Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1888-03-30
creaking fade away, falling off as If
down n hill into silence.

to mend her shoes If she would ferry him
over for nothing. Then the woman
would laugh and put out a bare foot,
hard and solid and brown, but shapely,
and ask him how he could mend that.
but when she ferried him over she would
shake her head and take no fee from him
at all.
1t was generally supposed in the sparse
settlement down by the crossroads
store, and by the semi-occasional trav-
elers, that the woman's husband was
dead. Some time & he had been
s'wanted' by the sheriff, had disap-
peared, and the she took to ferrying,
living or with her young ones in the
cabin, and if they or any others asked
any question of the missing man she
would say sharply and shortly dead"
Her cabin was clean. she cut her own
wood, the children fished in the river,
and she worked her garden, MIXED her
COW, ran the ferry when it was needed,
which was not more than two or three
times a month. and sometimes sent her
two oldest children to the crossroads
store after meal. coffee and a little sug-
ar. AS for herself she could not leave
the ferry. She watched it dav and
night in an eager, expectant way that
was, perhaps, born of her lonesome and
unusual situation.
What a life was hersl A tall. sallow
woman who worked in a garden and
pulled OK wagons over a river in a raft
ferry, who cut her own wood and dug
her potatoes, who could neither read nor
write, who lived on catfish and sweet
pntatpoc onJ l,or- natbin~ about tLa
value of being refined and intellectual!
But she was a good mother. She was
like a hen, scratching and picking for
her young ones and sheltering them
under her wings, or like a cow staying
close beside her weak and bleating calf,
or like a gentle doe regarding with fond
eyes her timid, hungry fawn. Oh, the
mother is or ought to be beautiful
whether she is in a brute's skin. under a
robe of feathers, or whether she is in the
image of Mary kneeling in alteration be-
fore her babe.
One day the mi was down on her
knees in her little garden wedding her
onion bed. Overhead the plum trees
were all in a white feather of bloom and
the bees were busy and noisy in the
VI tiititos IIt SlOlliu was SlldtN lIlt
soil fine as bread crumbs and moist, and
the worker plucked at her task as daint-
lily as a fine lady might sit at a bit of
Kensington embroidery. For my part l
do not know anything better than to be
down in the shade under a blooming
plum tree where the bees are grooming,
and nip little spears of grass and weeds
from a bed of fine black earth in which
young vegetables are sprouting. To
see the clean space grow under ones
hand. to feel the silence of the country
all about. to know without looking up
that beyond the plum blossoms there
is a blue sky and white woolly clouds, is
enough. 1t is as good as being refined
and intellectual. At any rate this
woman thought it was good. and while
she was not happy-for only children
and young lambs, a bride on her wedding
day, or a mother with her first baby in
her arms can truly be said to be happy
she was content. The children were at
play in the sands under the ruins of an
old dock, where ages ago some men had
built over schooners for a living, and the
ferry was idly tethered to the bank. 1t
was a peaceful time.
Just at this moment there sounded in
the woods the baying of hounds, a noise
hat heard in a forest always makes one
think of the booming of a funeral
drum. a dust was in the road, the
beat of horses hoofs and half a
dozen men with guns on their elbows
rode up and called to the woman
hurriedly. Two ~convicts at work in the
railroad camp in the next county had
escaped and had headed this wav-had
she seen or heard anything of them2
The woman stared at the men, clasping
the peaked ratings of her little gate with
her hard hands and seeming stricken
dumb. Well, she must come and ferry
them over the river, the leader said, and
she must keep a sharp lookout for the
men, and if they came that way she was
to send word at once to the crossroads
store. So the men. and the hounds that
had been fiercely tapping at the bitter
water, went over on the ferry and dashed
off into the dismal forest. And the
woman stood wringing her hands and
looking after them with anguish in her
eyes. Night came on, the children ate
their supper of sweet potatoes that had
been roasted in the ashes and her went
down to the river to wash their feet, after
which they crept off to bed. But
the ferry woman could not sleep. She
opened the wooden shutters and put a
pine knot. flaming brightly, on the
hearth. 1t sent forth a rich, smoky,
joyous light that could be seen far be-
yond the black, flowing tide of the river.
This done she gathered the skirt of her
pink calico gown up over her head and
went down by the ferry, watching and
waiting in a mysterious fashion. The
moon came and then went away. The
dewy night, with all its strange noises,
grew apace. The watcher looked with
a calm, confiding gaze up into the stars.
Theirs were faces she knew. They
seemed to answer her back. An owl
hooted off in the swamp. A bit of cav
ing hank fell with a splash into the
waters and a fish leaped up in mid
stream and seemed poised, for a single
breath of time, like a silver cone in the
blue dark of the night.
Suddenly the woman stepped softly
into the raft, put her hand on the rope