Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1888-03-30
THE FERRY WOMAN.

woods there stood a little hut made of
logs and rough boards. 1t was a queer
little hut of two rooms that seemed to
have been built far apart, but had come
together and married each other. Each
room had a curious mud chimney built
outside and looking as if it might have
been a mud tower thrown up in the
night by some gigantic crayfish; also
each had a door and a window opening
with a wooden shutter hat swung out
ward on hinges made of old bits of
leather, and when the shutter would be
closed, which was seldom. it was fastened
by means of a rough wooden button that
turned on a screw. The way these two
rooms had been brought together was by
means of a plank porch, and between
the two roofs the red and yellow
poles of young pine trees had
been laid evenly and neatly and
matched over with crisp dead
pine needles. When the wind
blew or the pigeons walked over this
matched roof, the needles knit busily
one against the other, giving out sharp
little cracking noises that were comfort
able to listen to. A few chickens picked
dDoul tIlt DOlCH u CiChltu UOND Ill lllt
straw under an old shed in a corner of
the lot, and IN old yellow COW grazed
out on the bare yellow hills. The hut
and garden were inclosed by a rail fence,
and in the garden, under some plum
trees, a few cabbages and beets and
onions were growing.
The garden was pretty to look at, and
made one think, as a neat vegetable gar
den always does make one think, of a
comfortable country home. and a mid
day dinner of pink boiled bacon, golden
corn bread, and by way of relish a plate
full of silvery white onions, tender and
crisp and with such gay green tops.
All about were the forests with the
wind forever moaning in the tree tops,
the frogs forever croaking in the dank
hollows, the jay birds forever tap, tap
ping on the rotted trunks of old dead
trees. Not another sign of human life
was visible, the little hut had no rivals in
this grand aud lonesome domain.
An ugly, oily river, deep, dark and
still, flowed through the woods near the
hut. Its waters were bitter and black,
stained with steepings of millions of fallen
rotted trees. Nothing was ever seen
floating on this river-no dead leaves,
nor logs of wood, nor carcass of any
drowned animal. and it was said that
such things would not float, but were al
ways sucked down into the quicksands.
Anyhow, be that as it may, the name of
the river was ''Wolf," and sometimes in
the night, when a storm came up and the
water moiled by with a bowling cry, the
little tow headed children in the hut on
rho hnnE xrnt1l1 ttroE thair hao1S lpu-,,
under the pink and white log cabin Quilt
and Cry out to each other. with little
shivering thrills in their shrill treble
voices, That now the wolf was coming
after them for sure.
A road came out of the pine forest
and ran down through the shining white
sand to the brink of the river. The sand
was SO white hereabout that the children
used to call it the VOLTS fangs. But
fangs are cruel, and so this was not true.
for the sand was soft to lie in, and pleas
ant to play in, and to build grand castles
in, and to dig cool wells in, and, above
all, graves for the little birds that died of
old age out in the forest. The road be-
gan again IN the other side the river,
and, like a lonesome traveller who might
perhaps be waylaid and murdered when
night came on, plunged off directly into
a dismal swamp where the trees were
hung with moss and where the alligator
holes were eight or ten feet deep.
To cross this river there was a ferry,
and the woman who lived with her little
children in the cabin on the bank was the
ferry woman The ferry was only a huge
flat bottomed raft. made of pine trees
and planks, large enough to carry an OK
team loaded with cotton or wool or
chickens. and the way the ferry woman
got the ferry over the river was by pull
ing with all her might on a rope that
was tied across stream from one side to
the other.
Sometimes at evening when the wo-
man sat in her porch scratching the fat
little red back of the youngest child. who
had been playing in the forest and was
full of little red woodticks that burrowed
under the tender skin, she would hear a
wagon creaking along the road. 1t had
a cheerful sound, the body groaning, the
rude wheels twisting noisily with a wiry.
rusty tweak tweak in their unoiled
sockets, and Their she would roll the
child out Of her lap and go down to the
ferry, so as to be ready when the wagon
came up to ferry it over.
The driver would pass the time of
day with her, but rarely did she ask
him what might be going on in town.
She took no interest in any life or go
ings ON away from the hut by the ferry.
When he would be safely over the
traveller would pay the ferry woman the
fee of two bits and his wagon would
creak off until lost in the forest. Some
times he would look back at the row of
bow legged, pink frocked, tow headed
children standing in the white sand by
the river, or at the woman bending her
back as she strained heavily at her huge
ferry, pulling it back to shore. And
the wagon would go out of sight, the