Chapter III: A Glimpse of Farm Service

The farmhouse had been built in the days of Ratke's prosperity. It was gothic in design and had three principal rooms--the sitting-room, the dining-room and the parlor.

On the northern side, and extending to the kitchen at the eastern extremity of the dwelling, was a tier of bedrooms and closets. Not satisfied with the half-dozen sleeping apartments in the row alluded to and several more in the chamber, the major had provided for the construction, on the side facing the street, of two more bedrooms which, jutting inwardly, formed a narrow hall between the sitting-room and the parlor.

The main divisions of the house were inappropriately named, or, at least, not named according to the uses to which they were put. The dining-room served much as a sitting-room, the sitting-room on account of its superior warmth was used in cold weather as a dining-room, and the parlor, which contained the organ and the library in four bookcases, was almost daily used by the family. It is true that this subversion of common usage was much censured by Mrs. Grippin, but there were, as we have seen, on this estate and in this household, certain evils which even she was powerless to remedy.

There were seated around the extension table thirteen persons, the resident family of four, six hired men, two prospective ones, and the agent, who was called Panicky, and whom the major had easily persuaded to stay to dinner.

"Major," said a fellow whose name was Brown, "how is it when you're shooting birds on the wing? Do you want to aim straight at 'em or a little ahead?"

"A little ahead, to be sure," replied Ratke, and, laying down his knife and fork, he gave a discourse of five minutes on the principles of absolute and relative motion.

"There, Wingscheut," exclaimed Brown, "the reason you didn't hit the quail was because you aimed straight at her."

"Tat ain't te reason at all," answered a tall German with dark hair and a fringe of whiskers running underneath his chin. "I aim't chust as you tolt me an' tat's te reason I titn't hit 'im."

"Will," asked the major, "did you take good care of Taylor?"

"I fed him and curried him off," replied Archer, the man whom Ratke addressed.

"Yes," said the German, in the loud tone he had previously used, "unt, if it hatn't a peen for me, you vootn't a hat no Taylor."

"How is that, Wingscheut?" queried the major.

"Vell, you see," began Wingscheut, "las' night I vass sleepin' in te clup-house. Unt, chust apout tvelf o'clock, I heert te parn toor co skveak. Vell, I know provitin' te toor co skveak, somepoty pe tere. Vell, I sit up. Unt I co out py te tool-house. Ven te toor stop, I stop. Vell, ven te toor co skveak, I co on. Pimepy te toor go skveak acin, unt two tam horse-tiefs, tey come out vith Taylor. Unt tey vass pic fellers, piccern ole Chon Tafis.

"Vell, ten I come out from te tool-house. Unt I catched poth of 'em hiplock, von on von hip unt von on te otter. Unt I trowet 'em. Unt I pountet 'em till tey hat te sorest faces. Provitin' you hatn't a peen asleep so sount as you couldn't vake, you voot a heert 'em yell."

"Why didn't you hold 'em when you had 'em?" asked Jake Sheppard, the oldest and most trusty of the hands.

"Vell, you see," answered Wingscheut, "Taylor he gits avay. Unt he runs up te roat. Unt I titn't vant to lose a horse vat vass vorth a tousan' tollars for two tam horsetiefs vat vass goot for notting at all. So I coes on after Taylor. Provitin' you ton't pelieve me, I can show you vere tey lay."

"Wingscheut give 'em sore faces, for I saw him," whispered a solemn-looking young man from the lower end of the table.

Every one present listened to this confirmation of Wingscheut's doubtful veracity.

"Vell, you see," continued Daggett, the voiceless young man, mocking the German's peculiar accent, "Vingscheut unt me, ve kilt te tam horse-tiefs, unt ve took teir scalps. Unt four more tam horse-tiefs, tey come up to git Taylor. Unt Vingscheut catched two of 'em hiplock. Unt I catched two of 'em hiplock. Unt ve kilt 'em. Unt ve took teir scalps. Unt ve vent on to te svamp. Unt ve fount sixteen more tam horse-tiefs. Unt ve kilt 'em. Unt ve took teir scalps. Unt, provitin' you ton't pelieve it, ve can show you te scalps."

When Wingscheut had mastered his disgust and an immense mouthful of beefsteak, he said:

"Provitin' I vass such a liar as tat, I voot crawl off in a holler loc unt tie."

"How do you get along with the one-man saw, Jake?" queried the major.

"Back aches like time," answered Sheppard, drawing his hand along his spine.

"That is strange," observed Ratke. "The one-man saw is certainly a great saving of labor. It allows you, instead of stooping over, or dropping your hands by your side, to push toward the log straight from the shoulder. The motory power is in the muscles of the shoulder and upper arm; and this power, the hand and the saw, should be as nearly as possible in a straight line. The common cross-cut, as it is worked, with the hands on a level with the hips, is a lever of the third class, power in the center, fulcrum at one end and weight at the other. In this lever there is a gain of motion and a corresponding loss of power. But, as to the loss of motion in the one-man saw, that can be easily made up by a swaying movement of the body."

At the conclusion of the meal Wrengell and Montcalm hired out for the summer, Wrengell getting twenty dollars per month, and Montcalm, out of consideration for Ratke's friendship for his father, receiving twenty-five dollars. Montcalm stayed in the house, conversing with the major, while the rest of the hired men, together with the vender of medicine, or Panicky, went to the club-house.

This building was a two-story upright, whose dimensions were thirty-two by thirty-six feet. On the ground floor were three bedrooms and one larger apartment, which contained a clock with an alarm, a table, a stove, common chairs, rocking-chairs and all the furniture necessary for the comfortable accommodation of a family.

Panicky surmised that Archer was bilious, that Sheppard had lumbago, and assured Daggett that all he needed for the complete restoration of his voice was a bottle of Great American Panacea. By a series of harangues on individual complaints, followed by an eloquent exordium, he sold a bottle of the panacea to the hands, of whom all, except Wingscheut, contributed equally to the purchase-money.

"Well, boys," said Jake Sheppard, "I'm a-goin' to work."

"Oh! there ain't no hurry," declared Archer; "the major he wouldn't say anything if we didn't go for an hour yet."

"Maybe he wouldn't say nothin'," replied Jake, "but right's right, an' loafin' roun' when you're paid to work ain't right."

The major sat watching the departure of his nieces, who were about to drive his trotter, Taylor, to Break O'Day; The girls were passing a small house not far from the swamp.

The preceding spring Philetus Takum had come to Ratke with a piteous appeal for help. He had been turned out of doors by his landlord, and left without shelter for himself and his family.

The major, against the remonstrances of his household erected a tenement house near the swamp and put it into the possession of Takum. But Philetus proved a disappointment to his benefactor. Not only did he neglect to pay the promised rent, but he circulated some annoying untruths and many more annoying truths concerning Ratke and his mortgaged estate.

The most valuable of Takum's personal property was a mongrel shepherd dog which bore the name of Lina.

Next in value were two of her full-grown progeny, which Philetus kept, for he had made many a solemn declaration that he would not sell a pup for less than one dollar, and he had been offered for the largest one only eighty-five cents. Mrs. Grippin declared that the dogs ate eggs, and that their master had an equal fondness for stolen chickens.

Ratke was sitting, as was his wont in meditation, with his left leg thrown over the arm of his rocking-chair, his elbow on his knee and his head resting on his hand. Left to himself, he plunged deeply into his philosophical studies. His mind was clear, his absorption complete. The principles of nature's mighty phenomena, enlarging in scope and simplifying in form, passed one by one before his vision with clearness and majesty; and, as he thought, more than ever showed the harmony of natural and mental philosophy.

He became conscious that something was drawing him away from his delightful reverie. Some external circumstance was tugging at his attention, which still clung tenaciously to the theories which he was formulating. Reluctantly he dropped his hand and threw his left leg from the arm of the rocking-chair, when he heard the voice of Mrs. Grippin calling from the chamber, "James, James."

"Yes," returned the major, throwing his leg back to its favorite position.

"James, James," cried Mrs. Grippin, more loudly than before.

"All right," responded Ratke.

"But it isn't all right," said the housekeeper. "Come up here, and you'll see that it's all wrong."

"I suppose I must go," thought the major. "Maria is a continuous force, which, though exercising a slight amount of influence per unit of time, in the lapse of concrete time brings to bear a stress, the total amount of which is enormous."

When he entered the chamber, Mrs. Grippin was standing on a box by a north window, from which she was endeavoring to obtain a view of the woods where the men were at work.

"I can't see many of them," she said. "There is the new man you like so well with the one-man saw. See how he has to pull! It looks as though it would break his back. He's got that swaying motion of the body you tell so much about. I guess nobody would pull that thing through a log without swaying the body."

"If that is all you want of me," remarked the major, "I will go down."

"I think some of the men are shirking," said Mrs. Grippin. "The woods are in the way so I can't see them. You'd better go down where they are."

"I do not like to appear suspicious of them," the major remonstrated. "Does it not please you to know that others have confidence in you?"

"Yes, confidence in everybody," answered Mrs. Grippin; "that's the trouble with you. Men consult their own interest and they don't work hard for other folks unless they have to."

"Why," ejaculated Ratke, "you are advocating the principles of 'Elementa Philosophica de Cive.'"

"What do I care what you call it?" returned Mrs. Grippin. "I tell you, you can't trust folks in that way without watching them."

"Bolder yet!" exclaimed the major. "Now you are branching off on the Leviathan. I never thought you would be a Hobbist, Maria."

"Do I have any more hobbies than you do," furiously retorted the housekeeper; "you, with your nonsense that nobody else can stand? I'd talk about hobbies."

"No, no, Maria," mildly expostulated the major. "A Hobbist means--"

"I don't care what it means," interrupted Mrs. Grippin. "James Ratke, if you don't go down there I won't get a morsel of dinner for your men. Now, you can understand. You can do just as you like."

"I can go for the sake of peace," said the major, with a sigh.

When he started from the house, he was looking over the tops of some tamaracks at the right of his destination, which he meant to reach by means of the path leading to the woods. Now it is unlikely that anything in the tamaracks interested him, if at that time he was conscious of their existence. Whatever the cause of his abstraction, it had the effect of taking him far out of his intended course. Nor was he aware of the deviation until he was confronted by the thick growth of bushes, which, to enter, he had to part with his hands. Suspending temporarily his meditations, he came upon a path which ran transversely through the shrubs, and which crossed at right angles the one which he had intended to follow.

He proceeded along this path and stopped near a broken tree whose upper portion, lying on the ground, was hidden from him by the standing stub. Glancing around and satisfying himself that he was not observed he said slowly and emphatically,

"Proposition I.: The will of man has the power of independent decision.

"Proposition II.: All external forces acting upon the will are persuasive and not coercive." Here the major paused and spatted his hands with great emphasis.

"Proposition III.: Whenever in--"

There was a rustling in the bushes followed by a succession of very rapid and heavy blows from an ax. Going around the stub, the major came upon Archer, who was working at a rate which, had it been maintained, would soon have cut down the patch of grubs so circumscribing to the observations of Mrs. Grippin. It is impossible to tell which one of the two was most embarrassed, the hired man who had been sleeping on the fallen tree or his employer who had been caught in what would generally be considered a very foolish soliloquy.

Each felt that he had drawn the unpleasant attention of his companion, and each consequently gave no heed to the weakness of the other.

The major was the first to speak.

"You are knocking them down at a great rate. Will."

"Yes," answered Archer, springing toward a sapling, which he felled at a few tremendous strokes.

"I would not heat myself too much," protested the major. "There are other days coming."

"Got to earn our money," returned Archer, rushing at another sapling.

"It seems to me," remarked the major, "that one making such violent exertions as you are would be encumbered by two coats and a jacket."

"Ain't had time to take 'em off yet," explained Archer, as he threw aside his superfluous clothing. "Whew, but it's warm!"

"I think I will go over where the boys are," observed the major. "I only hear one saw there."

Archer, clearing his throat, struck up a fragment of a song, whose pitch to the end was not more than a note higher or lower than the one with which it commenced.

"There was a man in days of old,
He had a daughter as I've been told;
And this daughter, she had a lover
Who was not liked much by her mother."

At the conclusion of the doggerel strain, the woods were ringing with life. A saw vibrated more energetically than the one which Ratke had first heard, and several axes were swung so rapidly as to produce almost a clatter.

"Right at it," remarked the major, as he neared the spot where Brown and Daggett were sawing. "I see that there are a great many ergs of work in my men."

Daggett's hard sawing, by which he had sought to lull the major's suspicion, resulted in a fit of violent coughing, and he was obliged to seat himself on a log and wait until the paroxysm had passed.

"That is a bad cough, boy," said the major, "and you are making it worse by getting heated."

"Oh, I'm all right," returned Daggett.

"No, you are in a bad condition," contradicted the major. "I insist that you take a more moderate gait. I do not wish you to exhaust your energy before the commencement of the summer's work. I must go up where Trace is now."

"Hanged if I ain't ashamed," commented Daggett, when the major had gone out of hearing. "Here we've been playing off all we could, and the first thing we know he comes around and tells us to go slower. I half believe that, if I was well, I'd pitch in and work decent for the old fellow."

"Oh, no, you wouldn't," returned Brown. "You wouldn't like that any better than you do now. We didn't have much warning, did we? Will got asleep. He must of. An' it wasn't the square thing to do."

"No, it wasn't," affirmed Daggett, forgetting his resolution to be industrious. "We'll get even with him for that. Go up and tell him the captain demands his immediate presence."

Archer, whose craving for sleep had been nearly satisfied by indulgence, was not loth to leave his position as sentinel. Such a summons was usually the forerunner of sport, and he believed, from the direct manner in which Daggett had sent for him, that, for the coming amusement, he was not to pay the reckoning.

But the discontented looks of the men gave token that they were not in the best of humor, while by their frequent glances toward him he was warned that he was the object of their dissatisfaction.

"Well, boys," he called out, "has the old man gone? I done my duty as a sentinel, didn't I? I warned you."

"Yes, you did warn us," said Daggett in a whisper which was almost vocalization, "after the boss had got here. That was a great way to do."

"I didn't see him," explained Archer, "until he got right onto me. And the first thing I knew I heard him getting off some of his philosophy trash."

"You vass sleepin'," asserted Wingscheut. "Tat vass a mean trick. Provitin' I cootn't vake up a little vile, I voot co to pet."

"Take him to the guard-house," ordered Daggett.

Archer was seized, and, despite his struggles and threats, thrown to the ground, when the men began to cover him with brush. Whenever he attempted to rise, he was pushed back; and, as soon as he threw aside a bush, it was succeeded by another. So, realizing the uselessness of further resistance, he lay still and was at once completely hidden by a quantity of limbs.

"Helloa, boys, here comes the major!" exclaimed Daggett. "Lay low, Will, till he goes. It won't be long."

"That rate would pile all the brush there is here in a short time," remarked the major, as he stood among the men. "It is a good plan, too, to complete the work as you go. Here are some limbs which have lain so long that they have been grown over by sod. Pile on those old poles while you are about it."

Thereupon, to Daggett's delight and Archer's dismay, the major brought a log larger than any of the hands could carry, and placed it upon the brush-heap, which was already large.

"Have any of you a match?" inquired the major. "I believe I will fire this heap."

The men looked at each other in alarm.

"No, we haven't," answered Daggett.

"Why, I have one," said Ratke. "Now let us get some of these dry leaves together and we may make it burn."

"It will not go," remarked the major, as the flame flickered and died out. "If I had another match, I could start it. Now, boy, come up and get something for that cough."

"Oh, I don't want anything for that," returned Daggett. "That will be all right when it comes warm weather."

"We must attend to it now," urged Ratke.

"No, I guess I won't go," said Daggett, feeling very uneasy at this manifestation of his employer's kindness.

"What, mutiny?" exclaimed the major, putting his arm around the young man and dragging him along. "You see that you have no option in the matter."

Daggett noticed that the major made no remark about Archer's disappearance. He had a suspicion that the philosopher, even when he was showing him such marks of kindness, understood the faithlessness of him and his fellows. Looking back as he was passing through the shrubs, he saw a head of wavy black hair emerging from a brush-heap and a fist shaken viciously toward him, but he kept the discovery to himself.