Chapter 2

With a flourish and a smirk, Tom deposited the spittoon on the counter under Silvia's astonished eyes.

"Here's a cuspadore, Miss Morden; not the very finest article, but it serves every purpose. Cleans easy, too, and that's the great thing, after all. Shall I send you a pair?"

Utterly astonished and struck dumb, Silvia stood gazing at the hideous thing.

"And look here, Miss Morden," dropping his voice to a confidential whisper, "we've got the finest lot of tobacco and the best snuff you ever used. Oh, I know,--I'll not mention it. Young ladies, of course, have their little secrets,--I understand that, and I'll be upon honor, 'pon my word I will."

"You insulting creature!" Silvia gasped.

Her look and tone caused Tom to back, and bump his head so violently against a shelf that, for a minute, he was blind. When he recovered his sight, Silvia had left the store, and the people at the counter were gazing with wide-open eyes on the scene.

"What did you say to Miss Morden, that she flew off in such a rage?" asked a tall, gaunt, spectacled old maid,--Miss James,--who was the terror of the town for her ill-natured gossip and interfering ways.

"Upon my word, ma'am, I said nothing insulting," replied the angered clerk. "Miss Silvia asked for a spittoon, and I showed her one. Of course people do not want spittoons unless they use tobacco, do they? I am sure I meant no harm. I only wanted to accommodate a customer."

"Of course, of course," said his grim listener. "Judge Morden and her ma don't dream of their daughter's goings-on, I'm sure of that. I'm a friend, and they'll know it before I'm an hour older."

She stalked out of the store, and down to Judge Morden's house. Without ringing, she marched into the sitting-room, where Mrs. Morden was at work.

"Clara Morden," she said, in her sharpest tones, for she was an old acquaintance of the lady, "how have you brought up your daughter, that she's disgracing you?"

"Disgracing! Are you talking of Silvia?"

Gentle Mrs. Morden's face was pale as she turned her startled eyes on her visitor.

"Who else? Don't you think it a disgrace for a girl to use tobacco? and that's what Sil does, and goes and buys a spittoon before the whole town! I'd tobacco her! But everybody knows it by this time, and whether she gives it up or not, people will keep on thinking she uses it. You always did give that girl too much head, I've told you so time and again, and now you see you'd better have taken my advice."

Mrs. Morden had regained her calmness by this time.

"There is certainly some mistake," she said, coolly. "I will ask Silvia about it when she comes in."

"You'll find it no mistake," said her visitor. "At least half-a-dozen people were in Morris's this evening when she asked for the spittoon, and then got mad with the clerk about something."

The explanation Silvia was compelled to make that evening, though it acquitted her of the first charge, left a most painful impression upon her mother that the habit of falsehood had grown upon her daughter.

"I will not add to your punishment by re-proof," she said, gravely, "because I foresee the mortification that this is going to bring to you. No explanation will convince half the gossips in town that you have not the filthy habit of using tobacco, and the story will cling to you for years."

"That's harsh and unjust!" Silvia cried, hotly. "It was a mistake anybody might have made."

"Yes, anybody who pretends to know what you are ignorant of. There is a strong likeness in the family of lies, and it is neither hard nor unjust that we should be punished for them. Your humiliation I hope may prove a salutary lesson."

It did. Silvia is rarely tempted now to her old pretences of superior knowledge. The cuspadore story brought her such pain and mortifition that the scars remain yet.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

For the Companion.

IN THE BACKWOODS. In Five Chapters.--Chap. I.

By C. A. Stephens.

We were boiling down "salts" that winter in Black Ash Swamp,--not epsom salts, but an extract from the lye of wood ashes. The ashes were boiled much as maple sap is boiled in order to obtain sugar.

I do not know whether the reader ever heard of such a thing. It was one of many ventures which Edward Martin, Vet Chase and myself made when we were boys up in the Maine backwoods in order to obtain a little money.

Black Ash Swamp was four or five miles up Mud Stream, a small tributary of the Penobscot. It was situated on "wild" land, as it was called, and was full of yellow ash, black ash and elm.

We had gone there early in November. Our first work was to fell the great ash-trees and cut them up so that the wood could be burned in ricks. Many of the trees were very old, nearly lifeless, and punky at the heart; but they made an abundance of ashes.

There is no wood in the world from which such quantities of ashes can be secured; and that is the reason, I suppose, why the tree is called _ash._ Nor is there another tree whose ashes make so strong a lye. It was for this reason that we came here to make "salts."

We brought up on our raft twenty old flour-barrels, to be used as leach-tubs. These were set up in a semi-circle round our boiling-place, which was a long stone "arch." A pole and lumber-shed served us as a camp.

We used to sit there evenings, and by the light of the fire under the boiling kettles of lye, try to read Aesop's fables in Latin, and I never to this day take up my old Latin reader without seeming to hear the steady drip-drop of those twenty leach-tubs.

Making salts was hard work for us, though not much harder than translating some of those fables; but one needs to work to keep warm in Northern Maine in December.

In the forenoons we would all three cut and split the ash into fire-wood, then burn it and boil the ashes. Sometimes we burned eight or ten cords in a single rick, which made from seven to ten barrels of ashes. Then we poured water into the barrels, and set earthen pans or pots underneath to catch the lye as it drained through.

When our four iron kettles,--hung with "hooks" to a long pole over our arch,--were all boiling, there was a strong odor, and the steam made our eyes smart. It took a lively fire, and we made a good many ashes in the arch.

When boiled away, the lye leaves a residuum, which, in color and general appearance, resembles brown sugar. This was the "salts." It is very strong. Compared with lye, it is like the oil of peppermint compared with peppermint tea.

We had been promised six cents a pound for salts delivered at Bangor, to be refined into soda. When we met with no interruptions, we obtained from forty to fifty pounds of salts in a day. Not a very rapid way of getting rich, yet better than nothing for boys who were determined to earn something so that we could prepare for college.

But it was shocking work for the hands, handling the lye and these "salts." Round our finger nails the skin was eaten off, and the nails themselves were warped and yellowed. Often the blood followed a single accidental slop of the "juice" which settled at the bottom of the "salts." I once heard a man who used to make salts say that he spoiled a horse by carrying a bagful of the nearly dry extract thrown across the saddle. Some of the juice trickled out, and going under the saddle, not only took the hair off, but made terrible sores, which it was found well-nigh impossible to heal. The liquid corroded our iron kettles very rapidly.

All through November, December and January we worked industriously, and studied our Latin. In summer the swamp would have been unhealthy and dangerous to life; but in winter, with the mud and water-holes frozen solidly, it was a warm, comfortable location, for it lay in a great valley, inclosed by high mountain ridges, that were covered by dense growths of pine and spruce. It fairly seemed as if the great fires which we built every afternoon warmed up the whole swamp.

Our smoke would often almost hide the sun when the weather was calm. Very little wind at any time found its way into our sheltered valley. The winter fortunately was a mild one. The snow was not more than a foot deep, and rains occasionally fell, leaving an icy crust.

One of these rain storms came during the last days of January. It thawed for two days, and then became cold on the following night. Next morning, while we were getting breakfast, boiling potatoes and baking biscuits in our tin baker, we heard out in the woods, to the east of our camp, sounds as if some animal was walking on the snow and breaking through the crust.

We listened. The sounds came nearer, and pretty soon we saw through the tree trunks that they were made by a bear. Probably the warm rain had roused him out of his winter den, or else he was starved out, for he looked surly and fierce, as if he felt cross.

He walked leisurely until he was within seven or eight rods of us. Then he stopped and looked at us a minute, but started forward again, and would probably have gone on civilly, had not Ed took our gun, which we kept loaded, and ran after him.

Hearing Ed coming, the bear turned round and ran towards him.

Ed stopped and took aim. The bear at once rose on his hind legs, and fanned the air with his paws.

Ed fired, and fortunately killed him with a single charge of buck-shot.

But I never saw a poorer bear. His hair was rusty, and he was evidently not in good health. The meat we could not eat; the very crows would have passed it by.

We wanted, however, candles to study by, and thought we could obtain grease enough from poor bruin to serve this purpose.

So we cut the body up, hair and all,--for his hide absolutely stuck to his bones,--and that night cleared out one of the kettles, and commenced trying out our bear's grease.

The contents of the kettle sizzled there all the evening, giving off anything but an agreeable odor. We were translating the fable of "The Mouse and the Peasant" that night, and _nihil Mehurcule_ is still mixed up in my mind with the odor of that old bear.

By nine o'clock the oil was fried out. We throw the scraps into the fire, and these made, if possible, a still more disagreeable odor as they burned. The whole swamp was full of it.

The hot fat was then poured off into a tin pail, and hung in a little spotted maple near one end of our camp-shed. We used to hang all our tin dishes and ladles here, for the maple had low limbs, which we had cut off so as to leave the stubs for pegs.

Underneath this tree was the great box--an old grain-box from a logging-camp--in which we stored our "salts" as it was made.

In the night.--it must have been after midnight, for the fire was out--I was roused from sleep by Ed, who was moving about the shed. I thought at first that he was walking in his sleep,--for he was a somnambulist,--and gave him a shake.

"Sh!" whispered he. "There's something sniffing round the arch."

We both peered sharply, but it was so dark that we could see nothing.

"It's the mate to that old bear, I guess," Ed whispered. "He's lonely, and wants company."

"More likely he has smelled the fat," said I, "and intends to steal it."

"Perhaps so," said Ed. "I thought we should draw some beast or other to us. Sh! I believe I can see him. Keep still! I'll teach him not to steal from his neighbors."

Ed reached for the gun, which at night always lay loaded at the head of our bunk.

Cocking the gun, he took aim and fired.

There was a yell almost as loud as the report, and it startled me a good deal worse. I once heard a vicious hound when shot make almost just such a noise. It was really a blood-curdling sound.

Vet had been sound asleep. The gun and the yell brought him suddenly to his feet.

"What is it?" he screamed. "What's the matter?"

"Matter?" exclaimed Ed; "that was a wolf! An ugly customer, too."

The creature had ran yelping away, and now the whole swamp resounded to its cries, as it crossed the frozen stream and ran for the mountain-side. What we took for the echoes at first, came back amazingly distinct from the mountains all about us. "Why," cried Vet, "those cries are other wolves answering him!"

It is strange what a distance the smell of burned bones and scraps will be carried to the noses of carnivorous beasts. A hunter in the woods better not burn such refuse unless he wants to draw dangerous game about him. It may be a wild opinion, but I haven't a doubt that the odor of those bones drew wolves twenty-five miles off to us that night.

As soon as Vet spoke, Ed and I both knew there must be other wolves howling. It made us feel almost frightened, there, in the dead of night, for we soon found that the creatures were drawing together and coming nearer, large numbers of them. Ed loaded the gun again.

"But what good will that do if there's a pack of 'em?" Vet exclaimed.

If we had had a log camp with a door, we shouldn't have felt uneasy; but our open shed would not afford us safety. There was no time to be lost, for the wolves were racing and scurrying about the swamp, not half a mile away.

"I'm going into that old stooping hemlock!" said Vet, and he ran for it.

This large mossy hemlock was a few yards to the right of our camp. It leaned down and rested partly in a great elm that stood on the bank of the stream.

Any one could make a run and scramble up the trunk of this tree to the first limbs, twelve or fourteen feet. Ed and I only waited to place two big stones from the arch upon our pork cask, and also to throw our flour-bag and meal-bag upon the roof of the shed. Then we scrambled after Vet.

We got amongst the green boughs, and perched ourselves as comfortably as we could. There was no wind, and the temperature could not have been below freezing, much.

We had but just got into the hemlock when two or three wolves ran by, and were soon scurrying about our "arch" and camp,--going and coming, here and there, uttering, now and then, a quick, eager yelp, like hounds hunting a track.

Though it was pretty dark, we could distinguish their dusky forms. We could hear them eating, too, the bones, scraps and offal we hand thrown out,--quarrelling, snapping and fighting with one another.

Several times, one or more of them were on the shed-roof. They dragged off the meal-bag, and tugged at the cloths, and dragged the bag about the ground. Then they began to jump into the little spotted maple. This was so near that we could see them better. They tore down the tin dishes, and still kept leaping up.

"Good-by, candles!" muttered Ed. "They're after that pail of bear's grease."

Pretty soon, we heard the pail go down, _thump!_ into the box of "salts," that was, as I have said, underneath it. Then there was a great rush and snapping of the whole pack--twenty to thirty of them, we thought--as they licked it up from among the salts.

They hurried hither and thither around the camp for ten or fifteen minutes longer, then dropped off, one after another, in response to howlings further down the stream.

The next morning, we saw where they had upset the bear-fat into the "salts." The oil had not cooled, and of course it soaked down into the loose salts. In their eagerness to get the warm grease, the rabid brutes had eaten grease and salts together.

"Well," said Ed, "some of 'em will be troubled with dyspepsia after this, that's certain."

This was Wednesday. Friday morning, Vet and I set off to go to the settlement. We followed down Mud Stream five miles, to where it entered the Penobscot. Here there was, or had recently been, open water, now only partly frozen over.

We could not get upon the river at the forks, and had to follow up the bank thirty or forty rods. We had gone only a few steps when we came upon a dead wolf, lying close down to the water's edge, among brush and drift-stuff.

"Here's one of our friends!" cried Vet, laughing.

We hauled the carcass up to the top of the bank. It was a good-sized wolf, as large as a fox-hound. We felt pretty happy, for the State then paid a bounty of eight dollars on wolf-scalps; and the hide--if we could get it off--would bring two or three dollars more.

Well, we had not gone four rods further when we came upon another wolf, curled up, dead, near the water. And--to cut the story short--we found eight dead wolves lying along that strip of open water.

The "salts" had proved a fatal meal for them.

We were not long going for Ed, and then we skinned the lot. But it was a tough job. We could not help cutting the hides considerably, and in consequence of this, we obtained but eleven dollars for these. We got seventy-six dollars in all, however, and this was a large amount for us in those hard, self-denying days.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

For the Companion. IN THE MINING REGIONS.

At the Station.

The cars stopped at a rude station. A little girl standing by a cow was the only human being to be seen. The girl was barefoot; her white hair looked as if it had not been touched by any comb for a week.

Grandly the hills stretched out, summit after summit. Here and there could be seen a little home, plain enough and poor enough, but made beautiful by its emerald setting.

"Do you work in the mills?" I asked the child with the white head. She stuck her forefinger in her mouth, looked shyly down, and shook her head.

Aunt Sally.

"Is that your cow?" was the next question. She nodded this time, and looked up at us with pleasant blue eyes.

"Can you show as where the mine is?"

"Yes, I can," she said, brightening at the small bit of money I held out, "It's yenter,--coom an' I'll tell ye."

We followed her to a fissure in the side of the hill, a place of rough beams, and bare of verdure. It seemed singularly deserted, for it wanted nearly half an hour to working time. We looked into the shaft with a shudder. It led in a slanting direction into the deep earth, and it seemed like going into a grave to enter it.

"Poppy goes down ther," said the girl. "He an' the other men are mad 'cause they have to stay there so long."

"Could we got a breakfast round hers, anywhere?" my friend asked of the child.

"Oh, yes, Aunt Sally, down there;" stud she pointed to a little clearing, dazzlingly white amidst the pretty garden spots. The girl volunteered to go with us.

The child led us into a small clean room, where were milk-pans, shining like silver.

Aunt Sally was a small, tidy body, with a bright English face of the best type, straight as an arrow, and with an eye that meant business.

"Them miners is a hard set," she said, as she bustled about us, getting bread and coffee. "You see, there's so many nations mixed. There's Irish, and German, and Swiss, and patience knows what else, and they get among themselves if they think things don't go right, and talk and talk, and git discontented and ugly.

"I'll 'low it's a hard life, 'specially for the women and children, though there aint but few o' _them_ work about here. But then, though they work a good while, yet they have a good bit of daylight, after all. The men as don't drink are, as a general rule, the easiest to git along with. There go some of 'em now."

The Murdered Miner.

A group of low-browed, sturdy follows passed the door, laughing and talking, seemingly contented, and after breaking our fast, we followed them.

A woman was walking ahead of us, with, a child in her arms, a little girl of six or seven years tugging at her skirt. They were a very quiet trio.

I noticed that the woman wore a bit of black crape on her hat, and there was something in her face that inclined me to stop and speak to her.

"You look young to have two children," I said.

"Yes'm; I aint twenty yet," she said, shifting the great boy to the other arm.

"And you are in mourning."

"Yes'm. I've lost Jim. He was a good husband, a real steady man; never drunk nor nothin'. Him and me'd knowed each other ever sence we were little uns. We was raised in Edinburgh, miss, and come over when we was married. Then Jim got sick, and it cost all we brought to cure him. So we came up here a year ago, and was doing quite well, miss."

"Was it an accident in the mines?" I ventured to ask.

"Oh, no, miss, it was a cruel murder; he was killed by them Molly Maguires!" and her lips trembled, and the tears started to her eyes.

I was sorry I had asked her, and was silent from sympathy.

"They're all very good to me about here. They've give me something to do, and Ruby, here, takes care of the baby like a little woman while I'm in the mine at work."

"Why, what can you possibly do?"

"Oh, a good many little odd jobs,--throwing the lumps out of the passages, and doing whatever comes to hand,--helping to load sometimes. I'm very glad to get it.

"They talk of raising me some money to buy a bit shanty," she added. "I can pick up a little to do, perhaps, then, that'll keep me out of the mine. It don't seem to be a woman's place, somehow. Not but what they're all very respectful and kind."

"Are there other women there?"

"Not many in this mine. Over on the hill where the men struck once or twice, there's a-many, and some of 'em do men's work; but a woman had better be home if she's got a home."

The sentiment found an echo in my heart as I looked on the pale, sorrowful face, so commonplace, yet so interesting, from its very sadness.

Down in the Mines.

"Wouldn't you like to go in?" she asked. "Ladies do, sometimes."

She placed the child in the arms of the girl,--a quiet little thing, and I followed her into the side of the hill, already thickly covered with working men, with the star of light burning on their foreheads, so faint and blue in the sunshine, so bright in the darkness.

I shall never forget the sensations of that hour. In and on, with a sense of continually descending; on each side, the great glistening black walls of anthracite; here and there small streams of water trickling down; now and then a dull thud of pick; a muffled, low roar, ringing in one's ears wherever there was a passage in which people were at work.

There were great hollows that looked like caves on one hand, and precipitous banks on the other; little bursts of sound, coming upon one suddenly, of miners talking or laughing below the mule tracks; patient mules, laboring on in the darkness; patient or impatient men, toiling from morning till night; even women denied the fair sunshine of the outer world.

Here were carts being loaded. Here were men making great fissures in the coal; the air was filled with a shimmering dust, oddly gleaming in plates as the light struck it. It filled the nostrils and the throat, and I wondered how the miners dared open their months to talk.

"You can't think how bright it all seems outside, after I get through," said the young woman, whose name, I learned, was Matilda Vernon. "Sometimes I think it's almost worth while to be shut up, things look so different. You live in two worlds like."

I had a terrible sensation of dread in going out,--more palpably felt than when I entered. What if these horrible jagged masses should fall on or in front of me, obstructing my path! I could see myself flying before me, and my breath grew so short that it was something like agony as I toiled up and up, led by a miner so bulky that he almost filled the passage at times.

I could have shouted for joy when at last I saw the faint far glimmer of the beautiful glad light,--the light of the blessed sun. I could not wonder that the miners asked for the boon of the eight hours law. It certainly seems long enough, and too long, to be imprisoned in the bowels of the earth.

Back again to the station, ready for the journey West,--I could hardly believe that it was not yet ten o'clock in the morning. GARRY MOSS.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

ENGLAND AND HER COLONIES.