Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 67, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 May 1901 — Hetty, of the Old Grudge. [ARTICLE]

Hetty, of the Old Grudge.

By J. H. CONNELLY.

Cofjright, ISO 3•- d 1898, Hr Bobeit Bcucer** Son*. [AH rights reserved.)

CHAPTER XVHL—(Continued.) To kill time while awaiting Uncle David’s message of recall —honestly keeping the promise that he most bitterly regretted having made —he formed a habit of haunting the great iron mills and glass Works near the mouth of the Run and along the narrow strip of available ground between Coal Hill and the river. Insensibly that atmosphere, pulsating with energy and thrilling with the operation of tremendous forces all about him, awoke in the young man new ideas and comprehensions of life, stirring him first with awe, then with curiosity and finally with a burning desire to bear an active part in that mighty vibration. The machinery’s rumbling roar filling the air, the quivering of the solid earth beneath his feet, the vivid bursts of colored flame that dazzled his sight, the earnest, purposeful activity of the muscular toilers who jostled him —all together had for him an indescribable fascination. This, he knew, was more, truly man’s work than any he had known before. One day he accidentally learned that the daily wages of a puddler were more than the weekly earnings of a skillful harvester. The embers of Scotch thrift latent in him began to glow. He wished to be a puddler. What did the puddler do? He went to the mill and watched one critically. The chap he made a study of was a huge, muscular fellow, a very giant, with short curly hair, close-matted and dark with perspiration; a neck like that of a bull; naked to the waist, showing thews and sinews like those of a gladiator. His eyes were red and his skin seemed baked to a light reddish brown. With his brawny legs braced wide apart, the big muscles of his arms, shoulders and back knotting, extending and writhing like serpents in motion, he busied himself doing something with a long iron bar thrust through a hole in an iron door. John tried to look into the hole, but could see only an intense white light, that seemed to dry his eyeballs and left a cherry-red spot in his vision, wherever he looked, for several minutes afterward. But the giant saw clearly what he was doing with his iron bar there. His trained sight could distinguish nice gradations of color in that apparently incandescent glow. Presently he uttered a sharp word of warning, at bearing which his helper, standing near and, like him, naked to the waist, sprang under a heavy stream of water flowing constantly from an open pipe higher than his head, was drenched In an instant and jumped back to his place. Then the puddler shouted another word; there was a rattle of chains, a skreek and clash of metal, and where the hole had been yawned a wide opening Into the fiercely glowing chamber where molten iron boiled like water in a pot. John knew that was what was in there, but could no more see it than he could distinguish objects upon the sun’s surface at high noon. But the puddler did not appear to mind the dazzling glare. Quickly stepping backward, he withdrew from the furnace-front the iron bar he had been manipulating, with a great ball of iron, in a plastic state, adhering to the end. That ball, larger than his head, looked to John like a chunk of the sun. The helper, by the aid of tongs pendent from a “traveler” in the semi-blackness far overhead, seized the candent mass and ran with it before him, like a small comet of which he was the tail, or the true phlogiston, away across the mill to the “crusher.” The furnace door closed automatically with a clang, leaving only a pencil of white light darting out of a little hole in its center and stabbing like a blade through the murk of the mill; and the puddler, leaping under the falling stream of water, spread his big arms and threw back his head to let the crystal flood dash upon his upturned face and broad, hairy breast. Steam went up) from him as if he had been red hot. John had some doubt as to whether his eyes would stand such cooking as the puddler’s got, but apart from that, the work pleased him, and he resolved to master it. Whether he would continue at it an hour after he received his summons of recall was quite another matter. It would be absurd that he, already the owner of two fine farms and prospective heir to a third, larger and better than both of them, should acquire a permanent habit of puddling iron for day’s wages during the rest of his life, but what better or mare manly occupation could he find while divorced from his farms? None, surely. So he found employment as a helper with a good-natured giant, whose willingly given instruction and his own natural aptitude for learning speedily put him in possession of the merely mechanical trick of puddling, and opened his eyes to the seriousness of an attempt to master a real knowledge of this delicate scientific process. Half a dozen workers in iron and glass boarded in the same house with John Cameron. They were generally rough fellows, honest enough but coarse, and Instinctively appreciative of the fact that he was not really one of them. Consequently they rather held aloof from him. There was one, however, a glass blower, known as “Billy the Barker,” with whom his sympathetic pity brought him upon terms of more intimacy. Billy was a lean, under-sized, hollow-cheeked chap, past middle age, weak and shy, upqn whom consumption had set the seal of doom. He had frequent violent and protracted spells of coughing, and was unable to work more than one or two days In the week usually, so he was destitute, wretched and tired of life. One night, John returning home very late from work, found Billy seated on the well cover In the garden, with his lean arms twined about bis knees, and shiver- " Hello!" exclaimed the young man. “What are you doing here? Don’t you know that with such a cough as yours, you shouldn’t be out in this damp night air?” “I know I shouldn’t, but there’s no choice for me. I’m gprt oi shy about having heavy boots chucked at my head.”

“What do you mean?” “There are four of us in the room where I have a bed. My three companions close the windows and smoke pipes until all is blue. That sets me coughing, and if I cannot stop when they want to go to sleep, they run me out.” “How do they run you out?” “Chucking their hob-nailed boots at my head.” “How often does this happen?” “Pretty nearly every night.” “And do you stay out all night, so that they may sleep?” “Well, hardly all night, sir. When they’re sound asleep to’rds morning, I slip in. But to-night Jem Hodges has been drinking and is ugly, and he swears he’ll break my neck If I show my face before daylight.” “Do you think he would?” “I haven’t the slightest doubt of it, sir.” . “I have. Come right up now and let’s see.” “Oh, no, indeed, sir! I don’t dare.” “If you don’t, I’ll spank you myself. The idea of your being turned out at the whim of a drunken bully! Come on! I’ll see that he doesn’t harm you.” Billy obeyed tremblingly. Jem waked the instant they crossed the threshold of the room and swore a mighty oath to “do” Billy if he did not instantly vanish. <l No,” said John, seizing the little man’s collar as he turned to flee, “this is no night for a man with a cough like his to be out, and he is going to bed.” “Hexcuse me,” responded Jem, with a mocking affectation of courtesy, “but Hi suppose you ’av’n’t been hinformed has Hi said hap ’ow ’e was to git hout.” “Oh, yes. But that don’t make any difference.” Jem was for a few moments literally paralyzed with astonishment, and the other two men in their beds sat up and stared in silence, aghast at such audacity. “D’ye know who Hi am?” roared Jem, when he recovered his breath. “No! And don’t care!” “Oho! You don’t? Well, Hi’m the Liverpool Terror —Hi am; hand Hi’ll make you care!” As he spoke he sprang out of bed and made a rush for the audacious American. Had the ensuing fight been conducted according to the rules of the London “prize ring,” in which Jem had won some laurels, he would have been a very ugly antagonist for the untrained young farmer, with all the latter’s quickness, strength and courage. But in a “rough-and-tumble,” John could hit twice to his once, and Jem soon had a lively experience of what has come to be technically known in latter days as “cyclone fighting.” His room mates, highly delighted with this unexpected nocturnal entertainment, conducted themselves as critical spectators, encouraging and criticising the combatants as occasion seemed to invite. “ ’E’s bestin’ thee, lad,” said one of them. “Hi’ll break ’im in two!" howled Jem, only to be on the instant himself floored. “Hast no license to break yon chap in two,” commented one of his friends, dryly. “Looks like thou’d get broke thysel’,” added the other. Jem had no spare breath for further idle speech. Billy made aimself as small as possible in an angle of the wall and stared in anxious terror. It was not long until Jem was> caught in a wrestling “lock” of his own seeking and thrown with such violence that for a moment he was stunned. When he regained his senses he found his nose flattened on the floor, John’s knee upon his neck, and one of his arms twisted up on his back, in John’s grasp, so that a very little tug upon it gave him excruciating pain. “Can Billy go to bed now and stay there undisturbed?” John asked. Jem was sullenly silent until his arm was twitched. Then, with profane emphasis, he replied that Billy might, and so far as he was concerned, stay there until the judgment day. Thereupon John let him up, and peace reigned again. “Blow me his you hain’t ha good un, young feller," growled the defeated “Liverpool Terror” in the surly but sincere recognition of genius that his own professional standing among “the fancy” demanded. t

From that time on, Billy never needed a protector again, but his gratitude seemed to inspire in him an almost dog-like affection tor and attachment to the strong young Amerienn who had come so opportunely to his aid. And John took the interest in him that men almost always get to feel 8n the weaker things they help and shield. “Of course,” said Billy, “I,cun never do anything to return your kindness. I’m no good any more. But I wasn’t always so. Glass blowing has done me up, as it did my father before me. It just takes the lungs out of us, especially such as work on window glass, and that’s my line. When it first caught me, about five years ago, I couldn’t believe it, I had always been so well. But my children were always sickly. I thought it was the damp plimate of England that ailed me, so I came here. Ma;H>e it would have helped me if I had come sooner; but I had waited too long. I kept getting worse. The doctor said if I went' on glass blowing it would soon kill me. Still I stuck to it, for I could earn good wages when I was able to work, and I wanted to get enough together to bring over my wife and children—only two left, the last of five. At last, I had to give up; but I knew nothing else to do, and wasn’t strong enough for much. I went to peddling books—religions books —but could scarcely llvo at it, to say nothing of sending money home. So every time I got a little better, out on the road in the open air, I would go back to the glass works, and when they had used me up, I took to the road again. It was all npa and downs, bub each up was less high than the one before, and each down was lower. Still I hung on to my hope and earned Wages every time I was strong

enough to stand on the plank until about eight months ago, when I got a letter that told me my wife was dead of typhoid and my children —little Mabel, only three years old, and the baby—were taken by the parish. Oh, how I did pray for strength to earn money to bring them to me. I felt as if I could steal, almost kill, for that. But praying did no good. My lungs were never worse than ihen. The next I heard, the children were dead, the baby first and then my sweet little Mabel. Well, they’re better off, and no farther from me now than they were before, maybe nearer; but —O God, how lonely I feel!” Such confidences naturally provoked a return from John, and he told the story of how he came to be in Temperanceville, beginning with his falling in love with Hetty Mulveil up on the Devil’s Backbone. The narration seemed to have much interest for Billy, who asked many questions concerning its incidents, particularly those connected with the adventure on the cliff. Partly through his apparent intuition and in part by a revivification in John’s mind of the half-forgot-ten occurrences of that memorable Train-ing-Day conflict, the two men together arrived at a pretty accurate understanding of previously unrecognized facts. John comprehended that in some way Constable Sim Mulveil had attained the knowledge that those silver spoons found on the cliff were stolen, and had actually dared to suspect him—a Cameron! —of being the thief, and had sought to arrest him as such. The thought made John’s blood boil with indignant anger, and for the first time fee sincerely regretted that Sim was drowned and beyond his reach. Rufus Goldie, he recalled, had denounced him as a “thiefi” So long as he had considered that epithet merely a provocative for a fight, it had made no serious impression upon him; but now that he felt Goldie meant it, he was as. wild with rage as if it had just been uttered. And Goldie drowned, too! It was very hard. The reflection suggested itself to him that Simeon, if really intending to arrest him, must have had a warrant, and that warrant was still in existence, liable to be used against him any time. The death of an officer does not stop the wheels of the law. Even if it were never served, the squire who issued it must know of it and would tell others about it. Clearly, it was necessary for him to go home at once and clear things up. So he straightway sat him down and wrote to Uncle David, detailing the facts, demanding his promise back, declaring that he must and would come home, whether or no, and that in three days he would follow his letter, “Hetty or no Hetty.”

CHAPTER XIX. John did not really mean that “Hetty or no Hetty.” The possibility of “no Hetty” had not entered his mind at all. He just meant the words as an expression of extremest emphasis; and on the third day after writing that letter he set out, as he had declared he would, for home. As he had sold his horse and cutter before leaving the Farmers’ Inn, it was necessary for him to make the journey on foot; but he cared nothing for that. A twenty-five mile walk, in such fine weather, was nothing to him. He would have liked to bid farewell to poor Billy the Barker, but Billy had mysteriously disappeared, and it was the opinion of the woman who kept the boarding house that he had gone into the river, as he had often threatened to. All John could do was to leave his address, to be given to the man if he ever returned, and with it a message that if he would come out to the Cameron farm he might stay there until he got well, “and it wouldn’t cost him a cent.” It was upon one of the lonely days of early spring, when the dew was still upon the grass, that John turned his back upon Temperanceville. At the top of the first high hill he turned and gazed upon the city. The golden light of the sun, passing through the low hanging dome of sooty clouds above it, took on a dull saffron tint, and the two rivers looked like tarnished silver. From tall chimneys everywhere columns of black smoke rose straight to the pall-like sky, as if supporting it. Here and there, in the bases of those columns, glowed tongues of flame, hardly perceptible now, but, as he well remembered, brilliant at night with their changing hues of blue and gold and crimson. Distant as he was, the roar of the mills reached his ears as a dull, unceasing growl. Step by step, as he moved backward from the crest of the hill, the city seemed to drop away from before him until it was all gone and only the black dome above it remained, growing hourly vaster in breadth and teight. In late years, Pittsburg has won a temporary respite from her old conditions of grime and smudge and gloom through the utilization of natural gas instead of bituminous coal in her many thousands of fireplaces.. Her buildings are brighter, her air clearer and her people cleaner and perhaps happier by reason of the change; but she has lost something of her former distinctive picturesqueness.

Five miles out of town, turning a bend in the road —around the corner of an old school house famous for its complete covering of roses in the month of June— John met Uncle David Henderson, in a light wagon and driving a double team at a spanking gait. After their first exclamations of mutual gratified surprise at the encounter, the giant sat staring at his nephew, too much occupied with studying him to even think of asking him to get into the wagon. “Why do you stare so at me, uncle?” asked John. “You look so different from what you used to. Of course I knew you, the moment I saw you, but, John, you don’t look like the same boy!” “I am older.” “Only four months. ’Tuin’t that. You have a different look. What have you been doing?” “Working in a rolling mill.” “Ah, that’s It! Jump in, and I’ll turn around.”, 1 “Don’t you want to go on into town?” “No. I only came after you.” “So you did get my letter, then, and never answered it?” “Didn't, hey? What do you call this? Gould I send a wagon and team by mail? But I was coming for you anyway.” When the horses’ heads were turned homeward, Uncle David again remarked upon the change in John’s appearance. “Men’s looks,” he said, “depend a good deal on how they live, their snrroundings and their work. I’ve always known that, but never appreciated it ao much al I do now in seeing yon. The young fellow who works on a farm in the peace and quiet there environing him, with the influence always pressing upon him of Na-

ture’s slow processes, which he cannot control but only help, unconsciously sinks into a tacit acceptance of a secondary place in the scale of being. The dormant seed, slow-growing tree and long-ripen-ing harvest, all compel him to recognition of the law of patient submission to the invisible force that is operating at the same time and in the same way upon him and upon all things surrounding him. Nature masters him; the seasons make him their slave; it is more correct to say of him that he vegetates, than that he lives. (To be continued.)