The Village Watch-Tower | Page 4

this book for consistency or to update
or "correct" the spelling. Mrs. Wiggin's spelling is somewhat
transitional between modern American and British spellings. The only
liberty taken is that of removing extra spaces in contractions. E.g., I
have used "wouldn't" where the original has consistently "would n't";
this is true for all such contractions with "n't" which appeared
inordinately distracting to the modern reader.
R. McGowan, San Jose, March 1997

THE VILLAGE WATCH-TOWER
BY KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN

Dear old apple-tree, under whose gnarled branches these stories were

written, to you I dedicate the book. My head was so close to you, who
can tell from whence the thoughts came? I only know that when all the
other trees in the orchard were barren, there were always stories to be
found under your branches, and so it is our joint book, dear apple-tree.
Your pink blossoms have fallen on the page as I wrote; your ruddy fruit
has dropped into my lap; the sunshine streamed through your leaves
and tipped my pencil with gold. The birds singing in your boughs may
have lent a sweet note here and there; and do you remember the day
when the gentle shower came? We just curled the closer, and you and I
and the sky all cried together while we wrote "The Fore-Room Rug."
It should be a lovely book, dear apple-tree, but alas! it is not altogether
that, because I am not so simple as you, and because I have strayed
farther away from the heart of Mother Nature.
KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN
"Quillcote," Hollis, Maine, August 12, 1895.

CONTENTS.
The Village Watch-Tower 1 Tom o' the Blueb'ry Plains 31 The
Nooning Tree 55 The Fore-Room Rug 95 A Village Stradivarius 123
The Eventful Trip of the Midnight Cry 195

THE VILLAGE WATCH-TOWER.
It stood on the gentle slope of a hill, the old gray house, with its
weather-beaten clapboards and its roof of ragged shingles. It was in the
very lap of the road, so that the stage-driver could almost knock on the
window pane without getting down from his seat, on those rare
occasions when he brought "old Mis' Bascom" a parcel from Saco.
Humble and dilapidated as it was, it was almost beautiful in the
springtime, when the dandelion-dotted turf grew close to the great

stone steps; or in the summer, when the famous Bascom elm cast its
graceful shadow over the front door. The elm, indeed, was the only
object that ever did cast its shadow there. Lucinda Bascom said her
"front door 'n' entry never hed ben used except for fun'rals, 'n' she was
goin' to keep it nice for that purpose, 'n' not get it all tracked up."
She was sitting now where she had sat for thirty years. Her high-backed
rocker, with its cushion of copperplate patch and its crocheted tidy,
stood always by a southern window that looked out on the river. The
river was a sheet of crystal, as it poured over the dam; a rushing,
roaring torrent of foaming white, as it swept under the bridge and
fought its way between the rocky cliffs beyond, sweeping swirling,
eddying, in its narrow channel, pulsing restlessly into the ragged
fissures of its shores, and leaping with a tempestuous roar into the
Witches' Eel-pot, a deep wooded gorge cleft in the very heart of the
granite bank.
But Lucinda Bascom could see more than the river from her favorite
window. It was a much-traveled road, the road that ran past the house
on its way from Liberty Village to Milliken's Mills. A tottering old
sign-board, on a verdant triangle of turf, directed you over Deacon
Chute's hill to the "Flag Medder Road," and from thence to Liberty
Centre; the little post-office and store, where the stage stopped twice a
day, was quite within eyeshot; so were the public watering-trough,
Brigadier Hill, and, behind the ruins of an old mill, the wooded path
that led to the Witches' Eel-pot, a favorite walk for village lovers. This
was all on her side of the river. As for the bridge which knit together
the two tiny villages, nobody could pass over that without being seen
from the Bascoms'. The rumble of wheels generally brought a family
party to the window,-- Jot Bascom's wife (she that was Diadema
Dennett), Jot himself, if he were in the house, little Jot, and grandpa
Bascom, who looked at the passers-by with a vacant smile parting his
thin lips. Old Mrs. Bascom herself did not need the rumble of wheels to
tell her that a vehicle was coming, for she could see it fully ten minutes
before it reached the bridge,--at the very moment it appeared at the
crest of Saco Hill, where strangers pulled up their horses, on a clear day,
and