CHAPTER XIII.

THE SCHOLARS SUSTAIN JAMES.

The next morning Peter, Bertie, John, and Will Edibean, the Nevins boys, and Edward Conly, by pure accident, entered the schoolroom at the same moment with James, and some little time before the master came.

James, as usual, made directly for his seat; but they all surrounded and crowded him along to the fireplace, and instantly the Wood boys, the Kingsburys, the Kendricks, Stillman Russell, and all the girls, got round him, shook hands with him, told him he did just right, the day before, that those boys had always domineered over the smaller scholars, set them on to mischief, and made trouble in school, and with the master when they could. James, to his amazement, found himself the centre of an admiring crowd; he blushed and fidgeted, stood first upon one foot, then upon the other, and rolled up his eyes, till Bertie, fearing he would burst into tears, as he did when he received his new clothes, took him by the hand, and said,—

“Come, James, let us look over the reading-lesson before the master gets here.”

When recess came, Peter and Bertie went to his seat, and asked James to go out and play with them. This, to use a homely phrase, “struck him all of a heap.”

“How can I go? I don’t know how to play any of your plays.”

“We are not going to play plays or wrestle, but fire snowballs at a mark, and you are first-rate at that,” said Peter.

James still declined; but Bertie stuck to him like bird-lime, and so did Peter, who called Ned Conly, whom James particularly liked, to aid them; but all in vain, till at length Bertie said,—

“Come, James, if you don’t want to go upon your own account, go to please me; this is the first thing I ever asked you to do for me.”

James rose directly; and Bertie, taking him by the hand, led him out of the house in triumph. The windows of the school were furnished with board shutters, and the boys had utilized one of them for a target by propping it with stones, and making three circles on it, and a bull’s eye in the centre. The boys, having heard how well James could throw stones, stipulated that he should stand six paces farther from the target than the rest, otherwise, they said, “there would be no chance for them.”

As James wanted the sport to go on to please Bert, he assented to this. Bert threw the first ball, hitting just outside the centre ring.

“I can beat that,” said John Kendrick, and hit within the second ring.

Arthur Nevins hit right on the third ring. None of them, however, struck the bull’s eye. It was now the turn of James. His first ball struck within the innermost circle, and about half-way from that to the bull’s eye; and the second he planted directly in the central dot, and covered it all over. They all shouted,—

“You can’t do that again.”

Upon which he plumped another on the second. None of the boys except James hit the centre, but very few within the second ring; and they were blowing their fingers, and beginning to tire of the sport, when Sam Kingsbury, pointing upwards, shouted,—

“Only look there!”

Following the direction of his finger, they saw an owl of the largest size (that had been overtaken by daylight before he could reach his roosting-place) sitting upon the branch of a large oak, motionless, and apparently lost in meditation, and entirely regardless of the uproar beneath.

“If anybody had a gun,” said Arthur Nevins. “I wonder if there’s time to run home and get mine before school begins.”

“No,” said Peter, “and if you should, perhaps you’d miss him; but I’ll bet James’ll take him with a snowball.”

“I could with a good stone, but I don’t think I can with a snowball; for I never threw a snowball in my life before to-day.”

James searched the stone wall of the pasture, but could find no stone to suit him, and urged by the boys to try, made three snowballs as hard as he could, with a small stone in the centre of each. The first ball brushed the feathers of the philosophical bird, and broke the thread of his meditations; but as he was gathering himself up to fly, a second struck him with such force under the wing as to bring him down half stunned into the snow, and before he could recover himself Ned Conly flung his cap over his head and caught him.

“Give him to me, will you, Ned?” said Bertie.

“I will, if you and Peter and James will come over to my house to supper to-morrow night and spend the evening.”

James objected decidedly to this arrangement.

“Well, he can’t have the owl unless you come.”

“Come, James, do go, because I want it ever so much to put it in a cage. I never had an owl in my life. I have had crows, and eagles, and bluejays, and robins, and coons, and foxes, and gray squirrels. I’ve got a nice cage that my bob-o-link was in.”

James was sorely pressed. He liked Ned Conly, for Ned and Stillman Russell were the only boys with whom he had any intercourse approaching to intimacy. Ned Conly in school sat next beside and Stillman Russell before him; he also could not bear to prevent Bertie from getting the bird that he saw he wanted. The perspiration fairly stood in drops on his forehead. At length he said,—

“I cannot go to supper, for then there would be nobody to do the chores, and it would not look well to leave Mr. Whitman to do them, but I’ll come after supper.”

They, therefore compromised on that ground.

“The master’s coming; how shall we keep him till school’s done?” said Bert.

“Cut his head off,” said James.

This was the first time that James had ever volunteered a remark, or been guilty of an approach to a witticism, and Peter stared at him astonished.

“I’ve got a skate-strap; you may have that,” said Chuck Witham, who was aching to be once more noticed, for no one spoke to him now.

“Thank you,” said Bert, though not very cordially, and took it, and with this they fastened the owl in the entry of the schoolhouse.

“Is not Ned Conly as quick as lightning?” said Arthur Nevins to Elmer; “who but he would have thought of that way to get James over there; he might have invited him till Doomsday to no purpose, but when James found Bertie couldn’t have the owl unless he went, that brought him. Only think how long we’ve been trying to get him to come to our house.”

“What shall we do with James, mother?” said Peter, as he and Bertie were preparing to go to Mr. Conly’s. “What shall we do with him when he comes? We don’t want him to sit all the evening and look straight into the fire, and never open his mouth, and Ned won’t either, and he’ll be frightened half to death.”

“I’ll tell you what to do,” said the grandfather; “ask him questions that he cannot answer by yes and no; he’ll have to answer them, and after he hears the sound of his own voice a few times he’ll gain courage.”

“What shall we ask him?”

“Ask him about the manner in which they do farming work in the old country, and if you can get him started, he will, I have no doubt, tell a great many things that Mr. Conly’s folks would like to know, for he never learned to reap, and mow, and break flax, and swingle it, and handle horses as he does, without working on the land a good deal. He talks when he is in the shop with me.”

The boys set out, leaving Maria to come with James, in order that he might not be obliged to come in alone.

The Conly family consisted of Emily, Edward, and Walter the schoolmaster, who was then boarding at the Edibeans.

After James and Maria came in, the first greetings were over, and the usual remarks in regard to the weather and the school had been made, and something said about a spelling school that was to come off in the near future. James merely listening, the conversation began to lag. Bertie grew desperate, and as was his wont resolved to make or mar, began to tell Mr. Conly about James hitting the owl, and about the accuracy with which he could throw stones, and then turned to James and asked,—

“James, how did you learn to throw stones almost as true as folks fire bullets?”

“I learned by throwing road metal when working on the roads. In England they keep a good many parish poor at work breaking stones for the roads; every man has a pile of stones before him, a hammer and a ring, he breaks a stone till it is small enough to go through the ring and then throws it on the pile.”

“What does he put it through a ring for?”

“Because the rings are all of a size, and that makes the stones all of a size, then they haul these stones and spread ‘em very thick on the roads, and spread coarse gravel on them, and roll the whole down with a great iron roller that it takes four and sometimes six horses to haul, and roll it down so hard that a wheel won’t dent it.”

“It must make a nice road,” said Mr. Conly.

“Yes, sir, one horse would haul as much on that kind of a road as two, yes, as three, on the roads we have here. I was set at work on the roads, and we didn’t work half the time and used to practise throwing stones. There was one fellow, Tom Lockland, could beat me,—and but one,—I knew how to break a stone to make it go true.”

“Where did you learn to drive horses? They say when you first came here you knew how to drive horses,” said Ned Conly, who perceived what Bert would be after.

“The governor at the workhouse used to hire me out to drive the teams to haul these stones. I drove one horse first, and then two, and then four, and sometimes six to draw the great roller.”

“Why, then,” said Mr. Conly, “couldn’t you go and work for yourself and support yourself?”

“Because there’s no work to be had. Why, sir, there are five men to do one man’s work. People are so plenty a man can only get a day’s work once in a while, and get so little for it that it will barely keep him alive, and when there’s no work he must fall back upon the parish or starve. The farmers don’t generally like to hire the parish poor, and then the settlement hurts poor people.”

“What’s that?”

“If a man gets a settlement in a parish, and can’t maintain himself, that parish must help maintain him.”

“How does he get a settlement?”

“If a man was born in any parish, his settlement is there. If he is bound for an apprentice forty days in a parish, his settlement is there. If he has been hired for a year and a day, he gains a settlement. If he has rented a house that is valued at ten pounds a year he gains a settlement.”

“I understand; it’s something like what we call gaining a residence.”

“Well, sir, the settlement act works very badly for a poor laboring man. Some of the parishes are quite small, and if in the parish where a poor person belongs, and has got his settlement, there is no work he can’t go into the next parish and get work, though there may be plenty of work there.”

“Why can’t he go?”

“He can go, sir, but he will get no work, for nobody will hire him for fear he will get out of work or fall sick, and stay long enough to gain a settlement; they will say: ‘Get you back to where you came from,’ and hustle him right out. Sometimes the farmers will hire a man for a few days short of a year, lest he should gain a settlement. They will take a boy out of the workhouse, keep him all summer till after harvest, and then quarrel with him and drive him off.”

“Can’t they be obliged to take an apprentice?”

“Yes, sir, or pay a fine; but the fine is so light they had sometimes rather pay the fine.”

Bertie found that by thus drawing a “bow at a venture,” he had struck upon a fruitful theme, and the evening passed so rapidly that it was nine o’clock before they thought it was eight, and when at last they came to separate, Mr. Conly made James promise that he would come again with Peter and Bertie. So much had his feelings and temper become modified by the discipline to which these high-minded boys, guided solely by their own instincts, had subjected him, that as Bertie told his mother when they got home, “James didn’t hang back at all when Mr. Conly asked him to come again with us, but said he would like to.”

“So that is the young man,” said Mr. Conly, to his family after the boys had gone, “that some of the scholars took a miff at as a redemptioner, and outlandish, and all that. I for one have got a good deal of information this evening, and I doubt very much if William Morse, or Riggs, or George Orcutt, could give so good an account of the methods of work here.”

“Father,” said Peter, “the master says James had better begin arithmetic at school.”

“I am going to the village to-morrow, and will get him a slate and a book.”

“There’s a slate in the house, only it has no frame, but make that do, and instead of a slate get him a large book to set down his sums in. He writes so well and makes such handsome figures, he will make it look nice to show at the committee examination.”

When Peter told James, the latter said he could make a slate frame himself, and did, of curled maple. Fondness for mechanical work grew upon James daily, and engrossed a portion of the time that had before been devoted to study. Peter had mechanical ability, and could make whatever he fancied. Not so, however, with Bertie, and thus an abundant opportunity was furnished to James to supply his friend. James made for him a sled, a crossbow, and a wheelbarrow, grandfather making the wheel; but James could hit nearer the mark with a stone, than Bertie could with his crossbow.

James now mingled freely with the other boys in their amusements at recess, and between schools; that is, he did not thus do every day. For some days he would not leave his seat, being inclined to study, but mingled with them sufficiently to produce the best of feeling, and distanced them all in lifting or pitching quoits, but in regard to wrestling,—a sport of which they never seemed to tire or get enough,—he was merely an interested spectator. One Saturday afternoon Peter said to him,—

“James, you do everything else us boys do, why don’t you wrestle?”

“Because I don’t know how.”

“Well, learn then, we all had to.”

“It seems to me I have got enough to learn that is of more value than wrestling, besides I am the largest boy in school. How it would look to have some little fellow like George Wood, or Chuck Witham, lay me on my back, and what a row it would make; if some of the larger boys did it that would be another thing.”

“Why not do as you have done in respect to reading, writing and spelling, learn at home, wrestle with me and Bertie? We are not much, to be sure, but I can throw most of the boys, and you can learn the locks and trips, and how to guard and handle yourself, and then when you come to wrestle at school you won’t be ashamed. If grandfather was not so stiff in his legs of late years he’d take delight in learning you.”

“Your grandfather?”

“To be sure. Grandfather has been an awful wrestler in his time. I can just remember when he wrestled. After you practise with us we can get Ned Conly and Arthur Nevins to come over here and wrestle. They are capable wrestlers, and father would wrestle with you.”

“Does your father wrestle?”

“I guess he does; there’s nobody can throw him, and he never was thrown. He won’t go into a ring to wrestle at a raising or at a town meeting now, because my mother don’t want him to, but grandfather told me that was not all the reason, because mother was never willing he should go into a ring, but he always would. Grandfather says it is because he feels he’s getting a little old, and is afraid some young man would get the better of him, and that he don’t blame him for not running that risk, after he had held the ring for years against three towns, fetch on who they would.”

“Does everybody wrestle here?”

“Everybody who thinks anything of themselves; everybody but the women and the minister, and they look on. They say the minister is a first-rate wrestler, and sometimes tries a fall in his back yard with friends who come to see him. A man who can’t wrestle, is thought very little of in these parts.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, ask grandfather, or ask the schoolmaster. He’s a good wrestler. Come, I’ll get Bertie, and we’ll begin to-night.”

“I can’t begin to-night.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s most night now and the chores are to be done.”

“I’ll call Bertie, and we’ll soon do ‘em.”

“Then I can’t, because it is Saturday night, and I want to look over the lesson for Monday morning and get my catechism.”

“Will you Monday night?”

“Yes, if your father don’t want me to do something.”

The boys took very good care that their father should not set James to doing anything, and after the chores were done they went into the barn floor.

James took hold of Bertie first, but he was so strong and his arms were so long, that Bertie could not get near enough to trip or move him in the least, James stiffening his arms and holding him off while Bertie twisted and wriggled like an eel on the end of a spear.

On the other hand James could not throw Bertie, because he was afraid of hurting him, else he might have either twitched him down or have lifted him bodily from the floor and taken his feet from under him at any moment.

“That’s no way to wrestle, you great giant,” cried Bertie.

“I told you I didn’t know how.”

“But you must slack up your arms and give me some chance. How do you think I am ever going to throw you if you won’t let me get near you?”

“I don’t mean you shall; folks don’t wrestle to get thrown, do they? Your grandfather didn’t.”

“But you must give me some chance to get at you or you’ll never learn. How could two men wrestle if one was in the barn and the other in the house; or one here, and the other in Philadelphia? We might as well be.”

Peter flinging himself upon the hay, rolled over and over convulsed with laughter, crying,—

“I’ll bet on James, he’ll hold the ring I’ll be bound, I mean to call grandfather to see the fun.”

“If you do I’ll not try to wrestle again,” said James.

James gradually yielded to the exhortations of Bertie, and permitted him to come near enough to push him over the floor, and it was not long after the wily boy got him to lift his feet till he tripped and threw him.

“There, you see how I did that, now do the same by me.”

“I shall hurt you.”

“That’s my look-out.”

It was not long before James got thrown again, but he was all the while gaining knowledge and watching the operations of his opponent, and at last gave Bertie a fair fall. James was evidently much pleased, and Bertie not less so. The former who at first had been dragged into the sport by the influence of his friends, began to take great interest in it, mastered the trips, and locks, and feints, without resorting to main strength, and at length made such progress that Bertie could no longer throw him.

He now began to wrestle with Peter, when he passed through the same experience, being thrown at first, but kept improving till at length Peter could but seldom get him down. Edward Conly and the Nevins boys now came over, and he wrestled with them, beginning now to wrestle at the back, in which mode of wrestling he excelled them all, as in that practice strength, a stiff back and capacity to endure punishment, avail more than agility and sleight.

A small plot of level ground before the schoolhouse, free from stones, and covered with long moss, where the boys were wont to wrestle, was now bare of snow. A wrestling match was got up, and had not been long in progress before Bertie persuaded James to enter the ring. The instant he entered, William Morse stepped in as his antagonist.

The castigation administered by James had never ceased to rankle, and he had not the least doubt but the opportunity had come for revenge, or at least to mortify his enemy before the whole school.

“Won’t he get terribly mistaken?” whispered Bertie to Arthur Nevins.

“He thinks he’s taking hold of a green redemptioner.”

They had scarcely placed themselves in position, till he was thrown. Red as a fire brick, and burning with shame,—for a great shout greeted the victory of James,—he took hold only to be again thrown. David Riggs then stepped in with the same result.

The boys then clamored to Orcutt to take his turn, but he declined. Edward Conly came in and was thrown, and after him Arthur Nevins, who threw James after a short struggle. James was now as eager to wrestle as he had been backward before, and wrestled every day till there were but two, Edward Conly and Arthur Nevins, who could throw him at arm’s length, and no one could throw him at the back. It was quite wonderful to notice the change imparted to his whole bearing by these exercises; before he was stiff and awkward in all his movements, but now he was lithe, graceful, his step was lighter and more elastic, and smiles had taken the place of the despondent look he formerly wore, insomuch that it was a matter of common remark in the neighborhood.