Ruth stared at him in dumb amazement and horror, while he proceeded, pouring forth his long concealed wrath.
“Well, I’ve got Seth Beeman’s wife, and, what’s wuth more, his farm, an’ his childern right ’nunder my thumb. I hope he knows on’t. And now, ma’am,” lowering his voice from its passionate exultation, “you don’t want to breathe a word o’ this to your nice neighbors or to your young ’uns. It wouldn’t do no good and it might be unpleasant all round. You don’t want folks to know what a fool you be.”
After this disclosure, Ruth lived, in weariness and vain regret, a life that seemed quite hopeless but for looking forward to the time when her son could assert his rights and be her champion. Her nature was one of those that still bend, without being broken, by whatever weight is laid on them.
[CHAPTER X—REBELLION]
One day Nathan was gathering ashes from the heaps where the log piles had been burned and storing them in a rude shed. Close by this stood the empty leach-tubs awaiting filling and the busy days and nights when the potash-making should begin. It was hard, unpleasant work, irritating to skin, eyes, and temper. It was natural a boy should linger a little as Nathan did, when he emptied a basket, and quickly retreated with held breath out of the dusty cloud. He looked longingly on the shining channel of the creek, and wished he might follow it to the lake and fish in the cool shadows of the shore. He wished that Job would chance to come through the woods, but Job lately rarely came near them, for he was vexed with Ruth for mating with this stranger, and the new master gave no welcome to any of the friends of the old master. His hands were busy as his thoughts, when he was startled by his stepfather’s voice close behind him.
“You lazy whelp, what you putterin’ ’bout? You spend half your time a gawpin. You git them ashes housed afore noon or I’ll give ye a skinnin’, and I’ll settle an old score at the same time,” and Toombs switched a blue beech rod he held in his big hand. After seeing the boy hurry nervously to this impossible task, he went back to his chopping.
The shadows crept steadily toward the north till they marked noontime, and still one gray ash heap confronted Nathan. As he stood with a full basket of ashes poised on the edge of the ash bin, Toombs appeared, with his axe on his shoulder and the beech in his hand. “You know what I told you, and Silas Toombs doesn’t go back on his words; no, sir.”
“I couldn’t do it. I tried, but I couldn’t get ’em all done!”
Silas strode toward him in a fury, when Nathan hurled the basket of ashes full at his head, and dodging behind the shed was in rapid flight toward the woods, when his assailant emerged from the choking, blinding cloud, sputtering out mingled oaths and ashes. In a moment he caught the line of flight and followed in swift pursuit. The boy’s nimble feet widened the distance between them, but he was at the start almost exhausted with his severe work, so that when he reached the woods his only hope lay in hiding.
Silas, entering the woods, could neither see nor hear his intended victim. Listening between spasms of rushing and raging, he heard a slight rustling among the branches of a great hemlock that reared its huge, russet-gray trunk close beside him. Looking up, he saw a pair of dusty legs dangling twenty feet above him.