A Busy Year at the Old Squire's Part 8

Encouraged by his kind glance, Helen again sang the scale in her clear voice. A radiant look overspread Bear-Tone's big face.

"Wal, wal!" he cried. "But you've a voice, little one! Sing that with me."

Big voice and girl's voice blended and chorded.

"Ah, but you will make a singer, little one!" Bear-Tone exclaimed. "Now sing Woodland with me. Never mind notes, sing by ear."

A really beautiful volume of sound came through the window at which I listened. Bear-Tone and his new-found treasure sang The Star-Spangled Banner and several of the songs of the Civil War, then just ended--ballads still popular with us and fraught with touching memories: Tenting To-night on the Old Camp Ground, Dearest Love, Do You Remember?

and Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys Are Marching. Bear-Tone's rich voice chorded beautifully with Helen's sweet, high notes.

As we were getting into the pung to go home after the meeting, and Helen and her older sister, Elizabeth, were setting off, Bear-Tone dashed out, bareheaded, with his big face beaming.

"Be sure you come again," he said to her, in a tone that was almost imploring. "You can sing! Oh, you can sing! I'll teach you! I'll teach you!"

The singing school that winter served chiefly as a pretty background for Bear-Tone's delight in Helen Thomas's voice, the interest he took in it, and the untiring efforts he made to teach her.

"One of the rarest of voices!" he said to the old Squire one night when he had come to the farmhouse on one of his frequent visits. "Not once will you find one in fifty years. It's a deep tribble. Why, Squire, that girl's voice is a discovery! And it will grow in her, Squire! It is just starting now, but by the time she's twenty-five it will come out wonderful."

The soprano of the particular quality that Bear-Tone called "deep tribble" is that sometimes called a "falcon" soprano, or dramatic soprano, in distinction from light soprano. It is better known and more enthusiastically appreciated by those proficient in music than by the general public. Bear-Tone, however, recognized it in his new pupil, as if from instinct.

The other pupils were somewhat neglected that winter; but no one complained, for it was such a pleasure to hear Bear-Tone and Helen sing.

Many visitors came; and once the old Squire attended a meeting, in order to hear Bear-Tone's remarkable pupil. In Days of Old when Knights were Bold, dear old Juanita, and Roll on, Silver Moon, were some of their favorite songs, Still a "goat," and always a "goat," I am not capable of describing music; but school and visitors sat enchanted when Helen and Bear-Tone sang.

Helen's parents were opposed to having their daughter become a professional singer. They were willing that she should sing in church and at funerals, but not in opera. For a long time Bear-Tone labored to convince them that a voice like Helen's has a divine mission in the world, to please, to touch and to enn.o.ble the hearts of the people.

At last he induced them to let him take Helen to Portland, in order that a well-known teacher there might hear her sing and give an opinion.

Bear-Tone was to pay the expenses of the trip himself.

The city teacher was enthusiastic over the girl and urged that she be given opportunity for further study; but in view of the opposition at home that was not easily managed. But Bear-Tone would not be denied. He sacrificed the scanty earnings of a whole winter's round of singing schools in country school districts to send her to the city for a course of lessons.

The next year the question of her studying abroad came up. If Helen were to make the most of her voice, she must have it trained by masters in Italy and Paris. Her parents were unwilling to a.s.sist her to cross the ocean.

Bear-Tone was a poor man; his singing schools never brought him more than a few hundred dollars a year. He owned a little house in a neighboring village, where he kept "bachelor's hall"; he had a piano, a cabinet organ, a bugle, a guitar and several other musical instruments, including one fairly valuable old violin from which he was wont of an evening to produce wonderfully sweet, sad strains.

No one except the officials of the local savings bank knew how Bear-Tone raised the money for Helen Thomas's first trip abroad, but he did it.

Long afterwards people learned that he had mortgaged everything he possessed, even the old violin, in order to provide the necessary money.

Helen went to Europe and studied for two years. She made her debut at Milan, sang in several of the great cities on the Continent, and at last, with a reputation as a great singer fully established, returned home four years later to sing in New York.

Bear-Tone meanwhile was teaching his singing schools, as usual, in the rural districts of Maine. Once or twice during those two years of study he had managed to send a little money to Helen, to help out with the expenses. Now he postponed his three bi-weekly schools for one week and made his first and only trip to New York--the journey of a lifetime.

Perhaps he had at first hoped that he might meet her and be welcomed. If so, he changed his mind on reaching the metropolis. Aware of his uncouthness, he resolved not to shame her by claiming recognition. But he went three times to hear her sing, first in Ada, then in Faust, and afterwards in Les Huguenots; heard her magic notes, saw her in all her queenly beauty--but saw her from the shelter of a pillar in the rear of the great opera house. On the fifth day he returned home as quietly as he had gone.

Perhaps a month after he came back, while driving to one of his singing schools on a bitter night in February, he took a severe cold. For lack of any proper care at his little lonesome, chilly house, his cold a day or two later turned into pneumonia, and from that he died.

The savings bank took the house and the musical instruments. The piano, the organ, the old violin and other things were sold at auction. And probably Helen Thomas, whose brilliant career he had made possible, never heard anything about the circ.u.mstances of his death.

CHAPTER VIII

WHEN WE HUNTED THE STRIPED CATAMOUNT

The following week Tom Edwards and I had a somewhat exciting adventure which, however, by no means covered us with glory. During the previous winter and, indeed, for several winters before that, there had been rumors current of a strange, fierce animal which came down, from the "great woods" to devour dead lambs that were cast forth from the farmers' barns in February and March.

At that time nearly every farmer in the vicinity kept a flock of from fifty to a hundred sheep. During the warm season the animals got their own living in the back pastures; in winter they were fed on nothing better than hay. The animals usually came out in the spring thin and weak, with the ewes in poor condition to raise their lambs. In consequence, many of the lambs died soon after birth, and were thrown out on the snow for the crows and wild animals to dispose of.

The old Squire had begun to feed corn to his flock during the latter part of the winter, and urged his neighbors to do so; but many of them did not have the corn and preferred to let nature take its course.

The mysterious animal that the boys were talking about seemed to have formed the habit of visiting that region every spring. Not even the older people knew to what species it belonged. It came round the barns at night, and no one had ever seen it distinctly. Some believed it to be a catamount or panther; others who had caught glimpses of it said that it was a black creature with white stripes.

Traps had been set for it, but always without success. Mr. Wilbur, one of the neighbors, had watched from his barn and fired a charge of buckshot at it; but immediately the creature had disappeared in the darkness, carrying off a lamb. It visited one place or another nearly every night for a month or more--as long, indeed, as the supply of lambs held out. Then it would vanish until the following spring.

On the day above referred to I saw Tom coming across the snowy fields that lay between the Edwards' farm and the old Squire's. Guessing that he had something to tell me, I hastened forth to meet him.

"That old striped catamount has come round again!" Tom exclaimed. "He was at Batchelder's last night and got two dead lambs. And night before last he was at Wilbur's. I've got four dead lambs saved up. And old Hughy Glinds has told me a way to watch for him and shoot him."

Hughy Glinds was a rheumatic old man who lived in a small log house up in the edge of the great woods and made baskets for a living. In his younger days he had been a trapper and was therefore a high authority in such matters among the boys.

"We shall have to have a sleigh or a pung to watch from," Tom explained.

"Old Hughy says to carry out a dead lamb and leave it near the bushes below our barn, and to haul a sleigh there and leave it a little way off, and do this for three or four nights till old Striped gets used to seeing the sleigh. Then, after he has come four nights, we're to go there early in the evening and hide in the sleigh, with a loaded gun.

Old Striped will be used to seeing the sleigh there, and won't be suspicious.

"Pa don't want me to take our sleigh so long," Tom went on. "He wants to use it before we'd be through with it. But"--and I now began to see why Tom had been so willing to share with me the glory of killing the marauder--"there's an old sleigh out here behind your barn. n.o.body uses it now. Couldn't we take that?"

I felt sure that the old Squire would not care, but I proposed to ask the opinion of Addison. Tom opposed our taking Addison into our confidence.

"He's older, and he'd get all the credit for it," he objected.

Addison, moreover, had driven to the village that morning; and after some discussion we decided to take the sleigh on our own responsibility.

It was partly buried in a snowdrift; but we dug it out, and then drew it across the fields on the snow crust--lifting it over three stone walls--to a little knoll below the Edwards barn.

We concluded to lay the dead lamb on the top of the knoll at a little distance from the woods; the sleigh we left on the southeast side about fifteen paces away. Tom thought that he could shoot accurately at that distance, even at night.

For my own part I thought fifteen paces much too near. Misgivings had begun to beset me.

"What if you miss him, Tom?" I said.

"I shan't miss him," he declared firmly.

"But, Tom, what if you only wounded him and he came rus.h.i.+ng straight at us?"

"Oh, I'll fix him!" Tom exclaimed. But I had become very apprehensive; and at last, Tom helped me to bring cedar rails and posts from a fence near by to construct a kind of fortress round the sleigh. We set the posts in the hard snow and made a fence, six rails high--to protect ourselves. Even then I was afraid it might jump the fence.

"He won't jump much with seven buckshot and a ball in him!" said Tom.

We left the empty sleigh there for three nights in succession; and every morning Tom came over to tell me that the lamb had been taken.