Chapter III: Part 3

I was boiling over with righteous wrath, but Cuthbert never was known to boil; he only simmered a little, but readily seconded my plan. We stopped at Kirby Corners, and there, secluded from view in the bushes, we spent the interval. Cuthbert had a watch, and by the light of the rising moon we were enabled to fix the full period for the trip. One hour and a half we allowed--an abundant limit. During this time I had completely “cooled off,” and had schooled myself to that point where I could tell a lie with a smooth face and a clear conscience. Accordingly, when the time came, we appeared at the door of the Tower. Mr. Snug was sitting in his accustomed place, and we entered and stood before him.

“Well, sir,” said he, with a polite bow of the head, dropping his paper and looking up at us.

“Mr. Snug, we have come to report,” said I, fearlessly. “We have been to Moody Barn.”

Instantly Mr. Snug straightened himself up in his chair, pushed back the gray locks from his high forehead, and, with an expression that I never shall forget, glared at me from under the frowning eyebrows.

“_You lie, sir!_” he exclaimed, in thundering tones that fairly made my hair stand on end, while Cuthbert trembled from head to foot; then followed a brief moment of consternation that seemed an age. “Now go!” continued he, as with an emphatic nod of the head he motioned toward the door. Sheepish and crest-fallen, we slunk away from the room. It is needless to say that we went this time. Through the darkness, by the aid of a lantern, we picked our way, as with theories numerous and ingenious we strove to account for that vociferous reception.

Late that night we held an experience meeting with Mr. and Mrs. Snug in the Tower, and if I remember right there were a few tears that fell, and many apologies and good resolves, and as the true state of the case dawned on Mr. Snug there was an evident twinge of regret on his kind face.

On the following morning (Saturday) there was a jolly party of youths leaving the Snuggery for a day’s boating at the lake. Dick Shin was among them; and just as he was passing out the gate, a youngster approaches him and taps him on the shoulder. “You are hereby arrested, sir, on the orders of Mr. Snug.”

With an anxious and innocent expression Dick follows his juvenile constable into the Tower, and his companions stroll along after to ascertain the cause of the detention. We pass over the brief but amusing trial, in which the prisoner, with the innocence of a little lamb, pleaded his cause.

“You _stumbled_, did you?” said Mr. Snug. “Well, you ought to know, sir, by this time that I don’t allow young men to stumble in that way in my house. These two boys have suffered through your admitted clumsiness.” Here Mr. Snug paused in a moment’s thought. “Dick Shin,” he continued, “I sent these innocent young gentlemen on two trips to Moody Barn--that makes four miles for Bigson and four miles for Harding, together making eight that they walked on your account. Now you may put down your fishing-pole, and ‘stumble’ along on the road to Judd’s Bridge, which will give you two extra miles in which to think over your sins. And to make sure”--here Mr. Snug arose and went to the closet--“you may take this hatchet along with you, and bring me back a good big chip from the end of the long bridge beam. I shall ride over that way to-morrow and see whether it fits. You understand?”

“Yes, sir,” replied the injured voice of Dick Shin. “But, Mr. Snug, can’t I put off that penance until Monday?”

“No, sir,” replied Mr. Snug, with a beaming smile and a bow of the head. “This is a lovely morning for contrite meditation. Go--_instantly_.”

Two hours later saw a demonstrative individual threatening to chop down the whole side of a bridge, while ten miles to the northward the placid surface of Waramaug rippled to the oars, and the lofty mountain-sides echoed with the shouts of a merry holiday.

* * * * *

But all things must have an end. The school-days ended, and so did this memorable vacation. A letter breaks the charm: insatiate publisher! Once more through the winding paths of the Housatonic, and I leave the loveliness of Hometown for the metropolis of brick and stone, there to resume the old routine.

AUTUMN.

I am sitting alone upon a wooded knoll at our old farm at Hometown. Above me a venerable oak holds aloft its dome of bronze-green verdure, and on either side the gnarled and knotty branches bend low, and trail their rustling leaves among the tufts of waving grass that fringe the slope around me.

It is a spot endeared to me from earliest memory, a loved retreat whose every glimpse beneath the overhanging boughs has left its impress, whose every feature of undulating field, of wooded mountain, and winding meadow-brook I have long been able to summon up at will before my closed eyes, as though a mirror of the living picture now before me. And what is this picture?

It is an enchanted vision of nature’s autumn loveliness--a vision of peace and tranquil resignation that lingers like a poem in the memory. It is a glorious October day, one of those rarest and loveliest of days when all nature seems transfigured, when a golden, misty veil swings from the heavens in a charmed haze, through which the commonest and most prosaic thing seems spiritualized and glorified. The summer’s full fruition is past and gone, the dross has been consumed; and in the lingering life, whose yielding flush now lends its sweet expression to the declining year, we see the type of perfect trust and hope that finds a fitting emblem in the dim horizon, where heaven and earth are wedded in a golden haze, where purple hills melt softly in the sky. It is a day when one may dream with open eyes, and whose day-dreams haunt the memory as sweet realities. The sky is filled with rolling, fleecy clouds, whose flat receding bases seem to float upon a transparent amber sea, from whose depths I look through into the blue air beyond.

Below me an ancient orchard skirts the borders of the knoll. Its boughs are crimson studded, and the ground beneath is strewn with the bright red fruit. They mark the minutes as they fall, running the gauntlet of the craggy twigs and bounding upon the slope beneath. Beyond the orchard stretch the low, flat meadow lands, set with alders and swamp-maples, with swaying willows, now enclosing, now revealing the graceful curves of the quiet stream as it winds in and out among the overhanging foliage. Soon it is lost beneath a wooded hill, where an old square tower and factory-bell betray the hiding-place of the glassy pond that sends its splashing water-fall across the rocks beneath the old town bridge. Looking down upon this bridge, Mount Pisgah, with its rugged cliff, is seen rising bold and stern against the sky, above a broad and bright mosaic of elms and maples, spreading from the grove of oaks near by in an unbroken expanse, to the very foot of the precipice, with here and there a sunny cupola or gable peering out among the branches, or a snowy steeple lifting high its golden cross or weather-vane glittering in the sun. The mountain-side is lit up with its autumn glow of intermingled maples, oaks, and beeches, with its changeless ledges of jutting rock, and dense, defiant pines standing like veteran bearded sentinels in perpetual vigilance.

All this comes to me in a single glimpse beneath the branches. But there are others, where undulating meadows, with their flowing lines of walls and fences, lead the eye through soft gradations to distant purple hills, through thrifty farms, with barns and barracks and rowen fields with browsing cattle, and ruddy buckwheat patches, where the flocks of village pigeons congregate among the cradle marks, in quest of scattered kernels shaken from the sheaves.

There is a tiny lake near by that nestles among the hill-side farms, where sloping pastures and fields of yellow, rustling corn glide almost to the water’s edge. So sensitive and sympathetic is this little sheet of water that I christened it one day Chameleon Lake, for it wears a different expression for every phase of season or freak of weather, and always dwells in harmony with the landscape which encloses it. In cloudy days it frowns as cold as steel. In days of sunshine it is as bright and blue as the sky itself, or shimmers like a shield of burnished silver. And now it is a flood of autumn gold, carrying from shore to shore a maze of ripples laden with opaline reflections of intermingled glints from cloud and sky, and of the gold and ruby colored foliage along its banks.

But this knoll and all these farms are not mine alone. They are such as I should hope might lurk in the memory of almost any one who looks back to early days among New England hills.

This old oak-tree, whose furrowed bark I lean upon, was a hardy patriarch when first I sought its shade. Its added years have scarcely changed a feature or modified a line in its old-time noble expression. As I look up, its great open arms spread out against the sky exactly as they did when I lolled beneath their shelter and watched the drifting clouds of twenty years ago sail through them in the blue above. Even the jagged furrows in the bark I seem to recognize. Here, too, is that same spreading scale of greenish lichen that fain will grow upon the trunk, as if I had not often picked it all to pieces in my early idling. The same round oak-gall rests on the bed of leaves in the hollow between the rocks near by, as though it had forgotten how a dozen years ago I cracked its polished shell and sent its spongy contents to the winds.

And here comes that veritable ant creeping through the grass at my elbow--now on the root, now on the bark, exploring every crack and crevice in his hurried search. I wonder if the little fellow will ever find what he has been looking for so long. And here’s a friend of his coming down. They stop and wag their antennæ in a moment’s conversation. I wonder what they said. I always _did_ wonder when I watched them do the same thing on this very spot a score of years ago. The soft waving grass whispers about my ears as it did then, and I hear the low trumpet of the nuthatch as he creeps about in the tree o’erhead. Easily may one forget the lapse of time in such a place as this, where every leaf, and twig, and blade of grass conspire to breed forgetfulness of later years. Hark! that shrill tattoo again! The tree-toad. Yes, that same recluse in his mysterious hiding-place, seeking by his tantalizing trill to renew that game of hide-and-seek we left off so long ago--in those eager days when every stick and stone upon the knoll was overturned in my zeal to find his whereabouts. There he goes again! louder and more shrill. But now I realize the effect of time, for I only sit and listen to his oft-repeated call. Formerly that sound was like a galvanic thrill that electrified every nerve and muscle in my physiology. No, I’ll not hunt for you again, my musical young friend; besides, the odds would be against you now, for I know more about tree-toads than I once did, and you wouldn’t see me hunting on the ground as in the olden days. Besides, you’re getting bold; there is no need of hunting, for in that last toot you gave yourself away. Even now my eyes are fixed upon the hole in yonder hollow limb, and I see your tiny form clinging to the rotten wood within the opening. What _would_ I not have given _once_ to have thought of that soggy hole!

Near by a spreading yew monopolizes a rocky bit of ground, its foliage creeping above a silvery gray bed of branching moss, whose pillowy tufts spread almost to my feet. This was my fairy forest of tiny trees. Here I found the fairies’ cups and torches, and even now I can see their scarlet tips scattered here and there among the gray; and fragile little parasols, too--it were an insult, indeed, to designate such dainty things as these by the name of toadstools. Beyond this bed of moss a scrubby growth of whortleberry takes possession of the ground. The bushes are now bare of fruit, but ruddy with their autumn blushes, tingeing the surface of the knoll with a delicate coral pink. This thicket extends far down upon the slope, even encroaching upon the wheel-ruts of the lane, and across again, until cut short by an ancient tumbling line of lichen-covered stones, a landmark which has long since yielded up its claim as a barrier of protection to the old orchard it encloses, now only a moss-grown pile, with every chink and crevice a nestling-place of some searching tendril, fern, or clambering vine. For rods and rods it creeps along beneath the laden apple-trees, skirting the borders of this old farm lane, and finally hides away among a clump of cedars a few hundred feet away.

Of all the picturesque in nature, what is there, after all, that so wins one’s deeper sympathies as the ever-changing pictures of a rustic lane or roadside, with its weather-beaten walls and fences, and their rambling growth of weeds and creeping vines? How sweet the sense of near companionship awakened by these charming way-side pastorals that accompany you in your saunterings, and reach out to touch you as you pass--a sense of friendly fellowship that breathes a silent greeting in the most deserted paths or loneliest of by-ways!

Show me a ruined wall or a rutted zigzag fence, and I will show you a string of pearls, or rather, if in these later months, a fringe of gems, for the autumn fence is set in wreaths of rubies and glowing sapphires. Follow its rambling course, now through the field, now skirting swampy fallows, now by rustic lanes and cornfields and over rocky pastures, and you will follow a lead that will take you through the rarest bits of nature’s autumn landscape.

Even in this lane, at the foot of the knoll below us, see the brilliant luxuriance of clustered bitter-sweet draping the side of that clump of cedars! It is only an indication of the beauty that envelops this lane for a full half mile beyond. Every angle of its rude rail fence encloses a lovely pastoral, each a surprise and a contrast to its neighbor.

Right here before us, what a beginning! Hold up your hands on either side, and shut out the surroundings. Such is the glimpse I always long to paint from nature, and yet how almost maddening is the result! Rather would I drink it all in and fix its every feature in my mind, and paint it from its memory, when the presence of the living thing before me shall not mock my efforts and put to shame the crude creations of oil and pigment.

See how the cool gray rails are relieved against that rich dark background of dense olive juniper, how they hide among the prickly foliage! Look at that low-hanging branch which so exquisitely conceals the lowest rail as it emerges from its other side, and spreads out among the creeping briers that wreathe the ground with their shining leaves of crimson and deep bronze! Could any art more daringly concentrate a rhapsody of color than nature has here done in bringing up that gorgeous spray of scarlet sumach, whose fern-like pinnate leaves are so richly massed against that background of dark evergreens? And even in that single branch see the wondrous gradation of color, from purest green to purplish olive, and olive melting into crimson, and then to scarlet, and through orange into yellow, and all sustaining in its midst the clustered cone of berries of rich maroon! Verily, it were almost an affront to sit down before such a shrine and attempt to match it in material pigment. A passing sketch, perhaps, that shall serve to aid the memory in the retirement of the studio, but a careful copy, _never!_ until we can have a tenfold lease of life, and paint with sunbeams. But there is more still in this tantalizing ideal, for a luxuriant wild grape-vine, that shuts in the fence near by, sends toward us an adventurous branch that climbs the upright rail, and festoons itself from fence to tree, and hangs its luminous canopy over the crest of the yielding juniper. Even from where we stand we can see the pendant clusters of tiny grapes clearly shadowed against the translucent golden screen. Add to all this the charm of life and motion, with trembling leaves and branches bending in the breeze, with here and there a flitting shadow playing across the half hidden rails, and where can you find another such picture, its counterpart in beauty--where? perhaps its very neighbor, for all roadside pictures are “hung upon the line,” they are all by the same great Master, and it is often difficult to choose.

Here we have a contrast. A dappled rock has taken possession of this little corner, or the corner has been built around it, if you choose--a “gray” rock we would call it in common parlance, but it is a gray composed of a checkered multitude of tints, colors which upon a rock, it would seem, were hardly worth an appreciative glance; but only let them be exhibited upon a fold of Lyons silk or Jouvin kid glove, and dignify them by the compliments of “ashes of roses,” or “London smoke,” and how eagerly they are sought, how exquisite they become. I speak in moderation when I say that I have often sat and counted as many as thirty just such tints upon the surface of a small “gray” rock, each _distinct_, and all so _refined_ and exquisite in shade. This rounded bowlder is no exception; and with its tufted spots of jetty moss, and outcroppings of glistening quartz, its rounded, spreading blots of greenish lichens, and mottled groundwork, it may well defy the craft of the most skilled palette. And when these grays are contrasted with tender yellow greens and browns of fading ferns, such as fringe the borders of the one before me, with a background of scarlet whortleberry bushes and deep-green sprays of blackberry clustering about the loosening bark of a crumbling stump, with its shelving growth of fungus hiding among its brown debris, one may well pause and wonder which to choose, or where a single touch is wanting in the perfect unity and harmony of either.

Another jutting corner, and we confront a swaying mass of gold and purple--that magnificent regal combination of graceful golden-rod and asters that glorifies our autumn from September to the falling leaf. There are a number of species of golden-rod, varying as much in their intensity of color as in their time of bloom. The earliest appear in the heart of summer, in wood and meadow; while others, larger and more stately, lift up in their midst their plumy, undeveloped tips, and wait until their predecessors are old and gray ere they roll out their wreaths of gold. For weeks the roads and by-ways have been lit up with their brilliant glow, that parting sunset gleam that lingers with the closing year. This splendid cluster is full six feet in height, and towers above the highest rail, or rather where the rail ought to be, for it is lost from sight beneath a dense fret-work of prickly smilax--and such brilliant, polished leaves! how they glitter in the sun! almost as though wet with dew.

And to think how those prickly canes, denuded of their leaves, are sold upon our city thoroughfares as “Spanish rose-trees” to the unsuspecting passer-by! Those guileless venders, too! I remember one that sought to enrich my store of botanical knowledge by telling me they “bloomed in winter!” and had a flower as “big as a saucer,” and “kinder like a holy hawk!!!?” I looked him straight in the eye, but he was the picture of innocence. “Can you tell me the botanical name,” I asked. “Oh yes,” he glibly replied, “I think they call it the _Rubus epistaxis_.” Eheu! but this was _too much_, and he saw it, and with a wink of his foxy eye and a shrewd grin, he whispered along the palm of his hand, “Got to git a livin’ _somehow_, boss; now _don’t_ give me away.” “Here you are, lady, Spanish roses, lady, fresh from the steamer.” I never see a thicket of green-brier without thinking of its “winter blossom;” and, by-the-way, did you ever notice a thicket of this shrub, what a defiant, arbitrary tyrant it is--shutting out the very life-breath and light of day from its encumbered victims, monopolizing everything within its power, and even reaching out for more with searching tips in mid-air, and a couple of greedy tendrils at every leaf? And did you ever notice along the road that delicious whiff that comes to you every now and then, that pungent breath of the sweet-fern? We get it now; the air is laden with it from the dark-green beds across the road. The sweet-fern, as I remember it, was the simpler’s panacea and the small boy’s joy--an aromatic shrub, whose inhaled fumes, together with its corn-silk rival, seem destined by an all-wise Providence as a preparatory tonic to the more ambitious fumigation of after-years. Many a time have I sat upon this bank and tried to imagine in my domestic product the racy flavor of the famed Havana!

Between old Aunt Huldy, with her mania for the simples, and the demand of the village boys, I wonder there is any of it left. But Aunt Huldy has long since died; all her “yarbs,” and “yarrer tea,” and “paowerful gud stimmilants” could not give her the lease of eternal earthly life which she said lurked in the “everlastin’ flaowers;” and after she had reached the age of one hundred and three, her tansy decoctions and boneset potions ceased in their efficacy--the feeble pulse grew feebler, and one winter’s eve, sitting in her rocker by her kettle and andirons, she fell into a deep sleep, from which she never awoke. Aunt Huldy was as strange and eccentric a character as one rarely meets in the walks of life. Some said she was crazy; others said she was a witch; but whatever she may have been, this aged dame was picturesque with her bent figure, her long white hair and scarlet hood. And who shall describe the ancient withered face that looked out from the shadow of that hood, the small gray eyes and heavy white eyebrows, the toothless jaws and receding lips, and massive chin that made its appalling ascent across the face? But I cannot describe that face: think of how a witch should look, and old Huldy’s features will rise up before you. She knew every herb that grew, but her great stand-by was “sweet-fern:” she smoked it, she chewed it, she drank it, and even wore a little bag of it around her neck, “to charm away the rheumatiz.”

Since her time, however, the sweet-fern has had a chance to recuperate, and, as far as we can see along the road, the banks are covered with it; and there’s a clump of teazles in its midst! I wonder if that old carding-mill still stands. You also, perhaps, will wonder what relation can exist between the two, that should make my thoughts jump half a mile at the sight of a roadside weed. But that old woollen-mill offered a premium on the extermination of one weed at least, for all the teasels of the neighborhood were required to keep its cloth brushes in thorough repair; but I fear its buzzing wheels are silent, for in olden times no such splendid clump as this could have remained to go to seed upon the highway. This old mill lies right upon our path, only a short walk down the road beyond. It nestles among a bower of willows in a picturesque ravine known as the “Devil’s Hollow”--an umbrageous, rocky glen, by far too cool and comfortable a place to justify the name it bears.

Following the road, we now descend into a long, low stretch, hedged in between two tall banks of alder, overtopped with interwoven tangles of clematis, with its cloudy autumn clusters--that graceful vine which, like the dandelion, is even more beautiful in death than in the fulness of its bloom. And so, indeed, are nearly all those plants whose final state is thus endowed by nature with feathery wings to lift them from the earth.

When has this swamp milk-weed by the roadside looked so fair as now, with its bursting pods and silky seeds--those little waifs thrown out upon the world with every passing breeze. How tenderly they seem to cling to the little cosy home where they have been so snugly cradled and protected; and see how they sail away, two or three together, loth to part, until some rude gust shall separate them forever.

And here’s the great spiny thistle, too, that armed highwayman with florid face and pompon in his cap. But he has had his day, and now we see him old and seedy; his spears are broken, and his silvery gray hairs are floating everywhere and glistening in the sun.

Now we leave the alders, and another roadside mosaic of rich color opens up before us, where the old half-wall fence, with its overtopping rails, is luminous with a crimson glow of ampelopsis. It covers all the stones for yards and yards; it swings from every jutting rail; it clambers up the tree trunks and envelops them in fire, and hangs its waving fringe from all the branches.

Above the wall, like an encampment of thatched wigwams, the corn-shocks lift their heads; a prospecting colony encamped among a field rich with outcroppings of gold--a wealth of great round nuggets all in sight. And were we to tear away that thatch, we might see where they have stowed away their accumulated grains of wealth. We hear their rustling whispers: “Hush! hush!” they seem to say to each other as we approach; but their wariness is gratuitous, for a tell-tale vine is creeping away upon the fence near-by, and has stopped to rest its golden burden on the summit of the wall, half hiding among the scarlet creepers.

Here yellow brakes abound, spreading their broad, triangular fronds on every side amid the brilliant berries of wild-rose, and pink leaves of blueberry. And here are thickets of black-alder, where every twig is studded with scarlet beads, that cling so close that even winter’s bluster cannot shake them off. No matter where we look in these October days, nature is burning itself away in a blaze of color that dazzles the eyes; and now we approach its very crowning touch.

I wish every one might see this gorgeous combination of oak and maples; see it and go no farther, for a further search were fruitless in finding its equal. It is the pride of the entire community; towns-people and visitors ride from miles around to see its final flush--a magnificent climax in the way of concentration of vivid color, in which nature seems to have grouped with distinct purpose and design, producing a piece of natural landscape-gardening such as no art could have approached. The background is a massive precipice of rock towering to the height of eighty feet, itself a perfect medley of tone.

The group is composed of eight maples, each a distinct contrast of pure color. In their midst a superb large oak presents one massive breadth of deep purple green; and spreading up one side like a flood of yellow light, a rock-maple lifts its splendid array of foliage. These two trees concentrate the effect, and the others are arranged around them like colors on a palette: one is a flaming scarlet, another beside it is always a rich green, even to the falling leaf--with only a single branch, that every year, even as early as August, persists in turning to a peculiar salmon pink; another, a red-maple, is so deep a red as to appear almost maroon, and its branches intermingle with the pale-pink verdure of another growing by its side. There is one that combines every intermediate color, from deep crimson to the palest saffron; while its neighbor flutters in the wind with every leaf a brilliant butterfly of pure green, with spots and splashes of deep carmine.

This whole assemblage of color fairly blazes in the landscape, and even from the top of Mount Pisgah, a half a mile away, it looks like a glowing coal dropped down upon a bed of smouldering ashes in the valley; for the surrounding meadow is thick-set with great gray rocks and crimson viburnum, as though it had caught fire from the flaming trees. What other country can boast the glory of a tree which, taken all in all, can hold its own beside our lovely maple? From the time when first it hangs its silken tassels to the awakening spring breeze until its autumn fire has burned away its leaves, it presents an everchanging phase that lends a distinct expression to American landscape. It affords us grateful shade in summer; and with its trickling bounty in the spring we can all unite in a hearty toast, “A health to the glorious maple.”

But there is another tree which should not be forgotten, and if once seen in a New England autumn landscape there is little danger of its escaping from the memory. Of course, I refer to the pepperidge, or tupelo, that nondescript among trees; for who ever saw two pepperidge-trees alike? They seem to scorn a reputation for symmetry, or even the idea of establishing among themselves the recognition of a type of character. Novelty or grotesqueness is their only aim, and they hit the bull’s-eye every time. There is one I have in mind that has always been a perfect curiosity. Its height is fully seventy feet, and its crown is as flat as though cut off with a mammoth pair of pruning-shears. The central trunk runs straight up to the summit, from which it squirms off into six or seven snake-like branches, that dip downward and writhe among the other limbs, all falling in the same direction. One gets the impression, on looking at it, that originally it might have been a respectable-looking tree, but that in some rude storm in its early days it had been struck by lightning, torn up by the roots, and afterward had taken root at the top. The tupelo, whenever seen, is always one of our most picturesque trees, and a never-failing source of surprise, twisting and turning into some unheard-of shape, and seeming always to say, “There! beat that if you can!” Near the coast it assumes the form of a crazy Italian pine, with spindling trunk and massive head of foliage. Sometimes it divides in the middle, like an hour-glass, and again mimics a fir-tree in caricature; but he who would keep track of the acrobatic capers of the tupelo would have his hands full. Whatever its shape, however, its brilliant, glossy crimson foliage forms one of the most striking features of our October landscape.

But I believe we were on the road to that carding-mill. We had almost forgotten it; and now, as we look ahead, we see the old lumber-shed that marks the upper ledge of Devil’s Hollow. From this old shed a trout-brook plunges through a series of rocky terraces, now winding among prostrate moss-grown trunks, now gurgling through the bare roots of great white birches, or spreading in a swift, glassy sheet as it pours across some broad shelving rock, and plunges from its edge in a filmy water-fall. It roars pent up in narrow cañons, and out again it swirls in a smooth basin worn in the solid rock. At almost every rod or two along its precipitous course there is a mill somewhere hid among the trees--queer, quaint little mills, some built up on high stone walls, others fed with trickling flumes which span from rock to rock, supporting on every beam a rounded cushion of velvety green moss, and hanging a fringe of ferns from almost every crevice. And one there is in ruins, fallen from its lofty perch, and piled in chaos in the stream. There are saw-mills, and shook-mills, and carding-mills, seven altogether in this one descent of about three hundred feet. The water enters the ravine as pure as crystal; but in its wild booming through race-ways, dams, and water-wheels, it gradually assumes a rich sienna hue from the _débris_ of sawdust everywhere along its course. The interior of the ravine is musical with the trebles of the falling water and the accompaniment of the rumbling mills. Tiny rainbows gleam beneath the water-falls, and swarms of glistening bubbles and little islands of saffron-colored foam float away upon the dark-brown eddies.

At last we reach the carding-mill, which is the lowest of them all--in every sense, it seems, for it is as I had feared: the flume is but a pile of brown and mouldy timbers in the bed of the stream, and the old box-wheel has rotted and fallen from its spokes, almost obscured beneath a rank growth of weeds. No sound of buzzing teasels, no rumbling of the water-wheel, no happy carder singing at his work: _nothing_--but a couple of boys, kneeling in a corner, sucking cider through a straw. Yes, the old mill has fallen from grace; but what else might one expect from a mill in “Devil’s Hollow,” where all its neighbors are engaged in making hogshead staves, and the very water has turned to ruddy wine?

The carding-machine is gone, and has given place to a rustic cider-press. A temporary undershot-wheel has been rigged beneath the floor, and a rude trough, patched up with sods, conducts the water from the stream.

It is the same old cider-press we all remember, and with the same accessories. Here are casks of all sizes waiting to be filled, and the piles of party-colored apples spilled upon the floor from the farmers’ wagons that every now and then back up to the open door. There is the same rustic harangue on leading agricultural topics, among which we hear a variety of opinions about that imaginary “line storm.”

“Seems to gi’n the slip this year,” remarks one old long-limbed settler with a slope-roofed straw hat, “’n’ I don’t know zactly what to _make_ on’t; but I ain’t so sartin nuther”--he now takes a wise observation of a small patch of blue sky through the trees overhead. “I cal’late we’ll git a leetle tetch on’t yit.”

“Likenuff, likenuff,” responds another, with a squeaky voice; “the ar’s gittin’ ruther dampish, ’n’ my woman hez got the rheumatiz ag’in. She kin alluz tell when we’re goin’ to git a spell o’ weather; it’s sure to fetch her all along her spine. But I lay _most_ store on them ar pesky tree-tuds. I heern um singin’ like all possessed ez I wuz comin’ through the woods yender; ’n’ it’s a sartin sign o’ rain when them ar critters gits agoin’, you kin depend on’t.”

And now we hear all about the pumpkin and the corn crop, the potato yield, and the regular list of other subjects so dear to the rural heart.

In a corner by themselves we see the pile of “vinegar nubbins”--a tanned and soft variety of apple--in all stages of variegation. The “hopper” receives the shovelfuls of fruit for the crushing “smasher,” which again supplies the straw-laid press. We hear the creaking turn of the lever screw, the yielding of the timbers, and a fresh burst of the trickling beverage flowing from the surrounding trough into the great wooden tub below. Here, too, is the swarm of eager urchins, with heads together, like a troop of flies around a grain of sugar. Ah! what unalloyed bliss is reflected from their countenances as they absorb the amber nectar through the intermediate straw--that golden link that I have missed for many a year!

Outside upon the logs the refuse “pumice-cheese” has brought together all the yellow-jackets and late butterflies of the neighborhood--butterflies so tipsy that you can pick them up between your fingers. I never went so far with the yellow-jackets, for they have a hotter temper, and don’t like to be fooled with. Black hornets, too, are here, and they find a feast spread at their very door; for overhead, upon the beech, they have hung their paper house, like a gray balloon caught among the branches.

Now we hear a chatter and a scratching on the roof, where a pair of lively squirrels hold a game of tag; and ascending the rickety stairs into the loft above, we find the floor strewn with hickory-nuts, with neat round holes cut through on either side, and numberless shaggy butternuts, too, with daylight let into their recesses also. The boards and beams are covered with cobweb trimmings, laden with wool-dust; and as we approach a pile of rusty iron near the murky window, we hear a scraping of sharp claws, the dropping of a nut between the rafters, and now a wild scampering on the roof overhead. Before we have fairly recovered from our surprise, we notice a sudden darkening of a hole in the shingles close by, where, still and motionless, two inquisitive black eyes look down at us. We have intruded upon private property, for this is the home of the squirrels. No one can dispute their title, for these little squatters have occupied the premises and held the fort for nearly twenty years.

They, too, have found forage close at hand, from the nut-grove upon the hill-side yonder--a yellow bank of foliage of clustered hickories and beeches, and rounded domes of chestnuts--a grove whose every rock and bush is my old-time friend; where there are “sermons in stones,” and every tree speaks volumes.

Here is the low thicket of weeds and hazel-bushes where we always flushed that flock of quail, or started up some lively white-tailed hare that jumped away among the quivering brakes and golden-rod. Here are soft beds of rich green moss, studded with scarlet berries of winter-green and partridge-vine. Now we come upon a creeping mat of princess-pine, and here among the leaves we had almost stepped upon a spreading chestnut-burr--that same burr I have so often seen before, that same fuzzy, open palm holding out its tempting bait to lure the eagerness of youth; an eagerness which always invested a neighbor’s chestnuts with a peculiar charm too tempting to resist; “take one,” it seems to say, as it did in years ago; and its hedge of thorny prickles truly typifies the dangers which surrounded such an undertaking, for these trees belong to Deacon Turney, and he prizes them as though their yellow autumn leaves were so much gold. He guards them with an eagle’s eye, and he gathers all their harvest; no single nut is ever known to sprout in Turney’s woods if _he_ knows it.

This pointed reminder among the leaves fairly pricks my conscience as I recall the many October escapades in which it formed the chief attraction. I remember one occasion in particular, for it is indelibly impressed on my memory, and it was on this very spot. A party of adventurous lads, myself among the number, were out for a glorious holiday. Each had his canvas bag across his shoulder, and we stole along the stone wall yonder, and entered the woods beneath that group of chestnuts. Two of us acted as outposts on picket guard; and another, young Teddy Shoopegg by name, the best climber in the village, did the shaking. He prided himself on being able to “shin up any tree in the caounty,” and after he had once got up among those chestnut-trees we stood from under, and in a very short space of time no single burr was left among their branches. There were five busy pairs of hands beneath those trees, I can tell you, for each one of us fully realized the necessity of making the most of his time, not knowing how soon the warning cry from our outposts might put us all to headlong flight; for the alarm, “Turney’s coming!” was enough to lift the hair of any boy in town.

But luck seemed to favor us on that day; we “cleaned out” six big chestnut-trees, and then turned our attention to the hickories. There was a splendid tall shagbark close by, with branches fairly loaded with the white nuts in their open shucks. They were all ready to drop, and when the shaking once commenced, the nuts came down like a shower of hail, bounding from the rocks, rattling among the dry leaves, and keeping up a clatter all around. We scrambled on all fours, and gathered them by quarts and quarts. There was no need of poking over the leaves for them, the ground was covered with them in plain sight. While busily engaged, we noticed an ominous lull among the branches overhead.

“’Sst! ’sst!” whispered Shoopegg up above; “I see old Turney on his white horse daown the road yender.”

“Coming this way?” also in a whisper, from below.

“I dunno yit, but I jest guess you’d better be gittin’ reddy to leg it, fer he’s hitchin’ his old nag ’t the side o’ the road. _Yis_, sir, I bleeve he’s a-cummin’. Shoopegg, you’d better be gittin’ aout o’ this,” and he commenced to drop hap-hazard from his lofty perch. In a moment, however, he seemed to change his mind, and paused, once more upon the watch. “Say, fellers,” he again broke in, as we were preparing for a retreat, “he’s gone off to’rd the cedars; he ain’t cummin’ this way at _all_.” So he again ascended into the tree-top, and finished his shaking in peace, and we our picking also. There was still another tree, with elegant large nuts, that we had all concluded to “finish up on.” It would not do to leave it. They were the largest and thinnest-shelled nuts in town, and there were over a bushel in sight on the branch tips. Shoopegg was up among them in two minutes, and they were showered down in torrents as before. And what splendid, perfect nuts they were! We bagged them with eager hands, picked the ground all clean, and, with jolly chuckles at our luck, were just about thinking of starting for home with our well-rounded sacks, when a change came over the spirit of our dreams. There was a suspicious noise in the shrubbery near by, and in a moment more we heard our doom.

“Jest yeu look _ee_ah, yeu boys!” exclaimed a high-pitched voice from the neighboring shrubbery, accompanied by the form of Deacon Turney, approaching at a brisk pace, hardly thirty feet away. “Don’t yeu think yeu’ve got jest abaout _enuff_ o’ them nuts?”

Of course a wild panic ensued, in which we made for the bags and dear life; but Turney was prepared and ready for the emergency, and, raising a huge old shot-gun, he levelled it, and yelled, “Don’t any on ye stir ner move, or by Christopher I’ll blow the heels clean off’n the hull _pile_ on ye. I’d _shoot_ ye quicker’n _lightni’_.”

And we believed him, for his aim was true, and his whole expression was not that of a man who was trifling. I never shall forget the uncomfortable sensation that I experienced as I looked into the muzzle of that double-barrelled shot-gun, and saw both hammers fully raised too. And I can clearly see now the squint and the glaring eye that glanced along those barrels. There was a wonderfully persuasive power lurking in those horizontal tubes; so I at once hastened to inform the deacon that we were “not going to run.”

“Wa’al,” he drawled, “it looked a leetle thet _way_, I thort, a spell _ago_;” and he still kept us in the field of his weapon, till at length I exclaimed, in desperation.

“For gracious sake! point that gun in some other _way_, will you?”

“Wa’al, _no_! I’m not fer pintin’ it ennywhar else jest _yit_--not until you’ve sot them ar _bags_ daown agin, jist whar ye _got_ ’em, every _one_ on ye.” The bags were speedily replaced, and he slowly lowered his gun.

“Wa’al, naow,” he continued, as he came up in our midst, “this is putty bizniss, _ain’t_ it? Bin havin’ a putty likely sort o’ time teu, I sh’d jedge from the looks o’ these ’ere _bags_. One--two--_six_ on ’em; an’ I vaow they must be nigh on teu a half bushel in every pleggy _one_ on ’em. Wa’al, naow”--with his peculiar drawl--“look eeah: you’re a putty ondustrious lot o’ _thieves_, I’m _blest_ if ye ain’t.” But the deacon did all the talking, for his manœuvres were such as to render us speechless. “Putty likely place teu cum a-nuttin’, ain’t it?” Pause. “Putty nice mess o’ shell-barks ye got thar, I tell ye naow.--Quite a sight o’ _chestnuts_ in _yourn_, ain’t they?”

There was only one spoken side to this dialogue, but the pauses were eloquent on both sides, and we boys kept up a deal of tall thinking as we watched the deacon alternate his glib remarks by the gradual removal of the bags to the foot of a neighboring tree. This done, he seated himself upon a rock beside them.

“_Thar!_” he exclaimed, removing his tall hat and wiping his white-fringed forehead with a red bandanna handkerchief. “I’m much _obleeged_. I’ve been a-watchin’ on ye gittin’ these ’ere nuts the hull arternoon. I thort ez haow yeu might like to know on’t.” And then, as though a happy thought had struck him, what should he do but deliberately spit on his hands and grasp his gun. “Look _ee_ah”--a pause, in which he cocked both barrels--“yeu boys wuz paowerful anxyis teu git _away_ from _ee_ah a spell ago. Naow yeu kin _git_ ez lively ez yeu pleze; your chores is done fer to-day.” And bang! went one of the gun-barrels directly over our heads.

We _got_, and when once out of gun-range we paid the deacon a wealth of those rare compliments for both eye and ear that always swell the boys’ vocabulary.

“All right,” he yelled back in answer, as he transported the bags across the field. “Cum agin next year--cum agin. Alluz welcome! alluz welcome!”

As I have already said, the deacon gathered all his nut harvest--sometimes by a very novel method.

Who does not remember some such episode of the old jolly days? If it was not a Deacon Turney, it was some one else. I am sure his counterpart exists in every country town, and in the memory of every boyhood experience.

We remember, perhaps, the sweet hazel-nuts which we gathered in their brown husks and spread to dry upon the garret floor, and how those mischievous mice avenged the deacon’s wrongs as they invaded our treasured store, and transported it to the nooks and kinks among the rafters and beneath the floor. Then there were those rambles after “fox-grapes,” and the “gunning” tramps, when we stole with cautious step upon the unseen “Bob White” whistling for us among the brush near by, when the startling _whirr_ of the ruffed grouse from almost under our feet sent an electric thrill up our backs and along our arms, even touching off the powder in our barrels unawares. There were box-traps in the woods, and snares among the copses, and lots of other mischief of which we would not care to tell.

There was another little three-cornered nut that fell among the beech-trees where we held our October picnics, and the autumn beech forest I remember as a lovely woodland parlor. We sit upon a painted rock, in the shadow of a drooping hemlock, perhaps. Beyond, we look across among the smooth gray tree-trunks, where sidelong shadows softly stripe the matted leaves, with here and there a shining shaft of sunbeam lighting up the carpet, or a glinting spray of sun-tipped leaves that flicker above their shadows. The woods are filled with a luminous glow such as no summer forest ever knew--an all-pervading light which seems almost independent of the sunshine, as though living in the leaf itself. It floods the mottled bark, and transforms its ashy tints to softened autumn grays. It searches out the shadows of the evergreens, and throws its mellow glow upon the rocks among their recesses. It permeates the whole interior as though it were transfigured through a golden-colored glass.

A quick, sharp whistle surprises you from the herbage near by, and a striped chickaree skips across the leaves and dives into his burrow at the foot of an old stump not far away. There are various other sounds that come to you if you sit quietly in a beech wood. Now it is a tiny footfall, a pat-pat upon the leaves, and a little brown bird is seen, hopping in and out among the undergrowth, scratching and pecking like a little hen among the leaf mould. Then comes a galloping sound, and you know there is a scampering hare somewhere about. And at last a peeping frog gains confidence, and starts up a trill somewhere behind you. He is soon joined by another, and still others, until a chorus of the shrill voices echoes among the trees, some from the around, some from the limbs overhead; and if you only sit perfectly still, you may hear a venturesome voice, perhaps, at your very elbow; for these little peepers are capricious songsters, and only sing before a quiet, attentive audience. Now a silly green katydid flits by, like an animated gauzy leaf; and quick as thought a kingbird darts out from the leaves overhead, hovers in mid-air for a second, and is away again; and luckless katydid wishes she _hadn’t_.

See the variety of beeches, too! Here are slender, dappled stems, clean and trim; and others, great giants with fluted trunks and gnarled roots, and with eccentric limbs reaching out in most fantastic angles; but all spreading above in a graceful, airy screen of intermingled tracery and sunlight, where slender branches bend and sway beneath the agile squirrel as he leaps from tree to tree, and the leaves clatter with the falling nuts. Behind us a soft fluttering of many wings betrays a slender mountain-ash, with its drooping clusters of berries, growing in an open, rocky space near by--where a flock of cedar birds assemble among the fruit, or scatter away amid the evergreens at your slightest movement. Turning your head in another direction, you can follow the course of an old farm-road that leads out upon a bright clearing, thick-set with light-green, feathery ferns. A few rods beyond, it makes a sudden downward turn through a dense grove of lofty pines and hemlocks. Here are “dim aisles” where dwell perpetual twilight--where no ray of sun has entered for well-nigh a century--only, perhaps, as it is brought down in a glistening sunbeam within the crystal bead of balsam upon some dropping cone. There is a solemn stillness in these stately halls, in which your very footfall is proscribed and hushed in the depths of the brown and silent carpet. There are old, venerable gray-beards here, and fallen monarchs lying prostrate among the rugged rocks; and here and there among the brown debris a fungus lifts its head, to tell of other generations that lie crumbling beneath the mould. Now among the lofty columns, like a magnificent illuminated window in some vast cathedral, comes a glimpse of the outer world with its autumn colors; and here the vaulted aisle soon leads us. We find a dazzling contrast; for in the sombre shadows of the pine-forest one readily forgets the month, or even the season. Here we approach a rippling trout-stream, and as we stop to rest upon its tottering bridge we look across a long brook meadow, where the asters screen the ground in mid-air in a purple sea--one of the rarest spectacles of autumn. But in this swamp lot there are presented a continual series of just such rich displays from spring-time till the winter.