FullReads

“We ‘ll just have a good piece of bread-an’-butter now,” said the commander of the expedition, “and then we ‘ll hang up the basket on some peg inside the house out o’ the way o’ the sheep, and have a han’some entertainment as we ‘re comin’ back. She ‘ll be all through her little dinner when we get there, Mis’ Martin will; but she ‘ll want to make us some tea, an’ we must have our visit an’ be startin’ back pretty soon after two. I don’t want to cross all that low ground again after it’s begun to grow chilly. An’ it looks to me as if the clouds might begin to gather late in the afternoon.”

Before us lay a splendid world of sea and shore. The autumn colors already brightened the landscape; and here and there at the edge of a dark tract of pointed firs stood a row of bright swamp-maples like scarlet flowers. The blue sea and the great tide inlets were untroubled by the lightest winds.

“Poor land, this is!” sighed Mrs. Todd as we sat down to rest on the worn doorstep. “I ‘ve known three good hard-workin’ families that come here full o’ hope an’ pride and tried to make something o’ this farm, but it beat ’em all. There ‘s one small field that’s excellent for potatoes if you let half of it rest every year; but the land ‘s always hungry. Now, you see them little peaked-topped spruces an’ fir balsams comin’ up over the hill all green an’ hearty; they ‘ve got it all their own way! Seems sometimes as if wild Natur’ got jealous over a certain spot, and wanted to do just as she ‘d a mind to. You ‘ll see here; she ‘ll do her own ploughin’ an’ harrowin’ with frost an’ wet, an’ plant just what she wants and wait for her own crops. Man can’t do nothin’ with it, try as he may. I tell you those little trees means business!”

I looked down the slope, and felt as if we ourselves were likely to be surrounded and overcome if we lingered too long. There was a vigor of growth, a persistence and savagery about the sturdy little trees that put weak human nature at complete defiance. One felt a sudden pity for the men and women who had been worsted after a long fight in that lonely place; one felt a sudden fear of the unconquerable, immediate forces of Nature, as in the irresistible moment of a thunderstorm.

“I can recollect the time when folks were shy o’ these woods we just come through,” said Mrs. Todd seriously. “The men-folks themselves never ‘d venture into ’em alone; if their cattle got strayed they ‘d collect whoever they could get, and start off all together. They said a person was liable to get bewildered in there alone, and in old times folks had been lost. I expect there was considerable fear left over from the old Indian times, and the poor days o’ witchcraft; anyway, I ‘ve seen bold men act kind o’ timid. Some women o’ the Asa Bowden family went out one afternoon berryin’ when I was a girl, and got lost and was out all night; they found ’em middle o’ the mornin’ next day, not half a mile from home, scared most to death, an’ sayin’ they’d heard wolves and other beasts sufficient for a caravan. Poor creatur’s! they ‘d strayed at last into a kind of low place amongst some alders, an’ one of ’em was so overset she never got over it, an’ went off in a sort o’ slow decline. ‘T was like them victims that drowns in a foot o’ water; but their minds did suffer dreadful. Some folks is born afraid of the woods and all wild places, but I must say they ‘ve always been like home to me.”