Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1888-01-05

up q 90 IL. But L N willing TO do nv
share, If you be calculating to build new
one" After an unresponsive pause:
you're calculating to build 9 new one. /
s'pose?"
Eyes, be-" Mr.. Telcott reioined, with
acrimonious promptoess.
Something IN his voice shook his
ne1ghbor's comEosure. But he carried
off his discontinue creditably.
"Wel." he said, "it,ll be s good thing.
s'pose it ought TO been done before.n
He pulled g grass and cheved it undaunt-
eddy for two or three minutes before he
went into the house.
"Well?" said his wife, as she set the
dish of pork on the taola.
Hes set out to bui' d a new line fence"
SAID Mr.. Long, taking his seat and SHOW
ing his knife up and down between the
tines of his fork.
HIS wife turned to look at him. Her
sharp Intuition footed out the dark side
OF the statement.
"You hain't had words with him Elias?-
she said, suick alarm in her pleasant
face. Now you didn't have no trouble
with him yesterday about them hens?"
Il told him. said Mr.. Long, reaching
for the coffee-pot, "his hens had been
making tolable free in my garden, and
the fence better be fixed up. If he's q
mind to flare up like fool don't know
as it's any of my concern"
He took a swallow from his cup. His
wife watched him wistfully. She looked
dszed.
She went about the house that day with
an uneasy apprehension in her face.
81 don't know what to make of it." she
kept thinking, in troubled way.
She knew by the rext night The new
line fence was done. It was seven feet
high. There was nothing to be seen a.
cross it except the upper half of Mr..
Talbot's house, the tops of the trees and
the barn roof. 1t rose tall and stern and
forbidding. And there was no gate. 1t
was hostile, uncompromisiEg barrier.
1t was an effective monument to Mr.. Tai
bots wrath and resentment.
The summer passed on into the fall, and
the fall became raw and windy, and
eventually snowy. Mr.. Longs tomatoes
had not suffered again from Mr.. Talcott's
hens. They had ripened finely. They
had been eaten raw and stewed; they had
been made up in catsup, and they had
been pulled while green to be sliced and
picked.
Mr.. Talcott's fence had accomplished
this, and great deal more. 1t had stood
there like an evil monster, and had never
been crossed. 1t had come down like
curse from the skies, and shut off all the
old communication, and turned the old
friendship into hard enmity, and the
old trust into fixed rancor.
It became rapidly known that the two
old neighbors were mot on speaking
nd ha oil
of the rupture were not a mystery. 1t |
was known, too, that Mrs. Long and Mrs.
Talcott were not active participants in
the quarrel. Their old pleasant compan-
ionship seemed virtually ended because,
in their timid womanly submissiveness,
they obeyed the unspoken commands of
their husbands rather than face the
displeasure which would have followed
defiance of them. But they smiled when
they met each other; they fingered in the
church vestibule to exchange good morn
ing.
The autumn days filed the air with the
dim blue vapor and not unpleasat odor
of bonfire smoke. Mr.. Talcott was late
with his. He had put it off till his fall
clearing was done-the garden freed of
the dried and empty bear vines, and TAX
ed off, the weeds pulled up which had
fourished powerless for harm during the
last month or two; and which now stood
black and frozen: a few dead bushes cut
down, and the fruit trees trimmed here and
there. 1t was late in November when the
pile lay ready, log down in corner of
the plundered potato-patch. In some of
its rough holIows lay the remains of
thin snow.
Mr.. Talcott lighted it directly after
supper. Now and then he replenished it;
at o'clock it was still burning, He sat
down on an old stump to look at it as it
leaped and fickered itself out, lighting
up broad space around it and shining
on the high fence.
Mr.. Talcott sat with his elbows on his
knees and his chin in his hands. There
was a sort of peace in the clear night,
and in the early quiet which had settled
down upon it. He locked around at the
still, bare-scene and the pale-gray sky,
and felt something of the tranq utility.
A spark from the subsiding fire snap
ped into little pile of dry stalks half a
rod distant and they famed up. A twig
took fire from and burned to its end, and
q loose splinter blazed in its turn. He
watched the curious line of light as it ate
its fiKering way along. There was deep
deposite of dead leaves drifted up against
the tall fence; they took the alarm, and
glowed and cracked smartly. And then
the flames mounted Up, and grew broader
and redder-the fence had caught fire.
Mr.. Talcott got up and walked over to
it. Then he returned, With scarcely the |
haste that might be looked for, and start |
en- for the pump. He seemed rather to |
linger on the way; when he reached it, he
lc5,a
in particular before he filed a wooden |
pail, which lay near, and went back with |
it. The fence was flaming brightly; but |
he stopped to pick out chip which had
got stuck in the sole of his boot, and tied |
the old WOODEN muller ne wore around his
neck with hands that were not quite
steady. Then he peered all about him, in |
an oddly guilty way, emptied his pail of |
water on the ground, and went and sat
down OH the stumd again. He looked |
cold and cross and uneasy, and anything |
but heroic; but there was a new found |
warmth within him.
There was quite a crowd about the
place half an hour later, looking at the |
blackeued remains of the line fence !
several men, attracted by the flames,
and few women hastily wrapped up.
Mr.. Long had come out and watched the
from a discreet distance.
B ut he had drawn gradually closer, till he
finally stood poking over the warm Gin
ders with one foot. Mr.. Talcott stood
near by. They did not look at each
other for a moment. Then the latter
spoke, in a voice made high and sharp
by the greatness Of the effort.
event down Jest like paper" he said.
II guess there couldn't anybody a-stop
10 - oaui1n,+ do nothing against III