IN a few days, thanks to Mr. Harry's constant care, the horse and cow
were able to walk. It was a mournful procession that came into the yard
at Dingley Farm. The hollow-eyed horse, and lean cow, and funny, little
thin pig, staggering along in such a shaky fashion. Their hoofs were
diseased, and had partly rotted away, so that they could not walk
straight. Though it was only a mile or two from Penhollow to Dingley
Farm, they were tired out, and dropped down exhausted on their
comfortable beds.
Miss Laura was so delighted to think that they had all lived, that she
did not know what to do. Her eyes were bright and shining, and she went
from one to another with such a happy face. The queer little pig that
Mr. Harry had christened “Daddy Longlegs,” had been washed, and he lay
on his heap of straw in the corner of his neat little pen, and surveyed
his clean trough and abundance of food with the air of a prince. Why, he
would be clean and dry here, and all his life he had been used to dirty,
damp Penhollow, with the trees hanging over him, and his little feet in
a mass of filth and dead leaves. Happy little pig! His ugly eyes seemed
to blink and gleam with gratitude, and he knew Miss Laura and Mr. Harry
as well as I did.
His tiny tail was curled so tight that it was almost in a knot. Mr. Wood
said that was a sign that he was healthy and happy: and that when poor
Daddy was at Penhollow he had noticed that his tail hung as limp and as
loose as the tail of a rat. He came and leaned over the pen with Miss
Laura, and had a little talk with her about pigs. He said they were by
no means the stupid animals that some people considered them. He had had
pigs that were as clever as dogs. One little black pig that he had once
sold to a man away back in the country had found his way home, through
the woods, across the river, up hill and down dale, and he'd been taken
to the place with a bag over his head. Mr. Wood said that he kept that
pig because he knew so much.
He said the most knowing pigs he ever saw were Canadian pigs. One time
he was having a trip on a sailing vessel, and it anchored in a long,
narrow harbor in Canada, where the tide came in with a front four or
five feet high called the “bore.” There was a village opposite the place
where the ship was anchored, and every day at low tide, a number of pigs
came down to look for shell-fish. Sometimes they went out for half a
mile over the mud flats, but always a few minutes before the tide came
rushing in they turned and hurried to the shore. Their instincts warned
them that if they stayed any longer they would be drowned.
Mr. Wood had a number of pigs, and after a while Daddy was put in with
them, and a fine time he had of it making friends with the other little
grunters. They were often let out in the pasture or orchard, and when
they were there, I could always single out Daddy from among them,
because he was the smartest. Though he had been brought up in such a
miserable way, he soon learned to take very good care of himself at
Dingley Farm, and it was amusing to see him when a storm was coming on,
running about in a state of great excitement carrying little bundles of
straw in his mouth to make himself a bed. He was a white pig, and was
always kept very clean. Mr. Wood said that it is wrong to keep pigs
dirty. They like to be clean as well as other animals, and if they were
kept so, human beings would not get so many diseases from eating their
flesh.
The cow, poor unhappy creature, never, as long as she lived on Dingley
Farm, lost a strange melancholy look from her eyes. I have heard it said
that animals forget past unhappiness, and perhaps some of them do. I
know that I have never forgotten my one miserable year with Jenkins,
and I have been a sober, thoughtful dog in consequence of it, and not
playful like some dogs who have never known what it is to be really
unhappy.
It always seemed to me that the Englishman's cow was thinking of her
poor dead calf, starved to death by her cruel master. She got well
herself, and came and went with the other cows, seemingly as happy as
they, but often when I watched her standing chewing her cud, and looking
away in the distance, I could see a difference between her face and the
faces of the cows that had always been happy on Dingley Farm. Even the
farm hands called her “Old Melancholy,” and soon she got to be known by
that name, or Mel, for short. Until she got well, she was put into
the cow stable, where Mr. Wood's cows all stood at night upon raised
platforms of earth covered over with straw litter, and she was tied
with a Dutch halter, so that she could lie down and go to sleep when she
wanted to. When she got well, she was put out to pasture with the other
cows.
The horse they named “Scrub,” because he could never be, under any
circumstance, anything but a broken-down, plain-looking animal. He
was put into the horse stable in a stall next Fleetfoot, and as the
partition was low, they could look over at each other. In time, by dint
of much doctoring, Scrub's hoofs became clean and sound and he was able
to do some work. Miss Laura petted him a great deal. She often took out
apples to the stable, and Fleetfoot would throw up his beautiful head
and look reproachfully over the partition at her, for she always stayed
longer with Scrub than with him, and Scrub always got the larger share
of whatever good thing was going.
Poor old Scrub! I think he loved Miss Laura. He was a stupid sort of a
horse, and always acted as if he was blind. He would run his nose up and
down the front of her dress, nip at the buttons, and be very happy if he
could get a bit of her watch-chain between his strong teeth. If he was
in the field he never seemed to know her till she was right under his
pale-colored eyes. Then he would be delighted to see her. He was not
blind, though, for Mr. Wood said he was not. He said he had probably not
been an over-bright horse to start with, and had been made more dull by
cruel usage.
As for the Englishman, the master of these animals, a very strange thing
happened to him. He came to a terrible end, but for a long time no one
knew anything about it. Mr. Wood and Mr. Harry were so very angry
with him that they said they would leave no stone unturned to have him
punished, or at least to have it known what a villain he was. They sent
the paper with the crest on it to Boston. Some people there wrote to
England, and found out that it was the crest of a noble and highly
esteemed family, and some earl was at the head of it. They were all
honorable people in this family except one man, a nephew, not a son, of
the late earl. He was the black sheep of them all. As a young man, he
had led a wild and wicked life, and had ended by forging the name of one
of his friends, so that he was obliged to leave England and take refuge
in America. By the description of this man, Mr. Wood knew that he must
be Mr. Barron, so he wrote to these English people, and told them what
a wicked thing their relative had done in leaving his animals to starve.
In a short time, he got an answer from them, which was, at the same
time, very proud and very touching. It came from Mr. Barron's cousin,
and he said quite frankly that he knew his relative was a man of evil
habits, but it seemed as if nothing could be done to reform him. His
family was accustomed to send a quarterly allowance to him, on
condition that he led a quiet life in some retired place, but their last
remittance to him was lying unclaimed in Boston, and they thought he
must be dead. Could Mr. Wood tell them anything about him?
Mr. Wood looked very thoughtful when he got this letter, then he said,
“Harry, how long is it since Barron ran away?”
“About eight weeks,” said Mr. Harry.
“That's strange,” said Mr. Wood. “The money these English people sent
him would get to Boston just a few days after he left here. He is not
the man to leave it long unclaimed. Something must have happened to him.
Where do you suppose he would go from Penhollow?”
“I have no idea, sir,” said Mr. Harry.
“And how would he go?” said Mr. Wood. “He did not leave Riverdale
Station, because he would have been spotted by some of his creditors.”
“Perhaps he would cut through the woods to the Junction,” said Mr.
Harry.
“Just what he would do,” said Mr. Wood, slapping his knee. “I'll be
driving over there to-morrow to see Thompson, and I'll make inquiries.”
Mr. Harry spoke to his father the next night when he came home, and
asked him if he had found out anything. “Only this,” said Mr. Wood.
“There's no one answering to Barron's description who has left Riverdale
Junction within a twelvemonth. He must have struck some other station.
We'll let him go. The Lord looks out for fellows like that.”
“We will look out for him if he ever comes back to Riverdale,” said Mr.
Harry, quietly. All through the village, and in the country it was known
what a dastardly trick the Englishman had played, and he would have been
roughly handled if he had dared return.
Months passed away, and nothing was heard of him. Late in the autumn,
after Miss Laura and I had gone back to Fairport, Mrs. Wood wrote her
about the end of the Englishman. Some Riverdale lads were beating about
the woods, looking for lost cattle, and in their wanderings came to an
old stone quarry that had been disused for years. On one side there was
a smooth wall of rock, many feet deep. On the other the ground and rock
were broken away, and it was quite easy to get into it. They found that
by some means or other, one of their cows had fallen into this deep pit,
over the steep side of the quarry. Of course the poor creature was dead,
but the boys, out of curiosity, resolved to go down and look at her.
They clambered down, found the cow, and, to their horror and
amazement, discovered near-by the skeleton of a man. There was a
heavy walking-stick by his side, which they recognized as one that the
Englishman had carried.
He was a drinking man, and perhaps he had taken something that he
thought would strengthen him for his morning's walk, but which had, on
the contrary, bewildered him, and made him lose his way and fall
into the quarry. Or he might have started before daybreak, and in the
darkness have slipped and fallen down this steep wall of rock. One leg
was doubled under him, and if he had not been instantly killed by the
fall, he must have been so disabled that he could not move. In that
lonely place, he would call for help in vain, so he may have perished by
the terrible death of starvation the death he had thought to mete out to
his suffering animals.
Mrs. Wood said that there was never a sermon preached in Riverdale that
had the effect that the death of this wicked man had, and it reminded
her of a verse in the Bible: “He made a pit and he digged it, and is
fallen into the ditch which he made.” Mrs. Wood said that her husband
had written about the finding of Mr. Barron's body to his English
relatives, and had received a letter from them in which they seemed
relieved to hear that he was dead. They thanked Mr. Wood for his plain
speaking in telling them of their relative's misdeeds, and said that
from all they knew of Mr. Barron's past conduct, his influence would be
for evil and not for good, in any place that he choose to live in. They
were having their money sent from Boston to Mr. Wood, and they wished
him to expend it in the way he thought best fitted to counteract the
evil effects of their namesake's doings in Riverdale.
When this money came, it amounted to some hundreds of dollars. Mr.
Wood would have nothing to do with it. He handed it over to the Band of
Mercy, and they formed what they called the “Barron Fund,” which they
drew upon when they wanted money for buying and circulating humane
literature. Mrs. Wood said that the fund was being added to, and the
children were sending all over the State leaflets and little books which
preached the gospel of kindness to God's lower creation. A stranger
picking one of them up, and seeing the name of the wicked Englishman
printed on the title-page, would think that he was a friend and
benefactor to the Riverdale people the very opposite of what he gloried
in being.