The Light in the Clearing: A Tale of the North Country in the Time of Silas WrightBacheller, Irving
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The Light in the Clearing: A Tale of the North Country in the Time of Silas Wright
Bacheller, Irving
New York (State) -- Fiction; Wright, Silas, 1795-1847 -- Fiction
What befell me that night while I dreamed of playing with the
sweet-faced girl I have wondered often. Some time in the night Dug
Draper had reached the village of Canton, and got rid of me. He had
probably put me out at the water trough. Kind hands had picked me up and
carried me to a little veranda that fronted the door of a law office.
There I slept peacefully until daylight, when I felt a hand on my face
and awoke suddenly. I remember that I felt cold. A kindly faced man
stood leaning over me.
"Hello, boy!" said he. "Where did you come from?"
I was frightened and confused, but his gentle voice reassured me.
"Uncle Peabody!" I called, as I arose and looked about me and began to
cry.
The man lifted me in his arms and held me close to his breast and tried
to comfort me. I remember seeing the Silent Woman pass while I was in
his arms.
"Tell me what's your name," he urged.
"Barton Baynes," I said as soon as I could speak.
"Where is your father?"
"In Heaven," I answered, that being the place to which he had moved, as
I understood it.
"Where do you live?"
"In Lickitysplit."
"How did you get here?"
"Dug Draper brought me. Do you know where Sally Dunkelberg lives?"
"Is she the daughter of Horace Dunkelberg?"
"Mr. and Mrs. Horace Dunkelberg," I amended.
"Oh, yes, I know her. Sally is a friend of mine. We'll get some
breakfast and then we'll go and find her."
He carried me through the open door of his office and set me down at his
desk. The cold air of the night had chilled me and I was shivering.
"You sit there and I'll have a fire going in a minute and get you warmed
up."
He wrapped me in his coat and went into the back room and built a fire
in a small stove and brought me in and set me down beside it. He made
some porridge in a kettle while I sat holding my little hands over the
stove to warm them, and a sense of comfort grew in me. Soon a boy came
bringing a small pail of fresh milk and a loaf of bread. I remember how
curiously the boy eyed me as he said to my new friend:
"Captain Moody wants to know if you'll come up to dinner?"
There was a note of dignity in the reply which was new to me, and for
that reason probably I have always remembered it.
"Please present my thanks to the Captain and tell him that I expect to
go up to Lickitysplit in the town of Ballybeen."
He dipped some porridge into bowls and put them on a small table. My
eyes had watched him with growing interest and I got to the table about
as soon as the porridge and mounted a chair and seized a spoon.
"One moment, Bart," said my host. "By jingo! We've forgotten to wash,
and your face looks like the dry bed of a river. Come here a minute."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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