LITMIR.BIZ

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distant times of simplicity a "mute inglorious" newspaper man. Newspapers in those days were as rare and unheard of as steam cars or the telegraph, but Biah had within him all the making of a thriving modern reporter, and no paper to use it on. He was a walking biographical and statistical dictionary of all the affairs of the good folks of Mapleton. He knew every piece of furniture in their houses, and what they gave for it; every foot of land, and what it was worth; every ox, ass and sheep; every man, woman and child in town. And Biah could give pretty shrewd character pictures also, and whoever wanted to inform himself of the status of any person or thing in Mapleton would have done well to have turned the faucet of Biah's stream of talk, and watched it respectfully as it came, for it was commonly conceded that what Biah Carter didn't know about Mapleton was hardly worth knowing.

      "Putty piece o' property, this 'ere farm," he said, surveying the scene around him with the air of a connoisseur. "None o' yer stun pastur land where the sheep can't get their noses down through the rocks without a file to sharpen 'em! Deacon Pitkin did a putty fair stroke o' business when he swapped off his old place for this 'ere. That are old place was all swamp land and stun pastur; wa'n't good for raisin' nothin' but juniper bushes and bull frogs. But I tell _yeu_" preceded Biah, with a shrewd wink, "that are mortgage pinches the deacon; works him like a dose of aloes and picry, it does. Deacon fairly gets lean on't."

      "Why," said Abner Jenks, a stolid plow boy to whom this stream of remark was addressed; "this 'ere place ain't mortgaged, is it? Du tell, naow!"

      "Why, yis; don't ye know that are? Why there's risin' two thousand dollars due on this 'ere farm, and if the deacon don't scratch for it and pay up squar to the minit, old Squire Norcross'll foreclose on him. Old squire hain't no bowels, I tell yeu, and the deacon knows he hain't: and I tell you it keeps the deacon dancin' lively as corn on a hot shovel."

      "The deacon's a master hand to work," said Abner; "so's the boys."

      "Wai, yis, the deacon is," said Biah, turning contemplatively to the farmhouse; "there ain't a crittur in that are house that there ain't the most work got out of 'em that ken be, down to Jed and Sam, the little uns. They work like tigers, every soul of 'em, from four o'clock in she morning' as long as they can see, and Mis' Pitkin she works all the evening--woman's work ain't never done, they say."

      "She's a good woman, Mis' Pitkin is," said Abner, "and she's a smart worker."

      In this phrase Abner solemnly expressed his highest ideal of a human being.

      "Smart ain't no word for 't," said Biah, with alertness. "Declar for 't, the grit o' that are woman beats me. Had eight children right along in a string 'thout stoppin', done all her own work, never kep' no gal nor nothin'; allers up and dressed; allers to meetin' Sunday, and to the prayer-meetin' weekly, and never stops workin': when 'tan't one thing it's another--cookin', washin', ironin', making butter and cheese, and 'tween spells cuttin' and sewin', and if she ain't doin' that, why, she's braidin' straw to sell to the store or knitting--she's the perpetual motion ready found, Mis' Pitkin is."

      "Want ter know," said the auditor, as a sort of musical rest in this monotone of talk. "Ain't she smart, though!"

      "Smart! Well, I should think she was. She's over and into everything that's goin' on in that house. The deacon wouldn't know himself without her; nor wouldn't none of them boys, they just live out of her; she kind o' keeps 'em all up."

      "Wal, she ain't a hefty woman, naow," said the interlocutor, who seemed to be possessed by a dim idea that worth must be weighed by the pound.

      "Law bless you, no! She's a little crittur; nothin' to look to, but every bit in her is _live_. She looks pale, kind o' slips round still like moonshine, but where anything's to be done, there Mis' Pitkin is; and her hand allers goes to the right spot, and things is done afore ye know it. That are woman's kind o' still; she'll slip off and be gone to heaven some day afore folks know it. There comes the deacon and Jim over the hill. Jim walked home from college day 'fore yesterday, and turned right in to-day to help get in the taters, workin' right along. Deacon was awful grouty."

      "What was the matter o' the deacon?"

      "Oh, the mortgage kind o' works him. The time to pay comes round putty soon, and the deacon's face allers goes down long as yer arm. 'Tis a putty tight pull havin' Jim in college, losin' his work and havin' term bills and things to pay. Them are college folks charges _up_, I tell you. I seen it works the deacon, I heard him a-jawin' Jim 'bout it."

      "What made Jim go to college?" said Abner with slow wonder in his heavy face.

      "Oh, he allers was sot on eddication, and Mis' Pitkin she's sot on't, too, in her softly way, and softly women is them that giner'lly carries their p'ints, fust or last.

      "But _there's_ one that _ain't_ softly!" Biah suddenly continued, as the vision of a black-haired, bright-eyed girl suddenly stepped forth from the doorway, and stood shading her face with her hands, looking towards the sunset. The evening light lit up a jaunty spray of golden rod that she had wreathed in her wavy hair, and gave a glow to the rounded outlines of her handsome form. "There's a sparkler for you! And no saint, neither!" was Biah's comment. "That crittur has got more prances and capers in her than any three-year-old filly I knows on. He'll be cunning that ever gets a bridle on her."

      "Some says she's going to hev Jim Pitkin, and some says it's Bill," said Abner, delighted to be able to add his mite of gossip to the stream while it was flowing.

      "She's sweet on Jim while he's round, and she's sweet on Bill when Jim's up to college, and between um she gets took round to everything that going. She gives one a word over one shoulder, and one over t'other, and if the Lord above knows what's in that gal's mind or what she's up to, he knows more than I do, or she either, else I lose my bet."

      Biah made this admission with a firmness that might have been a model to theologians or philosophers in general. There was a point, it appeared, where he was not omniscient. His universal statistical knowledge had a limit.

      --

Chapter III.

       The Shadow

       Table of Contents

      There is no moment of life, however festive, that does not involve the near presence of a possible tragedy. When the concert of life is playing the gayest and airiest music, it requires only the change of a little flat or sharp to modulate into the minor key.

      There seemed at first glance only the elements of joyousness and gayety in the surroundings at the Pitkin farm. Thanksgiving was come--the family, healthy, rosy, and noisy, were all under the one roof-tree. There was energy, youth, intelligence, beauty, a pair of lovers on the eve of betrothal--just in that misty, golden twilight that precedes the full sunrise of avowed and accepted love--and yet behind it all was walking with stealthy step the shadow of a coming sorrow.

      "What in the world ails James?" said Diana as she retreated from the door and surveyed him at a distance from her chamber window. His face was like a landscape over which a thunder-cloud has drifted, and he walked beside his father with a peculiar air of proud displeasure and repression.

      At that moment the young man was struggling with the bitterest sorrow that can befall youth--the breaking up of his life-purpose. He had just come to a decision to sacrifice his hopes of education, his man's ambition, his love, his home and family, and become a wanderer on the face of the earth. How this befell requires a sketch of character.

      Deacon Silas Pitkin was a fair specimen of a class of men not uncommon in New England--men too sensitive for the severe physical conditions of New England life, and therefore both suffering and inflicting suffering. He was a man of the finest moral traits, of incorruptible probity, of scrupulous honor, of an exacting conscientiousness, and of a sincere piety. But he had begun life with nothing; his whole standing in the world had been gained inch by inch by the most unremitting economy and self-denial, and he was a man of little capacity for hope, of whom it was said, in popular phraseology, that he "took things hard." He was never sanguine of good, always expectant of evil, and seemed to

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