[Illustration: MR. WHITMAN HELPED JAMES TO GET DOWN FROM THE WAGON. Page
10.]
THE UNSEEN HAND
OR
JAMES RENFEW AND HIS BOY HELPERS
BY
ELIJAH KELLOGG
AUTHOR OF “ELM ISLAND STORIES” “PLEASANT COVE STORIES” “FOREST GLEN
STORIES” “A STRONG ARM AND A MOTHER’S BLESSING” “GOOD OLD TIMES” ETC.
ILLUSTRATED
BOSTON
LEE AND SHEPARD PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK CHARLES T. DILLINGHAM
1882
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright, 1881,
BY LEE AND SHEPARD.
_All Rights Reserved._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. “THE MOTHER’S BREATH IS WARM” 9
II. THE REDEMPTIONER 18
III. JAMES RENFEW 29
IV. THE WHITMAN FAMILY 39
V. THE UNSEEN HAND 47
VI. “THERE’S LIFE IN HIM YET” 68
VII. NOBLE CONDUCT OF BERTIE 83
VIII. INFLUENCE OF HOPE 97
IX. THE REDEMPTIONER AT MEETING 115
X. THE REDEMPTIONER AT SCHOOL 129
XI. THE PLOT EXPOSED 146
XII. STUNG TO THE QUICK 162
XIII. THE SCHOLARS SUSTAIN JAMES 172
XIV. RESENTING A BASE PROPOSAL 189
XV. SOMETHING TO PUT IN THE CHEST 205
XVI. A YEAR OF HAPPINESS 221
XVII. REDEMPTION YEAR 239
XVIII. WILLIAM WHITMAN 253
XIX. TRAPPING 270
XX. JAMES AND EMILY 282
XXI. THE BRUSH CAMP 299
XXII. THE WILDERNESS HOME 316
PREFACE.
A vast majority of the noblest intellects of the race have ever held to
the idea that,—
“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough hew them how we will.”
By its influence they have been both consoled and strengthened under the
pressures and in the exigencies of life. This principle, to a singular
degree, assumes both form and development in the story of James Renfew,
the Redemptioner.
He comes to us as an orphan and the inmate of a workhouse, flung upon
the world, like a dry leaf on the crest of a breaker; his mind a blank
devoid of knowledge, save the idea of the Almighty and the commands of
the Decalogue, whose force, in virtue of prior possession, held the
ground and kept at bay the evil influences by which he was surrounded.
And in consequence of thus holding aloof from all partnership in vice,
he was brow-beaten, trampled upon, and made a butt of by his companions
in misfortune.
His only inheritance was the kiss of a dying mother, the dim
recollection of her death, and a Bible which he could not read,—her sole
bequest.
The buoyancy, the frolic of the blood, the premonition of growing power,
which render childhood and youth so pregnant of happiness, and so
pleasant in the retrospect, were to him unrevealed. At nineteen the life
seemed crushed out of him by the pressure, or, rather puncture, of a
miserable present and a hopeless future. In the judgment of the most
charitable, he was but one remove from fatuity.
From such material to develop the varied qualities of a pioneer, a man
of firm purpose, quick resolve, and resolute to meet exigencies, might
well seem to require supernatural power; and yet, by no other alchemy
than sympathy, encouragement wisely timed, and knowledge seasonably
imparted, was this seeming miracle accomplished.
The pity of Alice Whitman, the broad benevolence of her husband, the
warm sympathy of Bertie and his young associates, the ripe counsels of
the glorious old grandfather,—sage Christian hero,—and the efforts of
Mr. Holmes, who honored his calling, while sowing good seed in the
virgin soil of a young heart, were but visible instruments in the grasp
of the Hand Unseen.
THE UNSEEN HAND;
OR,
JAMES RENFEW AND HIS BOY-HELPERS.
CHAPTER I.
“THE MOTHER’S BREATH IS WARM.”
It was the autumn of 1792. The beams of the declining sun were resting
peacefully upon the time-worn walls of a log house of large dimensions,
evidently built to serve the purposes both of a dwelling and a fortress,
and situated upon the banks of the Swatara Creek, in the State of
Pennsylvania.
A magnificent chestnut-tree, whose trunk and lower branches were all
aglow with the long level rays of the retiring light, shadowed a large
portion of the spacious door-yard.
This was the homestead of Bradford Whitman, a well-to-do farmer, and
whose family consisted of himself and wife, his aged father, and three
children, Peter, Albert and Maria, aged respectively sixteen, fourteen
and eleven.
Upon one of the highest branches of this great tree was seated Bertie
Whitman. The eyes of the lad were eagerly fastened upon the road that,
skirting the rising ground upon which the dwelling stood, led to a
distant village.
At once his features lighted up with a jubilant expression; he rapidly
descended from his perch, and ran to the door of the house, shouting,
“Mother! Maria! Grandfather! They’ve got him; they are coming down
Liscomb’s hill this minute, and there’s three in the wagon. Oh!”
He would have run to meet the approaching team, and had taken a few
steps when he was met by his elder brother.
“Bertie, we’ve got the _redemptioner_, and I jumped out of the wagon
while the horses were walking up our hill to tell you and Maria not to
laugh if you can help it, ‘cause it would make him feel bad; but you
can’t think how funny he does look; he’s lame besides, and his name’s
James Renfew.”
This conversation was interrupted by the rumbling of wheels as their
father drove up, where his whole family were grouped around the door.
Mrs. Whitman stood on the door-stone, the old grandfather beside her,
leaning on his staff, the children in front, while Fowler, the
house-dog, with his fore-legs on the shoulders of old Frank, the near
horse, his particular friend, was trying to lick his nose and Frank was
arching his neck to accommodate him.
Mr. Whitman helped James to get down from the wagon. The boy made no
return to the salutations of the family save by a stony stare, not even
taking the hand extended to him by Mrs. Whitman. He, however, manifested
some token of sensibility by offering to help in unharnessing, and would
have limped after the horses to the barn, but his master told him to go
into the house and keep still till his leg was better; nevertheless
there he stood staring after the horses, and evidently would much rather
have followed them to the barn.
The dog then came and smelt of him. Mrs. Whitman told Peter to take him
by the hand and lead him into the house. She placed an arm-chair for
him, and a smaller one to put his lame leg on, and in a few minutes he
was fast asleep.
Judging by appearances Bradford Whitman had drawn a blank at this his
first venture in the redemptioner lottery. The children got together
(with the dog) under the great chestnut-tree to free their minds and
compare notes.
“Isn’t he queer?” said Bertie.
“Did ever anybody see such funny clothes? I guess they were made for him
when he was small and so he’s grown out of them, but he’d be real
handsome if he had good clothes and his hair combed, and didn’t have
such a pitiful look out of his eyes,” said Maria.
“I tell you what he puts me in mind of,” said Bertie, “Mr. William
Anderson’s oxen that are so poor, their necks so long and thin; and they
look so discouraged, and as though they wanted to fall down and die.”
Peter now related all he had heard Wilson tell their father, and dwelt
with great emphasis upon Mr. Wilson’s statement that the lad had not a
friend in the world and no home.
“He’s got one friend,” said Bertie, “Fowler likes him, ‘cause he smelt
of him and wagged his tail; if he hadn’t liked him he would have
growled. Mother’s a friend to him, and father and grandpa and all of
us.”
“We will be good to him because he never had any chestnut-tree to play
under and swing on, nor any garden of his own,” said Maria.
“How can we be good to him if he won’t say anything, Maria!” said
Bertie.
“Can’t we be good to the cattle, and I’m sure they don’t talk?”
“If they don’t they say something; the cat she purrs, the hens prate,
Fowler wags his tail and barks and whines; and the horses neigh, and
snort, and put down their heads for me to pat them; but how could you be
good to a stone? and he’s just like a stone, when mother put out her
hand to shake hands he did not take it, nor look pleased nor anything.”
“Perhaps ‘twas ‘cause he was afraid. When we first got our kitten she
hid away up garret, and we didn’t see her for three days, but she got
tame, and so perhaps he will.”
They finally made up their minds that James was entitled to all the
sympathy and kindness they could manifest towards him, when they were
called to supper.
It now became a question between Mr. Whitman and his wife, where to stow
James that night.
“Put him in the barn and give him some blankets to-night, and to-morrow
we will clean him up.”
“I can’t bear to put him in the barn, husband, I’ll make him a bed of
some old ‘duds’ on the floor in the porch. Send him right off to bed;
I’ll wash his clothes and dry ‘em before morning. I can fix up some old
clothes of yours for him to work in, for I don’t want any of the
neighbors to see him in those he has on.”
Mr. Whitman now ushered James to bed, waited till he undressed, and
brought in his clothes that were soon in scalding suds. Had Mr. Whitman
gone back he would have seen this poor ignorant lad rise from his bed,
kneel down and repeat the Lord’s prayer, and though repeated with a very
feeble sense of its import may we not believe it was accepted by Him who
“requireth according to that a man hath and not according to that he
hath not,” and whose hand that through the ocean storm guides the
sea-bird to its nest amid the breakers, has directed this wayfarer to
the spot where there are hearts to pity and hands to aid him.
A blazing fire in the great kitchen fireplace so nearly accomplished (by
bedtime) the drying of the clothes, that in the morning they were
perfectly dry, the hot bricks and mouldering log giving out heat all
night long. In the morning Mr. Whitman carried to the porch water in a
tub, soap and his clean clothes, and told James to wash himself, put
them on and then come out to his breakfast.
When James had eaten his breakfast (Mr. Whitman and Peter having eaten
and gone to the field), the good wife cut his hair which was of great
length, gave his head a thorough scrubbing with warm soapsuds, and
completed the process with a fine-toothed comb. Removing carefully the
bandages she next examined his leg.
“It was a deep cut, but it’s doing nicely,” she said, “there’s not a bit
of proud flesh in it; you must sit in the house till it heals up.” When
having bound up the wound she was about to leave him, he murmured,—
“You’re good to me.”
This was not a very fervent manifestation of gratitude, but it betokened
that the spirit within was not wholly petrified; as Alice Whitman looked
into that vacant face she perceived by the moisture of the eyes, that
there was a lack not so much of feeling as of the power to express it.
“God bless you, I’ll act a mother’s part towards you; it shall be your
own fault if you are not happy now. I know God sent you here, for I
cannot believe that anything short of Divine Power would have ever
brought my husband to take a redemptioner.”
Bertie and Maria, who had been looking on in silence, now ran into the
field to tell their father and Peter all their mother had said and done,
and that the redemptioner had spoken to her.
“Father,” said Maria, “if mother is his mother, will he be our brother?”
“Not exactly; your mother meant that she would treat him just as she
does you, and so you must treat him as you do each other, because your
mother has said so, and that’s sufficient.”
“Then we mustn’t call him a redemptioner?”
“No; forget all about that and call him James.”
“When we have anything good, and when we find a bumblebee’s nest, shall
we give him part, just like we do each other?”
“Yes.”
Mrs. Whitman sent for Sally Wood, one of her neighbor’s daughters, to
take care of the milk and do the housework; and then set herself to
altering over a suit of her husband’s clothes to fit James, who, clean
from head to foot, sat with his leg in a chair watching Mrs. Whitman at
her work, but the greater portion of the time asleep.
“Let him sleep,” she said; “‘twill do him good to sleep a week; he’ll
come to his feeling after that and be another boy. It’s the full meals
and the finding out what disposition is to be made of him, and that he’s
not to be hurt, makes him sleep. I doubt if he had any too much to eat
on the passage over.”
By night the good woman, with the aid of Sally (who, besides doing the
work, found some time to sew), had prepared a strong, well-fitting suit
of working-clothes and a linsey-woolsey shirt, and, after supper, James
put them on. He made no remark in relation to his clothes, but Maria
reported that she knew he was as pleased as he could be, because she
peeped into the door of the bedroom and saw him looking at himself in
the glass and counting the buttons on his waistcoat and jacket.
James improved rapidly, and began in a few days to walk around the
door-yard and to the barn, and sit by the hour in the sun on the
wood-pile (with Fowler at his feet, for the dog had taken a great liking
to him), insomuch that Mrs. Whitman asked her husband if it would not
make him better contented to have some light work that he could do
sitting down.
“Not yet, wife. I want to see if, when he finds us all at work, he won’t
start of his own accord. He has no more idea of earning anything, or of
labor in our sense of that word, than my speckled ox has. When I hold up
the end of the yoke and tell old Buck to come under, he comes; and so
this boy has been put out to hard masters who stood over and got all out
of him they could. He has never had reason to suppose that there are any
people in this world that care anything about others, except to get all
they can out of them.”
“If, as you say, he has always had a task-master, perhaps he thinks
because we don’t tell him what to do, that we don’t want him to do
anything.”
“We’ll let the thing work; I want to see what he’ll do of his own accord
before I interfere. It is my belief that, benumbed as he now appears,
there’s enterprise in him, and that the right kind of treatment will
bring it out; but I want it to come naturally just as things grow out of
the ground. He’s had a surfeit of the other kind of treatment.”
Affairs went on in this way for a week longer, till the boy’s leg had
completely healed, during which time it became evident that this
apparently unimpressible being was not, after all, insensible to the
influence of kindness, for, whenever he perceived that wood or water
were wanted, he would anticipate the needs of Mrs. Whitman nor ever
permit her to bring either.
Mr. Whitman still manifested no disposition to put the boy to work, and
even shelled corn himself, till his wife became somewhat impatient; and
though even the grandfather thought the boy might, at least, do that
much. Whitman, however, paid no attention to the remonstrances of
either, and matters went on as before.