IN HAYING TIME
I took a steep southward road and led the horse, with frequent rests, up the hills. Darkness had been fast gathering, the sunset colors had faded, one bright star glowed in the west, and at its right a gloomy cloud mass reached up from the horizon. The neighboring fields got more and more snow-covered, until the black ribbon of the muddy road was about the only thing which marred their whiteness. There were rocky pastures about, intermitting with patches of woodland. Here and there were stiff dark lines of spruce along the hilltops, and these, with the white pastures, made the country seem like a bit of Norway. Snow clung to the evergreen arms of the spruces and whitened the upper fence-rails, and the muddy trail of the road ceased in the crisp whiteness.
I was going through a piece of woods when I saw a house ahead with a glow of light in a window. I went past the friendly light. The dreary road still stretched on. No church was in sight, and I drew up and ran back to the house. A man came to the back door with a lamp. He said it was still two miles to the church, and I asked if I might stay overnight. Soon I had my horse in the yard and was comfortably settled by the kitchen fire. The kitchen was large, but the long table, the stove, a bed, and the other furniture made it rather cramped when the whole family were indoors. There were grandpa, and grandma, and “Hen” and his wife, and “Bucky,” and “Sherm,” and “Sis,” and Dan, and little Harry, not to mention a big dog and several cats. After supper, grandma fell to knitting with some yarn of her own spinning; grandpa smoked his pipe and told bear stories; “Hen” mended a broken ramrod so that his gun might be ready for a coon hunt he was planning; Mrs. “Hen” sewed; “Sherm” and “Bucky” were in a corner trying to swap hats, neckties, etc., and “Sis” was helping them; Dan ran some bullets which he made out of old lead-pipe melted in the kitchen fire; and Harry circulated all about, and put the cats through a hole cut for them in the cellar door, and climbed on the chairs along the walls, and picked away the plastering at sundry places where the lath was beginning to show through.
THE STREAM AND THE ELMS IN THE MEADOW
Bedtime came at nine and I was given a little room partitioned off in the unfinished second story. In the first gray of the next morning a loud squawking commenced outside of so harsh and sudden a nature as to be quite alarming to the unaccustomed ear. Later I learned this was the flock of ducks and geese which had gathered about the house to give a morning salute. The wind was whistling about, and came in rather freely at the missing panes in my window. As soon as I heard movements below I hastened downstairs. The two fellows in the bed in the unfinished part adjoining my room were still snoozing, and there were scattered heaps of clothing about the floor.
There was no one in the kitchen, and though the stove lid was off, no fire had yet been started. I heard old Mr. Yokes out in the back room.
UNDER THE OLD SYCAMORE