Mark Davenport was at work on a farm a short distance from the village. He hoped to enter college the following autumn, and he knew no means to obtain money for a portion of his outfit except by the labor of his hands. He could get twenty dollars a month for the summer season. Sixty, or possibly seventy dollars!—what ideas of opulence were suggested by the sound of those words!
It was a damp, drizzly day; there was not a settled rain, yet it was too wet to work in the corn. Mark was therefore busy in picking loose stones from the surface of a field cultivated the year before, and now "seeded down" for grass. A portion of the field bordered on a pond, and the alders upon its margin formed a dense green palisade, over which might be seen the gray surface of the water freckled by the tiny drops of rain. Low clouds trailed their gauzy robes over the top of Mount Quobbin, and flecks of mist swept across the blue sides of the loftier Mount Elizabeth.
"What a perfect day for fishing!" thought Mark. "If I had my tackle here, and a frog's leg or a shiner, I would soon have a pickerel out from under those lilypads."
But he kept at work, and, having his basket full of stones, carried them to the pond and plumped them in. A growl of anger came up from behind the bushes.
"What the Devil do you mean, you lubber, throwing stones over here to scare away the fish?"
The bushes parted at the same time, showing Hugh Branning sitting in the end of his boat, and apparently just ready to fling out his line.
"If I had known you were there fishing," said Mark, "I shouldn't have thrown the stones into the water. But," he continued, while every fibre tingled with indignation, "I will have you to know that I am not to be talked to in that way by you or anybody else."
"I would like to know how you are going to help yourself," said Hugh, stepping ashore and advancing.
"You will find out, Mr. Insolence, if you don't leave this field. You a'n't on the quarter-deck yet, bullying a tar with his hat off."
"Bless me! how the young Vulcan talks!"