AN OUTLYING VILLAGE
At the tunnel was a high railroad bridge spanning the river, a long freight train waiting, a round signal station, a few houses, and the lines of iron rails running into the gloomy aperture in the side of the hill. This was in a sort of ravine, and so somewhat secluded and holding little suggestion of its enormous length of over four miles. Some sheep were feeding on a grassy hillside just across the track, and looking back upon them they made a very pretty contrast to the wild scenery. The hills mounded up all about; the sun in the west silvered the water of the rapid river; a train waiting below the iron span of the bridge sent up its wavering white plume of smoke; and here on the near grassy slope were the sheep quietly feeding.
The road wound on through the same romantic wildness; now a mountain would shoot up a peak steeper and higher than those surrounding; but none of them seemed to have names. As one of the inhabitants expressed it, “They are too common round here to make any fuss over.”
A VILLAGE VIEW IN A HALF-WOODED DELL
In the late afternoon, after a hard climb up the long hills, I passed Monroe Bridge, where in the deep ravine was a large paper-mill. The road beyond was muddy and badly cut up by teams, and progress was slow. I expected to spend the night at Monroe Church, which I understood was three miles farther up, but I got off the direct route and on to one of the side roads. The sun had disappeared behind the hills and a gray gloom was settling down. The road kept getting worse. It was full of ruts and bog-holes. Like most of the roads of the region, the way followed up a hollow, and had a brook by its side choked up with great boulders. I came upon bits of snow, and thought there were places where I could scrape up a very respectable snowball.
THE OLD WELL-SWEEP
After a time I met a team and stopped to inquire the way to the church, and the distance. The fellow hailed had a grocery wagon, and no doubt had been delivering goods. He seemed greatly pleased by my question; in fact, was not a little overcome, showed a white row of teeth beneath his mustache, and he quite doubled up in his amusement. He said he did not know where the church was; and he guessed I wasn’t much acquainted up in these parts; said he wasn’t either. He stopped to laugh between every sentence. He apparently thought he was the only man from the outside world who ever visited these regions, and now was tickled to death to find another fellow had blundered into his district. There was no church about there, he said; I must be pretty badly mixed up; this was South Readsboro’, Vermont. “This is the end of the earth,” he said. He kept on laughing as he contemplated me, and I got away up the road as soon as I could, while he, still chuckling to himself, drove down.
The snow patches become larger and more numerous, and soon I came into an open and saw a village up the hill. This was October, and the sight ahead was strange and weird. The roofs of the buildings were white with snow; there were scattered patches of it all about, and a high pasture southward was completely covered. It seemed as if I had left realities behind; as if in some way I was an explorer in the regions of the far north; as if here was a little town taken complete possession of by the frost; as if no life could remain, and I would find the houses deserted or the inhabitants all frozen and dead. There was a little saw-mill here and some big piles of boards; everywhere marks of former life; but the premature frost seemed to have settled down like a shroud on all about. I entered the village and found a man working beside a house, and learned from him that I had still three miles to travel before I came to the church.