Adirondack Tales

Front matter

Adirondack ||ales : Story of the Man Who Didn't Know Much. Story that the Keg Told Me. Sketches .- — I. — En Route — Jet and the Cat. II. — Crossing a Carry in the Dark. III. — Climbing White-Face. BY W. H. H. MURRAY. AUTHOR OF "ADVENTURES IN THE WILDERNESS," "THE PERFECT HORSE," ETC. 3Lon"O0n : RICHARD D. DICKINSON, FARRINGDON STREET. 1878. CONTENTS. PAGE The Story that the Keg Told Me . . ' I Tin: Story of the Man Who Didn't Know Much — Part 1 79 Tart IT 176 Part III 249 Sketches— I. En Route: "Jet and the Cat" 321 II. Crossing a Carry in the Dark 327 III. Climbing White-Face IN MEMORIAM. to the memory of him who was my friend, wise in counsel and constant : to whom the earlier pages of this volume were read. and whose appreciation remains chiefest among the pleasant associations connected with its authorship: whose sudden and, as itseems to us who mourn, untimely departure from the earth stands as one of the great griefs and losses of my life, I DEDICATE THIS VOLUME. THE STORY THAT THE KEG TOLD ME. -t% jlionj %i % % ialh Re.

Chapter I. The Keg

" There is society where none intrudes." — Eyron. IT was near the close of a hot, sultry clay in midsummer, which I had spent in exploring a part of the shore line of the lake where I was camping, and the tortuous inlet Avhich led into the same ; and weaned with the trip I had made I was returning towards the camp. There was no motive for haste, and I was taking it easily. Indeed, I was in that quiet, contented state of mind, into which one easily falls in the woods, where his labours are dictated by his amuse ments and his physical necessities, and not by the duties which carry with them obligation ; and I had done little more than drift with the lazily-moving current. The quiet inaction, slow as it was, corresponded with my mood ; and I felt almost a regret when my boat floated out from be tween the shrubby banks into the open waters of the little lake.

It was a very secluded sheet of water, hidden away between the mountains, not marked on the map, and whose existence was entirely unsuspected by me until in my aimless wanderings B I had a few days before accidentally stumbled upon it. Indeed I doubt if in all the woods there is another sheet of water so shut in from observation and so likely to escape the eye, I will , not say of the tourist and sportsman, but even of the hunter and trapper. It was because of this fact that I had fallen in love with it. Here was silence undisturbed by any noise of man's making. Here I could escape the prying eyes of idle and provoking curiosity. • Here I could watch the habits of animated nature and study the mystery of her charm without interruption. And here the wisdom which man learns inde pendent of utterance — the wisdom ofthe unspoken and the unknown — might, so far as I was fit, be received by me.

The first day on the little lake I spent in paddling around its shores, in close scrutiny of them. In every bay into which I successively paddled I expected to find a hunter's cabin. On every point I doubled I looked for a sportsman's lodge. I circled every island in my sharp quest. But in vain. There was not a cabin or lodge, a charred coal nor mark of a guide's axe or trapper's knife in the entire circuit. Astonished and incredulous, I devoted another day to the examination. I even landed at every spot where Nature had suggested a camp ground, and seached, with framed eye, for the evidence of man's visitation, but found none ; not even the least trace. Springs I found, cool as iced water and clear as crystal ; but neither mark of axe, nor knife, nor fire. Convinced at last, I paddled out to the middle of the lake, feeling, as I watched the sun go down, the shadows deepen and the stars come out, that I beheld what no human eye had ever looked upon : a place unvisited by man from the foundation of the world.

In such a place the sense of time passes from you, and the sense of eternity is experienced. The years you have lived, the years of the world, are as if they were not, and you seem to be co-existent with the birth of material things. For are not the mountains around you as they were when God called them up out of the depths ? And is not the sky above them the same? And the great round sun, what has changed it ? Yea, and the water, is it not as it was when its parent springs first poured it forth ? In such a place one realizes that it is toil and worry and the giief of living, and not years, which make us grow old ; for behold, the years rest lightly on whatever is free of these. For that which does not work nor weep is for ever young. And so it came about that the feeling that I was the only man who had ever visited this lake was so forced upon me by what seemed indisputable evidence, that I accepted it as a fixed fact.

The idea took utter possession of me, and became a part of my consciousness. There was not a sign osman nor of man's coming or going, on the shores, and therefore I know man had never visited it. To me this was an absolute fact, as sure as life itself. Well, as I was saying, it was near sunset when my boat drifted on the current that flowed with easy motion from the little inlet, out upon the quiet bosom of the lake. The sun was already sinking in the west, and the peculiar silence which attends the close of a summer's day in solitary places possessed the atmosphere. The heat was fast leaving the air and the coolness of the coming night was growing perceptible to the senses. My camp was only a short mile down the lake, and towards it, with easy stroke of the paddle, I urged my homeward course.

" To-morrow," I said to myself as I paddled along, " I will leave the lake. It is too lonely even for me, and its steady, unbroken silence day after day is getting oppressive. I am undoubtedly the only man that was ever on this sheet of water ; even the deer here do not know what sort of an animal I am, and the rats will scarcely get out of the way of my boat. I will move out of this to-morrow nor will I stop until I find some traces of my kind." Thus muttering to • myself I paddled along, watching the reflections of sky and clouds in the clear unruffled depths beneath, and thinking of the centuries in which they had received and reflected back the changes in the firmament sus pended above them. I had already come to the point on the other side of which my camp lay, when my paddle, as it moved B forward for another stroke, struck against something floating in the water.

I might not have noticed it, perhaps, but for the fact that it sounded hollow as my paddle struck against it. Curious, because of the peculiarity of the sound, to know what it was, with a quick turn of my wrist I reversed my paddle, checked the boat in its course, and with a sharp stroke sent it backward along the line of its wake. As I repassed the object I reached down, and finding I could raise it, lifted it into the boat. I will confess I started as if an electric current had been shot unexpectedly into me. It was a KEG ! Now, finding a keg in some places would not be very sur prising : in a ship-yard for instance, or in a cooper's shop, a farmer's cellar, or in a liquor saloon ; for in such places kegs are plenty and you expeet to see them. Nor would it have astonished me had I met it on a frequented river, or in any place where men come and go ; but to find a keg on this lonely lake, where I felt man had never been — where no living soul had ever existed — was you will admit, reader, a startling experience.

Nevertheless, there it was — a real keg, with oaken staves and iron bands, with a bottom intact, and perfect in all respects save that the head was missing. As I recall it now it is really laughable the way I sat and stared at it. I rubbed my eyes to make sure of my sight. I tapped it with the blade of my paddle and rolled it half over and then back again, to make sure that it was what it seemed. Convinced at last, I sat and looked at it, questioning. Where did it come from? How did it get there? Who brought it, and when, and for what purpose ? Where is he who brought it? Is he living or dead, and where is his camp ? These and like interrogations I put to myself as I sat in my boat on that lonely lake, in the growing darkness, looking at that Keg. " Well," I said at last, speaking aloud, as one quickly forms the habit of doing, when alone, " well, sitting here and staring at it don't answer such questions, nor satisfy my hunger, either ; and I had better shove in to camp and get supper."

When supper was over and the necessary wood for my fire laid in for the night, I went out for a while, as was my wont, upon the point, for a quiet smoke, and to observe the appearance ofthe night. Of the beauty of such a place and hour those who never journeyed beyond the haunts of men know nothing. The sky was without a cloud. The air was breathless. Even the pines had forgotten in slumber their mournful plaint, and stood like so many shadows, dense, motionless and dumb. The water w*as as moveless as the atmosphere. It received the heaven as a mirror receives a face. It stole and appropriated the lustre of the firmament, and borrowed from the bespangled sky an ornamentation for its blank spaces as glorious as the heaven's own. The sky was blue-black, and out of its cerulean gloom the pointed stars shot gleams of many-coloured fire.

The mountains, sombre and vast, rested on their broad bases as if their foundations were laid in everlasting silence. The odours of the forest filled the damp air like incense. A loon far down trie lake, as if oppressed by the all-pervading silence, poured into the still air the prolonged sound of its mournful call. It entered into, and lingered sadly for a moment in the air, then passed away, making the silence that followed even more profound. Deeply affected by the spell of the lonely place and the hour, I arose from the stone on which I had been sittting, crossed the point, and returned to my little camp. I busied myself for a moment or two in starting my fire, and when the flames of it rose clear and strong I seated myself with my back against a pine, and half reclining gazed off upon the lake.

As I thus sat watching the reflection of the fire light in the water, my eyes fell upon the Keg. It seemed, in some sort, a kind of companion to me, alone as I was ; a visible bond binding me to my kind; a reminder of the life that men were living in the great roaring busy world outside and beyond the lonely lake on whose silent shore I then was lying. It reminded one of life, — or what men call life, — the getting and the giving ; the saving and the spending ; the loving and the hating ; of the thousands far away. I fell again to wondering where it came from, and by whom it was brought over the mountains, and for what purpose ; — wondering what its history was, and what had become of him who once handled it ; — whether he were living or dead, and a hundred other things such as one might fancy in such a spot, in such an hour, looking at such an object so strangely found.

It may be I was awake ; it may be I was asleep ; but as I was thus looking steadily and curiously at it, and wondering strange things about it, it seemed to change its appearance, and become different from a Keg ; even a MAN ; a little man ; a very little man, — a man not more than eighteen inches high, with the queerest little legs, and the funniest little body, and the tiniest face one ever saw. — but still a man. And, then, standing bolt upright and looking straight at me with its little gleaming eyes, that glowed like glistening beads, — wonder of wonders ! it opened its diminutive mouth, and began to talk ! the story of the keg. " I suppose," it said — and as it began to speak it leaned slightly towards me as a man might in listing himself upon his toes— and its ludicrous-looking face took to itself a grave expression, funny to see, — " I suppose," it said, " that you are very much astonished to hear me talk, as a man can, and to know that I even have a mouth at all ; but I have, sir, a very good mouth indeed, and a tongue inside of it, too, as you will learn before I have done telling my story.

For I have seen and heard strange things, both before and since I came into these woods, and had many queer experiences, of which I propose to tell you if you will only sit still and hear me, and not go clean off to sleep, as you seem inclined to do. O yes," it continued, " I desire to tell you my story ; the story of the man who brought me here ; why he did it, and what came of it ; and how he lived and died. Ancl it is a very sad story indeed ; and it pains me even to recall it." And here the Keg lifted one of its little thin hands, and placed it with great em phasis upon its heart, " but it contains a lesson which it were well that all men, who strive to be rich and are growing to love money, should hear, and I trust that what I tell to you to-night, you will some day tell to them ; and I trust it will do them good, and be a warning to them, and make them wiser than was the poor man who once owned me, and who died right here on the point off which you found me, — peace be to his soul ! and, indeed, I think he did find peace in the end, although he found it by a weary way, and a steep one, and one which led him nigh into hell.

But I will go back to the beginning and tell you all just as it happened, and the reason of things as I saw and felt them long years ago. "The earliest remembrance I have of myself is of the cooper's shop where I was made ; and a nice looking keg I was then, too, although you may not believe it judging by my present appearance. But that was many years ago, and you must remember that years wear the life and beauty out of kegs as much as they do out of men ; and although I look so worn and weakly now, yet I can recall the time that my staves were all smooth and clean, so that the oak grain showed clearly from top to bottom of me, and my steel hoops were as bright and shiny as steel can be. I have had many hard knocks since then, and seen hard usage enough to drive the very staves out of me time and again ; but the cooper that made me made me on his honour, and took a deal of honest pride in putting me together, as every workman should in doing his work.

And I remember as if it were but yesterday — for I have laughed over it many a time when I had poor reason to laugh at anything — that when I was finished, and the cooper had sanded me off and oiled me so that my side fairly shone, he set me up on his bench and said to his apprentice boy : ' There, that keg will last till the Judgment Day, and well on towards night at that.' "

Chapter II

the miser. " Some lone miser visiting his store Bends at his treasure, counts, recounts it o'er." Goldsmith. WELL, one day, a few weeks after, a man came into the shop and asked the master : ' Have you a good strong keg for sale ?' And he put the question in such an earnest, half spiteful and half suspicious way, that I fairly started within my hoops, and opened my eyes wide to take a good look at him ; and a very peculiar man I saw, too, I assure you. He was quite a young-looking man, not more than forty years of age ; of good height and strongly built He was a gentleman evidently, although his face was darkly tanned and his clothes were old and threadbare. His mouth was rather small than large. His lips were thin and had a look of being tightly drawn over the teeth — at least it seemed so to me.

His chin was very long, and was joined at the base to large, strong jaws. His hair was brownish-black, and not over-abundant ; indeed, I am not sure that he had not even then begun to grow slightly bald. But the remarkable feature of his face was his eyes. They were blue-grey in color, smallish in size, and set in deep under the arch of the eye brows. How hard and steel-like they were, and restless as a rat's ! And what an intense look of suspicion there was in them, — a half-scared, defiant look, as if their owner felt every one to be his enemy, against whom he must stand on his guard, and whom he might at any instant have to fight and kill. Ah, what eyes they were ! and how they came and went to and from your face, and shot their glances at you and into you — aye, and through you, too. I grew to know them well afterwards, and to know what the strange, wild light in them meant ; but of that by and by.

" ' Have you got a good strong keg to sell, I say ? ' he shouted to my master, who was hammering away at a barrel so that he had not heard the man enter, much less his question. ' A good stout keg ? ' said my master, as he turned around and looked squarely at the questioner. ' I should say that I had, Mr. Roberts; do you want one?' 'Yes,' returned the other, ' I do, but I want a strong one, — strong, do you hear ? ' — and he took a step towards my master as if he meant to strike him. ' Strong enough to hold the devil himself if he were in it, or a sinner's hope of heaven, either, if you like that better,' and he sneered the sentence out as if the blessed hope of Paradise were fit only to point a fool's joke. ' Well, I don't know much about the devil, Mr. Roberts,' rejoined my master, — ' not so much as you do, it may be ; and as to one's hope of heaven, I don't build kegs to keep that in ; but there's a keg,' — and my master tapped me with his mallet until I rang clear as a bell — ' that I made with my own hands, from the best of stuff, and I said to the boys when I finished it that it would last till the Day of Judgment ; and I verily believe it will, if white oak staves and steel hoops can last that long.' ' I didn't ask you anything about the Day of Judgment, or anything else the long winded parsons talk about and frighten their cowardly followers with,' snarled the other. ' All I want is a good strong keg — strong as can be made of wood and iron — and if that keg is what you say it is, I want it and will take it, if you won't cheat me at the bargain, as I dare say you would like to do ; what is your price, eh ? ' Well, the price was set, the money paid with a muttered protest, and Mr. Roberts hoisted me up under his arm and hastened with me out of the shop.

"Well, you can imagine that I felt very anxious about myself, and wondered as I was being hurried along, where I was being taken, and what use I was to be put to ; but I made up my mind to do my duty and hold whatever my new master should give to my trust so that my maker might not hear ill of me ; but I little thought what was to befall me, or what I should have to bear as the years went round. For I have seen dreadful sights in my time, and beheld things too awful to declare. For I have seen the undoing of a man, and the wreck of a human soul ! " Well, as I was saying, my new master hurried me along without stopping to speak to any one, although we passed many, and I noticed that no one of all we passed spoke to him, but looked at him coldly or wonderingly, and that he, whenever we were about to meet any one, whether man, woman or child, only clutched me the more tightly and hurried on the faster At last we came to a common-looking sort of a house, set back from the road, with a very high fence built clear around it, and a heavy padlock on the gate, and great strong wooden shutters at every window.

Into this my master entered and set me down carefully upon the floor. This done, he went back to the door and locked it, and drew two large iron bolts or bars across it, securing them most carefully in the sockets. He then w*ent to every window and examined them to see if each was fastened. He carefully examined every room and closet, even looking into the ash-hole and the oven in the chimney. Then lighting a candle he went down into the cellar, and after that up into the attic, carrying the candle in one hand and a great club or bludgeon in the other. " By this time I had made up my mind that I had fallen into the hands ofa maniac, and that my new master was insane. Leastwise I did not know what to make of him, or what was to be the upshot of his strange ways. After a while he came back to the room where he had left me, and took me up and set me on the table ; and starting the upper hoop proceeded to take out one of my heads.

At this I was thoroughly frightened, and kept my eyes on him wherever he went, as I wanted to see what his strange conduct meant, and what he would do next. When he had taken one of my heads out, he went to an old drawer under the cupboard and got a large sheepskin, with the wool closely clipped ; and with a pair of large shears proceeded to fit me with a lining of it. I must say that he did it with remarkable cleverness, and that when he was done with me I was lined as well as any tailor could line me. But what it all meant I couldn't guess ; and so I watched and waited. For you will admit that no keg was ever treated as he was treating me, and that I had good reason to be surprised. "After he had done lining me with the soft skin he seemed more easy, and less nervous, and he put his hands inside of me and felt of his work and was evidently pleased at it ; for he rubbed his hands together, and his eyes glistened, and he said to himself : ' There !

I call that a pretty good fit ; I don't think old Tim, the tailor, would have done it better.' And then he laughed to himself and rubbed his hands together again as if he had said a very funny thing. By this time it was well on towards night, and he kindled a fire in the fire-place— a very small fire it was, only a little thin blaze made of three or four short sticks which looked as if they had been picked up in the roadway, and a handful or two of chips. But small as the blaze was he managed to heat a little kettle of water by it and cook a cup of tea, which he placed upon an old board-table alongside ofa loaf of bread, and then he sat down by the table and began to eat the bread and drink the tea. And this was all the supper he had, and I thought it very strange that so large a man should be content with such a supper ; but I grew used to the sight afterwards, and ceased to wonder, as you will when you know the cause of his frugality.

" After he had done eating, he wrapped the remainder of the bread carefully in a piece of paper, and put it away with the little tea-kettle in the cupboard. And then he went to the door and re-examined the bolts, and looked closely to all the shutters, while I stood and wondered what his strange actions meant, and why he was so anxious that the doors and windows should all be fastened so tightly; for the neighbourhood was a good one, and the people law-abiding, so much so that the doors of half the houses in the village were never locked of nights, even from one year's end to the other. " When he had done all this, he brought the club or blud geon that I had seen him carry up stairs with him when he went up into the attic, and laid it on the table beside me, and also a large thick knife, with a strong horn handle, which he had taken from the mantel-piece where it had been lying ; and then he went to the ash-hole in the chimney, and brought the ash-pail, which was full of ashes ; and he went to the cupboard, and brought an old earthen jar ; and from under the bed he fetched a bag ; and from a chamber overhead he brought a small box ; and from the cellar he returned with a sack, all damp with earth.

All the while I kept my eyes well open, you may believe, wondering what it all meant, and what there was in the pail and the jar and the box and the bag and the sack. Well, when he had these all side by side near the table, he sat down ancl out of the ash-pail he took a small pot, and having blown the ashes off it with great care, he turned it bottom upwards on the table, and — merciful heaven ! what do you think was in it ? " Dollars ! Gold Dollars ! " Then he took the bag and untied the cord that held the mouth, and emptied it upon the table, and it, too, was full of dollars — gold dollars ! And then, one after the other, he opened the jar and the box and the sack, and out of each and all he poured a great stream of bright golden dollars ! Oh, what a pile of them there was ! What a heap they made I Flow they gleamed and glistened !

How they jingled and rang ! How they rattled and clinked as he poured them down upon the dark boards ! And how his eyes gleamed in their deep sockets as they saw the golden stream, and how the thin lips drew apart as the dollars flowed out, until his teeth showed their line of white back of them, and his hands shook and trembled as if the palsy was in them ! " It was a dreadful sight to see him sit down, and leaning over the table, run his hands under the yellow heap and lift the pieces up so that the bright bits flowed over and out of his hollow palms and ran down through his parted fingers in shining streams. And then to hear him laugh as he played with the glistening coin ! How mirthless his laughter was — hard and sharp and ringing like the metallic ring of the dollars itself. Oh, it was dreadful to think that a human soul could love money so.