We three

Chapter I

T was a winter afternoon, snow lying on the ground and the sun sinking in the west, a great red ball that seemed to give out no warmth, though its rays lit up beautifully the fringe of icicles that decked the front of the old shed where we had gathered, Philip, Robert and I. Outside was the little old farmhouse ; then the long stretch of snow, the grove with its bare, leafless trees standing like a disarmed and bannerless host ; and farther off the great hills behind which the sun was setting. Inside was the pile of wood for the winter’s use, and Phil leaning back against it. Rob was balancing himself on the saw-horse, his elbows on his knees, his chin between his hands ; while I stood at one side of the building, carelessly striking my hatchet into one of the old posts that had been marred and hacked with so many hatcnet-blows before. We had gone out to saw and carry in the evening’s wood, but had

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forgotten our work to have a talk — a long, serious talk for such boys as we were.

“You see,” Phil said, pushing up with the toe of his boot the chips that lay at his feet, “ it’s got to be done someway. There’s nobody left now but us, and we must take care of grandmother and Agnes, we three.”

I looked into his brave blue eyes, and replied innocently yet pointedly enough with the single little word that represents so many a weary and terrible problem in our human lives : “How?”

Phil could not answer. It took the long years that were coming to do that.

It was just four months since Uncle Mark had left the printing-office to stay at home for a little while. He had struggled for a long time with the oppressive weakness that made his steps so languid and his hand so tremulous ; but it was not to be conquered, and so, though not until necessity had usurped the place of choice, he left the office.

“ I think it is working in that close room and the warm weather together that are doing it,” he said. “ It will do me good to be out of doors, and I can work here at home, mending gates and fences, and doing whatever about the place needs to be done, and so have it all in good order by the time the weather gets cooler and I’m strong enough to go back.”

But setting the place in order did not progress very rapidly. A few attempts at something of the

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kind resulted only in the postponement of what was undertaken “ for a day or two,” until he should feel a little stronger — always but “for a day or two.” Still the long, summer days slipped by and brought no strength with them. Grandmother always found some good reason why it should be so, however. It had been so warm, or there had been a storm, or he had taken a slight cold. “ I think you’d have been a good deal better but for that,” she would say, and then set herself vigorously to preparing some new compound of strengthening roots and herbs that she was sure would do him good.

But she grew troubled and anxious at last. The teas were set aside as useless, and she insisted that a physician should be consulted. It could not do any good, Uncle Mark said ; he was “ not suffering, only weak.” Yet he yielded to her wishes, and old Dr. Graylie came. He knew his patient — that he was neither child nor coward, and that he must know the whole truth. So he told him how his life had been going in this gradual loss of strength that had been so painless, and in the slight cough that had seemed scarcely worth attending to, and now there wras no hope — told it gravely and kindly, but without any reservations or holding out of possible chances. After he had gone Uncle Mark sat long, I remember, looking out of the western window toward the glowing sky. I watched him with something of awe, wondering in my dreamy, boyish way how it must feel to be so shut awav from

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life and have this gloomy barrier raised between him and those who loved and needed him ; to have the long years that seemed to be coming with all their busy plans and purposes so suddenly struck away, and to know that he should not see them — that only a few more weeks of this earthly life were left him. I longed to know, yet dared not ask, of what he was thinking in that silence. When he turned his eyes from the sunset again, the old peaceful calm had come back to them, as if he had accepted whatever lay before him. Yet he smiled a little sadly as he met my glance, and looked at Phil and Rob.

" It will come hard for you, boys, I am afraid ; but I can’t help it now. You must do the best you, can and trust in God. He will make everything right,” he said, slowly.

Brave, unselfish Uncle Mark ! He had done his best for his widowed mother and his sister’s orphaned children ; and whatever struggles might be before us, there was indeed no hardship in our path that he could have helped. He did not talk much in those weeks of what lay just before him. He was silent usually where his own deepest feelings were concerned, and grandmother was like him in that. She had grown pale, I remember, and went about very quietly, only keeping such a tender, careful watch over him and striving to anticipate his every wish. She was not one to sit down to tears and lamentations, as many would have done.

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She took up whatever burden must needs be borne and carried it as best she might, but always silently, telling her sorrow to God only, seeking sympathy from him alone. Yet as the days passed she lingered more and more by Uncle Mark’s side, so unwilling to go out of his sight that the thoughtful Agnes noticed it and quietly took upon herself as much as possible all duties that would call her away. Grand mother’s glance was always wandering toward him, whatever she was doing, and their eyes met often, his with the steady smile in them, and hers patient but very sad, though it seemed to me toward the last that his had looked some of their own peace into hers.

The end came with the sharp cold of the early winter days, and we laid him to sleep under the first pure white snow — the first snow, that always to me in my brief boy-life before had appeared hurrying, frisking down, filled with visions of sledriding, snow-balling and the merry Christmastime; but has fallen in no winter since without bringing a thought of a new-made grave in a little village churchyard which it seems softly, tenderly, covering up. Nature grows into our lives, into our very souls, so ! I have read somewhere of physicians having found upon the body of one killed by lightning a perfect photograph of the tree through which the shaft had passed to reach him. Branch, twig and leaf were faithfully reproduced. So some sorrows seem to imprint

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upon the soul the surroundings through which they strike. We may not notice at the time if the day be bright or dark, if the flowers are still blooming or all nature has grown dark with our gloom ; but when the changing seasons have brought the sunlight to shine on the same spot, the leaves throw just the same shimmering shadows on the old path, and the soft air comes again with its peculiar odor of clover or violet, we thrill and tremble and live over and over in thought the time that is dead and gone. That peculiar phase of nature, whatever it may be to all the world beside, brings to us ever the picture of which it was once the setting, and makes such days on through all the years haunted days to us.

The wind blew drearily through the snow-laden pines that day, and mingled its voice in the brief prayer. It was the only audible moan which broke the silence that followed; and then we turned homeward. I remember pausing for a moment at the door and stealing a glance into the front room, which bustling little Mrs. McKenzie had hurried herself to put in order while we were gone — that is, she had ranged the chairs stiffly back against the wall and rolled the table which had so lately held our dead loved one into its accustomed place. But despite the bright fire she had kindled, it all looked to my troubled eyes strange and gloomy. Several persons were there talking with my grandmother and Agnes, and I stole away to the more

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familiar kitchen, into which the sunlight streamed, and where my grandmother’s plants bloomed in the window. I drew something like a breath of relief as I saw them, and felt for a moment as if I had escaped from some cold, dark prison into a warm, bright, living world once more.

Mrs. McKenzie and another neighbor, Mrs. Stetson, were standing by one of the windows talking together, and did not seem to notice me as I drew a low chair to the fire.

“ Yes, that’s what McKenzie says. It’s just the place, and nothing else,” the little woman was saying, earnestly.

“ Well, now — I do think — Why, it’s like — like — Ain’t it, now?” responded Mrs. Stetson, not very lucidly.

Such fragmentary attempts at a remark were a peculiarity with her ; she seemed always endeavoring to say something that she never could get fairly out, and usually accompanied the effort with a gesture not unlike that of one trying to brush away a troublesome fly.

“ It’s a pretty big garden-patch, to be sure, but it ain’t big enough to be worth anything for a farm,” continued Mrs. McKenzie; “and besides, there’s nobody to work it if it was.”

“ Well, now, I should think — It seems to me — But then I don’t know either and having scattered so many words from her lips by dint of vigorous brushing, Mrs. Stetson paused with a little shake

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of her head, as if trying to loosen something that still stuck in her throat.

“ There was some money in the bank, you see, but then he’s had to be drawing it out until there isn’t but a little left; husband says he knows there can’t be. I’m so sorry I don’t know what to do, and I told him so this morning when he was talking about it,” Mrs. McKenzie wrent on, too much absorbed in her subject and accustomed to her listener to notice or care that the conversation was onesided. “ It will come real hard, and none of the children being grown up or anything.”

“ Yes, it is so — It does seem like — Well, it is sad. Why, it would have been more — that is, a good deal better,” ventured Mrs. Stetson, uncertainly.

“ If he could have left something ? To be sure it would ; but then he wasn’t to blame, poor dear ! He did the best he could ; every one that knew him will say that. But you see being sick so long cost a good deal, and there’s quite a number to take care of ; and after he left the printing-office there was nothing coming in.”

The sorrow and excitement of the day must somewhat have bewildered me, I think, for not until the printing-office was mentioned did I comprehend that they were talking of Uncle Mark — of us. Almost at the same moment Mrs. McKenzie discovered me, and with an expressive nod to Mrs. Stetson suddenly dropped the conversation. The latter lady left the room presently, and Mrs.

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McKenzie after a moment came and stood beside me.

“ Now, Winford, don’t fret, dear, don’t ! It can’t do any good, you know ; and besides, it is not right. Oh, dear ! it is hard — it just is ! I am sorry for you as ever I can be, but you must try and do the best you can, and grow up to be as good a man as your uncle,” she said, patting my shoulder with her fat hand, while the tears rolled down her plump cheeks.

Neither her words nor her manner would have answered for a model of elegant condolence, I suppose, yet they convinced me of her earnest sympathy and made their way into my boyish heart as many a more eloquent and careful remark upon the universality of affliction and the duty of resignation would have failed to do.

The people who had come home with us went away, lingering a little and going one by one, as if not willing to leave us to the strange loneliness that death brings to a family circle ; but at last all were gone, and we were alone. Agnes closed up the front room then, and came out with a little shiver, as if she had a feeling something like mine about it, and we all gathered in the large pleasant kitchen as we were wont to do. No, not all — that never could be again ; yet now that we were alone and the strange faces gone, it was hard to realize that such a change had really come. The room had just its usual cosy, home-like air. The cheerful fire throwing gleams of light on the yellow-painted

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floor, the little round stand with its few books, the homely, easy rocking-chair, the tall, old-fashioned clock in the corner with its steady, monotonous tick, — all were as in the olden time, the time that was ended and gone beyond our reach for ever. I grew bewildered trying to comprehend it, and stole a glance at the others to see if I could read their faces. We were sitting silently, Phil gazing thoughtfully into the fire, Agnes turning somewhat absently the leaves of the old Bible, and grandmother — I started as if it were almost sacrilege that she had taken up her knitting. Poor grandmother ! I think she had borne as long as she could the enforced idleness that seemed to make the weight press still more heavily upon her burdened heart, and now she sat with swiftly-moving needles knitting in — who shall say what thoughts and memories?

“ Shall I not stay with you to-night, grandmother?” Agnes asked, pausing a moment, lamp in hand, as we were about separating for the night, and looking back as if unwilling to leave the dear grandparent.

She looked up, a little surprised at first :

“ Why, dear, Pm well, you know. No, I don’t need any one. Good-night.”

So Agnes went away and left her, and she passed the night alone, a widow, and bereft of the last of her children now. But whatever of bitter conflict and terrible sorrow the hours held He only knew who passed alone through Gethsemane, with none

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even of his best beloved to “ watch with him one hour.”

In our little room that night I told Phil of the conversation I had overheard concerning our circumstances.

“ Do you suppose it is true ?” I asked, in conclusion, for he had listened without a word.

“Yes,” he answered, slowly. “I never thought about it before, but it is true. I know it must be. Uncle Mark had a few hundred dollars in the bank — I don’t know just how much ; but you know he has been sick a good while, and all the time we’ve been living off it, and doctor’s bills to pay, and everything. I expect we are poor enough now.”

“ But, Phil,” said I, earnestly, “ what shall we do about it?”

“I don’t know,” he answered, a little trouble stealing into his voice. “We will have to think about it and find out.”

He certainly did think about it that night ; and largely mingled with boyish hopefulness as his thoughts were, they somewhat disturbed his slumbers, for I awakened at midnight to find that he had not slept. He was the oldest of us boys, my senior by little more than a year, and I felt great confidence that somehow he would think the matter all out straight.

We had been talking the subject all over that evening, out in the old shed, four days after Uncle

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Mark’s funeral, discussing our slender resources, the place and its capabilities. It had beema farm at one time away in the past, but the ground had been sold a little at a time as the village grew up around it, until now there was nothing left but the house, small and old-fashioned, but comfortable, the yard and garden, and a little strip of grove besides.

“ That is all, and so we boys will have to earn our own living now, and take care of grandmother and Agnes,” said Phil, soberly.

Even Rob’s face wore an expression as nearly serious as so merry a face could wear, and for once he was not whistling.

“ Well, what can we do?” he asked, after a brief pause, during which he had been meditatively knocking his heels against the saw-horse.

“ I can’t tell yet. I expect there’ll be some way to do it, though, and we must be ready to look after anything that comes up.”

“ I don’t believe there will anything come up unless we plant it,” responded Rob, doubtfully, his thoughts evidently running in the direction of the garden.

Phil laughed : “ Oh, I wasn’t meaning that sort of thing. I rather guess you’re right about it in more ways than that, though, for I don’t believe anything will come up for us anywhere unless we do something to start it ; and that’s what I mean to try to do. We’ll have to think about it, and

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not have our heads full of nothing but school and fun, just as we always have before.”

Phil glanced as he spoke toward one side of the shed, where was quite an armory of wooden pistols, swords and guns which we had manufactured to use on pretended hunting and scouting expeditions. My eyes followed Phil’s, and I experienced a sudden feeling of responsibility and added manliness, mingled with a queer pang of regret, as I reflected that such things would be quite too childish for us thereafter ; we should have more important affairs to think of with a family on our hands.

Agnes’ voice broke in upon our discussion. “ Come, boys ; supper is ready,” she called, standing for a moment on the steps with the open door behind her, making a background of light and warmth for her slender black-robed figure. She was the oldest of us all, somewhat over eighteen then ; a quiet, thoughtful girl, with large gray eyes shaded by long dark lashes, a face almost too colorless for perfect health, and soft dark-brown hair drawn smoothly back from her forehead. A sister well worth taking care of, I thought, glancing toward her. Rob and I gathered up the armfuls of wood we had sawed, while Phil hastily finished splitting the kindling, and we hurried into the house, becoming suddenly conscious that our hands and feet had become very cold while we talked.

That evening, when we read our Bible chapter as usual, Agnes chose the first of Joshua. Her

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clear voice, pure enunciation and the readiness with which she seemed to catch the spirit of what she read made it pleasant to listen to her always. But this chapter had a peculiar interest for us :

“ Moses, my servant, is dead ; now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou and all the people.

. . . As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee; I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.

“ Only be thou strong* and very courageous. . . . This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein ; for then thou shalt make thy way very prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.

“Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage ; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed; for the Lord thy God is with thee, whithersoever thou goest.”

Phil and I looked at each other.

“ I shouldn’t think Joshua could have feared • anything after that,” remarked Phil.

“ I think he had great need to be strong and of good courage, though,” said Agnes, thoughtfully, closing the book. “Just think of it! He had always looked to Moses before, and relied upon him to command and direct every movement, to inquire of God and control the people. And now the great leader that had been with them so long was suddenly taken away, and he was left with all

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this great people on his hands, questioning, rebellious and restless as they always were. The Jordan was before him to be crossed — perhaps he scarcely knew how then — and beyond it was the land which they were only to make their home by meeting its inhabitants in battle and driving them out. I suppose Joshua hardly felt sure of either himself or his people then.”

“ But after the promise he could feel secure of his God, and that was of vastly more importance — the only thing that was of any consequence, indeed,” said grandmother, slowly. “ Feeling sure of one’s self was no security for safe entrance into the promised land then, nor ever has been since.”

“ I liked that chapter, Win ; someway, it seemed as if it was meant for us,” said Phil as we mounted the stairs that led to our little room.

“Yes,” I answered, and fell asleep with the words still in my mind : “ Be thou strong and very courageous.”

Chapter II

AVING made up one’s mind to do something heroic, one naturally wishes to be about it, and the substitution of common things is not exactly agreeable. I had formed a vague idea of entering immediately upon some great undertaking, I scarcely knew what, and our starting to school again on Monday morning like ordinary boys was a disappointment. Even Phil asked, a little doubtfully,

“Shall we go, grandmother?”

“ Surely ; why not ?” she answered, adding, after a moment’s pause, “ It may be only a little while that you can go, and it is best to make the most of what time you have.”

It was the only wise and sensible course, certainly, that while there was- nothing else for us to do we should make the most of our time at school. We saw that at once, and began silently gathering up our books. We had said nothing to grandmother about our resolves and plans, nor had she spoken to us in any way of the state of our affairs and the circumstances in which Uncle Mark’s death had placed us. Perhaps she thought we would learn soon enough, and that it would be time 18

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to talk of it when there was something for us to do.

“ Don’t see how going to school is going to earn any money or help take care of anybody/’ said Rob, taking particular pains to walk out of the beaten path and into the deepest snow as we went down through the garden. “ An education is a good thing/’ he continued, oracularly, “but I’m sure I care enough for Agnes and grandma to be willing to give up school to keep along.”

Both Phil and I laughed. Bob was not overwhelmingly fond of school at any time, and had always been willing to make a similar sacrifice upon the slightest provocation.

“Well, what are you laughing at?” he asked, reddening.

“ Nothing ; only you have been ready to do as much as that for the sake of playing ball or going fishing any time,” Phil answered, rather provokingly.

“What of it?” said Bob, indignantly. “Of course I like fun as well as anybody — I never said I didn’t — but stopping out a day now and then is a different thing from giving up getting an education altogether, I should think.”

“ I don’t mean to do that, anyway,” said Phil, quietly, the flash of mischief fading out of his eyes and a more thoughtful look coming back to them. “ I don’t see any need of it.”

“ Humph !” ejaculated Bob, discontentedly, and

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I looked up, not quite understanding Phil’s meaning.

“ Going to school isn’t the only way of learning anything, is it?” he asked, catching my glance. “ Almost anybody can find some time to read and study if he wants to, even if he does have to work. It would be a queer idea not to try to learn anything more if we have to leave school. I mean to know all I can, anyhow.”

“ Ho !” exclaimed Nat McKenzie, catching the last words as he and his brother met us at the gate ; “ you’ll be a smart fellow if you know some of the lessons we’ve got to-day, I can tell you. Why, even Dan couldn’t get ’em,” with a comical sidelong glance at his brother.

“ No,” said Dan, slowly ; “ someway, I couldn’t get ’em into my head. The more I remembered ’em, the more I couldn’t study ’em straight ; and when I shut up my book and said ’em all over to myself, I didn’t know a word of ’em.”

“ Yes, that was just the way of it,” laughed Nat. “ I knew it was no use for me to try after that, so I just made myself comfortable and went out sliding. Say, Phil, do you know the lessons, though, you and Win?”

“We don’t even know where they are. How should we, when we haven’t been to school for a week ?” I answered, a little shortly. I thought he might have remembered.

“ Oh, I forgpt,” he exclaimed, apologetically, his

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face growing suddenly sober ; and we walked on for a few moments in silence, Nat not knowing how to express his boyish sympathy, and the slow, good-natured Dan, as usual, not comprehending what we were talking about until some time after we had done talking.

" Oh, I know — about your Uncle Mark,” he suddenly burst out after we had walked on some distance.

“ Hush, Dan !” interposed Nat.

“ Everybody’s real sorry,” said the kind-hearted Dan, fishing in the depth of his pocket for something like consolation, and drawing out three rosy apples. “ Here, take these. I don’t want ’em, and we’ve got lots more at home.”

We reached the school-house; it was no stately edifice of stone or brick, with numerous rooms and many teachers. It was a low frame building standing in the edge of a grove of pines and containing only the little ante-room where a goodly array of caps, tippets, hoods and shawls, with a sprinkling of dinner-baskets and pails, already decorated the pegs, and the school-room beyond. A good-sized room was this last, with the teacher’s raised platform and table at one end, and opposite to it the rows of clumsy wooden desks and benches carved in many a “ quaint device” by experimenting jackknives.

Quite a group were gathered around the old stove when we entered, and after a little, engineering we

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crowded our way into the circle of warmth. Two or three of the older scholars moved aside a little as I drew near them and made room for me, while some of the girls looked up with a glance of sympathy. Then the stream of talk went on again, and as I listened to animated discussions concerning snow-ball battles and the relative speed of sleds it seemed to me that I must have grown a great deal older in the week I had been away.

The bell suddenly scattered the talkers, and we hurried away to our respective desks. Phil and I sat together, and presently the teacher, passing up the aisle, stopped beside us. He was not one who held his office from any great love of it. It was merely an enforced pause in his own studies to secure the means of pressing onward, and he felt far more interest in his own future as a member of the bar than in developing any genius in the young ideas under his charge. Still, if he neither felt nor awakened any enthusiasm in regard to the school, he was too honest to be consciously unfaithful, and was tolerably patient and kind — very kind — to us that day as he stopped and talked for a moment or two, showing his sympathy more by his tone and manner than by his words. He told us what ground our classes had been over while we were away, and added that if we chose to look it over that day, instead of reciting, we could do so.