Early candlelight stories

by Stella C. Shetter

“We were down at the hole under the willows where we fished in summer and the boys set traps for muskrats in winter. It was getting colder, and I told Charlie I thought I’d go on to the house instead of going with him to the cabin in the sugar grove where he and Truman were keeping their skins that winter. The cabin was convenient to the traps, and Truman had put a good lock on the door and he and Charlie each had a key. I wanted to go to the house to play with brother Joe’s baby and see whether anyone else had come and to find out how the dinner was coming on. So Charlie told me to go ahead and he would come as soon as he skinned a couple of muskrats he had caught in his traps.

“There were so many of us and so much confusion that I did not notice until dinner was nearly over that Charlie was not there. When I called Mother’s attention to it, she said he was probably around somewhere and would eat presently. It took a long time to serve dinner that day, and afterward a sled load of neighboring young folks came in and there were games and music and a general good time. No one missed Charlie but me, and I didn’t miss him all the time, either.

“But about four o’clock in the afternoon Mother came out to the kitchen where some of the girls were popping corn and asked anxiously if anyone had seen Charlie. Belle said he hadn’t come in for any dinner.

“‘I can’t imagine where he is,’ Mother said. ‘He never did a thing like this before. He may have met the Orbison boys and gone home with them, but I can’t understand it at all. It isn’t like Charlie.’

“Just then Truman came up from the cellar with a big basket of apples we had polished the previous day.

“‘What about Charlie?’ he asked. ‘Where is he? What’s the trouble?’

“Mother explained that Charlie had gone to his traps early that morning and hadn’t been at the house since, nor been seen by any one since he had started for the cabin with two muskrats to skin.

“Truman just stared at Mother.

“‘You say Charlie went to the cabin this morning?’ he repeated slowly as if he couldn’t believe it. ‘Well, then, by jingoes, Mother, that’s where he is right now!’ And he went on to tell how when he was coming from feeding the stock on the upper place he had noticed that the door of the cabin was shut, but the lock was not snapped. He supposed Charlie had forgotten to tend to it as he had one other night, and so he had snapped it shut and come along home. Charlie had evidently been busy and had not heard the lock click.