THE BROKEN BRIDGE.
It was early in April, and the travelling was very bad, for the frost
was just coming out of the ground. Mary, Moses, and the twins attended a
private school, on the other side of the river, and Patty went with
them; but they were all rather tired of her company.
"Mother, we're afraid she'll get lost in one of the holes," said Moses.
"Won't you make her stay at home?"
Mrs. Lyman stood before the brick oven, taking out of it some blackened
cobs which had been used for smoking hams, and putting them into a dish
of water.
"What are you doing with those cobs?" asked Moses, while Patty caught at
her mother's skirts, saying,--
"I won't lose me in a hole, mamma! Mayn't I go to school?"
"I will tell you what I am doing with the cobs, Moses," said Mrs. Lyman;
"making pearlash water. I shall soak them a while, and then pour off the
water into bottles. Cob-coals make the very best of pearlash."
How queer that seems to us! Why didn't Mrs. Lyman send to the store and
buy soda? Because in those days there was no such thing as soda.
"But as for Patience," said she, "I really don't see, Moses, how I can
have her stay at home _this_ week. Rachel is weaving, Dorcas is
spinning, and the baby is cutting a tooth. Just now my hands are more
than full, my son."
Patty was delighted to hear that. It never once occurred to her to feel
ashamed of being such a trial to everybody. Dorcas tied her hood, pinned
her yellow blanket over her little shoulders, kissed her good by, and
off she trotted between Mary and Moses, full of triumph and
self-importance.
There was only a half-day's school on Saturday, and as the children were
going home that noon, George said,--
"I call this rather slow getting ahead. Patty creeps like a snail."
"Because her feet are so small," said kind-hearted Mary.
"They are twice as big as common with mud, I am sure," returned George;
whereupon Silas laughed; for whatever either of the twins said, the
other twin thought it very bright indeed.
"There, don't plague her, Georgie," said Mary, "Moses and I have got as
much as _we_ can do to get her home. I tell you my arms ache pulling!"
As she spoke a frightful noise was heard,--not thunder, it was too
prolonged for that; it was a deep, sullen roar, heard above the wail of
the wind like the boom of Niagara Falls. Very soon the children saw for
themselves what it meant. _The ice was going out!_
There was always more or less excitement to these little folks,--and,
indeed, to the grown folks too,--in the going out of the ice, for it
usually went at a time when you were least expecting it.
This was a glorious sight! The ice was very thick and strong, and the
freshet was hurling it down stream with great force. The blocks were
white with a crust of snow on top, but they were as blue at heart as a
bed of violets, and tumbled and crowded one another like an immense
company of living things. The tide was sending them in between great
heaps of logs, and the logs were trying to crush them to pieces, while
they themselves rushed headlong at terrible speed. The sun came out of a
cloud, and shone on the ice and logs in their mad dance. Then the white
blocks quivered and sparkled like diamonds, and the twins cried out
together, "How splendid!"
"Pretty! pretty!" chimed in little Patty, falling face downwards into a
mud puddle.
"Well, that's pretty works," said Moses, picking her up, and partially
cleansing her with his gingham pocket-handkerchief.
"Hallo, there!" shouted Mr. Griggs, the toll-gatherer, appearing at the
door of his small house with both arms above his head. "Children,
children, stop! Don't you come anigh the bridge for your lives!"
"Oh, it's going off! its going off!" cried the five Lymans in concert.
They forgot to admire any longer the magnificent sight. The ice might be
glorious in its beauty; but, alas, it was terrible in its strength!
How could they get home? That was the question. They could see their
father's house in the distance; but how and when were they to reach it?
It might as well have been up in the moon.
"They can't come after us," wailed Mary, wringing her hands; "'twill be
days and days before they can put a boat into this river."
"What shall we do?" groaned Moses; "we can't sleep on the ground."
"With nothing to eat," added George, who remembered the brick-red Indian
pudding they were to have had for dinner.
"Don't be scared, children; go ahead," said Dr. Hilton, from the bank.
"What! Would you have 'em risk their lives?" said the timid
toll-gatherer. "Look at them blocks crowding up against the piers! Hear
what a thunder they make! And the logs swimming down in booms! You step
into our house, children, and my wife and the neighbors, we'll contrive
to stow you away somewheres."
Crowds of people were collecting on the bank watching the ice go out.
"Well, you are in a pretty fix, children," said one of the men. "How
did your folks happen to let you come?"
The Lymans stood dumb and transfixed.
"Hurry! Why don't you step lively?" said Dr. Hilton, and two or three
other men.
"Stay where you are, children," cried Mr. Chase and Dr. Potter from the
other bank.
"If we could only see father!" said one of the twins. Brave as they both
thought themselves, the roaring torrent appalled them.
Suddenly there was a shout from the other end of the bridge as loud and
shrill as a fog-bell:--
"Children, come home! George! Silas! Mary? Be quick?"
It was Squire Lyman's voice.
"What shall we do?" cried Mary, running round and round.
"'Twon't do to risk it, neighbor Lyman," screamed the toll-gatherer.
"Children, run! there is time," answered the father, hoarsely.
It was Mary who called back again, "Yes, father, we'll come."
For the twins did not seem to feel clear what to do. "He knows," thought
she. "What father tells us to do must be right."
She stepped firmly upon the shaking bridge. For an instant Moses
hesitated, then followed with Patty; and after him came the twins, with
their teeth firmly set.
"Quick! quick!" screamed Squire Lyman. "Run for your lives!"
"Run! run!" echoed the people on both banks; but Mr. Griggs's tongue
clove to the roof of his mouth.
The roaring torrent and the high wind together were rocking the bridge
like a cradle. If it had not been for Patty! All the rest could run. It
seemed as if the mud on the child's shoes had turned to lead. She hung,
crying and struggling, a dead weight between Moses and Mary, who pulled
her forward, without letting her little toddling feet touch the ground.
The small procession of five, how eagerly everybody watched it! The poor
toll-gatherer, if he had had the courage, would have run after the
children, and snatched them back from their doom. Every looker-on was
anxious; yet all the anxiety of the multitude could not equal the
agonizing suspense in that one father's heart. He thought he knew the
strength of the piers; he thought he could tell how long they would
stand against the ice; but what if he had made a mistake?
The children did not get on quite as fast as he had expected. Every
moment seemed an age, for they were running for their lives!
It was over at last, the bridge was crossed, the children were safe!
The toll-gatherer, and the other people on the bank, set up a shout; but
Squire Lyman could not speak. He seized Dr. Potter by the shoulder, and
sank back against him, almost fainting.
"Papa! O, papa!" cried Patty, whose little heart scarcely beat any
faster than usual, in spite of all the fuss she had made, "I couldn't
help but laugh!"
This little speech, so babyish and "Patty-like," brought Squire Lyman to
himself, and he hugged the silly creature as if she stood for the whole
five children.
"Father, it was a tough one, I tell you," said Silas.
"O, father," said Moses, "if you knew how we trembled! With that baby to
pull over, too!"
"I'll tell you what I thought," said Mary, catching her breath. "I
though my father knew more than the toll-gatherer, and all the other
men. But anyway, if he didn't know, I'd have done what he said."
"Bravo for my Polly," said Squire Lyman, wiping his eyes.
Just half an hour after this, when they were all safe at home, the
bridge was snapped in two, and went reeling down stream. Squire Lyman
closed his eyes and shuddered. Of course no one could help thinking what
might have happened if the children had been a little later; and
everybody fell to kissing Patty, for that had long been a family habit
when any feeling came up which was too strong or too deep to be
expressed.
The next day, in Mrs. Lyman's Sunday evening talk with the children, she
told them the trust Mary had shown in her father, when he asked her to
cross the bridge, was just the feeling we should have towards our
heavenly Father, who is all-wise, and can never make mistakes; and then
she gave them this verse to learn:--
"Blessed is the man that maketh the Lord his trust."
Patty forgot the verse very soon; but Mary remembered it as long as she
lived.