What was it to Billy Birch, if his dog did kill a neighbor's sheep, now and then? What did he care, what should he care? If they were his own sheep, that would alter the case. But Cæsar never killed his master's sheep. Wasn't that kind in Cæsar? And as to this sheep-biting habit of his, why it is the nature of dogs to kill sheep. Cæsar must kill somebody's sheep; and if he hadn't picked out a good fat one from this flock, it would have been somebody else's flock. What is the use in making such a fuss about a sheep or two? The loss of one sheep won't break any body. What can't be cured, must be endured. People must take care of their sheep, if they don't want them to be killed.
That is the way this selfish, narrow-minded farmer reasoned and talked. You can see, plainly enough, that he was not the sort of man to be very much respected in the neighborhood. He was not respected. In fact, there was not, in all the parish, a more generally unpopular man than Billy Birch.
The boys, I have heard, bore him a grudge of long standing. It related to the huckleberries and hazel nuts in the old man's birch woods. There were bushels of huckleberries, and almost as many hazel nuts, in those woods. But would you have thought of such a thing? Mr. Birch forbade the boys picking any of his huckleberries or hazel nuts. Ever so many huckleberries decayed on the bushes every year, or were left to be harvested by the birds, because Mr. Birch's family could not pick them all themselves, and he was so tight that he would not let any body else pick them. He was like the dog in the manger, you see. He could not eat the hay himself, and he would not let any body else eat it.
But the meanest thing that I ever heard of his doing, was this: In these same woods—the woods where the huckleberries and hazel nuts grew—there were great multitudes of birch trees, of different species and among the rest, some of that species which goes by the name, among children, of black birch. I need not tell any of my country readers about this kind of birch. They know it well enough. They have eaten birch bark, many a time; and, for ought I know, some of them have felt a tingling sensation in the region of the back and legs, brought about by the use of birch twigs in the hands of some schoolmaster.
Well, Moses Ramble was crossing Billy Birch's woods one day in the spring of the year. For awhile, he whistled along, as merry-hearted as the blue birds that had just returned from their southern tour, and who were chirping on the branches over his head, breaking off, now and then, a few sprigs of birch, from the trees along his path. By and bye, he sat down on the fence, to rest himself, still going on with his whistling, at intervals, when his mouth was not too much occupied with the birch to interfere with the music.
THE BOY IN THE WOODS.[ToList]
While the merry young fellow was sitting here, feeling at peace with all the world, and not dreaming but all the world was at peace with him, he heard a slight rustling behind him, and, looking over his shoulder, whom should he see but Billy Birch himself, leaning against a chestnut tree, and looking as if he were angry enough to bite in two a hoe handle.