 | CHAPTER II. The wept of Wish-ton-Wish |  |
2. CHAPTER II.
And dare, upon the warrant of my art,
Commend a dear thing to you.
King Lear.
At the precise time when the action of our piece
commences, a fine and fruitful season was drawing
to a close. The harvests of the hay and of the
smaller corns had long been over, and the younger
Heathcote with his laborers had passed a day in depriving
the luxuriant maize of its tops, in order to
secure the nutritious blades for fodder, and to admit
the sun and air to harden a grain, that is almost considered
the staple production of the region he inhabited.
The veteran Mark had ridden among the
workmen, during their light toil, as well to enjoy a
sight which promised abundance to his flocks and
herds, as to throw in, on occasion, some wholesome
spiritual precept, in which doctrinal subtlety was
far more prominent than the rules of practice. The
hirelings of his son, for he had long since yielded the
management of the estate to Content, were, without
and long use and much training had accustomed
them to a blending of religious exercises with most
of the employments of life. They listened, therefore,
with respect, nor did an impious smile, or an
impatient glance, escape the lightest-minded of their
number, during his exhortations, though the homilies
of the old man were neither very brief, nor particularly
original. But devotion to the one great
cause of their existence, austere habits, and unrelaxed
industry in keeping alive a flame of zeal that
had been kindled in the other hemisphere, to burn
longest and brightest in this, had interwoven the
practice mentioned with most of the opinions and
pleasures of these metaphysical, though simple-minded
people. The toil went on none the less
cheerily for the extraordinary accompaniment, and
Content himself, by a certain glimmering of superstition,
which appears to be the concomitant of excessive
religious zeal, was fain to think that the sun
shone more brightly on their labors, and that the
earth gave forth more of its fruits, while these holy
sentiments were flowing from the lips of a father
whom he piously loved and deeply reverenced.
But when the sun, usually at that season, in the
climate of Connecticut, a bright unshrouded orb,
fell towards the tree-tops which bounded the western
horizon, the old man began to grow weary with his
own well-doing. He therefore finished his discourse
with a wholesome admonition to the youths to complete
their tasks before they quitted the field; and,
turning the head of his horse, he rode slowly, and
with a musing air, towards the dwellings. It is probable
that for some time the thoughts of Mark were
occupied with the intellectual matter he had just
been handling with so much power; but when his
little nag stopped of itself on a small eminence,
which the crooked cow-path he was following crossed,
and more sensible objects. As the scene, that drew
his contemplations from so many abstract theories
to the realities of life, was peculiar to the country,
and is more or less connected with the subject of
our tale, we shall endeavor briefly to describe it.
A small tributary of the Connecticut divided the
view into two nearly equal parts. The fertile flats,
that extended on each of its banks for more than a
mile, had been early stripped of their burthen of
forest, and they now lay in placid meadows, or in
fields from which the grain of the season had lately
disappeared, and over which the plow had already
left the marks of recent tillage. The whole of the
plain, which ascended gently from the rivulet towards
the forest, was subdivided in inclosures, by
numberless fences, constructed in the rude but substantial
manner of the country. Rails, in which
lightness and economy of wood had been but little
consulted, lying in zigzag lines, like the approaches
which the besieger makes in his cautious advance
to the hostile fortress, were piled on each other,
until barriers seven or eight feet in height, were
interposed to the inroads of vicious cattle. In one
spot, a large square vacancy had been cut into the
forest, and, though numberless stumps of trees darkened
its surface, as indeed they did many of the
fields on the flats themselves, bright, green grain
was sprouting forth, luxuriantly, from the rich and
virgin soil. High against the side of an adjacent
hill, that might aspire to be called a low rocky
mountain, a similar invasion had been made on the
dominion of the trees; but caprice or convenience
had induced an abandonment of the clearing, after
it had ill requited the toil of felling the timber by
a single crop. In this spot, straggling, girdled, and
consequently dead trees, piles of logs, and black and
charred stubs, were seen deforming the beauty of a
its deep setting in the woods. Much of the surface
of this opening, too, was now concealed by bushes
of what is termed the second growth; though, here
and there, places appeared, in which the luxuriant
white clover, natural to the country, had followed
the close grazing of the flocks. The eyes of Mark
were bent, inquiringly, on this clearing, which, by
an air line, might have been half a mile from the
place where his horse had stopped, for the sounds
of a dozen differently toned cow-bells were brought,
on the still air of the evening, to his ears, from
among its bushes.
The evidences of civilization were the least
equivocal, however, on and around a natural elevation
in the land, which arose so suddenly on the
very bank of the stream, as to give to it the appearance
of a work of art. Whether these mounds
once existed everywhere on the face of the earth,
and have disappeared before long tillage and labor,
we shall not presume to conjecture; but we have
reason to think that they occur much more frequently
in certain parts of our own country, than
in any other familiarly known to ordinary travellers;
unless perhaps it may be in some of the valleys
of Switzerland. The practised veteran had
chosen the summit of this flattened cone, for the
establishment of that species of military defence,
which the situation of the country, and the character
of the enemy he had to guard against, rendered
advisable, as well as customary.
The dwelling was of wood, and constructed of the
ordinary frame-work, with its thin covering of
boards. It was long, low, and irregular; bearing
marks of having been reared at different periods,
as the wants of an increasing family had required
additional accommodation. It stood near the verge
of the natural declivity, and on that side of the
rude piazza stretching along the whole of its front
and overhanging the stream. Several large, irregular,
and clumsy chimneys, rose out of different
parts of the roofs, another proof that comfort, rather
than taste, had been consulted in the disposition of
the buildings. There were also two or three de
tached offices on the summit of the hill, placed
near the dwellings, and at points most convenient
for their several uses. A stranger might have remarked
that they were so disposed as to form, far
as they went, the different sides of a hollow square.
Notwithstanding the great length of the principal
building, and the disposition of the more minute and
detached parts, this desirable formation would not,
however, have been obtained, were it not that two
rows of rude constructions in logs, from which the
bark had not even been stripped, served to eke out
the parts that were deficient. These primeval edifices
were used to contain various domestic articles,
no less than provisions; and they also furnished numerous
lodging-rooms for the laborers and the inferior
dependants of the farm. By the aid of a few
strong and high gates of hewn timber, those parts
of the buildings which had not been made to unite
in the original construction, were sufficiently connected
to oppose so many barriers against admission
into the inner court.
But the building which was most conspicuous by
its position, no less than by the singularity of its
construction, stood on a low, artificial mound, in the
centre of the quadrangle. It was high, hexagonal
in shape, and crowned with a roof that came to a
point, and from whose peak rose a towering flagstaff.
The foundation was of stone; but, at the
height of a man above the earth, the sides were
made of massive, squared logs, firmly united by an
ingenious combination of their ends, as well as by
sides. In this citadel, or block-house, as from its
materials it was technically called, there were two
different tiers of long, narrow loop-holes, but no
regular windows. The rays of the setting sun, however,
glittered on one or two small openings in the
roof, in which glass had been set, furnishing evidence
that the summit of the building was sometimes used
for other purposes than those of defence.
About half-way up the sides of the eminence, on
which the dwelling stood, was an unbroken line of
high palisadoes, made of the bodies of young trees,
firmly knit together by braces and horizontal pieces
of timbers, and evidently kept in a state of jealous
and complete repair. The air of the whole of this
frontier fortress was neat and comfortable, and, considering
that the use of artillery was unknown to
those forests, not unmilitary.
At no great distance from the base of the hill,
stood the barns and the stables. They were surrounded
by a vast range of rude but warm sheds,
beneath which sheep and horned cattle were usually
sheltered from the storms of the rigorous winters
of the climate. The surfaces of the meadows, immediately
around the out-buildings, were of a smoother
and richer sward, than those in the distance, and
the fences were on a far more artificial, and perhaps
durable, though scarcely on a more serviceable plan.
A large orchard of some ten or fifteen years' growth,
too, added greatly to the air of improvement, which
put this smiling valley in such strong and pleasing
contrast to the endless and nearly-untenanted woods
by which it was environed.
Of the interminable forest, it is not necessary to
speak. With the solitary exception on the mountain-side,
and of here and there a wind-row, along
which the trees had been uprooted, by the furious
blasts that sometimes sweep off acres of our trees
study in the vast setting of this quiet rural picture,
but the seemingly endless maze of wilderness. The
broken surface of the land, however, limited the
view to an horizon of no great extent, though the
art of man could scarcely devise colors so vivid, or
so gay, as those which were afforded by the brilliant
hues of the foliage. The keen, biting frosts, known
at the close of a New-England autumn, had already
touched the broad and fringed leaves of the maples,
and the sudden and secret process had been wrought
upon all the other varieties of the forest, producing
that magical effect, which can be nowhere seen,
except in regions in which nature is so bountiful and
luxuriant in summer, and so sudden and so stern in
the change of the seasons.
Over this picture of prosperity and peace, the
eye of old Mark Heathcote wandered with a keen
degree of worldly prudence. The melancholy sounds
of the various toned bells, ringing hollow and plaintively
among the arches of the woods, gave him reason
to believe that the herds of the family were returning,
voluntarily, from their unlimited forest pasturage.
His grandson, a fine spirited boy of some
fourteen years, was approaching through the fields.
The youngster drove before him a small flock, which
domestic necessity compelled the family to keep at
great occasional loss, and at a heavy expense of
time and trouble; both of which could alone protect
them from the ravages of the beasts of prey. A
species of half-witted serving-lad, whom charity had
induced the old man to harbor among his dependants,
was seen issuing from the woods, nearly in a line
with the neglected clearing on the mountain-side.
The latter advanced, shouting and urging before
him a drove of clots, as shaggey, as wayward, and
nearly as untamed, as himself.
“How now, weak one,” said the Puritan, with a
severe eye, as the two lads approached him, with
their several charges, from different directions, and
nearly at the same instant; “how now, sirrah! dost
worry the cattle in this gait, when the eyes of the
prudent are turned from thee? Do as thou wouldst
be done by, is a just and healthful admonition, that
the learned and the simple, the weak and the strong
of mind, should alike recall to their thoughts and
their practice. I do not know that an over-driven
colt will be at all more apt to make a gentle and
useful beast in its prime, than one treated with
kindness and care.”
“I believe the evil one has got into all the kine,
no less than into the foals,” sullenly returned the
lad; “I've called to them in anger, and I've spoken
to them as if they had been my natural kin, and
yet neither fair word nor foul tongue will bring them
to hearken to advice. There is something frightful
in the woods this very sun-down, master; or colts,
that I have driven the summer through, would not
be apt to give this unfair treatment to one they
ought to know to be their friend.”
“Thy sheep are counted, Mark?” resumed the
grandfather, turning towards his descendant with
a less austere, but always an authoritative brow;
“thy mother hath need of every fleece, to provide
covering for thee and others like thee; thou knowest,
child, that the creatures are few, and our winters
weary and cold.”
“My mother's loom shall never be idle from carelessness
of mine,” returned the confident boy; “but
counting and wishing cannot make seven-and-thirty
fleeces, where there are only six-and-thirty backs to
carry them. I have been an hour among the briars
and bushes of the hill logging, looking for the lost
wether, and yet neither lock, hoof, hide, nor horn,
is there to say what hath befallen the animal.”
“Thou hast lost a sheep!—this carelessness will
cause thy mother to grieve.”
“Grandfather, I have been no idler. Since the
last hunt, the flock hath been allowed to browse the
woods; for no man, in all that week, saw wolf, panther,
or bear, though the country was up, from the
great river to the outer settlements of the colony.
The biggest four-footed animal, that lost its hide in
the muster, was a thin-ribbed deer, and the stoutest
battle given, was between wild Whittal Ring, here,
and a wood-chuck that kept him at arm's-length, for
the better part of an afternoon.”
“Thy tale may be true, but it neither finds that
which is lost, nor completeth the number of thy
mother's flock. Hast thou ridden carefully throughout
the clearing? It is not long, since I saw the animals
grazing in that quarter. What hast thou twisting
in thy fingers, in that wasteful and unthankful
manner, Whittal?”
“What would make a winter blanket, if there was
enough of it! wool! and wool, too, that came from
the thigh of old Straight-Horns; else have I forgotten
a leg, that gives the longest and coarsest hair at
the shearing.”
“That truly seemeth a lock from the animal that
is wanting,” exclaimed the other boy. “There is
no other creature in the flock, with fleece so coarse
and shaggy. Where found you the handful, Whittal
Ring?”
“Growing on the branch of a thorn. Queer fruit
this, masters, to be seen where young plums ought
to ripen!”
“Go, go,” interrupted the old man; “thou idlest,
and mispendest the time in vain talk. Go, fold thy
flock, Mark; and do thou, weak-one, house thy charge
with less uproar than is wont. We should remember
that the voice is given to man, firstly, that he
may improve the blessing in thanksgivings and petitions;
be imparted to himself, and which it is his bounden
duty to attempt to impart to others; and then, thirdly,
to declare his natural wants and inclinations.”
With this admonition, which probably proceeded
from a secret consciousness in the Puritan that he
had permitted a momentary cloud of selfishness to
obscure the brightness of his faith, the party separated.
The grandson and the hireling took their several
ways to the folds, while old Mark himself slowly
continued his course towards the dwellings. It was
near enough to the hours of darkness, to render the
preparations we have mentioned prudent; still, no
urgency called for particular haste, in the return of
the veteran to the shelter and protection of his own
comfortable and secure abode. He therefore loitered
along the path, occasionally stopping to look into
the prospects of the young crops, that were beginning
to spring up in readiness for the coming year,
and at times bending his gaze around the whole of
his limited horizon, like one who had the habit of
exceeding and unremitted care.
One of these numerous pauses promised to be
much longer than usual. Instead of keeping his understanding
eye on the grain, the look of the old
man appeared fastened, as by a charm, on some distant
and obscure object. Doubt and uncertainty,
for many minutes, seemed to mingle in his gaze. But
all hesitation had apparently disappeared, as his lips
severed, and he spoke, perhaps unconsciously to himself,
aloud.
“It is no deception,” were the low words, “but a
living and an accountable creature of the Lord's.
Many a day has passed since such a sight hath been
witnessed in this vale; but my eye greatly deceives
me, or yonder cometh one ready to ask for hospitality,
and, peradventure, for Christian and brotherly
communion.”
The sight of the aged emigrant had not deceived
him. One, who appeared a wayworn and weary
traveller, had indeed ridden out of the forest, at a
point where a path, that was easier to be traced by
the blazed trees that lay along its route, than by any
marks on the earth itself, issued into the cleared
land. The progress of the stranger had, at first,
been so wary and slow, as to bear the manner of exceeding
and mysterious caution. The blind road,
along which he must have ridden not only far but
hard, or night had certainly overtaken him in the
woods, led to one of the distant settlements that lay
near to the fertile banks of the Connecticut. Few
ever followed its windings, but they who had especial
affairs, or extraordinary communion, in the way of
religious friendships, with the proprietors of the Wish-Ton-Wish,
as, in commemoration of the first bird
that had been seen by the emigrants, the valley of
the Heathcotes was called.
Once fairly in view, any doubt or apprehension,
that the stranger might at first have entertained,
disappeared. He rode boldly and steadily forward,
until he drew a rein that his impoverished and
weary beast gladly obeyed, within a few feet of the
proprietor of the valley, whose gaze had never ceased
to watch his movements, from the instant when the
other first came within view. Before speaking, the
stranger, a man whose head was getting gray, apparently
as much with hardship as with time, and one
whose great weight would have proved a grievous
burthen, in a long ride, to even a better-conditioned
beast than the ill-favored provincial hack he had
ridden, dismounted, and threw the bridle loose upon
the drooping neck of the animal. The latter, without
a moment's delay, and with a greediness that denoted
long abstinence, profited by its liberty, to crop
the herbage where it stood.
“I cannot be mistaken, when I suppose that I
the visiter said, touching a soiled and slouched
beaver that more than half concealed his features.
The question was put in an English that be-spoke
a descent from those who dwell in the midland
counties of the mother country, rather than in that
intonation which is still to be traced, equally in the
western portions of England and in the eastern states
of the Union. Notwithstanding the purity of his
accent, there was enough in the form of his speech
to denote a severe compliance with the fashion of
the religionists of the times. He used that measured
and methodical tone, which was, singularly enough,
believed to distinguish an entire absence of affectation
in language.
“Thou hast reached the dwelling of him thou
seekest; one who is a submissive sojourner in the
wilderness of the world, and an humble servitor in
the outer temple.”
“This then is Mark Heathcote!” repeated the
stranger in tones of interest, regarding the other
with a look of long, and, possibly, of suspicious investigation.
“Such is the name I bear. A fitting confidence
in him who knows so well how to change the wilds
into the haunts of men, and much suffering, have
made me the master of what thou seest. Whether
thou comest to tarry a night, a week, a month, or
even for a still longer season, as a brother in care,
and I doubt not one who striveth for the right, I bid
thee welcome.”
The stranger thanked his host, by a slow inclination
of the head; but the gaze, which began to partake
a little of the look of recognition, was still too
earnest and engrossing to admit of verbal reply. On
the other hand, though the old man had scanned the
broad and rusty beaver, the coarse and well-worn
doublet, the heavy boots, and, in short, the whole
to idle fashions to condemn, it was evident that
personal recollection had not the smallest influence
in quickening his hospitality.
“Thou hast arrived happily,” continued the
Puritan: “had night overtaken thee in the forest,
unless much practised in the shifts of our young
woodsmen, hunger, frost, and a supperless bed of
brush, would have given thee motive to think more
of the body than is either profitable or seemly.”
The stranger might possibly have known the
embarrassment of these several hardships; for the
quick and unconscious glance he threw over his
soiled dress, should have betrayed some familiarity,
already, with the privations to which his host
alluded. As neither of them, however, seemed
disposed to waste further time on matters of such
light moment, the traveller put an arm through the
bridle of his horse, and, in obedience to an invitation
from the owner of the dwelling, they took their
way towards the fortified edifice on the natural mound.
The task of furnishing litter and provender to
the jaded beast was performed by Whittal Ring,
under the inspection, and, at times, under the instructions,
of its owner and his host, both of whom
appeared to take a kind and commendable interest
in the comfort of a faithful hack, that had evidently
suffered long and much in the service of its master.
When this duty was discharged, the old man and
his unknown guest entered the house together; the
frank and unpretending hospitality of a country
like that they were in, rendering suspicion or hesitation
qualities that were unknown to the reception
of a man of white blood; more especially if he
spoke the language of the island, which was then
first sending out its swarms, to subdue and possess
so large a portion of a continent that nearly divides
the earth in moieties.
| CHAPTER II. The wept of Wish-ton-Wish | |