When he had graded the pit, as he thought, sufficiently, he administered a few blows with the flat of the shovel, and an energy that sent Dapple flying from the pit like a hen from a hawk, observing, as he went leisurely to work to fill up the hole, “Much obliged to you, neighbor, for this visit; call again the first opportunity.”
When Joe had filled up the pit, he flung some brush over, took the pail, and went to milking, never mentioning the matter, even to his wife, till years afterwards.
The mare never found opportunity to comply with Joe’s kind invitation. He might have left his crops out of doors for all her.
Dapple mended her pace as she approached the rising ground on which the Griffin homestead was located, for she had often proved the hospitality of its stable and pastures. The buildings were situated on the summit of a hill, which rose quite abruptly from the river. The blazing sun poured down upon a house of enormous size, the lower rooms finished, the rest a shell. Not a tree or a bush, save one old stub, stood near it. There was not the least attempt at a garden, but, far out in the field, in the midst of the corn, cabbage, beets, carrots, and onions were growing, and peas now ripe in the pod.
On one side of the front door was a goose-pen; on the other a molasses hogshead, into which an upright board conducted the rain water from the eaves. The only approach to anything in the shape of plants was some house leek (then considered a sovereign remedy for corns), in an old skillet.
At a short distance from the end door was a small enclosure, made by driving stakes into the ground, in which were roots of wormwood, tansy, comfrey, lovage, and sweet agrimony, while an enormous hop-vine covered a great part of the front of the house. All about the door-yard were shingle bolts, bunches of shingles, old yokes, logs, sticks of hewn timber, drags, sleds, with the stakes in, broken and whole, and a brush-harrow was tipped up against the house, right under one of the front windows, while between them the skin of a bear, recently killed, was stretched and nailed to the clapboards.
Beside the end door stood a leech, that had been set up in the spring, to make soap, and suffered to stand through the summer, as Mrs. Griffin liked to have weak lye to scour with. Within a gun-shot of the western end of the house stood the stub of a massive pine, which had been broken off about twenty-five feet from the ground, and was hollow, having the opening on the north-west side. In the cavity were augers, planes, saws, chisels, shovels, axes, and canting dogs, thrown together in most admirable confusion. The tools were of English make, and evidently of excellent temper, but covered with rust. From the dead limbs on the outside hung rusty scythes and a grain cradle. This was the Griffin tool-chest. An eighth of a mile from the house, down under the hill, was the well.
In the rough climate of New England, the inhabitants were solicitous to place their buildings in a lee, either under the side of a hill, the protection of a wood, or to dispose the buildings themselves in such a manner as to give them a sheltered and sunny door and barn-yard. But here the barn was a great distance from the house, the buildings disposed without the least reference to shelter, as though the occupants were insensible to wind or weather. Yet in other respects everything betokened plenty and thrift; the walls were well built of rocks of great size, and handsomely laid up; the barns were large, and through the open doors the hay could be seen, brought so far over the floors that the mows nearly touched each other, leaving barely room to swing a flail.
An immense log crib, the top covered with boards and shingles, where the long yellow ears of corn showed through the chinks, attested that the thrifty owner kept a year’s stock of bread on hand. On a scaffold of poles, laid over the high beams, bundles of last year’s flax were visible, while the number of milking-stools, hanging on the barn-yard fence, gave token of a large dairy.
To complete the picture, four great hogs were rooting in the chips after thistle roots, and a white mare, with a sucking colt and two half-grown ones, was standing in the shade, on the north side of the house. As Parson Goodhue gained the summit of the hill, and was not far from the old stub, he saw approaching some one whose form was nearly concealed by a huge back-load of spruce poles, from twenty to twenty-five feet in length, and bearing in one hand an axe. As he flung the poles from his shoulder, and stood erect, he caught sight of the minister.