Produced by David WidgerTHAT FORTUNEBy Charles Dudley WarnerIOn a summer day long gone among the summer days that come but to goa lad of twelve years was idly and recklessly swinging in the top of atall hickory the advance picket of a mountain forest The tree was onthe edge of a steep declivity of rocky pastureland that fell rapidlydown to the stately chestnuts to the orchard to the cornfields inthe narrow valley and the maples on the bank of the amber river whoseloud unceasing murmur came to the lad on his aerial perch like thevoice of some tradition of nature that he could not understandHe had climbed to the topmost branch of the lithe and tough tree inorder to take the full swing of this free creature in its sport with thewestern wind There was something exhilarating in this elemental battleof the forces that urge and the forces that resist and the harderthe wind blew and the wider circles he took in the free air the morestirred the boy was in the spring of his life Nature was taking himby the hand and it might be that in that moment ambition was born toachieve for himself to conquerIf you had asked him why he was there he would very likely have saidTo see the world It was a world worth seeing The prospect mightbe limited to a dull eye but not to this lad who loved to climb thisheight in order to be with himself and indulge the dreams of youth Anypretense would suffice for taking this hour of freedom to hunt forthe spicy checkerberries and the pungent sassafras to aggravate thewoodchucks who made their homes in mysterious passages in this gravellyhillside to get a nosegay of columbine for the girl who spelled againsthim in school and was his gentle comrade morning and evening alongthe river road where grew the sweetflag and the snapdragon and thebarberry bush to make friends with the elegant gray squirrel and thelively red squirrel and the comical chipmunk who were not much afraidof this unarmed naturalist They may have recognized their kinship tohim for he could climb like any squirrel and not one of them couldhave clung more securely to this bough where he was swinging rejoicingin the strength of his lithe compact little body When he shouted inpure enjoyment of life they chattered in reply and eyed him with aprimeval curiosity that had no fear in it This lad in short trouserstorn shirt and a frayed straw hat above his mobile and cheerful facemight be only another sort of animal a lover like themselves of thebeechnut and the hickorynutIt was a gay world up here among the tossing branches Across the riveron the first terrace of the hill were weatherbeaten farmhouses amidapple orchards and cornfields Above these rose the wooded dome of MountPeak a thousand feet above the river and beyond that to the leftthe road wound up through the scriptural land of Bozrah to high andlonesome towns on a plateau stretching to unknown regions in the southThere was no bar to the imagination in that direction What a graciousvalley what graceful slopes what a mass of color bathing this lovelysummer landscape Down from the west through hills that crowded oneither side to divert it from its course ran the sparkling Deerfieldfrom among the springs and trout streams of the Hoosac merrily going onto the great Connecticut Along the stream was the ancient highway orlowway where in days before the railway came the stagecoach and thebig transportwagons used to sway and rattle along on their adventurousvoyage from the gate of the Sea at Boston to the gate of the West atAlbanyBelow where the river spread wide among the rocks in shallows oreddies in deep dark pools was the ancient long covered woodenbridge striding diagonally from rock to rock on stone columns adusky tunnel through the air a passage of gloom flecked with glints ofsunlight that struggled in crosscurrents through the interstices ofthe boards and set dancing the motes and the dust in a golden haze astuffy passage with odors a century oldwho does not know the pungentsmell of an old bridgea structure that groaned in all its big timberswhen a wagon invaded it And then below the bridge the lad could see thehistoric meadow which was a cornfield in the eighteenth century whereCaptain Moses Rice and Phineas Arms came suddenly one summer day tothe end of their planting and hoeing The house at the foot of the hillwhere the boy was cultivating his imagination had been built by CaptainRice and in the family buryingground in the orchard above it lay thebody of this mighty militiaman and beside him that of Phineas Armsand on the headstone of each the legend familiar at that period of ournational life Killed by the Indians Happy Phineas Arms at the ageof seventeen to exchange in a moment the tedium of the cornfield forimmortalityThere was a tradition that years after when the Indians had disappearedthrough a gradual process of intoxication and pauperism a red man hadbeen seen skulking along the brow of this very hill and peering downthrough the bushes where the boy was now perched on a tree shaking hisfist at the hated civilization and vengefully some said patheticallylooking down into this valley where his race had been so happy in thenatural pursuits of fishing hunting and war On the opposite side ofthe river was still to be traced an Indian trail running to the westernmountains which the boy intended some time to follow for this highwayof warlike forays of messengers of defiance along which white maidenshad been led captive to Canada appealed greatly to his imaginationThe boy lived in these traditions quite as much as in those of theRevolutionary War into which they invariably glided in his perspectiveof history the redskins and the redcoats being both enemies of hisancestors There was the grave of the envied Phineas Armsthat ancientboy not much older than heand there were hanging in the kitchen themusket and powderhorn that his greatgrandfather had carried