"I wish we could shoot him!" I whispered, beginning to wax warlike.
"I've a great mind to let a stone go down there," said Ned, looking about. "Let's both get stones and throw at once, and see what he will do. If he starts up here, we'll put for that tree."
This was an extremely exciting proposition, but I was getting bolder. We found each a stone as big as a coffee-cup.
"Now both together," whispered Ned, and we flung them with all our power. We did not hit our mark, but they struck the ground near the spruce and bounced past it, quite closely. The bear growled again, savagely, and started stiffly out from his covert, past the remains of the sheep. We both turned to run, but noticing that the creature had stopped, we pulled up again. The bear saw us and growled repeatedly, yet did not come far past his jealously guarded treasure. He shuffled about, keeping his head drawn down in a peculiar manner, but we could see that his eye was on us. After a few moments, he drew back behind the spruce again. Thereupon we threw more stones; and again the beast rushed out, growling and scratching up the grass in an odd manner; he did not appear inclined to pursue us, however, and we now noticed that there was something clumsy in its gait, like a limp.
"Gracious!" Ned suddenly exclaimed. "That's old 'Three-Legs!' He's come round again!"
"What, the bear that lost his foot in a trap?" I asked, remembering what Ellen and Theodora had told me a few days before.
"Yes, siree!" cried Ned. "He's an awful old sheep-killer! He comes round once in a while. But he's mighty cunning! He's a savage one, too, but he can't run very fast."
"Then let's pelt him!" I exclaimed.
"No, no," said Ned. "We must hurry back home and raise a crew. That bear must be killed, you know. If we don't, he will come round every week and take a sheep all summer."
We therefore set off in haste, to run to the Wilbur farm, where we arrived very hot and out of breath just as the family was sitting down to supper. "Old 'Three-Legs' is in the sheep pasture!" shouted Ned at the door. "Get the gun, pa! I'm going to tell the Murches!"
Mr. Wilbur owned a gun, but it was not in shooting condition. We then ran down the hill to the Murch farm, and there our story created considerable excitement. Ben and Willis at once brought out a double-barrelled gun, which their father proceeded to load, but they lacked bullets and heavy shot. Willis and Ned and I therefore ran to the Edwardses to notify Thomas and his father and procure ammunition. At the Edwardses they had both shot and also a musket which carried balls. This latter weapon was at once charged for bear.
Mr. Edwards, however, advised me to go home and notify the Old Squire and Addison, in order that they, too, might join the hunt, if disposed.
I set off at a run again; but by this time I had become not a little leg-weary; night, too, was at hand. The boys were milking, and I met the Old Squire coming toward the house with two brimming pailfuls. "Old 'Three-Legs' has just killed one of Murches' sheep and a lamb, too!" I shouted.
"Is that so?" said the old gentleman, but the intelligence did not excite him so much as I had expected it would. He looked at me and said, "You look badly heated. You have run too hard."
"But that old bear's killed a sheep!" I exclaimed. "They are all going after him. They sent me to get you and the boys."
By this time Addison and Halstead had risen off their milking stools to hear the tidings, and exhibited signs of interest.
"Did you see the bear, my son?" the Old Squire asked.
"Yes, siree!" I exclaimed, and thereupon I poured forth all the particulars. "They want all of us to load our guns and go with them," I cried expectantly.
"Well," remarked the Old Squire, with what seemed to me a very provoking lack of enthusiasm. "If they are all going, I guess they will not need us. You had better go to the well and wash your face and head in some cold water, then rest a while and have your supper; it has been a very hot day."
"But old Three-Legs!" I exclaimed. "He may get away!"
"Yes, he may," said Gramp, laughing. "I should not wonder if he did.
"I will tell you something about bears, my son," he went on, good-naturedly. "A bear is quite a knowing animal, and sometimes very cunning. This one they call old 'Three-Legs' is remarkably so. I'm very sure that, if we all went over there as quick as we could, and stayed around all night, we shouldn't find him. That bear knew just as well as you did that you had gone to get help and would be back with it; and I shouldn't wonder if by this time he was three miles away--and still going. What that bear did after you and Ned left was to listen awhile, till he made sure you were gone, then stuff himself with as much more of that mutton as he could hold, and leave the place as fast as he could go. He's gone, you may depend upon it;--and he will not come near that place again for a week or two probably. That is bear nature and bear wit. They seem to know some things almost as well as men. They know when they kill sheep that men will make a fuss about it. That bear was lying quiet there, with his ears open for trouble; he wasn't much afraid of two boys, but he knows there are men and guns not far off."
I was really very tired and after hearing this view of the case was not much sorry to rest and have my supper. We learned next day that Thomas and his father, and Ned and the Murches went over to the pasture with their guns, but they failed to find the bear. The Murches set a trap at the place where the sheep had been killed, and kept it there for ten days. A hound was caught in it, but no bear.
I remember that my sleep that night was somewhat disturbed by exciting dreams of hunting. At the breakfast table next morning I told the story of our adventure over again, and described the ugly demonstrations of the bear at such length, that I presently saw grandfather smiling, and detected Addison giving a sly wink to Theodora. This confused me so much that I stopped in haste and was more cautious about my realistic descriptions in future. Halstead began hectoring me that forenoon concerning my adventure, and nicknamed me "the great bear hunter." Much incensed, I retorted by asking him whether he had paid for that seed-corn. Hearing that, Addison, who was near us, cast an inquiring look at Halstead, and the latter hurriedly changed the subject; he was unusually polite to me for several days afterwards.
CHAPTER IX
HOMESICK AGAIN. BLUE, OH, SO BLUE!
The jaunt with Edgar and the excitement about old "Three-Legs" had distracted my thoughts for the time being, but had not cured me of homesickness. Two days later my mother sent me by mail my book of arithmetic, the one I had recently used at school; she thought that I might attend the district school in Maine and need it.
Now there is not usually much in a text-book of arithmetic that excites fond memories in a boy of thirteen. Often the reverse. But I had no sooner taken that well-thumbed book from its wrapping of brown paper, than another pang of homesickness went through me; and this time it was nostalgia in earnest.
If, at this moment, there is anywhere in the United States, or in the whole world, a boy or girl who is homesick, I know how to pity each and all of them. I do not suppose that my pity will do them much good.
Nothing does much good. But I know exactly how they feel, and they have my heartiest sympathy.
Whoever ridicules and laughs at any one who is truly homesick must have a hard heart and a shallow mind. It is no laughing matter. Homesickness is something midway between a physical disease and a mental worry. It has a real, physiological cause, and is due to the inability of the brain to adapt itself, without a struggle, to the strangeness of new scenes and new surroundings; and that struggle is often a very painful one.
Homesickness had not fallen upon me at first, there were so many new things to see, so many new cousins and young neighbors to get acquainted with. For a time my attention was wholly taken up with the novelties of the place. The farm, the cattle, the birds, the work which we had to do, everything, in fact, was novel. Perhaps for that very reason, when the mental struggle to really adapt myself to it came, it was the more profound and severe.
That morning I had no sooner unwrapped this old book than the pang began again. I could not swallow a mouthful of breakfast. It really seemed to me that I should die right then and there if I did not get up and start for home.
_Blue_ is no adequate word with which to describe what I suffered. It came upon me with a suddenness, too, which nearly took my breath with it. At the table were the bright, cheery faces of my cousins, and of the Old Squire and Gram; but for the moment, how saddening, poor and dreary everything looked to me! The thought of remaining there, month after month, gave me heart-sink like death.
Kind parent, if you have a boy or girl off at school, or anywhere at a distance, whom you wish to be happy and content, do not write very much to them, and above all things do not go on to tell them of home affairs, home scenes and familiar objects. It is mistaken kindness. It might possibly answer--if a boy--to speak of a woodpile soon to be sawn; or--if a girl--to allude to great heaps of dishes to be washed; but I would not even advise much of that, nor anything else in the least suggestive of home scenes; in fact, write as little as possible.
I remember, as I sat there at table, unable to eat, or even to swallow my coffee, that Cousin Theodora glanced compassionately at me, and Ellen and Addison curiously. They surmised what ailed me, from their own previous experience, but said nothing. The Old Squire and Gram, too, wisely forebore to stir me by foolishly expressed sympathy. How glad I was that they did not speak to me!
The day passed drearily enough, and as evening drew on, still gloomier shadows fell into my mind. I stole away to read my mother's letter again and be alone with my trouble. Billow after billow of the blackest misery broke over me. I went out into the garden, then around to the back side of the west barn; the darkening landscape was not more somber than my heart. How unspeakably dreary the dim, weathered old barn, the shadowy hills and forests looked to me! Not less dreary seemed my whole future.
I felt exiled. It appeared to me that I should never know another happy moment, that I never could, by any possibility, enjoy myself again. I sat down on a stone, in the dark, put my head in my hands, and gave myself up to the most somber reflections. Cold despair crept into me at every pore. A fever of tears then filled my eyes. I laid wild plans to escape; I would run away that very night and go home. The distance, as I knew, was about five hundred miles; but I was sure that I could walk twenty miles per day, perhaps thirty. In twenty days I could reach home.
I did not think much about food by the way; it did not appear to me that I should want to touch a mouthful of anything eatable till I reached home. If I did so far desire, I fancied that I might gather a few berries by the wayside. Then I began to plan the details of setting off.
I would go indoors and put on my other suit of clothes, after the family were asleep; and not to be too mean and cause too much anxiety, I determined to write a few words on a bit of paper and slip it under Theodora's door, advising them all not to worry about me, as I had gone home, "for a time." These latter words I concluded to add, by way of breaking it a little more gently to them, not that I had the slightest intention of ever returning.
As I sat there with my hands over my face, planning, and brewing hot tears, I heard a step in the grass, and looking up, saw a tall, shadowy figure which I knew must be the Old Squire.
"Is that you, 'Edmund?'" he said, as I jumped up off the stone. He still called me that sometimes. "It is a close night, I declare," he continued. "I had about as lief be out here in the cool myself, as in the house abed. But the mosquitoes bite a little, don't they?".
I had neither noticed that the evening was hot, nor yet that there were any mosquitoes; I was quite insensible to ordinary physical influences.
The old gentleman lay down on the grass beside me. "Let's lay and talk a spell," said he. "I never come round back of the barn here, but that I think of the fox I shot when I was a young man. That fox had a 'brush'
as big 'round as your leg, the biggest fox-tail I ever saw. He had been coming around the barns for some time; I used to hear him bark, mornings, about four o'clock."
The Old Squire then went on, at length, to tell me how he watched for the fox, and how he loaded the old "United-States-piece" musket for it, and how he finally fired and shot the fox, but that the gun nearly broke his collar-bone, he had loaded it so heavily. He was nigh half an hour telling me all about it, and in spite of myself, I grew somewhat interested.
"Why, how these mosquitoes do bite!" he finally exclaimed, giving one a rousing slap. "Let's go in before they eat us up, and go to bed."
I went in with him and went to bed, but my trouble had now cankered too deeply to be easily calmed. In the blackness of the bedchamber it beset me again. Like other maladies, nostalgia, when once set up, must run its course, I suppose. It never has appeared to me that I slept at all that night, yet perhaps I did. Long before daylight, however, I was again shedding hot tears and laying wild plans. But my thoughts had now taken on an even gloomier and more desperate shade. What was the use of my going home, I thought; my mother did not want me there. What was the use of living in such a hopelessly dreary world! Live there at the Old Squire's I could not, would not; of that I was certain. I never could endure it. The thought of existing there, as I then felt, week after week and month after month, was simply unbearable. Better die at once. I began to think of various cases of suicide of which I had heard, or read--in my happier days: the rope, poison, drowning. The latter I believed to be the easier method of death; and I thought of the Little Sea down where we washed the sheep and had begun to go in swimming on warm days. There was water enough there in the deepest place;--and once in, it would soon be over!
As the hours of the night dragged by, I began to take a morbid pleasure in thinking about it, as if I had fully decided the question. I really believed that I had as good as decided to drown myself; and when at length we were called at five o'clock, I rose to dress in a very unhealthy frame of mind.
"What's the matter with you?" exclaimed Halstead, as we were putting on our shoes.
"Nothing," said I, heavily.