A NEW YEAR’S LEGACY.

John H. Bartlett.

{Illustrations by F. H. Trow.}

Now, Dan, you must try to do your best to-night. There will be heaps o’ people at that speaking, and Squire Barnard’s hall will be full, and I fear how you might be kind o’ shakey when you see ’em all looking at yer, boy. But be brave and powerful smart to-night, Dan, and maybe, some day, somebody’ll do ye a good turn, and ye might get a bit more learning.” These were the words that broke the deep quietness of a strangely impressive hour in a home freighted with ill fortune and cursed by nearly every event. It was in the days of early American life when Puritan simplicity and colonial customs held society in a more natural state, and allowed the highest and lowest a more ready approach. But the home of Dan Kenashton, though decent, was the simplest of the simple, and the most unpretentious of the unpretending. And on that November evening long ago, when, in other home-circles the “husking bee,” the evening kitchen party, and other ancestral pastimes told of pleasantly passing days, in this there lurked a legend of something wrong. The roughly hewn timbers which presented their ugly faces to the two inmates, in the two solitary rooms of this weird old cot seemed to speak curses on whomsoever was within. Even the dusty old motto, “God Bless Our Home,” which hung over the crude board shelf, seemed to bear an ill-omened import. Beside it was a well kept picture, a battle scene. Brave men were defending a fortification, amid snow and sleet and fire and lead, against an insidious attack by the Muskigo tribe on New Year’s eve. ’Neath the feet of those still contending lay the bleeding bodies of those who had fought their last. Did this have any special meaning in that home? If so, surely war is honorable, and to die in loyal defence leaves not a stigma upon one’s posterity. An old flintlock musket stood in the corner. It had not the appearance of recent use; the hammer was rusty and flintless; the bayonet was blunt and rusty, too;—but there it stood as it had stood for years, becoming such a part of the house that Dan never wondered at its use nor questioned its origin. Hanging to it was an old canteen. They were certainly relics of war, but war was common in those days, and the sight of arms familiar. A few antique pieces of furniture and the old spinning-wheel completed the scene in this strange, scanty home.

Dan, in his honest, quiet way, replied to the simple, yet feeling, words of his mother, “Indeed I’ll do all I can to win the prize, but it’s little use, you know I hav’n’t very good clothes to wear, and it ’pears to me that Deacon Ackley and Squire Barnard himself, and the other judges, don’t like me very well, and besides, I haven’t had any help until I spoke the piece to General Brockaway to-day.”

“What, how did that happen, Dan?” asked the mother, startled with a sudden impulse of rage at the mention of that name.

“Well, I couldn’t say how it was, exactly. He happened to hear that I was going to speak a war piece, and so he wanted to hear it. I thought it would be all right to recite it to him, and I did. He is writing a book on the old Indian wars. He said Mr. Kenashton, my father, was once a good soldier and fought under him at the battle of the Creek, that he remembered his face distinctly, and thought I had some of his marks.”

“I warn you, my boy, to keep away from that old man. He’s no friend of ours, Dan, nor was he a friend to your father. Friend! Oh, my God! were he not an enemy, less bitter would be my cup. But it’s well you know not all, my boy.”

“I don’t exactly understand,” replied Dan, “but I’ve wondered why we are not like other people, and why nobody cares to know us, but the old General wants to see that flint-lock and canteen, and says he intends to say something about them in his book, and so I told him I’d take them down to him to-morrow.”

“Curse the old general and his book,” said the mother, thinking she had detected him in some new plot, and becoming almost mad with rage, “take them to him and bid him keep them; they are not my——ah! but it’s well you know not all, Dan; yes, well, indeed.”

Like a lightning flash the whole past was mirrored in her mind. She never would believe him a traitor. Not for one moment. Fort Shelby may have been betrayed and the betrayer shot by his comrade captors, but he was not John Kenashton, nor is that his musket and canteen. They are the only signs of his guilt, and God knows they are not his. His name may have been on that canteen, but it was not his writing, not as I saw him write it. If General Brockaway had been a braver man himself, things would appear different. But of one thing I am sure, John Kenashton fell fighting bravely for what to him was most dear. Thus meditating to herself she passed the evening.

Dan had gone to the speaking. It was one of those old-time lyceum contests. The would-be literateurs of the vicinity had their organization, and on every Thursday evening during the colder months assembled to carry out programmes of a grave and stately nature, mostly on literary, political, and agricultural topics. The occasion on this November eve was the annual prize contest, open to all competitors, when the little surplus in the treasury, weekly reimbursed by a small collection to defray “incidental and other expenses,” was devoted to prizes which were awarded at the grand declamatory competition. It was the great event of the year. Dan had competed time and time again since his small boyhood, and always without any recognition, although, did people dare to utter their own thoughts, they would call him the best speaker. He had the strong, clear articulation of an orator—calm, composed, yet forcible in utterance. The flash of his keen, black eye would have held any audience spell-bound, could it once forget the betrayer of Fort Shelby. Although he spoke better this time than ever before, and his preëminence was more pronounced, his name was not read on the prize list. The reason was apparent. A few justice-loving people shrugged their shoulders, looked disapproval and cast sympathizing, if not almost admiring, glances at his strong, honest face. General Brockaway, proud of the results of his instruction, half wanted Dan to win, and even started to rise in his seat to interpose objections to the decisions rendered, but as quickly as cloud follows sunshine, evil impulse follows good, one thought another, he realized the risk of his prestige and settled back in his seat. The weekly lyceum was continued for years thereafter, but the last prize contest in Shelby town was over.