Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 April 1875 — A COLD SNAP. [ARTICLE]

A COLD SNAP.

Aunt Lackland lived away out in the country in those days —in the backwoods, Nell'and I called it, though, to be sure, our own place wasn’t so very populous, considering.that there were seventy-odd miles between the two; but then we were on the river-banks, and a steamer ran between us and Boston once a week, and we had a shabby little newspaper and a shabbier lecture course, and an occasional concert, and sleighing parties, and assemblies among ourselves, while out at Lackland people dwelt so far apart that it was a day’s work to make a call. Aunt Lackland was a widow with no children, and we had often urged her to come to Wateredge and live with us, but she had steadily refused, and thought she shouldn’t live out half her days if she were to forsake the familiar fields where her good man had plowed and reaped. She had an old who had lived with her since her marriage; and a kind of cousin of her husband’s —Eben Andrews—had come to manage the farm for her at uncle’s death, who was executor of the will, residuary .legatee, and goodness knows what not, and by whom she set the world. It used to be, “Eben thinks so,” and “Eben doesn’t like this,” till I got worn to shoe-strings the first time I went to see her, for, you see, mother, pitying her forlorn condition, living so out of the world, and no bloodrelation within call, used to send Nell and me to make alternate visits there to make sure she wasn’t imposed upon by her husband’s relatives. “ Who cares what Eben thinks and likes?” said I, for, I suppose, I was a little jealous that she should regard the opinions of this raw farmer as of greater importance than mine. “ I dare say you’ll care more’n you’ll like to own before you’re much older,” said she, laughing, “and you won’t be the first girl, neither.” “I’ll go right home if you talk so,” I cried. “I don’t think I shall lose my young aflections to Eben Andrews in a hurry. Anybody’d think I had never seen a young man before.” “ You never did see one like Eben,” she persisted. “ And I never -want to see another.” “That’s just the way girlstalk when they’re in love,” put in Tildy Bruce, who had come down to do up the sewing for Aunt Lackland, whose eyes began to fail her. •«

Tildy was something of a companion for me in that lonely ply.ee, though I had no great fancy for her. She lived six miles away through the woods, and Eben used to go for her, and carry her home when her work was done. “ There’s our Esther,” she went on—- “ what fun she used to make of Tom Adams’red head! But, sakes alive, now she’s married to him every particular hair is gold. “Very likely,” I retorted; “it runs in the family. I heard you say yourself that Eben had the biggest hands you ever saw. I suppose they’ll shrink as soon as h» offers them to you.” “ He’s got a heart to match’em,” added Aunt Lackland, while Tildy tittered. “Yes,” said I, just to plague Aunt Lackland, for I had really thought Tildy impudent enough to joke about the size of my aunt’s husband’s cousin’s hands — “yes, and a mouth to match the heart!” “So much the better to kiss you, my dear,” sang out Eben himself; and there he was, standing in the doorway. I didn’t know how much he had overheard, and I didn’t care; at least I thought I didn’t, and I left the room in dudgeon and slammed the door. A great bear of a backwoodsman to talk of kissing me'. Well, I suppose I was a contrary minx, for wtfen Aunt Lackland said that Eben doted on green I took great pains to wear blue ribbons; and when he declared that blue became me mightily I just changed to cherry-color next time. If Eben liked curls I combed my hair out as straight as a Digger Indian’s; and when he began to read aloud I left the room, or hummed a tune as rudely'as you please. Tildy Bruce used to giggle, and say that I did it just to keep myself before his eyes; and she was always so ready to run and jump for him, and flattered him so broadly, that I cbuld have shaken her soundly many a time. She .spared no pains to please him, wore the colors I discarded, and made beau-catch-

ers of her hair. She used to dare me to refuse his arm when he offered it, or his hand when he would have helped me into a carriage or over a stile, and I was just fool enough. She induced me to send him a saucy valentine, and to play all manner of giddy tricks upon him, such as putting salt in his tea, and vinegar m his milk, and sewing up the armholes of his overcoat, and lining his hat with burs! But he made a joke of it all, and called me his jester. “That means a fool,” said I, flaring up. “ Oh, does it?” said he, quietly. “ Well, sometimes the king was more fool than the jester, you remember,” oracularly. “So,” said Tildy, afterward, “ he thinks that he has only got. to ask, this minute, and you’ll say ‘ Yes, thank you.’ ” “ He’ll find out his mistake,” tossing my head, “if ever he does ask! —as though I would marry a farmer when I’ve been at boarding-school,- and can play the piano and read French! Mercy! if you should see the young men at Wateredge, in their kid gloves and broadcloth, you wouldn’t wonder that I wasn’t ready to fall in love with Eben Andrews, Tildy.” “And what are they like at Wateredge?” asked Aunt Lackland. “Like heroes in a romance,” said I spitefully; “not at all like Eben Andrews.” “ No, I reckon they’re not; heroes of fiddlesticks and nonsense!” “ Heroes of yard-sticks, I guess,” added Tildy. | And,"sure enough, Eben did find out his mistake not long after; though you might call it mine, in the long run. One day in March he asked me to go down into the maple grove to see the sap run, and to take a drink of it. We went along by a short-cut over the fields, w’here the snow yet lingered in soft drifts. The afternoon was clear as crystal, and when we got into the woods the sun illuminated it, shining upon the naked trees, and creeping through the tangled boughs, till it seemed like a great cathedral at evening service, I thought. There was a delicate hush there too, and once in a while an early bird trilled a hesitating roundelay, and another responded from some hidden branch; and the crows went languidly cawing overhead, and sometimes a rabbit scampered by, and the voices of the men who were busy over the gypsy fire boiling down the sap made long reverberations, melodious as the wind sweeping across f,n JEolian harp. We drank the sap, cool and sweet, as it dripped from the wounds in the maple trees, and stirred the boiling pot under the cross-sticks, and the afternoon faded, and the sunset blushed and looked into the wood, and the workmen dropped away one by one, leaving Eben and me to follow at our leisure. But he lingered still, covering the pot, smothering the fire, though I had long ago warned him that tea was waiting. We stood there, side by side, looking into the smoldering embers, when I said again:

“ Come, Eben Andrews, lord of loiterers, I can’t wait any longer.” “ Neither can I,” he returned, facing me. “I must know to-night, Letty, whether you love me or not!” “ Whether I love you or not!” I repeated. “What ever gave you that crazy notion?” “ Because I have been crazy enough to love you, Letty,” he answered, “ and I had heard that love begets love.” “ Well, we will let by-gones be bygones,” said I. “ I’m sure I never gave you any encouragement. But pray don’t speak of this to Aunt Lackland.” “ A man doesn’t usually brag about being jilted,” he answered. Now, though I should like to have had my aunt know’ I had refused her precious Eben, I was sure if she found it out there w’ould be an end of my visits to Lackland; she would never have allowed Eben’s happiness to be placed in such jeopardy; and somehow, though I didn’t care for Tildy Bruce, and had refused Eben, and was by no means devoted to my aunt, yet I liked to go to Lackland; I had never asked myself why, ...and I didn’t care to know. “ Well, Tildy,” said I, that night, after Aunt Lackland had had prayers, and Eben had taken his candle and gone to bed, and we were left to rake over the kitchen fire, “ well, Tildy, Eben’s found out his mistake!” Her eyes snapped like brands of fire, and the color flew all over her face. “ I guess you’ll find the mistake ip yours before you’re much older,” said she. “ I’ll wager, though, that he doesn’t feel anxious; he knows you only want to be coaxed.” Perhaps 1 did. But I must say it nettled me to see how well he bore himself. Thad read,, jn novels how r the hero was either soured by unrequited affection or became splendidly melancholy and morose and lost his appetite; but Eben didn’t carry out either programme; lie behaved just as usual, and passed his plate for a second piece of pudding, and made jokes, and didn’t seem to mind. , 4

“ I guess Eben was joking the other day,” Tildy suggested, pleasantly. “Pretty serious joke,” said I. “Supposing I had said yes?” . “ Then it’s a supposable case, eh? j thought as much.” It was dreadfully mean in me to mention it to Tildy at all; but I just wanted to show her that I wasn’t ready to marry Tom, Dick and Harry because they should see fit to ask me to, and at the same time I wanted to impress upon her that she was no prophet. Tildy s was ten years my senior, and if she knew how to mislead me for her own advantage I made it easy for her. I was like one having eyes and seeing not. Eben never hinted love after that, however. He was always kind and obliging. When I went home he often carried me to the next town, ever so many miles away, where I met the stage for Wateredge, and we had the long lonely road to ourselves, I promise you; but he never once said love, or pressed my hamYunder the bufialo-robes, as young men will, I’ve been told/ or referred to that afternoon in the maple grove, which was hardly ever out of my mind. It was about two years later when 1 made my annual visit at Lack-

land at Thanksgiving time. There were only three of us to sit down to dinner together, and Aunt Lackland said: - “Of all things one seems to need a large family at the holidays. How I wish I had ten children all coming home with their husbands and babies! I do wish Eben would get married and bring a wife here!” “ I can’t find anyone to marry me,” said Eben, as cool as a January morning. “ Pooh! that’s likely. The girl would be a fool who’d -refuse you, if Ido say it. ” I think she sometimes forgot that he wasn’t bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh. “ You’d never have to ask her but once!" “ That depends upon the girl,” said I, net thinking what I was saying. “ I never should ask her but once,” said Eben. “How unfeeling!” said I, as easy as a cushion, though, Heaven knows, I had a great lump in my throat, and I should have cried if I hadn’t said something disagreeable instead. Though we had a surprise party that night and all the neighbors far and near came in sleighs—if you lived within ten miles of Lackland you were a neighbor—and the house echoed with fun and frolic and we played forfeits and danced in the big kitchen, yet I felt heavy-heart-ed in spite of myself. I can see Eben now leading in Virginia reel with Tildy Bruce; he was a famous dancer, but that was the last time he ever tripped on the fantastic toe, thanks to me. Aunt Lackland was getting feeble that winter, and she begged me to stay till spring, for now that sister Nell was married I had to do the visiting for both, and I had been nothing loth before; but I must say that I felt miserable and sore about Eben; and it seemed to me all at once, that he must think I stayed because I couldn’t tear myself away from his neighborhood, and that I was sorry for what I had said down in the maple grove; and so, when mother wrote that there was to be a grand ball at Wateredge on Christmas night, I announced my intention of going home. We had had a remarkably comfortable season, though the sleighing was tolerably good; yet there had been no very cold weather, and folks seemed to believe that the nature of winter was changed, and there wouldn’t be any to speak of. Aunt Lackland said everything to keep me, and Eben even thawed enough to say that three wasn’t the crowd he’d thought it, and the season would be ten miles longer without me. But go I would. “I suppose you can send me down to Faring to meet the Wateredge stage with John?" I asked.

But John, the hired man, had rheumatism. “ I wouldn’t trust you with anybody but Eben this season of the year. John would be sure to lose the way if he hadn’t rheumatism. You might wait for the mail-carrier, and drive back with him.” The mail arrived only once a week a Lackland. “ I shall do nothing of the kind,” said I. “I shall start to-morrow, if I have to walk. ” “We couldn’t hear to your walking,” said Eben, laughing, “ unless you wear my snow-shoes.” » „ “Very well, then,” said Aunt Lackland, who was a trifle put out, “Eben must take you himself, though there’s no more need of your going than there is of my going to Gretna Green. You’ll like enough get snowed up at Faring and not reach home till after Christmas, and serve you right. Come, Eben. can’t you say something to make her stay?” “ I’ve said my say.” « “ I believe she only wants to be coaxed, after all,” persisted my aunt. “ I dare say ; it’s a way women have, but I never humor them in it!” I wouldn’t have stayed after that if it had rained blue devils all the way to Faring. Oh, I was a headstrong piece! I was set upon showing Eben that there were attractions inWatcredge. It was snowing lazily the morning we started. “ Take plenty of wraps, children,” implored Aunt Lackland. “I know you will get blocked up by a storm.” “ Nonsense,” said I. “This is only a spit, and it’s as mild as new cider.”

And, true enough, it was only only a spit; it ceased snowing altogether before we had gotten five miles'from Lackland, and when we were fifteen miles on our journey old Lightning lost a shoe. We had expected to reach Faring by five in the afternoon at latest, and at we stopped at a wayside farm-house'and got dinner, and Eben tried to hire another horse, for the road was rough, and pres ently Lightning would be lame; but the farmer had driven a span into Faring that morning and wouldn’t return till the next day. So we jogged on again. Eben, however, knew of a place oft the high-road where he thought he’d be able to get our horse shod, but by the time it was done it seemed almost dusk, and when I got into the sleigh again the cold cut me like a knife. You know how short the December afternoons are, and it must have been growing colder and colder every minute, only we hadn’t thought about it. People in the backwoods get used to it, only this was something I hadn’t bargained for; and just as I was wishing myself back in Aunt Lackland’s snuggery Eben reined up and said he must have taken the wrong turn. It was pitch-dark by this time; we couldn’t have seen our horse if he hadn’t been black, or if the ground hadn’t been covered with snow, and the cold pinched me at every pore. “Oh, dear!” I cried; “how much trouble I’ve given you, Eben!” And what do you think he answered? “ Nothing is trouble that I do for you, Letty.” It was as good as a hot soap-stone, if you’ll pardon the comparison; it stirred the blood to my fingers’ ends, till I was all of a glow. Well, we got back upon the highway, as we thought, but it proved a mistake, and we turned to the right,-And we turned to the left, but Faring seemed to be playing hide-and-seek with us. - “This beats everything," said Eben. “ I thought I knew every inch of the road, and every road in the country,” >, .

“ Everything—looks—so differently—by daylight,” I gasped, my teeth chattering in my head. “You are freezing to death, Letty,” said he. “ What a blockhead I am!” and just then a shaft broke, and there we were! Lost on a dreary country road, at nine o’clock of a bitter, starless night. As luck would have it, we had come to grief only a few yards from a log-hut, which stood out darkly against the snow. “ The inmates must have gone to bed,” said Eben, “ but we will rouse them;” and he knocked upon the rude door, which swung open at his touch, we had happened on a road made for their own convenience by the lumbermen, and the hut was the remnant of a last year’s camp, diverted and comfortless as a last year’s nest. i

“It is a shelter, at least,” said Eben. “ I will build a fire, Letty, and stop your chattering. ’’And he built a Are, Heaven only knows how," with nothing but the matches he carried in his pocket to light his stepsand he sat me down before the grateful blaze swathed in the buffalorobes; and a half-burned pine-knot in the hut served him for lantern, while he blanketed and led poor old Lightning to the hovel where the lumbermen had housed their cattle and left an armful of straw, and he made the bolt fast with a piece of wood. “ Letty,” said he, “ I’m afraid we shall have to stay here till daylight. I think we have taken some back-country road which has led us away from Faring; and the shaft is in splinters, and there’s not an inch of rope or anything about the premises, and I was too big a fool to bring anything of the kind. I don’t know where I am any more than if I’d been born blind. I don’t know how I became so bewildered. We might ride a-pillion, perhaps, but you’d freeze to death; here I can keep you from perishing, at least.” “ Oh, let us stay here; it is quite comfortablein comparison,” I said, “ and I am afraid to go out again into the great dark night. What a precious thing daylight is! Aren’t you coming near the fire? Aren’t you cold, Eben? Oh! what’s that? Somebody’s dog?” as the door of the hut trembled and a pair of sharp eyes looked in.

“ Only a wolf,” laughed Eben. “ Don’t be troubled; he’s too wise to come in; he’s afraid of the fire.” “ Oh, but you'll have to go out aftfcr wood to keep the fire alive! Oh, Eben! if it hadn’t been for me!” “ Never fear, the pine knot will keep him at a respectful distance; and if that fails, why, here’s my pistol. I never travel to Faring witho’ut it.” “ I never regarded a pistol as a blessing before,” said I. But ohjWhat a night it was! I couldn’t think of anything but Dr. Kane in the arctic regions. Though our wood fire snapped briskly, and Eben heated a rock to put at my feet, and the buffalo-robes were warm as wool, yet there was a dreadful sense of isolation and danger out there in the woods, with the wind roaring through the trees like a thing possessed, and boughs cracking, and sometimes the howl of a wolf making one’s heart stand still for an instant. Perhaps you don’t know what a camp in the woods is like? Well, in the first place, there’s no floor but the bare ground, with spruce boughs laid over it for carpeting; it is built of half-hewn logs, and it has a window or two, w r ith wooden shutters, and there’s a hole in one end of the roof for the smoke to pass through. Sometimes they build a rough chimney of stones; but this hut was without that modern convenience, and there were knot-holes in the shutters, and the door had no fastening, and sometimes the wind blew it wide open and gave one a glimpse of the black, frosty night outside, with now and then the glintgof a star on the ragged edge of a cloud, and the fir trees standing out darkly and takine all manner of shapes. It seemed to me that Eben was always stirring about, gathering fire-wood, or attending to my comfort' in some way. I couldn’t persuade him that there were enough buffalo-robes for us both; and once, while he was outside gathering fuel, I put my head out the door, and it was so cold it froze the tears on my eyelids. Sometimes Eben w’ould presume to take my hand in his, to make sure I was warm, and'tuck the wraps about me more snugly; and he tried to distract my mind by telling me stories of the. wood-choppers and life on a boom of logs; and once or twice he tried to sing, ahd he whistled like all the birds in the forest, just to seem cheerful; and at last I fell into a doze, and waked, shivering,. with a start, to find the gray dawn creeping in through the chinks and knot-holes, and to hear a strange voice outside calligg, “ Good morning to you, sir. Gee, Bright! How’s this for a cold snap, eh?” It was a teamster, toiling up from the mill village to haul logs; and so soon as he knew our strait he turned about, took out his oxen, and put them up in the hovel, harnessed old Lightning into his team, and drove us into Faring more dead than alive. “ A pretty cold snap,” echoed the landlord of the Sunbeam Tavern, as we entered; “a pretty cold snap, I take it. Halloa! what’s the matter?” Eben had slipped from his seat upon the floor in a dead faint! You may ruess 1 was pretty well frightened, as I deserved to be. “It’s all my fault —all my fault!” I cried, forgetting the by-standers and the strange doctors. “ Pity’s sake!” said the landlady, “is the cold snap your fault? are you to blame for the weather, miss? I’m afraid the cold has drove you out of your poor head. You’d better have something hot, dear.” 8 But you know how it was. My ears were a trifle frost-bitten, and they had to amputate Eben’s foot, and all because I had been vain and headstrong about going home, and had refused to speak the truth down in. the maple grove, and accept a backwoodsman and a farmer for my lover. Of course I married Eben, but I didift deserve to; and as for him, he says that the cold snap insured' him his greatest blessing.— Harper's Bazar.