It was as pretty a country cottage as is to be found, even now, in all
the Wabash Valley, situated on a prominent bluff, overlooking the broad
stretches of bottom land, and giving a fine view of the wide winding
river. The windows and doors of this cottage were draped in vines, among
which the morning glory and the honeysuckle were the most luxuriant;
while on each side of the gravelled walk, that led from the front
portico to the dooryard gate, grew clusters of pinks, sweet-williams and
larkspurs. The house was painted white, and had green window
shutters--old fashioned, to be sure, but cosy, homelike and tasty
withal. Everything pertaining to and surrounding the place had an air of
methodical neatness, that betokened great care and scrupulous order on
the part of the inmates.
About the hour of six on a Monday morning, in the month of May, a fine,
hearty, intelligent looking lad of twelve years walked slowly up the
path which led from the old orchard to the house. He was dressed in
loose trowsers of bottle green jeans, a jacket of the same, heavy boots
and a well worn wool hat. The boy's shoulders stooped a little, and a
slight hump discovered itself at the upper portion of his back. His face
was strikingly handsome, being fair, bright, healthful, and marked with
signs of great precocity of intellect, albeit it wore just now an
indescribable, faintly visible shade, as of innocent perplexity, or,
possibly, grief. His mind was evidently not at ease, but the varying
shadows that chased each other across the mild depths of his clear,
vivacious eyes would have stumped a physiognomist. Between a laugh and a
cry, but more like a cry; between defiance and utter shame, but more
like the latter; his cheeks and lips took on every shade of pallor and
of flush. He shrugged his shoulders as he moved along, and cast rapid
glances in every direction, as if afraid of being seen. "Whippoo-tee,
tippoo-tee-tee-e!" sang a great cardinal red bird in the apple tree over
his head. He flung a stone at the bird with terrible energy, but missed
it.
The mistress of the cottage was at this time in the kitchen preparing
for the week's washing, for do not all good Hoosier housewives wash on
Monday? She was a middle aged, stoutly built, healthy matron, sandy
haired, slightly freckled, blue eyed and quick in her movements. Usually
smiling and happy, it was painful to see how she struggled now to master
the emotions of great grief and sadness that constantly arose in her
bosom, like spectres that would not be driven away.
A bright eyed, golden haired lass of sixteen was in the breakfast room
washing the dishes and singing occasional snatches from a mournful
ditty. It was sad, indeed, to see a cloud of sorrow on a face so fresh
and sweet.
Mr. Coulter, the head of the family, and owner of the cottage and its
lands, stood near the centre of the sitting room with his hands crossed
behind him, gazing fixedly and sadly on the picture of a sweet child
holding a white kitten in its lap, which picture hung on the wall over
against the broad fire-place. A look of sorrow betrayed itself even in
the dark, stern visage of the man. He drew down his shaggy eyebrows and
occasionally pulled his grizzled moustache into his mouth and chewed it
fiercely. Evidently he was chafing under his grief.
The cottage windows were wide open, as is the western custom in fine
weather, and the fragrance of spice wood and sassafras floated in on the
flood tide of pleasant air, while from the big old locust tree down by
the fence fell the twittering prelude to a finch's song. A green line of
willows and a thin, pendulous stratum of fog marked the way of the
river, plainly visible from the west window, and through the white haze
flocks of teal and wood ducks cut swiftly in their downward flight to
the water. A golden flicker sang and hammered on the gate-post the while
he eyed a sparrow-hawk that wheeled and screamed high over head. The dew
was like little mirrors in the grass.
The lad entered the kitchen and said to his mother, in a voice full of
tenderness, though barely audible:
"Mammy, where's pap?"
"In the front room, Billy," replied the matron solemnly, quaveringly.
Passing into the breakfast room, Billy looked at his sister and a flash
of sympathetic sorrow played back and forth from the eyes of one to
those of the other; then he went straight into the sitting room and
handed something to Mr. Coulter. It was a moment of silence and
suspense. Out in the orchard the cherry and apple blooms were falling
like pink and white snow.
The man looked down at his boy sadly, sorrowfully, regretfully. He drew
his face into a stern frown. The lad looked up into his father's eyes
timidly, ruefully, strangely. It was a living tableau no artist could
reproduce. It was the moment before a crisis.
"Billy," said the father gravely, "I took your mother and sister to
church yesterday."
"Yes, sir," said Billy.
"And left you to see to things," continued the man.
"Yes, sir," replied the boy, gazing through the window at the flicker as
it hitched down the gate-post and finally dropped into the grass with a
shrill chirp.
"And you didn't water them pigs!"
"O-o-o! Oh, sir! Geeroody! O me! ouch! lawsy! lawsy! mercy me!"
The slender scion of an apple tree, in the hand of Mr. Coulter, rose and
fell, cutting the air like a rapier, and up from the jacket of the lad,
like incense from an altar, rose a cloud of dust mingled with the nap of
jeans. Down in the young clover of the meadow the larks and sparrows
sang cheerily; the gnats and flies danced up and down in the sunshine,
the fresh soft young leaves of the vines rustled like satin, and all
was merry indeed!
Billy's eyes were turned upward to the face of his father in appealing
agony; but still the switch, with a sharp hiss, cut the air, falling
steadily and mercilessly on his shoulders.
All along the green banks of the river the willows shook their shining
fingers at the lifting fog, and the voices of children going by to the
distant school smote the sweet May wind.
"Whippee! Whippee-tippee-tee!" sang the cardinal bird.
"O pap! ouch! O-o-o! I'll not forget to water the pigs no more!"
"S'pect you won't, neither!" said the man.
The wind, by a sudden puff, lifted into the room a shower of white bloom
petals from a sweet apple tree, letting them fall gracefully upon the
patchwork carpet, the while a ploughman whistled plaintively in a
distant field.
"Crackee! O pap! ouch! O-o-o! You're a killin' me!"
"Shet your mouth 'r I'll split ye to the backbone in a second! Show ye
how to run off fishin' with Ed Jones and neglect them pigs! Take every
striffin of hide off'n ye!"
How many delightful places in the woods, how many cool spots beside the
murmuring river, would have been more pleasant to Billy than the place
he just then occupied! He would have swapped hides with the very pigs he
had forgot to water.
"O, land! O, me! Geeroody me!" yelled the lad.
"Them poor pigs!" rejoined the father.
Still the dust rose and danced in the level jet of sunlight that fell
athwart the room from the east window, and the hens out at the barn
cackled and sang for joy over new laid eggs stowed away in cosy places.
At one time during the falling of the rod the girl quit washing the
dishes, and thrusting her head into the kitchen said, in a subdued tone:
"My land! Mammy, ain't Bill a gittin' an awful one this load o' poles?"
"You're moughty right!" responded the matron, solemnly.
Along toward the last Mr. Coulter tip-toed at every stroke. The switch
actually screamed through the air. Billy danced and bawled and made all
manner of serio-comic faces and contortions.
"Now go, sir," cried the man, finally tossing the frizzled stump of the
switch out through the window. "Go now, and next time I'll be bound you
water them pigs!"
And, while the finch poured a cataract of melody from the locust tree,
Billy went.
Poor boy! that was a terrible thrashing, and to make it worse, it had
been promised to him on the evening before, so that he had been dreading
it and shivering over it all night!
Now, as he walked through the breakfast room, his sister looked at him
in a commiserating way, but on passing through the kitchen he could not
catch the eye of his mother.
Finally he stood in the free open air in front of the saddle closet. It
was just then that a speckled rooster on the barn yard fence flapped his
wings and crowed lustily. A turkey cock was strutting on the grass by
the old cherry tree.
Billy opened the door of the closet. "A boy's will is the wind's will,
and the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." Billy peeped into
the saddle closet and then cast a glance around him, as if to see if any
one was near.
At length, during a pleasant lull in the morning wind, and while the
low, tenderly mellow flowing of the river was distinctly audible, and
the song of the finch increased in volume, and the bleating of new born
lambs in the meadow died in fluttering echoes under the barn, and while
the fragrance of apple blooms grew fainter, and while the sun, now
flaming just a little above the eastern horizon, launched a shower of
yellow splendors over him from head to foot, he took from under his
jacket behind a doubled sheep skin with the wool on, which, with an
ineffable smile, he tossed into the closet. Then, as the yellow flicker
rose rapidly from the grass, Billy walked off, whistling the air of that
once popular ballad--
"O give me back my fifteen cents,
And give me back my money," &c.
Transcriber's Notes:
Passages in italics or underlined are indicated by _italics_.
Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from
the original.
Punctuation has been corrected without note.