University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER IV.
A CONFESSION.

On the Thursday evening following, Clapham appeared
at Mrs. Davis's door. A change seemed
to have come over his spirit since the pleasant berrying
day. He looked more neglected, sadder, more
troubled, than usual. Nothing in particular had occurred
to make him so; but his present life, in consequence
of his association with the Davises, and of the
hopes Harry had inspired, and the prospects his friend
had set before him, was becoming more distasteful to
him, and his wretched home more and more hateful.
He felt too, more and more, the burden of an unconfessed
sin on his mind; and he was constantly tormented
with the fear that if Harry knew all, he might
withdraw his friendship.

Norman, as usual, had sent his jug down to be
filled, and Clapham had left it behind a rose-bush
at the gate. He had sold a string of fish in the
village, reserving a half dozen, which he asked Mrs.
Davis to accept. “There is but one trout,” he said;
“and that I brought for little Lucy, she is so fond
of counting the bright spots on them. Where is she,
Mrs. Davis?”

“In the bed-room, Clapham. Poor little Lucy is
not well; go in and show her the trout. Thank
you for the fish, Clapham; it's the gift in season.
I had nothing fresh in the house for father — he is
very fond of fish.”

“I wish Mrs. Davis would keep the fish to herself,”
thought Clapham; but he did not say it. He
proceeded to the bed-room. Lucy's cheek, burning
with fever, dimpled at his approach. She was delighted
with the trout, and still more delighted with
a bunch of fresh fringed gentian which Clapham
had brought to her, and which Annie promised to tie
into one of Lucy's favorite wreaths. “How pretty!”
said Lucy, pulling open one of the flowers; “as

blue as the blue sky.” Annie took up the word,
and quoted a stanza from Bryant's Fringed Gentian.
“Why, that's just what I said!” resumed Lucy.
“How kind you are, Clapham! O Annie!” she
added, and drew Annie down to the bed and whispered
to her; and Annie took from her work-basket
a pocket-handkerchief on which the Declaration of
Independence was printed. Harry had bought it with
money of his own earning, to give to Clapham.
Little Lucy had hemmed one of its sides, her first
“real sewing,” she said, for she counted the patch-work
on which she had learned for nothing. Annie
had finished the hemming, and marked Clapham's
name full out. Lucy told its history, and said, “Now,
Clapham,

“Never! never!” said Clapham; “and I thank
you all a thousand times.”

“And that is quite enough,” said Mrs. Davis.
“Now, Clapham, will you lend Harry a hand at carrying
my clothes home for Mrs. Dawson and the other ladies?”
Clapham, as always, was ready. “And, Harry,”
added Mrs. Davis, “take a vial, and get some castor-oil,
at Johnson's, for Lucy. Bring a light here, Annie.
I must get out some money to pay for it.”

Annie brought in a candle, and Mrs. Davis went to
a bureau which stood near a small sliding window,
opened a drawer, and took from a box a purse containing
all her treasure, the product of a summer's
washing for a large family from New York, who had
been boarding in the village, and who had paid her,
ungrudgingly, New York prices. She had, in her own
mind, appropriated every shilling of it to some good to
be obtained for her children. No wonder she looked
at it with pride and pleasure. A small sum, hardly
earned, gives more happiness to the contented laborer
than a great amount of riches to the rich man. Thus
a kind Providence throws in compensations!

While Mrs. Davis was selecting a quarter of a
dollar from a handful of silver in her hand, on which

the candle was gleaming, there was a noise against
the outside of the house, by the window.

“What's that, mother?” asked Annie, starting.

“It's the cow,” said Harry, “knocking down father's
model plough!”

“But I thought I saw a shadow of something,” said
Annie.

“No doubt; and a `shadow' of any thing is enough
to scare you. What harm can a shadow do you,
Annie?”

“But there is always a substance where there is a
shadow, Harry.”

“Nonsense, Annie! I wish you would not be a
goose, like other girls. Come, Clap, let us go. Perhaps
we shall meet this dreadful `substance,' Annie.”
The young people laughed, little dreaming that Annie
had seen indeed a substance and the shadow of a
fearful coming event!

The boys, after depositing the snow-white clothes,
proceeded to Mr. Johnson's shop — Clapham to fill the
jug, and Harry the vial. The shop was closed.

“Deuce take it!” said Clapham; “just my luck!”

“Never mind, Clap; you can go on to Smith's shop,
or, what is still better, take your jug home empty.”

“Yes, and get a beating, that father has promised
me if I bring it home empty; and this is the only kind
of promise he keeps. I have spent two hours trying
to sell my fish; and but for the New York people, I
should not have got a penny in cash. Our Salisbury
folks know where money goes that comes to us. But,
Harry, are you not coming along with me to Smith's?”

“No; mother told me, if I did not find Johnson's
open, to get the oil at the doctor's.”

“O! but, Harry, I say, do go to Smith's with me.”

“I am in a hurry, Clap, to get home.”

“We won't be a minute; we'll run all the way.”

“Thank you, I am too tired to run. I have been
on foot to Canaan to-day, for father.”

“Do come, Harry.”

“I cannot, Clap; mother will want me.”

But Clapham, contrary to his usual habit, insisted,
almost with tears; and when Harry said, “Why, what
is the matter, Clap? can't you go alone?” he replied,
“No, I cannot;” and, turning off, he muttered, “I'll go

home, and take the beating, and mam will cry because
I have not got her snuff. Hang it! I wish we were
all dead together!”

“O, mercy, Clapham! don't talk so. I will go with
you; but what is the reason you cannot go to Smith's
without me?”

“Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies,
Harry.” Not another word was spoken till they got
to Smith's, excepting that once, when they paused for
breath, Clapham said, “Harry, you've got a home. We
live in hell.” The upper part of the shop-door was
of glass. “Stop a minute,” said Clapham, as Harry
put his hand on the latch; and then, keenly reconnoitring
the shop, he added, “Mr. Smith is not in; you
may open the door, Harry.”

The boys drew up to the counter, and stood quietly
there, while the only clerk in the shop served two
women. Clapham hid his jug as well as he could
with his tattered frock coat. In a few moments, the
clerk's eye fell upon them. Harry perceived his
countenance changed at the sight of Clapham; he perceived,
too, that Clapham drew nearer to him. The

clerk continued eyeing him askance, while he tied up
the women's parcels; that finished, he approached the
boys. Harry asked for the oil, and Clapham, laying
down a half dollar, asked for a half gallon of rum, and
a quarter of Scotch snuff.

The clerk half smiled as he turned away and went
to the farther extremity of the shop, where a high
writing-desk was placed. The boys now perceived
that the master of the shop was sitting behind it; and
Harry was conscious that this discovery caused Clapham
slightly to tremble. The clerk spoke so low to
Mr. Smith that they could not hear a word he said;
but, as what passed came out afterwards, there is no
harm in telling it in this place.

“Clapham Dunn is in the store, sir,” said the clerk.

“He is, is he?” said Mr. Smith, starting from his
chair; but, on perceiving Harry Davis, he sat down
again. “Did he come in with Harry Davis?” he
asked.

“Yes, sir, and they seemed to be in company. He
wants rum and snuff, of course. He has got the money
in hand.”

“Well, you may keep dark this time. Draw the
rum for him.”

Mr. Smith was partly influenced by the presence
of Harry, partly, we fear, by the opportunity of selling
the rum. Thank God, the days are passed when
every shop had its barrel of rum, where the poor man
found a ready temptation to part with his small gains;
where such boys as Clapham Dunn began their apprenticeship
to vice and ruin; and such wretches as
his father found the means of drowning the consciousness
of misery and guilt; and where decent men, like
Mr. Elam Smith, could quietly sell this poison to body
and soul, pocket the money, reckon up their gains,
and fancy all the sin was at the buyers' door!

In a few minutes more, the boys had done their
business, and left the shop.

Hurried as Harry felt, his curiosity was too strongly
excited to be deferred. It was not idle curiosity; his
best feelings were touched by Clapham's attachment to
him, and dependence on him, and, perceiving he had
the power to serve him, he had the will too. “Tell
me, Clapham,” he said, “what does all this mean?”

“What?” asked Clapham, without raising his eyes.

“You know what I mean.”

“So I do, Harry,” he answered, now honestly turning
up his face, and looking his friend in the eye.
“And I will tell you. I declare I will tell you all;
but, hang it, I can't tell it now; it's a long story, and
a bad one.”

“Well, make a long story short, Clap, and have it
off your mind; you'll have time before we come to the
turn.”

“But, Harry, you'll despise me, and so will your
mother, and Annie, and little Lucy, and I could not
stand it. You'll never go a fishing with me again;
they'll never speak to me.”

“Clapham, you don't know them; you don't know
me. I'll stick by a friend through thick and thin.”

“But, Harry, there is too much thick; you won't
go it.”

“I'll start fair with you, Clapham. I'll tell you
what I'll go. You must speak just the whole truth
to me, and then I shall be sure of a foundation to
stand on, and, standing on that, with a long pull, and

a strong pull, and a pull both together, we'll get you
out of the mire if you are ever so deep in.”

Clapham began, and told his story, at first with a
faltering voice, but, as he went on, with a firmer
tone.

We must go a little farther back, in Clapham's
history, than Clapham's limited time allowed him to
do, or than he could have done.

But Clapham was born in a jail, and, from his
earliest recollection, his parents had been skulking
from one place to another, living on the outskirts of
villages, on the borders of Massachusetts, Connecticut,
or New York, where these three states meet, and afford
a very convenient neighborhood for those who evade
the laws by what is called dodging the line! Norman
was a strong, well-built man. He often boasted that
he could travel farther in a day, and fast longer, than
any man he ever knew. He could endure wet, and
heat and cold, without flinching. He would sometimes
live out, roaming about the woods for a week together,
and then come home, and eat, drink, and sleep, for a
week. He had never been taught to read or write.

This was a source of deep mortification to him. But it
was a greater disadvantage than Norman was aware of.
Norman was naturally proud of his size and strength,
and power of endurance, and he was humbled when he
saw a little fellow, whom he said he could throw over
the tallest pine-tree in the woods, really his superior,
and, because he could read and write, able to take a
place, and keep it, among his fellow-men. Norman
had the qualities that distinguish a savage. If he
had been born among the Indians, he might have been
their chief and led them. But knowledge is necessary
to live in society, and knowledge and goodness are
the only true distinctions between man and man, in a
social state. We may have an equality of rights and
privileges; in this favored country we have. Riches
do not make a man more respectable or happier than
his neighbor. Knowledge does. We are forced to
respect those that know more than we do. We feel
that, other things being equal, a superior education
gives the man who has it a power superior to ours.
Norman Dunn felt this, and it galled him. He felt it
the more, because by nature he had a good head, and
he felt it the more bitterly because he had not the
virtues and good feelings that, more than any thing
else, compensate for the want of education. An industrious,
honest, kind-hearted man may hold up his
head beside the wisest man and the greatest scholar
in the world. But neither honesty, nor any thing akin
to it, had Norman Dunn. He had just enough sense
of right to feel his degradation, to hate to come in
contact with his fellow-men; so he sulkily shunned
them. Clapham's mother was a poor outcast, half
Dutch, half Yankee. She was lazy, dirty, and shiftless.
She was never very bright, and so between drinking,
snuffing, and Norman's hard usage, the little light she
originally had was nearly put out. One virtue we
must give her credit for;—how she came by it nobody
could tell;—but Massy Dunn was never known to
take any thing that belonged to another. She ate of
stolen turkeys, fowls, and eggs, without asking a question.
She had been found sleeping in sheets pilfered
from the clothes-lines of a neighboring village. She
cut up and made over for Clapham many a garment
which she knew her husband had stolen; but never
was she known to take a penny's worth herself. We
cannot account for this; we only state the fact. It
may explain, in some measure, our friend Clapham's
aversion to following his father's trade.

“Father began with me,” he said to Harry, “when
I was a little shaver not six years old; and before I
was ten, I've robbed many a hen's-nest, and many a
hen-roost for him. Since then, I have done, in
the main, better. I have taken many a beating rather
than do as father bid me, and his hand is heavy, and
cruel hard, Harry. Once he wrenched my shoulder
out of joint, and another time he broke two of my
finger-bones.

“Last spring I did chores for Mr. Smith, and he
paid me in notions,—a little molasses, and rum for
father, and now and then a codfish, and so on. He
got a great deal out of me, and gave me but little
for it; but there's few that would employ father's boy;
so I had to take what I could get. He trusted me,
and I felt beholden to him for that, and never so
much as took a nut of any kind, or raisin, though
I passed the box twenty times a day. I hated

thieving and lying, I can't tell why, brought up as
I have been; but as true as truth is truth, I did; and
yet — O dear! — the day came that I found I was
just father's own son, and nothing else.

“There was a traveller, one evening, stopped at
the shop to buy an umbrella. Mr. Smith was called
off. The man took the umbrella, laid down the
price, — two half dollars, — and left the shop. There
lay the money. Mr. Smith had not seen it. The
traveller had, as I believed, passed on out of town.
There was to be a training, the next day, in Sheffield,
and a menagerie was coming there, and for
two days I had heard folks talking over the advertisement
of it that was up in Mr. Smith's shop, with
pictures of all the animals around it. You have seen
such, Harry. Of all things in the world, I wanted
most to see the animals. Every body was going but
I. There the money lay. If I took it, I could go.
Father would let me, I knew, if I gave him the half
of it. Still I held back. I heard Smith coming, and
I thought he had never paid me half he must have
paid another boy for the work I did, and I — took it.

Yes, Harry, I stole it! Father was not by. It was
not fear of him. Nobody told me to take it. This
time I was a thief. Now you know all.”

“Not all. Did Mr. Smith find it out?”

“Yes; he soon found it out. The traveller had
not gone a quarter of a mile when it began to rain,
and he found something the matter with the spring
of the umbrella; so he came back to change it. He
then told Mr. Smith he had put the money on the
counter. Mr. Smith charged me with stealing it, and
he thrust his hand into my pocket, and found it.
Then he called me every thing, and twitted me with
my father and mother, and I got mad, and told him,
if he'd been honest by me, and paid me what I
earned, I should have been honest by him. Then he
turned me out, and told me never to darken his doors
again. Now, Harry, you know all.” Clapham was
silent for a moment. Harry said nothing. “I knew
it would be so,” resumed Clapham, his voice trembling
so that he could scarcely articulate; “you know me,
now, for a thief, — a thief on my own hook, — and
you can't be friends with me, any way.” Harry hesitated

one moment, and but one. “Yes, one way, I
can,” he said; “the Scripture way, — `Go, and sin
no more.' Mother often says to us, `God forgives the
penitent, and how dare we not to forgive our fellow-creatures?'
I believe you, Clapham; I believe you
have told me the truth, and the whole truth, and I'll
stand by you so long as you'll stand straight.”

Clapham turned his eyes, streaming with tears, on
Harry, and his face beamed with an expression of
gratitude and joy which Harry never forgot. “Thank
ye, thank ye, Harry!” he said, in a subdued voice.
“This is more than your saving me from drowning.
I thought I could pay you for that; I never can for
this.”

The boys separated. “If I am ever good for any
thing,” thought Clapham, as he pursued his way alone,
“I shall have Harry Davis to thank for it. I might
have been punished, and talked to, and preached to
forever, but it would not have done it. Harry believes
me; he's friends with me, and that keeps me from
despising myself; and when I am with Harry's folks,
I feel as if I might be something if I could get out

of his clutches.” No wonder that Clapham, in his
thoughts, shrunk from giving the name of father to
that evil being who was like a cruel fate to him.

Many happy visions rose before him as he, that
evening, pursued his solitary way. The Davises were
the central light of all his castles in the air. His
path lay along the margin of Rhigi's brook; it glittered
and sparkled in the moonlight. The leaves
scarcely stirred as the soft, night breezes stole over
them. Clapham stopped for a moment, conscious of a
new feeling, and gazed around him with sensations he
had never before experienced. Is there not something
in the soul that answers, like an echo, to the music
of nature?

This poor mountain-boy felt this something within
him vibrating to the voice of nature. He looked up
to the vast, bright firmament, and a feeling of awe,
an indefinite sense of God's presence, without fear or
dread, stole over him. Perhaps it was that Harry's

kindness to him had inspired a sense of God's infinite
goodness and love, of which it was the true, though
faint image; however that might be, there was a new
feeling. He turned from the brook into the wood,
where the trees were so thick that scarcely a ray of
light penetrated to the path he followed. Suddenly
he emerged into an open space, where the broad, yellow
moon sent in her light, intercepted only by the
shadow of the tall trees, that, like a wall, enclosed it.
It was a startling contrast to the darkness from which
he had come. Impulsively, and for the first time in
his life, he fell upon his knees. Every feeling in his
bosom was a true prayer. Few, untaught, and simple,
were the words he uttered. There was a struggling
cry for pardon for the past, and strength for the future,
and a burst of gratitude for his friend.

It was sincere desire — true prayer. Of such it
is that God says, “I will hear ye when ye cry unto
me.”

A half hour after, Clapham entered his father's hut
with an indescribable loathing. It was filled with
smoke, made visible by a blaze, over which Massy was

frying a mess of fish, pork, and onions, the fumes of
which, mingling with the smoke of Norman's pipe,
settled about the beams and rafters. A cross-pole was
garnished with broken kettles, baskets, gourds, dried
herbs, strings of apples, and strips of drying pumpkin.
A blackened and greasy table, with a molasses jug,
and broken brown ware, was set out for supper.

Norman was half reclining in one corner, on a
filthy pile, called a bed. He growled at Clapham,
as he entered, for his long delay; and, seizing the
jug, he took a heavy draught from it.

Massy received her portion rather more parentally,
and thanked Clapham as she untied her parcel of
snuff. The knot was difficult, and Massy's fingers
none of the steadiest. Norman called out to her, with
a curse, that her fat was on fire, and she'd burn them
all up alive. In turning hastily to extinguish the
flame, she spilt her snuff into the mess. Norman,
enraged at the prospect of losing his supper, sprang
off his lair, and began beating her. Massy screamed.

A tired hound, that had been sleeping at full length
before the fire, joined, growling, in the fray.

It was such scenes as these, that had made poor
Clapham say to Harry Davis, “You have a home; we
live in a hell!” No, not quite a hell, while there was
there one spirit capable of love and hope.