I remember that we had a nice clean tablecloth and a good supper the night she came, and we all got along well at the table. We said “Please” every time, and our mother never once had to look at us. After supper we went into the parlor for a visit with Aunt Louisa. This must have been only a little while before my mother’s death; for I can see her plainer that night than at any other time. I wish I could remember the tones of her voice; but their faintest echo has entirely passed away, and I am not sure I should know them if they were spoken in my ear. Her face, too, seems hidden by a mist, and is faded and indistinct. Yet there she sits in her little sewing-chair, rocking back and forth, with her needle in her hand and her basket on her lap. Poor woman! she was busy every minute, and I suppose she never would have had a chance to rest if she had not gone up to the churchyard for her last long sleep when we were all so young.
Aunt Louisa has brought her work; she is knitting a long woollen stocking, and the yarn is white. She puts on her glasses, unwinds the stocking, pulls her long steel needles out of the ball of yarn and throws it on the floor; then she begins to knit. The knitting seems to help her to talk; for as she moves the needles back and forth, she never for a moment stops talking or lacks a single word. Something is said that reminds her of her husband, and she tells us of his death: “It was nearly thirty years ago. He went out to the barn to hitch up the colt. The colt was one that Truman had just got that summer. He traded a pair of oxen for it, to a man over in Johnston, but I disremember his name. It was a tall rangy colt, almost as black as coal, but with a white stripe on its nose and white hind feet. He was going out to draw in a load of hay from the bottom meadow. It was a little late in the season, but the spring had been dry, and it had rained almost all the summer, and he hadn’t had a chance to get in his hay any sooner. He was doing his work that year alone, for his hired man had left because his father died, and it was so late in the season that he thought he would get on alone for the rest of the year.” I do not yet know how her husband was really killed, although she told us about it so many times, stopping often to sigh and take a pinch of snuff, and wipe her nose and eyes with a large red and black handkerchief. She said she had never felt like marrying since, and that she had no consolation but her religion.
After she had finished the story of her husband’s death, she began to tell us about the neighbors. She seemed especially interested in some man who lived alone in the village and who had done something terrible; I cannot now tell what it was, and in fact I hardly understood then what she meant. But she said she had been talking with Deacon Cole and with Squire Allen, and they thought it was a burning shame that the men folks didn’t do something about it—that Squire Allen had told her there was no law that could touch him, but she thought if the men had any spirit they would go there some night and rotten-egg him and ride him on a rail and drum him out of town. I cannot remember that my mother said anything about the matter, but she seemed to agree, and Aunt Louisa kept on talking until it was almost nine o’clock; then she said she thought it was about time for her to go home. My mother said a few words about her staying overnight, but Aunt Louisa said she ought to go “so as to be there early in the morning.” I know I thought at the time that my mother did not urge her very much, and that if she had, Aunt Louisa would most likely have stayed. Then my father told my older brother and me to get a lantern and go home with her. Of course there was nothing else to do. All along the road she kept talking of the terrible things the man had done, and how she thought the men and boys of the village ought to do something about it.
A few nights afterwards I heard that something was to happen in the town. I cannot now remember how I heard, but at any rate I went to bed, and took care not to go to sleep. About midnight my brother and I got up and went to the public square. Twenty or thirty men and boys had gathered at the flag-pole. I did not know all their names, but I knew there were some of the best people in the place. I am certain I saw Deacon Cole, and I know that we went over to Squire Allen’s carriage-house and got a large plank which he had told the crowd they might have. The men had sticks and stones and eggs, and we all went to the man’s house. When we reached the fence, we opened the gate and went inside and began throwing stones and sticks at the house and through the windows; and we broke in the front door with Squire Allen’s plank. All the men and boys hooted and jeered with the greatest glee. I can still remember seeing a half-dressed man run out of the back door of the house, down the garden path, to get away. I can never forget his scared white face as he passed me in the gloom. After breaking all the doors and windows, we went back home and went to bed, thinking we had done something brave and noble, and helped the morals of the town.
The next day little knots of people gathered around the house and in the streets and on the square, to talk about the “raid.” Nearly all of them agreed that we had done exactly right. There were only a few people, and those by no means the best citizens, who raised the faintest objection to what had been done.
Aunt Louisa was radiant. She made her tour of the neighborhood and told how she approved of the bravery of the men and boys. She said that after this everyone would know that Farmington was a moral town.
The hunted man died a year or so afterwards, and someone bought him a lonely grave on the outskirts of the churchyard where he could not possibly harm anyone who lay slumbering there, and then they buried him in the ground without regret. There was much discussion as to whether or not he should have a Christian funeral; but finally the old preacher decided that the ways of the Lord were past finding out, and the question should be left to Him to settle, and that he would preach a regular sermon, just as he did for all the rest.
When it came Aunt Louisa’s turn for a funeral, the whole town was in mourning. The choir practised the night before the funeral, so they might sing their very best, and the preacher never spoke so feelingly before. All the people in the room cried as if she were their dearest friend. Then they took her to the little graveyard and lowered her gently down beside Truman. Everyone said it was a “beautiful funeral.” In a few months a fine monument was placed on the little lot,—one almost as grand as Squire Allen’s. She left no children, and in her will she provided that all the property should be taken for the funeral and for a monument, except a small bequest to foreign missions.
CHAPTER XXII
THE SUMMER VACATION
If I were to pick out the happiest time of my life, I should name the first few days of the summer vacation after the district school was out.