Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1873-05-14
Old Agate.

LOVE STU =
Old Agate was the pest Of everybody in
his neighborbood who might, by any stretch
Of the Imagination be classed as sof
The gossips unanimously termed him a
brute; be didn't cry for them, at the funeral
Of his wife
The old nurse, who tended his wife during
her last sickness, and laid her out " for
| burial, shook her head knowingly, and said
nay; she saw him knec by the cold body
and groan, aud clutch the empty air in help
less agony.
1t is the love story of old Agate that |
propose to tell it is complete to me, and
has moral. | hope it may seem so to my
readers. If anybody can tell the fall story,
it is |. When a poor schovlmaster, after
his wife's dlath, lived with him, aud par
took without price, Of his bounty, and
followed him to the war, aud buried him
and his son jim.
1t is labor Of love for me to tell his
simple story. | hope | may tell it truth
fully and well
Old Agate was once young, with thick,
bull neck, broad shoulders, black hair, and
strength perfectly terrific. They tell how,
when mere boy, he walked up to a defiant,
unarrested murderer, closed with him, aud
brought him, a prisoner, into the awe-strick-
en- but cowardly crowd with one arm broken
and ribs crushed in.
They tell how he tweaked the nose Of the
old banker who had foreclosed the mortgage
on his fathers farm, and strangled with his
wiry fingers the dog the banker set on
him, and then ran off to sea.
When, ten years after, he came back,
with arms tattoed and his face bronzed, he
wooed one week, and married the next, to
the horror of everybody, Susan Dyke, the
gentlest girl in all the country, and the
best. Poor thing, she was to be pitied,
was she not
lie brought home money and settled down
to business, reticcnt, stern, and hard to
everybody but Susie. To her he was as
dutitul child, his old temper seemed gone,
be watched her every want, and supplied
it, till after the birth of her baby boy she
died in his arms.
After the death Of Susie, he put the boy
his old business ways, as though nothing
had happened, and went on getting gray
and grim, and making money in his mill,
jim grew and waxed strong, till at six
teen he had reached nearly the stature Of
his father his thick neck, and protrudine
chin showed the temper Of his sire, only
toned down little by his mothers dark
brown eyes.
At that time be came home, and for the
6rst time since his birth, was directly uu.
der the tuition of Old Agate, his father.
The transition from the indulgent pam.
pering of his nurse and foster mother, to
the cold, silent, nhexible training of his
father, often stirred the spirit of rebellion
within him. causing the hot blood to crim-
son his cheek, and his breath to come aud
90 as if be carried a heavy load,
He offered no resistance to the paternal
mandates, no questioning or protestation
ever escaped his lips He feared Old
Agate, as did every body else, and more, he
loved him, for he was his father, and his
smothered love made his life all the harder
for him.
On the night Of his eighteenth birthday
be had determined to run away. His plans
were all made, and he had thrown himself
on his bed for such rest as might come to
him till the sleeping village should tell no
tale of his flight.
Running away" has its charm for every
healthy boy at some time in his youth, the
time when sentiment first takes hold OF
him, aud overshadows common sense.
If. Jack had been asked to give a reason
for his discomfort, he would have been dumb,
Only an indefinite yearning-an aching
void, with nothing whatever to dll it. Old
Agate had asked him on his birthday, my
sou, what have you done this long year, Of
which you or | should be proud2" And
he had dropped his eyes and answered
"nothing;' and saying over to himself all
day, nothing" he had determined to run
away, as his father had done before him.
Weakening from his first uneasy sIumber,
he saw his window lighted as he had never
seen it before, all lurid, and Pickering from
the burning of Old Agate's mill.
A night fire in n country village, to the
boy or man who sees it for the first time,
is a sight ever memorable. In the black
ness of the night, blood-red, he wakes, as
il were, into a new world. Everything
puts on new semblance even the panic.
stricken villagers put on new faces, as they
rush yelling to the scene Of con1agration.
1t brings all latent heroism or cowardice
into action. The possible heroes work as
they never worked before, and the towards,
dazed by the new light, run hither and
thither, crying, fire fire ~
By the time jim had hustled himself n-
to his clothes aud reached the street, the
flames had burst out on all sides of the
mill, aud nothing remained TO be done ex-
cept to save the surroundings aud the huge
piles of wood and lumber outside the mill.
As he came out into the glare he had an
indistinct impression Of excited men run
ming aimlessly here and there, and Of the
roar aud cracking of the flames, and one
man high up on the tallest pile Of lumber,
directing in cheerful, clarion voice, the con-
fused crowd below.
The figure standing out so large aud
black against the sky, the only self.poised
thing in the picture, was Old Agate, d.
reoting, IN tones that must DC Obeyed, the
crszed crowds how to save the surrounding
cottages.
The picture brought jim to sense oil
his surroundings Al first he longed to
embrace Old Agate; then he began to say
to himself, something instead Of "noth-
ing" and, as calm as his father on the
burning pile, he strobe down to the burning
mill.
A dazed crowd stood there watching it
as it burned Jim heard some one say,
"lf one could go in through the aume, and
raise the gates, Old Agates wheel, which
cost three hundred dollars, might be saved
The covered fume was long aud dark,
two hundred feet, jim remembered, but
with cry Of something" on his lips, the
boy disappeared in its entrance.