Martinsburg herald. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1881-1920, 1902-05-31
A GREAT CAPTURE.
BY ALDEN

Winter comes early and stays late in
the northern portions of Penobscot county,
Maine; but most of the winter of 1900 had
passed when Abel Cushman and his wife set
off, with horse and sleigh, to visit Mrs.
Cushman's brother, who lived about 20
miles away. They left their boy Charley,
aged IA, to keep house and care for the cows,
sheep and poultry at the barn. And in order
that he might not be lonely, they had sent
down to 0ldtown for his cousin, Charley
Stetson, to come and stay with him.
Mrs. Cushman had cooked food enough for
the boys during the week they would be
alone. To save them from that mischievous
idleness which creeps upon boys when they
play all day long, Mr.. Cushman set off a
section of the woodpile for them to reduce
to stove wood. 1t was a small section, how
ever, hardly more than a cord; they would
not be obliged to work ON it more than an
hour each day.
There was still much snow upon the
ground; but on the fourth day after the de-
parture OF Mr.. and Mrs. Cushman there
came a rainstorm which laid the fields bare
in spots, raised the brooks and flooded the
pond behind the Cushman woodlot till the
water stood a foot deep on the winter ice,
As it caanced, this portion of the state lay
near the snow line; which means that not
many many miles to the northward there
were sleet and snow instead OF rain, while
to the southwark nearly all the snow had
gone. Looking north and northwest,
Mount Katahdin showed wholly white; to
the south the hills lay bare and brown. The
rain ceased and the sky cleared in part on
the next afternoon. During the following
evening, as the two Charleys were popping
corn at the .sitting-room fireplace, Charley
Stetson thought that he heard a queer noise
up the chimney.
Sounds like geese" he said. Lots of
geese a long way off"
He continued hearing it as he shook the
corn, and at last the two boys ran to the out
side door to listen. Then, indeed, they
heard geese IN earnest. The sky, the fields
and the whole surrounding country APP
peared to be full Of geese!
1t was too dark to see them, however, and
for a long time the two lads stood at the
door, and listened to the clamor. For not
only were iocks passing over, but other
focks appeared to be c~ircling about, in con-
fusion or alarm.
wild geese flying north" said Charley
Cushman. "They fly every spring, but |
never heard so many before" Neither had
anyone else, not even the oldest inhabitant,
although this region is in the line of the
great annual spring migration of wild geese
from the southern coast northward to Hud-
son Bay.
But this season the unusual meteorolog-
zeal conditions must nave been misleading,
Finding the earth bare of snow along the
coast and for so miles inland, the locks seem
to have passed the watchword to fly north.
But as they reached the latitude Of Malta
wamkeag, they unexpectedly found the
whole country still buried in snow; and all
the lakes, streams and small ponds sealed
with ice.
The iocks in advance turned back at the
small lakes in alarm, or from lack of food;
and when these retreating iocks met Others
coming up from the south great sqnalling
prevailed. The captain ganders loudly
abused one another. Somebody had blum