in due time the whole family took up its abode in the cabin. the household furniture had been brought out and bestowed in its scanty space, the bookcase had been set up, and the unbound books packed in easily accessible barrels.
there yet remained some of our possessions to follow, chief of which was the cow; for in those simple days people kept cows in town, and it fell to me to help my father drive her out to her future home. we got on famously, talking of the way-side things so beautiful in the beautiful autumnal day, all panoplied in the savage splendor of its painted leaves, and of the poems and histories so dear to the boy who limped barefooted by his father’s side, with his eye on the cow and his mind on cervantes and shakespeare, on—
“the glory that was greece,
and the grandeur that was rome.”
[pg 8]
but the cow was very slow—far slower than the boy’s thoughts—and it had fallen night and was already thick dark when we had made the twelve miles, and stood under the white-limbed phantasmal sycamores beside the tail-race of the grist-mill, and questioned how we should get across with our charge. we did not know how deep the water was, but we knew it was very cold, and we would rather not wade it.
the only thing to do seemed to be for one of us to run up under those sycamores to the saw-mill, cross the head-race there, and come back to receive the cow on the other side of the tail-race. but the boy could not bring himself either to go or stay. i do not know just how it is with a boy’s world now, but at that time it was a very dangerous world. it was full of ghosts, for one thing, and it abounded in indians on the war-path, and amateurs of kidnapping and murder of all sorts.
the kind-hearted father urged, but he would not compel. you cannot well use force with a boy with whom you have been talking literature and philosophy[pg 9] for half a day. we could see the lights in the cabin cheerfully twinkling, and we shouted to those within, but no one heard us. we called and called in vain. nothing but the cold rush of the tail-race, the dry rustle of the sycamore leaves, and the homesick lowing of the cow replied.
we determined to drive her across, and pursue her with sticks and stones through the darkness beyond, and then run at the top of our speed to the saw-mill, and get back to take her in custody again. we carried out our part of the plan perfectly, but the cow had apparently not entered into it with intelligence or sympathy.
when we reached the tail-race again she was nowhere to be found, and no appeals of “boss” or “suky” or “subose” availed. she must have instantly turned again, and retraced, in the darkness which seemed to have swallowed her up, the weary steps of the day, for she was found in her old home in town the next morning. at any rate, she had abandoned the father to the conversation of his son, for the time being, and the son had nothing to say.
