me to many of his own: "Where was I bound?" "Where did I come from?"
and, "Who did I know in the parts?" To these I replied as best I could,
and with a directness that seemed rather to disconcert him.
But he was a kindly man, and noticing that I limped, and that I was in
no condition to travel, he proposed my stopping the night with him, and
he would carry me part way on my journey on the morrow. To this I
agreed, as I found I had wandered somewhat out of my way.
At supper that evening I tasted for the first time the delightful cakes
made out of buckwheat, and had to relate again, for the benefit of my
host and his wife (a tall, sharp-featured woman who spoke with a whining
drawl), the story of my adventures and the eventful voyage of the
_Minetta_.
When I told of the affair of the severed hand, and the action of the
English, the woman quoted a passage from the Bible that was quite as
much as a curse on the heads of the offenders, it breathed so of
vengeance. But we had not burned half a candle before we all were
yawning. Well, to be short, I slept in a great feather bed that night,
and the next morning I started northward, mounted astride, behind Farmer
Lyman on a jolting gray nag.
When my friend put me down he bade me a farewell, and told me I had but
five miles before me to the town of Miller's Falls.
It was up and down hill, slow going, and noon, I should judge by the
shadows, before I saw the village, nestling at the bend of a small
valley. On the wind came to me the shrieking and clanking of machinery
and the jarring of a waterfall.
I sat down on the top rail of a fence, and surveyed the village for some
time before I descended the hill. As I walked along I saw in a steep
gorge, a sheer descent of some fifty feet to one side of the roadway, a
rushing brook, and almost in the centre of the town itself a pond that
spread back into the hills.
The mill that was raising such a clatter stood at one side of a dam
built of stone and timber that had backed the water of the pond; and I
walked up close to the building and looked with wonder at everything. A
huge over-shot wheel was turning and plashing busily, and the water was
roaring over the dam and breaking on the brown slippery rocks below. It
fascinated me, and I stood for some time leaning over the rail watching
it. I grew so interested, in fact, that I almost forgot my mission or
where I was, and was recalled to myself by a voice hailing me from only
a few feet above my head.
"Well, sonny," said a drawling voice, "be ye wondering where all that
water is goin' to?"
A thin cadaverous face with a very pointed nose and chin was thrust out
of a little window, and two long hands on either side gave the man the
effect of holding himself in his position by the exercise of sheer
strength.
"I suppose it goes into the sea," I replied, perceiving that he wished
to chaff me.
"Correct," he answered. "Go to the head."
"May I come into the mill?" I asked, for I had never seen one, and the
varied noises excited my curiosity.
"Why, certainly," the man said. "Pull the latch-string in the door
yonder and come in."
The mill not only sawed the long pine trunks into planks and squared
timbers, of which there was a profusion about, but also ground most of
the grain for the neighborhood. As I entered, the stones were grumbling
and the air was full of dust.
"What is it you're making?" I shouted into the tall man's ear. He had
greeted me at the doorway.
"Buckwheat cakes," he replied, thrusting his hand into the top of an
open sack. "Ye're a stranger here, ain't ye?"
I knew what to expect by this time, and that probably my appearance had
determined the miller to find out all he could about me merely for his
own satisfaction. So, half shouting in his ear, I related (by the
answering of questions) part of my story--at least I told him where I
had come from and the why and wherefore of my trip. When it came to the
asking for my uncle's place of residence I ran against trouble, and my
heart sank.
"What is the name?" asked the thin man when I had first mentioned it.
"Monsieur Henri Amedee Lavalle de Brienne."
"Eh?"
I had to repeat it.
"No such person in these parts," the man answered, shaking his head
positively. "And I ought to know," he added. (I dare say he did, and
most people's private business besides.)
But here was an uncomfortable position. What was I to do? Somehow the
hum and groaning and rumbling of the mill appeared to prevent my
thinking, and I stepped to the door.
The village of Miller's Falls stretched down one wide road that curved
about the edge of the mill-pond. It was not a cheerful-looking place
taking it altogether, but it had a certain air of prosperity; there was
some movement, and a number of horses and carts were on the streets.
All at once the chatter of voices and the familiarly shrill cries of
boys at some rough merriment came up from the road at the right. I
looked about the corner of the mill and saw that a half-dozen youngsters
of about my own age were coming down the hill, and before them rode an
odd figure on a small brown horse. It was a little man, who sat very
erect, and who had a semi-military hat set aslant his gray hair, which
was gathered in a long queue behind. His coat was of a very old fashion,
made of velvet, and heavy riding-gaiters encased his thin legs.
The horse he was riding was by no means a bad one, and it was apparently
all the old man could do to keep him from breaking into a run; and to
accomplish this last was the evident intention of the crowd of small
boys, for they were tickling the horse's heels, or giving him a cut now
and then with some long switches; they varied this by pelting small
pebbles at the rider. The latter, however, kept his seat and controlled
the horse exceedingly well, although it was apparent that he was both
angry and frightened, for he would stop and scold at the boys, and often
turn his horse's head threateningly in their direction. This would
excite a scattering and shouts of derision and laughter.
Some one spoke over my head at this moment, and I saw that the tall man
and one of the mill hands, attracted by the noise, had perceived the
approach of the old man and his tormentors.
"Why, it's old Debrin, from Mountain Brook," said the miller. "Come down
to get his wheat ground, I reckon."
Slung across his saddle were two bags, and the rider was now headed
toward the mill and restraining the horse with difficulty. When he drew
up at the little platform it was all he could do to throw off the bags,
and when he had lifted his legs from the stirrups and slid to ground I
thought he would have fallen, and for the first time I perceived how old
a man he was. Moved by some impulse, I jumped down from the door-sill
and helped him tie the rope halter of the little horse fast to a post.
The old man's hands were trembling so that I doubt if he could have
accomplished it unaided.
My action had so surprised the boys that they had gathered in a circle
about us in silence and astonishment. When I had finished, the old
gentleman looked at me with his black beadlike eyes and raised his hat.
"Thank you, thank you very much," he said, in broken English, in which I
recognized at once the manner in which my mother had spoken. The trace
of the French tongue was there beyond all doubt. So I lifted my own cap,
and answered in what I may well call my native tongue, and told him in
French that I was very glad to have been able to help him.
His astonishment at hearing me address him thus was so great that for a
minute it deprived him of the power of answering, but then he burst
forth into such rapid speech and into so many violent gesticulations
that it was all I could do to follow. The little crowd pressed us so
close that I became embarrassed, and the old man, who had been
complaining of the conduct of the boys and the temper of his horse, and
at the same time stating how welcome it was to hear his own tongue
again, suddenly saw that he was creating a great deal of amusement for
the gaping, snickering circle about us. He drew himself up and his lip
curled with contempt. I now, for the first time, had an opportunity to
ask a question that had been forming itself in my mind.
"Are you Monsieur de Brienne?" I ventured.
"I am, and you?" he replied.
"Am Jean Hurdiss, your nephew, who has come all the way from Baltimore
to see you."
Instantly his manner changed. I thought he was going to fling his arms
about me. But if such was his intention he controlled himself.
"We will not talk before this canaille," he said, quietly, "and I cannot
here express my delight at seeing you."
This must have appeared very strange to the on-lookers, who, of course,
understood no word of what we were saying, and what happened afterwards
must have been stranger still; and I can now readily see why I was
regarded as a mystery by the inhabitants of Miller's Falls during the
whole course of my stopping there.
The old man with a great deal of dignity laid hold of the sack of corn,
and seeing that nobody volunteered to help him, I took up the other end,
and we carried it into the mill. There he flung it on the floor, and M.
de Brienne pointed at it with his finger.
"Grind me this," he said, in a commanding tone, despite the broken and
twisted accents. "I will pay for it when I return."
The surprise occasioned by our actions at the meeting had evidently
struck the crowd of youngsters dumb, but they were soon started again in
their shouts of laughter by the difficulty that my uncle and I
immediately had with the little brown horse. How so feeble a man as he
appeared to be could ever manage the restive beast at all was more than
I could see. Full half a dozen times he failed to make the saddle, even
with my assistance, and this started the boys in their shouts of
derision, and even drew laughter from the windows in which some of the
mill-crew had gathered.
At last, however, I succeeded in getting the old gentleman into the
saddle, and, obeying him, I crawled up behind him and placed my arms
about his waist. But between my lack of knowledge, the horse's
scampering, and the old man's weakness, we almost came to grief more
than once.
Three of the little rapscallions, who of course could not follow us, for
we had started on a run down the road, cut across the meadow by a path,
as if intending to head us off for some reason.
They reached the main roadway first, and were waiting in an orchard at
the end of a stone wall for us to go by. I noticed that they had
gathered some apples, which they held in the hollows of their arms, much
as boys carry snow-balls in an attack. I had been angry before, but now
my one desire was to get at them. I often fear that I must be a
vindictive person indeed.
As we approached they let fly, of course, and one of the apples caught
my uncle squarely in the forehead. He would have fallen, I believe, had
I not held him for an instant, and reaching forward I caught the reins
and brought the little horse to a sudden halt. Then I slipped from my
seat to the ground, and with no weapons but my closed fist I charged the
enemy.
It is not bragging to say that from some ancestor I have inherited
immense strength, and even at the age of thirteen I believe I should
have been a match and more for some lads four or five years older.
(Since I have been sixteen years old even I have never met a grown man
who could force down my arms or twist a finger with me.) But to return:
I caught the first boy a jolt with my closed fist on the side of the
head, and seizing the second, who came to his rescue, I fairly believe I
threw him over the fence without so much as touching it. He landed on
some loose stones on the other side, and set up a tremendous bawling.
The third lad did not stop to get a chance, but legged it as fast as he
could across the meadow. I was so angry now that I believe murder was in
my heart, and I picked up the broken branch of a tree and stood over the
first boy whom I had struck. He looked up at me and began to beg for
mercy.
"Bravo!" called my uncle from the horse, that for a wonder was standing
still. "Bravo, mon enfant!"
He was wiping the juice of the apple from his eyes, but catching my
glance he threw me a kiss from his finger-tips, and laughed a laugh of
congratulation and sympathetic triumph.
I covered my fallen antagonist with added chagrin by scooping up with a
sideway stroke of the foot some dust out of the road on top of him, and,
walking to the horse, I clambered up behind again. Then, digging my
heels into the nag's side, we started on a gallop up the hill and
entered the woods that lined the crest.
I had been so angry that I dare say I had shed tears even at the moment
of my victory (what varieties of weeping there are, to be sure), and I
had such a lump in my throat that I waited for my uncle to begin any
conversation he might wish, but he did not speak until after we had
progressed some distance in among the trees. Then he pulled the horse up
with a jerk (that caused me almost to break my nose on the back of his
head), and he ordered me to dismount. I did so. Monsieur de Brienne
leaned from the saddle and turned me around by the shoulder, much as I
have seen a planter look at a negro before purchasing.
"Very like indeed," he muttered. "A true De Brienne."
Then he leaned further over and told me to embrace him. I complied, and
he kissed me on each cheek and between the eyes. This quite embarrassed
me, and I dropped my glance to the ground and shuffled uneasily; but the
old man had begun to talk, and I dare say it was an hour that we stood
there, for I had to tell him, of course, of my mother's death and of the
burning of Marshwood. When I came to relate of the loss of the
strong-box and its contents, the old gentleman grew quite pale, then he
drew a long breath, and ripped out into a frightful burst of temper. For
some reason I could not help but feel that it was directed against me,
and I waited until he had calmed before I went on. Then I remembered the
letter which had given me the only clew that had led to this meeting,
and I thrust my hand into my coat pocket. It was not there? Fruitlessly
I searched with a growing fear upon me, and I saw that my uncle's little
black eyes were following my every movement; I could see that there was
a certain suspicion in his look, but the letter was not forth-coming,
and was not to be found in my bundle, although I undid it from the strap
of the saddle-bag where I had tied it, and spread its few contents on
the road-side.
"Where is the miniature that you spoke of finding?" inquired Monsieur de
Brienne, in a cold harsh voice.
I told him what I imagined had become of it.
"Ah, bah!" he cried at this, and raised his hand as if he would have
struck me. Had he done so I believe I should have pulled him from the
saddle. He was scarcely larger than myself, and I was growing angry at
his unnecessary and unjust words.
"What have you done?" he cried, restraining himself. "You have lost all
the proofs--all the papers, you fool! Now we can prove nothing. A curse
on such stupidity! What use are you without them? Why did you come?"
I had gathered up my possessions, and was tying together the corners of
the handkerchief, making up my mind to burden him no longer with my
presence, and to return whence I had started (for I still had a number
of the gold pieces sewed in the lining of my cap, where Mr. Edgerton's
maiden sister had placed them), but suddenly M. de Brienne spoke in
rather an eager tone, and asked me to come closer to him. I did so,
wondering. He leaned forward and caught one of the buttons of my coat
between his thumb and forefinger and looked at it closely. Then he
heaved a sigh.
"All there is left," he said. "Ah, my child, my child, you do not know
what you have lost. Pardon my rough speech of a moment since, but what
you told, and what has happened, appeared to turn into ashes what little
hope I had left in life."
I was softened by the sadness of his tone and the real grief that showed
itself in his small pinched features. So I looked up at him, and tried
to smile.
"What is your name?" he questioned of me, eagerly, in a whisper, as if
to extract a secret that I might not care to disclose aloud.
"John Hurdiss," I replied. "That's all I know."
The old man drew a long sigh. "Was your mother's name Hortense or
Hélène?" he questioned again, suddenly and hoarsely.
"I don't know," I said. "I have no idea."
"So be it," he replied, as if accepting a decision against which there
was no use railing. "Come, son; up with you, and we will ride on to my
château."
We followed the well-worn road, and then turned off through the woods,
and came to some pasture bars at the edge of a clearing. I slid to the
ground and opened them at a command from my uncle, and replaced them
after he had gone through. The field that we entered had been
sheep-grazed, and was poor pasturage. Here and there crumbling hoof-worn
patches of rock showed through the wiry close-cropped turf; clusters of
rank fern and hard-back bushes were dotted about, and we threaded them,
following a narrow path, until we came to another gate, which I opened
in the way I had the first. A half-mile of travelling through an expanse
of soft swampy ground, grown with alders and dogwood, and I heard the
sound of running water. Soon we came to a clear brook that gurgled
under overhanging banks, and purled about gleaming time-smoothed stones;
crossing it, and clambering up the steep bank, we came to a second
clearing, hardly five acres in extent. A half-score of large apple-trees
and a diminutive garden were to the left, and at the upper edge of the
clearing was a small unpainted house, and behind it a little barn, whose
foundations extended into the hill-side.
"Gaston! Gaston!" called Monsieur de Brienne, at top voice. "Where are
you hiding?"
In answer a head was thrust from the doorway, and the oddest-looking
figure that I had ever seen came into view. It was an old man, whose
frame when covered with flesh or muscles must have been enormous, but
now so scantily cushioned were the bones that the quaint clothes hung on
him much in the way that a coat hangs on a fence post. But the man moved
with incredible swiftness. He gave a strange look at me, and took
Monsieur de Brienne's stirrup-leather in his hand and assisted him to
dismount. I pushed myself backwards over the horse's hind quarters.
"A guest, Gaston, to Belair. My nephew, Monsieur Jean Hurdiss. This is
Gaston, my valet, chef, major-domo, and standing army."
My uncle had smiled as he said this, but the other's face was most
serious. As I eyed him closely his countenance looked more like a ball
of tightly wound twine with ears and features than anything else I could
imagine. I had never seen such a mesh of wrinkles, or imagined that age
could stamp itself so wonderfully. That the old man was not decrepit,
however, was evident from the deft way in which he unsaddled the little
horse and threw the trappings over his shoulder.
Now my uncle turned to me again. "Welcome, my son," he said. "Consider
all here as yours entirely."
He ushered me through the doorway. I could scarce control an expression
of my astonishment as I looked about. Immediately facing the light I saw
something that caused me to start suddenly. It was the figure of a man
in flowing satins and velvets; great heavy curls fell over his
shoulders, and torrents of lace poured at his wristbands and knees. He
had on high red-heeled shoes, fronted by wide bows, and his slender
bejewelled hand rested on the top of a tall walking-stick.
It took me a second glance to perceive that it was but a portrait that
extended from the floor to ceiling, and was merely nailed, without
framing, against the wall. A rough table made of pine boards but covered
with a handsome cloth was in the centre of the room. It was heaped high
with books in embossed leather covers. Tacked about the walls were many
portraits of times long since. One especially, before which I drew a
long breath, dumfounded me (it was so like my mother). But Monsieur de
Brienne had gathered me by the elbow, as it were, and marched me around.
The portrait whose resemblance had struck me so vividly he told me was
my grandmother, and then went on, stopping before each, "Your
great-grandfather, your great-uncle, your aunt," and so forth and so
forth.
One might have thought that I was being introduced in person to all my
ancestors and past family. In fact, I found myself bowing as if it were
expected of me.
After a few minutes I had a chance to look about me. There were but four
rooms on the ground-floor of the little house and three above; and if
the furniture of Marshwood had been an odd assortment, that of Belair
was odder still. I had noticed, as I have said, that the portraits were
not in frames. They had evidently been brought from their former
residence rolled in some shape or other for convenience. Many of them
showed traces of rough handling, and were much cracked and soiled.
My uncle slept on the first floor in a great four-poster bed hung about
with heavy curtains of embroidered silk, but the rest of the
_ameublement_, was made up of clumsy wooden benches and stools, not the
workmanship of a joiner, but clearly made by unskilled hands.
The room upstairs to which I was shown contained nothing but a mattress
stuffed with cornhusks, and a beautiful painted landscape (which
comparing with some that I have since seen must have been nothing less
than a Claude, I dare say). A bench on which stood an ebony cross, and a
large brass blunderbuss that hung from a nail over the door, were all
the other things in the room.
At dinner that night we were waited upon by the great wizzened-faced
servant, and my uncle, who was taken with a sleepy, tongue-tied mood,
had attired himself in such a brilliantly faded costume that he
resembled nothing less than one of the pictures that looked down at us.
Before the meal was half finished, however (it was exceedingly well
cooked and toothsome), I received a shock.
Monsieur de Brienne suddenly and without a warning gave a little cry and
fell back in his arm-chair (a home-made affair, cut from a barrel of
some sort), and I, frightened, ran to his side.
But the old servant appeared quite used to this, and together we got my
uncle into his bed, where we rubbed and chafed his limbs until I grew so
tired I could hardly move. The next day I thought he was like to die. He
would not let me leave him, and talked so incoherently that I could make
no sense out of his maunderings at all.
Now begins such a strange existence that if it were told to me by any
one who claimed to have led it I should be most doubtful. It would make
a volume in itself, maybe, but I intend to hasten over this period, and
to get quickly into that from which has developed the present, and which
is leading up to whatever future there is before me.
To this end I shall do my best to resist any temptation to dwell at too
great length on the life I led at the lonely farm-house on Mountain
Brook.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
HARNESSING NIAGARA.
BY ELIZABETH FLINT WADE.
Two men were once boasting of their wonderful physical powers, and a
story told by one would be immediately capped by the other by the
relation of a capability far more marvellous. Suddenly one of them
pointed to a church spire which could be seen across the valley, and
said,
"Do you see that church spire yonder?"
"I do," replied the other.
"Well, I can see a fly crawling on it! Can you?"
His companion looked at it attentively a moment, and said, slowly,
"No, I can't see it, but," placing his hand behind his ear and leaning
forward, "I can hear it walk!"
Something quite as remarkable as the hearing the foot-step of a fly on a
church steeple a mile distant was accomplished a few weeks ago, when, by
means of a slender wire attached to an ordinary telephone, the sound of
the "voice of many waters," situated 500 miles away, was distinctly
heard in New York city.
The National Electric Light Association held its last annual meeting in
New York, and in the Industrial Arts Building were exhibited the latest
appliances of electricity; but of all the wonderful demonstrations of
that strange power which slips so swiftly and silently along a slender
wire, the most novel, if not the most wonderful, was the transmitting
the roar of the Falls of Niagara through the long-distance telephone by
means of the power generated by the cataract itself.