Wheat and Huckleberries Part 13

"I'll wager anything that's a blooded Kentucky," she said, craning her neck for a fuller view. "My, but isn't she a beauty? I'll have a good look at her if his highness gets down. Wouldn't I like to call out, 'Light, and come in, stranger!'" she added under her breath. "Stella, who is he? He must be some admirer of yours."

"Never saw him before," said Stella, who was eying him with as much curiosity as Kate. "I'll tell you what, he must be a connoisseur in art and has heard of my Breton Peasant. Ha! With that horse and that riding costume I shall charge him a hundred and fifty."

By this time the young man had reached the hitching post and jumped down from the saddle. He patted his horse's neck when he had adjusted the hitching rein, flicked the dust from his riding boots with his gold-handled whip, and proceeded toward the door.

"You go, Kate," whispered Stella, who was drawing Greenaway figures with pen and ink on a set of table doilies, and Kate was not loath.

"Is Deacon Saxon at home?" inquired the young man in a pleasant voice.

"I think so. Will you come in?" responded Kate.

"It isn't the Breton Peasant after all," murmured Stella to Esther. "I wonder if it can be an ancestor." She arranged the doilies with a quick artistic touch, and rose as the young man entered the room.

He had presented Kate with a small engraved card, and though it was a new discovery for her that gentlemen ever carried such things, she used it as if to the manner born.

"Mr. Philip Hadley, Miss Saxon and Miss Northmore," she announced easily, and Stella added, with a pretty bow, "And, Mr. Hadley, Miss Kate Northmore."

The young man looked bewildered. In search of a country deacon of advanced years, at an old-fas.h.i.+oned farmhouse, to be ushered into one of the most attractive of parlors, with three charming young ladies in possession, was enough to bewilder. But he rose to the surprise gracefully in another moment.

"I must apologize for intruding myself in this way," he said, "but I have heard that Deacon Saxon is quite an authority on Esterly antiquities, and I wanted to see him on a little matter of inquiry."

"He will be delighted to talk with you. You may be sure of it," said Stella.

It was only a minute before the old gentleman appeared, walking in his nimblest manner from his own room, whither Kate had gone in search of him. She had put him in possession of his caller's name, and he extended his hand with an air of welcome and curiosity combined.

"Hadley? Did you say your name was Hadley? Well, I'm pleased to see you."

"I'm very pleased to see you, sir," said the young man, bowing with a deference of manner which was peculiarly pleasing. "I'm taking a liberty in calling on you, I'm well aware of it, but it's the penalty one pays for having a reputation like yours. People say you know everything that ever happened in Esterly, and as I'm looking up our family history a little, I thought perhaps you could help me. I confess though," he added with a smile, "I expected to see a much older person."

"Older than eighty-eight?" quoth Ruel Saxon. "I was born in the year seventeen hundred and ninety-one, and if I live till the twenty-first day of next June I shall be eighty-nine."

He was too much pleased with the young man's errand, and himself as the person appealed to, to pause for a compliment at this point, and added briskly, "I shall be glad to tell you anything I know. 'Tisn't many young men that go to the old men to inquire about things that are past.

They did in Bible times. In fact, they were commanded to: 'Ask thy father and he will show thee, thy elders and they will tell thee.'

That's what it says; but they don't do it much nowadays."

"They have more books to go to now, you know, grandfather," said Stella, glancing from the figure she was drawing, a charming little maid in a sunbonnet, and incidentally holding it up as she spoke.

"Yes, too many of 'em," said her grandfather, rather grimly. "They'd go to the old folks more if they couldn't get the printed stuff so easy."

"But, grandfather," exclaimed Esther, "the young people can't all go to the old people who know the stories. Kate and I didn't have you, for instance, till a few weeks ago."

Her grandfather's face relaxed, and Mr. Philip Hadley looked amused.

"But Deacon Saxon is right," he said, turning to the young ladies. "It's a much more delightful thing to hear a story from one who has been a part of it, or remembers those who were, than to get it from the printed page. I fancy the spirit of a thing is much better preserved by oral tradition than by cold print. You remember Sir Walter attributed a good deal of his enthusiasm for Scottish history to the tales of his grandmother. I see you have a charming sketch of Abbotsford," he added, glancing at a picture on the wall opposite, and from there with a questioning look to Stella.

She gave a pleased nod. "We were sketching in Scotland, a party of us, last summer," she said.

"Were you?" exclaimed the young man. "I was tramping on the Border myself."

Perhaps he would have liked to defer his consultation with the old gentleman long enough for a chat with the young lady, but the former was impatient for it now. He had been scrutinizing his caller's face for the last few moments with sharp attention.

"You say your name is Hadley. Are you any relation to the Hadleys that used to live in our town? There was quite a family of 'em here fifty years ago."

"I think I am," said the young man, smiling. "My father was born in Esterly, but moved away before his remembrance. Perhaps you knew my grandfather, Moses Hadley."

"I knew _of_ him," said the old gentleman, nodding; "but our family never had much to do with the Hadleys, for they lived on the other side of town. They were good respectable folks," he added in a ruminating tone; "didn't care any great about schooling, I guess, but they were master hands for making money. I've heard one of 'em made a great fortune somewhere out West. He sent a handsome subscription to our soldiers' monument."

The young man, who had flushed distinctly during part of this speech, looked relieved at its conclusion. "That must have been my Uncle Nathan," he said. "My father went into business in Boston." Perhaps it was by way of foot-note to the remark about his ancestors' lack of zeal for learning that he added carelessly: "I remember my cousin came to Esterly once to see your monument. We were in Harvard together at the time."

The remark was lost on the old gentleman. He was pursuing his own train of recollection now. "I knew your grandmother's folks better 'n I did your grandfather's," he said. "Moses Hadley married Mercy Bridgewood, and the Bridgewoods and our folks neighbored a good deal."

"Did they?" exclaimed the young man, with a quick eagerness in his voice. "It was the Bridgewood line that I came to see you about. Did you ever hear of Jabez Bridgewood?"

"Jabez Bridgewood!" exclaimed Ruel Saxon. "What, old Jabe that used to live on Cony Hill? Why, sartin, sartin! He 'n' my grandfather were great cronies. I've heard my mother say more 'n once, when she saw him coming across the fields: 'Girls, we may as well plan for an extra one to supper. There's Jabe Bridgewood, and he 'n' your grandfather'll set an'

talk till all's blue. There'll be no getting rid of him.'"

The young man colored again, and this time the girls did too. But they might have spared their blushes. The old gentleman was serenely unconscious of having said anything to call them out, and was pursuing his subject now under a full head of delighted reminiscence.

"He was an uncommon bright man, old Jabez Bridgewood; sort o' crotchety and queer, but chuck full of ideas, and ready to stand up for 'em agin anybody. He was pretty quick-tempered, too, when anybody riled him up.

My grandfather's told me more 'n once about a row he got into with Peleg Wright; and the beginning of it was right here in this room. You see, Peleg was a regular Tory, though he didn't let out fair 'n' square where he stood; and Jabez he was hot on the other side, right from the start."

A gleam of amused recollection came into his eyes as he added: "They used to tell about a contrivance he had on the hill to pepper the British with, if they should happen to come marching along his road. It was a young sapling that he bent down and loaded with stones and hitched a rope to, so he could jerk it up and let fly at a moment's notice. They called it 'Bridgewood's Battery,' but I guess he never used it. He was firing that old flint-lock gun of his instead. He was one of the minute-men, you know.

"But about that fuss with Peleg Wright. I don' know just what 'twas Peleg said. He was sitting here talking with Jabe 'n' my grandfather, getting hold of everything he could, I guess; and he said something about our duty to the king that stirred Jabe up so that he just bent down and scooped up a handful o' sand-you know they had the floors sanded in those days, instead of having carpets on 'em-and flung it right square into Peleg's face."

"Shocking!" exclaimed Mr. Hadley, laughing. "Is that the sort of manners my great-great-grandfather had? I'm ashamed of him."

"Well, there was a good many that thought he hadn't or' to have done it," admitted the old gentleman, "but I don't know. Peleg was a terrible mean-spirited, deceiving sort of cretur. It came out afterwards that 'twas he that put the British on the track of some gunpowder our folks had stored up; and sometimes I've kind o' thought it served him right.

The Bible says, 'Bread of deceit is sweet to a man, but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel,' and I don' know but your grandfather was just fulfilling scripture when he gave it to him."

"Do you suppose he thought of that verse when he did it?" said Mr.

Hadley, laughing more heartily than before.

"Mebbe he didn't," said the deacon; "but there's been plenty of scripture fulfilled without folks knowing it. Well, naturally it made Peleg pretty mad, 'specially when folks twitted him 'bout it; and a day or two afterward he pitched on Jabez down town, and I guess it's more 'n likely one of 'em would have got hurt if folks hadn't separated 'em.

Jabez wrote some verses about it afterward, and I remember my grandfather telling me one of 'em was:-

"'Old Tory Wright with me did fight, Designing me to kill; But over me did not obtain To gain his cursed will.'"

"So he was a poet, too!" exclaimed Mr. Hadley.

"Bless you, yes," said Ruel Saxon. "When he warn't contriving something or other, he was always making up verses. I've seen 'em scribbled with chalk all over his house. It was a little house without any paint on it, and when it got so full it wouldn't hold any more he'd rub 'em out and put on some fresh ones. Paper warn't as plenty in those days as it is now, specially not with Jabez."

"Do you remember any more of his verses?" asked Mr. Hadley, who was evidently a good deal impressed with this ancestor of his, in spite of his lack of that economic turn of mind which had so distinguished the other side of his house.

"I don' know as I do," said the old gentleman, "though I guess I could think up some of 'em if I tried. Oh, Jabez Bridgewood was a good deal of a character. He could do anything he set his hand to, and I never did see anybody that knew as much about things outdoors as he did. He was like Solomon, and spoke of the trees, 'from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop that springeth out of the wall'; and when it came to the beasts of the field, and the fowls of the air, and the creeping things, it seemed as if he knew 'em all, though some folks did think he spent too much time watching 'em, for the good of his family."

"Why, he must have been a real genius, a Th.o.r.eau sort of man," exclaimed Esther, who had been listening with rapt attention, as she always did when her grandfather told a story. "Grandpa, won't you show me some day where his little house stood, and the tree he loaded with stones to fire at the British?"