Of their own land, the Whipples for years had cultivated only a garden-patch close about the house, and this in so luke-warm a fashion that the net results—some potatoes, a little sweet corn, a few pumpkins, and so on—never by any chance saw them through the winter.
Why they did not sell this unproductive land to Elisha Teachout, who evidently wanted it, instead of borrowing money from him on it to pay taxes for it, I could never understand. Very likely they did not try to explain it to themselves.
But it was the fact, nevertheless, that in July of 1863 they owed Mr. Teachout something over three hundred dollars in accrued interest upon the mortgages he held, and that to prevent his foreclosing and evicting them from the house, Mose Whipple went to the war as Teachout's substitute.
This year of 1863 had still a week of life before it on the morning in question—when Mose returned from the war.
He had made across the stiff-crusted level wastes of snow from Teachout's straight as the bee's flight, even before the dawn began to break. He had heard the talk in the barn about the certainty of his capture, but it made little impression on his mind. It did not even occur to him that the matter concerned him. What had stirred him was Job Parshall's roundabout and reluctant admission that all was not right with the old man.
He had waited only a few minutes in the haymow after Job had gone to the farm-house before the temptation to be off again toward home mastered him. It was silly to linger here for food when the goal was so close at hand.
He took a couple of English turnips from one of the fodder bins to eat on the way, and let himself cautiously out by the rear door of the cow-barn.
It was still quite dark and bitterly cold, but he started briskly off. After he had left the barnyard an idea occurred to him. His father might be perishing of hunger! He turned and bent his steps back across the yard to the hen-house, opened the door, and crept in. A cackling murmur fell upon the darkened silence, rising all at once into a harsh and strident squawking, then ceasing abruptly.
Mose emerged upon the instant, shut and hooked the door, and started to run, stuffing a big, limp and shapeless object into his coat pocket.
When he had rapped upon and rattled vigorously for a third time the window on the north side of the house he had journeyed so far and risked so much to return to, Mose was conscious of a heavy, sudden sinking of the heart. That was the bedroom window; how was it his father had not heard him?