Read Ebook: St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls Vol. 5 Nov 1877-Nov 1878 No 1 Nov 1877 by Various Dodge Mary Mapes Editor

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 713 lines and 57113 words, and 15 pages

THE GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL

"THE GRAPES THAT HANG HIGH"

"Beth! Beth Baldwin! Oh, B. B.! Do, for pity's sake, stop! Do you expect me to chase you all over town such a hot day as this? It's cruelty to animals to make me run in this awful sun," and Mary Devine finally reached Elizabeth Baldwin's side, and clung to her school friend's arm, panting.

"Cruelty to how many animals, Mary?" asked Beth, laughing. "Are you a whole menagerie? You remind me of our Marcus when he was a little fellow. There was a 'cat concert' in our back yard one night, and Marcus put his head out of the door to see the participants.

"'Oh, Mamma!' he called, 'there's a million cats out here,' and when mamma reproved him for exaggerating, he defended himself by saying: 'Well, anyway, there's our old cat and another one!'"

Mary had regained her breath now, and giggled over Beth's little story, but was not to be sidetracked. She had something to tell. News was Mary Devine's over-mastering passion. To know what went on all over Hudsonvale, and to distribute her information generously, "free, gratis, for nothing," was the height of her enjoyment.

Mr. Baldwin said one evening, after Mary had been calling on Beth: "They did think some of starting a local paper here in Hudsonvale; but they heard of that Devine girl and gave it up. No need of a newspaper with her in town."

Now Mary gasped to her friend:

"Oh, Beth! I've got something to tell you. You'd never guess!"

"That's good of you, dear," Beth said, her black eyes dancing. "I hate conundrums. Tell me."

"Larry Haven has hired an office in the Hudsonvale block."

"Why, Mary! that certainly is news," Beth cried. "I never would have guessed that. Has he hung out his shingle?"

"He's going to," declared Mary, who knew all about it, for her father was janitor of Hudsonvale's one brick office building. "He's taken the room next to Dr. Coldfoot's, the dentist's, suite. Larry told father that the screams of the dentist's patients would not bother him, for he expected his clients would scream quite as loud when he separated them from their money," and Mary giggled again. "And oh, Beth! he's just as handsome!"

"Who is--Dr. Coldfoot?" asked her friend, innocently.

"Goodness no! You are well aware, Beth Baldwin, that I meant the village pride, Mr. Lawrence Haven, just returned from the law school with his sheepskin."

Beth laughed again. "I do hope he'll be successful," she said. "His father was a prominent lawyer, you know."

"Larry Haven is no longer a boy," Beth said slowly.

Mary laughed. "Of course not. He's an old man," she said saucily. "He's twenty-two."

"That is seven years our senior," said Beth, reflectively.

"You have more assurance than most, Mary," said Beth, smiling. "I don't know that I shall dare even speak to Larry now."

"Humph! you and he used to be as 'sticky' on each other as two molasses cocoanut balls--you know you used. He was the white-headed little boy who used to pull you to school on his sled," said Mary, airily.

"But that was a long time ago," said Beth, with laughter. "I haven't seen Larry since last winter's holidays--and then scarcely more than to wave my hand to him. He's grown quite away from us Hudsonvale girls and boys since his sophomore year at college."

"But Larry wasn't spoiled," Beth hastened to say. "He's so sweet-tempered."

"Just across town on an errand," her friend said evasively; for it was the gossipy girl's nature to repeat to the next person she talked with anything she had learned from her previous companion, no matter how trivial.

The girl's mind, however, was filled with thoughts springing from the bit of news her school friend had told her. She and Mary had but recently graduated from the high school. And Larry Haven, the only son of the widowed Mrs. Euphemia Haven, had recently returned to his home with his diploma as a lawyer. Beth knew he had already been admitted to the county bar.

Beth's mother and Euphemia Griswold had been bosom friends in girlhood. At first, after Euphemia Griswold had married Mr. Haven, the leading lawyer of the county and a scion of one of the oldest, if not one of the wealthiest, families in the State, she and Priscilla Baldwin, who had married a foreman in the Locomotive Works, remained very good friends.

The Haven baby carriage was often pushed along the pleasantly shaded walks of Hudsonvale side by side with the more plebian carriage containing the Baldwins' first little one, who later had died. The two young women remained inseparable friends for some years.

Then had come the death of her first child, and for a long period of time after this Mrs. Baldwin mingled but little with her friends. This was followed by a long illness. But, after a few years, Beth, now the oldest of her brood, came to give the foreman's wife a new and better interest in life.

Meanwhile, her old-time chum had grown away from her. Mr. Haven had become a corporation lawyer and was fast growing rich. He and his family had always had entrance into the most exclusive society of the State. Had he not died suddenly when Larry was ten years old, he might have been a national figure in politics.

In dying, he had left Mrs. Euphemia Haven and her only child fairly well-to-do. The property had to be conserved with some shrewdness, perhaps; but the widow lived in one of the finest old houses in Hudsonvale, entertained well, and seemed to have everything her heart desired. Larry was given an excellent education; and it was understood that he was to follow in his father's footsteps, for he must earn his own living now that he was of age, his mother having full rights in the property as long as she lived.

Mrs. Haven was not a snob. Although now the acknowledged leader of such society as there was in Hudsonvale , she had often come to see her old friend, Mrs. Baldwin, while Larry was still small. So it was that the soft-spoken, gentle boy, with the watchful gray eyes and firm mouth, came to be a companion of Beth Baldwin's while she was little.

He took her to school on her first day; and sat beside her and held her plump little hand for an hour, too, because she was afraid. He had drawn Beth to school on his sled, as Mary Devine said. Larry was as much at home in the Baldwin house when a child as he was in his own. Perhaps more at home, for there was more gaiety in the little cottage on Bemis Street, which soon began to be crowded with young life after Beth was born.

There was Marcus, two years Beth's junior; Ella, now a flyaway child of eleven; Prissy--named after her mother--as sweet and loving as a child could be; and Fred and Ferd, the twins, six years old. They had all looked on Larry Haven as almost an elder brother.

For two years, however, as Beth had intimated to Mary Devine, Larry had not been much at the Baldwin home. Indeed, he had been in Hudsonvale but seldom. His summers had been spent in preparing for the law school, for he was very desirous to get ahead. His exceeding industry had brought results. He was a very young man, indeed, to have succeeded in securing his diploma and entering upon public life as he now had.

As Beth Baldwin went her way, these thoughts weaved through her mind. And, too, she compared her own lot to that of her whilom playmate and confidant. When Beth learned that Larry was to go to college and finally enter the law school, she had expressed her intention of getting the maximum amount of education to be secured by a girl--and Larry had encouraged her to try for it.

"There's about as much chance of my going to Rivercliff as there is of my getting an aeroplane and soaring in it to the Heights of Parnassus," Beth told herself, with a little laugh and a little sigh. She was not of a melancholy disposition, and even the seriousness of her desire to learn and to achieve, in her way, as much as Larry had achieved in his, could not make her gloomy.

Mr. Baldwin earned three dollars and seventy-five cents a day as foreman of the erecting shop in the Hudsonvale Locomotive Works. The family had often "figured and refigured" that sum; but they could not make it come to more than twenty-two dollars and fifty cents a week.

Marcus, although but thirteen, was already talking bravely about going to work. In anin quaintest guise, Was carved--'Within this tomb there lies The fairest thing to mortal eyes.'"

Farewell, sweet Isabella!--a wife at eight, a widow at twelve, and dead at twenty-two,--your life was indeed short, and, though not without happy days, sorrow blended largely with its joy!

CHASED BY WOLVES

BY GEORGE DUDLEY LAWSON.

Some forty years ago the northern part of the State of New York was very sparsely settled. In one of the remote counties, which for a name's sake we will call Macy County, a stout-hearted settler, named Devins, posted himself beyond the borders of civilization, and hewed for his little family a home in the heart of a forest that extended all the way from Lake Champlain to Lake Ontario. His nearest neighbor was six miles away, and the nearest town nearly twenty; but the Devinses were so happy and contented that the absence of company gave them no concern.

It was a splendid place to live in. In summer the eye ranged from the slope where the sturdy pioneer had built his house over miles and miles of waving beech and maple woods, away to the dark line of pines on the high ground that formed the horizon. In the valley below, Otter Creek, a tributary of the St. Lawrence, wound its sparkling way northward. When Autumn painted the scene in brilliant hues, and it lay glowing under the crimson light of October sunsets, the dullest observer could not restrain bursts of admiration.

Mr. Devins's first attack on the stubborn forest had been over the brow of the hill, some four miles nearer Owenton, but his house was burned down before he had taken his family there from Albany. He had regretted that he had not "pitched his tent" on the slope of Otter Creek; so now he began with renewed energy his second home, in which the closing in of the winter of 1839 found him. He had sixty acres of rich soil under cultivation at the time of which we are to speak, his right-hand man being his son Allan,--a rugged, handsome, intelligent boy of sixteen.

The winter of '39 was a terrible one; snow set in before the end of November, and, even in the open country, lay upon the ground until the beginning of April, while in the recesses of the forest it was found as late as the middle of June. There was great distress among the settlers outside of the bounds of civilization, to whom the deep snow was an impassable barrier. The Devinses neither saw nor heard from their nearest neighbors from the first of December till near the beginning of February, when a crust was formed upon the snow sufficiently firm to bear the weight of a man, and a friendly Cayuga Indian brought them news of how badly their neighbors fared.

Mr. Devins was especially touched by the bad case of his friend Will Inman, who lived on the nearest farm. The poor man lay ill of a fever; Mrs. Inman was dead and temporarily buried, until her body could be removed to the cemetery in Owenton, and all the care of the family devolved upon Esther, his daughter, fourteen years old. After a short consultation, the next morning breaking bright and clear though very cold, it was determined to allow Allan to go over the hill to Inman's, bearing medicine, tea, and other little necessaries for the family. He was impressively warned to begin his return at so early an hour that he might reach home before the short day's end, especially because of the danger from wild animals. The severity of the winter had made the wolves more venturesome and dangerous than they had been for many years. Mr. Devins had lost several sheep and hogs, and deemed it unsafe for any of his family to be caught far from the house at night.

Allan armed himself with his light rifle, put some biscuits and cold meat in a pouch strapped to his waist, mounted one of the strong farm-horses, and set out on his journey. The road through the forest was better than he expected to find it, as the snow had been drifted off, but at the turns, and in the thickest part of the wood, his horse floundered through drifts more than breast high; and more than once Allan had to dismount and beat a path ahead. Therefore, he did not reach Inman's till two o'clock, and, by the time he had helped Esther about her work, assisted her young brother to get in a good supply of wood, and made things more comfortable for the invalid, it was almost sundown. He stoutly refused to wait for supper, declaring that the luncheon still in his pouch would serve, and started just as the short twilight came on. He was a brave lad, and, with no thought of peril, went off, kissing his hand gayly to Esther.

It took him an hour to traverse the first three miles, and then he came to a stretch of comparatively bare ground leading through his father's old clearing, and almost to the top of the hill back of Mr. Devins's house. He was just urging old Bob into a trot, when a long, clear howl broke upon his ear; then another and another answered from east and south. He knew what that meant. It was the cry of the advance-guard of a pack of wolves.

The howling sounded near, and came swiftly nearer, as though the wolves had found his tracks and scented their prey. Old Bob trembled in every limb, and seemed powerless to move. Allan realized that he could not, before dark, reach home through the drifts ahead, and the increasing cold of the advancing night would render a refuge in a tree-top probably as deadly as an encounter with the pack.

Presently there came a cry, shriller and sharper than before, and Allan, looking back, saw a great, lean, hungry gray wolf burst from the underbrush into the road, followed by dozens more; and in a moment the road behind him was full of wolves, open-mouthed and in keen chase. Their yells now seemed notes of exultation, for the leader of the pack--the strongest, fleetest, hungriest one among them--was within a dozen yards of Allan, who was now riding faster than ever old Bob had gone before or ever would go again. Excitement made the lad's blood boil in his veins, and he determined to show fight. The moon had risen, and the scene was almost as light as day. Now he could count the crowding host of his enemies, and just as he broke from the forest road into the old clearing, he turned in his saddle and fired. The foremost of the pack rolled over and over; the rest gathered around and tore their leader in pieces.

But Allan! What of him? When he recovered from the effects of the shock, he found himself over head and ears in snow. He had no idea where he was, but struggled and plunged in vain endeavors to extricate himself, until at last he broke into a space that was clear of snow, but dark as Erebus, damp and close. Feeling about him he discovered over his head logs resting slantingly against the upper edge of a pit, and then he knew that he was in the cellar of the old house his father had built, and which had been burned down nine years before! The cellar was full of snow, except at the corner roofed over by the fallen logs, and Allan, bursting through the snow into the empty corner, was as secure from the wolves as though seated by his father's fireside. It was not nearly as cold in there as outside, and he found a dry spot upon which he lay down to think.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet