Chapter 1

Produced by Annie McGuire

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VOL. I.--NO. 51. PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK. PRICE FOUR CENTS.

Tuesday, October 19, 1880. Copyright, 1880, by HARPER & BROTHERS. $1.50 per Year, in Advance.

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RABBITS TO FIND.

BY WILLIAM O. STODDARD.

"I say, Tad Murray, what's made you so late with your cows this morning?"

"Late? Well, I guess you'd be late if you'd had such a time as I did. It was all old Ben's fault."

"Ben's? Why, there he is now, chasing the brindled heifer. If she'd only turn on him, she could pitch him over the fence like a forkful of hay."

"He's a better cow-dog than that ragged little terrier of yours, Carr Hotchkiss; but he's an awful fellow to let into a corn field, 'specially 'bout this time of year."

"Into a corn field!"

"When there's a lot of rabbits in the shocks."

"Are there rabbits in your corn?"

"It's just alive with 'em. And Ben he gets after 'em, and the corn's all cut and shocked, and he'll tear a shock of corn to pieces in no time; and father says it's too bad, for he hasn't any time to kill rabbits."

"Tell you what, Tad, Whip's the best dog in the world for rabbits."

"Is he?"

"He wouldn't hurt a shock of corn if he scratched clean through it. I'll fetch him along soon's you get your cows in; and we'll get Dan Burrel and Eph McCormick and Frank Perry, and we'll have the biggest rabbit hunt you ever heard of."

"Don't I wish I had a gun!"

"Father's got one, but he won't let me put a finger on it."

"So's my father got one. It's a splendid good gun, too, but one of the triggers is gone, and there's a hole you could stick your finger into in the right barrel, where it got bursted once."

"We don't want any guns. You hurry your cows in. There! the brindled heifer's given Ben an awful dig."

"He won't care."

Old Ben did care, however, for he left the brindled heifer suddenly, and came back toward the boys, with his wise-looking head cocked on one side, as much as to say, "Didn't I hear you two saying something about rabbits?"

It was less than half an hour before they were telling him a good deal about that kind of game. They gathered the rest of their hunting party on their way back to Squire Murray's, only they did not waste any time going to the house. It was a shorter cut through the wheat stubble and the wood lot to the big corn field in the hollow.

Corn, corn, corn. Squire Murray said he had never before raised so good a crop in all his life. And then he had added that the rabbits and squirrels and woodchucks were likely to be his best market, for they were husking it for him, and not charging him a cent. Only they carried off all they husked without paying for it, and he was compelled to charge that part of his crop to "rabbit account."

The old squire loved a bit of fun as well as anybody, and it was a pity he could not have been in his own corn field that morning.

Tad Murray had to catch hold of old Ben the moment they were over the fence, for he half buried himself in the nearest shock of corn the first thing.

"Oh dear! if there was only one of 'em in sight, so he'd have something to run after!"

"Whip! Whip!" shouted Carr Hotchkiss. "Rabbits, Whip--rabbits!"

Whip had been dancing around the shock as if the ground under him were red-hot, and he couldn't keep his feet on any one spot for two seconds; but now he made a sudden dive into the gap from which Tad had pulled out old Ben.

"Find 'em, Whip--find 'em!"

"There's a rabbit in there somewhere," said Dan Burrel, in a loud, earnest whisper.

"Look out you don't scare him," whispered back Eph McCormick; and Frank Perry picked up a long stiff corn stalk, and began to poke it in at every crack he could find.

"Don't, Frank; you'll scare the rabbit."

"Scare him, Eph? Why, that's just what we're up to. If we don't scare him, he won't come out."

There was a loud whine from Whip at that moment, and a sound of very vigorous pawing and scratching away in out of sight.

"Do rabbits ever bite?" said Frank, excitedly.

"Rabbits? bite a dog?" said Carr, scornfully. "I'd back Whip all alone against all the rabbits Squire Murray's got."

Another whine from Whip, and more pawing and rustling in that mysterious place he had scratched into. Every boy of them wished he were in there with a double-barrelled gun or something.

"Tad," said Frank Perry, "maybe it isn't a rabbit. Maybe it's something big."

"Woodchucks?"

"Are there any 'coons around here nowadays?"

"Haven't seen any; but the rabbits are awful big ones, some of 'em."

Yelp, yelp, yelp, from the dog inside, and his voice had a smothered and anxious sound.

"He's got him!" exclaimed Tad. But he had better have kept his hold upon Ben for a moment longer. It had been pretty hard work the last minute or so, for Ben understood every sound Whip had been making. All it had meant really was: "Ben! boys! there's a rabbit here, and he keeps just about a foot ahead of me. He's three sizes smaller than I am, and he can get through the shock faster. One of you be on the look-out for him on that further side."

The instant Tad loosened his arms from around Ben's neck, the sagacious old fellow sprang forward--not at the hole where Whip went in, but straight across, where there was no hole at all, till he came to make one.

There was a big one there before any boy of them all knew what Ben was up to. How the corn stalks did fly as he pawed his way in and tore them aside with his great strong teeth! If he was not much of a hand at setting up a shock, he was a mouth and four paws at pulling one down.

"Ben! Ben!" shouted Tad. "Come here! Rabbits, Ben--rabbits! Come here, sir."

As if Ben needed anybody to say "rabbits" to him, after he had listened to all that anxious whimpering from Whip!

"Shake the shock a little," said Dan Burrel. "He's in there somewhere."

He suited the action to the word, but that was all that was needed, and down it came, flat on the ground, with a big dog and a small one and five excited boys tearing around among the ruins.

There was a rabbit there too when the shock fell over, but he came out of the confusion with a great leap, and would have made his escape entirely if it had not been for the long legs of old Ben.

There was no time given the rabbit to hunt for another hiding-place, for before the boys and Whip had quite made up their minds what had become of their game, Ben was shaking him by the back of the neck half way down the field.

"I say, boys," said Tad, "we must set this shock up again. There comes Josephus, and if we leave such a mess as this is behind us, he won't let us go after another rabbit."

Josephus was Tad's elder brother, and he had been sent down there by his mother to get a pumpkin for some pies. There were plenty of them, that had been planted among the corn, and it was easy enough to pick out a good one and go back to the house; but Joe saw what the boys were about, and he stood for a moment looking at them.

"Set it up carefully," whispered Eph McCormick; "Joe's watching us."

"We've got one rabbit, anyhow."

"I say, what's become of Whip?"

"Never mind, boys. Hurry this thing together again."

So they did, and they were so intent on repairing the mischief they had done that they did not see what Josephus and the two dogs were doing meantime.

"I've got him!"

They were all standing back and looking at their work to see if it was just as good as it had been before it tumbled, when they heard Joe shouting that to them from the other side of the field.

"I've got him! I wouldn't give much for a lot of boys that can't catch rabbits without tearing the corn to pieces. Send in the little dog every time, and wait till the rabbit comes out. The big dog's bound to catch him if you give him a fair chance."

"That's what we'll do," said Tad. "Joe's picking up his pumpkin. He's all right."

No doubt he was, but he would much rather have staid with them in the corn field than have carried that great yellow ball half a mile to the house.

There was plenty of fun after that, for both dogs and boys had learned that there was a right way to work at that kind of hunting. Before noon they had thirteen fine large rabbits hanging on the fence, and nobody could have told by the look of any shock in the field that either a dog or a boy had been through it.

"Boys," said Squire Murray, when he met them coming through the barn-yarn gate, "which of you caught the most rabbits?"

"Which of us caught the most?"

"Yes, that's what I'd like to know. Which of you is the one I want to hire to catch my rabbits for me?"

The boys looked at one another for a moment, and then Tad slowly remarked, "Well, father, I guess it's Ben. He got the first bite at every one of 'em."

[Begun in No. 46 of HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE, September 14.]

WHO WAS PAUL GRAYSON?

BY JOHN HABBERTON,

AUTHOR OF "HELEN'S BABIES."

CHAPTER VI.

THE BEANTASSEL BENEFIT.

Of the many boys who were curious about Paul Grayson's antecedents, no one devoted more attention to the subject than Benny Mallow. Benny was short, and Paul was tall; Benny was fat, and Paul was thin; Benny's hair was light, while Paul's was black as jet; Benny had light blue eyes, while those of Paul were of a rich brown; Benny always had something to say about himself, while Paul never seemed to think his affairs of the slightest interest to any one but himself: so, taking all things into account, it is not wonderful that Benny Mallow spent whole half-hours in contemplating his friend with admiration and wonder.

Still more, as Benny had been accepted by every one as Paul's particular friend, he actually was besieged with all sorts of questions, and to answer these without letting himself down in the estimation of the school was no easy matter, when he did not know any more about Paul than any one else did. One question, however, he settled to the entire satisfaction of every one but Napoleon Nott-- Grayson was not an exiled prince. Benny was sure of this, because he had asked Paul if he had ever been on the other side of the ocean, and Paul had answered that he had not. Notty endeavored to make light of this evidence by showing how easy it would have been to spirit the mysterious person away from his royal home and to America while he was a baby, and therefore too young to know anything about it, but Will Palmer told Notty that it was about time to stop making a fool of himself, and the other boys present said they thought so too, at which Notty became so angry that he vowed, in the presence of at least a dozen boys, that when the truth came out, and all the boys wanted to borrow his copy of _The Exiled Prince: a Tale of Woe_, he would not lend it to them, even if it were to save them from death; he would not even let them look at the cover, with its picture of the prince and the name of the publisher.

Meanwhile Mr. Morton had continued his visits to the prisoners and to the poor of the town, and out of school hours he had so interested the boys in some of the suffering families of worthless men or widowed women, that it was agreed by the whole school that the teasing of any of the boys of these families about the holes in their trousers, or provoking fights with or between them, should entirely stop; indeed, as this suggestion came from Bert Sharp, who was fonder of fighting than any other boy in the town, the school could not well do otherwise.

The boys went even farther: when one day old Peter Beantassel, whose family was always on the verge of starvation, spent on drink the accidental earnings of a week, and then fell into an abandoned well and was drowned, it was decided by the school to give an exhibition for the benefit of Mrs. Beantassel and her six children. Mr. Morton was delighted, and promised to secure a church or hall without expense to the boys, and to collect enough money from the public to pay for printing the tickets. The boys at once began work in tremendous earnest; they were for a fortnight so busy at determining upon a programme, and studying, rehearsing, selling tickets, and exacting promises from people who would not purchase in advance, that there was but little playing before school and during recess, blackberry hedges were neglected, and the trout in the single brook near the town had not the slightest excuse for apprehension.

Paul Grayson entered into the spirit of the occasion as thoroughly as any one else; he volunteered to recite Longfellow's "Psalm of Life," and when the farce of _Box and Cox_ was about to be given up because no boy was willing to dress up in women's clothes, and be laughed at by all the larger girls, for playing the part of Mrs. Bouncer, Paul volunteered for that unpopular character, and saved the play. But this was not all. There were to be some tableaux, and as Mr. Morton had been asked to suggest some scenes, particularly one or two with Indians in them, and was as fond of pointing a moral as teachers usually are, one of his tableaux, to be called "Civilization," was a scene in the interior of an Indian's wigwam. The squaw, who had just been killed, was lying dead on the floor; her husband, with his hands tied, stood bleeding between two soldiers, while between father and mother stood the half-grown son, wondering what it all was about. As all of the boys wanted to see this tragic picture, all of them declined to take part in it; Joe Appleby had been heard to remark with a sneer that only very small and green boys cared to look at Indians, so he was asked to take the part of the wretched son himself; but he said that when any one saw him making a fool of himself by browning his face and dressing up in rags, he hoped some one would tell him about it: so Grayson, as the only other tall boy who had dark hair that was not cut short, was cast for this part also, and offered no objection. As for the bleeding chieftain, Napoleon Nott fought hard to pose in that character, and was quieted only by being allowed to play the dead squaw, which all the boys told him he ought easily to see was the more romantic part, besides being one in which he could by no chance make any mistake.

The place selected for the entertainment was the lecture-room of the Presbyterian church, and the boys had therefore to give up their darling project of devoting half an hour of the evening to amateur negro minstrelsy, for one of the deacons said that while he sometimes doubted that even an organ was a proper musical instrument for use in sacred buildings, he certainly was not going to tolerate banjos and bones. This decision was a great disappointment to Benny Mallow, who had been selected by the managers to perform upon the tambourine, but in the revision of the programme Benny was assigned to duty in a tableau as a little fat goblin, and this so tickled his fancy that he did not suffer long by the disappointment.

At last the eventful night arrived. Some of the boys did not leave the lecture-room at all after the last rehearsal, not even to get their suppers, for fear they should be late, and those who reached the room barely in time to take their parts had all they could do to squeeze through the crowd that blocked the doors and filled the aisles. The spectacle of so crowded a house raised the boys to a high pitch of excitement, which was increased by various peeps from the curtains that served as dressing-rooms at the Beantassel children, who by some thoughtful soul had been provided with free seats in the extreme front bench; there they were, all but the baby; they had been provided with clothing which, though old, was far more sightly than the rags they usually wore, and although they did not seem as much at ease as some others among the spectators, their eyes stood so very open, then and throughout the evening, that even Joe Appleby, who had reluctantly consented to pose, in his best clothes, with gloves, cane, and high hat, as Young America in a tableau of "The Nations," agreed with himself that the exhibition was rather a meritorious idea after all, and that even if the boys did as badly as he knew they would, he was glad it was sure to pay.

But the boys did not do badly; on the contrary, the general performance would have been quite creditable to adults. The opening was somewhat dismal; it was announced to consist of a duet for two flutes by Will Palmer and Ned Johnston. The boys had practiced industriously at several airs in order to discover which would be best, and at last they supposed they had fully agreed; but when seated Ned began the "Miserere" from _Trovatore_, while Will started "The Old Folks at Home," and each was sure the other was wrong, and would correct himself, which the other in both cases failed to do, and finally both boys retired abruptly, amid considerable laughter, and fought the matter out in the dressing-room.

Paul Grayson soon restored order, however, by his rendering of the "Psalm of Life." He had a fine voice, and he spoke the lines as if he meant them; so gloriously did his voice ring that even the boys in the dressing-room kept silence and listened, though they had heard the same verses a hundred times before.

Most of the performances that followed went very smoothly, although Benny Mallow, who played the Hatter's part in _Box and Cox_, caused some confusion by laughing frequently and unexpectedly, because Paul's disguise as Mrs. Bouncer affected him powerfully in spite of the efforts made by Sam Wardwell, as the Printer, to restrain him. The tableaux pleased the audience greatly; even that of "Prometheus," with Ned Johnston as the sufferer, and Mrs. Battle's big red rooster as the vulture, brought down the house.

But the great tableau of the evening was the teacher's "Civilization." When Paul Grayson had understood fully what the scene was to be, he refused so earnestly to have anything to do with it that the boys were startled. They did not excuse him from taking the part of the young Indian, however; they pleaded so steadily that at last Paul consented, but in worse temper than any one had ever seen him before. No one could complain of the manner in which he acted on the stage, however. When the curtain was drawn he was seen standing beside his dead mother, and shaking a fist at the soldiers; in color, dress, pose, and spirit he seemed to be a real Indian, if the audience was a competent judge; then, when the applause justified a recall, as it soon did, the drawn curtain disclosed Paul clinging to the wounded brave as if nothing should ever tear him away.

Napoleon Nott saw all this, although, as the Indian boy's mother, he was supposed to be dead beyond recall. Suddenly he felt himself to be inspired, and when the curtain was down he flew into the dressing-room and exclaimed, "I've got it!"

"Be careful not to hurt it," said Canning Forbes, sarcastically.

"I've got it!" declared Notty, without noticing Canning's cruel speech. "Grayson is an Indian, a chief's son. You don't suppose he could have made believe so well as all that, do you? That's it. I knew he was a great person of some sort. Sh--h! he's coming."

Somehow the boys who had been able to peep out at the tableau did not laugh at Notty this time. Paul, in his Indian dress, had greatly impressed them all before he left the dressing-room, and certainly his acting had been unlike anything the boys had seen other boys do. The subject was talked over in whispers, so that Paul should not hear, during the remainder of the evening, with the result that that very night at least six boys told other boys or their own parents, in the strictest confidence, of course, that there was more truth than make-believe about Paul Grayson as an Indian. And the parents told the same story to other parents, the boys told it to other boys, and within twenty-four hours Paul Grayson was a far more interesting mystery than before.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

THE PARASOL ANTS AND THE FORAGING ANTS.

BY CHARLES MORRIS.

Was there ever such a prattler as the warm-hearted little brook that ran by the foot of the garden of Woodbine Cottage? To be sure, it had good reason to be jolly, for the sunlight buried itself in its bubbles till they sparkled like diamonds; and a hedge of roses overhung it, and dropped crimson leaves that floated away like fairy boats on its bright surface; and broad-winged butterflies floated, like tiny ships of the air, above the happy stream. And away it ran, prattling and chattering, and picking its way through moss-covered stones that lifted above its surface, and tumbling hastily down in little cascades, as though it were in a desperate hurry to get on in the world, and altogether misbehaving itself just as any madcap little stream might when out on a frolic.

Its bank beyond the garden was bordered with the white and gold of daisies and buttercups, and the red and green of blossoming clover, in which Harry Mason was almost buried, only his bright cheeks and curly hair showing out of this verdant nest. As for Uncle Ben, he was gravely seated on the bank of the brook, holding his little friend Willie on his knee. The little chap was quite as grave as his big uncle.

"You neber tole us one word yet 'bout them soldiers an' cows an' tings, 'mong the ants, Uncle Ben," he earnestly remarked, "an' you knows you said you was goin' to tell us all an' all an' all about 'em. An' I don't think it's fair."

"Why, I certainly must have done so," replied Uncle Ben, with affected surprise. "You have surely forgotten. I shall have to leave this affair for Harry to settle."

"Then Willie is right," returned Harry, from his grassy nest. "You told us everything else about them, but you never said one thing about the cows or the soldiers."

"Everything else about them!" exclaimed Uncle Ben, with a sly smile. "Why, I know I did not say a word about the parasol ants, or the foraging ants, or the--"

"The parasol ants!" cried Willie, quite forgetting the cows and the soldiers in his surprise. "You doesn't mean, Uncle Ben, that they carries parasols--jes like mamma, now?"

Harry, too, had lifted himself up on his elbow, the light of curiosity gleaming in his eyes.

"They are the most comical things in the world," replied their uncle. "Just imagine now a great line of ants, marching along like a school of young ladies out on a holiday, each of them holding a piece of green leaf over its head like a parasol. It is not strange that people fancied that this was done to keep the sun off, and called them parasol ants."

"What do they do it for, then?" asked Harry, eagerly.

"Maybe them's the soldiers," suggested Willie; "maybe it's ant guns they's carryin'."

"We have not got to the soldiers yet," said his uncle, smiling. "These leaves are really used in building their nests. But the whole thing is very curious. The ants climb up the bushes, and run out on the leaves. There they cut, with their sharp jaws, a little round piece from the leaf. Then they pick this up, getting a tight hold on it, you may be sure, and away they scamper for the nest. But these ants are not the nest-builders; they are only like the laborers who carry bricks to the bricklayers. They drop their leaves beside the nest, and run back for more, leaving the real builders to finish the work."

"Regular little hod-carriers," suggested Harry. "But they don't build a nest of little bits of leaf, I hope?"