The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1884-09-03
eNor he children.
What Pierre Went After and What
Went After Pierre.

Pierre Lubee was bad boy. Was a
bad boy, you perceive; but that was some
time ago. He is a good boy now. A
very different boy from what he was. He
is now the sort Of boy who wears glasses
and has white hair; the sort of a boy
who tells long stories and walks with
cane; the sort of boy who has a dozen
rosy children, more or less, climbing the
back of his chair and swarming about his
knee and noisily calling him "Grand.
father"
But then he was bad boy. He hated
to bring in frewood or look after the
baby for his mother. He hated to hoe
or weed the garden for his father. He
hated to help anybody, even himself for
he hated above all things to 60 to school
in the lonely little school-house on the
river road in the woods. =.
If one asked who stole the hens and
turkeys from the farmers poultry yards,
who tied a string across the road on
market day and tripped up the women
with their baskets of eggs, who put pep
per in old Pere Uoiackes snuff-box, and
shouted after poor hobbling Widow Mich
aud, old and lame,
Give her broomstick, away she will go!''-
if one asked who did any or all of these
things, the reply was always sure to be:
at is Pierre, wicked Pierre Lubee. He
is truly son of the evil one. 1t cannot
be beaten out of him. He is bewitched."
They were ignorant people in the vii
lage where Pierre lived, and believed in
all manner of silly stories of witches,
Ill of 1LnN ,Nrt
Pierre said that Mother Michaud was
witch they did not tell him, as they
should have done, that there were no
witches and that Mother Michaud was
only a palsied and lame old creature who
needed kindness and charity instead of
mocking words. No; they only shook
their heads and looked mysterious; for
Mother Michaud had no teeth, her nose
and chin nearly met, she lived in lonely
house in the woods with her fowls and
her black cat, and she shook her head as
she walked and mumbled words that no.
body could understand; and all these
things the Canadian village folk counted
as signs of true witch.
One evening in the autumn Pierre came
in to his supper with very sly look in
his black eyes. His mother noticed it as
she stepped about briskly, filling the
wooden bowls with piping hot cabbage
soup. His father noticed it, too, as he sat
mending an OK goad, and he pointed sig
nifcantly to bundle of rods which hung
within easy reach above the fire.
"What wickedness art plotting now,
Pierre ?" he asked. "Mind thyself we'll,
or thou knowest what thou'lt get in the
morning"
Pierre made no reply, and after eating
his supper spent very harmless and inno-
cent evening playing at cats cradle with
his little sister Margot on the floor of the
cabin before the swapping fire. At eight
o'clock he went, like model boy, to bed.
"Thou seest we wronged the lad" said
Pierre's mother as she undressed little
Margot. "He has been good all the even.
ing. 1t is only that he has merry eye.
Is it not so, my friend?"
"He has the evil one in him." grunted
the father, as he rose to put away his
pipe. "But mind, will beat it out OF
him yet, as long as there are rods left in
the forest"
BY nine o'clock Pierre's father and
mother were snoring loudly in their bed
in the warm kitchen corner. Pierre him.
self slept in tiny loft which was reached
by a ladder from below. In the end of
this loft was a small window, and just un.
der the window WAS the little shed where
Pierre's father kept his COW and the sleepy
old donkey, d" Cosette."
At nine by the village clock, if one had
been watching, one might have seen the
naughty Pierre creeping softly out of the
little loft window, warmly dressed, and
making no noise at all with his bare
brown feet. Once on top of the shed, il
was an easy jump to the ground, and
once on the ground, away flew Pierre
like the wind, down the long white road
neither stopping nor turning till he
reached certain gray milestone under q
pine tree. Here he stopped and whistlec
shrilly two or three times, and, receiving
no answer, mounted the milestone, and
dangling his feet against the cold granite
proceeded to wait for somebody who die
not come. 1t was nipping and chilly
night, and presently Pierre began tt
grow impatient.
81 shall not wait for him any longer,
he declared, slipping down from his seat
"He ought to have been here half al
hour ago. Well, it's his own loss.
don't care"
But he did care. The thing he wa
going to do did not seem to him half a
good fun as he fastened alone through
the silent Canadian woods, the cold sting
ing him and the trees casting strang
shadows before him, as it would hav
seemed had Martin Trudeau been will
him to giggle and chuckle and keep hin
company.
However, Pierre was not the boy to Civ
thing up just because he happened to b
trifie cold and lonesome, 80 be kept Of
along the road, whistling to keep his coui
age up, and running, as any other bo
might have done, as he passed the empt
school-house, which was so commonplace
by day but 30 oddly scarey by night.
At last he left the road, and, strikin
off across the frosty fields, soon reached
small, black house, which stood on tn
edge of the wood. Here lived the poo
old Widow Michaud with her hens an
her black cat She did not mind til
loneliness. People only meant unkint
ness to her as a general thing. AS to tn
wild creatures of the woods, they woul
not come very near house and she di
not fear them at all.
Pierre had no need of creeping softl
here. There was no danger of wakin
deaf old Mother Michaud, and she key