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Autumn began to paint the maples red and the elms yellow, for the early days of September brought a frost. Some one remarked at the village store that old Blueb'ry Tom must not be suffered to stay on the plains another winter, now that he was getting so feeble, not if the "seleckmen" had to root him out and take him to the poor-farm.
I don't s'pose it made any odds whether he was preachin' 'bout Mis' Pettigrove or the woman on the Blueb'ry road, it was a movin', elevatin' discourse, 'n' that was what we went there for." "It wouldn't 'a' ben so elevatin' if he'd told the truth," said Samantha; "but, there, I ain't goin' to spit no more spite out.
"I'd much d'ruth-er walk in the bloom-in' gy-ar-ding, An' hear the whis-sle of the jol-ly swain." Everybody knows the song, and everybody knows the cracked voice. The master of this bit of silent wilderness is coming home: it is Tom o' the blueb'ry plains. He is more than common tall, with a sandy beard, and a mop of tangled hair straggling beneath his torn straw hat.
He'd just come from a fun'ral nine miles the other side o' Moderation, up on the Blueb'ry road; so he was a leetle mite late, 'n' David 'n' I was as nervous as witches, for every room was cram full 'n' the thermometer stood at 87 in the front entry, 'n' the bearers sot out there by the well-curb, with the sun beatin' down on 'em, 'n' two of 'em, Squire Hicks 'n' Deacon Dunn, was fast asleep.
Mother or father, sister or brother, he had none, nor ever had, so far as any one knew; but how should people who had to work from sun-up to candlelight to get the better of the climate have leisure to discover whether or no Blueb'ry Tom had any kin? At some period in an almost forgotten past there had been a house on Tom's particular patch of the plains.
Pinkham hed lived there goin' on nine year, workin' their fingers to the bone 'most, 'n' yet they hadn't been able to lay up a cent!" If this peculiarity of administration was its worst feature, it was certainly one that would have had no terrors for Tom o' the blueb'ry plains.
And these, ere many days, the autumn winds would scatter, and the leafless branches on which they fell would shake them off lightly, never dreaming that they hid the soul of a home. Nothing but ashes! Poor Tom o' the blueb'ry plains! The giant elm stood in the centre of the squire's fair green meadows, and was known to all the country round about as the "Bean ellum."
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