Riley Brooke had a tongue for gossip, an ear for evil report, an
eye for rascals. Every day new suspicions took root in him, while
others grew and came to great size and were as hard to conceal as
pumpkins. He had meanness enough to equip all he knew, and gave it
with a lavish tongue. In his opinion Hillsborough came within one
of having as many rascals in it as there were people. He had tried
to bring them severally to justice by vain appeals to the law,
having sued for every cause in the books, but chiefly for trespass
and damages, real and exemplary. He was a money-lender, shaving
notes or taking them for larger sums than he lent, with chattel
mortgages for security. Foreclosure and sale were a perennial
source of profit to him. He was tall and well past middle age,
with a short, gray beard, a look of severity, a stoop in his
shoulders, and a third wife whom nobody, within the knowledge of
the townfolk, had ever seen. If he had no other to gossip with, he
provided imaginary company and talked to his own ears. He thought
himself a most powerful and agile man, boasting often that he still
kept the vigour of his youth. On his errands in the village he
often broke into an awkward gallop, like a child at play. When he
slackened pace it was to shake his head solemnly, as if something
had reminded him of the wickedness of the world.
"If I dared tell all I knew," he would whisper suggestively, and
then proceed to tell much more than he could possibly have known.
Any one of many may have started his tongue, but the shortcomings
of one Ezekiel Swackhammer were for him an ever present help and
provocation. If there were nothing new to talk about, there was
always Swackhammer. Poor Swackhammer had done everything he ought
not to have done. The good God himself was the only being that had
the approval of old Riley Brooke. It was curious--that turning of
his tongue from the slander of men to the praise of God. And of
the goodness of the Almighty he was quite as sure as of the badness
of men. Assurance of his own salvation had come to him one day
when he was shearing sheep, and when, as he related often, finding
himself on his knees to shear, he remained to pray. Sundays and
every Wednesday evening he wore a stove-pipe hat and a long frock
coat of antique and rusty aspect. On his way to church--with
hospitality even for the like of him, thank God!--he walked slowly
with head bent until, remembering his great agility and strength,
he began to run, giving a varied exhibition of skips and jumps
terminating in a sort of gallop. Once in the sacred house he
looked to right and left accusingly, and aloft with encouraging
applause. His God was one of wrath, vengeance, and destruction;
his hell the destination of his enemies. They who resented the
screw of his avarice, and pulled their thumbs away; they who
treated him with contempt, and whose faults, compared to his own,
were as a mound to a mountain--they were all to burn with
everlasting fire, while he, on account of that happy thought the
day of the sheep-shearing, was to sit forever with the angels in
heaven.
"Ye're going t' heaven, I hear," said Darrel, who had repaired a
clock for him, and heard complaint of his small fee.
"I am," was the spirited reply.
"God speed ye!" said the tinker, as he went away.
In such disfavour was the poor man, that all would have been glad
to have him go anywhere, so he left Hillsborough.
One day in the Christmas holidays, a boy came to the door of Riley
Brooke, with a buck-saw on his arm.
"I'm looking for work," said the boy, "and I'd be glad of the
chance to saw your wood."
"How much a cord?" was the loud inquiry.
"Forty cents."
"Too much," said Brooke. "How much a day?"
"Six shillings."
"Too much," said the old man, snappishly. "I used to git six
dollars a month, when I was your age, an' rise at four o'clock in
the mornin' an' work till bedtime. You boys now-days are a lazy
good-fer-nothin' lot. What's yer name?"
"Sidney Trove."
"Don't want ye."
"Well, mister," said the boy, who was much in need of money, "I'll
saw your wood for anything you've a mind to give me."
"I'll give ye fifty cents a day," said the old man.
Trove hesitated. The sum was barely half what he could earn, but
he had given his promise, and fell to. Riley Brooke spent half the
day watching and urging him to faster work. More than once the boy
was near quitting, but kept his good nature and a strong pace.
When, at last, Brooke went away, Trove heard a sly movement of the
blinds, and knew that other eyes were on the watch. He spent three
days at the job--laming, wearisome days, after so long an absence
from heavy toil.
"Wal, I suppose y& want money," Brooke snapped, as the boy came to
the door. "How much?"
"One dollar and a half."
"Too much, too much; I won't pay it."
"That was the sum agreed upon."
"Don't care, ye hain't earned no dollar 'n a half. Here, take that
an' clear out;" having said which, Brooke tossed some money at the
boy and slammed the door in his face. Trove counted the money--it
was a dollar and a quarter. He was sorely tempted to open the door
and fling it back at him, but wisely kept his patience and walked
away. It was the day before Christmas. Trove had planned to walk
home that evening, but a storm had come, drifting the snow deep,
and he had to forego the visit. After supper he went to the Sign
of the Dial. The tinker was at home in his odd little shop and
gave him a hearty welcome. Trove sat by the fire, and told of the
sawing for Riley Brooke.
"God rest him!" said the tinker, thoughtfully puffing his pipe.
"What would happen, think ye, if a man like him were let into
heaven?"
"I cannot imagine," said the boy.
"Well, for one thing," said the tinker, "he'd begin to look for
chattels, an' I do fear me there'd soon be many without harps."
"What is one to do with a man like that?" Trove inquired.
"Only this," said the tinker; "put him in thy book. He'll make
good history. But, sor, for company he's damnably poor."
"It's a new way to use men," said Trove.
"Nay, an old way--a very old way. Often God makes an example o'
rare malevolence an' seems to say, 'Look, despise, and be anything
but this.' Like Judas and Herod he is an excellent figure in a
book. Put him in thine, boy."
"And credit him with full payment?" the boy asked.
"Long ago, praise God, there was a great teacher," said the old
man. "It is a day to think of Him. Return good for evil--those
were His words. We've never tried it, an' I'd like to see how it
may work. The trial would be amusing if it bore no better fruit."
"What do you propose?"
"Well, say we take him a gift with our best wishes," said the
tinker.
"If I can afford it," the boy replied.
The tinker answered quickly: "Oh, I've always a little for a
Christmas, an' I'll buy the gifts. Ah, boy, let's away for the
gifts. We'll--we'll punish him with kindness."
They went together and bought a pair of mittens and a warm muffler
for Riley Brooke and walked to his door with them and rapped upon
it. Brooke came to the door with a candle.
"What d'ye want?" he demanded.
"To wish you Merry Christmas and present you gifts," said Trove.
The old man raised his candle, surveying them with surprise and
curiosity.
"What gifts?" he inquired in a milder tone.
"Well," said the boy, "we've brought you mittens and a muffler."
"Ha! ha! Yer consciences have smote ye," said Brooke, "Glory to God
who brings the sinner to repentance!"
"And fills the bitter cup o' the ungrateful," said the tinker. And
they went away.
"I'd like to bring one other gift," said Darrel.
"What's that?"
"God forgive me! A rope to hang him. But mind thee, boy, we are
trying the law o' the great teacher, and let us see if we can learn
to love this man."
"Love Riley Brooke?" said Trove, doubtfully.
"A great achievement, I grant thee," said the tinker. "For if we
can love him, we shall be able to love anybody. Let us try and see
what comes of it."
A man was waiting for Darrel at the foot of the old stairs--a tall
man, poorly dressed, whom Trove had not seen before, and whom, now,
he was not able to see clearly in the darkness.
"The mare is ready," said Darrel. "Tis a dark night."
He to whom the tinker had spoken made no answer.
"Good night," said the tinker, turning. "A Merry Christmas to
thee, boy, an' peace an' plenty."
"I have peace, and you have given me plenty to think about," said
Trove.
On his way home the boy thought of the stranger at the stairs,
wondering if he were the other tinker of whom Darrel had told him.
At his lodging he found a new pair of boots with only the Christmas
greeting on a card.
"Well," said Trove, already merrier than most of far better
fortune, "he must have been somebody that knew my needs."