MORGAN MAKES A TRIP TO BOSTON.
For several days Morgan showed his regret at the fate of the beaver by neither romping nor playing. When David and himself were on their way from place to place and resting at noon, he cropped grass in a very staid and dignified manner, whilst David sat in the shade and ate his luncheon of light wheaten cakes and cheese, the two things for which Mistress Hannah was famous.
On these trips they sometimes met the Boston-Canada stage coaches, carrying the mail, and they would stand one side and watch the horses running at full speed over the rough roads; the horn winding a lusty warning to private coach, curricle or rider, that might be approaching from the other direction round a sharp bend in the way.
Again they would pass lazy oxen, drawing their sleds slowly to market, or coming home from mill, their loads creaking behind them as they swayed awkwardly from side to side, responding reluctantly to the goad-sticks in their drivers’ hands.
These pioneer teams drew the products of the outlying farms—maple sugar, and potash and “black salts”—(gathered by thrifty farmers from the ashes of winter fires or logging heaps)—to the towns.
The forests of Vermont at first were gloomy and almost impenetrable, tending, some claimed, to make the people grave and serious, but already the lumber industry had begun the destruction of the beautiful woods of hemlock, birch, white pine, ash, chestnut and stately oak. Saw-mills whirred and sang busily on river banks, whose falls afforded such marvellous water-power for their wheels, and comfortable houses soon took the place of pioneer huts in many places.
In spite of his faithful service to the Wings, they did not buy the Morgan, and Hawkins after a while sold him to the same Robert Evans, at Randolph, for whom he had once done such good service.
Randolph had a newspaper now, called The Weekly Wanderer, and this praised the Morgan so highly that for a while, out of pride, Evans had to keep him in good condition. But unfortunately this pride lasted but a short time, Evans being too busy at his farm work and trapping, earning a living for his family.
On the day of his return to Randolph, Morgan heard that Master Justin Morgan had gone on to “lie in green pastures, beside still waters.” So sweet a sound had this to the lonely horse, separated from his good friends in Montpelier, that he sometimes wandered away from the Evans’ primitive barn, looking for that “Valley of the Shadow” of which men spoke when referring to the kindly school-master. The heat of the mid-summer days sometimes oppressed the little horse, and he grew thin and weary at the plow, but there was no “Valley of the Shadow” for him—no other valley could he find than his work-a-day one along the banks of the sparkling White River in full sunshine.
In the weary battling against the uncongenial farm life, he was no little cheered by the memory of what his father told him of his high-crested ancestor, the Godolphin Arabian—that he, in all his greatness and beauty, had once pulled a water cart in France.