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Title: "All's not Gold that Glitters;" or, The Young Californian

Author: Alice B. Haven

Release date: January 20, 2022 [eBook #67206]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: D. Appleton and Company, 1859

Credits: Carlos Colon, the University of California and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK "ALL'S NOT GOLD THAT GLITTERS;" OR, THE YOUNG CALIFORNIAN ***






[Illustration:

    “ALL’S
    NOT GOLD
    _That_
    Glitters”

    D. APPLETON & CO.
    New York.]




                     “All’s not Gold that Glitters;”
                                   OR
                         THE YOUNG CALIFORNIAN.

                                   BY
                              COUSIN ALICE,
          AUTHOR OF “NO SUCH WORD AS FAIL;” “CONTENTMENT BETTER
                         THAN WEALTH,” ETC. ETC.

                                NEW-YORK:
                         D. APPLETON & COMPANY,
                           346 & 348 BROADWAY.
                               M.DCCC.LIX.

       Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by
                         D. APPLETON & COMPANY,
        In the Clerk’s office of the District Court of the United
              States for the Southern District of New-York.




THE FOURTH HOME BOOK.


In her last note of introduction to the Home circle, Cousin Alice partly
promised to tell a story of Virginia life when she came to them again.
She has to confess that she has not redeemed this now, though she is sure
the trials and adventures of the young Californian will prove not less
interesting, and there are other days to come when her little Southern
friends shall be introduced.

American boys, perhaps more than those growing up in any other country,
are thinking of money-getting before they are fairly out of school; but
the history of King Midas, which most of them read there, teaches that
the possession of gold is not happiness, and they will find it out, as
our young hero did, when they come to earn it for themselves. There is
another lesson shadowed forth in the title,—all fair promises are not to
be trusted, though we know there is _one hope_ that never fails, ONE
FRIEND that never deceives.

Cousin Alice has no more earnest wish than that this hope, and this
friend, may be theirs through life.




CONTENTS.


                                              Page.

    BAD MANAGEMENT                               9

    A NEW PLAN                                  22

    THE MOTHER AND SON                          36

    GOING TO CALIFORNIA                         47

    SETTING SAIL                                62

    THE STORM                                   77

    THE FIRST LETTER                            89

    SAN FRANCISCO                              104

    THE PLAINS                                 118

    A GLIMPSE AT THE MINES                     128

    THE FATHER AND SON                         141

    “AS WE FORGIVE MEN THEIR TRESPASSES”       156

    FIRE!                                      167

    NEW PROSPECT                               180

    THANKSGIVING DAY                           196




“ALL’S NOT GOLD THAT GLITTERS,”

The Young Californian.




CHAPTER I.

BAD MANAGEMENT.


“Ain’t the stage rather late, Squire? I’ve been waiting round a
considerable while now.”

The “Squire” had just driven up to the Post Office, which was at one end
of the village tavern, and a man hanging to a post that upheld the piazza
addressed him.

“Perhaps it may be, I’m rather late myself; but I drove the long road
past Deacon Chase’s. Do you expect any body, Gilman?”

“Well—I can’t say I do, Squire; but I like to see the newspapers, and
hear what’s going on in the world, as well as most people, specially
since the Californy gold’s turned up. I wouldn’t mind finding a big lump
or so myself.”

Gilman chuckled as he said this, and set a dilapidated hat a little more
over his eyes, to shade them from the strong light of the declining sun.
No wonder they needed it; for they were weak and bleared, and told the
same tale that could be read in every line of a once expressive face.
The tavern bar had seen as much of him as the piazza. He knew by long
experience the taste of all those fiery liquids, contained in the rows of
decanters, and worse still, of many a cask of New England rum, dispensed
by the landlord of “Mooney’s Tavern.”

“I’ve heard your wife’s father say there was gold buried on every farm in
New Hampshire, if people only knew where to find it,” the Squire answered
pleasantly, fastening his horse to the much used tying-up post; “there
ought to be on what’s left of his, by this time—there’s been enough
buried there.”

[Illustration: WAITING FOR THE STAGE.

Page 9.]

The man, dull as his once clear mind had become, seemed to understand
the allusion and the reproof it conveyed, for his face flushed even
through deep unhealthy redness, as he walked off to a knot of idlers
like himself. They stood with their hands in their pockets, and coats
buttoned up to the chin—discussing the wonderful news that was then the
only topic of conversation through the whole Atlantic coast, and even far
in the backwoods, where much less of the great world’s doings came—the
gold discovery in California.

At first it had been scarcely credited—many who were afterwards ready to
stake life itself in gaining it, declared the whole thing a hoax, and
ridiculed those who believed in it. But as month after month brought
fresh arrivals, and more marvellous intelligence from the new-found El
Dorado, even the endless discussion of politics was given up for this
fascinating theme. So far, no one had gone from Merrill’s Corner, the
name of this retired New England village; but many from neighboring towns
were now on their way to “make their fortunes,” or lose their lives in
“the diggings.”

The door of the post office had scarcely closed upon Squire Merrill,
when the jingling of sleigh-bells and the quick tread of horses was
heard coming up the hill. It was the stage-sleigh, that passed through
from Concord every afternoon, bringing the eagerly expected mail and
a few travellers, farmer-looking men, who were glad to spring out, and
stamp their benumbed feet, the moment it drew up. One of them threw a
morning paper into the knot of questioners, telling them rather abruptly
to “look for themselves,” as they asked the invariable question, “what’s
the news?” and Gilman, who was so fortunate as to seize it, was instantly
surrounded as he unfolded the sheet.

The expected arrival was announced, in huge letters, at the top of the
paper:—

    ONE MONTH LATER FROM CALIFORNIA!!

    ARRIVAL OF THE CRESCENT CITY.

    HALF A MILLION IN GOLD DUST!!!

    NEW DISCOVERIES MADE DAILY.

    PROSPECTS OF THE MINERS CONSTANTLY IMPROVING!

And with a voice trembling with eagerness, the wonderful particulars
were read aloud, interrupted only by exclamations of astonishment, more
expressive than elegant.

Lumps of gold, according to these wonderful accounts, were to be picked
up for the stooping. Some men had made a fortune in a single month, from
steamer to steamer.

Every remarkable piece of good fortune was exaggerated, and the
sufferings and privations, even of the successful, barely touched upon.
There was scarcely enough shade to temper the dazzling light of this
most brilliant picture. No wonder that it had all the magic of Aladdin’s
wonderful lamp to these men, who had been born on the hard rocky soil
of the Granite State, and, from their boyhood, had earned their bread
by the sweat of the brow. If it dazzled speculators in the city, men
who counted their gains by thousands, how much more the small farmer,
the hard-working mechanic, of the villages, whose utmost industry and
carefulness scarcely procured ordinary comforts for their families.

Just as the stage was ready to drive off again Squire Merrill came out
on the piazza with several newspapers in their inviting brown wrappers,
a new magazine, and one or two letters. There was of course a little
bustle as the passengers took their seats, and the driver pulling on his
buckskin gloves, came from the comfortable bar-room, followed by the
tavern-keeper.

“More snow, Squire, I calculate,” remarked the sagacious Mr. Mooney,
nodding towards a huge bank of dull-looking clouds in the west. “What’s
your hurry?”

“All the more hurry if you’re right, Mr. Mooney,—I think you are; and
somehow I never find too much time for any thing. Going right by your
house, Gilman; shall I give you a lift?”

“Well I don’t care if you do,” answered Gilman, to the surprise of his
fellows, and especially the hospitable Mr. Mooney. He had not yet taken
his daily afternoon glass, and just before one of them had signified his
intention of standing treat all round, to celebrate the good news from
California.

The Squire seemed pleased at the ready assent, for it was equally
unexpected to him, knowing Gilman’s bad habits. He did not give him time
to withdraw it, for the instant the stage moved off, followed, in the
broad track it made through the snow, the bells of both vehicles jingling
cheerfully in the frosty air. It may seem strange to those unaccustomed
to the plain ways of the country, especially at the North, that a man
of Squire Merrill’s evident respectability should so willingly make a
companion of a tavern lounger. But, in the first place, the genuine
politeness of village life would make the neighborly offer a matter of
every day occurrence, and besides this, the Squire had known Gilman
in far different circumstances. They played together on the district
school-ground, as boys, and their prospects in life had been equally
fair. Both had small, well cultivated farms, the Squire’s inherited from
his father, and Gilman’s his wife’s dowry, for he married the prettiest
girl in the village. Squire Merrill, with true New England thrift, had
gone on, adding “field to field,” until he was now considered the richest
man in the neighborhood, and certainly the most respected. His old
school-fellow was one of those scheming, visionary men, who are sure in
the end to turn out badly. He was not industrious by nature, and after
neglecting the business of the farm all the spring, he was sure to see
some wonderful discovery that was to fertilize the land far more than any
labor of his could do, and give him double crops in the fall; or whole
fields of grain would lie spoiling, while he awaited the arrival of
some newly invented reaping machine, that was to save time and work, but
which scarcely ever answered either purpose. Gradually his barn became
filled with this useless lumber, on which he had spent the ready money
that should have been employed in paying laborers—his fences were out of
repair, his cattle died from neglect.

Mr. Gilman, like many others, called these losses “bad luck,” and parted
with valuable land to make them up. But his “luck” seemed to get worse
and worse, while he waited for a favorable turn, especially after he
became a regular visitor at Mooney’s. Of late he had barely managed
to keep his family together, and that was more owing to Mrs. Gilman’s
exertions than his own.

The light sleigh “cutter,” as it was called, glided swiftly over
the snow, past gray substantial stone walls, red barns, and
comfortable-looking farm houses. The snow was in a solid, compact mass,
filling the meadows evenly, and making this ordinary country road
picturesque. Sometimes they passed through a close pine wood, with
tall feathery branches sighing far away above them, and then coming
suddenly in sight of some brown homestead, where the ringing axe at the
door-yard, the creaking of the well-pole, or the bark of a house-dog made
a more cheerful music. There are many such quiet pictures of peace and
contentment on the hill-sides of what we call the rugged North, where the
rest of the long still winter is doubly welcome after the hard toil of
more fruitful seasons.

Squire Merrill seemed to enjoy it all as he drove along, talking
cheerfully to his silent companion. He pointed out the few improvements
planned or going on in the neighborhood, and talked of the doings of the
last “town meeting,” the new minister’s ways, and then of Mrs. Gilman and
the children. Suddenly the other broke forth—

“I say it’s too bad, Squire, and I can’t make it out, anyhow.”

“What’s too bad, Gilman?”

“Well, the way some people get richer and richer, and others poorer and
poorer the longer they live. Here I’ve hardly got a coat to my back, and
Abby there—nothing but an old hood to wear to meetin’, and you drive
your horse, and your wife’s got her fur muff, and her satin bonnet!
That’s just the way, and it’s discouraging enough, I tell you.”

“My wife was brought up to work a good deal harder than yours, Gilman,
and we didn’t have things half as nice as you when we were married.”

“I know it—hang it all—”

“Don’t swear—my horse isn’t used to it, and might shy—. Well, don’t you
think there must be a leak somewhere?”

“Leak—just so—nothing but leaks the whole time! Hain’t I lost crop
after crop, and yours a payin’ the best prices? Wasn’t my orchard all
killed?—there ain’t ten trees but’s cankered! And hundreds of dollars
I’ve sunk in them confounded—beg pardon, Squire—them—them—_outrageous_
threshing machines.”

The Squire chirruped to his horse—“Steady, Bill—steady! Haven’t you been
in too much of a hurry to get rich, Gilman, and so been discontented when
you were doing well? You always seemed to have more time than I. I don’t
believe I ever spent an afternoon at Mooney’s since I was grown up. I’ve
worked hard, and so has my wife.” “Yours has, too,” he added, after a
moment. “I don’t know of a more hard-working woman than Abby Gilman.”

“True as the gospel, Squire, poor soul!” and the fretful, discontented
look on the man’s face passed away for a moment. A recollection of all
her patient labor and care came over him, and how very different things
would have been if he had followed her example, and listened to her
entreaties.

“Why don’t you take a new start?” said the Squire, encouragingly, for he
knew that if any thing could rouse his old companion it would be the love
for his wife. “You’ve got some pretty good land left, and ought to be
able to work. We’re both of us young men yet. My father made every cent
he had after he was your age; and there’s Sam, quite a big boy, he ought
to be considerable help.”

“Yes, he’s as good a boy as ever lived, I’ll own that—but hard work don’t
agree with me. It never did.”

Gilman was quite right. It never had agreed with his indolent
disposition. There are a great many children as well as men who make the
same complaint.

“If a body could find a lump of gold, now, Squire, to set a fellow up
again.”

“I do believe you’d think it was too much trouble to stoop and pick it
up,” Mr. Merrill said, good-naturedly. He saw that California was still
uppermost in his companion’s mind. “And just look at that stone wall, and
your barn—it wouldn’t be very hard work to mend either of them, and I
don’t believe a stone or a board has been touched for the last two years,
except what Sam has contrived to do.”

Gilman looked thoroughly ashamed. With the evidence of neglect staring
him in the face, he could not even resent it. He seemed relieved when
the Squire drew up before the end door, to think that the lecture was
over. There, too, were broken fences, dilapidated windows, every trace
of neglect and decay. The place once appropriated to the wood-pile was
empty, and instead of the daily harvest of well-seasoned chips, hickory
and pine, a few knotted sticks and small branches lay near the block. One
meagre-looking cow stood shivering in the most sheltered corner of the
barn-yard, without even the cackle of a hen to cheer her solitude. The
upper hinges of the great barn door had given way, but there was nothing
to secure it by, and it had been left so since the cold weather first
came. Every thing looked doubly desolate in the gray, fading light of a
wintry day, and the blaze that streamed up through the kitchen window
was too fitful to promise a cheerful fireside. Yet fifteen years ago,
this very homestead had been known for miles around for its comfort and
plenty.




CHAPTER II.

A NEW PLAN.


“Why, father!” was the surprised and cheerful exclamation of Mrs. Gilman,
as her husband entered the room. It was an unusually early hour for him,
and besides, she saw his step was steady. No wonder that she left the
bread she was kneading, and came forward, her hands still covered with
flour, to meet him. As she stood in the fire-light, she was handsome
even yet, though her face looked careworn, and her figure was bent, as
if she had been much older. Her ninepenny calico dress was neatly made,
and though she had no collar, a small plaid silk handkerchief, tied
closely around the throat, supplied the place of one. She must have had a
cheerful, sunny temper originally, for in spite of her many trials, there
was not a trace of despondency or fretfulness in her face or manner.

“Didn’t you go to the Corner? Oh, was that you in Squire Merrill’s
sleigh? I _thought_ I heard it stop. Abby, get father his shoes—Hannah,
just look at the bannock, it must be almost done by this time, and we
don’t have father home every day. Come, children, step round:” and
Mrs. Gilman made a lively motion to quicken the tardy Hannah, who was
straining her eyes out over a book by the very faint twilight of the west
window.

Mr. Gilman felt that he did not deserve this hearty welcome, in a home to
which he had brought only sorrow and trouble. There were other thoughts
that kept him silent too, for after explaining that Squire Merrill had
brought him home, he sat down by the fireplace and watched his wife
and daughters while they prepared tea, as if it had been a holiday.
Cold brown bread, that substantial New England loaf, and the smoking
corn meal bannock, were all that they had to set forth, with a simple
garnishing of butter and a bowlder of apple-sauce, made, also, by the
good mother in the autumn. The largest and driest sticks of wood were
added to the fire, so, though there was but one candle, and that but a
“dip,” any thing in the room was plainly visible. The Windsor chairs
and side-table were scoured clean and white; through the open door of
the buttery was seen a dresser in perfect order, even to the row of
shining, but, alas, too often empty milk-pans, turned up under the lower
shelf, and the bread-bowl, covered by a clean towel. The looking-glass
between the windows, surmounted by curious carving and gilding, and the
tall peacocks’ feathers, the thin legs of the table at which they sat,
indeed nearly every thing in the room were old friends of Mrs. Gilman’s
childhood. The house and farm had been her father’s homestead, and she
an only child. She often said she was too thankful that she did not have
to go off among strangers, as so many young girls did when they were
married, for she knew every rock and tree on the farm. Here she had been
married, here her children were born, and here she hoped to die.

“Sam won’t be home in time to milk, I don’t believe,” observed Abby, the
oldest girl, reaching her plate for a second supply of bannock. “He’s
always out of the way when he’s wanted, seems to me.”

“I don’t know,” “mother” answered good-naturedly. “I think he’s worked
most hard enough all day to earn a good long play-spell. Sam’s getting
very handy, father. He fixed the well-sweep after dinner as well as you
could have done it yourself. So after he’d brought in the wood, and gone
to the store, I let him go over to Deacon Chase’s. I thought you’d have
no objection.”

Mr. Gilman was home too little to know much about his children’s
movements, but his wife always kept up a show of authority for him, that
he might be respected at home at least. Abby had found time for another
theme. “Mother, I should think you might let Hannah and me have some new
hoods. Julia Chase has got an elegant one, lined with pink silk, and a
new merino cloak. And there’s Anne Merrill and Jane Price. I’m sure we’re
as good as any body; ain’t we, father?” for Abby, being her father’s
favorite, was always sure of a hearing from him.

“So you are, Abby—every bit, and you shall ride over their heads yet. I
tell you what, mother; I can’t stand this much longer; I don’t see why
you shouldn’t have your silks and satins as well as Eliza Merrill, and
Hannah, go to boarding school if she wants to, when she’s old enough.
I’ve about made up my mind to go to California—there—and there’s the end
of it!” and the excited man struck his knife upon the table so that every
dish rattled.

Mrs. Gilman looked up with an anxious, questioning face. She was afraid
that he had been drinking after all, and her hopes of a quiet evening,
“like old times,” vanished. Hannah ceased to wonder absently what would
have became of the Swiss Family Robinson, if it had not been for their
mother’s wonderful bag, out of which every thing came precisely at the
moment it was needed. Abby improved the opportunity to help herself to an
extra quantity of “apple butter,” unobserved. Abby certainly had a strong
fancy for all the good things of life, dainties and new hoods included.

“Why, what on earth has put that into your head, father?” Mrs. Gilman
said, after a moment, still addressing him by the familiar household
name, at first so endearing and afterwards habitual. She did not think
it possible he could have any serious thoughts of such a scheme. Her
husband’s plans very often ended in “talking over,” and from the time
they were married some project occupied him.

“It ain’t any new plan; I’ve been turning it over ever since the last
steamer, and I only waited to see if the luck would hold out. Now the
news is come, and _I’m goin’_. That’s just all there is about it. I don’t
see why I should stay here and be a poor man to the end of time, when
other folks has only got to turn round and make a fortune. Why there was
one man took five ounces of gold out of one hole, in among the rocks! The
paper says so, and gold’s nineteen dollars an ounce. Five times nineteen
is——”

“Ninety-five,” responded Abby, quickly. She had been a diligent student
of Smith’s Arithmetic, at the district school all winter, and when her
father was speaking considered she had a perfect right to join in the
conversation.

“Yes—ninety-five dollars in ten minutes, just as fast as he could scoop
it out, and I might work six months for it here on this plaguy farm. Why,
it tells about lumps of real solid gold, as big as my fist! and one man’s
just as good as another there. None of your Deacons and Squires, settin’
themselves up above other folks.”

Poor Mr. Gilman, like many other persons whose own faults have degraded
them, had a bitter envy towards those who continued to do well. It must
certainly be on the principle that “misery loves company;” there is no
better way to account for this selfish desire to see others in trouble,
when we are suffering from our own rashness or folly, “selfish,” to say
the least.

“Is any body going from the Corner?” Mrs. Gilman had laid down her knife
and fork, and pushed back her plate. She felt a sick, choking sensation,
that would not let her eat. She saw her husband was in his sober senses,
and more determined than he had been on any subject for a long time.

“Yes,” he answered doggedly, as if he did not wish to be questioned
further.

“Who?” persisted his wife, with an anxious foreboding of the name she
would hear.

“Well, if you must know, it’s Bill Colcord, and we’ve agreed to go into
partnership. I know you don’t like him, but it’s just like one of your
woman’s notions. Bill’s a first-rate fellow, and gives as long as he’s
got a cent.”

Mrs. Gilman did not remonstrate. She knew it was of no use. The time had
been when her husband would scarcely have spoken to this man, who had
always been idle and dissolute. How he lived no one exactly knew. He was
very clever at making a bargain, was always betting, and, it was said,
could overreach any body he dealt with. It was only of late years that he
had become Mr. Gilman’s companion. His wife had warned and entreated him
in vain. Mr. Gilman would sometimes promise to give him up, but the man
always had a hold on him, treating at Mooney’s, or lending him small sums
of money.

In spite of herself, Mrs. Gilman drew a heavy sigh when she heard him
mentioned; but she saw Hannah looking up earnestly, and Abby listening,
and remembering every word.

“You can clear away the table, girls—come, be spry,”—she said, rising
with a great air of alacrity herself; but she had a heavy heart, as
she took up her knitting from the side-table, and sat down in her low
arm-chair in the corner of the fireplace. Mr. Gilman followed and
squared himself on the other side, leaning his elbows on his knees, with
a show of obstinate determination, as he looked from his wife to the fire.

“Mustn’t we wait for Sam?” asked Hannah, who had already seized on volume
second of her beloved history. She had a natural disinclination to
household tasks, an indolence inherited from her father, and but partly
excused to the notable Mrs. Gilman, by the love of reading, which kept
her out of mischief.

“No; Sam knows when we have tea, and the table can’t be kept waiting for
him.”

“He don’t deserve any, I’m sure,” Abby was quite ready to add. “I hate
to strain the milk after dark, and he knows it, and stays away just to
plague me. Come, Hannah, take the bread into the buttery, while I pile up
the things. You know it’s your week for putting away, and you try to get
things off on other people. Mother—mustn’t Hannah come and help me?”

The book was reluctantly closed, and Hannah’s tardy step made a slow
accompaniment to her sister’s bustling movements. There was much more
clatter than was necessary in piling up the four cups and saucers,
emptying the tea tray, folding the cloth, and setting back the table. It
was quite a picture to see the handy little housewife, tucking back her
dress and apron, as she dexterously carried the still smoking tea-kettle
into the buttery, and filled a large milk pan with clean hot water, while
Hannah expended all her energies in reaching down a towel and preparing
to dry the few dishes.

The buttery, a long wide closet at one end of the kitchen, added very
much to the neatness of the family sitting-room. It was Abby’s especial
pride to keep the sink, the numerous pails and buckets, in order, and
the one low window as clear as hands could make it. Hannah, though a
year the eldest, hated the buttery, and always made her escape as soon
as possible. To use her own favorite word—she “hated” washing dishes,
and dusting, and peeling potatoes, in fact, every thing like work. She
liked reading and walking in the woods, especially in spring-time, making
wreaths of wild flowers, and fanciful cups and baskets from the twigs and
leaves, Hannah’s imagination was already captured by these wonderful
golden visions. Plenty of money, stood for plenty of time to do just as
she pleased. Her mother could not be always telling her, “you must learn
to be industrious, for you are a poor man’s child, and have got to make
your own way in the world.”

“I hope father will go to California,” was the first symptom of
consciousness she showed, while Abby splashed away in the water,
regardless of scalded hands and mottled elbows.

“My goodness, Hannah! do see what you are about—letting the end of the
towel go right into the dishwater. I’m sure I don’t want my father to go
clear off there and die, if you do.”

“People don’t always die—there’s Robinson Crusoe, taken home after all he
went through, and I’m sure the Swiss Family will. I don’t like to look
at the last chapter ever, but of course they will be. I heard father
tell mother, when I was folding up the table-cloth, that he wouldn’t be
gone over a year and a half, and was sure to make ten or twenty thousand
dollars.”

“Twenty-thousand-dollars! Why, Hannah, that’s more than Squire Merrill’s
worth! Why, how rich we’d be! perhaps we’d have a new house.”

“And a big book-case in the parlor, full of—every thing!” added Hannah,
intent only on her personal accommodation.

“And handsome carpets all over it, and a mahogany sofa, and a big
looking-glass. Just ’spose it once.”

“I hope we’ll have a garden, with an elegant arbor, as shady as can be.”

“With grapes, and lots of fruit-trees, and plenty of dahlias! Well, it
would be nice,” and Abby suffered the knife handles to slip into the hot
water, a piece of carelessness expressly forbidden by the careful Mrs.
Gilman, while she rested her chubby hands thoughtfully on the rim of the
milk pan.

“But come, the water’s all getting cold, and there’s Sam round by the
barn whistling. There’s the knives.”

“It’s always cold here,” shivered Hannah, fretfully; “I should think
mother might let us wash dishes on the table in the kitchen. I’m most
frozen here every night. It takes twice as long—”

“There’s Sam slamming the door as usual,” interrupted Abby, “tracking up
the whole floor, of course.”

And there stood Sam, as she looked over her shoulder into the centre
room, his face glowing with the quick walk, a woollen comforter knotted
about his throat, and the torn vizor of a seal-skin cap hanging over his
eyes. His old round-about, buttoned up close to the chin, was powdered
with feathery flakes of snow, and his gray satinet pantaloons, with
“eyes,” as he called the patches on the knees, scarcely reached to his
boots. But for all this, he was a fine, hardy-looking boy, full of life,
and health, and spirits, and would have demonstrated the latter by an
impromptu war dance, on the kitchen floor, if he had not caught his
mother’s look of warning.

“Been to supper at the deacon’s—give us the milk pail, Chunk,” he called
out very unceremoniously in answer to Abby’s threatened lecture. “I know
you like to strain the milk after dark, so you can have me to hold the
light for you. Don’t she, Nan?—hurry up there,” and snatching the pail,
he was gone again in a moment, out into the darkness and increasing
storm, caring neither for the loneliness nor the exposure.

Mrs. Gilman’s face lighted as she looked after him. She had been
listening to her husband’s plans, clearer, and more capable of being
carried out, than most of them, showing that some one else had been
assisting to make them. Mr. Gilman had persuaded himself, with this
adviser’s assistance, that he would be perfectly right in selling the
remnant of the farm, with the house, to pay for his passage and outfit
to California. “As he only went to make money for his wife and children,
_they_ ought not to complain,” he reasoned, “and he would return so soon,
to give them all that heart could wish. Meantime,” _he said_ he would
leave them something, and by time winter came he would send money from
California. Mrs. Gilman well knew that she must be the entire dependence
of her family, however fair all might seem in prospect.




CHAPTER III.

THE MOTHER AND SON.


But this was not the thought that weighed heaviest, when all but Mrs.
Gilman had forgotten their plans and their pleasures in sleep.

As she sat alone by the broad flagging of the hearth, she could hear the
heavy breathing of her husband in the next room, the ceaseless ticking of
the clock, the purr of the cat, in its warm corner by the ashes. Overhead
were her sleeping children, she alone, watchful and anxious. Slowly
the old clock marked the passing hour, the brands mouldered with a dim
redness, then broke, and fell with a shower of sparks upon the hearth.
The rising wind rattled the loose window frames, the cold snow drifted
upon the sill, white and chilling. She had kept many a midnight watch
since she had been a wife, but this was the dreariest of all. She did not
bury her face in her hands, and sob—her habitual industry had retained
the coarse stocking, and her hands moved rapidly to the monotonous click
of the needles, while hot tears gathered slowly in her eyes, and plashed
down upon them. She did not wipe them away,—she did not know they were
there. She was thinking over all the long time since her marriage; how
very happy she had been at first, with her dear baby in the cradle, and
her young husband, so fond of her and his first born, and the gradual
and entire change that had since come over him and over their home. She
had never ceased to hope through it all, that the time would come when
he should be given back to her “in his right mind.” How earnestly she
had prayed for it, sitting there, watching patiently night after night,
trying to keep cheerful through all things; to make his home pleasant
for him, when he least deserved it. And this was the end. She knew he
was going, she felt it from that first abrupt announcement, and with the
perils of the sea, and that new country, he might not return. She must go
out from that old homestead, must see even the very burial-place owned by
others, and he who had promised to love and protect her was the cause
of all. It was hard to put down the bitter, reproachful feeling that
had tempted her before, and to think of him with love, of God’s will,
with submission and hope. Then came a picture of her husband, suffering,
sick, dying on that long journey, for she knew how his health had been
weakened, and how little fitted he was to bear exposure. This was
terrible. If some friend, some one she could trust, was going with him,
instead of that bad man, she could bear it better.

A noise that she would not have noticed in the stir of daylight, made her
look up. It was only her boy’s cap, which he had hung carelessly behind
the door, falling from the nail. “How strong and well he is,” thought the
lonely woman—“why could not he go, and take care of his father?”

When she first tried to reason with herself about the future, he had
seemed her only comfort and stay. Must she give him up too?

Mrs. Gilman did not often act from impulse, but she had become restless,
and eager, thinking these things over. She took the candle, already
burned to the very socket, hurried up the narrow winding stairs leading
from the room in which she sat, to the “garret chamber,” chosen by her
boy as his winter sleeping room, for the greater convenience of disposing
of and watching over his hoard of treasures. They were few enough, but
invaluable to him. The ears of corn he had saved for parching, hung by
their braided husks, the soft pine blocks, prepared for whittling,—his
skates, his new sled, not yet trusted to the doorless barn, the pile of
hickory nuts in the corner, were nearly all that he owned; but no money
could have purchased him more valued possessions.

The boy was sleeping soundly after the day’s hard work and exercise. His
mother put down the light upon the chest that served him for a table, and
sat down upon the bed beside him. He looked very beautiful to her, his
long brown hair thrown back over the pillow, and his face flushed with
a red glow of health. One arm was thrown above his head in a careless,
graceful way, the brown hand bent, as if reaching to grasp a branch above
him. Should she, who had held him in her arms, with the first prayerful
thrill of a mother’s love, innocent and pure, send him forth to contact
with the world unshielded! To see vice, and perhaps crime in every
form—to be the companion of those long familiar with it! But, surely, it
was a sacred mission to watch over and care for an erring parent, perhaps
to save him from still greater degradation. Would not God reward her for
this loving sacrifice, by keeping him in the charge of all good angels!

Her strong faith trusted in this, as she knelt down, still watching his
heaving chest, and laid her hand lightly in unconscious blessing upon his
broad forehead. It may have been that blessing which bore him through
strange trials and temptations. We know that those who ask “in faith,”
nothing wavering, have their reward; and what can exceed the yearning
faithfulness of a mother’s love?

“No, nothing is the matter, my son,” Mrs. Gilman answered to the boy’s
start of surprise, and half frightened, half sleepy question. “I did not
mean to wake you up, Sam, I came to see if you were asleep yet and quite
comfortable. Are you sure you have clothes enough? It’s going to be a
very cold night.”

“Plenty, mother,—it’s just like you to be worried. I thought it must be
morning first, or father was sick, or something. Good night,” and he
turned still drowsily to his pillow.

“Sam, did you know your father had concluded to go to California?”

“Goodness, mother!” and all sleepiness was gone in an instant, the boy
sat up in bed, and looked at his mother eagerly.

“Yes, he has decided to go, and I’ve been thinking if it wouldn’t be
better for you to go along.”

“Me?”

“I guess it’s best, Sam. I don’t see how I can spare you very well: but
your father will need you more than we shall; we shall make out to get
along somehow. You will be coming home some day with a fortune, like the
young princes in the story books.”

Mrs. Gilman tried to speak playfully, but it was hard work to keep down
the sobs.

“It isn’t like you, mother, to want me to leave you and the girls, just
to make money. I’ve heard you say too many times, that you would be
contented to live any way, so long as we could all be together, and work
for each other. What put it into your mind?”

There was an earnest directness in the boy’s manner Mrs. Gilman could not
evade. She had never before alluded to her husband’s weakness to one of
his children. It was hard now, but it was right Sam should know all.

“You can remember, Sam, when we were all a great deal happier; before
father took to going to the corner every day. You know how he comes home
night after night, and how bad company has changed him. Bill Colcord has
followed him every where, and has persuaded him into this. If father has
you with him, he’ll think of us oftener, and perhaps it will keep him
from doing a great many things Colcord might lead him into. You are old
enough to know what’s right and what’s wrong.”

“I ought to, mother, when I’ve had you to tell me ever since I was a
baby.”

“God knows I’ve _tried_ to do my duty,” Mrs. Gilman said, clasping her
hands together, “I’ve _tried_, Sam, and I’m trying now, though it’s hard
to see whether it’s right to send you away with that bad man. But it
_must be_! Look out for your father just as I would. Keep right yourself,
and then he will listen to you. But it’s all in your Bible; and you
won’t forget to read it, will you? You say your prayers, don’t you, like
a good boy?”

“Sometimes I forget till I am almost asleep,” the boy confessed honestly.
“But I don’t sleep half so well, I think, or wake up so good-natured at
any rate. When is father going—does he know you want me to?”

“Not yet, but we must not mind that—Colcord won’t want you. Something
tells me you ought to. Sam, I only want you to make me one promise. Never
to touch a drop of any thing that could hurt you—you know what I mean,
any spirit, and keep father from it as much as you can. You will, won’t
you?”

“I never tasted spirit yet, mother, and I never will, so long as I can
remember to-night. I’ll swear it on the Bible if you want me to.”

“No, I don’t ask that, only your promise. If you wouldn’t keep a solemn
promise, you wouldn’t keep an oath. And never let yourself get lazy.
People sit ’round and do nothing, and so they are tempted to drink just
to pass away the time, and most men who will drink, will swear or do
any thing else. I don’t say _all_ will;” and a painful flush rose to
the poor woman’s forehead as she thought of her misguided husband, “but
it leads into mischief they never would think of or consent to in their
sober senses. Don’t be afraid of hard work. I never was, and my father
was called well off. If one kind of work is not handy do something else,
it keeps away bad thoughts, and _hard_ thoughts too, sometimes.”

It seemed that Mrs. Gilman could not bear to leave her son. It was the
first time she had ever opened her heart to him at all. He was too
young to understand half its silent loneliness and care; but he loved
her better than anybody in the world, and was ready to do any thing or
promise any thing that would make her look happier. He did not get asleep
for a long time after she went away, though the candle had burnt out, and
the snow sifting against the window made it very dark. He turned over the
pillow, and drew up the quilt, but it was no use. To any boy of his age,
the novelty of going to sea would have been exciting. And California!—he
knew as much about it as any of his elders and betters. The boys had been
talking about it once, as they helped Ben Chase shell a double quantity
of corn, so that he could go skating with them after school, Monday;
and boasting, as boys will, of what _they_ would do, if they could only
get there! How astonished they would be to find he was going! He could
not help feeling very important, and suddenly improved almost to man’s
estate, even in his own eyes. Then his imagination rambled on to a very
distant and undefined future. How he would come home with piles and piles
of gold—great bags full, and give five to his mother, and one to each of
the girls, and buy back the farm. Whether he should put the old house
in splendid order, or build a new one, he could not quite make up his
mind. But there would be time enough for that. One thing was certain.
His mother should have every thing she wanted, and never do another bit
of work, if she didn’t choose to. His mother’s troubled face brought him
back very suddenly to the present. He understood better than ever he did
before, how many things she must have to worry her, especially about his
father. He thought about this a long time, and made new resolution to
keep his promise, and be very good and industrious. His good resolves
were a little confused and misty at the last, mixed with wandering
thoughts about the ship, for he had never seen one, and Ben Chase’s new
skates, which had been the object of his highest ambition three hours
before. Then he slept as soundly as if the whole plan of his life had not
been changed that eventful day; unconscious of the hardships, the trials,
and the temptations that were to mark every step of his future path
through boyhood.

So it happened that our young hero, as his mother had said, like a
prince in some marvellous fairy tale, “went out to seek his fortune.” He
had no “shoes of swiftness,” or “invisible cap,” nor yet the “purse of
Fortunatus,” _that_ he expected to find. But he carried a light heart,
willing hands, and a determination to do right, whatever happened, “three
gifts” that perhaps could bring him as much in the end.




CHAPTER IV.

GOING TO CALIFORNIA!


It is strange how soon the most startling things that happen to us,
settle into a matter of course. Before another Saturday night the whole
Gilman family thought and talked of “going to California,” as if they had
looked forward to it for a year. Sam contrived to gather more information
about Cape Horn and the Pacific coast than he could have learned from a
study of Olney’s Geography all his life. As Mrs. Gilman expected, her
husband’s adviser made a determined opposition against taking a boy, and
one as sharp-sighted as Sam Gilman particularly. But she was equally
determined, and as Colcord knew she had it in her power to stop the sale
of the farm, and cut off their means of going, he thought it best to give
up. He concluded he should be able to manage both father and son after a
while, and it might not be such a bad plan in the end.

Squire Merrill tried his best to dissuade Mr. Gilman, when he saw what
was on foot. He even offered to lend him money to stock his farm, and get
started again, but he could have had about as much influence on the wind.
He proved himself to be a true friend, even though his advice was not
taken.

He bought the remnant of the once valuable farm, paying ready money for
it, though he was afterwards sorry he had not kept the sum intended for
Mrs. Gilman’s use in his own hands. It would have been much better if he
had. His old neighbor could not bear to have money and not be generous.
With his hundred dollars clear, in his pocket, after paying Colcord
enough to secure his passage in the same ship,—it was called _a loan_,—he
felt quite as good as any one in the county, and would not listen to the
suggestion that they should take passage in the steerage. He even debated
going in the Crescent City, but found that quite beyond his means.

There was one comfort in this self-importance. He renewed a promise made
and broken, many, many times, not to drink any more, and in spite of the
past sad experience, his wife _almost_ believed he would keep it. It was
this hope, and seeing him more like his old self, kind and affectionate,
that helped her through those two weeks of preparation. Her busy thoughts
flew fast into the future, as her needle kept time to them. She said to
herself she would forget the unhappy years that were gone, and work on
cheerfully. How many bright pictures of the future were wrought into her
daily tasks! She could even see them measuring the land, and sign the
deed that gave up all right to it, thinking how soon the old homestead
might be theirs again, and once more have fields crowned with plenty.

Sam seemed to think a long face was expected from him, and tried to
put on one every time the matter was talked over. He found this harder
and harder, as the time came near. A journey to Boston was an event in
the life of Ben Chase he had never quite recovered from. Ben Chase had
seen the Bunker Hill Monument and the State House, with Washington’s
Statue, and, dear to a boy’s heart, the Common, with its renowned Frog
Pond, which he never would own, even to himself, had disappointed him.
Ben Chase talked of Boston Harbor, and like all boys brought up out of
sight of salt water, thought of all things in the world he should like
to be a sailor. He had even contemplated running away and persuading Sam
Gilman to go with him. But Ben was a deacon’s son, and heard “honor thy
father and mother” read out of the big family Bible very often. He had
compunctious visitings the next day after concocting this notable scheme,
at family prayers, and quite repented of it when he saw his father go
round with the collection plate, the Sunday after. Now all his enthusiasm
revived. He looked up to Sam quite as much as Sam expected or desired,
when he found they were going “round the Horn.” He favored him with many
decidedly original suggestions, always prefaced with—“I’ll tell you what,
Sam,” and read over in the retirement of the barn chamber his limited
collection of voyages and travels, burning with a renewed desire to

    “Walk the waters like a thing of life,”

as he poetically termed staggering across a ship’s deck. Sam sometimes
felt a little uncertainty about his positive happiness in leaving home,
when he saw how sorry Julia Chase looked; but Ben’s conversation had
quite an opposite effect on his spirits. Julia presented him with a
heart-shaped pincushion, made out of the pieces of her new hood, as a
keepsake. Ben deliberated among his accumulated stores a long time, and
finally decided on the big hickory bow and arrow he was making with a
great deal of care and skill. “It would be so useful if you was cast away
on a desert island, you know,” he said.

Julia and Ben came over on Saturday afternoon to bring their presents,
and some dried apples from Mrs. Chase to Mrs. Gilman. The last were
prefaced by the apology that “she didn’t know but Mrs. Gilman’s must be
most out.” Many a useful gift had come from the same quarter, prompted by
equal kindness, and offered with the same natural delicacy. “Neighbors”
in New England, mean more than living near a person. The rule of the
Samaritan is taken rather than the Levite’s, and certainly good wishes
and kind acts were as “oil and wine” to Mrs. Gilman of late, however
trifling they might seem in themselves.

The children passed a greater part of the afternoon in the garret
chamber, which being directly over the kitchen, was warm and comfortable.
Sam’s clothes were to go in his father’s chest—“a real sea-chest”—as he
told Ben, but he was to have a box of his own besides. Packing this box
was the excitement of the afternoon, as it included a distribution of
that part of Sam’s treasures, he found it impossible to accommodate. One
particular red ear of corn presented to Julia Chase, made a great deal
of amusement; some speckled bird’s eggs, and the principal curiosity of
his museum, a carved elephant’s tooth, brought home by some sailor uncle
or cousin of his mother’s, completed her share of the spoils. The sled
was presented to Ben, and Abby and Hannah shared the remainder, feeling
far richer than many a grown up legatee does in receiving a bequest of
thousands. An animated conversation was kept up, Julia bringing forward
a fact in history that had troubled her very much for the past few days.
Her class were studying Goodrich’s United States for the first time,
and she remembered that when the English settled at Jamestown they
discovered earth containing a great quantity of shining particles which
were supposed to be gold by the colonists. She sympathized very heartily
with them in their disappointment, when they found their ship loads
sent to England turned out worthless, and she had become quite anxious
on Sam’s account. What if after all the California gold should end in
the same way! Hannah and Abby were very much agitated for a while with
this startling historical inference, but Ben did not hesitate to say,
“girls were fools, they knew nothing and never did;” while Sam gave such
remarkable anecdotes and facts, that they were reassured, and all grew
merry and good-natured again.

For the first time in many Sundays, Mr. Gilman went with his wife and
family to meeting. His new rough great coat and respectable hat made
him seem like another man. But he did not like the sermon at all, and
considered it as meant for him. It was rather singular that the text
should be—

“_Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust
doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:_

“_But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor
rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal._”

Sam, who had persuaded his mother to let him sit in the gallery with
Ben, became much more attentive than usual. The new minister evidently
had the California adventure in his mind, though he only spoke of the
feeling extending all over the country; the sudden haste to get rich, and
the willingness people showed to leave their families and their homes
to go in search of golden treasure. He said if they would make half as
many sacrifices to lay up treasure in heaven, they would be thought to
have lost their senses, and ridiculed on every side; yet there was no
comparison between the worth and value of the two.

Ben on the contrary thought the sermon very long and tiresome, and amused
himself by carving on the seat what he fondly called a ship, working
most industriously with one eye on his father’s pew, to see when he was
unobserved. Ben certainly never could have supported existence without a
knife, and though it was only a jack-knife, and not a very elegant one at
that, it was surprising what a number of things he managed to do with it.

All the neighbors stood in the entry, or porch, at the noon recess,
and shook hands with Mr. Gilman, just as they used to do. His wife sat
near the glowing stove, talking with Mrs. Chase, and could not help
thinking how much happier it would be if, instead of going away the
next morning, he would stay with her and the children, and try to get
along at home. But then, perhaps, it was wrong not to be thankful for
any change that promised better things. Squire Merrill spoke very kindly
and encouragingly, Deacon Chase in his queer, forgetful way, shook hands
twice over, and insisted on driving them home, after afternoon meeting,
although Mrs. Gilman told him they were going back with Mr. Conner, whose
wife was not well enough to go out, so there was plenty of room. Sam on
his side had a large congregation of all the boys round him, most of them
looking very stiff and uncomfortable in their Sunday clothes, with their
straight, sunburnt locks, plastered down by an extra allowance of soap
and water. In their secret hearts they all envied him, and he knew it,
but tried not to overpower them by a sense of his own importance, leaving
it for Ben to set forth his probable route and adventures. Julia had
brought his sisters a big Baldwin apple apiece, and shared her luncheon
of dough-nuts in the most generous manner; a kindness which Abby fully
appreciated, as all their apples were gone long ago, and dough-nuts had
been a rarity for the last two winters. Hannah, with characteristic
forethought, saved her Baldwin until she could have a good chance to read
her new library book. A book and an apple was the height of Hannah’s
enjoyment. We must not forget, however, that she _was_ capable of
self-denial, for that same treasured Baldwin, with its beautiful crimson
cheek, found its way into Sam’s overcoat pocket the next morning. Let
those who have given up a hoarded dainty, appreciate the sacrifice!

Mr. Gilman was very restless—“fidgety” the Deacon would have called it,
all that evening. It was Sunday; all preparations were completed; he
could not make an excuse to go to Mooney’s, and he _had_ to think. He
went out to the barn, and even mounted to what was once the hay-loft.
He walked to the road, back to the kitchen, and out to the road again,
with his hands in his pockets, and his hat set down over his face. He
began to whistle, but stopped, remembering it was Sunday. No one but He
who can read the thoughts of our hearts, knew all that came into his, in
the quiet and deep stillness of that last Sunday evening at home. The
sermon, the journey, the next day’s parting with his wife, her love for
him, and his selfish neglect, all mingled there, and brought remorse and
self-condemnation with them. When he went into the house, Mrs. Gilman was
sitting in the fire-light with her children, singing hymns that her own
mother had taught her. This had once been the happiest hour of all the
week, but now the mother’s voice was tremulous, and her heart full of
heaviness. The last night of an unbroken family circle, perhaps for ever;
the last Sunday beneath the roof of her father’s homestead! How could it
be otherwise? Mr. Gilman was persuaded that this was the commencement of
a new and better life for him. All the indifference and selfishness of
years seemed to melt away; something like a silent prayer came in its
place, a prayerful resolve only, not one for aid and guidance. Depending
on himself, and forgetting how often he had been self-betrayed, he meant
fully, at that moment, to be industrious and persevering for their dear
sakes. He would toil with a strength and energy that must succeed, and
his wife should be doubly rewarded for all she had suffered.

Perhaps she felt the certainty of this as he sat near her, shading his
eyes with his hand; for her voice grew clearer and stronger as she sang—

    Ye fearful souls fresh courage take,
      The clouds ye so much dread,
    Are big with mercy, and shall break
      In blessings on your head.

    Judge not the Lord by feeble sense
      But trust him for his grace—
    Behind a frowning Providence
      He hides a smiling face.

    His purposes will ripen fast,
      Unfolding every hour;
    The _bud may have a bitter taste_,
      _But sweet will be the flower._

Oh, these calm, thoughtful Sunday evenings in a New England home,
where the strict, and it may be rigid rule of our forefathers, is
still preserved! What a blessed memory they are, in after years, to
the toil-worn and world-wearied heart! The dear circle gathered in
the fire-light, one clasping a mother’s hand—the youngest nestling in
a father’s arms!—the long quiet talk of pleasant and holy things—the
wonderful Bible stories of Joseph and his brethren, Moses in the
bulrushes, and the destruction of Pharaoh’s host—the old-fashioned hymns,
led by a dear mother’s voice, in which all strive to join; the simple
melodies, and the pious words sinking unconsciously into the memory!
Who would exchange these recollections for the indulgence of carpeted
nurseries, a servant’s twice-told tales of ghost or goblin, the muttered
sleepy prayer at her knee, when another Sunday is over, a day of idle
play, or marked only by a careful toilette for the dinner company who
were expected, and engross the time and thoughts of worldly parents in
the drawing-room? We may be mistaken, after all, about the privileges
which the children of the rich enjoy.

Actually saying “good-bye,” is hardly ever as hard as we expect it will
be, or the loneliness afterwards proves. The next morning found Mr.
Gilman as confident as ever, and bustling around with great alacrity,
to be ready in time for the stage. His wife did not allow herself to
think. She had her breakfast to prepare—though Abby was the only one of
the party that seemed to need it—and many things to see to at the last
moment. Wherever she was, and whatever occupied her hands, her eyes
and her heart followed Sam, who felt all the excitement of departure.
His father had been so little comfort or company lately, that it would
be easier to be accustomed to his absence. Sam she had depended on—his
willing, cheerful readiness to assist her, the frank honesty that never
deceived, young as he was, had filled up a great void in her heart. His
very voice, and step, were music and lightness.—Do all she could the
tears could not be kept back, but filled her eyes, and almost blinded
her, as she went about her morning work. And then the time came—her
husband kissing her hurriedly and nervously as the toiling horses came
in sight, her boy not ashamed to cling to her neck, while she wrapped
her arms around him, as if he had been still the baby in her bosom,
and kissed him in an agony of love, and fear, and blessing. They were
gone, and the house, no longer her home, was empty and desolate, and her
straining eyes could not catch another glimpse of that bright boyish face.

All day long Mrs. Gilman busied herself with strange haste, and
unnecessary care. It seemed as if she dreaded to have her hands
unemployed for a moment. The children forgetting their tears, as children
will, played, and worked, and disputed, but she scarcely seemed to notice
them. It seemed to her as if death, not absence, had removed her son.




CHAPTER V.

SETTING SAIL.


Their future constant companion joined the father and son, as might be
expected, at Mooney’s Tavern. He had no leave-takings to subdue the
boisterous spirits in which he set out on an expedition that was to make
a rich man of him. His brothers and sisters were married, and had lost
all interest in him long ago. They were even glad that he would no longer
be a daily disgrace to them. He was very grand with Mr. Gilman’s money,
and expected, of course, to drink to their success in a parting glass
at Mooney’s. He had drank to it so often already that morning, that it
was doubtful whether he would be fit to start on the journey. It had the
effect of making him unusually good-natured, fortunately, so that he took
Mr. Gilman’s refusal with only the complacent remark, “more fool he.”
The stage did not make long stoppages so early in the day; away they
drove again—the tavern, the post-office, the white meeting-house on the
hill, disappearing in turn, and then the young traveller felt that home
was really left behind.

He was very quiet, he could not help it.—The day was exceedingly cold,
and the road, for miles together, dreary and uninteresting. The noisy
laugh of Colcord troubled him, while he thought of his mother and the
girls. This could not last long, as the stage filled up, stopping now
at a farm house, where a place had been bespoken for its owner the day
before, or receiving a passenger at some wayside tavern. Sam began to
feel all the dignity of being a traveller himself, and particularly when
he saw how much the strangers were interested, hearing that they were
bound for California. Colcord talked to every one, and made himself out
the commander-in-chief of the expedition. _He_ was going to “invest,”
as he called it; _he_ expected to see the time when he could buy up the
whole of an insignificant little village like Merrill’s Corner!—And
then the most incredible facts were related, exaggerated newspaper
reports given, as having happened to the uncle, or cousin, or friend of
the speaker. When they came to a tavern, Colcord was the first man out,
strutting around the bar-room, and asking all his fellow-passengers to
drink with him. Even Mr. Gilman seemed ashamed of his partner, as he
loudly proclaimed himself to be.

Sam went to bed at Concord that night, wondering if New-York could be
larger, or have handsomer houses, and what they were doing at home. It
seemed as if months had passed since bidding them good-bye. Then came
the novelty of a railroad, the hurried glimpse at Manchester and Lowell,
with their tall piles of brick and mortar, the loud hiss of steam, and
clanking of machinery. How busy and restless all the world began to seem,
and how far off the eventless village life, which had till now been a
world in itself.

Colcord did not let them lose a moment’s time. He had found out on the
journey, that no ship was to sail from Boston for more than a week. A
week, he said, would give them a long start; as they had the money, they
might as well push through to New-York, where whole columns of vessels
were advertised.

The morning of the third day after leaving home, Sam found himself
following his father and Colcord along the crowded wharves of this great
city, going to secure their passage.

The “Helen M. Feidler,” was the unromantic name of the ship Colcord had
selected. She was to sail first, and the handbills pasted along the
corners, described her as nearly new—fast sailing—with every possible
accommodation for freight and passengers. The owners said she would
make the voyage in half the usual time, and if _they_ did not know, who
should? In fact the clerk, or agent at the office, gave such a glowing
account of her wonderful speed, the excellent fare, and the rush of
people to engage their berths, that Mr. Gilman was all ready to secure
three cabin vacancies that happened, by the most fortunate chance in
the world, to be left. He had even taken out the old-fashioned leather
pocket-book, in which the bills were laid, when he saw Colcord making
signs to him not to be in too much of a hurry. The clerk assured them,
his warm manner growing very cold and distant, as he replaced his pen
behind his ear, that the next day would probably be too late. Sam did not
understand what Colcord said to his father, but almost as soon as they
were in the street, they told him he had better stroll around and amuse
himself; they were going to look at the ship, and see if all that had
been said was true.

[Illustration: “HE STROLLED ALONG THE WHARVES.”

Page 66.]

This was certainly very reasonable. Sam wondered, at the same time, what
had made Colcord so suddenly cautious, and why they did not take him with
them. However, he strolled along the wharves, where all was new to him;
the inviting eating saloons, with their gayly-painted signs, the sailors
in their blue and red shirts, and rolling gait, that came out and went
into them, the tall warehouses of the ship-chandlers, with the piles of
ropes, and what seemed to him rusty chains, and useless lumber, scattered
about the lower floor. It was a bitter day, and seemed doubly cold and
disagreeable in the absence of snow, which only was found in dirty and
crumbling piles out on the wharves or along the edge of the frozen
gutters. The signs creaked and clanked in the wind, that came sweeping
with icy chillness from the river; and the bareheaded emigrants, women
and children, that came trooping along the sidewalk, looked half frozen
and disconsolate. Still it was new and wonderful, and so were the rows of
vessels, schooners and brigs, that lined the docks, some receiving and
others discharging their cargoes, with a hurry and bustle of drays, and
creaking pulleys, and a flapping of the sail-like canvas advertisements,
fixed to the mast, that told their destination, and their days of
sailing. The black hulls and dirty decks did not look very inviting; but,
of course, the wonderful Helen M. Feidler, did not in the least resemble
such uncouth hulks as these!

How he did wish for Ben as he walked along, trying to shield his face
from the wind, with nobody to ask a question of, or tell his discoveries
and conjectures to! He wished for him more than ever when he inquired
his way back to the lodging house, in which they had left their chests,
and found his father had not yet returned. It was a cheap place of
entertainment, and chosen by them because near the water. Sam did not
think it nice nor comfortable in the uncarpeted sitting-room, scarcely
any fire in the dirty stove, and nothing to look at but an old file of
newspapers on the baize-covered table. But that was better than the
bar-room and its unwelcome sights and sounds.

He expected his father every moment, and told the waiter so, when he
asked him if they would have dinner. The afternoon came on, still lonely,
dark and gloomy. He began to be anxious for fear they had lost their way,
or perhaps been robbed, and carried out to sea,—he had heard of such
things. Hungry, and tired and lonely, he laid down on the long, wooden
settee, and fell asleep, dreaming that he saw his mother, and made her
very happy by telling her that his father had resisted all Colcord’s
endeavors to get him to drink, and talked about her every time they were
alone together.

It was very late—nearly midnight—before the men returned. They were
quarrelling violently on the stairs, and poor Sam instantly knew that his
father had again been led into temptation. He did not know until the next
day what a misfortune this had proved. When his father awoke, haggard and
sullen, it was to charge Colcord with having robbed him of every cent the
pocket-book contained, more than half of all he possessed. Colcord’s
own poverty disproved this charge. Between them, there was just enough
to take a steerage passage for the three, and paying their bill at the
lodging house, but a few dollars were left.

They had not yet purchased the necessary tools and stores for their
business; with the exception of a newly invented patent gold-washer,
in which Mr. Gilman had rashly invested a third of the sum originally
intended for their outfit, on their way to the wharves, there was nothing
to rely upon when they should arrive out. Colcord tried to get him to
exchange this for the less expensive picks and spades; but Mr. Gilman
was stubborn and dogged, as he always was under the influence of strong
drink, and insisted on what he considered a fortunate speculation.

It was in this way, after all his father’s pride and spirit on leaving
home, that Sam, with his two still unreconciled companions, was entered
as a steerage passenger on one of those very vessels that he had
considered so unpromising at first sight. He tried to write a cheerful
letter home, the day of sailing, describing what he had seen, but saying
as little as possible about his father, or the vessel, that he could not
think of without disgust. It was indeed a comfortless prospect, to be
shut up for months in that dreary-looking steerage, so dark and stifling,
so crowded with human beings of every grade and country.

The same glowing description was given of the speed and safety of the
“Swiftsure;” but Sam began to doubt even the merits of the Helen M.
Feidler, when he read column after column, in which barks, schooners and
brigs up for California, were advertised to possess every advantage that
could possibly be desired. It was his first great lesson that promise and
reality are by no means the same thing.

Boy as he was, and hopeful as he had always been, he sat down
disconsolately on his father’s chest, and tried to realize all that
had befallen him. The place described in the advertisement as “large,
roomy, well lighted and ventilated,” seemed to him dark, crowded, and
suffocating. The space between the rows of bunks, as the slightly built
berths were called, was piled with chests and boxes, over which each new
comer climbed, and fell, and stumbled along, venting their annoyance in
oaths and imprecations. The air was damp, at the same time so close
and heavy that he could scarcely breathe. A fear of stifling when night
and darkness came, made him start up and rush on deck, while it was yet
possible to do so. They had already moved out of the dock in tow of a
small steamboat, that was to take them down the bay, and carry back the
friends of the cabin passengers, who helped fill the decks. There was
scarcely an inch of plank to stand upon, or an unobstructed path to any
part of the ship. Water-casks, fresh provisions for the cabin table,
crates of fowls, the cackle adding to the general uproar; chests, boxes
and trunks of the passengers, and freight received up to the last moment,
were scattered, piled and packed in what seemed hopeless confusion. If
there was dreariness and heart-sinking in the steerage, the cabin made
amends with its uproar and jollity. Every one seemed to be of Colcord’s
opinion, that too many parting glasses could not be, and wine and brandy
flowed as freely as water.

It might have seemed a festival day to Sam, if the sun had shone and the
shores been covered with summer foliage; but the sky was in those close
racks of clouds, so often seen in winter, chilling the very sunlight to
transient watery beams. Cakes of ice, dirty, huge and discolored, were
floating in the bay, crashing against the puffing little steamboat,
with every revolution of the wheel. No golden horizon could gild the
chilliness of the whole scene, or make it promise brightness to come.

It was late in the afternoon when the steamboat cast loose from them,
and the ship, with every sail set to the strong breeze, went on her way
alone. The friends of the cabin passengers departed with cheers on each
side, while some on ship-board went below to write one more hasty word
of farewell to still dearer ones left behind. The pilot, bearer of these
messages, resigned his brief command to their captain, and left them last
of all. The low line of coast—the Neversink highlands—that last glimpse
of home became indistinct in the wintry twilight, as the swell that bore
them on sank into the long, rolling, foam-crested waves—the boundless
expanse of ocean.

The discomforts of the inevitable sea-sickness past, Sam began to
find even the steerage endurable. It was crowded to be sure, and his
fellow-voyagers were many of them quite as disagreeable as Colcord, who
formed quantities of new acquaintances, and was so good as to trouble
them very little with his society. After daylight,—and once accustomed
to the rolling of the vessel, Sam slept as sound in his bunk as when his
mother came to tuck in the bed-clothes in the garret chamber,—he saw
very little between decks, until night came again. He made friends with
the cook in the galley, and the sailors in the forecastle, where he was
a welcome visitor. There was a never-ceasing interest in the long yarns
which the sailors told of their various voyages in every quarter of the
globe, and their numerous adventures in port; some of which did not
speak much for their morality, I am sorry to say. It was as good as six
volumes of Sinbad, as many of Munchausen, and libraries of Gulliver. Sam
watched all their ways with the most lively interest, and considered them
the best fellows that ever were born. “How he should like to astonish
Ben!” he used to think, as he sat on deck, watching them unravelling the
tarred ropes for “spun-yarn,” or in the dim light of the forecastle,
while they cut and made, and mended their wide pantaloons, or overhauled
the thick clothes provided for their passage round the Horn, a prospect
that did not seem very agreeable to them. He found himself adopting their
peculiar gait, and practising from a large collection of sea-phrases.
They taught him to climb the rigging, the names of the different sails
and ropes, and the meaning of the curious orders sung out by the captain
or mate, that at first had seemed like a foreign language. It was all so
new and exciting, particularly when he came to understand the working
of the ship, that he wondered what people meant when they talked of the
“monotony of sea-life.” It doubtless was monotonous to the young men in
the cabin, who slept, and ate, and drank, and lolled around the deck,
sometimes with a book, sometimes hanging over the ship’s sides in perfect
lack of occupation, “like cows in a pasture”—Sam used to say. He managed
to get up a great feeling of superiority and pity, when he saw them turn
out on deck after breakfast, looking so languid and sleepy. _He_ had been
up since sunrise, and seen the decks washed down and cleansed, seated in
some part of the rigging, above the unceremonious flood that followed his
promenade on deck. It was his delight to follow the sailors to the galley
for their kids of beef and cans of coffee—what an appetite he always had
for the “hard tack,” and meat almost as unimpressible to the teeth, that
fell to his own share! The poor fellows in the cabin were starving by
their own account, and thought as longingly of the abundance and variety
of the tables at Delmonico’s and the Astor, as ever the children of
Israel in the desert did of the flesh-pots of Egypt!

Many good mothers would have been troubled at this constant companionship
with men they are accustomed to think of as degraded beings; but for a
boy with Sam’s disposition, it was far preferable to the example of the
more refined circle in the cabin. Sam knew that the oaths and honestly
told “scrapes” of the sailors were wrong. There was no concealment
intended, and it was easy to distinguish good and evil, when so broadly
marked.

The twenty cabin passengers, mostly young men, who had led idle and
dissipated lives in large cities, had a code of morals, that would have
had a more secret and fatal influence.—Their conversation over the card
table, the unending games, in which money was always staked to make it
exciting, would have had a much worse effect. Sam knew that almost any
sailor would drink when it was possible to do so, and had heard the
habit spoken of as the worst which they were given to. He might have
thought his mother was mistaken in the harm, after all, if he had seen
the daily excesses of the captain’s table, and educated men boasting of
the quantity of wine they had, or could carry, without being considered
intoxicated. Their recklessness of any thing good and holy was appalling,
and Sam would not have wondered so much at one of them, who used to go
aloft to the cross-trees every fair day, and read or muse hours over his
Bible, if he had heard how jestingly the sacred volume was named by the
rest.




CHAPTER VI.

THE STORM.


A fair and prosperous voyage was prophesied by all, as the vessel flew
along the Gulf Stream, the air growing softer with every day’s advance,
and a fair wind keeping the officers and crew in perfect good humor.

After he had once conquered the dizziness with which he first tried to
climb the rigging, Sam began to think with Ben, that the most delightful
life in the world was a sailor’s. He had never been very fond of study,
though he liked to read when the book exactly suited him. The district
school from time immemorial had been taught by a woman in the summer.
This was partly from a motive of laudable economy on the part of the
school committee, who thought it their duty to have the young ideas of
Merrill’s Corner taught to shoot with as little expense as possible.
As to a woman’s earning half as much as a man, or justice demanding she
should receive an equal rate of wages, it had never entered into their
wise heads. “A woman’s school,” all the boys in the neighborhood felt to
be entirely beneath their dignity, whether their services were needed at
home or not.

In winter, “fun” was the principal pursuit. School was all very well, as
an excuse for the boys to get together, and most of them studied just
enough to keep out of the reach of punishment. Snowballing, skating and
practical jokes upon the master, were pursued much more industriously
than the geography, grammar and arithmetic, which they “went through”
again and again. Up to the time of his leaving home, Sam had not the
least understanding what English grammar was intended for. The master
who taught it, sinned against half the rules in explaining them. He
would tell them they “dun their sums wrong,” and that they “hadn’t got
no lesson for a week.” Nor did the boys bother themselves with wondering
what it was all about. They were brought up to go to school so many
months every year, and supposed it was all right.

Now, at sea, there were very few books to be found. The sailors had
a collection of old song and jest books, voyages, and biographies of
celebrated criminals. One of them had bought Fox’s Book of Martyrs by
mistake, at a stall, thinking from the pictures that it was an account
of some great executions, possibly of pirates and highwaymen. It was the
only thing like a religious book in the forecastle, except a few tracts
and Testaments, sent on board by some society before the vessel left
New-York. There was a Bible on the cabin table, replaced regularly every
morning, after cleaning up, but no one ever looked into it. Cheap novels
was the only branch of literature that had any encouragement in the
cabin, where dice, cards and dominoes, formed the principal amusement.

It was astonishing to Sam how much he recollected at sea of what he had
read at home. All the books in the district school library relating
to political life or history, he ran through as he read them, without
attempting to remember. He could not recall three rules in syntax, or
the population of a single country of Europe, but facts and events he
had not read more than once, he could tell by the half-hour to the
sailors in return for their long stories, until these simple-hearted,
unlettered men, began to look on him as a prodigy. They taught him every
kind of knot that could be tied, or plaits that could be twisted, all
the practical seamanship that a boy could understand, and for the first
time in his life Sam began to feel a pride and interest in acquiring
knowledge, for its own sake, and for the _use_ he could put it to.

So far he had met with only one great disappointment. He had privately
longed for a storm at sea, with “waves rolling mountains high,” as Ben
used to quote from his favorite authors, and the ship “scudding under
bare poles,” one of his newly acquired nautical phrases. He began to be
afraid he should not be gratified, as the Swiftsure was fast leaving the
region of storms behind, and the Horn seemed too distant to calculate
upon. Every day as he went aloft to watch for a sail, he looked quite
as wistfully for clouds. The captain had promised to speak the first
homeward bound vessel, that they might send letters to the States. He
did not intend to go into any port but Valparaiso, as they were so
fortunate in the outset of their voyage, and he was anxious to round
the Horn as soon as possible. So all hands watched for homeward-bound
vessels every fair day, and those who had not become too indolent, amused
themselves keeping a diary, to be sent by them to their friends. Sam had
an elaborate sea-letter to Ben on hand, as his father intended writing to
Mrs. Gilman, an intention which stopped there, for though he found plenty
of “nothing in the world to do,” he never found “time to commence.”

Ben was to be furnished with a practical commentary on navigation,
that might fit him for his favorite pursuit, if his father ever came
to consent to it. It opened with several bold allusions to Christopher
Columbus and Captain Cook. Sam’s first great discovery in seamanship,
that there were but eight “ropes” in a ship, after all, followed the
historical introduction. It would seem as incomprehensible to Ben as it
had been to him at first, and he enjoyed in anticipation the puzzled look
of unbelief, until the clue to the riddle was found, when he proceeded
to name the complicated rigging, as braces, stays, clue-lines, halyards,
&c., and contradicted the popular fallacy that “sheets” were sails,
as they had always supposed. A statement that “eight bells” did not
mean eight o’clock alone, but were sounded every four hours in the day,
was added. Ben “stood generally corrected,” and a great deal of useful
information upon reefing, furling, and slushing down the masts, was
combined in the next page.

The last was written the first stormy day they had met with since
leaving New-York harbor. Sam had been on deck, as usual, in the morning,
but retreated to the society of the forecastle, as the wind and rain
gradually increased. None of the sailors thought it was going to end
in “much of a blow” at first, or that it was worth honoring with thick
jackets and “sou’ westers.” The cabin passengers sat as long as possible
at dinner, to pass away the time, and bothered the captain with useless
questions every time he appeared among them.

But the gale increased slowly and surely. One sail after another was
taken in. The captain was on deck all night, the mate or himself shouting
their orders in the teeth of the roaring wind, and even then the men
could scarcely distinguish them. Shut up in the dark and crowded
steerage, bruised with the rolling of the vessel, Sam began to think, on
the second day, that a storm at sea was by no means so romantic as he
imagined. Some of the men, Colcord among them, were horribly frightened,
and sure they were all going to the bottom. Some slept and some prayed,
and cried like boys—some boys would have scorned the cowardice—and never
ceased wishing they were safe on land again. Others swore at them for
making such a disturbance, and exhorted them, in no very pious way, to
“die like men”—at any rate.

Still the gale increased until the morning of the third day. The captain
had very little hope that the ship could live through the tempest, and
did not attempt to conceal it from the few passengers that ventured upon
deck, clinging to the ropes and sides, lest they should share in the fate
of every thing movable, and be washed over-board by some retreating wave.
It seemed impossible, as the huge foam-crested surges rose above them,
that the vessel could ever be lifted in safety,—as though the roaring
waters must close over, and drive the ship with its awful freight of
human souls down, down, down to the very depths of the yawning sea.

And now came a stunning shock, as the dread changed to the horror of
reality, and driven over by the mingled force of wind and wave, the ship
lay beaten helplessly along, her tall yards dipping the dark turbid
waters.

There was no time for thought, scarcely for fear. The worn-out crew,
the helpless passengers guided by the frantic gestures of the captain,
worked with a strength and courage impossible in a less awful moment.
The orders shouted in their very ears died away in the roar of the storm
before they could be understood; but all obeyed the instinct of the
moment, and worked as one man to lighten the ship. They cut and tore away
with reckless energy every thing within their reach. The foremast, with
every stay severed by rapid hacking strokes—quivered, snapped like a reed
in the gale, and fell away with a dull, heavy plunge, heard above the
awful roar. Not till then did any dare to hope, or even see as the ship
slowly righted,—every timber creaking and shuddering as in the strain of
parting,—that the dense clouds drifted with less violence above them,
and the gale had spent its utmost fury.

In the first certainty of safety, no one thought of the losses and
inconveniences that they had suffered. Yet, by the time the sea began to
subside, captain, crew and passengers seemed to forget the awful danger,
in fretting about losses, trifling in themselves, at least in comparison
to their escape. Not a trace of fresh provisions now could be found,
more than half the water and meat casks had disappeared in company with
the mast. The “doctor,” as the cook was called by the sailors, mourned
vainly over absenting pots, pans and coppers, that had gone to cook, this
“food for fishes,”—and the cabin table vented their disgust to half-raw
ham, and coffee, which had more the flavor of beef tea,—on his devoted
head. The sunshine of mate and captain vanished with the serene sky, as
the rigging of the jury-mast was retarded, and the sailors exercised
their ancient privilege of grumbling on every thing that “turned up,” or
“didn’t turn up,” as the case might be. Five, ten, fifteen disconsolate
days above and below, until from the change in the vessel’s course, and
a momentary condescension on the captain’s part, it was discovered that
the Swiftsure was nearing Rio, to refit and take in fresh provisions.

Perhaps no one but the very youngest among them remembered with more
than a passing thought how near they had been to the end of life.
The danger, though he had not known it until it was over, had been a
sermon which Sam could not but listen to, and he wondered at first with
child-like undoubting belief in a future life, how they could all seem so
indifferent to it. Then the recollection became less vivid, as the sea
and sky returned to their calm beauty, and were absorbed, except in some
just waking or sleeping moment, in the eager anticipation of land; and
above all, first setting foot in a foreign country.

Nothing could be more welcome, or more beautiful, than the first distant,
then gradually deepening view of Rio and the country around it. “Land
ho,” had a magical sound, that brought every passenger to crowd the
deck. For the last week the discomforts of the ship had become almost
intolerable. Head winds, increasing heat, salt provisions adding to
the cravings of thirst, that could only make the thick slimy water
doled out to them endurable, were included in the list of grievances.
The “Swiftsure,” was declared to belie her name entirely. The owners
were rated and blamed from morning till night for crowding freight and
passengers into a vessel scarcely sea-worthy, as they now suddenly
discovered. Sam usually kept out of the way of his old comrades, the
sailors, unless especially invited to join them, and they in turn crossed
the Captain’s path as seldom as possible. Now every thing was changed,
even the wind. The men moved with alacrity, the passengers clustered
sociably together, talking of tropical fruits and wines, and were even
heard to mention spring-water complacently.

It was the realization of some of his many dreams of enchantment to Sam,
as the shore became more defined. The rocks and foliage of New Hampshire,
for his home had been in one of its least fertile parts, gave him very
little idea of the luxuriance of tropical countries, or the vivid beauty
of color of the earth, and sea and sky, in the glowing sunset which
welcomed them. It was so strange, after the isolation of the voyage, to
see other ships passing, even steamboats, trailing their lines of smoke
and vapor in the distance. The sharp summits of the Sugar Loaf, and the
other mountains that gird this fine harbor, were touched by the very
clouds.

The city, picturesque and novel, in the first distant view, grew stranger
still as they came nearer and nearer, and cast anchor at last in the
far-famed harbor of Rio Janeiro.




CHAPTER VII.

THE FIRST LETTER.


“Where do you suppose they are now, mother?” Hannah Gilman kept her
finger on the map, as she looked up to ask the question. She was tracing
out for the twentieth time, the track of the vessel, by the aid of an
Olney’s Atlas.

“Let me see,” answered the mother musingly, waxing the linen thread more
slowly, as she dwelt on the thought of her absent ones. It was almost
the only pleasure Mrs. Gilman allowed herself, a stolen respite from her
never-ending daily labor. “What day of the month is it, Abby?”

“Twenty-ninth—Hannah, you won’t get your hat done—Mother, just see
Hannah’s short straws scattered all ’round.”

“Perhaps it would be just as well if you would attend to your own work,
Abby,—how often must I tell you, that I don’t like to see children,
sisters especially, interfering with each other. Yes, it’s April 29th,
Hannah, and they expected to get into San Francisco the middle of May,
or first of June. You must look in the Pacific for them now, near
Valparaiso, I hope. It will be a long, long time before we hear.”

Four months, a long New Hampshire winter, had gone slowly by. How slowly,
only those who count days, and weeks, and months of absence can tell. At
night Mrs. Gilman’s last thought was one of thankfulness, that another
day was gone. In the morning she woke with a wish that it was night
again. They were living in a small house near the end of the village, to
which they removed the week after New-Years. Squire Merrill had begged
Mrs. Gilman to stay in the homestead all winter at least, but this she
could not consent to. Since she must leave it, it was best to go at once,
and she could warm the hired house, the only empty one in the village,
much more economically. It was one of those so often seen on a country
road-side, standing in a little door-yard, low and unpainted. There were
but two rooms on the ground floor, and an unfinished attic above; but
it was all they would really need, and the rent was very low. Abby’s
pride was greatly hurt when she first heard of the arrangement, and she
declared very plainly, that she “never would, _never_ go to that little
mean place, where old Lyman had lived.” Abby’s threats were generally
the extent of her disobedience, and after all, she proved the greatest
help in moving, and getting settled again. The two girls divided the
house-work between them now, even the baking; for which Abby began to
show a decided genius, and Mrs. Gilman sat at her needle from morning
till night. It was all she had to depend upon, but the first year’s house
rent which she put aside.

She had a plan for the girls, which she expected Abby would rebel at,
that might in the end be a great deal of assistance to her. When at
the store she had seen piles of coarse palm-leaf hats brought in and
exchanged for dry goods or groceries. She did not see why Abby’s nimble
fingers could not braid these as well as knit stockings, for which there
was little sale. The young lady for once proved reasonable, and even
Hannah’s emulation was excited, when her sister entered into a precise
calculation of what their gains might be before the end of the winter.

The palm-leaf came home, looking so fair and even in the long bundles,
and the two sisters plunged into the mysteries of “setting up,” and
“adding in,”—“double turns,” “binding off”—and “closing up.” While the
fever lasted, Abby could scarcely be persuaded to take time for eating
and sleeping; and when the novelty began to wear off, she had acquired
a mechanical skill and dexterity that made her new profession quite as
easy as knitting. It was harder for Hannah, until she discovered that she
could read while she braided down the crown, so in her hurry to get to
this favorite part of the work, her hat was completed almost as soon as
her sister’s.

And how much do you suppose, my little city ladies, who are always in
debt when allowance-day comes,—these industrious Yankee girls received,
as the sum of a week’s hard work; rising at five o’clock, and never
ceasing but for household duties until the sun went down? Eighteen and
three-quarter cents at first, not half as much as you have wasted at the
confectioner’s and the worsted stores in the same length of time! Three
cents a piece for braiding a whole hat, and Abby thought herself very
rich when she could do one and a half a day! So it is—but do not pity
them too much—they had twice your enjoyment in spending it.

Abby was on the last round of the brim, when Hannah laid her hat down
to look for the atlas. They had all been talking of father and Sam,—and
wishing the captain had been going to stop at Rio.

“We should have heard of him before this if he had,” Hannah said, “for
I looked in the ship list, the place that tells all about vessels, in
Squire Merrill’s paper, the last time I was up there; and I saw some
vessel had come in forty days from Rio. That’s less than six weeks, and
it will be four months Thursday since they sailed.”

“Here comes Squire Merrill now,” remarked Abby from her post at the front
window. She always took possession of it, and kept them informed of every
passer-by, if it was only a boy driving a yoke of oxen. “I guess he
doesn’t find it very good wheeling, his wagon is all spattered with mud.
How high wagons look, after seeing sleighs all winter. Why I do believe
he’s going to stop here! He is, just as sure as I’m alive. I’ll go to the
door, Hannah—he’s beckoning with a letter or something, as if he didn’t
want to get out.”

Mrs. Gilman, usually so calm, felt her heart give a sudden bound, as she
hurried to the window in time to see Squire Merrill give the letter to
Abby, and drive off again, with a smiling nod to herself, as if he shared
in the pleasure it would give her. No doubt he did, knowing very well,
when he found that heavy brown envelope lying at the post office, what a
rejoicing it would make.

It was Sam’s coarse, but very plain school-boy hand, in the direction,
and if there had been the least doubt in the matter, the ship-mark on
it would have told who it came from. Abby thought her mother was the
greatest while getting it open, and wondered what made her hands tremble
so. Mrs. Gilman could not command her voice to read the very first lines,
before Abby had made out half the first page, looking over her shoulder.

To be sure she had a right to—for it commenced:

“_Dear mother and the girls._” It was dated Rio Janeiro, March 4th, and
must have cost Sam a week’s hard work at least, covering three large
sheets of foolscap, and full of “scratching out” and interlining.

“Here we are at last,” was the boy-like and abrupt commencement, “where
I never expected to be last Thanksgiving Day, did I? The Captain doesn’t
want to be here now; but I’ve told Ben all about that in my letter. What
an awful storm that was, though! I never expected to see land, I can tell
you, and old Jackson says (Jackson is the sailor I like best, you will
see all about it in Ben’s letter) he never saw such a blow as that, and
he never wants to see another. I don’t, I’m sure. I’ve got so much to
tell you I don’t know where to begin. I suppose I ought to say ‘we are
all well, and hope you are the same.’ Well, we are—father and me. Jackson
says I’m a regular ‘lubber,’ that means very fat, with him. I shouldn’t
like to have him call me a ‘land lubber,’ though. Dear mother, you don’t
know how much I want to see you and the girls; I could talk to you all
night, but I’m afraid I can’t tell half I want to, on paper.

“We got here two weeks ago. The Captain thought he was going right off
again, but you never saw such a lazy set, as the people are here. Jackson
says he and I could do as much as twenty Portuguese. I go on shore
almost every day. _She_ doesn’t lie at a dock as she did in New-York,
for they do not have any docks. It seemed so queer at first, to see all
the vessels anchored out in the bay, and the little boats pulling around
them. Just think—there have been twenty-two vessels put in here this last
month, from the United States, to refit. The reason is, so many were like
ours, not fit to go to sea at all, they say, and too much loaded. I think
the owners must be bad men to risk people’s lives for the sake of making
a little more money. Don’t you?

“Father knows a great many people here, he’s got acquainted with them
off the different vessels, and _keeps very busy_.” Good hearted Sam! he
had puzzled half an hour over that sentence, lest he should betray his
father’s faults, but Mr. Gilman well knew with all his caution, what he
intended to conceal.

“I do not know whether he will find time to write home by this ship, but
he means to”—the letter went on to say; for Sam had seen how writing
had been put off from day to day, and wished to soften his mother’s
disappointment, if no letter came.

“So I go round by myself, and see enough curious things. Why I could
not tell you half in ten years. Just think! they are all Catholics in
Rio; and have great big churches, that you could put two or three of our
meeting-houses right inside! They don’t have any pews, but anybody kneels
right down on the stone floor, and says their prayers. I guess our girls
wouldn’t like it, with their Sunday-go-to-meeting dresses on! The ladies
here don’t seem to mind it at all, but they don’t wear the same kind of
clothes. Abby could tell you more about their rigging in ten minutes,
than I could in a whole week, so I guess I won’t try. The priest (that’s
like our minister) _sings_ all the prayers, in Latin. I guess the folks
don’t know much what he means. There are pictures all round some of the
churches, and I like to go to hear the music—not singing, like our
choir, but real bands of music, that play lively tunes.

I got acquainted with another boy, a real _splendid_ fellow, last week;
he came from Boston in the Mermaid, and the Captain is his father. We
have great times. There isn’t many boys, going to California. _His_ name
is _John_. Well, John and me did think it was so queer to see _real
slaves_ at first. There’s hundreds, and hundreds of them in the streets,
and the streets aren’t a bit like what I thought they were going to
be—more like little narrow alleys, such as I saw in New-York. (I’m all
out of breath with such a great long sentence, so I guess I’ll stop and
rest a while.)”

The next page was written with blue ink, and dated two days later.

“Dear mother, I’ve seen such beautiful things this morning, that I must
sit right down to tell you before I forget it. I wish Abby had been with
John and me this morning. His father took him there yesterday, and he
took me there to-day. I mean to the great flower-shop, which is enough
handsomer than Squire Merrill’s garden. I thought just as much as
could be they were all _real_ flowers, and wondered how they kept them
so fresh, without any water; and John laughed, and laughed when I said
so! John is most as good a fellow as Ben—he knows all about navigation,
his father is teaching him; I told Jackson yesterday I wish I had known
him before I finished Ben’s letter. Just tell Ben that the sun _doesn’t
stop_, when it’s just noon,—I thought it did a minute; but it begins to
go down the minute it gets in the middle of the sky, and then the Captain
knows when it’s exactly noon. Ben’s letter tells about it, if you want to
know.

Oh, about the flowers. They were _artificials_. Abby would go out of
her senses to have a bunch for her straw bonnet. If father and me stops
here on our way home, I will bring her and Hannah, and Julia Chase, _a
bushel_. They are made out of feathers, bird’s feathers, and colored
shells—the _littlest things_! you ever saw, the shells are; and a good
deal brighter and handsomer than real flowers are. I mean New Hampshire
flowers. Rio flowers are splendid—tulips and dahlias ain’t _nothing_ to
them, tell Abby. Why, geraniums grow right along the road, as high and
big as a great mustard bush—and that prickly, green-looking thing like a
snake, Julia used to have in a flower pot. The cactuses are nothing but
weeds here—not half so scarce as white clover in a hay-field.

Then they have whole farms out back of the city, where nothing but
coffee grows! I haven’t seen it growing, but John has, he rode out with
his father and some gentlemen. The slaves, (there, I meant to tell you
about the slaves,) they bring it in on their heads in great bags, and
trot along like old Prince, singing something or other, way down in
their throats, and one of them has a rattle, something like Mrs. Chase’s
baby’s. I don’t mind the slaves at all now,—it seems just as natural to
see them all along the streets, or curled up going to sleep in their big
baskets, on the door-steps. John says he’d rather be a nigger than go to
sea before the mast, tell Ben. There are great high mountains all around
Rio, not like the White Mountains look from our house, but right up sharp
and steep, as a bare rock. They don’t have wells here, with buckets and
a sweep, the acqueducts (I believe I’ve spelt it right) brings the water
along in pipes from one of the mountains, and it spouts up in fountains
all over the city. Then the slaves come and get it, and carry it home on
their heads, like the coffee.—John says that _he_ thinks they must have
_wooden heads_, or very thick skulls to stand it. I should think so too.
I told Jackson, and _he_ said they didn’t have any feeling; any way,
Jackson can’t learn ’em anyhow, he says he’d show ’em how to step ’round!

I guess, now, I must tell you about what we are going to do. Just as
soon as the vessel is ready, we are going to sea, and bear right down
for the Cape. Jackson has been round the Horn twice, and says we must
look out for squalls. We are going right down to Staten Land, that’s an
island, and perhaps through the strait, Le Maire, not Magellan. Our ship
is too large for them. Then we come up to Valparaiso, and hope to get to
San Francisco, the middle of June. I expect I shall be glad enough by
that time. Father has just come on board, and says he will write by the
“Racer” that goes out next week. He says he supposes I told all the news,
and sends his love to you and the girls. I wish—well, I do wish _that
Colcord_ was in Jericho, and I can’t help it, _there_, if it is wicked.
I’ve told John about my sisters, and Julia Chase, and he’s told me about
his. We have real good times. Give my love to Mrs. Chase and Julia, and
all inquiring friends. No more at present, from your affectionate son—

                                                           SAM’L GILMAN.”

Sam had added “Esq.” to the above flourish, but afterwards scratched it
out, as if he concluded it was not quite proper. There was a lengthy
postscript, in which several messages for Ben were included, and ending—

“I try to do as I know you want me to, mother. I have read my Bible every
Sunday, and keep my promise, so far.” Blotted and hurried as were the
lines, it was the most precious part of that long, and carefully-written
and boyishly egotistical letter; dear as it all was to his mother.

Ben came over the next day with the Sea Journal, which was as good as
hearing again from the travellers, and though Mr. Gilman’s promised
letter by the “Racer,” never arrived, his wife felt that she ought to
be only too thankful for this. The precious letter was kept between the
leaves of the family Bible, and every fold was worn long before another
came.




CHAPTER VIII.

SAN FRANCISCO.


It was the Fourth of July, the great holiday of boys, if not of the
nation, when the Swiftsure came slowly into the magnificent harbor of
San Francisco. The weather-beaten sails and canvas told of a long and
disastrous voyage. The crew were sullen and discontented, the passengers
worn down by long confinement and miserable fare. They had escaped any
furious gales after leaving Rio, but encountered head winds, and long
unhealthy calms, almost from the time of entering the Pacific. They laid
scarcely out of sight of Valparaiso twenty days together. Sam was not the
only one on ship-board, who thought then, with almost longing, of the
stiff gales and driving sleet and mist off Cape Horn. Our young sailor
had comparatively a very comfortable experience of that great bugbear to
all seamen. Sometimes the weather was fine for several days together;
and gentle-eyed cape pigeons, so tame that it seemed cruel to capture
them, came round the ship, or the passengers amused themselves in snaring
an albatross, and watching the flapping of its useless wings from the
deck.

This strange looking bird reminded Sam of the story he had read in verse,
from a book belonging to his last teacher. Ben and he had carried it
off from the desk to hide it, and have their own fun in the search, but
finding the “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner,” read it over so frequently,
that they could remember more than half, when the hue and cry after the
missing volume compelled them to restore it. Jackson and his messmates
were favored with recitations as they passed within sight of the
rugged and barren promontory, and stretching far away for a favorable
wind, entered the long, rolling swell of the Pacific. There was life
and excitement in the hardest squall they encountered there, that Sam
considered in every way more agreeable than the sameness of a calm in a
southern latitude.

Jackson was sure a sailor must have written the description Sam used to
spout from his favorite “Ancient Mariner,” and was disappointed to find
it was only a poet—“a kind of craft” he had very little respect for. And
so it was—

    “Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down,
      ’Twas sad as sad could be—
    And they did speak only to break
      The silence of the sea.

    All in a hot and copper sky,
      The bloody sun at noon,
    Right up above the mast did stand
      No bigger than the moon.

    Day after day, day after day,
      They stuck, nor sense nor motion,
    As idle as a painted ship,
      Upon a painted ocean.”

Life grew almost a blank to those on board, until the certainty of
nearing San Francisco, roused once more the feverish excitement with
which they had left home.

Sam thought the last night would never end. He walked the deck
restlessly, and tried to plan what they were going to do. Colcord he knew
had schemes of his own, that Mr. Gilman would be sure to follow. But
how were they to get to the mines to begin with? They had no money, no
friends to apply to. The day broke over the broad swell of the bay, and
lifted the heavy fog that obscured the new city of San Francisco. It was
as yet a wilderness of tents and canvas-covered sheds, stretching along
the beach without order or regularity. Here they dropped anchor at last,
and another eager crowd of adventurers landed on the shores of California.

Mr. Gilman planning the voyage in the bar-room of Mooney’s tavern, or
talking it over, by his comfortable fireside, was a very different person
from Mr. Gilman landed on the beach at San Francisco, not knowing where
to get a breakfast, or the money to pay for it. Colcord too, was more
crest-fallen than Sam ever saw him before or afterwards, and condescended
to say, “Well, Sammy my boy, what are we going to do first?”

That was the question, for they could not sit on their chests all day
and watch the vessels anchored near their own, and Mr. Gilman found, to
his dismay, that it would cost twenty dollars even to land his cherished
gold rocker. Colcord proposed that they should try to get an advance
on it, and for this the two men left Sam to look after their baggage,
a very useless precaution as he soon found. The whole shore was strewn
with piles of goods far more valuable than a sea chest, and lighters were
already coming and going from the different ships, adding to them. Sam
strolled off towards one of these, as he thought he made out the ship
from which it came. He was not mistaken; the Mermaid had arrived before
them, and if the disheartened boy had suddenly been set down at home, he
could scarcely have felt happier, than when he saw his Rio acquaintance,
John, spring on shore. It was a most fortunate meeting. John had been a
Californian three whole weeks, and gave Sam an astonishing account of
what was going on in the country. People had to pay fifty dollars a week
for board, and poor fare at that, John said; as for the gold-washer, on
which so much depended, if they got themselves to the mines they would
be fortunate, and nobody wanted to buy machinery on speculation for that
reason. John had gone to work already, and advised Sam to do the same.
He knew men were wanted to help unload the Mermaid, and other vessels
in port, and some of them had ten dollars a day; boys like themselves
were earning six and eight. John had not much time to talk. He looked
as important as any business man on the New-York Exchange, and bustled
around among the sailors and porters, assisting the clerk who had come
down to take charge of the Mermaid’s cargo. Fourth of July gave no
respite from business here, and but for the national flag flying from
every ship, and an occasional ambitious discharge of Chinese crackers, no
one seemed to notice it.

Colcord and Mr. Gilman came back, not very amiable towards each other or
any one else. Sam had been thinking over his mother’s parting counsel,
and came to the conclusion that she was right about work, as well as
other things.

“Never be afraid of hard work”—he said to himself. “If one kind of work
is not handy, do something else.”—He had come to dig gold, but as far as
that was concerned he might as well have been at home. So he thought the
next best thing would be to earn it. Sam walked up and down the beach,
with hands in both pockets, whistling Hail Columbia, in honor of the
day, with an absent air, when the two men came up; but in half an hour
from that time he was working away alongside the Mermaid, under John’s
orders. Colcord followed his example, when he found it was the only thing
to be done, but Mr. Gilman could not forget his pride, or conquer his
indolence, until driven to it by a very uncomfortable night on the beach.
Even the shelter of a canvas tent had to be paid for. He did more real
hard work, that one week in San Francisco, than he had on the farm in six
years.

Sam now began to be of some consequence in the partnership, and felt his
importance, as might be supposed. He contributed almost as much as either
of the others to the common stock, when they came to purchase their tools
and provisions for the mines.

Mr. Gilman insisted on taking the gold-washer, until the very last
moment, although after he succeeded in getting it landed, it was said to
be useless by people coming from the diggings. No one would make him the
smallest offer for it, and finding at last that it would be impossible
to get it carried across the country from the Sacramento, he left it
reluctantly on the beach at San Francisco, the twenty dollars—two days’
hard work!—paid for landing, added to the original cost.

Sam was very glad to bid good-bye to San Francisco, and find himself
actually on his way to the mines. He had seen very little of it, except
at night, when the eating houses and gambling saloons were like so many
great transparencies, as the light struck through the canvas roofs and
sides. There were no other places of amusement, no churches, no public
buildings to visit. Men worked and speculated all day, and managed to
spend at night almost as much money as they had made. They had no homes,
no family circles, scarcely a tie to life; no wonder that half of them
grew reckless. Sam was not old enough either in years or in the world
to comprehend these things, and he longed for new adventures. He gave a
last look to the old Swiftsure, rocking in the bay, without any other
feeling of regret than a fear he should never see Jackson, his sailor
friend, again. Jackson thought they might “run alongside” in China or
Calcutta yet, but Sam did not think it was very likely _his_ travels
would ever extend so far. John said he might possibly “take a run up to
the mines before the rainy season set in,”—for California boys talk very
independently, and it was John’s great ambition to be considered grown
up. He patronized Sam extensively, the last few days, and slapped him
on the shoulder with a “good-bye old boy—take care of yourself”—as the
little party embarked on the sloop in which they had engaged passage to
Sacramento.

The clothes that Mrs. Gilman so carefully prepared, were reduced to a
very small compass, when they selected what they could carry to the
mines. Where every thing had to be paid for at the rate of twenty cents
a pound, and provisions and mining tools were indispensable, ordinary
baggage was not to be thought of. Many boys of Sam’s age think it
impossible to leave home for a quarter at boarding-school, without at
least “five changes of raiment”—not to mention dressing case, desk and
carpet bag, including a silver fork and spoon. The catalogue of the young
miner’s outfit was very brief. The clothes he wore—two shirts, and a huge
jack-knife, with a common share in the pans, pick-axes and shovels, a
tin cup, frying-pan, and coffee-pot. Boarding-school fare, much as it
is berated, would be considered a feast in comparison to the crackers,
jerked and salt beef—packed with their “assorted cargo”—the stock of
provisions that was to last them to the mines.

Sam felt very dignified and Robinson Crusoe-ish, as he stuck his knife in
a new leather belt, and slung a coarse blue blanket that was to serve as
a bed,—mattress, quilts, pillows, and all,—over his shoulder. He found
the last slightly uncomfortable when the sun beat down upon the narrow
deck, and was obliged to deposit it ignobly beneath him. He was ready for
any kind of adventure in the morning, Indians, coyotes or bears, but such
an unworthy foe as a mosquito cloud damped his ardor very considerably.
He was not at all prepared for the early advances these tormenting little
insects made, nor the perseverance with which the attack was followed
up. He could readily believe the stories some of the passengers told, of
men who had gone mad from their torments, and especially of a thief, who
could not be made to confess by the lash, or any threat of death, but
came to terms very suddenly when tied to a tree, where he was exposed,
defenceless, to a swarm of mosquitoes. Some of these men had already been
to the mines, and were returning with supplies from San Francisco. Their
marvellous stories of the increasing abundance of the gold, the great
yield of the gulches on the Yuba and Feather Rivers, and the ease with
which it was attained, elated Mr. Gilman wonderfully. He was in better
humor all through the trip than he had been since leaving New-York, and
talked more to Sam of home. To have listened to him, any one would have
thought he had always been a most loving and considerate husband, and was
now exiled from all that he cared for, a martyr for their sakes; when
the truth was, he had wasted all that belonged to them, and came away
when his wife would willingly have worked twice as hard, rather than have
him and her son exposed to the hardships and temptations they were now
encountering.

The low, foliage-covered banks of the Sacramento looked pleasant, late
as it was in the season, to those who had been so long on ship-board.
Sometimes they had a distant glimpse of the mountainous country they
were approaching, through the glades and openings along the bank.
Then the river spread through the tule-marshes, all overflowed in the
rainy season, but now only beds of rank coarse rushes. The voyage to
Sacramento City, which lasted three days, was on the whole monotonous
and uncomfortable, varied only by a succession of mosquito battles, or
going on shore as the sloop warped slowly through the cut-away, a kind
of canal, made by a turn in the river, which had forced its way through,
instead of winding around a jutting point of land.

Sacramento City, like San Francisco, they found to be a collection of
temporary houses, half the population living in tents, which were pitched
under the old forest trees, so recently standing there in solitude. The
streets were more regularly laid out, and filled with a motley crowd,
the teams of emigrants and miners arriving and departing constantly.
The canvas-covered stores were as busy as if they had been the most
respectable brick warehouses, quick sales and _large_ profits being the
order of the day. The cattle market and auction sales going on in the
open air, called together the oddest looking people Sam had ever seen;
genuine miners, with their faces and hands like leather, their long
beards and careless dress being the most noticeable. It was certainly a
great contrast to the quiet routine of New England village life, more so
even than the narrow, crowded streets of Rio; and Sam sometimes thought
he must be dreaming over Gulliver’s Travels in the great barn chamber.
What had altered him most of any thing since leaving home, was having
no companion his own age. He had lived among men, and listened to their
conversation, until he had almost lost the fresh simplicity of boyhood.
When he first comprehended his father’s faults, it took away his simple
faith, and the care which his mother impressed on him, had changed the
ordinary feeling between father and son. Painfully sensitive to every
weakness in his father’s habits and disposition, he could not bear any
one else to notice them, and never thought for a moment that there was
any less claim on his obedience. Yet the first love and devotion of
his heart was his mother’s. It was the same everywhere; up aloft on
the Swiftsure, watching for a sail, toiling on the hot beach at San
Francisco, or lying in a dream of home, as the sloop glided up the
Sacramento, the thought of his mother brought a glow to his heart, and
often tears to his eyes. She should not be disappointed in him at any
rate, he said to himself, a hundred times, as he remembered the troubled,
anxious look he had seen at times steal over her cheerful face.




CHAPTER IX.

THE PLAINS.


Sam did wish Ben could have seen them, as they started across the plains
in the wake of the team on which their cooking and mining utensils were
carried. Several of the sloop’s passengers had joined the party, so
that the wagon was heavily loaded, and the oxen toiled patiently along.
Before them stretched an endless reach of level country, the road winding
through it past clumps of oaks, that dotted the plain like islands, for
miles and miles, with scarcely a shrub or rock to break the uniformity.
The only danger to be dreaded was a scarcity of food for the oxen, and
water for themselves. The springs and wayside pools had all disappeared
in the heat of the dry season, and every person carried their bottle of
water, as carefully as if it had been some costly luxury. If water had
been the only liquid that the party carried, it would perhaps have been
better for many of them, Mr. Gilman included.

The afternoon shadows were stretching from the tents pitched on the
outskirts of Sacramento, when they left it, and the first stage of their
journey lengthened to midnight. The owner of the oxen, a fortune in
themselves at this time, took good care to guide them to a spring, and
here they halted for the night. The cattle were turned loose to graze,
fires were built of dry twigs and branches, kettles boiled, and beef
hissed in the frying-pan. Sam was installed the cook for their party. His
father stretched himself on the grass as soon as possible, and Colcord
knew very little about the matter. It was no hardship to the young cook,
who watched the rest of the party, and practised on his recollections of
the galley of the Swiftsure. Never had beef or coffee tasted like that to
him, though he was no more remarkable for a bad appetite than most boys
of his age, at any time. He was so delighted with his success, that he
thought it was useless to try to go to sleep. And so it was. He found it
the very easiest thing in the world, once rolled in his blanket, watching
the moonlight flicker through the leaves on the queer figures stretched
around him.

Long before daylight the little camp was again in motion, the remnants of
the last night’s supper made them a hurried meal, the kettles were slung
to the wagon, the oxen driven in and harnessed, the water bottles filled,
and they were miles on their journey when the sun rose. This early start
was to avoid the great heat of the unsheltered road at mid-day, and
halting as before, at a clump of low scrub oaks, they lolled around in
what shade they could find, cooked their dinners, and waited until almost
nightfall to recommence their journey.

The fourth day they were not so successful in finding water. They were
later in starting, as the cattle had strayed some distance, and the
sun came out hot and red. Neither the men nor animals were fresh, the
loose gravelly ridges of the road impeded them, and their flasks were
all empty, from the lengthened merry-making of the night before. The
straggling party dragged slowly along, their steps impeded by as little
clothing as it was possible to wear. The patient oxen lolled their
parched tongues, and the jokes and snatches of negro melodies, with which
the men beguiled the time, died away in an ominous quiet. They had not
breath to waste even in complaining. It was almost noon when they came
to a shallow stagnant pool, mantling with green mould, and the driver
tried in vain to make them pass it without halting. He expected to find
a spring by digging in the dry hollows, through which the road sometimes
ran; but they would not listen to him in their frantic thirst. Some
of the party threw themselves on the ground, and drank where the oxen
themselves turned away, and then sickened of the nauseous draught. Others
tried in vain to conquer their disgust, and but moistened their parched
lips.

Poor Sam, the bravest of them all, had never imagined such suffering. His
feet seemed like bars of iron as he tried to keep in the sandy road, and
his head grew dizzy, while his mind wandered to the old well at home,
the ice-cold water brimming and dripping over the bucket, as he raised
it to his lips. Then he seemed to hear the plash of the fountains at
Rio, mocking him,—the recollection of the scanty allowance, warm and
unpalatable as it then seemed, served out to them at sea, was delicious.
He thought he must die as travellers in the great deserts had done,
and he tried to pray, but his mind wandered again to the old well, to
the mill pond, with its shadow of alder bushes, and sweet flags. Could
it be possible that he had ever wasted water so—that it had ever been
plentiful enough to bathe in, to float about, laving his limbs with its
cool ripple. Then he looked around again to try and remember where he
was, and saw the dreary plain, the short fringe of grass withered to dust
beneath his feet, and the first belt of timber where they could hope for
shade, miles beyond, the furnace glow of the plain cutting off all hope
of reaching it alive. He would have laid down there, and died, or gone
raging mad, as men have done from thirst, had not his father sunk with
fatigue and fever, resisting the entreaties of his companions. It roused
him for a moment to forgetfulness of his own agony. He urged and prayed,
and entreated his father to struggle on a little longer, with no answer
but moans of suffering. He could not leave him to die by the road-side.
But they must both perish, if he staid there longer; the train, slowly as
it moved, was far ahead of them. He lost sight of their guide descending
in a dry ravine. Why did they stop there so long? they could not all have
despaired; the last straggler hurried forward—he thought he heard a faint
shout—a cry of joy! He left his father alone on the hot sand; he ran, he
struggled on, as in some horrid dream, feeling that every step must be
the last, that he should never, never reach the train. All consciousness
of action left him,—but they saw him, they came towards him, some less
selfish, less delirious than the rest; and as he staggered and fell, a
kind hand held water to his lips, and dashed it on his face. In that
first gasp of returning strength, he only thought that his father’s life
was saved. What was gold—mines of gold—mountains of gold, to that one
precious draught, that most common of all God’s blessings, water!

No one thought of food for hours after. A sleep, almost like lethargy,
followed the intense thirst and exhaustion, and then as night came, they
woke to drink and sleep again. They scarcely noticed the long unbroken
outline of the Sierra rising before them, the first wooded slope of the
highlands being almost gained. For once they forgot even their thirst for
gold.

The next evening’s travel was delightful, after they had entered the
scattered wood at the bottom of the hills, although the path was rough
and uneven. The stir of foliage overhead was pleasant, and rocks and
falling trees, though they made the way more difficult, were something
to rest the eye after the unbroken sameness of the plains. Sam could
scarcely realize their late danger, encamped for the night near a small
but clear and sparkling lake one of the party had discovered among the
hills. The camp fires streamed up, the coffee bubbled and steamed over
the glowing coals, they ate and drank and sang, and speculated over the
sums they expected to make, with reckless unconcern, though only the day
before they would have given all but life for a cup of cold water! Most
of them had met with too many perils and hairbreadth escapes, to give
one thought to any thing that was fairly over with, however frightful
or disagreeable it might be at the time, and they were within one day’s
journey of the waters of the Yuba—and boundless wealth. At least it was
theirs in anticipation, though many of them were never to have it in
reality.

It was almost as thrilling as the first cry of “land!” when Sam reached
the summit of the mountain ridge, and looked down upon the camp of the
miners on Larkin’s Bar.

Here he was,—the same good-hearted daring boy, that a year ago had
considered a ducking in the mill-pond, or climbing Prospect Mountain, an
adventure,—in the very heart of a California range, thinking as eagerly
of gold hunting, as the party of bearded, travel-worn men around him. His
brown sunburnt face, neglected hair, and careless dress, would have drawn
a crowd in Yankee-land, but here it was the costume of the country. He
stood on the very highest spur of the hill, looking back with a wave of
the tin cup in his hand to cheer on less active climbers, and then down
into the ravine, through which the shrunken stream brawled and foamed, as
if fretted at the many intruders that were tearing up its banks.

Sam had heard them talk of bars, and knew they were going to one, but he
had always supposed it was like the bar at the entrance of a river or
harbor. To his great wonder, it was only the bed of the river, laid bare
by the water subsiding in the dry season, into a narrow, rocky channel.
As the particles of gold were washed down from the mountains, they were
deposited on these bars, beneath the loose, gravelly soil, or in the
fissures of the rocks. The miners’ camp was beneath the high bluff on
which he stood. A few small tents, a rough canvas-covered shed, dignified
into a store,—some benches and a table, at which meals were served to
those who could afford the luxury of having their cooking done for them,
and groups of cooking utensils at intervals marking the place where less
opulent individuals “did their own work,” and slept in their blankets,
was all that made Larkin’s Bar a habitable place.

It was nearly sundown when they reached it, and most of the miners had
finished a week’s hard toil, and were collecting or calculating their
gains. The only curiosity they showed in receiving the new comers, was
for news from the States, and when a mail was expected; but they were
very good-natured in giving them all the information they wanted.

Mr. Gilman was not at all pleased with his first discovery. All the
bar had been claimed, or bought of the original discoverers, and the
privilege of working it was to be paid for, accordingly. The smallest
claim, as the water lots were called, could not be had under three
hundred dollars. Mr. Gilman was for resisting any such injustice, and Sam
did not like the idea of working two or three weeks for other people,
when they might as well be helping themselves. It was found the best and
only thing they could do in the end, as all the bars in the neighborhood
were occupied, and they would lose more time in going on to the Feather
River; it might be only to find the same thing there.

There was some comfort in hearing that nearly every one who arrived hired
themselves out for a few days, to learn how to handle their tools; but
the commencement of Mr. Gilman’s schemes of independence, was to find
himself using a spade and pickaxe as a day-laborer.




CHAPTER X.

A GLIMPSE AT THE MINES.


And now the romance of “going to California” began to subside into the
dull reality of a pick and shovel. The claim would never have been
purchased but for Sam. It did not suit either Mr. Gilman’s or Colcord’s
inclinations to settle down to steady, hard work, after all the stories
of wonderful “luck” they had heard in the States and on their way to
the mines. Such things had happened more frequently before the crowd of
miners had scoured the whole country. Gold that had laid undisturbed for
ages, silently collecting in the crevices of the rock, was discovered by
some fortunate stroke, and gathered almost pure. But the first boundless
harvest was nearly over, and the gold crop, like any other, was not to be
had without labor.

Every straggling party that came to their camp was questioned by Mr.
Gilman, who took all they said for truth, and was ready to start off
“prospecting,” or searching among the neighboring ravines, and leave
the bar to those who claimed it. Colcord hesitated between the father
and son. Sam talked with the miners by whom he worked steadily all day,
many of whom had explored the whole gold region. They told him that the
gold of the Yuba was the purest, and in the end was sure to make a safe
return. Many of the camps were unhealthy from chills, and more wasting
diseases, and those who roved from place to place were sure to lose as
much time and strength on the road, or in days and days of vain search,
as they made by their most fortunate discoveries. These rough, hard men,
all seemed to like the cheerful, industrious boy, and showed him many a
kindness, that was the more pleasant because unexpected. They taught him
the easiest way to detect and separate the fine particles of gold in the
pans of earth dug up from the river’s bed, and here, as well as at home,
he saw that much was gained by doing things the right way, instead of
wasting time in experiments.

At first he was employed to carry earth from where the men were throwing
it up in piles with shovels and spades, to the cradle, or gold washer,
in which it was cleansed. This was a much more simple affair than the
complicated machine Mr. Gilman had bought under that name. It was
something the shape of the old-fashioned cherry wood cradle in which he
had been rocked to sleep, but was built of rough boards, and in length
would have accommodated a man better than a baby. One end was left open;
in the other was fixed a shallow iron pan, pierced with holes. In this
the dirt was thrown, the water poured over it, and as the cradle was
rocked the gold fell through, and being heavier than the dirt remained
in the bottom, caught between the bars of wood placed across it. As it
needed several persons to manage a cradle properly, others working on
their own account washed out the gold in an ordinary tin pan, such as
they had brought with them.

Some of the more successful miners hired the Indians, who were attracted
to their camp, to work for them at these cradles. Sam was very much
amused at their odd ways, and careless, simple habits. They had no
idea of laying up, or saving any thing for themselves. So that they had
enough to eat, and could purchase any trifle they took a fancy to among
the possessions of the miners, it was all they seemed to care for. Sam’s
first ounce was made by exchanging for it a fanciful worsted cap he had
picked up at sea, from the stores of his friend Jackson, the red tassel
having fascinated his new work-fellow. The natives seemed much more like
children than grown up men, just as he had read of them in books of
travel. He did not think they came up to his idea of the North American
Indians, found by the first settlers on the Atlantic coast. To Ben and
himself, King Philip and his followers had always seemed finely formed,
stern and resolute braves,—it would be hard to transform the thoughtless,
degraded Californian natives into warriors, even in imagination.

Mrs. Gilman might well think anxiously of her absent son, for hard work
was not by any means the worst he had to bear. He could get along well
enough in the daytime, though his back ached with stooping in the hot
sun, or his limbs were chilled by standing almost up to the waist in
water. It was pleasant in the early morning to watch the sunshine drive
away the dense masses of shadow from this mountain gorge, striking the
tents and the bed of the stream with glancing rays,—to listen to the
hum of voices, and the ringing stroke of those at work among the rocks.
When the heat became intense, and his work more severe, there was a
never-ceasing pleasure in dreams of home, and wondering about the changes
that had been, or would be. He could see the ever dear mother’s face, and
Abby’s teasing ways, and Hannah, more quiet, but not so dear to him as
“little Chunk”—his favorite nickname for his chubby playmate. And then
he was always planning their return; how he would leave father to come
on in the stage, and he would hurry on from the last stopping place. He
would be so grown, and brown, and altered, that Mooney would not know
him as he went by the tavern, nor even Ben standing at the post-office
door. But he could not wait to talk to them with the little brown house
in sight. There would be his mother sewing by the window,—but she would
look up as if she had never seen him before, and Abby would answer his
knock, while he asked the way to Squire Merrill’s. His mother would start
when she heard his voice, and come out into the entry, and then he could
not keep in any longer, but say, “don’t you know me, mother?”—in a voice
all choked, and—here the dream was broken by the signal for quitting
work, and weary enough he would go back to their camping ground to find
his father fretful and discontented, or perhaps bearing Colcord’s abuse,
which Sam dared not resent, though it made his very blood boil.

_His_ day’s work was not yet over; not until he had collected brush and
dry sticks in the ravine to cook the evening meal; mixed the cakes of
flour and water—even this was costly fare—stewed the jerked beef, or
boiled the coffee, if they were so fortunate as to have any. His own
share was eaten while trying to keep peace between the two men, who
quarrelled incessantly over their plans and gains, especially when there
was any liquor to be obtained at the shanty, which furnished them with
food at enormous prices.

They had agreed to work their claim on equal shares, Sam proving that he
could earn as much as either of them in the course of the day, by his
steady industry and greater skill. He did not think of claiming any part
for himself. He was working for his father, and his father was working
for “mother and the girls,”—it was all the same thing. But Colcord was
constantly quarrelling about this. He said the partnership was between
himself and Mr. Gilman, and they ought to share equally. Every fresh
outbreak, Sam was in hopes they would separate. He did not care how hard
they worked, so they could keep peace. He was frightened at the wicked
feeling of hate, that would come into his mind, towards this man, who had
been the cause of so much disgrace and trouble to his father; and he was
haunted by the fear that it would end in bloodshed between them. Sleeping
or awake this fear followed him. He often dreamed that he saw Colcord
standing over his father in sleep, with a face made horrible by passion,
and lifting an iron bar, or pick, to strike him dead. Rumors of murder
and robbery came from every part of the country: the curse of avarice
seemed to rest upon it.

Mr. Gilman, who might have lived in peace and plenty in his own house,
among his own fields, had come to work like a slave; to bear such fatigue
as the lowest New England farm-laborer never imagines, and the tyranny
of a man he hated and despised. Yet he was one among hundreds on the
slopes, or in the ravines of the great Sierra, who had thrown away
competency, and the love and comforts of a happy home, for a life that
the prodigal son could not have accepted in his greatest need. To many of
them repentance, when it came, was not less bitter, but the return to a
father’s house, with its plenty and its affection, impossible.

Rumors of a new discovery higher up the river, excited Colcord’s
grasping disposition, just as their claim was beginning to make a yield
that even experienced miners called remarkable. Wonderful stories of
“pockets,” holding a pound of clear gold, and lumps weighing almost
as much, were in busy circulation; and many of the oldest settlers of
Larkin’s Bar emigrated on the first report. If Colcord had not wanted to
go, Mr. Gilman would have insisted on it,—but they happened to be more
at variance than ever, about a disputed loss at cards, and Mr. Gilman
obstinately opposed the plan. Colcord was dogged,—but offered to settle
the matter by selling his share of the claim, at a most enormous sum. He
had no idea Mr. Gilman would agree to it, knowing very well that it was
almost every cent they had saved. Just at that moment Mr. Gilman would
have thrown away every thing in his old pride and obstinacy, and though
Sam saw what an unjust demand it was, he begged his father to consent
to it. And in this way, when he had almost given up all hope of better
times, or ever saving enough from the drinking and gambling Colcord
always contrived to draw Mr. Gilman into, Sam found himself his father’s
sole companion and adviser.

In all his California perils and adventures, that boy never felt a
greater relief, than when he lost sight of Colcord. He hoped it was for
the last time. He thought of the Old Man of the Sea, who had proved such
a troublesome acquaintance to Sinbad, and his father laughed as he had
not done for many a day when he heard the comparison. It was a happy
moment for Sam, when his father cheerfully shouldered his shovel and
said,

“Well, Sammy, as we’ve shaken him off, at a pretty considerable price,
we shall have to work all the harder to make up for it. I guess your
mother won’t be sorry though, if we do have to stay a year longer on the
strength of it.”

Since they came to the mines, Mr. Gilman had hardly ever spoken of home,
and Sam took what he said, as a sign of “the good time coming.”

At last it did begin to seem as if Mrs. Gilman’s trust and hope would
have its reward. Her husband was right in thinking she would be willing
to have them stay longer, when she found out Colcord had left them. She
did not hear of it until three months afterwards, for the cheerful,
affectionate letter, which Sam coaxed his father into writing, had a
long and wandering journey to San Francisco, in the team of the trader
to whose charge it was given. There was no weekly mail, as there is
now, uniting the interests and the lives of the two coasts. The short,
travel-stained letter, was received with a welcome only less glad than
would have been given to the dear exiles themselves.

A new love and interest grew up between the father and son. They toiled
cheerfully all day side by side. Mr. Gilman resumed his old good nature,
and was in better spirits than Sam had ever seen him. He was ready with
a joke and laugh, at the many amusing incidents of their wild life, and
half civilized companions. Every body threw off the artificial manners of
city life, at the mines. Never was there such an odd assembly gathered
together. The rough western farmer was in partnership with a young man
just out of college, or who had danced the polka at Saratoga or Newport
the year before. They troubled themselves very little about dress, and
any one who had never heard of the Californian gold mines, would have
thought them a race by themselves, with a national costume of well worn
trousers and red flannel shirts, who were under a vow never to shave or
submit to the modern operation of hair cutting.

In only one thing was Mr. Gilman unlike himself. “Easy come, easy go”—was
the principle on which most of the miners acted. It seemed folly to
be careful about small sums, when there was so much to be had for the
digging, and not taking care of the “ounces,” the “pounds” soon disposed
of themselves. After Colcord disappeared, the very spirit of avarice
seemed to take hold of Mr. Gilman. He scarcely allowed himself time to
sleep or eat. They had purchased a tent of some departing miner before
Colcord left them, on the anticipation of the rainy season, or they would
still have been sleeping with only their blankets for a covering after
the day’s fatigue.

Mr. Gilman’s habits of idleness and self-indulgence, had injured his
strength before leaving home. The voyage which made Sam so brown and
hardy, had a contrary effect on him. When Sam was braving the cold wind
on deck, or exercising every nerve and muscle in climbing the rigging,
Mr. Gilman slept in his bunk, or played some game of chance in the close
air of the steerage. He had never recovered from the last day’s exposure
on the plains, and it was natural that this severe and unaccustomed toil
should have its effects. Sam did not know that the very industry at
which he wondered and rejoiced, was the effect of a feverish excitement
of mind and body that could not last. It seemed only natural that his
father should exert himself to the utmost, to get home again. Mr. Gilman
appeared almost afraid Sam should know the amount they had collected. In
one month after Colcord left, they had more than made up the amount paid
to him, and Mr. Gilman was never tired of calculating it to himself. He
seemed to grudge the smallest remittance to his family, telling Sam it
was “all for them in the end, every cent,” when he began to talk about
sending home to his mother for the winter, as they had promised. It was
always to be done by the next opportunity, but opportunities passed, and
Mrs. Gilman was looking forward to a penniless winter, while her husband
was hoarding nearly two thousand dollars, on the banks of the Yuba.




CHAPTER XI.

THE FATHER AND SON.


Sam was always up at the earliest light, and busied himself about the
tent, preparing breakfast, which was generally ready before Mr. Gilman
woke. The first warning he had of his father’s illness was seeing him
toss restlessly on the earthen floor of their tent, moaning and muttering
in his sleep.

“I’d lie by to-day, if I was you, father”—he said, bringing a tin cup of
coffee, as Mr. Gilman sat up with a start, and looked wildly around him.
“I can wash that pile out alone, and to-morrow’s Sunday. One day’s rest
will set you right up again.”

“Who’s talking about resting! I don’t want rest! I ain’t sick, I _tell
you_, I ain’t sick, who said I was?”

Sam was still more alarmed at the quick, almost fierce, manner in which
his father spoke. “Nobody said so, sir,” he answered as quietly as he
could. “Only you know how tired you were last night, and you talked some
in your sleep.”

“Did I? What did I say?” Mr. Gilman began dressing with trembling hands,
the matted hair falling over his thin, sunburnt face, and his blood-shot
eyes glaring around the tent, with the wildness of fever. “What did I
say, Sam—why don’t you answer me? Did I tell you somebody had stolen
every cent? Don’t let them know it, Sam, the rest of them, will you? I
mean it shall be two thousand dollars before the week’s out. Some rascal
or other will track it yet—I know they will. There’s Tucker, don’t tell
him; he wanted to know yesterday, how things stood. His pile don’t grow
so fast just by hard work,—yes, it’s all gone, every cent—ain’t it hard,
Sam?”

“I guess you’re mistaken, father,” Sam said, soothingly. “It was all
right last night, don’t you remember? If I was you, I’d just drink some
coffee and lay down awhile—you’ll remember all about it by-and-by. It
ain’t time to go to work yet, any way.”

But Mr. Gilman would not be persuaded to lie quietly. He insisted on
following Sam to the pile of earth they had prepared for washing out,
and plunged knee-deep into the water, as if the coolness would take way
the fever heat. It was the very worst thing he could have done, for the
fever was followed by chills, and though he worked more than an hour with
unnatural strength, it left him at once, and he laid down as helpless as
a child, in the very glare of a hot sun.

He had been muttering to himself all the while, and his wild gestures
drew the notice of those working around him. Sam was bending over his
father almost as despairingly as he had done on the plains, trying to
rouse him, when he heard some one say—

“I thought the old man needed looking after the last two or three days.
Bear a hand, and we’ll carry him where he can lie more like a Christian.”

It was a young man Sam liked best of any in the camp. He was a general
favorite; for, with his careless manner, and rough ways, there was an
unselfish, generous temper, shown in numberless good turns, to those less
experienced or less fortunate than himself. Nobody knew his real name,
but they all called him “Major.” His costume was rather peculiar, even
for the mines, his red flannel drawers and shirt being girt by a crimson
military sash. For the six weeks since his arrival at Larkin’s Bar, he
had not been guilty of the extravagance of a pair of pantaloons; it was
the only economy, however, that could be set down to his credit, as the
store-keeper could testify. His eyes and teeth were almost all that could
be seen of his face, a mass of brown, waving hair falling over his broad
forehead, and his heavy beard reaching almost to his sash; but the eyes
had always a good-natured smile, and his teeth were even and brilliantly
white.

“Well, you’re not as heavy as you might be, are you, neighbor?” he said,
lifting Mr. Gilman, as if he had been a child, when he found he was
unable to assist himself. Sam followed with a brandy-flask, some one
had brought forward; brandy was both food and medicine to most of them.
He had never seen severe illness before, and was entirely ignorant of
what ought to be done. There was no physician within miles of them,
and no medicine except stimulants, if there had been. The brandy was,
perhaps, the best thing Mr. Gilman could have taken just then—so weak and
exhausted; but when the fever came back at night, more violent than ever,
Sam could only bathe his forehead and hands with cold water, while he
listened to his wild ravings.

The gold seemed to haunt Mr. Gilman the whole time. He assured Sam, over
and over again, that it was all stolen, every cent of it, in the most
pitiful tone, and then the expression of his face changed to cunning,
and he would whisper—“We’ll cheat them all, Sammy, Tucker and the rest.
I guess your mother can get along, don’t you? She knows how to manage,
and Abby’s a smart one. I guess we won’t send just now; you don’t mean
to make me, do you, Sammy? It might get lost, and none of us would be
better off, would we?”—or hours of lethargy followed, from which it was
impossible to rouse him, the convulsive motion of his hands, or his
vacant, rolling eyes, terrifying the solitary boy.

The miners came to offer any service, with their sincere, hearty
kindness, but there was nothing to be done, and their time was too
precious to be wasted. The Major came oftener than any of the rest, and
all that he advised Sam tried to do. It was a relief to be busy about
something, for though he did not think his father’s life was in danger,
it was very hard to see him suffer so. The Major talked as encouragingly
as he could, and told him not to be down-hearted; but the next week
dragged very slowly, and he could not help being discouraged, as the
fever and chills continued. Mr. Gilman’s frame wasted, and his sunken
eyes and haggard face were painful to look at, even when at rest,—and
then came that last awful change, which all but the love-blinded watcher
had foreseen from the first.

Poor, lonely boy! He could not believe it was death, though the wan,
shadowy look startled him, as he stooped down to moisten the parched lips
with water. He left the sick man alone for the first time, while he went
to call assistance, for night was coming, and he thought something might
be done or wanted before daylight.

It was too late for earthly help. The men knew it was death, they were
only too familiar with that fixed and rigid expression. They spoke in low
voices to each other, and did all that was to be done, almost as tenderly
as women, thinking, perhaps, that their turn might come soon. Sam watched
them, following every motion, but he did not hear half they said to him,
or scarcely understand what they were doing. The shock was too sudden for
boyish grief or fear.

They went away again when all was arranged for the simple burial; for
even the kind-hearted young man who had been with him most, felt it was
best to leave the boy alone. The moonlight came in through the opening of
the tent, and made every thing dimly visible, as he sat on the ground, by
that stiff, motionless form. He put his hands over his face, and tried
to think. His father was _dead_. He had heard them say so. His mother’s
husband,—Abby’s father—Hannah’s father! They could not see him again.
They were thinking about his coming home, and they would look for him,
but it was no use. He felt it would kill his mother, when she came
to know about it, and it seemed as if he could hear Abby’s passionate
crying, and sobs, when she heard the dreadful news. She had always been
her father’s favorite, without any jealousy from the others, since the
first moment that her soft baby arms were wound around his neck.

He wished that it was him, instead of his father, who had gone, since
one of them must die; it would not have made half so much difference at
home. Then he lifted up his head from between his knees, and looked at
his father’s face again,—only to sink down and rock his body slowly, as
he thought on, and on.

If his father had died at home, how different it would have been. The
whole neighborhood would have known Mr. Gilman had a fever. The doctor
and the minister, and his mother, would have been by, and he might have
known them, and talked about Heaven, and some one would have prayed.

Then Sam thought, what was _living_, after all, and what use was it to
come into the world so full of trouble? Perhaps the thought was a prayer,
for the answer came in the recollection of many things that he had read
and studied in his Bible. His mother had explained to them again and
again, how Our Father in Heaven permits us to have trials and troubles
as long as we live, so that we shall not forget there is a better and
a higher life. And there every one is told so plainly what is right
and what is wrong; those who do right being happy, even in sickness or
poverty. It was only natural in Sam to think for an instant, how much
better it would have been for them all if his father had been as good and
contented as their mother was, but that feeling was lost in the bitter
one, that it was all over now, life was ended, nothing could be changed.

“Oh, mother, mother, mother,” the boy groaned, and he longed, as if his
heart was breaking, to lay his head on her knee, and look up for comfort
to her face, as he had often done in his childish troubles. “Dear, _dear_
mother!” and the tears came at last, raining through his fingers, and
taking away that dull stupor of pain from his heart. He was exhausted
with his long and anxious watch, and a strange heaviness came over him,
which he struggled against in vain. He did not mean to sleep, but he
must have done so, for he roused himself up and looked around with a
sobbing start. He had not forgotten that his father was lying dead beside
him, that he was keeping watch for the last time—but he thought he had
heard a stealthy footstep outside the tent, and that the shadow of a man
fell across the entrance. But no one came, and there was no sound but the
fretting of the river, as the moon sank behind the hills, and left him in
darkness and solitude.

There was not time for grieving over the dead, or for more than the
simplest burial rites, in that rude mountain life.

The men came again, at earliest light, and found the boy sitting where
they had left him, his long hair falling over his face, bowed down upon
his knee. Sam understood why they had come, and rose to follow them,
though no one spoke a word to him, as they wrapped Mr. Gilman in the
blanket on which he laid, and carried him away. His was not the only
grave they had prepared at midnight, for other low mounds of earth marked
a little slope, half way up the bluff. And here they laid him, with
kindly, not loving, hands,—he was a stranger to them all, and but one
solitary mourner stood near. There was no audible prayer, though no one
can tell what thoughts or wishes passed through their minds, as the men
stood silently for a moment, with uncovered heads, when their task was
finished. It was but a moment, and then their voices, and their footsteps
sounded down the hill, as quick and as careless, as if death could not
reach them.

Sam thought they had all gone, but some one came and laid a hand on his
shoulder. It was the Major, who said cheerfully—

“Come, come, my boy, don’t give up; you’ve got a long life before you
yet.”

“A hard one,” Sam said, turning away his face even from those friendly
eyes, and leaning his head against a tree. No wonder his voice sounded
hopeless, for he was yet a boy, and thousands of miles from any one who
knew him or cared for him, in the first great trouble of his life.

“It’s hard enough, anyhow, for that matter, but there’s no use crying
over it. I suppose you think I’m a jolly dog—most people do.—Well, I
haven’t seen the day for these six years, that I couldn’t thank any body
who’d help me out of it. Let’s sit down here a minute and talk it over.
Do you suppose any body is really happy?”

“Any body!” Sam repeated wonderingly, but he sat down on the grass beside
his stranger friend, who began hacking the root of the tree with his
knife as he talked. He forgot his own troubles, wondering what such a
good-hearted, careless man could be miserable about.

But the Major did not seem disposed to talk any more about himself; only
he said—

“I never had a brother. I don’t know how I’d feel towards one; but if
there’s any thing I can do for you let me know it. I’d advise you to go
home, if you’ve got enough to take you there. California’s not the place
for boys like you.”

“I don’t know that I am different from other boys,” Sam began to say.

[Illustration: SAM AND THE MAJOR.

Page 152.]

“Oh, yes, you are,” the other interrupted. “You don’t swear, and you
don’t drink, you don’t gamble,—now I’d like to know what other boy of
your age, would stand a voyage round the Horn, and three months in
California, without being as bad as the rest of us. Boys are worse I
think.”

“Not if they had such a mother as I’ve got!” and then Sam thought that
his mother was all now,—and his heart sank down again, for there was the
new-made grave,—he was fatherless and she a widow.

“I wish I had a mother—I wish I had any body to care for me, or any
thing to live for. Go home, and take care of your mother, my boy—stay by
her as long as she lives. You!—yes, go home and comfort her. See what
gold’s done for your father—see what it’s doing for all of us, here in
the mines. We live like savages, and we die like sheep. Your father was
taken care of, and buried decently, that ought to make you thankful. I’ve
seen men lie down by the road-side, with no one to give them a drop of
water—with racking pain and thirst. And they’d die so, and nobody knew
even their names, or where they came from. You must go home.”

Sam had not thought of what he was to do; but he did not need such urging
to decide. He could go now,—he was free, his labor of love was ended! He
almost caught his breath with the recollection, that there was nothing
to keep him one day longer away from all the comforts of life, and among
bad men. He was almost happy again—even when looking back to his father’s
grave, for would he not leave death, and toil, and care behind him, and
have a home, and be a boy once more!

“Well, good-bye, if I never see you again,” the Major said, when he found
the boy was fairly roused. Sam had not noticed till then that he seemed
to be ready for a journey, and a pack, such as a New-England pedler might
carry, laid under a bush near them. His companion raised it, and secured
it, with the long red sash, over his shoulder.

“I’m off, you see, I don’t know exactly where. If I did, I’d ask you to
travel with me. You’d better start with the next team that comes in from
Sacramento, and try a steamer this time if you can. I would anyway, I’ve
had enough of the Horn.”

It was a brief, abrupt leave-taking, and Sam had not known him long,
yet he felt as if the only friend he had in the country was gone, as he
watched the tall figure disappear over the bluff above him. A little
kindness had made him feel a great interest in this strange, roving man.
But there are many such in California, who seem to have no settled plans,
and nothing to live for, but the whim of the moment. Sam was thankful
even in his loss, that he had so great a duty and pleasure before him, as
to make his mother happy, and take care of his sisters. He was their only
protector now. He was learning in boyhood what some live a lifetime to
find out,—that the greatest happiness we can ever have in this world, is
thinking more and doing more for other people than ourselves.




CHAPTER XII.

AS WE FORGIVE MEN THEIR TRESPASSES.


He came slowly down the ravine, still heavy with shadows, while the sun
was shining above him, and on the bed of the river below. The tents were
deserted and still, the men were already at work, and the hum of voices
and labor came up the stream. The sound brought back his thoughts in a
moment, to the bare reality of his position. If his father had not been
persuaded to come to California, and his mother’s anxious fears made
him a partner in the scheme, he would now have been lounging about the
old homestead, thinking himself very useful and industrious if he kept
the vegetable garden in order, and mended broken fences, glad enough to
escape from any thing that seemed like work, for a game of ball, or a
blackberry expedition.

Now he was free from all restraint as if he had been a man; the
undisputed possessor of almost two thousand dollars. He hurried towards
the tent, to look at this accumulated treasure, not with any selfish,
miserly feeling, but to find out the exact amount, and plan how he could
best reach home with it. In the short distance he had still to go, his
quick thoughts had shaped out a great deal for the future. He would go
home by the steamer, and be the first to tell his mother the sad news,
for he knew she could bear it better in the joy of his return.—There
would still be money enough left to buy back the lost land they had
parted with, and the house, and something to get started with. He could
manage a little farm, if not very well at first, after a few years, with
Squire Merrill’s advice, and his mother’s help. “Mother was as good as a
man, any day,” he said to himself.

But then how much gold there was yet in California, and every one said
they had had wonderful luck. Now he was here, wouldn’t it be best to stay
and work another season, and go home rich! How the people would look up
to him, and mother could have the whole farm. He might as well after all
that trouble!

It was a dazzling temptation, home and love, comfort and peace,—balanced
against the chances of being rich while yet a boy; and a long life of
ease and prosperity before him! His step became slower—it was very hard
to decide. How much more he could do for the girls, the tempter said,
putting on the most generous disguise; and his mother should live without
having to lift her hands to work. Once more his mother stood between him
and an evil choice. How often had she told him, that industry made people
happy, not idleness; that it kept away bad thoughts, and left no time for
them to grow into bad actions. She would never be satisfied to fold her
hands, and live a useless life. He knew that if she could read what was
going on in his mind, she would not think he ought even to hesitate. God
had so far taken care of him, and prospered him, because he was doing his
duty. That duty was over now, and another,—to return to the mother who
had so unselfishly devoted him to it, and make her happy,—came plainly
before him.

Yes, he had decided, he would go home. The empty tent seemed to send a
chill over him, as he went into it. The silence spoke louder than words,
that his father was gone for ever. The gold he had hoarded was useless
now, it could not purchase even one hour’s consciousness at the last, to
send messages of love to his family, to ask the pardon of Heaven for a
misspent life. It was a mute commentary on the fearful question—

_What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own
soul?_

_Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?_

Something like a dim understanding of this came into his son’s mind, as
he stooped down to scrape away the sand from under the edge of the tent,
where his father had concealed his gains. It was a precaution very few
of the miners took, and the strangest thing in all their peculiar life
was, perhaps, the respect they all observed towards any thing claimed
by another person. No matter how high a price was paid for the common,
indispensable tools and cooking utensils, or how much a man might be in
want of them, the owner could leave his claim for days, and come back
to find them untouched. So with the gold. It was often only rolled up
in their blankets, or left in some cup or pan, unguarded, except by
the strict law, made and enforced among themselves. Death was usually
the instant and only penalty, before the Californians could claim the
protection of State laws.

Colcord’s thoroughly mean, avaricious disposition would not trust to
this, and Mr. Gilman, growing more miserly every day after he left, went
on concealing the gold, in the same way. Sam had never even disturbed it
before, but he saw his father lift out the old broken kettle, and pass
the shining scales through his hands, only the night before he was taken
sick. It yielded readily to his grasp, for it was scarcely covered by
the light soil. Sam would have noticed that the sand was smoothed less
carefully than usual by the sick man’s tremulous hands, before this,
but Mr. Gilman always laid down by his treasure, and one corner of the
blanket had covered the place till now. No matter—all precaution was
useless—_it was empty_!

Sam could not believe the gold was all gone at first. He thought it might
have been hidden in the sand, or thrown out accidentally, and mixed with
it. He snatched up the knife again, and dug down deeper still, but a few
scattering flakes was all he found. His father’s ravings about its being
stolen flashed across his mind; but he knew that was only the wildness
of fever, for he had seen it put there himself. Suddenly he noticed that
the knife he still held was not his own, or his father’s. He had found
it lying there, and he had seen it before. He knew it in a moment, and
could have sworn to it in any court in the land. The short, slightly
curved blade, the extreme point snapped off,—the heavy bone handle,—he
had seen Colcord display and boast of that knife too often, not to know
it again. He recollected the stealthy footsteps and the man’s shadow
the night before, at the same instant. Colcord must have heard that his
father could not live, and he knew only too well where to find all they
possessed. Sam felt that he had slept nearly an hour, for he remembered
the moon was almost down when he roused himself, and in this time, not
content with living ruin, Colcord had _robbed the dead_!

Mr. Gilman’s ravings had been a prophecy. “It was all gone,” every
dollar, and with it the bright pictures of home and a comfortable
independence. Sam felt this with a dreadful heart-sinking, as he dropped
the knife and rushed out upon the beach. His first impulse was to call
out his loss, and pursue the thief. No one was near him at the moment,
and he remembered how many hours Colcord had been gone, and what would be
his fate if he was overtaken by these unscrupulous dealers of justice,
the miners.

Every thing about the theft was so aggravated, they would be sure to hang
him on the spot,—others had been for even less offences, and yet Sam knew
that there was but one crime that made this less than murder. The divine
law has ordained life to be taken only for life.

Oh, it was very hard—too hard for him to bear—whichever way he turned! He
went back to the tent and sat and brooded over every thing, feeling that
he should go crazy; and then he started up, and hurried away to the most
desolate spot he could find, lest he should be tempted to the revenge
that was boiling up in his mind. And there he laid hours and hours, away
from every human sight and sound, battling with himself, until he looked
up despairingly to the sky above him, and its peaceful serenity fell
like a thought of God and heaven upon the tumult of his mind.

Passion and revenge, hate and despair were arrested by one thought.
“Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.” A moment of some
Sunday’s lesson, or it might have been only the text to a sermon he had
not listened to at the time; no matter how he had learned it, he knew
that it was as much to be regarded as the command, “thou shalt not kill.”
It was listened to then, but many a time afterwards the struggle came up
again, and the self-conquest grew harder and harder.

It was well for him that the miners did not trouble themselves to pry
into each other’s affairs, and that Sam knew too little of any of them,
to ask or expect their advice. They thought he was a sensible little
fellow to keep on at work; and called him a “queer stick,” for not
wasting what he made as they did. He was as industrious as ever, but grew
sullen and moody. How could he help it? he was old before his time; the
very strength of will that made him without his knowing it a moral hero,
in keeping the secret of Colcord’s villany, and working on when many a
man would have given up discouraged, was a proof of it. It was all there,
a natural trait of character, but he might have grown up without its
being called out in less eventful life.

Sam toiled on at the nearly exhausted claim, for he had not the means to
secure a better one, until the men began to talk of emigrating, for the
rainy season, to the dry diggings. It was very discouraging to work so
very, very hard, and deny himself every thing, with so little success.
Many a night what he had made seemed hardly worth adding to his little
stock. The disappointed men on the bar drank and gamed to throw off their
troubles, and he was often tempted to do the same. Once he raised the
glass to his very lips,—but his promise was stronger than the wish to
drink it; and more than once, night after night that miserable winter, he
lingered in the large gaming tent, made alluring by light, and warmth,
and jovial choruses, and watched the glittering piles grow larger and
higher, to be swept off by some eager looker-on. It seemed so easy to
make up losses, by a single throw of the dice, or lucky turn of the
cards. He would not think of those who were ruined by the same throw,
then, but steal off through the dark wet night to his own tent, calling
himself a fool for hesitating at the risk, and resolved to play the
desperate stake when another evening came.

But even if he could have forgotten the warning of his father’s example,
he knew his mother never would receive the wages of sin, and it was for
her, only for her, he cared to hoard.

He often looked back to that dismal and pitied winter himself. Some of
the miners, from Larkin’s Bar, prepared to leave for the States, not
many weeks after he began the world again, contented with what they had
made. By one of them Sam wrote a short desponding letter home, trying to
soften the news of his father’s death, and their new misfortune; and then
he left that grave in the wilderness, and followed the miners to their
winter encampment.

The heavy rains made the roads almost impassable before they reached
it, and more than one died, as Mr. Gilman had done, from fatigue and
exposure. Death in many forms was no longer a strange sight.

I know it is a sad thing to read of these trials happening to one so
young, and I will not dwell on the dark picture. Those who are reading
it in their pleasant homes, where want, and care, and hardships are only
heard of, cannot even understand all the weariness and temptation of
that winter to the young exile. But they can thank our Heavenly Father
that their paths are made full of pleasantness, and be more grateful
for the comforts around them. There were many days when the steady fall
of rain,—coming not in showers but like a heavy column,—deluged and
obscured every thing, and left not even the refuge of hard work, from
home-sickness, and heart-sickness. And then prospects brightened, and
hope came back with the sunshine, as the boy worked cheerfully all day
long, untouched by the discontent and, worse than all, sickness around
him. So the winter wore away, darkness and clouds, hope and brighter days
coming and going, to many an exile beside our young miner, through the
dry diggings of California.




CHAPTER XIII.

FIRE.


“Well, what now?” one of his neighbors called out, as Sam struck his
shovel into the ground and turned over his pan face downwards, one fine
April morning. The men were in high spirits, for the rains were nearly
over, and every thing promised a successful season.

“I’m going to the States—that’s all—off in the first boat, and want to
sell out cheap.—What’ll you give for every thing as it stands, tent and
all—give us a bid.”

“Two ounces; they ain’t much use now, the dry season’s coming,” said the
man, concisely. He had been sharing the tent and accommodating himself
with its kitchen department, for a weekly sum, since his arrival at Free
Man’s Diggings, a month before, and did not mind becoming proprietor
instead of boarder. It did not need much time or many words to make a
bargain in those early days of California.

“I’ll take it,” from Sam was all that was necessary, and with this, in
addition to his careful winter’s work, he was the possessor of nine
hundred dollars. It was very little,—but it would take him home, and they
could hire the old place, which he had hoped to buy back again. This hope
had helped him through many a hard day’s work. Never mind—it was not the
first disappointment he had met with. He could help his mother along
somehow—and see her he must. The feeling was not exactly home-sickness;
it was a hearty disgust of every thing around him. The monotony of a
miner’s life seemed unbearable that morning, with the bright sunshine and
perfumed foliage reminding him of the spring at home. No such intention
as starting for it had crossed his mind when he went out as usual. The
fresh wind made him think of what the farmers were doing on the hill
sides of New England. The lowing of oxen, the tinkle of bells from the
pasture, seemed to sound in his ears. He thought of the brown earth,
turning up with its fresh smell, in long unbroken furrows,—the children
going to school along the road, with their books and dinner baskets!

He struck down his shovel, and said to himself, he would go home to
civilized life, that was the end of it. He had enough to take him there
and hands to work with afterwards.

In two hours more he was on the road to San Francisco; his gold dust,
sewn up in a little canvas bag, was not a very heavy burden. He whistled
as he went along with a lighter heart than he had had for many a day; and
found himself once more floating on the Sacramento, before he had time
to change his mind. Perhaps it was just as well,—many a man worked on
and on, to find himself without the means to come home when health and
strength gave out.

Sam did not “rub his eyes” at this first glimpse of San Francisco,—as
his favorite princes in the Arabian Nights always used to when things
astonished them; but it seemed quite as much like the change of magic, as
any thing in those enchanted pages. He had left, not a year ago, a crowd
of tents scattered along an open beach, with a few old frame houses,
looking like any thing but a city. Now a flourishing metropolis, with
streets, and stores, and hotels, invaded the hills and extended into
Happy Valley, where the smoke of manufactories was going steadily up.
Warehouses stood beside the bay, and a wharf stretched out at the very
spot where he had landed, on an empty beach, with vessels discharging
their cargoes, as he had seen on the piers and docks of New-York. When he
landed and went into the hurry of the crowd, it seemed stranger still.
The rough dress of the miners was conspicuous among them, and he saw
shops, with every article of use and luxury for sale as in the States.
Hotels had grown up around the old Plaza, now re-named as Portsmouth
Square; and merchants collected in the piazzas and talked of business,
and “the markets,” the day’s transactions being over, as they would have
done on the steps of the Astor or the Tremont House.

It was, indeed, “magic,” but the magic of industry and enterprise, such
as never has been heard of in the history of the world. San Francisco
seemed to reverse the meaning of the old proverb, “Rome was not built in
a day.”

Sam went to bed that night, one among twenty tenants of a large room in a
lodging house, near Portsmouth Square; the first time he had slept under
a roof, since leaving the coast. He was completely bewildered with all
he had seen and heard, and so tired that he fell asleep, in the midst of
the talking and confusion around him five minutes after he had placed his
travelling companion, the canvas bag, under his head for safe keeping.

He woke with a strange roar, sounding through his dreams, and half
roused, thought he was at sea, homeward bound, and the vessel was nearing
breakers. But he was in the midst of a more awful storm, than any which
ever swept over the ocean. A thick, choking cloud, a quick crackling
of fire, a heat so intense that he groped blindly along, his hands
blistering on every thing he touched, were all around him, and he had
scarcely reached the outer air, when a volume of flame and smoke, red
and dense, burst through the adjoining roof, and swept down on the pine
building from which he had escaped, with a shower of sparks and crash
of falling timber. The scene was more fearful, that no help could avail
to check the advancing flames. Men worked with desperate energy to save
their goods and papers, but were driven back, square after square,
and street after street, by the rush and roar of the fiery tide, that
ran along the dry, wooden pavements, like water forcing a channel from
the hills, and sweeping down all before it. Some shut themselves up in
buildings that were thought fire-proof, and perished with the goods they
had heaped together for safety. Men cried, and wrung their hands like
women, when they saw their property burning like tinder, before their
eyes, and the offer of boundless rewards, could bring them no help. When
noonday came, and the fury of the fiery storm went down, the very heart
of the town was desolated. Heaps of ashes, and smouldering blackened
timbers, only marked the places, where rich warehouses stood. The crowds
of men were still there, but climbing over ruins, instead of counting
up their gains, and among them, once more penniless, was the boy whose
strange history we are describing.

He discovered in the first moment of safety, that he had left his gold
in the burning house, but saw at the same instant how useless trying to
reach it would be. It seemed nothing to him then, in the thankfulness
for his own escape, and the wild excitement of the fire. It scarcely
crossed his mind, as he worked among men who were losing hundreds of
thousands, plunging in the thickest smoke, and venturing on the edge
of frightful explosions, with almost reckless courage; wild with the
excitement of the scene. But that was all over now—only the certainty of
loss remained to the merchants, whose warehouses were in ashes, and the
boy, whose few hundreds had been his all.

He slept on the ground again that night with only the sky above him, and
woke with the old heart-sickness and despondency; as far from home as
ever, though the waves of the Pacific broke on the beach before him.

So many had been thrown out of business and employment the day before,
that he felt it would be useless to seek for work where no one knew
him. He might earn enough to carry him up to the mines, perhaps, but he
could not bear the thought of going back to the men and the employment
he had quitted. It was like returning to hopeless slavery; “he would
die first”—he thought, as he made his way among the piles of goods,
and falling timber, where men were already at work, clearing away the
ruins and preparing to build again, that business might not be swept out
of their hands. Many of these men had lost every thing in the fire of
December, and now what they had made since then, but were ready to go on,
and trust once more the treacherous element. They showed a perseverance
equal to their industry, and _he_ had borne up bravely before. Business
was going on the same, when the fire had ceased, as if nothing had
interrupted it. He met people hurrying along to and from the post-office,
with letters and papers from the States. It was long since he heard a
word from home, and he had no reason to think a letter would be directed
to him there; he did not expect any thing as he followed after them, and
inquired among the rest. There was a few minutes’ delay, and he fell back
among the little crowd, as if he already had heard “nothing for you.” No
one would have known him as the light-hearted, cheerful, Yankee boy, who
had battled bravely through so much. He had grown both taller and thinner
the past winter. His clothes were blackened and scorched by the fire,
his hands blistered, and there was a deep cut or bruise on his forehead.
With bodily pain to bear, and faint from want of food, he scarcely
cared what became of him. For the first time he doubted God’s help and
goodness, and felt as if he was given up to evil fortune.

The general mail from the States had been distributed several days
before, and letters from business correspondents in the interior, were
not so eagerly looked for. The space in front of the window at which Sam
applied was nearly empty, when his name was called, and to his great
astonishment a letter was held out to him. But postage in those days
was no trifle. “Forty cents,” the clerk said, and Sam had not forty
farthings. He saw that it was, indeed, for him, and in his mother’s
handwriting.

“Forty cents,” the clerk repeated mechanically, thinking he had not
understood.

“Oh, dear, what shall I do!” burst out involuntarily,—that precious
letter lying within his reach, yet it might as well have been in the
New-York post-office, for want of a single half dollar.

“Do about what? Why don’t you take your letter and be off; and give
somebody else a chance?”

The words were rough, but the voice was cheerful and kindly. Sam turned
with a piteously anxious look; his voice trembled, and his hands shook as
he pointed to the letter.

“Oh, sir—it is from home, from my mother,” he said, “and I haven’t
a dollar, not a cent in the world. I lost every thing in the fire
yesterday.”

Even the post-office clerk in the hurry of business looked interested,
for the tears were rolling down the poor boy’s face.

“You look as if you’d nearly lost yourself in the bargain,” the gentleman
said. “Here, give the boy his letter,”—and he threw down a gold piece
carelessly. “Any thing for Frank Hadley? I don’t expect to empty a
steamer’s mail.”

The manner and the voice sounded very familiar to Sam; he noticed it even
in his thankful joy at having the letter in his possession. He had never
heard the name before—no, he had known Frank Hadley,—but only as “the
Major.” His outward man had altered almost as much as his name, since
they parted that morning at the mines. His hair and beard were shorn of
their immoderate length, though still several inches longer than he would
have worn them in Broadway. Pantaloons made a difference too.—Sam thought
them a decided improvement on the red flannel drawers, and his teeth were
whiter than ever.

“Oh, sir, I can’t thank you,” he began to say, grasping the letter as if
he was afraid some one would claim it back.

“Well, then, I wouldn’t try—I’d read the news. Hurry up there, if there’s
any thing for me—this sun’s as hot as a furnace.”

“But I thank you so much, and I’m so glad to see you again”—Sam went on
eagerly.

“Wasn’t aware you ever had that pleasure before”—returned Hadley, facing
around suddenly. “Well, if it isn’t _you_, what business have you here
I’d like to know, cutting such a figure as that! I thought you were in
the States, long ago. Did not I send you home?”

“I couldn’t go—truly I couldn’t, he stole all I had—Colcord, the man that
used to be with us.”

“And you have been lying round ever since. Why did not you jump up and
try it again, as the fellows down there are doing?”

“But I did, and that’s all gone too, in the fire. I only got here
yesterday, and the house I slept in was burnt down, and now I don’t know
what to do.”

“A mighty hard case,” said the clerk, appearing again. “One letter,
sir—here’s your change;” for Hadley was walking Sam off as fast as
possible, in utter forgetfulness of the five dollar piece he had thrown
down.

“I’ll tell you what to do; read your mother’s letter right off, and see
what she says. No—come along and get some breakfast”—he said, thrusting
the change uncounted into his pocket. You look as thin as a weasel. Well,
Colcord’s got his deserts, that’s one consolation. I always thought he
had a hang dog look.

“Robbed and murdered, coming from the mines,” he answered to Sam’s
questioning eyes, as the boy tried to keep pace with his quick strides
down the hill. “I should have thought you’d have heard of it—’twas in
all the papers; there, read your letter—and break your neck stumbling,
if you want to, I’ll pick you up”—and the good-natured fellow broke the
seal of his own by way of example. Sam tried to read, but the words
were blurred and confused, and he comprehended little more than that
all were well, until he was seated in the comparative quiet of a little
restaurant, and Hadley was calling for coffee and mutton chops.




CHAPTER XIV.

NEW PROSPECTS.


“My dear, _dear_ child” (Sam could almost hear his mother say these
precious words), “I am writing to you to-night, though our Heavenly
Father only can tell whether you will ever know from this how my heart
aches for you. I have just got your letter with its dreadful news, but
I feel more for the poor girls and for you than I do for myself. I am
used to trouble. I don’t mean to murmur, but it seems to me as if I’d had
hardly any thing else since my father and mother died. God forgive me!
when my children have been such a comfort to me, you especially, Sam.

“I know it’s all right; but if I could only have been with your poor
father and taken care of him, if he was only buried here among his own
people, where I could go and see his grave sometimes, it seems as if I
could submit. But I know you did every thing, Sam. I knew you would when
I let you go. God will reward you for being a good, dutiful boy. I know
it; I feel it; and that’s all that keeps me up when I think about your
being alone, so far off, without a friend to look to. O if you could only
get home to us! I only ask to see you again, and I could die in peace.

“Poor Abby has cried herself to sleep these two nights, and hasn’t eaten
a meal. You know she was always _his_ favorite—and Hannah doesn’t seem
well this cold weather; she never was very strong. All the neighbors are
very kind, especially Squire Merrill and Mrs. Chase—she sends Ben over
almost every day, to see if he can do any thing, and I don’t know how
we should get along sometimes, if they did not send in something every
little while. Squire Merrill was in here this afternoon, and says I had
better send this to San Francisco, for you might get enough to come home
with, and think to ask at the post-office there before you do. He thinks
you will come right home as soon as you can. It seems to me as if it
would be best, but I don’t know. My only comfort is, _God knows what is
best for all of us; if we didn’t need trouble he wouldn’t send it_; I say
that to myself over and over again, and I pray for you, morning, noon,
and night. HE has been my guide from my youth up, only make Him yours, my
son, and He will take care of you. Whether I ever see you again in this
world or not, I hope to see you in another, for absence or death can make
no difference in my love for you.

“It has been very hard to say ‘forgive us our trespasses,’ when I think
of Colcord, but I try to, and I’m glad you did not tell. Sam, there isn’t
one boy in a hundred would have done what you’ve done. No, nor in a
thousand neither!”

Sam’s hot tears fell faster and faster on these words. He felt rewarded
for all he had suffered, and all that was before him. He was not ashamed
to lay his head down on the table and “cry it out.”

“Well, now, if you’re through, suppose we have some breakfast,” Hadley
said, as he came back with the waiter, bearing a tray covered with good
things. “_I_ haven’t had any letters from home, and I’m hungry. Yes—two
oyster stews, boy—any thing that’s good—hurry up there.”

It was such a meal as Sam had not seen for many a day, and served on a
table with some pretensions to comfort and elegance. At first he tried
to eat to please his generous friend, and because he felt that he needed
food; but by the time the savory oyster stew arrived, he was doing almost
as well as his companion, in the way of clearing the other dishes.

“I was just thinking it’s a great pity you’re not a girl,” Hadley
leisurely remarked, in the interval of breaking a cracker into his plate,
and giving a little stir with his spoon.

Sam looked up, wondering why his sex was a matter of regret; it never had
been to him. Who ever did see a boy that was not proud of being one, and
had not in the bottom of his heart a great feeling of superiority towards
all “girls?”

“Why, you see, I’m looking up a cook, that’s my errand down here. You did
not know I had turned ranchero, country gentleman, with a villa under
the elegant title of Hadley’s Ranch.—Well, I have, and find it rather too
much to see to ploughing and sowing, making fences, taking care of the
chickens, stable boy and cook into the bargain. Women folks are scarce up
in our valley, and unless I sacrifice myself and marry one of those Pike
County whole-team individuals, I don’t see what’s going to become of me.”

“I did not know you were a farmer, sir,” Sam said, while his mother’s
counsel of working at whatever offered itself, came into his mind.

“Nor I either—till I tried it, just by way of a change when I came down
from the mines. What do you suppose my sisters would say to such a fist
as that? I used to wear Stewart’s ladies’ gloves to their parties before
I came away, and think it was hard work to wait on them to the opera. I
don’t suppose they would own any part of me but my moustache now.”

Hadley’s dress was certainly suggestive of any thing sooner than a
New-York dandy, and so were his face and figure, hardy and sunburnt; but
his manners had the courtesy and self-possession of a gentleman, as well
as the free and easy style of the new country. It was quite true before
he came to California he had managed to spend a large property, left
to him by his father, and his sisters were among the most fashionable
women in New-York. His riches had taken the wings of extravagance and
self-indulgence, to flee away; but as he often said, it was the best
thing they ever did for him.

“I should think sisters would be glad to own a person any way,” Sam said,
thinking _his_ sisters would, if he came home a beggar.

“Very likely, if they’d lived together when they were children, and had
a mother to look after them. My sisters always lived at boarding-school,
and so did I until I was old enough to take the reins into my own hands.
I drove a little too fast, and got upset, you see. Won’t you have
something else?”

But Sam’s very good appetite was quite satisfied, and that brought him
back to business matters. “I don’t believe but I could cook, sir.”

“You! what do you know about it?”

“A great deal; more than most boys I mean. My mother is a first rate
cook, and I used to like to be around baking days, and in the galley, on
the ship. You know I always cooked on the bar.”

“So you did—did not I teach you how to make slap-jacks one day? I
consider _that_ an accomplishment worth having;” and Hadley shut one eye
and looked up in the air, as if to catch a smoking, brown, batter-cake,
after a scientific toss.

“Well, suppose you try it, till something else turns up.”

Sam was only too glad to accept the proposal. The prospect of immediate
employment, at any thing but mining, and with a person he liked very
much, seemed almost too good news to be true. He had very little idea of
a ranch, except that it was something like a farm, and he should live a
kind of free and easy life. A very pleasant prospect, since he could not
get home, after the great fatigue and monotony of a miner’s life.

“I don’t promise very high wages”—was about all the agreement they made,
and they were on the sloop that was to take them across San Pablo Bay,
before Hadley mentioned the matter at all. They were very glad to get
away from the discomforts of San Francisco, as soon as the business
which had brought him down, was finished. The air was full of ashes and
cinders, and every second person they met was a sufferer in some way
by the fire. The little sloop had a load of lumber for Hadley’s ranch
on board, and an assorted cargo of flour, rice, molasses, sugar, and
groceries of all kinds for the same place. These were to be given to
Sam’s charge forthwith.

The sail was perfectly delightful. The air was so fresh and exhilarating,
as the little vessel bounded across the broad bay, the spray and mist
dashing up before her, and the white sails filled with a favorable wind.
The hills, usually so bare and desolate, were covered with a vivid mantle
of green to the very summits, by the heavy rains, and the few days of
warm sunshine. Hadley seemed to enjoy Sam’s delight, but told him to keep
his ecstasies for the ranch, for there was no place in California, nor
the whole world to compare with it! A very small world, probably, Sam
thought.

But he did not wonder much, when he came in sight of it; in his world, he
certainly had never seen any thing that could compare with that first
glimpse of Sonoma valley. It was as different from any thing he had seen
in California, as if he had been in another country. The desolate plains
of Sacramento, the barren ranges of the hills in the mining country, make
the rich valleys all the more beautiful by contrast.

It was an hour before sundown, when the sloop came to, at the
Embarcadero, or landing, on a little creek, emptying into the bay,
after winding through the fertile valley lands. A _real_ wagon, and two
spirited horses were waiting them, in charge of Maloney, the head man,
whose universal knowledge, and blunders and brogue, Hadley had been
amusing Sam with that afternoon. His employer took “the reins into his
own hands,” as he had said, and now he could not drive too fast for Sam’s
good pleasure, or his own impatience. The ranch was a perfect passion
with him. Sam believed he was right when he said he should not care any
more for a wife if he had one. The horses, Bill and Dick, knew very
well who was driving them, and flew along a road as level as an English
turn-pike; bordered by fields instead of fences, prairie-like meadows
of wild oats, and countless flowers, so thick, and with such brilliant
colors that the whole valley seemed like a bright carpet unrolled before
them. Clumps of oaks, and red-wood trees stood like islands in this sea
of verdure, with a bright emerald foliage of early spring, and waved and
rustled their branches from the hills on each side. There was not a bare
or barren spot for miles, and fording the creek now grown narrower, but
not less clear and musical, they came suddenly on the new house, standing
in the very midst of this luxuriance.

There were fences and out-houses, oxen lowing, and hens cackling, the
deep growl of the watch-dog, and the snapping of two most ill-natured
looking terriers, to make up the picture. The house itself was really a
house, and not a log cabin, or shanty, as Sam had supposed. The frame
had been shipped from the States, and sent up by Hadley, to replace the
shanty of the first settler, when he came into possession of the ranch.
It was two stories high, with real windows and doors, and painted white.
Sam had not expected to find any thing so comfortable on the premises;
and was astonished, much to Hadley’s gratification, when he caught the
first glimpse of it through the trees.

Its furniture was not very elegant or abundant, and the largest room
was filled with a varied collection of farming and carpenters’ tools,
boards, seeds, chests and boxes of all kinds,—a general lumber room. In
the absence of a barn, which was to be built as soon as the ranchero
could afford it, or time would permit, the fowls had been let out of
the very large chicken house, and the long legs of a Shanghai were
walking comfortably over the kitchen table, while three more surveyed
the new arrivals curiously from the door-step. There was a bedroom on
the ground-floor, with a four-post bedstead, minus mattress, sheets or
pillows,—sacking, and a pair of blue blankets supplied their places.
Overhead were two unfurnished rooms, occupied by Maloney, and his brother
work-fellows, in harvest time; their blankets doing duty on the floor.

The housekeeping, to which Sam was speedily introduced, was quite
as miscellaneous.—Some obliging neighbor had sent over a gallon of
buttermilk, and the bread was as light and well baked as Mrs. Gilman’s.
The fried, fresh beef, and boiled beans, were eaten with _silver forks_,
a trace of Hadley’s early propensities, and the only set that had so far
entered the valley; and he washed the dishes himself, by the light of
spermaceti candles inserted into empty claret bottles. Perhaps Abby would
not have been satisfied with the general use the towels were put to, and
might have thought they would have lasted longer if they had been hemmed.
But Abby was not there, and her brother saw nothing to grumble at.

Matters looked a little straighter about the house, however, after his
ministrations commenced. He shared in his mother’s love of order and
neatness, and many of her practical lessons to Abby and Hannah came back
to him. He found that when the chairs were set up, and the chickens
dislodged, the stove cleaned, and the floor swept, “the decks were
considerably clearer to work in.” Instead of thinking his employment
degrading or unbecoming, he took the greatest pride and pleasure in it,
since it _was_ his work, and kept in mind one of Mrs. Gilman’s favorite
maxims, “Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well.”

He obeyed a still higher precept, “_Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do
with all thy might_;” and thus it was, that “faithful in a few things,”
he fitted himself to “be ruler over many” when the time should come.

Life on the ranch was never dull or monotonous. Housekeeping was a very
small part of what he did. There were the fowls to feed and water,
the eggs to look after, and the young brood to watch. Hadley’s fowls
received as much attention as any part of the family. They were a China
breed, rare and costly, and he was as fond of them as of the ranch, or
the house, or Sam; for when Sam came to be known in the valley, he was
as great a favorite as he had been on ship-board. People came miles to
see the fowls. Hadley knew them all apart, and had named most of them,
curious entries being made in the farm journal, kept daily, of the eggs
and families of “Pert,” “Topknot,” “Old Maid,” “Sauce Box,” “Dinah,”
and many other occupants of the chicken house. There was an excuse for
a vegetable garden laid out when Sam came, but no one had found time to
attend to it. By June it was as flourishing as garden could be, with
rows of lettuce and early peas, and such beets and melons, in prospect,
as would have astonished the farmers at Merrill’s Corner. Hay-making,
from the tall, wild oats, was the farm work for the first few weeks, and
Sam was as much help as any of the extra hands. Hadley mowed with the
men all day, drinking molasses and water from the same big pitcher, and
beating them by half an acre, when he became a little accustomed to the
swing of the scythe. He was very much respected all through the valley,
his pride taking the form of a sturdy independence, and his liberal,
generous disposition finding its proper place in the hospitalities of a
new country.

When the day’s work was done, Sam was his chosen companion, while he
smoked his cigar—another trace of old habits—on a tour of inspection to
the stable, the garden, or the chicken-house, or galloped over to Sonoma
for letters, or small stores. He had never passed a week in the country
before he came to California, except at a watering-place, and listened to
Sam’s practical suggestions with a great deal of respect.

“I’ll tell you what, Sam,” he would say, knocking the ashes from his
cigar on the top rail of the fence—“there’s no other life like it. I’ve
seen a good deal of the world, and spent a good deal of money. There
was my father slaved himself to death, to leave his children rich. What
comfort did he take with all his money, pinned down to a desk all day?
Well, I spent as fast as he made, when I came along. I went to Europe
before I was twenty-one, and I bought every thing I took a fancy to, and
saw every thing that was to be seen. When all that was gone, I came with
the rest of the world to California for more, and got to the mines just
in the thick of the gold crop. Handling the gold is all well enough, but
what’s the use of it up there? It don’t bring a home, nor a house to put
your head in,—you spend about as much as you can make, and have nothing
to show for it.”

Sam always agreed with him, and thought if he was only earning a little
more, for his mother and sisters, or could be near them, he would not
change his life on the ranch for any thing he could think of. He worked
as many hours as when he was at the mines, but he lived for something
else besides eating and sleeping. His boyhood came back, surrounded by
this beautiful country, and enjoying its freedom. He had explored it for
miles in every direction, mounted on one of Hadley’s excellent horses,
which he was as free to use as if they had been his own. Jerry and
Buck, the oxen, had a fancy for being neighborly, when their day’s work
was ended, and straying off to try the oats on the adjoining farms, or
see how the barley crops came on. Hunting after them was one of Sam’s
favorite sports; though they often led him a weary chase, and were
captured one at a time.

Then there was Sunday, that blessed day of rest both to man and beast,
when the house had a more orderly air than usual, and Sam always “went to
meeting”—as he called putting on clean clothes and reading his mother’s
Bible.

The ranch abounded in books and newspapers, in which its owner never
stinted himself, being supplied regularly by arrivals from the States;
and through these, Sam was getting a good, practical education, mind and
body both developing, through natural, healthy exercise.




CHAPTER XV.

THANKSGIVING DAY.


“Good-by, mother—it’s too bad you ain’t going. I hate to leave you all
alone.”

“Hadn’t you better come, _Miss_ Gilman? the sleigh can hold just as many
as we can pile in, and my wife don’t stint her oven Thanksgiving Day,”
urged the Deacon, standing up in the huge box-sleigh, and tucking the
buffalo robe around Mrs. Chase, who was on the front seat with him.

“Now, I know you haven’t got nothing to keep you,” said the good woman,
seconding her husband’s invitation.

“Do, mother!”—called out Abby again, from between Ben and Julia Chase,
and Hannah’s eyes looked “do mother,” though Ben had almost smothered her
in the blue and white coverlet, which came to their share.

“Two turkies,” said Ben, “real fine, fat fellows.”

“And whole oceans of mince and punkin pies, I helped to make ’em, didn’t
I, mother?” added Julia, proud of her first great attempt in the kitchen
department; “besides, the _biggest_ plum pudding!”

Mrs. Gilman only shook her head, and pulled her black hood close over her
face, as she went down the hill from the meeting-house. She was afraid to
speak, for fear her voice would tremble with the tears she could hardly
keep down. It had been a hard day to her, one of the hardest in her life,
for she knew she ought to join in the thanksgiving; and, look whichever
way she could, only her troubles came up to her.

The very name of the anniversary, so full of associations to her,—the
hymns of the morning service, the minister’s text—_O give thanks unto the
Lord, for He is good, and His mercy endureth for ever_! had made her sad
instead of rejoicing. When she came out with the congregation, families
that she had known all her lifetime, all looking so happy, a feeling
nearer to envy of their prosperity, and rebellion against her Heavenly
Father’s choice for her, than she had ever felt through all her troubles,
rose up, choking her voice, as she tried to return their friendly
salutations cheerfully. She was glad the children were going home with
the Deacon, they would not miss their thanksgiving dinner; but she felt
it would be impossible to accept the invitation for herself.

She did not look up as the sleighs passed her on the road, though she had
to stand aside for them more than once, warned by their merry bells. She
was chilled by the damp new-fallen snow, and felt utterly desolate, when
she unfastened the door of the little brown house. Squire Merrill’s team,
with its party of young and old, was just going by the gate.

“There’s a mail in from California, I hear”—he called out; checking his
horses for a moment. “I’ll go round to the post-office to-night. Fine
day, Mrs. Gilman,” and then she was alone in the empty room. The promise
did not raise her spirits; so many mails had arrived with nothing for
her, that she had almost given up looking for them. The neighbors had not
forgotten her in their own abundance, but she did not feel like eating.
She had never taken a thanksgiving dinner alone, in her life, and she
could not so much as taste food.

Sometimes the room, bare as it was, looked neat and comfortable to her,
but not now. Every thing had the stiff, cleared-up air of a holiday,
without its cheerfulness. The stove was a poor substitute for the wide,
blazing fireplace, to which she had been always accustomed; and she
thought of the homestead, and those who had gathered there in days gone
by. If she could have taken her work, it would have been a great relief,
but it would not have seemed right to sew on thanksgiving day, any more
than if it had been Sunday; so she drew her chair up to the black,
uninviting stove, and leaning her chin on her hand, went on with the
bitter thoughts, a weary, heart-stricken woman.

The thought of her childhood,—the abundance and merriment of those
thanksgiving days, when the whole house was filled with plenty, and
she dreamed for weeks of the dainties and merry making to come. When
she first had children of her own, she lived it all over again in
their pleasure. She thought of her husband as he was then,—a liberal,
kind-hearted man, loved and respected by others as well as herself. And
her boy—her first-born—where was he? She had not had, since the news
of his father’s death came, but one short letter, when he wrote in the
anticipation of a home he might never have found. His fate might be worse
than death, a wanderer in a strange land, and the pressing care of actual
poverty had come upon her with all the rest.

She listened and watched through the afternoon, with a kind of sickening
eagerness, for Squire Merrill’s return. But it was as she had feared—no
letter; and he did not even try to comfort her. He saw by the look which
came over her face, that it would be useless.

“Never mind”—she said to herself with a kind of despairing calmness, “she
ought not to expect any thing but disappointment in this world.”

But she knew she was doing wrong in giving up to such a temptation, and
indulging murmuring thoughts. “God forgive me! He knows what is best”—she
said half aloud, and got up with a great effort, and put down the paper
window-curtains, before she lighted a candle, to try and drive them away
with the darkness. Her hymn book, with its well-worn leathern binding,
laid on the mantel. It had been her mother’s before it was her own, and
she had learned her letters from the large capitals at the commencement
of the lines. She turned to the psalms first, and looked for those that
suited her present mood. She had often found comfort in their deep faith,
and humble, repentant spirit. There was one she had read many times of
late—

    How long wilt thou forget me, Lord?
      Must I for ever mourn?
    How long wilt thou withdraw from me,
      O, never to return!

    Oh, hear, and to my longing eyes
      Restore thy wonted light;
    Dawn on my spirit, lest I sleep
      In death’s most gloomy night.

    Since I have always placed my trust
      Beneath thy mercy’s wing,
    _Thy saving health will come_; and then
      My heart with joy shall spring.

She had always tried to do right. He had promised never to forsake those
who trusted His love and kindness!

She noticed something written with a pencil on the margin of a hymn, as
she turned over the leaves in search of other favorites. It was the text
of the sermon, the Sunday before her husband went away;—

_Lay not up for yourself treasures upon earth, where moth and rust do
corrupt, and thieves break through and steal._

Oh, if he had only heeded the warning, and made a wise use of what had
been given to him! and there was the hymn they had all sung, that last
Sunday evening. It came as an answer to her silent prayer, and hushed the
last struggling doubt of her heavenly Father’s goodness.

    “Ye fearful souls fresh courage take,
      The clouds you so much dread
    Are full of mercy, and shall break
      In blessings on your head.”

She sang to herself, as she rose with a quicker step and lighter heart
than she had had before that day.

There was a knock at the front door, and she opened it, wondering a
little who of her neighbors had left their families, Thanksgiving
evening, to pay her a visit.

But she had never seen the face before, and the stranger did not know
her either, for he asked “if Mrs. Gilman lived here?” He took off his
fur travelling cap when he came into the room, and his dark, handsome
face,—strange enough it looked to her, with its heavy beard and
moustache, lighted up with a pleasant smile, as he said—

“I bring my introduction, and I hope my welcome, too, in a letter from
your son, madam.”

“Oh, sir, from Sam—from California? Have you seen him? Is he well? _I am
so thankful._”

Mrs. Gilman had found her Thanksgiving Day at last.

The gentleman made himself very much at home, as she eagerly opened the
letter, and would not answer a question till she had read it. Then he was
ready to tell her all she wished to hear, and such good news, that she
scarcely knew how to bear it.

Mrs. Gilman knew from the letter that Mr. Hadley brought it. He had left
Sam in charge of the ranch, he said, and came to the States, partly
“to see if they were still standing,” and partly to take her back with
him. He and Sam had talked it over until they thought it was the best
thing to be done. He wanted a housekeeper, that would not go off and get
married the day she landed, and Sam wanted his mother and the girls. He
wanted a dairy, and Mrs. Gilman was the very one to manage it,—butter was
selling at a dollar a pound, and they would go partnership in it if she
was willing. Sam was too valuable a hand on the farm to waste his time in
housekeeping, and had been willing to enter into bonds for Abby’s good
care of the chicken-house. “It would be a shame,” he said, “to take Sam
out of the country; he would do better there than he could ever do in the
States, and she would see him in Congress yet, if he made as popular a
man as he was boy; but if Mrs. Gilman wouldn’t come out, Sam would come
home, and that would be the last of him.”

There was no end to the praises that he lavished on the young ranchero,
for so he began to call himself; on his honesty and industry, his
perseverance and his good sense. His pies and his ploughing, Hadley
declared, could not be beaten in the valley, and he didn’t believe his
sisters could hem a towel or make a flannel shirt better.

Mrs. Gilman actually laughed at this singular list of accomplishments,
and began to feel as if she had known Sam’s friend a long time. They got
on very fast indeed. Hadley thought to himself he could see Sam’s smile
in his mother’s eyes, and they had just that clear, honest look. He was
not in the least disappointed—and felt sure he should carry her back with
him, impossible as she seemed to think it at first. Mrs. Gilman did not
wonder that Sam’s letter praised him so, and hardly knew how to show him
how sincerely thankful and grateful she was.

Abby and Hannah came home in fine spirits. “Ben had driven them in the
cutter, and had tipped them out in a snow-drift on Shingle Camp, and they
had such fun! and such a splendid dinner, and Mrs. Chase had sent—”

But here the young ladies became suddenly aware of the presence of a
stranger, and became as quiet, and shy, and _awkward_ in a moment, as
they had been gleeful and graceful before.

Mr. Hadley did not intend this should last; he liked their faces much
better lighted up by fun and frolic, than when they settled themselves on
the edges of two chairs, stiff, little country girls.

“Well, what _did_ Mrs. Chase send, Abby?—this must be Abby,” he said,
pulling the bashful child towards him—“something good, I hope, for your
mother has not given me any supper yet. Let’s see”—and off came the clean
towels in quick order, as he set the dishes out of the big basket on the
table. “Cold ham—very good—apple pie, mince pie, better and better—goose
pie—”

“No, chicken,” corrected Abby, forgetting her awe of the height, and
moustache of the stranger, in his funny ways. It was a mistake “made on
purpose,” and they were good friends from that moment, though it took
Hannah much longer to get over her shyness.

“Well, now, let us have a plate, and a knife and fork,” Mr. Hadley went
on, “two of them, Hannah; I shouldn’t wonder if your mother would have
some goose pie too;” and late as it was, a capital supper was soon set
forth, in which Mrs. Gilman did join him. Hannah told Abby that she did
not believe her mother had tasted a mouthful before, all day, and she was
quite right.

“Good-night,” Mr. Hadley said, taking up his overcoat, when they had all
talked, and laughed, and wondered, until the old clock struck ten. “Our
friend, Mr. Mooney, has promised me a bed, but I shall come and help you
to finish that pie in the morning. Oh, Sam said you’d be wanting some new
travelling frocks, or something, and here’s a couple of slugs or so, to
get them with. Do all your shopping before you start; our Sonoma stores
haven’t the best assortment of calicoes.”

Abby picked up the “slugs,” as Mr. Hadley called them, six there were
instead of a couple; three hundred dollars, they found next day.

She never had seen any California gold before, and thought they looked
very like ugly, heavy brass medals. “Small cakes of maple sugar,”
Hannah suggested, trying to describe them to Julia Chase. They did not
“glitter,” it is true, but were excellent gold, for Squire Merrill
readily gave Mrs. Gilman three hundred dollars in new ten-dollar bank
bills in exchange.

Mr. Hadley came early the next morning, in Mr. Mooney’s best sleigh, full
of buffalo robes, to give them a sleigh-ride. He wanted to go over to
the Deacon’s, he said, and see Ben, and Julia, and Mrs. Chase. He knew
them all very well by Sam’s account, and had something in charge Sam had
sent. Abby had half a mind to be jealous at first, when a heavy ring of
Yuba-river gold came out for Julia, whose eyes sparkled not so much at
the gift as the remembrance of the giver. Ben had given up all idea of
going to sea, and “settled down into a real stiddy hand,”—his father
said, bidding fair to occupy the Deacon’s seat one day. The Deacon took
a great fancy to Mr. Hadley, and they had a long talk about crops, and
California farming, with a great many “deu tell’s,” and “jus’ so’s,” on
the Deacon’s part. He “tackled up,” and went over to Mrs. Gilman’s that
afternoon, to tell her, that he and his wife thought the best thing she
could do, was to “take up with the offer of this ere Californy chap, who
seemed to be doing first rate by Sam, and was real likely, if he’d only
shave that hair off his face.”

[Illustration: ARRIVAL OF THE MAJOR.

Page 209.]

Squire Merrill’s opinion, a little more elegantly expressed, agreed
with the Deacon’s, when he had seen and talked with Mr. Hadley. His
visit to the Gilmans, and their affairs, made a great noise in Merrill’s
Corner, which Abby was not slow to take airs upon. He was the first
real Californian that had ever been in the village, and the President,
himself, would hardly have had a greater crowd than gathered around
Mooney’s tavern to see him off. He was to come back again in a month for
Mrs. Gilman, whose preparations and leave-takings would not take more
than that time.

No brother could have been kinder to Abby and Hannah, when Mr. Hadley
really took charge of them at the commencement of their long journey.
He showed them all that he could think of that would interest them in
New-York, until their heads were in a whirl of panoramas, and museums,
and picture galleries, with dissolving views of the Battery and High
Bridge, and strong recollections of bookstores and confectioners. For
once in her life Hannah had enough of candies and new books. Mrs. Gilman
was afraid they would be completely spoiled, and talked to Mr. Hadley
very seriously about indulging them so.

He seemed to have adopted the whole family, for he said “mother” half
the time. So much, that several people on the steamer talked to Abby
about “her brother,” much to her delight and amusement. He was attentive
as a son to all Mrs. Gilman’s wants and wishes through the discomforts
of sea-sickness, and crossing the Isthmus. The girls enjoyed the Isthmus
mule-ride more than any part of the journey. Abby laughed at Hannah’s
mishaps, and slipped off the mule herself the next rough place they came
to. Mr. Hadley laughed at both of them, and said he should have to give
them lessons in horsemanship as soon as they got to the ranch.

They arrived safely in San Francisco, the steamer before Sam expected
them, and Mr. Hadley would not send him word, as he counted on a grand
surprise.

The team was waiting the arrival of the little steamboat, which now
touched twice a week to the Embarcadero, Mr. Maloney having come down for
a load of supplies, which Sam had been commissioned to get in advance,
for his mother’s arrival. He was “tuck off his feet entirely,” when he
saw his employer step on shore, and land Mrs. Gilman and the girls,
instead of the expected furniture.

It was a little earlier in the season than when Sam had arrived the
year before, but every thing in the valley was looking as lovely as a
bright day could make it. Mrs. Gilman, full of one thought—the meeting so
near at hand,—scarcely saw the country; but the girls begged to have the
wagon stopped every acre of red, and blue, and yellow flowers they came
to. They could hardly believe Mr. Hadley’s assurance, that the ranch was
covered with them, and they could gather a bouquet as large as a bushel
basket in ten minutes, if they chose to. The Queen of Sheba could not
have been more astonished with the magnificence of the Court of Solomon,
than these New Hampshire girls with the beauty and abundance of the
floral treasures of Sonoma Valley.

Sam was discovered in the pastoral occupation of watering his flocks and
herds; that is to say, Buck and Jerry, who had come to show a less truant
disposition,—and a shaggy-looking colt, he considered the handsomest
steed in the valley. It was in his eyes, for “Shanks” was his own
personal property, and returned his affection with interest.

It was a meeting which we cannot attempt to describe, and none of the
party quite recovered their senses until the next morning, when Mr.
Hadley rode over to Sonoma on business, and left Sam to do the honors of
the house, garden, and ranch generally. In the garden there was not much
to be seen as yet, but good intentions and a few heads of lettuce,—but
Sam had laid out nice flower-beds for Abby in the front of the house, and
stocked them with hare-bells and wild valley lilies, golden cardinals and
blue larkspurs,—all kinds of roots and seeds that had taken his fancy.
The new barn was nearly completed, Sam and Maloney were the principal
carpenters,—a trellice of very respectable lattice work relieved the
square front of the house, and a porch shaded the neat-looking kitchen.
Abby was introduced to her special territory, the enlarged chicken house,
where the children and grand-children of “Topknot” and her coop-mates
flourished, and then they all went to work to get the front room in
order before Mr. Hadley’s return. Maloney had arrived with the load of
furniture before breakfast; and the neat chairs and tables were soon
in their places. There was a bureau for Mrs. Gilman’s room, the upper
chambers had been finished off, and Mr. Hadley taken up his quarters in
one of them, while Maloney and his adherents retired to the barn chamber.

Mr. Hadley came dashing up to the front door at nightfall, and declared
he did not know his own house. The front room was graced with curtains,
and a lounge Sam had helped the girls to manufacture. The tables held
enormous bouquets, and there was a work-basket still standing on the
window seat, sure token of a woman’s presence. Mrs. Gilman had set the
tea-table, from what seemed, to her economical eyes, the extravagance of
the store-room, and no one could have wished a more cheerful welcome home.

Mrs. Gilman sat thinking of the beauty and abundance of all around
her that evening, and the hearty kindness, which made her feel how
useful and happy she should be there. A prayer for the pardon of her
faithless doubts and fears, came into her heart. She had not one, but two
Thanksgiving Days, and could join most heartily in the glad invitation,—

_O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, and His mercy endureth for
ever!_

Julia Chase can probably tell best, whether our young Californian ever
intends to visit New Hampshire again, as she is the only one in Merrill’s
Corner who is favored with letters from Hadley’s ranch. Ben has not
turned out much of a scholar, but makes an excellent farmer, and is
contented with overlooking the correspondence, and sending messages in
the postscript. One thing is certain, it will only be a visit, if Sam
goes, for he bids fair to be one of the most respected and enterprising
men in the New Country.


THE END.



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