometimes suspended in order that the besieged
party might sally out for more snow, after the way in which the Samoan
armies borrow ammunition of each other; for, of course, if you want the
fun of fighting, both parties must have munitions of war.
“I guess _that_ ball did the work!” cried Jack, as his missile hit the
captain of the Indians square in the face. “I put a lot of ’em in the
water-butt and then froze ’em, last night.”
“My goodness, Jack!” cried Will. “That’s like poisoning wells in the
enemy’s country! It’s as bad as shooting with poisoned bullets! Don’t
you know ice-balls might kill people? Ah, it did do the work! See,
Charlie’s nose is bleeding!”
At this Jack began to cry. “You’re a fine bawl-baby for a soldier!”
said Will then with much scorn. “You going to pity the enemy? Why, I
broke a finger once, and never thought of crying! Here they come! Ready
now! Aim low! Fire!” And the garrison overwhelmed the assailants with
such a shower of snow that they retreated in disorder.
Charlie rallied his men, however, in spite of the gore that reddened
the field, and charged again with such vehemence that there was a
scream of real pain, and then one of his soldiers fell over and lay
still; and it was found that Ally had fainted with a broken arm.
Charlie carried Ally into the house, followed by every one of the poor
little people in dead silence after the first exclaiming and crying,
all feeling like murderers.
“Oh! is she going to die?” asked Janet, her face buried in the skirts
of her cloak, and her sobs making her words something you had to guess.
“People don’t die of simple fractures,” said Old Uncle, who knew
something of surgery. “But we will send for Dr. Brent. Keep the arm
cool—not cold, remember—till he comes.” And he went for Dr. Brent
himself.
The doctor kept Ally quiet, with Aunt Rose, for some days; and everyone
forgot the business and battles of the snow hut, and hung about the
house, without lessons and without games. Will used his best exertions
to commit to memory the names of the Greek ships, and Essie and Janet
spent much of the time in tears till Aunt Susan took them into the
kitchen every day for Diane to teach them how to make little frosted
cakes and tarts.
At last the doctor allowed them to see the invalid—at first one at a
time, and at last all together. One was allowed to put cologne on her
handkerchief, one to change her pillows, one to bring the milk for her,
and one just to hang over her and kiss her now and then, till Ally felt
rather important, and thought it wasn’t such a bad thing to have a
simple fracture after all.
“I wish it had been my arm,” said Will, one day, when Ally had been
brought down stairs into the sitting-room, and was lying on the lounge.
“Then I shouldn’t have to be bothering my head about subjunctives in
Latin and aorists in Greek, and dear knows what!”
It was at about this time that a supply-team was starting for the
logging-camp in the far woods. That day Old Uncle had taken Aunt Susan
up with him, in the driving-sleigh, saying she really needed some sort
of an outing.
When Will had seen the prancing black horses shaking off showers
of bell-tones, he had begged hard to go, and harder still when he
heard there was a hatchet and knife in the sleigh, and saw Old Uncle
examining his revolvers, there being a rumor of wolves on the way,
although probably a baseless rumor. But Will’s entreaties had been
promptly silenced, and he was told that he must stay and attend to his
lessons if he wanted to enter Bowdoin year after next.
Well, Will didn’t want to enter Bowdoin. He wanted to go to the
logging-camp. Year after next was a great way off. The woods, the life
there, the stories, the games, the hunting for bears, the gathering of
gum, the deer-hunt, the escape from panthers or gray, gaunt wolves, the
coming down with the drive in the spring, the jam of the logs at the
falls with the raftsmen skipping round on them as lightly as Mercury in
the mythology, handling them with long hooks, and springing for dear
life as one dexterous thrust loosened the whole mass and sent them
rearing, rolling, plunging, and shooting over the cataracts,—all that
was close at hand. And Will, as he thought of it, was bound to be a
lumberman.