Darrel of the Blessed Isles | Page 6

shut in the box-stall he
could hear her calling, half a mile away, and it made his heart sore.
Soon after, a moose treed him on the trail and held him there for quite

half a day. Later he had to help thrash and was laid up with the measles.
Then came rain and flooded flats that turned him off the trail. Years
after he used to say that work and weather, and sickness and distance,
and even the beasts of the field and wood, resisted him in the way of
learning.
He went to school at Hillsborough that winter. His time, which Allen
gave him in the summer, had yielded some forty-five dollars. He hired
a room at thirty-five cents a week. Mary Allen bought him a small
stove and sent to him, in the sleigh, dishes, a kettle, chair, bed, pillow,
and quilt, and a supply of candles.
She surveyed him proudly, as he was going away that morning in
December,
"Folks may call ye han'some," she said. "They'd like to make fool of ye,
but you go on 'bout yer business an' act as if ye didn't hear."
He had a figure awkward, as yet, but fast shaping to comeliness. Long,
light hair covered the tops of his ears and fell to his collar. His ruddy
cheeks were a bit paler that morning; the curve in his lips a little drawn;
his blue eyes had begun to fill and the dimple in his chin to quiver,
slightly, as he kissed her who had been as a mother to him. But he went
away laughing.
Many have seen the record in his diary of those lank and busy days.
The Saturday of his first week at school he wrote as follows:--
"Father brought me a small load of wood and a sack of potatoes
yesterday, so, after this, I shall be able to live cheaper. My expenses
this week have been as follows:--
Rent 35 cents Corn meal 14 " Milk 20 " Bread 8 " Beef bone 5 " Honey
5 " Four potatoes, about 1 " -- 88 cents.
"Two boys who have a room on the same floor got through the week
for 75 cents apiece, but they are both undersized and don't eat as hearty.
This week I was tempted by the sight of honey and was fool enough to
buy a little which I didn't need. I have some meal left and hope next
week to get through for 80 cents. I wish I could have a decent necktie,
but conscience doth make cowards of us all. I have committed half the
first act of 'Julius Caesar.'"
And yet, with pudding and milk and beef bone and four potatoes and
"Julius Caesar" the boy was cheerful.
"Don't like meat any more--it's mostly poor stuff anyway," he said to

his father, who had come to see him.
"Sorry--I brought down a piece o' venison," said Allen.
"Well, there's two kinds o' meat," said the boy; "what ye can have,
that's good, an' what ye can't have, that ain't worth havin'."
He got a job in the mill for every Saturday at 75 cents a day, and soon
thereafter was able to have a necktie and a pair of fine boots, and a
barber, now and then, to control the length of his hair.
Trove burnt the candles freely and was able but never brilliant in his
work that year, owing, as all who knew him agreed, to great modesty
and small confidence. He was a kindly, big-hearted fellow, and had wit
and a knowledge of animals and of woodcraft that made him excellent
company. That schoolboy diary has been of great service to all with a
wish to understand him. On a faded leaf in the old book one may read
as follows:--
"I have received letters in the handwriting of girls, unsigned. They
think they are in love with me and say foolish things. I know what
they're up to. They're the kind my mother spoke of--the kind that set
their traps for a fool, and when he's caught they use him for a thing to
laugh at. They're not going to catch me.
"Expenses for seven days have been $1.14. Clint McCormick spent 60
cents to take his girl to a show and I had to help him through the week.
I told him he ought to love Caesar less and Rome more."
Then follows the odd entry without which it is doubtful if the history of
Sidney Trove could ever have been written. At least only a guess would
have been possible, where now is certainty. And here is the entry:--
"Since leaving home the men of the dark have been very troublesome.
They wake me about every other night and sometimes I