Chapter II: Introduction: BY (2)

“You will be given a chance in due time,” was the answer, given so coldly that it indicated the chairman’s position against them beyond a doubt. There were many whispered threats, but Eric and his father firmly stood their ground. The business of the board of review is to hear the complaints of those who think they have been unfairly taxed. Apparently there were to be few complaints at this meeting. An old man who spoke with the unmistakable inflection of the Irishman commended the assessment and praised the assessor. He thought every one in the township had been satisfied. He was pleased to know that this was so. As he sat down, a small, loosely jointed man, with fiery red hair, rose from his chair.

He wore a diamond shirt-stud which, if genuine, would have purchased every stitch of personal apparel in the room. He drawled pleasantly in his talk. Every one knew him. His name was William P. Ketchum, or more familiarly, Billy Ketchum. Eric’s eyes fastened hard upon him and watched him as a catamount might watch a squirrel, and with much the same motive.

Billy Ketchum was the representative of the great logging concern of Miller, Knees & Dye, which owned all the pine lands in the township, and, indeed, in nearly all the county. He complimented the assessor in his softest manner, he complimented the board down from Caxton to Severn, through Holt, and then he complimented them up again from Severn to Caxton. He mentioned New Antrim and brought in a deft reference to the shamrock and the old sod, and then—he suddenly caught the eye of Eric Halstrom burning at him above the heads of the crowd. For a single instant he seemed trying to pull himself together, and then he went on with his pleasant drawl:

“As representing the largest taxpayers in Middlebrook,” he said, “I am deeply interested in its welfare. We pay our taxes gladly, knowing that they have been honestly levied and that they will be honestly collected—”

At this Eric Halstrom came shouldering nearer, with the shoemaker close behind him.

“It’s not so!” Eric gasped, excitedly. “I tell you it’s not so. He’s the man who’s caused all the trouble.”

“I was not aware,” put in Billy Ketchum, in his smoothest voice, “that you allowed your meetings to be broken up by a brawling—”

His last words were drowned in shouts, and it was some moments before Mr. Caxton, pounding on the table, could restore peace.

Calvin Donohue whispered in the chairman’s ear, and Mr. Caxton said aloud to Eric, “We’ll hear what you have to say right away.”

The shoemaker pushed Eric forward eagerly. The boy stood up before the crowd, blushing and stammering. His big hands fumbled in his pockets and his tongue refused to stir. He had not been particularly afraid to face the assembled forces of New Antrim in the road, but he was afraid to make a speech.

“I—I wanted to—explain about the taxes,” he stammered.

“So I suppose,” was Mr. Caxton’s cool reply.

Eric pulled a piece of chalk out of his pocket and looked round.

“I—I’ve got to have something to write on,” he said, at which the New Antrimites shouted with laughter.

If it had not been for the wise old shoemaker at that moment, Eric would have been lost, laughed to defeat. Nothing will floor a speaker more quickly than the wit of an Irish audience. But the shoemaker spoke in Norwegian. Eric turned quickly; he was only a step from the door. There, outside in the sand, stood the old iron kettle. He stooped, picked it up, and set it on a bench, which the shoemaker had swung into place. It was all done so swiftly that New Antrim forgot its fun in its astonishment.

And when Eric drew a big white square on the kettle with his chalk, a voice rose hoarsely from the back of the room:

“Well, I’ll be jiggered!”

At that all the Irishmen laughed, and then sat still again, out of respect, being “jiggered.”

Eric divided the white square into many smaller squares. In one corner he drew a number of crosses; in the opposite corner he did the same. One of these groups of crosses he labeled T.

“That is the Thingvalla settlement,” he said, “and this—is New Antrim.”

Then he swept his hand between the two and glanced at Billy Ketchum. “And all this in here is the pine owned by Miller, Knees & Dye.”

The shoemaker whispered in his ear, and he turned to the chairman, and said in a sterner voice: “I want to show who is to blame for all this trouble between the settlements.”

“We are not dealing with quarrels,” was the response. “We are here to equalize taxes.”

“That’s it, that’s what I want to do. I want to show that the taxes aren’t equal.”

Then he fumbled in his pocket and drew out a much-folded paper. With this to support him, he forgot all about himself, and talked rapidly and earnestly.

He told how he had figured up all the land owned by the Scandinavians of Thingvalla, and all that owned by New Antrim, and all that owned by the lumber company.

“Thingvalla has two thousand two hundred and forty acres in farms; New Antrim has two thousand nine hundred and twenty acres,” he explained, “while the lumber company has more than twelve thousand acres of pine. Thingvalla is assessed at an average of four dollars and sixty cents an acre; New Antrim is assessed at four dollars and fifteen cents an acre—a little less, but not enough to count. But here is this lumber company assessed for only one dollar and ninety cents an acre—”

Here Billy Ketchum sprang excitedly to his feet. “But this is wild land—not a foot of it is cultivated. I tell you such a comparison is unfair—”

“Yes, but your pine is worth more to the acre than our farms with all our crops and buildings on them.”

“I tell you—”

“I know!” broke in Eric, excitedly. “I tell you, I know! Look here—”

He drew from his pocket a pack of little strips of paper, each with a section map at the top, upon which different “forties” of land were checked up in red and blue pencil.

He turned again to the table and marked out a square about midway between the settlements.

“Here’s section ten, township forty, range twelve. Last fall I was hired to go over this land with the company’s explorer, and estimate the pine. We travelled together for two months, counted all the trees, and estimated the number of feet of lumber they would make. That pine as it stands is worth from four dollars to six dollars a thousand feet, and some of the single forties have more than two hundred thousand feet of timber on them. That makes a cash value of from eight hundred dollars to twelve hundred dollars—or twenty dollars to thirty dollars an acre—and that’s more than the best improved farm in this county is worth—”

“I tell you—” roared little Billy Ketchum, wild with excitement.

“And you know it,” added Eric. “Here are these slips, which will prove just what I say. They are the company’s own valuation of its property. You can see for yourselves that our farms are assessed for more than twice as much as this pine land, although it is worth five or six times as much. And that will show you who is dodging taxes. Billy Ketchum says that he represents the biggest taxpayers in the township, and that he is well contented with the assessment. Of course he is contented, but he is wrong about representing the largest taxpayers. As the assessments now are, we represent the biggest taxpayers—and we are not contented, for we pay ten times the taxes that we should. All I ask is that the assessments be fair, and Thingvalla and New Antrim will not quarrel.”

Billy Ketchum, purple of face, tried in vain to make himself heard, but the Irishmen of New Antrim drowned him out of the discussion. The explorer’s slips were passed back and forth and referred to the diagram on the iron kettle, and for a few moments pandemonium reigned.

“What’s more,” shouted Eric, in the flush of victory, “I can prove that Billy Ketchum is at the bottom of this quarrel!”

There was silence again.

“If it hadn’t been for him, we’d have been good friends to-day. He’s kept us enemies so that we couldn’t get together and assess the pine lands as they ought to be assessed.”

Ketchum sprang to his feet.

“It’s not so!” he shouted. “We’ve been perfectly fair to every one. Why should I mix up in neighborhood quarrels?”

He poured out an impassioned speech, the drawl all gone, and the words crowding so fast that he could hardly utter them plainly. He called the Irishmen “Billy” and “Calvin” and “Pete” familiarly, and spoke of their warm friendship, but somehow they did not rouse to enthusiasm as he had expected. They were thinking.

Presently Eric made himself heard again.

“Who left that warning in the Thingvalla road last night?” he asked, facing Ketchum.

“Who? How should I know?”

At this, New Antrim leaned forward to a man with curiosity. Eric drew out the warning and told where he had found it. Then he passed it gravely to Mr. Caxton.

“Billy Ketchum left that in the road,” said Eric. “He did it to keep us away from the meeting. He tried to make us think that the New Antrim settlement was against us. He had found out that I knew the real value of those pine lands.”

Again Billy hopped up. “I dare him to prove it, Mr. Chairman! I didn’t come here to be insulted. I tell you—I dare him to prove it!”

“Well, I will,” said Eric, coolly.

At that the shoemaker stepped round behind the table and picked up a long, slender, paper-covered roll and handed it to Eric. Eric held it up, and pointed to Ketchum’s name written upon it, for it was a roll of maps. Ketchum rushed at Eric and tried to grasp his property, but Eric brushed him aside.

Then he unrolled the manila covering of the maps a few inches and held it up. One corner was torn off. He took the warning notice from Mr. Caxton’s desk and held it in the place of this torn corner. It fitted perfectly.

“My father happened to see this when he came in,” explained Eric. “What more proof do you want?”

For a moment the room was still. Then the same deep voice which had spoken once before burst out:

“I’ll be jiggered!”

Calvin Donohue turned to Billy Ketchum and said, none too pleasantly:

“You get out! We can manage our own affairs!”

Callahan suggested taking him out triumphantly in the iron kettle, but Billy disappeared with such haste they could not catch him.

Then the whole assembly took up seriously the problem of assessments, and before the day was out, the township of Middlebrook was equalized, and the taxes of the settlers, New Antrim and Thingvalla alike, were cut down to their just proportions, no more, no less, and the pine lands were assessed strictly in accordance with Eric’s estimate slips.

THE CURE OF FEAR

By Norman Duncan

Like many another snug little harbor on the northeast coast of Newfoundland, Ruddy Cove is confronted by the sea and flanked by a vast wilderness; so all the folk take their living from the sea, as their forebears have done for generations.

It takes courage and a will for work to sweeten the hard life of those parts, which otherwise would be filled with dread and an intolerable weariness; and Donald North, of Ruddy Cove, was brave enough till he was eight years old. But after that season he was so timid that he shrank from the edge of the cliffs when the breakers were beating the rocks below, and he trembled when the punt heeled to a gust.

Now he was a fisherman’s son, and in the course of things must himself be a paddle-punt fisherman; thus the mishap which gave him that great fear of the sea cast a dark shadow over him.

“Billy,” he said to young Topsail, on the unfortunate day, “leave us go sail my new fore-an’-after. I’ve rigged her out with a grand new mizzens’l.”

“Sure, b’y!” said Billy. “Where to?”

“Uncle George’s wharf-head. ’Tis a place as good as any.”

Off Uncle George’s wharf-head the water was deep—deeper than Donald could fathom at low tide—and it was cold, and covered a rocky bottom, upon which a multitude of starfish and prickly sea-eggs lay in clusters. It was green, smooth and clear, too; sight carried straight down to where the purple-shelled mussels gripped the rocks.

The tide had fallen somewhat and was still on the ebb. Donald found it a long reach from the wharf to the water. By and by, as the water ran out of the harbor, the most he could do was to touch the mast tip of the miniature ship with his fingers. Then a little gust of wind crept round the corner of the wharf, rippling the water as it came near. It caught the sails of the new fore-and-after, and the little craft fell over on another tack and shot away.

“Here, you!” Donald cried. “Come back, will you?”

He reached for the mast. His fingers touched it, but the boat escaped before they closed. He laughed, hitched nearer to the edge of the wharf, and reached again. The wind had failed; the little boat was tossing in the ripples, below and just beyond his grasp.

“I can’t cotch her!” he called to Billy Topsail, who was back near the net-horse, looking for squids.

Billy looked up, and laughed to see Donald’s awkward position—to see him hanging over the water, red-faced and straining. Donald laughed, too. At once he lost his balance and fell forward.

This was in the days before he could swim, so he floundered about in the water, beating it wildly, to bring himself to the surface. When he came up, Billy Topsail was leaning over to catch him. Donald lifted his arm. His fingers touched Billy’s, that was all—just touched them. Then he sank; and when he came up again, and again lifted his arm, there was half a foot of space between his hand and Billy’s. Some measure of self-possession returned. He took a long breath, and let himself sink. Down he went, weighted by his heavy boots.

Those moments were full of the terror of which, later, he could not rid himself. There seemed to be no end to the depth of the water in that place. But when his feet touched bottom, he was still deliberate in all that he did.

For a moment he let them rest on the rock. Then he gave himself a strong upward push. It needed but little to bring him within reach of Billy Topsail’s hand. He shot out of the water and caught that hand. Soon afterward he was safe on the wharf.

“Sure, mum, I thought I was drownded that time!” he said to his mother, that night. “When I were goin’ down the last time I thought I’d never see you again.”

“But you wasn’t drownded, b’y,” said his mother, softly.

“But I might ha’ been,” said he.

There was the rub. He was haunted by what might have happened. Soon he became a timid, shrinking lad, utterly lacking confidence in the strength of his arms and his skill with an oar and a sail; and after that came to pass, his life was hard. He was afraid to go out to the fishing-grounds, where he must go every day with his father to keep the head of the punt up to the wind, and he had a great fear of the wind and the fog and the breakers.

But he was not a coward. On the contrary, although he was circumspect in all his dealings with the sea, he never failed in his duty.

* * * * *

In Ruddy Cove all the men put out their salmon-nets when the ice breaks up and drifts away southward, for the spring run of salmon then begins. These nets are laid in the sea, at right angles to the rocks and extending out from them; they are set alongshore, it may be a mile or two, from the narrow passage to the harbor. The outer end is buoyed and anchored, and the other is lashed to an iron stake which is driven deep into some crevice of the rock.

When belated icebergs hang offshore a watch must be kept on the nets, lest they be torn away or ground to pulp by the ice.

“The wind’s haulin’ round a bit, b’y,” said Donald’s father, one day in spring, when the lad was twelve years old. “I think ’twill freshen and blow inshore afore night.”

“They’s a scattered pan of ice out there, father,” said Donald, “and three small bergs.”

“Iss, b’y, I knows,” said North. “’Tis that I’m afeared of. If the wind changes a bit more, ’twill jam the ice agin the rocks. Does you think the net is safe?”

It was quite evident that the net was in danger, but since Donald had first shown signs of fearing the sea, Job North had not compelled him to go out upon perilous undertakings. He had fallen into the habit of leaving the boy to choose his own course, believing that in time he would master himself.

“I think, zur,” said Donald, steadily, “the net should come in.”

“’Twould be wise,” said North. “Come, b’y, we’ll go fetch it.”

So they put forth in the punt. There was a fair, fresh wind, and with this filling the little brown sail, they were soon driven out from the quiet water of the harbor to the heaving sea itself. Great swells rolled in from the open and broke furiously against the coast rocks.

The punt ran alongshore for two miles keeping well away from the breakers. When at last she came to that point where Job North’s net was set, Donald furled the sail and his father took up the oars.

“’Twill be a bit hard to land,” he said.

Therein lay the danger. There is no beach along that coast. The rocks rise abruptly from the sea—here, sheer and towering; there, low and broken.

When there is a sea running, the swells roll in and break against these rocks; and when the breakers catch a punt, they are certain to smash it to splinters.

The iron stake to which Job North’s net was lashed was fixed in a low ledge, upon which some hardy shrubs had taken root. The waves were casting themselves against the rocks below, breaking with a great roar and flinging spray over the ledge.

“’Twill be a bit hard,” North said again.

But the salmon-fishers have a way of landing under such conditions. When their nets are in danger they do not hesitate. The man at the oars lets the boat drift with the breakers stern foremost toward the rocks. His mate leaps from the stern seat to the ledge. Then the other pulls the boat out of danger before the wave curls and breaks. It is the only way.

But sometimes the man in the stem miscalculates—leaps too soon, stumbles, leaps short. He falls back, and is almost inevitably drowned. Sometimes, too, the current of the wave is too strong for the man at the oars; his punt is swept in, pull as hard as he may, and he is overwhelmed with her. Donald knew all this. He had lived in dread of the time when he must first make that leap.

“The ice is comin’ in, b’y,” said North. “’Twill scrape these here rocks, certain sure. Does you think you’re strong enough to take the oars an’ let me go ashore?”

“No, zur,” said Donald.

“You never leaped afore, did you?”

“No, zur.”

“Will you try it now, b’y?” said North quietly.

“Iss, zur,” Donald said, faintly.

“Get ready, then,” said North.

With a stroke or two of the oars Job swung the stem of the boat to the rocks. He kept her hanging in this position until the water fell back and gathered in a new wave; then he lifted his oars. Donald was crouched on the stern seat, waiting for the moment to rise and spring.

The boat moved in, running on the crest of the wave which would a moment later break against the rock. Donald stood up, and fixed his eye on the ledge. He was afraid; all the strength and courage he had seemed to desert him. The punt was now almost on a level with the ledge. The wave was about to curl and fall. It was the precise moment when he must leap—that instant, too, when the punt must be pulled out of the grip of the breaker, if at all.

He felt of a sudden that he _must_ do this thing. Therefore why not do it courageously? He leaped; but this new courage had not come in time. He made the ledge, but he fell an inch short of a firm footing. So for a moment he tottered, between falling forward and falling back. Then he caught the branch of an overhanging shrub, and with this saved himself. When he turned, Job had the punt in safety; but he was breathing hard, as if the strain had been great.

“’Twas not so hard, was it, b’y?” said Job.

“No, zur,” said Donald.

Donald cast the net line loose from its mooring, and saw that it was all clear. His father let the punt sweep in again. It is much easier to leap from a solid rock than from a boat, so Donald jumped in without difficulty. Then they rowed out to the buoy and hauled the great, dripping net over the side.

It was well they went out, for before morning the ice had drifted over the place where the net had been. More than that, Donald North profited by his experience. He perceived that if perils must be encountered, they are best met with a clear head and an unflinching heart.

That night, when he thought it over, he was comforted.

* * * * *

In the gales and high seas of the summer following, and in the blinding snowstorms and bitter cold of the winter, Donald North grew in fine readiness to face peril at the call of duty. All that he had gained was put to the test in the next spring, when the floating ice, which drifts out of the north in the spring break-up, was driven by the wind against the coast.

Job North, with Alexander Bludd and Bill Stevens, went out on the ice to hunt seal, and the hunt led them ten miles offshore. In the afternoon of that day the wind gave some sign of changing to the west, and at dusk it was blowing half a gale offshore. When the wind blows offshore it sweeps all this wandering ice out to sea, and disperses the whole pack.

“Go see if your father’s comin’, b’y,” said Donald’s mother. “I’m gettin’ terrible nervous about the ice.”

Donald took his gaff—a long pole of the light, tough dogwood, two inches thick and shod with iron—and set out. It was growing dark, and the wind, rising still, was blowing in strong, cold gusts. It began to snow while he was yet on the ice of the harbor, half a mile away from the pans and clumpers which the wind of the day before had crowded against the coast.

When he came to the “standing ice,”—the stationary rim of ice which is frozen to the coast,—the wind was thickly charged with snow. What with dusk and snow, he found it hard to keep to the right way. But he was not afraid for himself; his only fear was that the wind would sweep the ice-pack out to sea before his father reached the “standing edge.” In that event, as he knew, Job North would be doomed.

Donald went out on the standing edge. Beyond lay a widening gap of water. The pack had already begun to move out.

There was no sign of Job North’s party. The lad ran up and down, hallooing as he ran; but for a time there was no answer to his call. Then it seemed to him he heard a despairing hail, sounding far to the right, whence he had come. Night had almost fallen, and the snow added to its depth; but as he ran back, Donald could still see across the gap of water to that great pan of ice, which, of all the pack, was nearest to the standing edge. He perceived that the gap had considerably widened since he had first observed it.

“Is that you, father?” he called.

“Iss, Donald!” came an answering hail from directly opposite. “Is there a small pan of ice on your side?”

Donald searched up and down the edge for a detached cake large enough for his purpose. Near at hand he came upon a thin, small pan, not more than six feet square.

“Haste, b’y!” cried his father.

“They’s one here,” he called back, “but ’tis too small! Is there none there?”

“No, b’y! Fetch that over!”

Here was a desperate need. If the lad was to meet it, he must act instantly and fearlessly. He stepped out on the pan, and pushed off with his gaff.

Using his gaff as a paddle—as these gaffs are constantly used in ferrying by the Newfoundland fishermen—and helped by the wind, he soon ferried himself to where Job North stood waiting with his companions.

“’Tis too small,” said Stevens. “’Twill not hold two.”

North looked dubiously at the pan. Alexander Bludd shook his head in despair.

“Get back while you can, b’y,” said North. “Quick! We’re driftin’ fast. The pan’s too small.”

“I think ’tis big enough for one man and me,” said Donald.

“Get aboard and try it, Alexander,” said Job.

Alexander Bludd stepped on. The pan tipped fearfully, and the water ran over it; but when the weight of the man and the boy was properly adjusted, it seemed capable of bearing them both across. They pushed off.

When Alexander moved to put his gaff in the water the pan tipped again. Donald came near losing his footing. He moved nearer the edge, and the pan came to a level. They paddled with all their strength, for the wind was blowing against them, and there was need of haste if three passages were to be made. Meanwhile the gap had grown so wide that the wind had turned the ripples into waves, which washed over the pan as high as Donald’s ankles.

But they came safe across. Bludd stepped quickly ashore, and Donald pushed off. With the wind in his favor, he was soon once more at the other side.

“Now, Bill,” said North, “your turn next.”

“I can’t do it, Job,” said Stevens. “Get aboard yourself. The lad can’t come back again. We’re driftin’ out too fast. He’s your lad, an’ you’ve the right to—”

“Iss, I can come back,” said Donald. “Come on, Bill! Quick!”

Stevens was a lighter man than Alexander Bludd, but the passage was wider, and still widening, for the pack had gathered speed.

When Stevens was safely landed, he looked back.

A vast white shadow was all that he could see. Job North’s figure had been merged with the night.

“Donald, b’y,” he said, “you got to go back for your father, but I’m fair feared you’ll never—”

“Give me a push, Bill,” said Donald.

Stevens caught the end of the gaff and pushed the lad out.

“Good-by, Donald!” he said.

When the pan touched the other side, Job North stepped aboard without a word. He was a heavy man. With his great body on the ice-cake, the problem of return was enormously increased, as Donald had foreseen.

The pan was overweighted. Time and again it nearly shook itself free of its bad load and rose to the surface.

North stood near the center, plying his gaff with difficulty, but Donald was on the extreme edge. Moreover, the distance was twice as great as it had been at the first, and the waves were running high, and it was dark.

They made way slowly, and the pan often wavered beneath them; but Donald was intent upon the thing he was doing, and he was not afraid.

Then came the time—they were but ten yards off the standing edge—when North struck his gaff too deep into the water. He lost his balance, struggled desperately to regain it, failed—and fell off. Before Donald was awake to the danger, the edge of the pan sank under him, and he, too, toppled off.

Donald had learned to swim now. When he came to the surface, his father was breast-high in the water, looking for him.

“Are you all right, Donald?” said his father.

“Iss, zur.”

“Can you reach the ice alone?”

“Iss, zur,” said Donald quietly.

Alexander Bludd and Bill Stevens helped them up on the standing edge, and they were home by the kitchen fire in half an hour.

“’Twas bravely done, b’y,” said Job.

So Donald North learned that perils feared are much more terrible than perils faced. He has a courage of the finest kind, in these days, has young Donald.

A CHRISTMAS ADVENTURE

By J. E. Chamberlin

Having lived all his fourteen years in New York City, making occasional visits to his grandfather’s house in Connecticut, Horace Mason had often sighed for an adventure, and lamented because life in the eastern part of the country is so tame and uninteresting. It had certainly never occurred to him that the chance for a pretty thrilling adventure existed in the quiet country neighborhood in which his grandfather lived.

About a week before Christmas Horace’s mother took him to his grandfather’s farm for the holidays—he had seldom been there in winter.

The weather became remarkably cold and rough, but Horace found pleasure in walking about woods and pastures in rubber boots and ulster, and noting how odd the familiar scenes looked when covered with snow and ice, instead of dressed in green.

A tree was to be set up on Christmas Eve in the old homestead; but Uncle John, on the afternoon of the twenty-third, brought in for the celebration a rather scraggly little red cedar, brown rather than green, which Horace deemed totally unfit for the dignity of a Christmas celebration.

“Why didn’t you get a fir balsam, with a nice even top to it?” Horace asked his uncle.

“Don’t grow around here.”

“But there are some over in the Big Swamp,” said Horace.

“Never noticed ’em,” said Uncle John.

Horace said nothing to this, because he was aware that he had often noticed things about the region, in the way of trees, plants and birds, which were apparently quite unobserved by the residents.

“You won’t be offended if I go after one to-morrow, will you, Uncle John?”

“Bless your heart, no!”

The next morning a blizzard raged. Horace, looking out, saw nothing but the whirling fine snow; the wind rattled all the shutters on the old house; it shook the building to its very foundations.

Horace thought it would be great fun to go out into this storm, with ulster, high rubber boots, and cap over his ears, looking for a Christmas tree in the Big Swamp. It did not occur to him that he needed to get his mother’s permission for the expedition, and it certainly did not occur to her that the boy would start out in such a storm.

Shortly after breakfast he took an ax from the wood-shed, and was gone. On the way he thought for a time that he must turn back—the storm buffeted him so terribly, and the cold, in spite of his warm coverings, was so intense. But he fought his way along, and at last came to the borders of the swamp, a flat tract of perhaps a hundred acres, lying in a hollow between hills.

In the spring this level expanse was mostly covered with water, up through which grew many low red maples, some scattered firs and cedars, and a jungle of alders. Horace had often wished that he might explore the gloomy depths of this swamp, but in midsummer mosquitoes and pools forbade. Now, with the ground and the pools frozen, he had no doubt he could pass through the swamp from end to end.

He left the wood road, and plowed through the deep snow along the margin of the swamp, looking out for firs. But he could see nothing more than a rod or two away. The storm did not diminish, and all about him the snow seemed extraordinarily deep. He sank into it up to his knees, and sometimes it was deeper still. He walked thus a long way on the edge of the swamp woodland, not caring to plunge into the swamp until he should have spied out a balsam.

At last he saw, through the cloud of snow, the tapering head of an unmistakable fir balsam. He struck into the swamp after it, parting the alder branches with the ax held with both hands before him, and sinking two or three inches deeper into the snow.

The fir proved to be too irregular for a Christmas tree. Then, through the snow, he saw another farther in the swamp. He penetrated to that, and found one side of it lacking. Beyond were other firs, and he fought his way deeper and deeper into the swamp.

He discovered now a circumstance that aided him somewhat in working his way through the jungle. The matted alders seemed to lean away in masses from the hummocks of earth upon which they grew, in such a way as to make crooked arched-over passageways, which, Horace thought, were curiously like the paths moles make under matted grass. He had often amused himself in summer digging out these mole-paths, and wondering why the crooked ways were constructed.

These avenues through the alder thickets, away down in the bottom of a swamp quite impenetrable without them, often came to an abrupt end. Then Horace, floundering on hands and knees in the deep snow, sometimes thrusting his foot down into a watery depth, had to break his way with his ax through to another opening.

He found the seclusion somewhat interesting. Down here there was no wind, and his clothing and his laborious exercise made him warm—even uncomfortably so. He lay a few minutes on his back, in a place where he could look up through an opening in the branches, and marveled at the sight of the stormy maelstrom overhead.

The whirling snow looked black. For a moment the current of it seemed flowing like a river all one way; then it appeared to turn, to cross itself, and to twist about in a circle, from which it soon disentangled itself, to resume its swift and steady march in one direction.

All at once it occurred to Horace to ask himself, Which direction was that? He thought first that he could not get lost in the swamp so long as he could see which way the snow was driving; but a chill ran over him when he reflected that he had not noticed, in his eagerness all the morning to be out in the storm, which way the wind was blowing. He tried now to think which way it had come as he walked to the swamp, but all he could recall was that the storm seemed to be coming from all directions at once.

He started up with a sudden alarm; and then, noticing the deep track he had made as he floundered to the place where he lay now, he began to laugh. To get out of the swamp, he had only to follow his tracks back.

He had come in here to find a nice young fir for a Christmas tree, and he was bound to get one. As he sat up, preparatory to rising, he saw that the snow, sifting down straight and steady from the eddying masses above the tops of the alders, had covered his coat and trousers with a deposit half an inch thick. And the minute of inaction had made him feel cold and stiff. He must be stirring.

He plowed along farther into the swamp. Coming out on the surface of one of the pools, he was rejoiced to see some balsam tops that seemed not more than a rod or two from the other edge of the pool. He struck through to them, but found here not even a mole-path; he had to cut and slash with his ax to get to the trunks of the firs.

Although the butts were five or six inches thick, the tops seemed tapering and even, and he set about cutting down one of the trees. Very soon he had the trunk cut in two, and it settled down into the snow; but fall it certainly could not, so dense was the growth all about it. He had to drag the butt through the bushes, still fighting his way with the ax, until the tree lay nearly flat on the ground; and then he found that the shape did not suit him at all.

He left this fir on the ground and went plowing after another.

Before long, traversing one of the tunnels under the alders, he came upon the very fir he wanted—a beautiful, even little tree, thick and green. He cut it down eagerly; but in another moment he found that it was as impracticable to drag that bushy-headed young tree through the alder jungle as it would have been to move a house through the same wilderness. Horace had literally to carve a way for it. He slashed and chopped and worked the tree along a rod or two, and this took him at least half an hour.

Horace sat down, quite out of breath, on the butt of the little tree to think it over. How could he get the tree out? He pondered a good while, and began to feel very cold, and then looked up to see if the storm was still raging violently. It certainly was. The space above the treetops was black with clouds of snow.

Then, chancing to look away in the direction from which he had come, he noticed that his tracks were already filled with snow! Horace jumped up, quite willing to leave his Christmas tree behind, and dragging his ax, rushed through the tunnel toward the pool that he had crossed less than an hour before. The track disappeared completely before he had reached this small open space. Although the alder branches were so thick, they held up very little of the snow. Leafless and wiry, they afforded little surface for the hard snow to cling to.

Nevertheless, Horace found his way to the pool, and there the storm struck him full in the face. It was blinding. He could no longer see the fir tops that had beckoned him on an hour ago! Every track that he had made in coming in was completely obliterated!

Perhaps if he beat round the outskirts of the pool he could find the tracks where he came in, among the bushes on the other side. So he began to walk round and round the little open space, searching in vain for the tracks, and finding nothing but those by which he had just come out of the alders where he had cut the tree; and even these tracks were rapidly being covered.

He began to feel decidedly queer, for he had not the slightest idea now which was the way out of the swamp. But he must be able to reach some place where he could see the woods; and once out of the swamp and into these, he could easily enough find his way back to the house.

So for more than an hour—it seemed longer to him, but he had left his watch at home, and had no way of telling the time—he dragged himself through the tunnels under the alders, or slashed to right and left with his ax. He struggled and grew desperate, and never once did he catch sight of anything that looked like the woods or the margin of the swamp.

The snow grew deeper and deeper, and made the arching tops of his mole-paths lower and lower, while the labor of floundering and dragging himself through them became more terrible. Once he felt a thrill of relief upon coming on a track which he knew must be his own. He supposed that it was the track by which he had come into the jungle in the morning, strangely left uncovered by some better protection than the thicket had provided elsewhere. So he started back on it quite joyfully. And he followed it until he came to the trunk of a little maple-tree which he knew he had cut down not fifteen minutes before to clear a path.

Then he knew he was winding about and had crossed his own tracks. If he followed them farther, they would simply bring him back to where he stood now.

Meanwhile he had grown very faint—he was almost too badly scared to be aware that he was hungry.

But he felt that it must be afternoon; and on such a day, and at this time of year, the darkness would fall by half past three. He felt himself hopelessly lost—and abandoned, too, for why did not the people at the house miss him, and know that, having gone after a Christmas tree, he must be lost in the Big Swamp? Why did they not send after him?

They _must_ come! But if he sat down and waited for them he would get chilled. Already, in spite of his efforts, he felt a numbness creeping over him. The sense of it filled him with horror. He hurled himself against the bushes; he threw himself on his hands and knees, and worked his way through the narrow passages. His mind went over and over various futile schemes for tracing his way.

All at once he stopped and pondered. If he was really going round in a ring when he thought he was going straight, could it be possible that he would go straight if he tried to go round in a ring? And if he found his way back to his track and made a ring, why not start out anew and deliberately add another ring to that? Enough circles made thus, placed side by side, would reach at last the edge of the swamp.

He went back on his tracks, and was pleased to find that the snow had not yet covered them so deeply but that he could find the place where he had branched off from the ring he had made.

Walking back on this a few steps, Horace went off to the left, purposely intending to make another circle and come back to this one. But after threading and pushing his way a long time, he convinced himself that he was not returning to it; no more tracks did he find. Did this mean that he was now following a straighter line, or merely that he was making a larger circle, and going entirely round the inner one?

A terrible fear of the snow and the earth came over him, and he could not bear to get down on his hands and knees to follow the tunnels under the bushes. But he was too weak to fight his way upright through the thicket. His brain reeled as he strained his eyes for the five-hundredth time for some sign of the trees of the woods.

It reeled still more when it seemed to him that he saw something large and black and shapeless through the gloom—some strange and threatening object descending upon him.

The boy was so weak and tired and dazed by the long beating about and the everlasting swirl of the storm above his head, that he could not bring his reason to bear upon the consideration of the question what this thing might be. It seemed to dash forward at him, and the formless black mass then divided as if it were the mouth of a crocodile, and then it drew back; it shook angrily from side to side; now it dashed at him again, and opened its terrible mouth.

Horace felt himself swooning in horror, and he knew that if he fainted here it would be the last of him. Oh, why had not his mother sent for him?

Then a thought of shame came over him, that he should be fainting with terror over something that could not be real.

Out of this shame grew a resolution, and suddenly the resolution mended his reason, and enabled him to see that this terrible shapeless object was a great pine-tree, whose dark branches were waving and bending and opening in the storm, seen dimly through the thick snow.

Then he was at the edge of the woods! He tore through the bushes, and came out on the clear space about the tree, and rushed up to it. He dropped the ax and put his arms round the tree. Now he had to pull himself together to save himself from swooning with joy. But in another minute he felt much better. He had no idea on which side of the swamp he was, but that did not matter. He could find his way well enough now.

After a little search, he found that he was exactly on the opposite side of the swamp from that on which he had gone in. And as he was skirting the edge of it, feeling fearfully hungry as well as weak, he saw, growing quite within his reach, a fine young fir-tree.

Then he remembered that he had dropped the ax at the foot of the pine-tree, and he had to go back and get it before he could cut down the little tree. But he did cut it down, and staggered home with it, weak but triumphant.

He found that it was three o’clock, and his mother was very much agitated, and Uncle John had gone away, by the road, to the Big Swamp about half an hour before. The boy had been so much accustomed to going off by himself that his mother had not worried until he had failed to return for the midday meal. Nor had she any idea what sort of a place the Big Swamp was.

When Uncle John got it through his somewhat slow head that Horace had in all probability actually gone there, he, too, had become alarmed, and after slow preparations, had started. Horace had missed him by coming home across the pastures.

But Uncle John was brought home in an hour by the hired man, and as Horace felt much better after a good meal and a rest, the tree that he had brought was dressed, and the Christmas festival merrily celebrated by its aid.

CHASED BY THE TRAIL

By Jack London

Walt first blinked his eyes in the light of day in a trading post on the Yukon River. Masters, his father, was one of those world missionaries who are known as “pioneers,” and who spend the years of their life in pushing outward the walls of civilization and in planting the wilderness. He had selected Alaska as his field of labor, and his wife had gone with him to that land of frost and cold.

Now, to be born to the moccasin and pack-strap is indeed a hard way of entering the world, but far harder it is to lose one’s mother while yet a child. This was Walt’s misfortune when he was fourteen years old.

He had, at different times, done deeds which few boys get the chance to do, and he had learned to take some pride in himself and to be unafraid. With most people pride goeth before a fall; but not so with Walt. His was a healthy belief in his own strength and fitness, and knowing his limitations, he was neither overweening nor presumptuous. He had learned to meet reverses with the stoicism of the Indian. Shame, to him, lay not in the failure to accomplish, but in the failure to strive. So, when he attempted to cross the Yukon between two ice-runs, and was chased by the trail, he was not cast down by his defeat.

_From the drawing by George Giguère_]

The way of it was this. After passing the winter at his father’s claim on Mazy May, he came down to an island on the Yukon and went into camp. This was late in the spring, just before the breaking of the ice on the river. It was quite warm, and the days were growing marvelously long. Only the night before, when he was talking with Chilkoot Jim, the daylight had not faded and sent him off to bed till after ten o’clock. Even Chilkoot Jim, an Indian boy who was about Walt’s own age, was surprised at the rapidity with which summer was coming on. The snow had melted from all the southern hillsides and the level surfaces of the flats and islands; everywhere could be heard the trickling of water and the song of hidden rivulets; but somehow, under its three-foot ice-sheet, the Yukon delayed to heave its great length of three thousand miles and shake off the frosty fetters which bound it.

But it was evident that the time was fast approaching when it would again run free. Great fissures were splitting the ice in all directions, while the water was beginning to flood through them and over the top. On this morning a frightful rumbling brought the two boys hurriedly from their blankets. Standing on the bank, they soon discovered the cause. The Stewart River had broken loose and reared a great ice barrier, where it entered the Yukon, barely a mile above their island. While a great deal of the Stewart ice had been thus piled up, the remainder was now flowing under the Yukon ice, pounding and thumping at the solid surface above it as it passed onward toward the sea.

“To-day um break um,” Chilkoot Jim said, nodding his head. “Sure!”

“And then maybe two days for the ice to pass by,” Walt added, “and you and I’ll be starting for Dawson. It’s only seventy miles, and if the current runs five miles an hour and we paddle three, we ought to make it inside of ten hours. What do you think?”

“Sure!” Chilkoot Jim did not know much English, and this favorite word of his was made to do duty on all occasions.

After breakfast the boys got out the Peterborough canoe from its winter cache. It was an admirable sample of the boat-builder’s skill, an imported article brought from the natural home of the canoe—Canada. It had been packed over the Chilkoot Pass, two years before, on a man’s back, and had then carried the first mail in six months into the Klondike. Walt, who happened to be in Dawson at the time, had bought it for three hundred dollars’ worth of dust which he had mined on the Mazy May.

It had been a revelation, both to him and to Chilkoot Jim, for up to its advent they had been used to no other craft than the flimsy birch-bark canoes of the Indians and the rude poling-boats of the whites. Jim, in fact, spent many a happy half-hour in silent admiration of its perfect lines.

“Um good. Sure!” Jim lifted his gaze from the dainty craft, expressing his delight in the same terms for the thousandth time. But glancing over Walt’s shoulder, he saw something on the river which startled him. “Look! See!” he cried.

A man had been racing a dog-team across the slushy surface for the shore, and had been cut off by the rising flood. As Walt whirled round to see, the ice behind the man burst into violent commotion, splitting and smashing into fragments which bobbed up and down and turned turtle like so many corks.

A gush of water followed, burying the sled and washing the dogs from their feet. Tangled in their harness and securely fastened to the heavy sled, they must drown in a few minutes unless rescued by the man. Bravely his manhood answered.

Floundering about with the drowning animals, nearly hip-deep in the icy flood, he cut and slashed with his sheath-knife at the traces. One by one the dogs struck out for shore, the first reaching safety ere the last was released. Then the master, abandoning the sled, followed them. It was a struggle in which little help could be given, and Walt and Chilkoot Jim could only, at the last, grasp his hands and drag him, half-fainting, up the bank.

First he sat down till he had recovered his breath; next he knocked the water from his ears like a boy who has just been swimming; and after that he whistled his dogs together to see whether they had all escaped. These things done, he turned his attention to the lads.