Hills of the Shatemuc

Low stirrings in the leaves, before the wind

Wakes all the green strings of the forest lyre.

LOWELL.

The light of an early Spring morning, shining fair on upland and lowland, promised a good day for the farmer's work. And where a film of thin smoke stole up over the tree-tops, into the sunshine which had not yet got so low, there stood the farmer's house.

It was a little brown house, built surely when its owner's means were not greater than his wishes, and probably some time before his family had reached the goodly growth it boasted now. All of them were gathered at the breakfast-table.

"Boys, you may take the oxen, and finish ploughing that upland field - I shall be busy all day sowing wheat in the bend meadow."

"Then I'll bring the boat for you, papa, at noon," said a child on the other side of the table.

"And see if you can keep those headlands as clean as I have left them."

"Yes, sir. Shall you want the horses, father, or shall we take both the oxen?"

"Both? - both pairs, you mean - yes; I shall want the horses.

I mean to make a finish of that wheat lot."

"Mamma, you must send us our dinner," said a fourth speaker, and the eldest of the boys; - "it'll be too confoundedly hot to come home."

"Yes, it's going to be a warm day," said the father.

"Who's to bring it to you, Will?" said the mother.

"Asahel - can't he - when he brings the boat for papa?"

"The boat won't go to the top of the hill," said Asahel; "and it's as hot for me as for other folks, I guess."

"You take the young oxen, Winthrop," said the farmer, pushing back his chair from the table.

"Why, sir?" said the eldest son promptly.

"I want to give you the best," answered his father, with a touch of comicality about the lines of his face.

"Are you afraid I shall work them too hard?"

"That's just what I'm afraid they'd do for you."

He went out; and his son attended to his breakfast in silence, with a raised eyebrow and a curved lip.

"What do you want, Winthrop?" the mother presently called to her second son, who had disappeared, and was rummaging somewhere behind the scenes.

"Only a basket, mamma," - came from the pantry.

His mother got up from table, and basket in hand followed him, to where he was busy with a big knife in the midst of her stores. Slices of bread were in course of buttering, and lay in ominous number piled up on the yellow shelf. Hard by stood a bowl of cold boiled potatoes. He was at work with dexterity as neat-handed and as quick as a woman's.

"There's no pork there, Governor," his mother whispered as he stooped to the cupboard, - "your father made an end of that last night; - but see - here -"

And from another quarter she brought out a pie. Being made of dried apples, it was not too juicy to cut; and being cut into huge pieces they were stowed into the basket, lapping over each other, till little room was left; and cheese and gingerbread went in to fill that. And then as her hands pressed the lid down and his hands took the basket, the eyes met, and a quick little smile of great brilliancy, that entirely broke up the former calm lines of his face, answered her; for he said nothing. And the mother's "Now go!" - was spoken as if she had enough of him left at home to keep her heart warm for the rest of the day.

The two ploughmen set forth with their teams. Or ploughboys rather; for the younger of them as yet had seen not sixteen years. His brother must have been several in advance of him.

The farmhouse was placed on a little woody and rocky promontory jutting out into a broad river from the east shore. Above it, on the higher grounds of the shore, the main body of the farm lay, where a rich tableland sloped back to a mountainous ridge that framed it in, about half a mile from the water. Cultivation had stretched its hands near to the top of this ridge and driven back the old forest, that yet stood and looked over from the other side. One or two fields were but newly cleared, as the black stumps witnessed. Many another told of good farming, and of a substantial reward for the farmer; at what cost obtained they did not tell.

Towards one of these upland fields, half made ready for a crop of spring grain, the boys took their way. On first leaving the house, the road led gently along round the edge of a little bay, of which the promontory formed the northern horn. Just before reaching the head of the bay, where the road made a sharp turn and began to ascend to the tableland, it passed what was called the bend meadow.

It was a very lovely morning of early Spring, one of those days when nature seems to have hushed herself to watch the buds she has set a swelling. Promising to be warm, though a little freshness from the night still lingered in the air. Everywhere on the hills the soft colours of the young Spring- time were starting out, that delicate livery which is so soon worn. They were more soft to-day under a slight sultry haziness of the atmosphere - a luxurious veil that Spring had coyly thrown over her face; she was always a shy damsel. It soothed the light, it bewitched the distance, it lay upon the water like a foil to its brightness, it lay upon the mind with a subtle charm winning it to rest and enjoy. It etherealized Earth till it was no place to work in. But there went the oxen, and the ploughmen.

The one as silently as the other; till the bay was left behind and they came to the point where the road began to go up to the tableland. Just under the hill here was a spring of delicious water, always flowing; and filling a little walled- up basin.

Will, or Will Rufus, as his father had long ago called him, had passed on and begun to mount the hill. Winthrop stopped his oxen till he should fill a large stone jug for the day. The jug had a narrow neck, and he was stooping at the edge of the basin, waiting for the water to flow in, when his head and shoulders made a sudden plunge and the jug and he soused in together. Not for any want of steadiness in either of them; the cause of the plunge was a worthless fellow who was coming by at the moment. He had a house a little way off on the bay. He lived by fishing and farming alternately; and was often, and was then, employed by Mr. Landholm as an assistant in his work. He was on his way to the bend meadow, and passing close by Winthrop at the spring, the opportunity was too good to be resisted; he tipped him over into the water.

The boy soon scrambled out, and shaking himself like a great water-dog, and with about as much seeming concern, fixed a calm eye on his delighted enemy.

"Well, Sam Doolittle, - what good has that done anybody?"

"Ha'n't it done you none, Governor?"

"What do you think?"

"Well! I think you be a cool one - and the easiest customer ever I see."

"I've a mind it shall do somebody good; so see you don't give my father any occasion to be out with you; for if you do, I'll give him more."

"Ay, ay," said the man comfortably, "you won't tell on me. Hi! here's somebody!"

It was Rufus who suddenly joined the group, whip in hand, and looking like a young Achilles in ploughman's coat and trousers. Not Achilles' port could be more lordly; the very fine bright hazel eye was on fire; the nostril spoke, and the lip quivered; though he looked only at his brother.

"What's the matter, Winthrop?"

"I've been in the water, as you see," said his brother composedly. "I want a change of clothes, rather."

"How did you get into the water?"

"Why, head foremost - which wasn't what I meant to do."

"Sam, you put him in!"

"He, he! - well, Mr. Rufus, maybe I helped him a leetle."

"You scoundrel!" said Rufus, drawing the whip through his fingers; "what did you do it for?"

"He, he! - I didn't know but what it was you, Will."

For all answer, the ox-whip was laid about Sam's legs, with the zest of furious indignation; a fury there was no standing against. It is true, Rufus's frame was no match for the hardened one of Mr. Doolittle, though he might be four or five years the elder of the two boys; but the spirit that was in him cowed Sam, in part, and in part amused him. He made no offer to return the blows; he stood, or rather jumped, as the whip slung itself round his legs, crying out,

"Lay it on, Will! - Lay it on! Hi - That's right - Tuck it on,

Will! -"

Till Will's arm was tired; and flinging away from them, in a towering passion still, he went up the hill after his oxen. Sam rubbed his legs.

"I say, Governor, we're quits now, ben't we?" he said in a sort of mock humble good-humour, as Winthrop was about to follow his brother.

"Yes, yes. Be off with yourself!"

"I wish it had ha' been 'tother one, anyhow," muttered Sam.

Not a word passed between the brothers about either the ducking or the flagellation. They spoke not but to their oxen. Rufus's mouth was in the heroic style yet, all the way up the hill; and the lips of the other only moved once or twice to smile.

The day was sultry, as it had promised, and the uphill lay of the ground made the ploughing heavy, and frequent rests of the oxen were necessary. Little communication was held between the ploughmen nevertheless; the day wore on, and each kept steadily to his work and seemingly to his own thoughts. The beautiful scene below them, which they were alternately facing and turning their backs upon, was too well known even to delay their attention; and for the greater part of the day probably neither of them saw much beyond his plough and his furrow.

They were at work on a very elevated point of view, from which the channel of the river and the high grounds on the other side were excellently seen. Valley there was hardly any; the up-springing walls of green started from the very border of the broad white stream which made its way between them. They were nowhere less than two hundred feet high; above that, moulded in all manner of heights and hollows; sometimes reaching up abruptly to twelve or fourteen hundred feet, and sometimes stretching away in long gorges and gentle declivities, - hills grouping behind hills. In Summer all these were a mass of living green, that the eye could hardly arrange; under Spring's delicate marshalling every little hill took its own place, and the soft swells of ground stood back the one from the other, in more and more tender colouring. The eye leapt from ridge to ridge of beauty; not green now, but in the very point of the bursting leaf, taking what hue it pleased the sun. It was a dainty day; and it grew more dainty as the day drew towards its close and the lights and shadows stretched athwart the landscape again. The sun-touched lines and spots of the mountains now, in some places, were of a bright orange, and the shadows between them deep neutral tint or blue. And the river, apparently, had stopped running to reflect.

The oxen were taking one of their rests, in the latter part of the day, and Winthrop was sitting on the beam of his plough, when for the first time Rufus came and joined him. He sat down in silence and without so much as looking at his brother; and both in that warm and weary day sat a little while quietly looking over the water; or perhaps at the little point of rest, the little brown spot among the trees on the promontory, where home and mother and little baby sister, and the end of the day, and the heart's life, had their sole abiding-place. A poor little shrine, to hold so much!

Winthrop's eyes were there, his brother's were on the distance. When did such two ever sit together on the beam of one plough, before or since! Perhaps the eldest might have seen nineteen summers, but his face had nothing of the boy, beyond the fresh colour and fine hue of youth. The features were exceedingly noble, and even classically defined; the eye as beautiful now in its grave thoughtfulness as it had been a few hours before in its fire. The mouth was never at rest; it was twitching or curving at the corners now with the working of some hidden cogitations. The frame of the younger brother was less developed; it promised to be more athletic than that of the elder, with perhaps somewhat less grace of outline; and the face was not so regularly handsome. A very cool and clear grey eye aided the impression of strength; and the mouth, less beautifully moulded than that of Rufus, was also infinitely less demonstrative. Rufus's mouth, in silence, was for ever saying something. Winthrop's for the most part kept its fine outlines unbroken, though when they did give way it was to singular effect. The contrast between the faces was striking, even now when both were in repose.

The elder was the first to break silence, speaking slowly and without moving his eye from its bent.

"Governor, - what do you suppose lies behind those mountains?"

"What?" - said Winthrop quickly.

The other smiled.

"Your slow understanding can make a quick leap now and then."

"I can generally understand you," said his brother quietly.

Rufus added no more for a little, and Winthrop let him alone.

"We've got the farm in pretty good order now," he remarked presently in a considerate tone, folding his arms and looking about him.

"Papa has," observed Winthrop. "Yes - if those stumps were out once. We ought to have good crops this year, of most things."

"I am sure I have spent four or five years of my life in hard work upon it," said the other.

"Your life ain't much the worse of it," said Winthrop, laughingly.

Rufus did not answer the laugh. He looked off to the hills again, and his lips seemed to close in upon his thoughts.

"Papa has spent more than that," said the younger brother gravely. "How hard he has worked - to make this farm!"

"Well, he has made it."

"Yes, but he has paid a dozen years of his life for it. And mamma! -"

"It was a pretty tough subject to begin with," said the elder, looking about him again. "But it's a nice farm now; - it's the handsomest farm in the county; - it ought to pay considerable now, after this."

"It hasn't brought us in much so far," observed Winthrop, "except just to keep along; - and a pretty tight fit at that."

"The house ought to be up here," said Rufus, considering the little distant brown speck; - "it would be worth twice as much."

"What would?"

"Why! - the farm!"

"The house wouldn't," said Winthrop, - "not to my notions."

"It's confoundedly out of the way, down there, a mile off from the work."

"Only a quarter of that, and a little better," said Winthrop calmly.

"A little worse! - There's a great loss of time. There would be twice as much work done if the house was up here."

"I couldn't stand it," said Winthrop. "How came it the house was put down there?"

"Papa bought the point first and built the house, before ever he pushed his acquirements so far as this. He would be wise, now, to let that, and build another up here somewhere."

"It wouldn't pay," said the younger brother; "and for one, I'm not sorry."

"If the farm was clear," said the elder, "I'd stand the chance of it's paying; it's that keeps us down."

"What?"

"That debt."

"What debt?"

"Why, the interest on the mortgage."

"I don't know what you are talking of."

"Why," said Rufus a little impatiently, "don't you know that when papa bought the property he couldn't pay off the whole price right down, and so he was obliged to leave the rest owing, and give security."

"What security?"

"Why, a mortgage on the farm, as I told you."

"What do you mean by a mortgage?"

"Why, he gave a right over the farm - a right to sell the farm at a certain time, if the debt was not paid and the interest upon it."

"What is the debt?"

"Several thousands, I believe."

"And how much does he have to pay upon that every year?"

"I don't know exactly - one or two, two or three hundred dollars; and that keeps us down, you see, till the mortgage is paid off."

"I didn't know that."

They sat silent a little time. Then Winthrop said,

"You and I must pay that money off, Will."

"Ay - but still there's a question which is the best way to do it," said Rufus.

"The best way, I've a notion," said Winthrop looking round at his cattle, - "is not to take too long noon-spells in the afternoon."

"Stop a bit. Sit down! - I want to speak to you. Do you want to spend all your life following the oxen?"

Winthrop stopped certainly, but he waited in silence.

"I don't!"

"What do you want to do?"

"I don't know - something -"

"What is the matter, Will?"

"Matter?" - said the other, while his fine features shewed the changing lights and shadows of a summer day, - "why Winthrop, that I am not willing to stay here and be a ploughman all my life, when I might be something better!"

The other's heart beat. But after an instant, he answered calmly,

"How can you be anything better, Will?"

"Do you think all the world lies under the shadow of Wut-a- qut-o?"

"What do you mean?"

"Do you think all the world is like this little world which those hills shut in?"

"No," - said Winthrop, his eye going over to the blue depths and golden ridge-tops, which it did not see; "- but -"

"Where does that river lead to?"

"It leads to Mannahatta. What of that?"

"There is a world there, Winthrop, - another sort of world, - where people know something; where other things are to be done than running plough furrows; where men may distinguish themselves! - where men may read and write; and do something great; and grow to be something besides what nature made them! - I want to be in that world."

They both paused.

"But what will you do, Rufus, to get into that world? - we are shut in here."

"I am not shut in!" said the elder brother; and brow and lip and nostril said it over again; - "I will live for something greater than this!"

There was a deep-drawn breath from the boy at his side.

"So would I, if I could. But what can we do?"

How difficult it was to do anything, both felt. But after a deliberate pause of some seconds, Rufus answered,

"There is only one thing to do. - I shall go to College."

"To College! - Will?"

The changes in the face of the younger boy were sudden and startling. One moment the coronation of hope; the next moment despair had thrown the coronet off; one more, and the hand of determination, - like Napoleon's, - had placed it firmly on his brow; and it was never shaken again. But he said nothing; and both waited a little, till thoughts could find words.

"Rufus, - do papa and mamma know about this?"

"Not yet."

"What will they think of it?"

"I don't know - they must think of it as I do. My mind is made up. I can't stay here."

"But some preparation is necessary, Rufus, ain't it? - we must know more than we do before we can go to College, mustn't we? How will you get that?"

"I don't know, I will get it. Preparation! - yes!"

"Father will want us both at home this summer."

"Yes - this summer - I suppose we must. We must do something - we must talk to them at home about it, - gradually."

"If we had books, we could do a great deal at home."

"Yes, if, - But we haven't. And we must have more time. We couldn't do it at home."

"Papa wants us this summer. - And I don't see how he can spare us at all, Rufus."

"I am sure he will let us go," said the other steadily, though with a touch of trouble in his face.

"We are just beginning to help him."

"We can help him much better the other way," said Rufus quickly. "Farming is the most miserable slow way of making money that ever was contrived."

"How do you propose to make money?" inquired his brother coolly.

"I don't know! I am not thinking of making money at present!"

"It takes a good deal to go to College, don't it?"

"Yes."

And again there was a little silence. And the eyes of both were fixed on the river and the opposite hills, while they saw only that distant world and the vague barrier between.

"But I intend to go, Winthrop," said his brother, looking at him, with fire enough in his face to burn up obstacles.

"Yes, you will go," the younger said calmly. The cool grey eye did not speak the internal "So will I!" - which stamped itself upon his heart. They got up from the plough beam.

"I'll try for't," was Rufus's conclusion, as he shook himself.

"You'll get it," said Winthrop.

There was much love as well as ambition in the delighted look with which his brother rewarded him. They parted to their work. They ploughed the rest of their field: - what did they turn over besides the soil?

They wended their slow way back with the oxen when the evening fell; but the yoke was off their own necks. The lingering western light coloured another world than the morning had shined upon. No longer bondsmen of the soil, they trode it like masters. They untackled their oxen and let them out, with the spirit of men whose future work was to be in a larger field. Only Hope's little hand had lifted the weight from their heads. And Hope's only resting point was determination.