Part 3

He heard the yells and shouts of the Indians outside and above as they roamed about everywhere, searching for the "fire-water," which they loved so well. They had indeed been doubly infuriated because the commandant had ordered the destruction of the whiskey and the powder. They fancied that some might have escaped, and were hunting for it like hounds on the scent. Harold could now and then construe an Indian word, and he thought of the barrels so near at hand. He had felt a broken candle in one of the boxes where he hid, and this he now lit from his flint and steel. As he groped his way, peering at the cellar bottom, he perceived several black trails converging toward the heap of casks. He blew out his light with a gasp, and a breath of ice stirred the roots of his hair and chilled his marrow as the truth flashed on him. Some of the soldiers had left full powder-barrels and a train to destroy the careless savages, if possible, should they go down with lighted candle or torch. Harold crawled back to his ambush, and tugged with all his might at the little timber gate; but the bolts were rusty with damp and disuse.

While he struggled he heard the outcries of the Indians nearer and nearer, and their thick tongues showed they had already found whiskey, a beginning which promised the ransacking of every rat-hole in the fort for more. With the strength of despair he struggled with the obstinate bolts, and, just as they began to creak a little in their rusty sockets, a dozen savages, doubly intoxicated with liquor and with the slaughter of the inhabitants of the fort, tumbled down the stone stairs at the other end of the cellar. With candles flaming in their hands, with faces and bodies hideously painted, and with eyes glowing in the flare of the lights like live coals, they looked like nothing less than the demons which Harold remembered to have seen in some of the Bible picture-books of that period.

The boy's only thought now was to force the gate, escape into the tunnel, and close the mouth again behind him. That was his one chance of escape. The maddened red-skins, their eyes glittering in the weird light, waving their glittering candles from which smoulders of burnt wick were dropping, chanting some sort of exultant song, ran about the cellar as if they were the figures of a monstrous nightmare. Their eyes at last fell on the pyramid of barrels, and they darted at the expected treasure-trove. Harold had never ceased tugging frantically at the gate, and when the bolts jangled back and he slid the barrier, it seemed his dangerous companions must have heard. Luckily the blissful thought of "fire-water" made them blind and deaf to all else. He passed the portal, softly closed it again, and sped with whirling senses up the dark passage. But the strain had been too great, and he collapsed in a dead faint, with a crash in his ears as if the earth had been shattered to its core.

* * * * *

When Harold recovered his senses a disk of light in front marked the outlet to sunshine, but in the rear the tunnel was choked, and his legs were tangled fast in a mass of earth and débris. He extricated himself and made his way to the entrance, sore but sound of bone. One of the block-houses had been blown to fragments, and the other partly tumbled into ruins, while about fifty of the savages had been slain or terribly maimed. Groups of Indians stood in the distance sobered and awe-stricken. When he crossed to the Kinzie mansion after dark, he found the captives there under guard, but the captors altered into a merciful mood. Black Partridge had improved the occasion to impress on their minds that the awful catastrophe was a divine punishment for their treachery.

STRIKING "PAY DIRT."

BY ANNIE HAMILTON DONNELL.

"No beans? Why, Thanny!" The rich creamy spoonful dripped back into the tureen. Millia Thacher's tired face put on astonishment as a garment. "No _beans_?"

"Well, that's what I said, wasn't it?" her brother snapped across at her. "I don't know's the world has got any call to stand still because I don't want 'em, either. I don't want any dinner."

"Why, Thanny!"

"Well, I don't. That's all there is to it."

"But, Thanny, I've got rhubarb pie. I made it a purpose, and I guess it's real good. You ain't going to slight that, Thanny?"

"Milly Thacher, for pity's sake do stop Thannying me! Anybody'd think I was ten years old instead of twenty. There! I'm sorry. I'll be a good boy now."

He reached his long arm across the table, and touched Millia's face with big, contrite fingers very gently. The sudden remorse softened the morose lines in his face, and lifted for a minute the cloud upon it. It was a strong enough, comely enough young face, its chin rounded out boldly, and the clean-cut mouth above was not at all weak. But Nathan Thacher's face was listless and discouraged, and altogether unhappy.

He pushed away his chair, rasping it over the uneven floor as if the discord accorded with his mood.

"It's no use, Milly; I'm going to give it up. It's no _use_."

"Oh no, Thanny--no, no! You're only tired out and down-spirited this morning, that's all. You don't feel like yourself. The idea of us _giving it up_!" She laughed nervously, with a little shrill, hysterical note in her voice. "Why, we've got to keep right on, Thanny Thacher, just as we promised father we'd do. We've got to keep the old farm running--"

"Till it runs down hill into the poorhouse. It's more'n two-thirds down now."

"I don't care! Then we've got to pull it up again. We promised father."

Millia's defiance had the thrill and surrender of a sob in it, and suddenly she sank down into a heap on the kitchen floor and cried in smothered dreary abandon.

The door being open, Nathan looked out, across Millia's huddled shoulders, at the bare stretch of rough uncultivated acres. The scant unthrifty grass divided the honors with rocks and underbrush. There was nothing beautiful nor "sightly" nor encouraging in the prospect, and Nathan Thacher's mouth puckered into a low whistle of contempt. He whistled still louder, and shuffled his feet about to drown the low monotony of Millia's sobs, filling the little room drearily.

"Hush up, Milly; there's a good girl," he said at last, prodding her arm gently. "What's the good of wasting all that salt water? Salt may go up."

He made a sorry attempt at laughing, and strode past her out of the door. The girl sat on the floor, rocking back and forth with even swaying motion for a long while. The cheerless world outside oppressed her through the net-work of her fingers and chilled her heart. Pitifully distinct she saw the same barren stretch of fields that Nathan had seen--the same sparse, worn-out vegetation. It looked as forlorn, as discouraging, as it had to him. But Millia Thacher's troubled soul held stubbornly to its one anchor of unswerving loyalty to the poor old farm, and of faith to their promise--Thanny's and hers--to poor old "father."

Give it up? Never! Oh, no, not. They must stand by the farm. Thanny must work--she must work.

She got up hastily, and peered out across the fields in the eager hope of seeing Thanny with old Bess ploughing. Surely he would plough to-day; yes, there he was, but walking idly, moodily, about, with stooped-over shoulders, like an old man.

Poor Thanny! He hadn't wanted, anyway, to be a farmer, and after his brave little beginning out in the world--after father died--it had been hard to come home and settle down on the old "run-out" farm among the stumps and rocks and the meagre timothy heads.

Poor Thanny! Millia watched him with loving eyes. He looked so dismal in the dismal setting of stubbly fields, backgrounded by the dull sky, that she had no heart to upbraid him. Poor Millia!

The little kitchen wore its late-afternoon spick-and-span dress, and Millia sat in it, humming a little brave tune over her mending-box, when Nathan came hurrying, springing in. There was rare buoyancy in his step, and Millia wailed, astonished.

"Why, Thanny!" she cried, as soon as he got within hearing range.

Nathan Thacher's tanned face radiated excitement and triumph from every feature. His eyes were shining. Into Millia's hands he thrust a bit of jagged rock.

"Look at that, Milly--_gold_!"

"My goodness me, Thanny!"

"_Gold_, I tell you--g-o-l-d! Milly Thacher, there's gold on this farm--do you hear? It's under your face and eyes, in that rock. It's in all the rocks."

He laughed shrilly, executing shuffling dance steps around her chair.

"Thanny Thacher, you ain't in your right mind! You scare me."

"Milly Thacher, it's the live truth! Dan Merriweather thought so as long ago as he worked for father, but father didn't believe it, nor I either. I didn't think there could be any such good luck. But there is--there is!" The boy's face was radiant. "Dan's an old Forty-niner, and he ought to know. I didn't believe him, though--not till this afternoon, when I found that rock. Seeing's believing, and can't you see? Can't you see all those little gold grains, Milly Thacher, if you've got half an eye? They're _there_. All we've got to do is to get 'em out. I guess I know gold when I see it!"

Millia held the little rock in limp, unbelieving fingers. She saw the tiny sparkles in it; but--_gold!_ Visions of wealth and luxury and rest hurried through her brain, of Thanny looking happy and satisfied again, and of herself--plain, tired little Milly--wearing becoming clothes, and letting her roughened fingers grow smooth and white. Perhaps she would wear soft kid gloves; people did who had gold. Perhaps Thanny would too; Thanny's hands were slender and shapely. Luxuries read of and dreamed of appealed suddenly to her dazzled vision as possible, probable realities; people with gold on their farms had such things, of course.

Nathan broke in upon her dreaming:

"They found gold on a farm over in Bentley. Over Easton way, too. I guess it's all over these parts. Anyhow, it's on the Thacher farm!" He laughed jubilantly. Then he pocketed the little sparkling pebble, and said, briskly: "Don't you wait supper for me, Milly. I'm going down to the Forks to see Amasa Flagg. He can advise me some about working the vein. Amasa knows everything."

Working the vein! How mysteriously important it sounded to Millia as she sat there, confused and awed! Could that be Thanny--_Thanny!_--swinging along with great springy strides, his shoulders unstooped, and importance and energy trailing in a little wake behind him?

Would Amasa Flagg advise him to dig a mine--Millia's thoughts were couched in familiar words--and wear a candle in his hat, and burrow round in the earth in unsafe places? My goodness me!--would there be real miners round the place, perhaps wanting to board right in the family?

In the midst of things Millia fell asleep.

Nathan came home at night rather sobered, but still confident. There was gold there; how much nobody could prophesy till it could be looked into systematically, and that took money. There was no money on the Thacher place, and Nathan scorned any suggestion of borrowing.

So the money must be earned. When that was done, he would sink a shaft and find his gold. When that was done--the money earned! Well, it looked a little appalling just at first; but Nathan Thacher had his grandfather Thacher's courage, once aroused, and he set his teeth for the struggle.

"Crops," Amasa Flagg had said, succinctly.

Nathan had thought of his barren waste fields, and gasped inwardly. Well, crops, then, if crops it must be; but what?

"Corn," the oracle had declared. "There's money in sweet-corn, now 't them factories are runnin full tilt over to Easton. They want all they can git. You won't make no mistake if you plant your fields full of it, an' I calc'late you'll find that the nighest road to your gold-mine. I calc'late so. But you'll have to hustle considerable, an' make your hoe fly real stiddy. You can't make a corn crop payin' without you do everything thorough. You've got to hustle, my boy, early 'n' late!"

And how Nathan Thacher hustled those long hot summer days! How, from daylight to sunsetting, he delved and toiled in his fields, working miracles in them with slow stubborn courage! He lost courage once or twice, but Millia never knew it. She watched his eager determined face steadily, and always read quiet resolution in it, and, as the weeks multiplied to months, a new expression of self-respect that delighted her soul.

"Thanny's losing his old down-spirited looks," she would muse happily over her work. "He holds up his head straight and kind of proud now; but, my goodness me, how he is working!"

And Millia, too, worked. She hurried through with her house duties, and went out to the fields with Nathan to do whatever lighter work he would let her do out there. Side by side the brother and sister toiled, seeing the waste places bloom under their eyes, and gradually the rough acres smooth out into beautiful thrifty corn rows.

Millia walked between them in cool evenings, and let her skirts flip the tiny stalks gently. They grew tall, and she could nudge them in friendly greeting as she passed down and up between them.

Of course all this success came only out of the hardest possible wrestling with nature. There went before it weeks of mighty work with drag and pick, wresting out rocks and uprooting stumps and weeds. Only Grandfather Thacher's grim persistence, descended like a mantle on Nathan's aching young shoulders, carried those hard days. The neighbors helped at odd times, and Nathan repaid them in rainy intervals. So at last the two big fields were smooth and ready for the ploughing, that left them seamed with long ridges wavering gently away into perspective. How good the upturned earth had smelled to Millia! She stood outside and drew in long satisfying whiffs of it.

It was so good to see the old place thriving at last--to smell it and watch it and be proud of it. Millia forgot all about the gold-mine some days.

Nathan never did. He repaired the fences to keep intruders out. He drew out loads upon loads of dressing for his land from stores of hitherto wasted fertility beneath the old barns. He nurtured and tended and worked unstintingly, but always with the glitter of the gold grains in his rocks before his eyes. Nathan never forgot. He studied books on mining in the evening until his tired head nodded over the blurring letters. Once, when the corn was all planted, and there was a little interval of rest, he went to a city, a day's trip distant, and had his little samples of glistening rock assayed. It was when he came home from that journey that Millia thought she could detect a little look of disappointment in his face, and perhaps a faint crestfallen note in his voice. But she forgot about it soon, because they were so busy weeding the corn rows.

One evening, when the green stalks towered more than elbow-high around them, Thanny and Milly walked through the rows, talking to each other across them. They both looked happy. Milly's small thin face had rounded out a little, and turned to a golden brown. She walked with little quick jubilant steps. The old farm looked so beautiful to-night! What would father say?

Suddenly she began to laugh. In front of her dangled her scarecrow--the work of her own hands--mincing and bowing to her ludicrously. A slight breeze stirred his hempen hair and swayed his coat skirts. It was Thanny's coat and Thanny's hat and Thanny's trousers and boots. He was an unwieldy, unflattering travesty of Thanny, with, oddly enough, his stooped shoulders, and old air of depression and gloom. Had Thanny bequeathed them to Milly's scarecrow, for once and all?

For to-night Thanny's shoulders were not stooped, and his whole expression was cheery and manly.

He stopped too and laughed.

"My goodness me! Thanny, ain't he a beauty?" giggled Milly, delightedly.

"Milly," Thanny said, "that's me. I've been watching myself this long time--stooped over and hangdog and down in the mouth. I've been seeing myself the way you and other folks used to see me, and--well, it was kind of a bitter pill, but I took it, and I guess it's done me good. I guess so."

The summer days swelled the sweet-corn kernels and brought the ears to their perfection. It was almost time to cut them and carry them away to the factory, when one day Nathan found Millia among the rows, and stopped to put both his big hands on both her shoulders with unusual gentleness. Looking up into his face, she thought how serenely happy it seemed.

"Milly," he said, laughing a little in quiet triumph, "they offered me eighty dollars an acre for this corn to-day."

"Why, Thanny!"

"Yes'm; and I took it." He walked away, down one row and up another. Then he faced her again. "Milly, we've struck pay dirt a'ready. We've found the gold," he said.

"Why, Thanny! Why, I thought--" And then Milly caught his sudden sweeping gesture, comprehending all the golden stalks of corn, row after row, and understood. "Why, yes!" she cried; "so it is, Thanny Thacher--it's our gold!"

"Yes," Thanny said, thoughtfully, as they walked home together, and there was quiet contentment in his voice. "Yes, I guess it's all right. The assayer said there wasn't enough gold in the rocks to make it worth while, but there's gold in the old sod, Milly. We've struck 'pay dirt.'"

A FAIR RETORT.

It is quite as hard as ever to get ahead of Pat. This was proved the other day during a trial in an English court-room, an Irish witness being examined as to his knowledge of a shooting affair.

"Did you see the shot fired?" the magistrate asked, when Pat had been sworn.

"No, sorr. I only heard it," was the evasive reply.

"That evidence is not satisfactory," replied the magistrate, sternly, "Stand down!"

The witness proceeded to leave the box, and directly his back was turned he laughed derisively. The magistrate, indignant at the contempt of court, called him back, and asked him how he dared to laugh in court.

"Did ye see me laugh, your Honor?" queried the offender.

"No, sir; but I heard you," was the irate reply.

"That evidence is not satisfactory," said Pat, quietly, but with a twinkle in his eye.

And this time everybody laughed, even the magistrate.

DANIEL WEBSTER'S SCHOOL DAYS.

BY ALBERT LEE.

The house where Daniel Webster boarded while he was a scholar at the Phillips Academy, Exeter, still stands at the corner of Water and Clifford streets, in that little New Hampshire town. The external appearance of the building has been changed somewhat; the protruding logs in the back part of the house have been covered with planed boards, and the large old-fashioned chimney that stood until within a few years has been torn down, but the little room on the second floor is still in about the same condition as it was in the days when Webster studied there.

He was fourteen years of age when brought by his father to Exeter and placed in charge of Mr. Clifford, a worthy gentleman of the town. The precise date of Daniel Webster's entrance at the academy is the 25th of May, 1796. It was the first time that the boy had been away from home, and he describes his feelings himself as follows: "The change overpowered me. I hardly remained master of my own senses among ninety boys, who had seen so much more and appeared to know so much more than I did." When Webster's father had bidden his son farewell, he said to Mr. Clifford that "he must teach Daniel to hold his fork and knife, for Daniel knows no more about it than a cow does about holding a spade."

From all accounts this comparison must have been a good one, for Daniel Webster's table manners were so rude that it is said that the other boys who boarded at Mr. Clifford's requested the latter to send Webster away. But Mr. Clifford, of course, never for a moment considered this, and knowing that young Webster was of a most sensitive disposition, he tried to correct the lad by example rather than by advice and remonstrance. Webster was accustomed to hold his knife and fork in his fists; one day Mr. Clifford held his own knife and fork in the same way, and continued doing so at intervals, until Webster saw how ungraceful it was, and corrected himself.

Daniel Webster was not much of a success as a student while at Exeter. He admits this in his autobiography. He seemed unable to recite in a room full of boys; and although he spent many hours in study, he could never, having learned his lesson, make a good recitation. The strangest thing of all, however, is that he could not be induced to speak in public; and when the day came on which it was usual for his class to declaim, although he had learned his piece, he was utterly incapable of rising from his seat when his name was called. "The kind and excellent Buckminster," says Webster in his autobiography, "sought especially to persuade me to perform the exercise of declamation, like other boys, but I could not do it. Many a piece did I commit to memory, yet when the day came when the school elected to hear declamations, when my name was called and I saw all eyes turned to my seat, I could not raise myself from it. Sometimes the instructors frowned; sometimes they smiled. Mr. Buckminster always pressed and entreated most winningly that I would venture, but I could never command sufficient resolution. When the occasion was over, I went home and wept bitter tears of mortification." To think that such should have been the nature of the boy who afterward became so famous an orator, and whose speeches, as a man, have become classical, and whose presence "has graced the courts of justice in the national halls of legislation"!

Daniel Webster was so greatly discouraged at this inability to declaim before his comrades, and by the treatment he received at the hands of his fellow-students because of his awkwardness and shyness, that at the end of his first term he said to Dr. Abbott, the principal, that he thought he would not return after Christmas. The principal knew very well that Webster's rustic manners and coarse clothing had been the cause of the misconduct of the other boys toward him, and he therefore encouraged Webster to remain in school, and assured him that he was a better scholar than most of the boys in his class, and he promised the lad that if he would return at the commencement of the next term, he would be placed in a higher class, where he should "no longer be hindered by the boys who cared more for play and dress than for solid improvement." Webster says that these were the first encouraging words that he had ever received with regard to his studies, and because of them he resolved to return to school, and to work with all the ability he possessed.

But in spite of his best determinations, Webster was never able to do well in the class-room, and he therefore left Phillips Academy after having attended its classes for nine months. His father placed him then, in February, 1797, in charge of the Rev. Samuel Wood at Boscawen, who prepared him for college. Even with Mr. Wood young Webster's success as a student was not very great, for at the end of a year the reverend gentleman said to his pupil, "I expected to keep you till next year, but I am tired of you, and I shall put you into college next month."

Daniel Webster went to Dartmouth College, and there he did much better, both in his studies and in his intercourse with his fellow-students, and he managed a number of times to speak in public.

THE AMERICAN NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENTS.

A JAPANESE MATINÉE.

BY EMMA J. GRAY.