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Updated: May 25, 2025
"In the spring-house, the brick building on the brook, which you cannot see from here. I have five sons and one daughter; two of the boys are in the army, and three are past the military age, though they belong to the Millersville Home Guards, and were called out for duty three days ago. I expect them home soon; but they have been gone four days now.
I could think of a few things, but I did not mention them, for her first words recalled some scenes of my early life on a backwoods farm: the log cabin, with hardly ten nails in it, the latch-string, the wide-mouthed stone-and-stick chimney, the spring-house with its deep crocks, the smoke-house made of a hollow gum-tree log, the ladder to the loft where I slept, and where the snows would drift on the floor through the rifts in the split clapboards that roofed me over.
That spring-house had been my home for a good many years, and the tramp didn't live who could spend the night there if I knew it. I realized then that I should have taken the poker. I went over cautiously to one of the windows, wading in deep snow to get there and if you have ever done that in a pair of bedroom slippers you can realize the state of my mind and looked in.
To-night, not to-morrow." I was pretty well ashamed when I got in the spring-house and sat down in the dark. I kept saying over and over to myself, so I'd not forget, "tonight, not to-morrow," but I couldn't remember WHAT was to be to-night. I was sleepy, too, and my legs were cold and numb.
"Well, take the money, and let us ketch a couple of them chickens there," said Shorty, laying down the bill on the banister rail. After a little demur the woman finally agreed to this, and picked up the money. The boys selected two fat chickens, ran them down, wrung their necks, and, after repeating their thanks, took their bread and started for the spring-house.
He tried to think of a retort, and not finding one he slammed out of the spring-house in a rage. Mr. Van Alstyne and his wife came in that same day, just before dinner, and we played three-handed bridge for half an hour. As I've said, they'd been on their honeymoon, and they were both sulky at having to stay at the Springs. It was particularly hard on Mrs.
Many a summer's day I remembered them sewing together in the spring-house, talking in subdued voices which were hushed when I came running in. And lo! the same memory was on Dorothy's mother then, half expressed as she laid her hands upon my shoulders. "Poor Elizabeth!" she said, not to me, nor yet to Dorothy; "I wish that she might have lived to see you now. It is Captain Jack again."
What with worry and no sleep and now this new complication I was dead as yesterday's newspaper. I sat there on the floor with my hands around my knees, thinking what to do next, and as I sat there, the crayon enlargement of father on the spring-house wall began to shake its head from side to side, and then I saw it hold out its hand and point a finger at me. "Cut and run, Minnie," it said.
"Well, speculating on what men are a-going to do in this life is about like trying to read turkey tracks in the mud by the spring-house, and I'm not wasting any time on Gid Newsome's splay-footed impressions.
He could kiss all around any American I ever saw!" I went back to my news stand. I was shaking so my knees would hardly hold me. All I could think of was that they had swallowed Mr. Pierce, bait and hook, and that for a time we were saved, although in the electric light Mr. Pierce was a good bit less like Dicky Carter than he had seemed to be in the spring-house by the fire.
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