North of Boston | Page 5

apron to it. She put out her hand
Among the harp-like morning-glory
strings,
Taut with the dew from garden bed to eaves,
As if she
played unheard the tenderness
That wrought on him beside her in the
night.
"Warren," she said, "he has come home to die:
You needn't
be afraid he'll leave you this time."
"Home," he mocked gently.

"Yes, what else but home?
It all depends on what you mean by home.

Of course he's nothing to us, any more
Than was the hound that
came a stranger to us
Out of the woods, worn out upon the trail."


"Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to
take you in."
"I should have called it
Something you somehow
haven't to deserve."
Warren leaned out and took a step or two,

Picked up a little stick, and brought it back
And broke it in his hand
and tossed it by.
"Silas has better claim on us you think
Than on his
brother? Thirteen little miles
As the road winds would bring him to
his door.
Silas has walked that far no doubt to-day.
Why didn't he
go there? His brother's rich,
A somebody--director in the bank."

"He never told us that."
"We know it though."
"I think his brother
ought to help, of course.
I'll see to that if there is need. He ought of
right
To take him in, and might be willing to--
He may be better
than appearances.
But have some pity on Silas. Do you think
If he'd
had any pride in claiming kin
Or anything he looked for from his
brother,
He'd keep so still about him all this time?"
"I wonder
what's between them."
"I can tell you.
Silas is what he is--we
wouldn't mind him--
But just the kind that kinsfolk can't abide.
He
never did a thing so very bad.
He don't know why he isn't quite as
good
As anyone. He won't be made ashamed
To please his brother,
worthless though he is."
"I can't think Si ever hurt anyone."
"No,
but he hurt my heart the way he lay
And rolled his old head on that
sharp-edged chair-back. He wouldn't let me put him on the lounge.

You must go in and see what you can do.
I made the bed up for him
there to-night.
You'll be surprised at him--how much he's broken.

His working days are done; I'm sure of it."
"I'd not be in a hurry to
say that."
"I haven't been. Go, look, see for yourself.
But, Warren,
please remember how it is:
He's come to help you ditch the meadow.

He has a plan. You mustn't laugh at him.
He may not speak of it,
and then he may.
I'll sit and see if that small sailing cloud
Will hit
or miss the moon."
It hit the moon.
Then there were three there,
making a dim row,
The moon, the little silver cloud, and she.

Warren returned--too soon, it seemed to her,
Slipped to her side,
caught up her hand and waited.
"Warren," she questioned.
"Dead,"
was all he answered.

The Mountain
THE mountain held the town as in a shadow
I saw so much before I
slept there once:
I noticed that I missed stars in the west,
Where its
black body cut into the sky.
Near me it seemed: I felt it like a wall

Behind which I was sheltered from a wind.
And yet between the town
and it I found,
When I walked forth at dawn to see new things,

Were fields, a river, and beyond, more fields.
The river at the time
was fallen away,
And made a widespread brawl on cobble-stones;

But the signs showed what it had done in spring;
Good grass-land
gullied out, and in the grass
Ridges of sand, and driftwood stripped of
bark.
I crossed the river and swung round the mountain.
And there I
met a man who moved so slow
With white-faced oxen in a heavy cart,

It seemed no hand to stop him altogether.
"What town is this?" I
asked.
"This? Lunenburg."
Then I was wrong: the town of my
sojourn,
Beyond the bridge, was not that of the mountain,
But only
felt at night its shadowy presence.
"Where is your village? Very far
from here?"
"There is no village--only scattered farms.
We were but
sixty voters last election.
We can't in nature grow to many more:

That thing takes all the room!" He moved his goad.
The mountain
stood there to be pointed at.
Pasture ran up the side a little way,

And then there was a wall of trees with trunks:
After that only tops of
trees, and cliffs
Imperfectly concealed among the leaves.
A dry
ravine emerged from under boughs
Into the pasture.
"That looks
like a path.
Is that the way to reach the top from here?--
Not for this
morning, but some other time:
I must be getting back to breakfast
now."
"I don't advise your trying from this side.
There is no proper
path, but those that have

Been up, I understand, have climbed from
Ladd's.
That's five miles back. You can't mistake the place:
They
logged it there last winter some way up.
I'd take you, but I'm bound
the other way."
"You've never climbed it?"
"I've been on the sides

Deer-hunting and trout-fishing. There's a brook
That starts up on it
somewhere--I've heard say
Right on the top, tip-top--a curious thing.


But what