University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.
MISS MARTHA HAWKINS.

“IT'S very good for the health to dig in the elements.
I was quite emaciated last year at the
East, and the doctor told me to dig in the elements.
I got me a florial hoe and dug, and it's been most
excellent for me.” Time, the Saturday following
the Friday on which Ralph kept Shocky company as far as the
“forks” near Granny Sanders's house. Scene, the Squire's garden.
Ralph helping that worthy magistrate perform sundry little jobs
such as a warm winter day suggests to the farmer. Miss Martha
Hawkins, the Squire's niece, and his housekeeper in his present
bereaved condition, leaning over the palings—pickets she called
them—of the garden fence, talking to the master. Miss Hawkins
was recently from Massachusetts. How many people there are
in the most cultivated communities whose education is partial!

“It's very common for school-masters to dig in the elements
at the East,” proceeded Miss Martha. Like many other people
born in the celestial empires (of which there are three—China,
Virginia, Massachusetts), Miss Martha was not averse to reminding

outside barbarians of her good fortune in this regard. It did
her good to speak of the East.

Now Ralph was amused with Miss Martha. She really had a
good deal of intelligence despite her affectation, and conversation
with her was both interesting and diverting. It helped him to
forget Hannah, and Bud, and the robbery, and all the rest, and
she was so delighted to find somebody to make an impression
on that she had come out to talk while Ralph was at work. But
just at this moment the school-master was not so much interested
in her interesting remarks, nor so much amused by her
amusing remarks, as he should have been. He saw a man coming
down the road riding one horse and leading another, and he
recognized the horses at a distance. It must be Bud who was
riding Means's bay mare and leading Bud's roan colt. Bud had
been to mill, and as the man who owned the horse-mill kept

but one old blind horse himself, it was necessary that Bud should
take two. It required three horses to run the mill; the old blind
one could grind the grist, but the two others had to overcome
the friction of the clumsy machine.

But it was not about the horse-mill that Ralph was thinking,
nor about the two horses. Since that Wednesday evening on
which he escorted Hannah home from the spelling-school he
had not seen Bud Means. If he had any lingering doubts of the
truth of what Mirandy had said, they had been dissipated by the
absence of Bud from school.

“When I was to Bosting —” Miss Martha was to Boston only
once in her life, but as her visit to that sacred city was the most
important occurrence of her life, she did not hesitate to air
her reminiscences of it frequently. “When I was to Bosting,”
she was just saying, when, following the indications of Ralph's
eyes, she saw Bud coming up the hill near Squire Hawkins's
house. Bud looked red and sulky, and to Ralph's and Miss
Martha Hawkins's polite recognitions he returned only a surly
nod. They both saw that he was angry. Ralph was able to
guess the meaning of his wrath.

Toward evening Ralph strolled through the Squire's cornfield
toward the woods. The memory of the walk with Hannah was
heavy upon the heart of the young master, and there was comfort
in the very miserableness of the cornstalks with their disheveled
blades hanging like tattered banners and rattling discordantly in
the rising wind. Wandering without purpose, Ralph followed
the rows of stalks first one way and then the other in a
zigzag line, turning a right angle every minute or two. At
last he came out in a woods mostly of beech, and he pleased
his melancholy fancy by kicking the dry and silky leaves before

him in billows, while the soughing of the wind through
the long, vibrant boughs and slender twigs of the beech forest
seemed to put the world into the wailing minor key of his
own despair.

What a fascination there is in a path come upon suddenly without
a knowledge of its termination! Here was one running in
easy, irregular curves through the wood, now turning gently to
the right in order to avoid a stump, now swaying suddenly to the
left to gain an easier descent at a steep place, and now turning
wantonly to the one side or the other, as if from very caprice in
the man who by idle steps unconsciously marked the line of the
foot-path at first. Ralph could not resist the impulse — who
could?—to follow the path and find out its destination, and following
it he came presently into a lonesome hollow, where a
brook gurgled among the heaps of bare limestone rocks that filled
its bed. Following the path still, he came upon a queer little
cabin built of round logs, in the midst of a small garden patch inclosed
by a brush fence. The stick chimney, daubed with clay
and topped with a barrel open at both ends, made this a typical
cabin.

It flashed upon Ralph that this place must be Rocky Hollow,
and that this was the house of old John Pearson, the one-legged
basket-maker, and his rheumatic wife—the house that hospitably
sheltered Shocky. Following his impulse, he knocked and was
admitted, and was not a little surprised to find Miss Martha Hawkins
there before him.

“You here, Miss Hawkins?” he said when he had returned
Shocky's greeting and shaken hands with the old couple.

“Bless you, yes,” said the old lady. “That blessed gyirl”—the
old lady called her a girl by a sort of figure of speech perhaps—

“that blessed gyirl's the kindest creetur you ever saw—comes here
every day, most, to cheer a body up with somethin' or nuther.”

Miss Martha blushed, and said “she came because Rocky Hollow
looked so much like a place she used to know at the East.
Mr. and Mrs. Pearson were the kindest people. They reminded
her of people she knew at the East. When she was to
Bosting—”

Here the old basket-maker lifted his head from his work, and
said: “Pshaw! that talk about kyindness” (he was a Kentuckian
and said kyindness) “is all humbug. I wonder so smart a woman
as you don't know better. You come nearder to bein' kyind than
anybody I know; but, laws a me! we're all selfish akordin'
to my tell.”

“You wasn't selfish when you set up with my father most
every night for two weeks,” said Shocky, as he handed the old
man a splint.

“Yes, I was, too!” This is a tone that made Ralph tremble.
“Your father was a miserable Britisher. I'd fit red-coats, in the
war of eighteen-twelve, and lost my leg by one of 'em stickin his
dog-on'd bagonet right through it, that night at Lundy's Lane;
but my messmate killed him though, which is a satisfaction to
think on. And I didn't like your father, 'cause he was a Britisher.
But ef he'd a died right here in this free country, 'thout
nobody to give him a drink of water, blamed ef I wouldn't a been
ashamed to set on the platform at a Fourth of July barbecue, and
to hold up my wooden leg for to make the boys cheer! That was
the selfishest thing I ever done. We're all selfish akordin' to
my tell.”

“You wasn't selfish when you took me that night, you know,”
and Shocky's face beamed with gratitude.

“Yes, I war too, you little sass-box! What did I take you fer?
Hey? Bekase I didn't like Pete Jones nor Bill Jones. They're
thieves, dog on 'em!”

Ralph shivered a little. The horse with the white forefoot
and white nose galloped before his eyes again.

“They're a set of thieves. That's what they air.”

“Please, Mr. Pearson, be careful. You'll get into trouble, you
know, by talking that way,” said Miss Hawkins. “You're just
like a man that I knew at the East.”

“Why, do you think an old soldier like me, hobbling on a
wooden leg, is afraid of them thieves? Didn't I face the Britishers?
Didn't I come home late last Wednesday night? I rather
guess I must a took a little too much at Welch's grocery, and laid
down in the middle of the street to rest. The boys thought
'twas funny to crate me. I woke up kind a cold, 'bout one in
the mornin.' 'Bout two o'clock I come up Means's hill, and didn't
I see Pete Jones, and them others what robbed the Dutchman,
and somebody, I dunno who, a crossin' the blue-grass paster
towards Jones's?” (Ralph shivered.) “Don't shake your finger at
me, old woman. Tongue is all I've got to fight with now; but
I'll fight them thieves tell the sea goes dry, I will. Shocky,
gim me a split.”

“But you wasn't selfish when you tuck me.” Shocky stuck
to his point most positively.

“Yes, I was, you little tow-headed fool! I didn't take you
kase I was good, not a bit of it. I hated Bill Jones what keeps
the poor-house, and I knowed him and Pete would get you
bound to some of their click, and I didn't want no more thieves
raised; so when your mother hobbled, with you a leadin' her,
poor blind thing! all the way over here on that winter night,

and said, `Mr. Pearson, you're all the friend I've got, and I want
you to save my boy,' why, you see I was selfish as ever I could
be in takin' of you. Your mother's cryin' sot me a cryin' too.
We're all selfish in everything, akordin' to my tell. Blamed ef
we ha'n't, Miss Hawkins, only sometimes I'd think you was real
benev'lent ef I didn't know we war all selfish.”