"Why, Joseph, it must have been Hannibal!" cried Gram.
"So it was!" exclaimed Gramp. "Too bad we were not at home!"
"What! Not Hannibal Hamlin that was Vice-President of the United States!" Addison almost shouted.
"Yes, Vice-President Hamlin," said the Old Squire.
And about that time, it would have required nothing much heavier than a turkey's feather to bowl us all over. Addison looked at "Doad" and she looked at Ellen and me. Halse whistled.
"Why, what did you say, or do, that makes you look so queer!" cried Gram, with uneasiness. "I hope you behaved well to him. Did anything happen?"
"Oh, no, nothing much," said Ellen, laughing nervously. "Only he got the 'Jonah' pie and--and--we've had the Vice-President of the United States under the table to put our feet on!"
Gram turned very red and was much disturbed. She wanted to have a letter written that night, and try to apologize for us. But the Old Squire only laughed. "I have known Mr. Hamlin ever since he was a boy," said he. "He enjoyed that pie as well as any of them; no apology is needed."
CHAPTER XXIII
THE THRASHERS COME
Truth to say, farm work is never done, particularly on a New England farm where a little of everything has to be undertaken and all kinds of crops are raised, and where sheep, cattle, calves, colts, horses and poultry have to be tended and provided with winter food, indoors. A thrifty farmer has always a score of small jobs awaiting his hands.
There were now brakes to cut and dry for "bedding" at the barn, bushes and briars to clear up along the fences and walls, and stone-heaps to draw off, preparatory to "breaking up" several acres more of greensward.
The Old Squire's custom was to break up three or four acres, every August, so that the turf would rot during the autumn. Potatoes were then usually planted on it the ensuing spring, to be followed the next year by corn and the next by wheat, or some other grain, when it was again seeded down in grass.
About this time, too, the beans had to be pulled and stacked; and there were always early apples to be gathered, for sale at the village stores.
Sometimes, too, the corn would be ripe enough to cut up and shock by the 5th or 6th of September; and immediately after came potato-digging, always a heavy, dirty piece of farm work.
Not far from this time, "the thrashers" would make their appearance, with "horse-power," "beater" and "separator," which were set up in the west barn floor. These dusty itinerants usually remained with us for two days and threshed the grain on shares: one bushel for every ten of wheat, rye and barley and one for every twelve of oats. There were always two of them; and for five or six years the same pair came to our barn every fall: a sturdy old man, named Dennett, and his son-in-law, Amos Moss. Dennett, himself, "tended beater" and Moss measured and "stricted" the grain as it came from the separator;--and it was hinted about among the farmers, that "Moss would bear watching."
We were kept very busy during those two days; Halse, I remember, was first set to "shake down" the wheat off a high scaffold, for Dennett to feed into the beater; while Addison and I got away the straw. I deemed it great fun at first, to see the horses travel up the lags of the horse-power incline, and hear the machine in action; but I soon found that it was suffocatingly dusty work; our nostrils and throats as well as our hair and clothing were much choked and loaded with dust.
We had been at work an hour or two, when suddenly an unusual snapping noise issued from the beater; and Dennett abruptly stopped the machine.
After examining the teeth, he looked up where Halse stood on the scaffold, shaking down, and said, "Look here, young man, I want you to be more careful what you shake down here; we don't want to thrash clubs!"
"I didn't shake down clubs," said Halse.
"A pretty big stick went through anyway," remarked Dennett. "I haven't said you did it a-purpose. But I asked you to be more careful."
They went on again, for half or three-quarters of an hour, when there was another odd noise, and Dennett again stopped and looked up sharply at Halse. "Can't you see clubs as big as that?" said he. "Why, that's an old tooth out of a loafer rake. You must mind what you are about."
Halse pretended that he had seen nothing in the grain; and the machine was started again; but Addison and I could see Halse at times from the place where we were at work, and noticed that he looked mischievous.
Addison shook his head at him, vehemently.
Nothing further happened that forenoon; but we had not been at work for more than an hour, after dinner, when a shrill _thrip_ resounded from the beater, followed by a jingling noise, and one of the short iron teeth from it flew into the roof of the barn. Again Dennett stopped the machine, hastily.
"What kind of a feller do you call yerself!" he exclaimed, looking very hard up at Halse. "You threw that stone into the beater, you know you did."
"I didn't!" protested Halse. "You can't prove I did, either."
"I'd tan your jacket for ye, ef you was my boy," muttered Dennett, wrathfully. He and Moss got wrenches from their tool-box and replaced the broken tooth with a new one. The Old Squire, who had been looking to the grain in the granary, came in and asked what the trouble was.
"Squire," said Dennett, "I want another man to shake down here for me.
That's a queer Dick you've put up there."
The Old Squire spoke to Addison to get up and shake out the grain and bade Halse come down and assist me with the straw. Halse climbed down, muttering to himself. "I want to get a drink of water," he said; and as he went out past the beater, he made a saucy remark to Dennett; whereupon the latter seized a whip-stock and aimed a blow at him. Halse dodged it and ran. Dennett chased him out of the barn; and Halse took refuge in the wood-shed.
The Old Squire was at first inclined to reprove Dennett for this apparently unwarranted act; he considered that he had no right to chastise Halse. "I will attend to that part of the business, myself," he said, somewhat sharply.
"All right, Squire," said Dennett. "But I want you to understand you've got a bad boy there. Throwing stones into a beater is rough business. He might kill somebody."
Halse did not come back to help me, at once; and at length Gramp went to the house, in search of him. Ellen subsequently told me, that Halse had at first refused to come out, on the pretext that Dennett would injure him. The Old Squire assured him that he should not be hurt. Still he refused to go. Thereupon the old gentleman went in search of a horsewhip, himself; and as a net result of the proceedings, Halse made his appearance beside me, sniffing.
"I wish it had stove his old machine all to flinders and him with it,"
he said to me, revengefully.
"Did you throw the stone into the beater?" I asked. The machine made so much noise that I did not distinctly hear what Halse replied, but I thought that he denied doing it; and whether he actually did it, or whether the stone slid down with the grain owing to his carelessness, I never knew. Addison shook down till night; and the next day Asa Doane came to help us; for the Old Squire deemed it too hard for boys of our age to handle the grain and straw, unassisted.
In May, before I came to the farm, Addison and Halse had planted a large melon bed, in the corn field, on a spot where a heap of barnyard dressing had stood. There were both watermelons and musk-melons. These had ripened slowly during August and, by the time of the September town-meeting, were fit for eating.
The election for governor, with other State and county officers, was held on the second Monday of September in Maine.
In order to raise a little pocket money, Addison and Halstead carried their melons, also several bushels of good eating apples and pears, to the town-house at the village, early on election day, and rigged a little "booth" for selling from. They set off by sunrise, with old Nancy harnessed in the express wagon.
As I had no part in the planting of the melons, I was not a partner in the sales, although Gramp allowed me to go to the town-meeting with him, later in the forenoon. The distance was seven miles from the farm.
The boys sold thirty melons at ten cents apiece and disposed of the most of the apples at two for a cent and pears at a cent apiece; so that the combined profits amounted to rather over seven dollars. Sales were so good, that they had disposed of their entire stock by three o'clock in the afternoon.
The polls were not closed, however, till sunset, that is to say voting could legally continue till that time. Halse had called on Addison for a division of the money, at about three o'clock, and received his share; he then told Addison that he was going home. Addison preferred to remain, to learn how the town had voted; for he was much interested in a "temperance movement" which was agitating that portion of the State that year.
The Old Squire had returned home, shortly after noon, and gone into the field to see to the digging of the potatoes. When we came in to supper, at six o'clock, Addison was just coming up the lane, on his way home.
"No doubt Williams is elected!" were his first words.
Williams was the Republican and Temperance candidate for representative to the State legislature. Addison was much elated; and after we sat down to supper, he began telling Theodora about the town-meeting; for some moments none of us noticed that one chair was empty. Then Gram said, "Where's Halstead?"
"I don't know," said the Old Squire, suddenly glancing at the vacant seat. "Didn't he come home with you, Addison?"
"No, sir," replied Ad. "He went home afoot, a little while after you left; at any rate he said that he was going home. I haven't seen him since."
"I don't think he has come home," said Theodora. "I haven't seen him at the house."
"Well, he said he was coming home, and I gave him his part of the melon and apple money," replied Addison. "That's all I know about it."
We thought it likely that he would come during the evening, but he did not, and we all, particularly Theodora, felt much disturbed about him.