The minister sighed and rubbed his chin uneasily, and Mrs. Mather recovered her ordinary state of mind, which was a state of suppressed complaint.
I was saying that the footpath was seldom used. Hants Corby would have used it—for he was too shiftless to be afraid—if the river had run the other way. As it was, he preferred to drift down in his boat and row back when he had to. He found that easier, being very shiftless. The Hermit himself went on the river, except in the spring when the current below was too strong.
The opinions of the Leather Hermit may be shown in this way. If you came on him, no matter suddenly, and asked whose land that was across the river, he would answer promptly, “The devil's”; whereas it belonged to Bazilloa Armitage, a pillar of the church in Preston Plains, who quarrelled zealously with the other pillars; so that, as one sees, the Leather Hermit was not in sympathy with the church in Preston Plains.
The people of the valley differed about him according to humor, and he used strong language regarding the people of the valley according to opportunity, especially regarding Bazilloa Armitage. He denounced Bazilloa Armitage publicly in Preston Plains as a hypocrite, a backbiter, and a man with a muck rake—with other language stronger still. Bazilloa Armitage felt hurt, for he was, in fact, rather close, and exceedingly respectable. Besides it is painful to be damned by a man who means exactly what he says.
To speak particularly, this was in the year 1875; for the next year we camped near the spot, and Hants Corby tried to frighten us into seeing the Hermit's ghost. Bazilloa Armitage was denounced in June, and Hants Corby on the second Friday in August, as Hants and the Hermit fished near each other on the river. The Hermit denounced him under three heads—sluggard, scoffer, and beast wallowing in the sty of his own lustful contentment. On Saturday the Hermit rowed up to Hants Corby's place in the rain and denounced him again.
Sunday morning the Hermit rose early, turned his back on the Wyantenaug, and climbed the cliff, onward and up through the pines. The prophets of old went into high places when they prayed; and it was an idea of his that those who would walk in the rugged path after them could do no better. Possibly the day was an anniversary, for it was of an August day many years gone—before ever a charcoal pit was built on the Cattle Ridge—that the Hermit first appeared on the Wyantenaug, with his leather clothes in a bundle on his back, and perhaps another and invisible burden beneath it. A third burden he took up immediately, that of denouncing the sins of Wyantenaug Valley, as I have said.
All that Sabbath day the river went its way, and late in the afternoon the sunlight stretched a thin finger beneath the hemlocks almost to the Hermit's door. Across the river the two children of Bazilloa Armitage, boy and girl, came down to the water's edge. The boy pulled a pole and line out of some mysterious place in the bank. The little girl sat primly on the grass, mindful of her white pinafore.
“You better look out, Cis,” he said. “Any fish you catch on Sunday is devils. You don't touch him. You cut the line and let him dry till Monday.”
“Oh, Tad!” gasped the little girl, “won't the Leather Hermit tell?”
“Well,” said Tad, sturdily, “father said he'd get even, if it took a month of Sundays, and that's six Sundays by this time. There ain't anything bothers the Hermit like catching the fish on Sundays, specially if you catch a lot of 'em. Blamed old fool!” grumbled Tad.