The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1878-11-30
THE CHARCOAL-BURNER.

Down in little glen, where the trees
grew thick and tail, shutting out the
sun, and the loneliness was so intense
that the voice grew hushed, and the
heart seemed stirred with memories of
other worlds, heard in broken phrases,
uncouth and roughly spoken, the story
of Pierre, the charcoal-burner.
81 am the poorest man alive" said
Pierre; :" in all the world there's none
poorer or rougher. In saying | am a
charcoal-burner, alfs said in one word.
I'm an outcast of the woods, and
know it, and | rarely trouble town,
for there Ifeel myself alone-not tuned,
as it were, to the tone about me. / love
the wild, free woods, and she loved the
forest, too, with all her heart. There
wasn't sound in it she couldn't tell
and interpret, from the song of the
nightingale down to the weakest cry
of the small insect on the grass.
people said she was ignorant. She
couldn't read and write; she couldn't
say Pater' in Latin to save her life;
she was untaught and ignorant as a
bird or a beast. I've heard the town.
folks say this of her often, and I've
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woods with us for awhile. Ignorant,
was she? Why, she knew every tree
that grows; she knew every herb that
springs out of the grass. She could
tell you where the freshest water ran,
and the greenest crosses grew. There
wasn't a healing leaf in all the woods
that she hadn't learned to understand;
and if you did but hurt your finger, she
would spring aside, and come back
smiling, with some sweet-smelling rem
edy in her pretty hand.
''Then the flowers! There was no
eye like hers for flowers. She knew
them all, and never gathered them as
town-folks do, to throw away when they
faded. No; she dried them in the sun,
and kept them for the sick in Winter
The rose and the gillyfower for colds,
the lime blossoms for fever. All, what
store she gathered every Summer!
And with what wreaths and posies she
decked out our little hut!
eve were brought UP together, sir,
so | know what am SAYING when tell
you she was not ignorant. But, like us
all, she had no town-learning; her only
hooks were the forest and the sky; but
out of these she got wisdom that might
have put learned men to shamen
Pierre paused here, and his eyes
looked out far away beneath the green
glades, as though he saw there some
sight that filled his soul with unutter-
able longing of sorrow.
"Was she beautiful? you ask. I
don't know, sir. Her face was not like
Go I .c,,1
in towns and villages; but once, in a
picture, | saw face like hers. 1t was
the picture of a woman in the wilder
ness, weeping, as she lay on the ground
with her head resting on book
MARY Magdalen,n said l.
cit might be, sir. But her name,
you know, was Elmire. I've made the
woods ring with her name many time
in the old joyous days, and in the sad
times since. I've whispered it to my
self in prison, in such bitterness as few
men know. You wouldn't think, sir,
that she was girl whom a wicked
man would dare to love in a wicked
way. And yet that misery came to her
If you were to climb to the top of that
green knoll, and look westward over
the shopping trees, you'd see the smoke
of the village where he lived. | never
go there now. The sight of the place
would set my brain on fire.
He was farmers son, well-to-do,
vile and cruel as wolf; but clever, so
the schoolmaster said, and rich, as all
the world knew.
"He crept into the wood, and came
upon her in her lonely places, and in
suited her with hot words of passion.
Or he stole upon her unawares, when
she sat at work beneath the tree, and
faWned and cringed for word from her.
Or he threatened, and frightened her,
when she came into the village for flax
and wool. All things, all ways he tried
and he gained only her quiet scorn, and
her untold loathing.
"We wild children of the woods
have an instinct which warns us of a
hurtful reptile, or a poisonous plant,
and thus we avoid them, though we
know not their names, and though we
could not, in our ignorance, utter our
reason for our fear. So with her; she
hated this man from the first; and one
day, in our wanderings she told me she
thought he would kill her, as a snake
or wolf might when hungry or angry.
81 laughed at this. He dare not
lift his hand against thee, Elmire,' l
said. He is coward, and he knows
that l should kill him if he did but
touch thee
Indeed, my anger burned so fierce
ly against the villain that Elmire had
with difficulty kept us from blows. But
for her prayers and tears, l would have
rid her path of him long before. There
was another hindrance, too-her father.
With him lay all the root of this misery.
He was a drunkard, and for drink he
was willing to sell even his daughter
He was lost, swallowed up in that one