"I'm sure I can't imagine what should put Maquoit Bay in my head to-night, unless it was meeting with you, and thinking of old times; but it seems to set forth my condition exactly. Six weeks ago it was high water with us, a spring tide, up over everything, clear to the grass ground, filling every cove and creek, the mouths of the brooks kissing the birch roots on the edge of the cliffs, and lifting up the strawberry leaves. Now it is dead low water, bare flats, angry sky, and to me the voyage of life seems 'bound in shallows and in miseries.'"
"That's one side, old chum" (putting his arms around Rich's neck), "but the tide only ebbs to flow again. The farther it runs off, and the more it drains out at one time, the higher it flows the next."
It was the first manifestation of anything like depression that Morton had noticed in his friend. Rich, however, shook it off, as the bird shakes the dew from its plumage, saying, with a smile,—
"You are right, Mort; and that's the way I look at it generally; but I can't yet visit the old home, and come away again, without stirring up something that had better be kept down; especially when the cat puts her head in my bosom, as she did to-night, and says, 'Do stay here with me, I am so lonesome.'"
Morton, as they came in sight of the house now occupied by the Richardsons, was most forcibly struck with the contrast between this abode and the one they had just left. Their present habitation stood in a tan-yard; indeed it had, in the days of his poverty, been the residence of the owner of the tan-yard, who being pinched for room, had crowded his house into the smallest possible limits.
It was placed very near the line of the street, leaving barely space for a single doorstep, which was a pasture stone. The tan-pits at one side approached within two feet of the cellar wall. On the other was a currier's shop, leaving just space enough between the two buildings for a narrow cart road. Beneath the back windows of this shop were old oil barrels and heaps of curriers' shavings, stewing and simmering in the sun.
Directly behind the house a garden spot twenty-five feet by thirty was fenced out. It had not been ploughed for some years; the Richardsons did not care to cultivate it, as their stay was but temporary, and it was overgrown with weeds, and strewn with old boots and shoes, broken pottery, pots and pans that had outlived their usefulness, heaps of ashes, and the bleaching bones of cats that had come to an untimely end.
Abutting on this lot was a large shed, open on the side facing the dwelling in which was the "beam" house, where the green and bloody hides were received and "fleshed." Here were heaps of horns, and the pith or marrow that comes out of them when they taint. The roof of this shed was covered with glue skins, that is, the trimmings of the hides saved to make glue, spread to dry, and which attracted swarms of green flies; add to this a stagnant mill pond that supplied water for the pits, and to propel a bark mill, fences, and walls hung with sides of leather spread out to dry, and smeared, or, in technical language, dubbed, with tallow and rancid fish oil, and you have a faithful description of the surroundings of this delightful abode. But aside from actual experience, imagination cannot conceive or tongue describe the combined odors furnished by these various substances when operated upon by sun and wind.