Darrel of the Blessed Isles Part 3

-- 88 cents.

"Two boys who have a room on the same floor got through the week for 75 cents apiece, but they are both undersized and don't eat as hearty. This week I was tempted by the sight of honey and was fool enough to buy a little which I didn't need. I have some meal left and hope next week to get through for 80 cents. I wish I could have a decent necktie, but conscience doth make cowards of us all.

I have committed half the first act of 'Julius Caesar.'"

And yet, with pudding and milk and beef bone and four potatoes and "Julius Caesar" the boy was cheerful.

"Don't like meat any more--it's mostly poor stuff anyway," he said to his father, who had come to see him.

"Sorry--I brought down a piece o' venison," said Allen.

"Well, there's two kinds o' meat," said the boy; "what ye can have, that's good, an' what ye can't have, that ain't worth havin'."

He got a job in the mill for every Sat.u.r.day at 75 cents a day, and soon thereafter was able to have a necktie and a pair of fine boots, and a barber, now and then, to control the length of his hair.

Trove burnt the candles freely and was able but never brilliant in his work that year, owing, as all who knew him agreed, to great modesty and small confidence. He was a kindly, big-hearted fellow, and had wit and a knowledge of animals and of woodcraft that made him excellent company. That schoolboy diary has been of great service to all with a wish to understand him. On a faded leaf in the old book one may read as follows:--

"I have received letters in the handwriting of girls, unsigned.

They think they are in love with me and say foolish things. I know what they're up to. They're the kind my mother spoke of--the kind that set their traps for a fool, and when he's caught they use him for a thing to laugh at. They're not going to catch me.

"Expenses for seven days have been $1.14. Clint McCormick spent 60 cents to take his girl to a show and I had to help him through the week. I told him he ought to love Caesar less and Rome more."

Then follows the odd entry without which it is doubtful if the history of Sidney Trove could ever have been written. At least only a guess would have been possible, where now is certainty. And here is the entry:--

"Since leaving home the men of the dark have been very troublesome.

They wake me about every other night and sometimes I wonder what they mean."

Now an odd thing had developed in the mystery of the boy. Even before he could distinguish between reality and its shadow that we see in dreams, he used often to start up with a loud cry of fear in the night. When a small boy he used to explain it briefly by saying, "the men in the dark." Later he used to say, "the men outdoors in the dark." At ten years of age he went off on a three days' journey with the Allens. They put up in a tavern that had many rooms and stairways and large windows. It was a while after his return of an evening, before candle-light, when a gray curtain of dusk had dimmed the windows, that he first told the story, soon oft repeated and familiar, of "the men in the dark"--at least he went as far as he knew.

"I dream," he was wont to say in after life, "that I am listening in the still night alone--I am always alone. I hear a sound in the silence, of what I cannot be sure. I discover then, or seem to, that I stand in a dark room and tremble, with great fear, of what I do not know. I walk along softly in bare feet--I am so fearful of making a noise. I am feeling, feeling, my hands out in the dark.

Presently they touch a wall and I follow it and then I discover that I am going downstairs. It is a long journey. At last I am in a room where I can see windows, and, beyond, the dim light of the moon. Now I seem to be wrapped in fearful silence. Stealthily I go near the door. Its upper half is gla.s.s, and beyond it I can see the dark forms of men. One is peering through with face upon the pane; I know the other is trying the lock, but I hear no sound. I am in a silence like that of the grave. I try to speak. My lips move, but, try as I may, no sound comes out of them. A sharp terror is p.r.i.c.king into me, and I flinch as if it were a knife-blade. Well, sir, that is a thing I cannot understand. You know me--I am not a coward. If I were really in a like scene fear would be the least of my emotions; but in the dream I tremble and am afraid. Slowly, silently, the door opens, the men of the dark enter, wall and windows begin to reel. I hear a quick, loud cry, rending the silence and falling into a roar like that of flooding waters. Then I wake, and my dream is ended--for that night."

Now men have had more thrilling and remarkable dreams, but that of the boy Trove was as a link in a chain, lengthening with his life, and ever binding him to some event far beyond the reach of his memory.

V

At the Sign o' the Dial

It was Sunday and a clear, frosty morning of midwinter. Trove had risen early and was walking out on a long pike that divided the village of Hillsborough and cut the waste of snow, winding over hills and dipping into valleys, from Lake Champlain to Lake Ontario. The air was cold but full of magic sun-fire. All things were aglow--the frosty roadway, the white fields, the h.o.a.ry forest, and the mind of the beholder. Trove halted, looking off at the far hills. Then he heard a step behind him and, as he turned, saw a tall man approaching at a quick pace. The latter had no overcoat.

A knit m.u.f.fler covered his throat, and a satchel hung from a strap on his shoulder.

"What ho, boy!" said he, shivering. "'I'll follow thee a month, devise with thee where thou shalt rest, that thou may'st hear of us, an' we o' thee.' What o' thy people an' the filly?"

"All well," said Trove, who was delighted to see the clock tinker, of whom he had thought often. "And what of you?"

"Like an old clock, sor--a weak spring an' a bit slow. But, praise G.o.d! I've yet a merry gong in me. An' what think you, sor, I've travelled sixty miles an' tinkered forty clocks in the week gone."

"I think you yourself will need tinkering."

"Ah, but I thank the good G.o.d, here is me home," the old man remarked wearily.

"I'm going to school here," said Trove, "and hope I may see you often."

"Indeed, boy, we'll have many a blessed hour," said the tinker.

"Come to me shop; we'll talk, meditate, explore, an' I'll see what o'clock it is in thy country."

They were now in the village, and, halfway down its main thoroughfare, went up a street of gloom and narrowness between dingy workshops. At one of them, shaky, and gray with the stain of years, they halted. The two lower windows in front were dim with dirt and cobwebs. A board above them was the rude sign of Sam Ba.s.sett, carpenter. On the side of the old shop was a flight of sagging, rickety stairs. At the height of a man's head an old bra.s.s dial was nailed to the gray boards. Roughly lettered in lampblack beneath it were the words, "Clocks Mended." They climbed the shaky stairs to a landing, supported by long braces, and whereon was a broad door, with latch and keyhole in its weathered timber.

"All bow at this door," said the old tinker, as he put his long iron key in the lock. "It's respect for their own heads, not for mine," he continued, his hand on the eaves that overhung below the level of the door-top.

They entered a loft, open to the peak and shingles, with a window in each end. Clocks, dials, pendulums, and tiny cog-wheels of wood and bra.s.s were on a long bench by the street window. Thereon, also, were a vice and tools. The room was cleanly, with a crude homelikeness about it. Chromos and ill.u.s.trated papers had been pasted on the rough, board walls.

"On me life, it is cold," said the tinker, opening a small stove and beginning to whittle shavings, "'Cold as a dead man's nose.'

Be seated, an' try--try to be happy."

There was an old rocker and two small chairs in the room.

"I do not feel the cold," said Trove, taking one of them.

"Belike, good youth, thou hast the rose of summer in thy cheeks,"

said the old man.

"And no need of an overcoat," the boy answered, removing the one he wore and pa.s.sing it to the tinker. "I wish you to keep it, sir."

"Wherefore, boy? 'Twould best serve me on thy back."

"Please take it," said Trove. "I cannot bear to think of you shivering in the cold. Take it, and make me happy."

"Well, if it keep me warm, an' thee happy, it will be a wonderful coat," said the old man, wiping his gray eyes.

Then he rose and filled the stove with wood and sat down, peering at Trove between the upper rim of his spectacles and the feathery arches of silvered hair upon his brows.

"Thy coat hath warmed me heart already--thanks to the good G.o.d!"

said he, fervently. "Why so kind?"

"If I am kind, it is because I must be," said the boy. "Who were my father and mother, I never knew. If I meet a man who is in need, I say to myself, 'He may be my father or my brother, I must be good to him;' and if it is a woman, I cannot help thinking that, maybe, she is my mother or my sister. So I should have to be kind to all the people in the world if I were to meet them."

"n.o.ble suspicion! by the faith o' me fathers!" said the old man, thoughtfully, rubbing his long nose. "An' have ye thought further in the matter? Have ye seen whither it goes?"

"I fear not."

"Well, sor, under the ancient law, ye reap as ye have sown, but more abundantly. I gave me coat to one that needed it more, an' by the goodness o' G.o.d I have reaped another an' two friends. Hold to thy course, boy, thou shalt have friends an' know their value. An'