Tom Akerley / His Adventures in the Tall Timber and at Gaspard's Clearing on the Indian River

by Theodore Goodridge Roberts

“You aren’t saying much to-night,” remarked Tom, after his host had sat silent for nearly an hour and two games of chess had been played.

“An’ thinkin’ all the more, lad,” replied Gaspard, pleasantly.

“But what about, Grandad?” asked Catherine.

“One thing an’ another, one thing an’ another—but mostly about human vanity an’ ignorance an’ the hand o’ Providence,” answered Gaspard.

The young people let it go at that. They smiled at each other across the corner of the table and set up the chessmen again. The subjects of human vanity and ignorance did not touch their imaginations, and they were well content with the workings of the hand of Providence.

Tom left the house after breakfast, with a light pack on his shoulder. His heart was light, too, though the sky was gray and a cold and gusty wind blew smothers of icy rain across the clearings. Upon reaching camp he immediately built up the fire, which lay full length across the front of the lean-to, dried himself thoroughly and smoked a pipe. The heat and cheery light beat into the shelter, thrown forward by mighty back-logs. Hail-stones rattled in the trees, hopped on the frozen moss and hissed in the hot caverns of the fire. A big, smoke-blue moose bird or “whiskey jack” fluttered about the camp, harsh of voice, confiding, and possessed of curiosity in that extreme degree that is said to have killed a cat.

Tom felt happy in the present moment and situation. He even felt that his happiness might well be established here for a lifetime, if only the great world, from which he had parted so violently and suddenly, would continue to leave him in peace. He was glad that he had not followed Mick Otter and the lure of peltries seven miles farther afield. He felt that the distance of six miles was quite far enough for any sane person to be separated from Gaspard Javet’s clearings.

He dined at mid-day on tea and bacon and Catherine’s bread and Catherine’s home-made strawberry jam. He fed the attentive moose bird with rinds of bacon and bits of bread soaked succulently in hot fat. The rain and hail ceased early in the afternoon. He left the shelter and worked his ax for an hour, felling and trimming selected trees for fuel. The moose bird kept him company, flitting about him and attending upon every stroke of the ax as if expecting it to produce bacon rinds, instead of chips. Then he inspected the three traps that Mick had left with him. They were empty—but their condition did not chill his sense of contentment in the least.

Soon after supper he heaped the long fire high with green logs and rolled himself in his blankets. The night was frosty, but the gusty wind had gone down with the sun; and the fire-lit shelter seemed an exceedingly comfortable and secure retreat to him. To fully appreciate comfort, one must be within arm’s-length of discomfort or but recently emerged from it. Thousands of persons in steam-heated places with electric bells and janitors do not know what they are enjoying—or what they are missing.

Tom was fully conscious of his comfort. He lay for some time with his eyes half open, gazing up at the flicker of firelight on the poles and tarpaulin overhead; thinking drowsily of Catherine MacKim, and of Gaspard with his good heart and extraordinary beliefs; and of Mick Otter. He liked Gaspard better than any other elderly person of his acquaintance, despite the old woodman’s embarrassing ambition to deal with the supposed devilish powers of the air with a rifle. And he liked Mick Otter, too. In short, he liked every one he had met in Gaspard’s clearings except Ned Tone. It was really wonderful how full his heart was of affection and how entirely he seemed to have finished with worldly ambition. He would make an early start on the morrow for Racquet Pond, to see how that amusing old Indian was getting along; and he would visit the clearings again on the day after that, for a game of chess. A fine game, chess—an old and romantic game—an ancient pastime of kings and queens. He fell asleep and dreamed of kings and queens in romantic costumes playing chess with ivory pieces—and all the queens looked like Catherine MacKim.