Part 3 (2/2)

He would force himself to a solitary day at times, and go out into the country with dog and gun, and tramp for miles, and wonder at himself.

He had all sorts of fancies. He thought of his wickedness and his wasted time, and compared himself with the great men in the books who had been in similar evil straits,--with Marc Antony, with King Arthur in Gwendolen's enchanted castle, and with Geraint the strong but slothful,--rather far-fetched this last comparison,--and of all the rest. It was a grotesque variety, but amid it all he really suffered.

And he would make good resolves and, for the moment, firm ones, and return to town when the dew was falling and the moonlight coming, and the tale was but retold. And the woman was wise, as women are, and conscienceless, yet suffering a little, too.

She had found more than a summer's toy, and she had grown to fear the great boy in his moods, and to want to keep him, and to doubt the measure of her art. This must be a hard thing, too, for such splendid pirates to bear. They may not even scuttle all the craft they capture.

And the root of all evil is sometimes the root of all good. The dollar pulls all ways. Harlson must earn his way. One day his father dropped a chance word regarding some one, miles in the country, who wanted a fence built inclosing a tract out of the wood. It was isolated work, a task of a month or two for a strong man, a mere laborer. Young Harlson became interested.

”Why shouldn't I try it?” he asked.

His father laughed.

”It's work for a toughened man, my boy. You have softened with six years of only study.”

The boy laughed as well.

”You needn't fear,” he said. ”All strength is not attained upon a farm, and I want to swing an ax and maul again.”

And that day he set out afoot for the home of the man who needed a fence. He told Mrs. Rolfston briefly. She paled a trifle, but made no objection. He said he would make visits to the town.

CHAPTER X.

THE BUILDING OF THE FENCE.

An ax, a maul, a yoke of oxen; these are the great requisites for him who would build a rail fence through a forest. Grant Harlson made the bargain for the work, hired a yoke of oxen, as you may do in the country, and secured the right to eat plain food three times a day at the cabin of a laborer. A bed he could not have, but the right to sleep in a barn back in the field, and there also to house his oxen for the night, was given him. He slept upon the hay-mow. He went into the forest and began his work. The wood was dense, and what is known all through the region as a black ash swale, lowland which once reclaimed from nature makes, with its rich deposits, a wondrous meadow-land. He ”lined” the fence's course and cleared the way rudely through the forest, a work of days, and then he made the maul.

The mace of the mediaeval knight is the maul of to-day. No longer it cracks heads or helmets, but there is work for it. And it has developed into a mighty weapon. There are two sorts of maul in the lake country. As the stricken eagle is poetically described as supplying the feather for the arrow by which itself was hurt to death, the trees furnish forth the thing to rend them. Upon the side of the curly maple, aristocrat of the sugar bush, grows sometimes a vast wart.

This wart has neither rhyme nor reason. It has no grain defined. It is twisted, convoluted, a solid, tough and heavy ma.s.s, and hard, almost, as iron. It is sawed away from the trunk with much travail, and is seasoned well, and from it is fas.h.i.+oned a great head, into which is set a hickory handle, and the thing will crush a rock if need be.

This is the maul proper.

There is another maul, or mace, made from a cut of heavy iron-wood, a foot in length and half a foot in thickness, with the hickory handle set midway between iron bands, sprung on by the country blacksmith.

This is sometimes called the beetle.

The beetle is a monster hammer, the maul a monster mace. Each serves its purpose well, but the beetle never has the swing and mighty force of the great heavy maple knot. Grant Harlson bought a seasoned knot of an old woodman and shaped a maul. He had learned the craft in youth.

The ash trees fell beneath the ax, the trunks were cut to rail lengths, and the oxen dragged logs through muck and mire and brush and bramble to the line of fence, and there the maul swung steadily in great strokes upon the iron and wooden wedges, the smell of timber newly split was in the air, and the heavy rails were lifted, and the fence began its growth.

And it was lonesome in the depths of the wood, for the black ash swale is not tenanted by many birds and squirrels as are the ridges, and only the striped woodp.e.c.k.e.r or a wandering jay fluttered about at times, or a c.o.o.n might seek the pools for frogs. Harlson had circ.u.mstance for thought. Only the hard labor cleared his blood and brain, and helped him.

Could fortune come to him who had such a load upon his conscience? Was not he a violator of all law, as he had learned it,--law of both G.o.d and man? Had he an excuse at all, and what was the degree of it? He could not endure the time when it became too dark in the wood for work, and when he drove the jaded oxen out into the field and to the barn, and it was yet too early for seeking the hay-mow, which was of clover, and there seeking sleep. A clover mow is a wonderful sleep-compeller.

There are the softness and fragrance, but, sometimes, even with that, he would be wakeful. To avoid himself, the young man would, at last, go in early evening to the older farmers' homes,--for it was his own country and he knew them all,--and there, with the sons and hired men, pitch quoits in the road before the house.

Quoits is still a game of farmers' sons, and the horseshoe is superior to the quoit of commerce and the town. The open side affords facility for aggressive feats of cleverness in displacing an opponent's cast, and the corks upon the shoes reduce some sliding chances, and the game has quality. And Harlson found rather a distraction in the contests.

He found, maybe, distraction, too, in chatting with slim Jenny Bierce, who was a very little girl when he was in the country school, but who had grown into almost a woman, and who was a trifle more refined, perhaps, than most of her a.s.sociates. She had a sweetheart, a stalwart young farmer named Harrison Woodell, one of the schoolmates of Harlson's early youth, but she liked to talk with Harlson. He was different from her own lover; no better, of course, but he had lived another life, and could tell her many things.

And Woodell, who expected to marry her, glowered a little. She did not care for that. Grant Harlson had not noticed it.

<script>