tunnel, and close the mouth again behind him. That was his one chance of
escape. The maddened red-skins, their eyes glittering in the weird
light, waving their glittering candles from which smoulders of burnt
wick were dropping, chanting some sort of exultant song, ran about the
cellar as if they were the figures of a monstrous nightmare. Their eyes
at last fell on the pyramid of barrels, and they darted at the expected
treasure-trove. Harold had never ceased tugging frantically at the gate,
and when the bolts jangled back and he slid the barrier, it seemed his
dangerous companions must have heard. Luckily the blissful thought of
"fire-water" made them blind and deaf to all else. He passed the portal,
softly closed it again, and sped with whirling senses up the dark
passage. But the strain had been too great, and he collapsed in a dead
faint, with a crash in his ears as if the earth had been shattered to
its core.
* * * * *
When Harold recovered his senses a disk of light in front marked the
outlet to sunshine, but in the rear the tunnel was choked, and his legs
were tangled fast in a mass of earth and débris. He extricated himself
and made his way to the entrance, sore but sound of bone. One of the
block-houses had been blown to fragments, and the other partly tumbled
into ruins, while about fifty of the savages had been slain or terribly
maimed. Groups of Indians stood in the distance sobered and
awe-stricken. When he crossed to the Kinzie mansion after dark, he found
the captives there under guard, but the captors altered into a merciful
mood. Black Partridge had improved the occasion to impress on their
minds that the awful catastrophe was a divine punishment for their
treachery.
STRIKING "PAY DIRT."
BY ANNIE HAMILTON DONNELL.
"No beans? Why, Thanny!" The rich creamy spoonful dripped back into the
tureen. Millia Thacher's tired face put on astonishment as a garment.
"No _beans_?"
"Well, that's what I said, wasn't it?" her brother snapped across at
her. "I don't know's the world has got any call to stand still because I
don't want 'em, either. I don't want any dinner."
"Why, Thanny!"
"Well, I don't. That's all there is to it."
"But, Thanny, I've got rhubarb pie. I made it a purpose, and I guess
it's real good. You ain't going to slight that, Thanny?"
"Milly Thacher, for pity's sake do stop Thannying me! Anybody'd think I
was ten years old instead of twenty. There! I'm sorry. I'll be a good
boy now."
He reached his long arm across the table, and touched Millia's face with
big, contrite fingers very gently. The sudden remorse softened the
morose lines in his face, and lifted for a minute the cloud upon it. It
was a strong enough, comely enough young face, its chin rounded out
boldly, and the clean-cut mouth above was not at all weak. But Nathan
Thacher's face was listless and discouraged, and altogether unhappy.
He pushed away his chair, rasping it over the uneven floor as if the
discord accorded with his mood.
"It's no use, Milly; I'm going to give it up. It's no _use_."
"Oh no, Thanny--no, no! You're only tired out and down-spirited this
morning, that's all. You don't feel like yourself. The idea of us
_giving it up_!" She laughed nervously, with a little shrill, hysterical
note in her voice. "Why, we've got to keep right on, Thanny Thacher,
just as we promised father we'd do. We've got to keep the old farm
running--"
"Till it runs down hill into the poorhouse. It's more'n two-thirds down
now."
"I don't care! Then we've got to pull it up again. We promised father."
Millia's defiance had the thrill and surrender of a sob in it, and
suddenly she sank down into a heap on the kitchen floor and cried in
smothered dreary abandon.
The door being open, Nathan looked out, across Millia's huddled
shoulders, at the bare stretch of rough uncultivated acres. The scant
unthrifty grass divided the honors with rocks and underbrush. There was
nothing beautiful nor "sightly" nor encouraging in the prospect, and
Nathan Thacher's mouth puckered into a low whistle of contempt. He
whistled still louder, and shuffled his feet about to drown the low
monotony of Millia's sobs, filling the little room drearily.
"Hush up, Milly; there's a good girl," he said at last, prodding her arm
gently. "What's the good of wasting all that salt water? Salt may go
up."
He made a sorry attempt at laughing, and strode past her out of the
door. The girl sat on the floor, rocking back and forth with even
swaying motion for a long while. The cheerless world outside oppressed
her through the net-work of her fingers and chilled her heart. Pitifully
distinct she saw the same barren stretch of fields that Nathan had
seen--the same sparse, worn-out vegetation. It looked as forlorn, as
discouraging, as it had to him. But Millia Thacher's troubled soul held
stubbornly to its one anchor of unswerving loyalty to the poor old farm,
and of faith to their promise--Thanny's and hers--to poor old "father."
Give it up? Never! Oh, no, not. They must stand by the farm. Thanny must
work--she must work.
She got up hastily, and peered out across the fields in the eager hope
of seeing Thanny with old Bess ploughing. Surely he would plough to-day;
yes, there he was, but walking idly, moodily, about, with stooped-over
shoulders, like an old man.
Poor Thanny! He hadn't wanted, anyway, to be a farmer, and after his
brave little beginning out in the world--after father died--it had been
hard to come home and settle down on the old "run-out" farm among the
stumps and rocks and the meagre timothy heads.
Poor Thanny! Millia watched him with loving eyes. He looked so dismal in
the dismal setting of stubbly fields, backgrounded by the dull sky, that
she had no heart to upbraid him. Poor Millia!
The little kitchen wore its late-afternoon spick-and-span dress, and
Millia sat in it, humming a little brave tune over her mending-box, when
Nathan came hurrying, springing in. There was rare buoyancy in his step,
and Millia wailed, astonished.
"Why, Thanny!" she cried, as soon as he got within hearing range.
Nathan Thacher's tanned face radiated excitement and triumph from every
feature. His eyes were shining. Into Millia's hands he thrust a bit of
jagged rock.
[Illustration: "LOOK AT THAT, MILLY--GOLD!"]
"Look at that, Milly--_gold_!"
"My goodness me, Thanny!"
"_Gold_, I tell you--g-o-l-d! Milly Thacher, there's gold on this
farm--do you hear? It's under your face and eyes, in that rock. It's in
all the rocks."
He laughed shrilly, executing shuffling dance steps around her chair.
"Thanny Thacher, you ain't in your right mind! You scare me."
"Milly Thacher, it's the live truth! Dan Merriweather thought so as long
ago as he worked for father, but father didn't believe it, nor I either.
I didn't think there could be any such good luck. But there is--there
is!" The boy's face was radiant. "Dan's an old Forty-niner, and he ought
to know. I didn't believe him, though--not till this afternoon, when I
found that rock. Seeing's believing, and can't you see? Can't you see
all those little gold grains, Milly Thacher, if you've got half an eye?
They're _there_. All we've got to do is to get 'em out. I guess I know
gold when I see it!"
Millia held the little rock in limp, unbelieving fingers. She saw the
tiny sparkles in it; but--_gold!_ Visions of wealth and luxury and rest
hurried through her brain, of Thanny looking happy and satisfied again,
and of herself--plain, tired little Milly--wearing becoming clothes, and
letting her roughened fingers grow smooth and white. Perhaps she would
wear soft kid gloves; people did who had gold. Perhaps Thanny would too;
Thanny's hands were slender and shapely. Luxuries read of and dreamed of
appealed suddenly to her dazzled vision as possible, probable realities;
people with gold on their farms had such things, of course.
Nathan broke in upon her dreaming:
"They found gold on a farm over in Bentley. Over Easton way, too. I
guess it's all over these parts. Anyhow, it's on the Thacher farm!" He
laughed jubilantly. Then he pocketed the little sparkling pebble, and
said, briskly: "Don't you wait supper for me, Milly. I'm going down to
the Forks to see Amasa Flagg. He can advise me some about working the
vein. Amasa knows everything."
Working the vein! How mysteriously important it sounded to Millia as she
sat there, confused and awed! Could that be Thanny--_Thanny!_--swinging
along with great springy strides, his shoulders unstooped, and
importance and energy trailing in a little wake behind him?
Would Amasa Flagg advise him to dig a mine--Millia's thoughts were
couched in familiar words--and wear a candle in his hat, and burrow
round in the earth in unsafe places? My goodness me!--would there be
real miners round the place, perhaps wanting to board right in the
family?
In the midst of things Millia fell asleep.
Nathan came home at night rather sobered, but still confident. There was
gold there; how much nobody could prophesy till it could be looked into
systematically, and that took money. There was no money on the Thacher
place, and Nathan scorned any suggestion of borrowing.
So the money must be earned. When that was done, he would sink a shaft
and find his gold. When that was done--the money earned! Well, it looked
a little appalling just at first; but Nathan Thacher had his grandfather
Thacher's courage, once aroused, and he set his teeth for the struggle.
"Crops," Amasa Flagg had said, succinctly.
Nathan had thought of his barren waste fields, and gasped inwardly.
Well, crops, then, if crops it must be; but what?
"Corn," the oracle had declared. "There's money in sweet-corn, now 't
them factories are runnin full tilt over to Easton. They want all they
can git. You won't make no mistake if you plant your fields full of it,
an' I calc'late you'll find that the nighest road to your gold-mine. I
calc'late so. But you'll have to hustle considerable, an' make your hoe
fly real stiddy. You can't make a corn crop payin' without you do
everything thorough. You've got to hustle, my boy, early 'n' late!"
And how Nathan Thacher hustled those long hot summer days! How, from
daylight to sunsetting, he delved and toiled in his fields, working
miracles in them with slow stubborn courage! He lost courage once or
twice, but Millia never knew it. She watched his eager determined face
steadily, and always read quiet resolution in it, and, as the weeks
multiplied to months, a new expression of self-respect that delighted
her soul.
"Thanny's losing his old down-spirited looks," she would muse happily
over her work. "He holds up his head straight and kind of proud now;
but, my goodness me, how he is working!"
And Millia, too, worked. She hurried through with her house duties, and
went out to the fields with Nathan to do whatever lighter work he would
let her do out there. Side by side the brother and sister toiled, seeing
the waste places bloom under their eyes, and gradually the rough acres
smooth out into beautiful thrifty corn rows.
Millia walked between them in cool evenings, and let her skirts flip the
tiny stalks gently. They grew tall, and she could nudge them in friendly
greeting as she passed down and up between them.
Of course all this success came only out of the hardest possible
wrestling with nature. There went before it weeks of mighty work with
drag and pick, wresting out rocks and uprooting stumps and weeds. Only
Grandfather Thacher's grim persistence, descended like a mantle on
Nathan's aching young shoulders, carried those hard days. The neighbors
helped at odd times, and Nathan repaid them in rainy intervals. So at
last the two big fields were smooth and ready for the ploughing, that
left them seamed with long ridges wavering gently away into perspective.
How good the upturned earth had smelled to Millia! She stood outside and
drew in long satisfying whiffs of it.
It was so good to see the old place thriving at last--to smell it and
watch it and be proud of it. Millia forgot all about the gold-mine some
days.
Nathan never did. He repaired the fences to keep intruders out. He drew
out loads upon loads of dressing for his land from stores of hitherto
wasted fertility beneath the old barns. He nurtured and tended and
worked unstintingly, but always with the glitter of the gold grains in
his rocks before his eyes. Nathan never forgot. He studied books on
mining in the evening until his tired head nodded over the blurring
letters. Once, when the corn was all planted, and there was a little
interval of rest, he went to a city, a day's trip distant, and had his
little samples of glistening rock assayed. It was when he came home from
that journey that Millia thought she could detect a little look of
disappointment in his face, and perhaps a faint crestfallen note in his
voice. But she forgot about it soon, because they were so busy weeding
the corn rows.
One evening, when the green stalks towered more than elbow-high around
them, Thanny and Milly walked through the rows, talking to each other
across them. They both looked happy. Milly's small thin face had rounded
out a little, and turned to a golden brown. She walked with little quick
jubilant steps. The old farm looked so beautiful to-night! What would
father say?
Suddenly she began to laugh. In front of her dangled her scarecrow--the
work of her own hands--mincing and bowing to her ludicrously. A slight
breeze stirred his hempen hair and swayed his coat skirts. It was
Thanny's coat and Thanny's hat and Thanny's trousers and boots. He was
an unwieldy, unflattering travesty of Thanny, with, oddly enough, his
stooped shoulders, and old air of depression and gloom. Had Thanny
bequeathed them to Milly's scarecrow, for once and all?
For to-night Thanny's shoulders were not stooped, and his whole
expression was cheery and manly.
He stopped too and laughed.
"My goodness me! Thanny, ain't he a beauty?" giggled Milly, delightedly.
"Milly," Thanny said, "that's me. I've been watching myself this long
time--stooped over and hangdog and down in the mouth. I've been seeing
myself the way you and other folks used to see me, and--well, it was
kind of a bitter pill, but I took it, and I guess it's done me good. I
guess so."
The summer days swelled the sweet-corn kernels and brought the ears to
their perfection. It was almost time to cut them and carry them away to
the factory, when one day Nathan found Millia among the rows, and
stopped to put both his big hands on both her shoulders with unusual
gentleness. Looking up into his face, she thought how serenely happy it
seemed.
"Milly," he said, laughing a little in quiet triumph, "they offered me
eighty dollars an acre for this corn to-day."
"Why, Thanny!"
"Yes'm; and I took it." He walked away, down one row and up another.
Then he faced her again. "Milly, we've struck pay dirt a'ready. We've
found the gold," he said.
"Why, Thanny! Why, I thought--" And then Milly caught his sudden
sweeping gesture, comprehending all the golden stalks of corn, row after
row, and understood. "Why, yes!" she cried; "so it is, Thanny
Thacher--it's our gold!"
"Yes," Thanny said, thoughtfully, as they walked home together, and
there was quiet contentment in his voice. "Yes, I guess it's all right.
The assayer said there wasn't enough gold in the rocks to make it worth
while, but there's gold in the old sod, Milly. We've struck 'pay dirt.'"
A FAIR RETORT.
It is quite as hard as ever to get ahead of Pat. This was proved the
other day during a trial in an English court-room, an Irish witness
being examined as to his knowledge of a shooting affair.
"Did you see the shot fired?" the magistrate asked, when Pat had been
sworn.
"No, sorr. I only heard it," was the evasive reply.
"That evidence is not satisfactory," replied the magistrate, sternly,
"Stand down!"
The witness proceeded to leave the box, and directly his back was turned
he laughed derisively. The magistrate, indignant at the contempt of
court, called him back, and asked him how he dared to laugh in court.
"Did ye see me laugh, your Honor?" queried the offender.
"No, sir; but I heard you," was the irate reply.
"That evidence is not satisfactory," said Pat, quietly, but with a
twinkle in his eye.
And this time everybody laughed, even the magistrate.
DANIEL WEBSTER'S SCHOOL DAYS.
BY ALBERT LEE.
The house where Daniel Webster boarded while he was a scholar at the
Phillips Academy, Exeter, still stands at the corner of Water and
Clifford streets, in that little New Hampshire town. The external
appearance of the building has been changed somewhat; the protruding
logs in the back part of the house have been covered with planed boards,
and the large old-fashioned chimney that stood until within a few years
has been torn down, but the little room on the second floor is still in
about the same condition as it was in the days when Webster studied
there.
He was fourteen years of age when brought by his father to Exeter and
placed in charge of Mr. Clifford, a worthy gentleman of the town. The
precise date of Daniel Webster's entrance at the academy is the 25th of
May, 1796. It was the first time that the boy had been away from home,
and he describes his feelings himself as follows: "The change
overpowered me. I hardly remained master of my own senses among ninety
boys, who had seen so much more and appeared to know so much more than I
did." When Webster's father had bidden his son farewell, he said to Mr.
Clifford that "he must teach Daniel to hold his fork and knife, for
Daniel knows no more about it than a cow does about holding a spade."
From all accounts this comparison must have been a good one, for Daniel
Webster's table manners were so rude that it is said that the other boys
who boarded at Mr. Clifford's requested the latter to send Webster away.
But Mr. Clifford, of course, never for a moment considered this, and
knowing that young Webster was of a most sensitive disposition, he tried
to correct the lad by example rather than by advice and remonstrance.
Webster was accustomed to hold his knife and fork in his fists; one day
Mr. Clifford held his own knife and fork in the same way, and continued
doing so at intervals, until Webster saw how ungraceful it was, and
corrected himself.
Daniel Webster was not much of a success as a student while at Exeter.
He admits this in his autobiography. He seemed unable to recite in a
room full of boys; and although he spent many hours in study, he could
never, having learned his lesson, make a good recitation. The strangest
thing of all, however, is that he could not be induced to speak in
public; and when the day came on which it was usual for his class to
declaim, although he had learned his piece, he was utterly incapable of
rising from his seat when his name was called. "The kind and excellent
Buckminster," says Webster in his autobiography, "sought especially to
persuade me to perform the exercise of declamation, like other boys, but
I could not do it. Many a piece did I commit to memory, yet when the day
came when the school elected to hear declamations, when my name was
called and I saw all eyes turned to my seat, I could not raise myself
from it. Sometimes the instructors frowned; sometimes they smiled. Mr.
Buckminster always pressed and entreated most winningly that I would
venture, but I could never command sufficient resolution. When the
occasion was over, I went home and wept bitter tears of mortification."
To think that such should have been the nature of the boy who afterward
became so famous an orator, and whose speeches, as a man, have become
classical, and whose presence "has graced the courts of justice in the
national halls of legislation"!
Daniel Webster was so greatly discouraged at this inability to declaim
before his comrades, and by the treatment he received at the hands of
his fellow-students because of his awkwardness and shyness, that at the
end of his first term he said to Dr. Abbott, the principal, that he
thought he would not return after Christmas. The principal knew very
well that Webster's rustic manners and coarse clothing had been the
cause of the misconduct of the other boys toward him, and he therefore
encouraged Webster to remain in school, and assured him that he was a
better scholar than most of the boys in his class, and he promised the
lad that if he would return at the commencement of the next term, he
would be placed in a higher class, where he should "no longer be
hindered by the boys who cared more for play and dress than for solid
improvement." Webster says that these were the first encouraging words
that he had ever received with regard to his studies, and because of
them he resolved to return to school, and to work with all the ability
he possessed.
But in spite of his best determinations, Webster was never able to do
well in the class-room, and he therefore left Phillips Academy after
having attended its classes for nine months. His father placed him then,
in February, 1797, in charge of the Rev. Samuel Wood at Boscawen, who
prepared him for college. Even with Mr. Wood young Webster's success as
a student was not very great, for at the end of a year the reverend
gentleman said to his pupil, "I expected to keep you till next year, but
I am tired of you, and I shall put you into college next month."
Daniel Webster went to Dartmouth College, and there he did much better,
both in his studies and in his intercourse with his fellow-students, and
he managed a number of times to speak in public.
THE AMERICAN NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENTS.
A JAPANESE MATINÉE.
BY EMMA J. GRAY.
The members of the Senior Class in the Frotinbas Institute wished to
give a complimentary entertainment to their friends. There were many
informal suggestions and discussions as to the character of the
entertainment, and had not a class meeting been called, such a condition
of affairs might have been kept up indefinitely. But the meeting decided
matters, for then the different suggestions were formally examined,
weighed, and voted upon. That receiving the most votes being a Japanese
matinée.
The question now settled, committees were appointed to complete
arrangements, so that at the time of entertainment there would be
neither balk nor anxiety.
To the girls were given the important duties of decoration and
refreshment, the boys declaring that "girls had a knack at such things,"
and therefore there was not the slightest use of their blundering
awkwardness.
While the boys on their part promised to furnish sufficient and clever
amusement. And when the day of days at last arrived, for everything is
sure to come in time, and too soon sometimes, no sky could be bluer, nor
sunshine give heartier welcome, for it was a perfectly delicious
atmosphere. As a consequence, therefore, the new gymnasium, in which
this pretty entertainment was held, was crowded to its utmost limit.
Such a wealth of charming girls and manly boys! There were older people
there, too--mothers and fathers, whose love for their children made them
sure to come and see how they did things, and, indeed, to be quite
honest, we must not fail to mention the dearest of dear little people,
whose chubby dimpled hands would clap with all their baby might, and
whose gleeful laugh, whenever their big brothers or sisters would
particularly delight them, would spread contagion through the entire
audience.
All the girls looked quaint and interesting in Japanese costume. Some of
these had been hired, and others made at home by the nimble fingers of
the wearers. In order to learn how to do things, the girls carefully
examined the portraits of Japanese women, and also received many ideas
from a large Japanese emporium. At this place they made all their
purchases, even to such small though important items as hair-pins, for,
notwithstanding that none of the girls were over sixteen, each had her
hair rolled, and altogether dressed in the Japanese fashion. This
hair-dressing effected an enormous change, for instead of a cloud of
windy curls, long waving hair, or braids, to which we were accustomed,
the smoothly arranged and fantastically decorated locks seemed odd
indeed, and gave the girlish faces an almost unnatural look, as though
they were masquerading after the fashion of their baby sisters when they
roguishly look through grandmother's spectacles. But notwithstanding the
change wrought by upturned hair, there was no change in their winsome
manner, and therefore every guest was instantly won.