It was little wonder, then, with these painful facts so fresh in his mind, that young Brandon Tarr found it so hard to stifle his emotion while his great uncle had been speaking. In fact, when presently the crabbed old man opened his lips to speak again, he arose hastily, threw down his book, and seized his hat and coat.
“I’m going out to see if I can pick off that flock of crows I saw around this morning,” he said hastily. “If you do get a chance to plant anything this spring, they’ll pull it up as fast as you cover the seed.”
“We kin put up scarecrows,” said Arad, with a scowl, his dissertation on the “shiftlessness” of Don’s father thus rudely broken off. “I can’t afford you powder an’ shot ter throw away at them birds.”
“Nobody asked you to pay for it,” returned the boy gruffly, and buttoning the old coat about him, and seizing his rifle from the hooks above the door, he went out into the damp outside world, which, despite its unpleasantness, was more bearable than the atmosphere of the farm house kitchen.
The farm which had come into Arad Tarr’s possession in what he termed a “business way,” contained quite one hundred acres of cultivated fields, rocky pastures, and forest land.
It was a productive farm and turned its owner a pretty penny every year, but judging from the appearance of the interior of the house and the dilapidated condition of the barn and other outbuildings, one would not have believed it.
There was sufficient work on the farm every year to keep six hired hands beside Brandon and the old man, himself, “on the jump” every minute during the spring, summer, and fall.
In the winter they two alone managed to do the chores, and old Arad even discharged the woman who cooked for the men during the working season.
As soon as the season opened, however, and the old man was obliged to hire help, the woman (who was a widow and lived during the winter with a married sister in the neighborhood) was established again in the Tarr house, and until the next winter they lived in a manner that Brandon termed “like Christians,” for she was a good cook and a neat housekeeper; but left to their own devices during the cold weather, he and his great uncle made sorry work of it.
“The frost is pretty much out of the ground now,” Brandon muttered as he crossed the littered barnyard, “and this drizzle will mellow up the earth in great shape. As soon as it stops, Uncle Arad will dig right in and work to make up for lost time, I s’pose.”