Mr. Armstrong, who had been telegraphed for, arrived with a police officer that night; and Miss Prillwitz, father, and Mr. Stillman were absent all the next morning making depositions to aid in the identification of the prisoners.
It was finally decided to remove them to New York to await trial on Mr. Armstrong's charges. We set out that afternoon for Ashfield, our route leading us over beautiful hills, and affording us views of rare loveliness. Ashfield is a village loved by literary men as Deerfield is by artists. Deerfield nestles in a valley, while Ashfield lies on the breezy hill-top; George William Curtis is the centre of the coterie of rare minds who make Ashfield their summer home. Mr. Curtis gives a lecture here once a year for the benefit of the Sanderson Academy. At this time every manner of vehicle brings the country-people over the winding roads, which converge in Ashfield like the spokes of a wheel in their hub. We were not fortunate enough to light on this red-letter day, and we accordingly rested over night at the long low inn, and started early the next morning for uncle's home in Hawley. The distance was short, as the crow flies, but it seemed to be all up-hill. The last mile was through one of those gorges so common in this region, where the fissure between the hills is so narrow that the sun only looks in for two or three hours. Slowly climbing the long, green-vaulted stairway, the dusky tapestry was at length looped back for us, and the road, emerging from the wooded ravine, gleamed yellow-white between the grassy mounds. Crowning one of these knolls stood a long, white farm-house, spreading out wing after wing in hospitable effort to shelter the entire hill-top. Beside the road stood a post with a letter-box affixed, for the reception of the mail left by the daily stage. We passed a huddle of old barns and out-buildings, among which I recognized a carpenter's shop, a carriage-shed, a sugar-house in convenient proximity to a grove of maples, a dairy through which ran the brook, keeping cool and solid the eighty pounds of butter which my cousins made each week, a cider-mill, and behind it an orchard of russet apple-trees, and a long row of bee-hives fronting the flower-garden.
Uncle expected us, and it was delightful to see the meeting between the two brothers, who had not seen each other in twelve years. There were plenty of airy bedrooms, hung with pure white dimity, and after our gypsy life it seemed very pleasant to find once more the comforts of a home. We spent several days at the Maples, attending service in the dear old-fashioned church with its high, square pews.
Aunt Prue had all of our travel-soiled clothing neatly washed, and refilled the emptied hampers and lunch-baskets with abundant supplies from the products of the farm and her own good cookery.
Uncle was a large, easy man, who dearly loved to tell a story to match his own ample proportions, only the twinkle in his eye redeeming him from the charge of deception. Aunt Prue's rigid conscience revolted at uncle's romances. "Asahel Smith!" she would exclaim, "how can you lie like that; and you a church-member?"
"Now, Prudence," Uncle Asahel would reply, "the catechism says a lie is a story told with intention to deceive, and when I told these girls that I drove the oxen home with the last load of hay so fast that I got it into the barn before a drop of water fell, while it was raining so hard behind me that Watch, who was following the wagon, actually swam all the way up from the medder—when I told 'em that, I cal'late I didn't deceive 'em; I was only cultivating their imaginations."
Aunt Prue groaned in spirit, and began to sing, in a high, cracked voice.
"False are the men of high degree,
The baser sort are vanity;
Weighed in the balance, both appear
Light as a puff of empty air."
While at The Maples we made an excursion to Cummington, formerly Bryant's home. We sat in the library, shut in by a thick grove, where he composed his translations of the Odyssey and Iliad, and we played with a little pet dog of which he had been very fond. Not far from the estate is a fine library, Bryant's gift to the little town. "Bryant's River" is a brawling little stream which flows through a very picturesque region. We amused ourselves by fancying that we recognized spots described in several of his poems.
There was a grand old oak upon the place which might have inspired his lines—