University of Virginia Library

An Idyl of the Rod.

It was as pretty a country cottage as is to
be found, even now, in all the Wabash Valley,
situated on a prominent bluff, overlooking the
broad stretches of bottom land, and giving a
fine view of the wide winding river. The windows
and doors of this cottage were draped in
vines, among which the morning glory and the
honeysuckle were the most luxuriant; while
on each side of the gravelled walk, that led
from the front portico to the dooryard gate,
grew clusters of pinks, sweet-williams and
larkspurs. The house was painted white, and
had green window shutters—old fashioned, to
be sure, but cosy, homelike and tasty withal.
Everything pertaining to and surrounding the
place had an air of methodical neatness, that
betokened great care and scrupulous order on
the part of the inmates.

About the hour of six on a Monday morning,
in the month of May, a fine, hearty, intelligent
looking lad of twelve years walked

slowly up the path which led from the old
orchard to the house. He was dressed in
loose trowsers of bottle green jeans, a jacket
of the same, heavy boots and a well worn wool
hat. The boy's shoulders stooped a little, and
a slight hump discovered itself at the upper
portion of his back. His face was strikingly
handsome, being fair, bright, healthful, and
marked with signs of great precocity of intellect,
albeit it wore just now an indescribable,
faintly visible shade, as of innocent perplexity,
or, possibly, grief. His mind was evidently
not at ease, but the varying shadows that
chased each other across the mild depths of
his clear, vivacious eyes would have stumped
a physiognomist. Between a laugh and a cry,
but more like a cry; between defiance and
utter shame, but more like the latter; his
cheeks and lips took on every shade of pallor
and of flush. He shrugged his shoulders as
he moved along, and cast rapid glances in
every direction, as if afraid of being seen.
“Whippoo-tee, tippoo-tee-tee-e!” sang a great
cardinal red bird in the apple tree over his
head. He flung a stone at the bird with terrible
energy, but missed it.

The mistress of the cottage was at this time
in the kitchen preparing for the week's washing,

for do not all good Hoosier housewives wash
on Monday? She was a middle aged, stoutly
built, healthy matron, sandy haired, slightly
freckled, blue eyed and quick in her movements.
Usually smiling and happy, it was
painful to see how she struggled now to master
the emotions of great grief and sadness
that constantly arose in her bosom, like spectres
that would not be driven away.

A bright eyed, golden haired lass of sixteen
was in the breakfast room washing the dishes
and singing occasional snatches from a mournful
ditty. It was sad, indeed, to see a cloud of
sorrow on a face so fresh and sweet.

Mr. Coulter, the head of the family, and
owner of the cottage and its lands, stood near
the centre of the sitting room with his hands
crossed behind him, gazing fixedly and sadly
on the picture of a sweet child holding a white
kitten in its lap, which picture hung on the
wall over against the broad fire-place. A look
of sorrow betrayed itself even in the dark,
stern visage of the man. He drew down his
shaggy eyebrows and occasionally pulled his
grizzled moustache into his mouth and chewed
it fiercely. Evidently he was chafing under
his grief.

The cottage windows were wide open, as is

the western custom in fine weather, and the
fragrance of spice wood and sassafras floated
in on the flood tide of pleasant air, while from
the big old locust tree down by the fence fell
the twittering prelude to a finch's song. A
green line of willows and a thin, pendulous
stratum of fog marked the way of the river,
plainly visible from the west window, and
through the white haze flocks of teal and
wood ducks cut swiftly in their downward
flight to the water. A golden flicker sang and
hammered on the gate-post the while he eyed
a sparrow-hawk that wheeled and screamed
high over head. The dew was like little mirrors
in the grass.

The lad entered the kitchen and said to his
mother, in a voice full of tenderness, though
barely audible:

“Mammy, where's pap?”

“In the front room, Billy,” replied the matron
solemnly, quaveringly.

Passing into the breakfast room, Billy looked
at his sister and a flash of sympathetic sorrow
played back and forth from the eyes of one to
those of the other; then he went straight into
the sitting room and handed something to Mr.
Coulter. It was a moment of silence and suspense.
Out in the orchard the cherry and

apple blooms were falling like pink and white
snow.

The man looked down at his boy sadly, sorrowfully,
regretfully. He drew his face into a
stern frown. The lad looked up into his father's
eyes timidly, ruefully, strangely. It was a living
tableau no artist could reproduce. It was
the moment before a crisis.

“Billy,” said the father gravely, “I took your
mother and sister to church yesterday.”

“Yes, sir,” said Billy.

“And left you to see to things,” continued
the man.

“Yes, sir,” replied the boy, gazing through
the window at the flicker as it hitched down
the gate-post and finally dropped into the
grass with a shrill chirp.

“And you didn't water them pigs!”

“O-o-o! Oh, sir! Geeroody! O me! ouch!
lawsy! lawsy! mercy me!”

The slender scion of an apple tree, in the
hand of Mr. Coulter, rose and fell, cutting the
air like a rapier, and up from the jacket of the
lad, like incense from an altar, rose a cloud of
dust mingled with the nap of jeans. Down in
the young clover of the meadow the larks and
sparrows sang cheerily; the gnats and flies
danced up and down in the sunshine, the fresh

soft young leaves of the vines rustled like
satin, and all was merry indeed!

Billy's eyes were turned upward to the face
of his father in appealing agony; but still the
switch, with a sharp hiss, cut the air, falling
steadily and mercilessly on his shoulders.

All along the green banks of the river the
willows shook their shining fingers at the lifting
fog, and the voices of children going by to
the distant school smote the sweet May wind.

“Whippee! Whippee-tippee-tee!” sang the
cardinal bird.

“O pap! ouch! O-o-o! I'll not forget to
water the pigs no more!”

“S'pect you won't, neither!” said the man.

The wind, by a sudden puff, lifted into the
room a shower of white bloom petals from a
sweet apple tree, letting them fall gracefully
upon the patchwork carpet, the while a ploughman
whistled plaintively in a distant field.

“Crackee! O pap! ouch! O-o-o! You're
a killin' me!”

“Shet your mouth 'r I'll split ye to the backbone
in a second! Show ye how to run off
fishin' with Ed Jones and neglect them pigs!
Take every striffin of hide off 'n ye!”

How many delightful places in the woods,
how many cool spots beside the murmuring

river, would have been more pleasant to Billy
than the place he just then occupied! He
would have swapped hides with the very pigs
he had forgot to water.

“O, land! O, me! Geeroody me!” yelled
the lad.

“Them poor pigs!” rejoined the father.

Still the dust rose and danced in the level
jet of sunlight that fell athwart the room from
the east window, and the hens out at the barn
cackled and sang for joy over new laid eggs
stowed away in cosy places.

At one time during the falling of the rod
the girl quit washing the dishes, and thrusting
her head into the kitchen said, in a subdued
tone:

“My land! Mammy, ain't Bill a gittin' an
awful one this load o' poles?”

“You're moughty right!” responded the matron,
solemnly.

Along toward the last Mr. Coulter tip-toed
at every stroke. The switch actually screamed
through the air. Billy danced and bawled and
made all manner of serio-comic faces and contortions.

“Now go, sir,” cried the man, finally tossing
the frizzled stump of the switch out through
the window. “Go now, and next time I'll be
bound you water them pigs!”

And, while the finch poured a cataract of
melody from the locust tree, Billy went.

Poor boy! that was a terrible thrashing, and
to make it worse, it had been promised to him
on the evening before, so that he had been
dreading it and shivering over it all night!

Now, as he walked through the breakfast
room, his sister looked at him in a commiserating
way, but on passing through the kitchen
he could not catch the eye of his mother.

Finally he stood in the free open air in front
of the saddle closet. It was just then that a
speckled rooster on the barn yard fence flapped
his wings and crowed lustily. A turkey cock
was strutting on the grass by the old cherry
tree.

Billy opened the door of the closet. “A
boy's will is the wind's will, and the thoughts
of youth are long, long thoughts.” Billy peeped
into the saddle closet and then cast a glance
around him, as if to see if any one was near.

At length, during a pleasant lull in the
morning wind, and while the low, tenderly
mellow flowing of the river was distinctly audible,
and the song of the finch increased in
volume, and the bleating of new born lambs in
the meadow died in fluttering echoes under
the barn, and while the fragrance of apple

blooms grew fainter, and while the sun, now
flaming just a little above the eastern horizon,
launched a shower of yellow splendors over
him from head to foot, he took from under his
jacket behind a doubled sheep skin with the
wool on, which, with an ineffable smile, he
tossed into the closet. Then, as the yellow
flicker rose rapidly from the grass, Billy
walked off, whistling the air of that once popular
ballad—