Part 2

What manner of rebuke he would have administered, history is unable to record. The minister had come. The children began to scatter. Lizzie and her red-headed cousin ran around the church. Socky and Sue stood with angry faces.

Suddenly Socky leaned upon the church door and burst into tears. He dimly comprehended the disgrace which Lizzie had sought to put upon him. The minister could not persuade him to enter the church or to explain the nature of his trouble.

When all had gone into Sunday-school, the boy turned, wiping his eyes. Sue stood beside him, a portrait of despair.

"Le's go home an' tell our father," said she.

They started slowly, but as their indignation grew their feet hurried. Neither spoke in the long journey to their door. They ran through the hall and rushed in upon their father who sat reading.

"Oh, father!" said the girl, in excited tones; "Lizzie Cornell says you're a thief an' a drunkard."

Gordon rose and turned pale.

The hands and voices of the children were ever raised against him.

"It's a lie!" said he, turning away.

He stood a moment looking out of the window. He must take them to some lonely part of the wilderness and there make an end of his trouble and of theirs. He turned to the children, saying, "Right after dinner we'll start for the woods."

So it befell that in the afternoon of a Sunday late in June, Socky and Sue, with all their effects in a pack-basket, and their father beside them, started in a spring-wagon over the broad, stony terraces that lift southward into thickening woods, on their way to great peril.

And so, too, it befell that in leaving home and the tearful face of dear Aunt Marie, they were sustained by a thought of that good and mighty man whom they hoped soon to see--their Uncle Silas.

III.

THE day was hot and still. Slowly they mounted the foot-hills between meadows aglow with color. The country seemed to flow ever downward past their sleepy eyes on its way to the great valley. The daisies were like white foam on the slow cascade of Bowman's Hill, and there were masses of red and yellow which appeared to be drifting on the flats. A driver sat on the front seat, and Gordon behind with Socky and Sue. The little folk chattered together and wearied their father with queries about birds and beasts. By-and-by the girl grew silent, her chin sank upon her breast, and her head began to shake and sway as their wagon clattered over the rough road. In a moment Socky's head was nodding also, and the feet of both swung limp below the wagon-seat.

They had seemed to sink and rise and struggle and cry out in the silence, and were now as those drowned beneath it. Gordon drew them towards him and lifted their legs upon the cushioned wagon-seat. He sat thinking as they rode. They had been hard on him--those creditors. He had not meant to steal, but only to borrow that small sum which he had taken out of the business in order to feed and clothe the children who lay beside him. True, some dollars of it had gone to buy oblivion--a few hours of unearned, of unholy relief. How else, thought he, could he have stood the reproaches of brutal men?

They arrived at Tupper's Mill late in the afternoon. There Gordon found a canoe and made ready. At this point the river turned like a scared horse and ran east by south, around Tup-per Ridge, in a wide loop, and, as if doubting its way, slackened pace, and, wavering right and left, moved slowly into the shade of the forest, and then, as if reassured, went on at a full gallop, leaping over the cliff at Fiddler's Falls. Below, it turned to the north, and, seeming to see its way at last, grew calm and crossed the flats wearily, covered with foam.

Socky woke and rubbed his eyes when he and his sister were taken out of the wagon. Sue continued to sleep, although carried like a sack of meal under the arm of the driver and Silas Strong laid amidships on a blanket. Mr. Tupper, the mill man, gave them a piece of meat which, out of courtesy to the law, he called "mountain lamb." With pack aboard and Socky on a blanket in the bow, Gordon pushed his canoe into the current.

All who journeyed to the Lost River country from the neighborhood of Hillsborough arrived at Tupper's late in the afternoon. There, generally, they took canoe and paddled six miles to a log inn at the head of the still water. But as Gordon started from Tupper's Mill down stream he had in mind a destination not on any map of this world. Socky sat facing him, a little hand on either gunwale.

Socky had thought often that day of the incident of the night before and of his father's poverty. Now he looked him over from head to foot. He saw the little steel chain fastened to his father's waistcoat and leading into the pocket where he knew that his own watch lay hidden. The look of it gave him a feeling of great virtue and satisfaction.

"Father, will you please tell me what time it is?" he inquired.

Gordon removed the watch from his pocket. "Half-past six. We've got to push on."

It was fine to see that watch in his father's hand.

"I'm going to give it to you," said the boy, soberly. "You can wear it Sundays an' every day."

Gordon looked into the eyes of his son. He saw there the white soul of the little traveller just entering upon the world.

"I'm going to buy you some new clothes, too," said Socky, now overflowing with generosity.

"Where'll you get the money?"

"From my Uncle Silas." After a few moments Socky added, "If I was Lizzie Cornell's father I'd give her a good whipping."

They rode in silence awhile, and soon the boy lay back on his blanket looking up at the sky.

"Father," said he, presently.

"What?"

"I'm good to you, ain't I?"

"Very."

There was a moment of silence, and then the boy added, "I love you."

Those words gave the man a new sense of comfort. If he could have done so he would have embraced his son and covered his face with kisses.

The sun had sunk low and they were entering the edge of the night and the woodland. Soon the boy fell asleep. The silence of the illimitable sky seemed to be flooding down and delightful sounds were drifting on its current. They had passed the inn, long ago and walls of fir and pine were on either side of them. Gordon put into a deep cove, stopping under the pine-trees with his bow on a sand-bar. Then he let himself down, stretching his legs on the canoe bottom and lying back on his blanket.

For a long time he lay there thinking. He had been a man of some refinement, and nature had punished him, after an old fashion, for the abuse of it with extreme sensitiveness. He had come to the Adirondacks from a New England city and married and gone into business. At first he had prospered, and then he had begun to go down.

He had been a lover of music and a reader of the poets. As he lay thinking in the early dusk he heard the notes of the wood-thrush. That bird was like a welcoming trumpeter before the gate of a palace; it bade him be at home. Above all he could hear the water song of Fiddler's Falls--the tremulous, organ bass of rock caverns upon which the river drummed as it fell, the chorus of the on-rushing stream and great overtones in the timber.

Sound and rhythm seemed to be full of that familiar strain--so like a solemn warning:

A long time he sat hearing it. He began to feel ashamed of his folly and awakened to the inspiration of a new purpose. He rose and looked about him.

When you enter a house you begin to feel the heart of its owner. Something in the walls and furnishings, something in the air--is it a vibration which dead things have gathered from the living?--bids you welcome or warns you to depart. It is the true voice of the master. As Gordon came into the wilderness he felt like one returning to his father's house. In this great castle the heart of its Master seemed to speak to him with a tenderness fatherly and unmistakable.

A subtle force like that we find in houses built with hands now bade him welcome. "Lie down and rest, my son," it seemed to say. "Let not your heart be troubled. Here in your Father's house are forgiveness and plenty."

He put away the thought of death. He covered the sleeping boy and girl, pushed his canoe forward upon the sand, and lying back comfortably soon fell asleep.

He awoke refreshed at sunrise. The great, green fountain of life, in the midst of which he had rested, now seemed to fill his heart with its uplifting joy and energy and persistence.

He built a fire under the trees and broiled the meat and made toast and coffee. He lifted the children in his arms and kissed them with unusual tenderness.

"To-day we'll see Uncle Silas," Gordon assured them.

"My Uncle Silas!" said the boy, fondly.

"He's mine, too," Sue declared.

"He's both of our'n," Socky allowed, as they began to eat their breakfast.

IV

SILAS STRONG, or "Panther Sile," as the hunters called him, spent every winter in the little forest hamlet of Pitkin and every summer in the woods.

Lawrence County was the world, and game, wood, and huckleberries the fulness thereof; all beyond was like the reaches of space unexplored and mysterious. God was only a word--one may almost say--and mostly part of a compound adjective; hell was Ogdensburg, to which he had once journeyed; and the devil was Colonel Jedson. This latter opinion, it should be said, grew out of an hour in which the Colonel had bullied him in the witness-chair, and not to any lasting resemblance.

As to Ogdensburg itself, the hunter had based his judgment upon evidence which, to say the least, was inconclusive. When Sile and the city first met, they regarded each other with extreme curiosity. A famous hunter, as he moved along the street with rifle, pack, and panther-skin, Sile was trying to see everything, and everything seemed to be trying to see Sile. The city was amused while the watchful eye of Silas grew weary and his bosom filled with distrust. One tipsy man offered him a jack-knife as a compliment to the length of his nose, and before he could escape a new acquaintance had wrongfully borrowed his watch. His conclusions regarding the city were now fully formed. He broke with it suddenly, and struck out across country and tramped sixty miles without a rest. Ever after the thought of Ogdensburg revived memories of confusion, headache, and irreparable loss. So, it is said, when he heard the minister describing hell one Sunday at the little school-house in Pitkin, he had no doubt either of its existence or its location.

All this, however, relates to antecedent years of our history--years which may not be wholly neglected if one is to understand what follows them.

After the death of his sister--the late Mrs. Gordon--Strong began to read his Bible and to cut his trails of thought further and further towards his final destination. A deeper reverence and a more correct notion of the devil rewarded his labor.

It must be added that his meditations led him to one remarkable conclusion--namely, that all women were angels. His parents had left him nothing save a maiden sister named Cynthia, and characterized by some as "a reg'lar human panther."

"Wherever Sile is they's panthers," said a guide once, in the little store at Pitkin.

"Don't make no dif'er'nce whuther he's t' home er in the woods," said another, solemnly.

That was when God owned the wilderness and kept there a goodly number of his big cats, four of which had fallen before the rifle of Strong.

Cynthia, in his view, had a special sanctity, but there was another woman whom he regarded with great tenderness--a cheery-faced maiden lady of his own age and of the name of Annette.

To Silas she was always Lady Ann. He gave her this title without any thought or knowledge of foreign customs. "Miss Roice" would have been too formal, and "Ann" or "Annette" would have been too familiar. "Lady Ann" seemed to have the proper ring of respect, familiarity, and distinction. In his view a "lady" was a creature as near perfection as anything could be in this world.

When a girl of eighteen she had taught in the log school-house. Since the death of her mother the care of the little home had fallen upon her. She was a well-fed, cheerful, and comely creature with a genius for housekeeping.

June had come, and Silas was getting ready to go into camp. There was no longer any peace for him in the clearing. The odor of the forest and the sight of the new leaves gave him no rest. Had he not heard in his dreams the splash of leaping trout, and deer playing in the lily-pads? In the midst of his preparations, although a silent man, the tumult of joy in his breast came pouring out in the whistled refrain of "Yankee Doodle." It was a general and not a special sense of satisfaction which caused him to shake with laughter now and then as he made his way along the rough road. Sometimes he rubbed his long nose thoughtfully.

A nature-loving publisher, who often visited his camp, had printed some cards for him. They bore these modest words:

S. STRONG

GUIDE AND CONTRIVER

He was able in either capacity, but his great gift lay in tongue control--in his management of silence. He was what they called in that country "a one-word man." The phrase indicated that he was wont to express himself with all possible brevity. He never used more than one word if that could be made to satisfy the demands of politeness and perspicacity. Even though provocation might lift his feeling to high degrees of intensity, and well beyond the pale of Christian sentiment, he was never profuse.

His oaths would often hiss and hang fire a little, but they were in the end as brief and emphatic as the crack of a rifle. This trait of brevity was due, in some degree, to the fact that he stammered slightly, especially in moments of excitement, but more to his life in the silence of the deep woods.

Silas Strong had filled his great pack at the store and was nearing his winter home--a rude log-house in the little forest hamlet. He let the basket down from his broad back to the doorstep. His sister Cynthia, small, slim, sternfaced, black-eyed, heart and fancy free, stood looking down at him.

"Wal, what now?" she demanded, in a voice not unlike that of a pea-hen.

"T'-t'-morrer," he stammered, in a loud and cheerful tone.

"What time to-morrer?"

"D-daylight."

"I knew it," she snapped, sinking into a chair, the broom in her hands, and a woful look upon her. "You've got t' hankerin'."

Silas said nothing, but entered the house and took a drink of water. Cynthia snapped:

"If I wanted t' marry Net Roice I'd marry 'er an' not be dilly-dallyin' all my life."

Cynthia was now fifty years of age, and regarded with a stern eye every act of man which bore any suggestion of dilly-dallying.

"Ain't g-good'nough," he stammered, calmly.

"You're fool 'nough," she declared, with a twang of ill-nature.

"S-supper, Mis' Strong," said he, stirring the fire.

Whenever his sister indulged in language of unusual loudness and severity he was wont to address her in a gentle tone as "Mis' Strong"--the only kind of retaliation to which he resorted. He shortened the "Miss" a little, so that his words might almost be recorded as "Mi' Strong." In those rare and cheerful moments when her mood was more in harmony with his own he called her "Sinth" for short. In his letters, which were few, he had addressed her as "deer sinth." She was, therefore, a compound person, consisting of a severe and dissenting character called "Mis' Strong," and a woman of few words and a look of sickliness and resignation who answered to the pseudonyme of "Sinth."

Born and brought up in the forest, there was much in Silas and Cynthia that suggested the wild growth of the woodland. Their sister--the late Mrs. Gordon--had beauty and a head for books. She had gone to town and worked for her board and spent a year in the academy. Silas and Cynthia, on the other hand, were without beauty or learning or refinement, nor had they much understanding of the laws of earth or heaven, save what nature had taught them; but the devotion of this man to that querulous little wild-cat of a sister was remarkable. She was to him a sacred heritage. For love of her he had carried with him these ten years a burden, as it were, of suppressed and yearning affection. Silas Strong alone might even have been "good enough," in his own estimation, but he accepted "Mis' Strong" as a kind of flaw in his own character.

Every June he went to his camp at Lost River, taking Sinth to cook for him, and returning in the early winter. Next day, at sunrise, they were to start for the woods.

To-day he helped to get supper, and, having wiped the dishes, put on his best suit, his fine boots, his new felt hat, and walked a mile to the little farm of Uncle Ben Roice. He carried with him a gray squirrel in a cage, and, as he walked, sang in a low voice:

"All for the love of a charmin' creature,

All for the love of a lady fair."

It was like any one of a thousand visits he had made there. Annette met him at the door.

"Why, of all things!" said she. "What have you here?"

"C'ris'mus p-present, Lady Ann," said he.

It should be said that with Silas a gift was a "Christmas present" every day in the year--the cheerful spirit of that time being always with him.

He proudly put the cage in her hands.

"Much obliged to you, Sile," said she, laughing.

"S-Strong's ahead!" he stammered, cheerfully.

This indicated that in his fight with the powers of evil Strong felt as if he had at least temporary advantage. When, perhaps, after a moment of anger it seemed that the Evil One had got the upper hold on him, he was wont to exclaim, "Satan's ahead!" But the historian is glad to say that those occasions were, in the main, rare and painful.

"Strong will never give in," said Annette, with laughter.

Strong's affection was expressed only in signs and tokens. Of the former there were his careful preparation for each visit, and many sighs and blushes, and now and then a tender glance of the eye. Of tokens there had been many--a tame fox, ten mink-skins, a fawn, a young thrush, a pancake-turner carved out of wood, and other important trifles. For twenty years he had been coming, but never a word of love had passed between them.

Silas sat in a strong wooden chair. Under the sky he never thought of his six feet and two inches of bone and muscle; now it seemed to fill his consciousness and the little room in which he sat. To-day and generally he leaned against the wall, a knee in his hands as if to keep himself in proper restraint.

"Did you just come to bring me that squirrel?" Annette inquired.

"No," he answered.

"What then?"

"Squirrel come t' b-bring me."

"Silas Strong!" she exclaimed, playfully, amazed by his frankness.

He put his big hand over his face and enjoyed half a minute of silent laughter.

"Silas Strong!" she repeated.

"Present,"'said he, as if answering the call of the roll, and sobering as he uncovered his face.

In conversation Silas had a way of partly closing one eye while the other opened wide beneath a lifted brow. The one word of the Emperor was inadequate. He was, indeed, present, but he was extremely happy also, a condition which should have been freely acknowledged. It must be said, however, that his features made up in some degree for the idleness of his tongue. He brushed them with a downward movement, of his hand, as if to remove all traces of levity and prepare them for their part in serious conversation.

"All w-well?" he inquired, soberly.

"Eat our allowance," said she, sitting near him. "How's Miss Strong?"

"S-supple!" he answered. Then he ran his fingers through his blond hair and soberly exclaimed, "Weasels!"

This remark indicated that weasels had been killing the poultry and applying stimulation to the tongue of Miss Strong. Silas had sent her fowls away to market the day before.

"Too bad!" was the remark of Lady Ann.

"Fisht?" By this word Silas meant to inquire if she had been fishing.

"Yesterday. Over at the falls--caught ten," said she, getting busy with her knitting. "B-big?"

"Three that long," she answered, measuring with her thread.

He gave a loud whistle of surprise, thought a moment, and exclaimed, "M-mountaneyous!" He used this word when contemplating in imagination news of a large and important character.

"How have you been?"

"Stout," he answered, drawing in his breath.

Annette rose and seemed to go in search of something. The kindly gray eyes of Silas Strong followed her. A smile lighted up his face. It was a very plain face, but there was yet something fine about it, something which invited confidence and respect. The Lady Ann entered her own room, and soon returned.

"Shut yer eyes," said she.

"What f-for?"

"Chris'mas present."

Silas obeyed, and she thrust three pairs of socks into his coat-pocket. With a smile he drew them out. Then a partly smothered laugh burst from his lips, and he held his hand before his face and shook with good feeling.

"S-socks!" he exclaimed.

"There are two parts of a man which always ought to be kep' warm--his heart an' his feet," said she.

Silas whacked his knee with his palm and laughed heartily, his wide eye aglow with merriment. His expression quickly turned serious.

"B-bears plenty!" he exclaimed, as he felt of the socks and looked them over. This remark indicated that a season of unusual happiness and prosperity had arrived.

Worked in white yarn at the top of each leg were the words, "Remember me."

"T-till d-death," he whispered.

"With me on your mind an' them on your feet you ought to be happy," said Annette.

"An' w-warm," he answered, soberly.

Presently she read aloud to him from the _St. Lawrence Republican_.

"S-some day," said Silas, when at last he had risen to go.

"Some day," she repeated, with a smile.

The only sort of engagement between them lay in the two words "some day." They served as an avowal of love and intention. Amplified, as it were, by look and tone as well as by the pressure of the hand-clasp, they were understood of both.

To-day as Annette returned the assurance she playfully patted his cheek, a rare token of her approval.

Silas left her at the door and made his way down the dark road. He began to give himself some highly pleasing assurances.

"S-some day--tall t-talkin'," he stammered, in a whisper, and then he began to laugh silently.

"Patted my cheek!" he whispered. Then he laughed again.

At the store he had filled his pack with flour, ham, butter, and like provisions for Lost River camp. At Annette's he had filled his heart with renewed hope and happiness and was now prepared for the summer. While he walked along he fell to speculating as to whether Annette could live under the same roof with Cynthia. A hundred times he had considered whether he could ask her, and as usual he concluded, "Ca-can't."

The hunter had an old memorandum-book which was a kind of storehouse for thought, hope, and reflection. Therein he seemed always to regard himself objectively and spoke of Strong as if he were quite another person. Before going to bed that evening he made these entries:

_"June the 23. Strong is all mellered up.

"Snags."_

With him the word "meller" meant to soften, and sometimes, even, to conquer with the club.

The word "snags" undoubtedly bore reference to the difficulties that beset his way.

V

SILAS and his sister ate their breakfast by candle-light and were off on the trail before sunrise, a small, yellow dog of the name of Zeb following. Zeb was a bear-dog with a cross-eye and a serious countenance. He was, in the main, a brave but a prudent animal. One day he attacked a bear, which had been stunned by a bullet, and before he could dodge the bear struck him knocking an eye out. Strong had put it back, and since that day his dog had borne a cross-eye.