Beautiful Joe Part 27

I should call him in plain English, a scoundrel. Did Harry show you his note?"

"No, uncle," said Miss Laura.

"Read it aloud," said Mr. Wood. "I'd like to hear it again."

Miss Laura read:

J. WOOD, Esq.

Dear Sir:--It is a matter of great regret to me that I am suddenly called away from my place at Penhollow, and will, therefore, not be able to do myself the pleasure of calling on you and settling my little account. I sincerely hope that the possession of my live stock which I make entirely over to you, will more than reimburse you for any trifling expense which you may have incurred on my account. If it is any gratification to you to know that you have rendered a slight a.s.sistance to the son of one of England's n.o.blest n.o.blemen, you have it. With expressions of the deepest respect, and hoping that my stock may be in good condition when you take possession,

I am, dear sir, ever devotedly yours, HOWARD ALGERNON LEDUC BARRON.

Miss Laura dropped the paper. "Uncle, did he leave those animals to starve?"

"Didn't you notice," said Mr. Wood, grimly, "that there wasn't a wisp of hay inside that shanty, and that where the poor beasts were tied up the wood was knawed and bitten by them in their torture for food? Wouldn't he have sent me that note, instead of leaving it here on the table, if he'd wanted me to know? The note isn't dated, but I judge he's been gone five or six days. He has had a spite against me ever since I lent him that hundred dollars. I don't know why, for I've stood up for him when others would have run him out of the place. He intended me to come here and find every animal lying dead.

"He even had a rope around the pig's neck. Harry, my boy, let us go and look after them again. I love a dumb brute too well to let it suffer, but in this case I'd give two hundred dollars more if I could make them live and have Barron know it."

They left the room, and Miss Laura sat turning the sheet of paper over and over, with a kind of horror in her face. It was a very dirty piece of paper, but by-and-by she made a discovery. She took it in her hand and went out-doors. I am sure that the poor horse lying on the gra.s.s knew her. He lifted his head, and what a different expression he had now that his hunger had been partly satisfied. Miss Laura stroked and patted him, then she called to her cousin, "Harry, will you look at this?"

He took the paper from her, and said: "That is a crest s.h.i.+ning through the different strata of dust and grime, probably that of his own family We'll have it cleaned, and it will enable us to track the villain. You want him punished, don't you?" he said, with a little, sly laugh at Miss Laura.

She made a gesture in the direction of the suffering horse, and said, frankly, "Yes, I do."

"Well, my dear girl," he said, "father and I are with you. If we can hunt Barron down, we'll do it." Then he muttered to himself as she turned away, "She is a real Puritan, gentle, and sweet, and good, and yet severe. Rewards for the virtuous, punishments for the vicious," and he repeated some poetry:

"She was so charitable and so piteous, She would weep if that she saw a mouse Caught in a trap, if it were dead or bled."

Miss Laura saw that Mr. Wood and Mr. Harry were doing all that could be done for the cow and horse, so she wandered down to a hollow at the back of the house, where the Englishman had kept his pig. Just now, he looked more like a greyhound than a pig. His legs were so long, his nose so sharp, and hunger, instead of making him stupid like the horse and cow, had made him more lively. I think he had probably not suffered so much as they had, or perhaps he had had a greater store of fat to nourish him. Mr. Harry said that if he had been a girl, he would have laughed and cried at the same time when he discovered that pig. He must have been asleep or exhausted when we arrived, for there was not a sound out of him, but shortly afterward he had set up a yelling that attracted Mr.

Harry's attention, and made him run down to him. Mr. Harry said he was raging around his pen, digging the ground with his snout, falling down and getting up again, and by a miracle, escaping death by choking from the rope that was tied around his neck.

Now that his hunger had been satisfied, he was gazing contentedly at his little trough that was half full of good, sweet milk. Mr. Harry said that a starving animal, like a starving person, should only be fed a little at a time; but the Englishman's animals had always been fed poorly, and their stomachs had contracted so that they could not eat much at one time.

Miss Laura got a stick and scratched poor piggy's back a little, and then she went back to the house. In a short time we went home with Mr.

Wood. Mr. Harry was going to stay all night with the sick animals, and his mother would send him things to make him comfortable. She was better by the time we got home, and was horrified to hear the tale of Mr.

Barron's neglect. Later in the evening, she sent one of the men over with a whole box full of things for her darling boy, and a nice, hot tea, done up for him in a covered dish.

When the man came home, he said that Mr. Harry would not sleep in the Englishman's dirty house, but had slung a hammock out under the trees.

However, he would not be able to sleep much, for he had his lantern by his side, all ready to jump up and attend to the horse and cow. It was a very lonely place for him out there in the woods, and his mother said that she would be glad when the sick animals could be driven to their own farm.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE END OF THE ENGLISHMAN

In a few days, thanks to Mr. Harry's constant care, the horse and cow were able to walk. It was a mournful procession that came into the yard at Dingley Farm. The hollow-eyed horse, and lean cow, and funny, little thin pig, staggering along in such a shaky fas.h.i.+on. Their hoofs were diseased, and had partly rotted away, so that they could not walk straight. Though it was only a mile or two from Penhollow to Dingley Farm, they were tired out, and dropped down exhausted on their comfortable beds.

Miss Laura was so delighted to think that they had all lived, that she did not know what to do. Her eyes were bright and s.h.i.+ning, and she went from one to another with such a happy face. The queer little pig that Mr. Harry had christened "Daddy Longlegs," had been washed, and he lay on his heap of straw in the corner of his neat little pen, and surveyed his clean trough and abundance of food with the air of a prince. Why, he would be clean and dry here, and all his life he had been used to dirty, damp Penhollow, with the trees hanging over him, and his little feet in a ma.s.s of filth and dead leaves. Happy little pig! His ugly eyes seemed to blink and gleam with grat.i.tude, and he knew Miss Laura and Mr. Harry as well as I did.

His tiny tail was curled so tight that it was almost in a knot. Mr. Wood said that was a sign that he was healthy and happy, and that when poor Daddy was at Penhollow he had noticed that his tail hung as limp and as loose as the tail of a rat. He came and leaned over the pen with Miss Laura, and had a little talk with her about pigs. He said they were by no means the stupid animals that some people considered them. He had had pigs that were as clever as dogs. One little black pig that he had once sold to a man away back in the country had found his way home, through the woods, across the river, up hill and down dale, and he'd been taken to the place with a bag over his head. Mr. Wood said that he kept that pig because he knew so much.

He said the most knowing pigs he ever saw were Canadian pigs. One time he was having a trip on a sailing vessel, and it anch.o.r.ed in a long, narrow harbor in Canada, where the tide came in with a front four or five feet high called the "bore." There was a village opposite the place where the s.h.i.+p was anch.o.r.ed, and every day at low tide, a number of pigs came down to look for sh.e.l.l-fish. Sometimes they went out for half a mile over the mud flats, but always a few minutes before the tide came rus.h.i.+ng in they turned and hurried to the sh.o.r.e. Their instincts warned them that if they stayed any longer they would be drowned.

Mr. Wood had a number of pigs, and after a while Daddy was put in with them, and a fine time he had of it making friends with the other little grunters. They were often let out in the pasture or orchard, and when they were there, I could always single out Daddy from among them, because he was the smartest. Though he had been brought up in such a miserable way, he soon learned to take very good care of himself at Dingley Farm, and it was amusing to see him when a storm was coming on, running about in a state of great excitement carrying little bundles of straw in his mouth to make himself a bed. He was a white pig, and was always kept very clean. Mr. Wood said that it is wrong to keep pigs dirty. They like to be clean as well as other animals, and if they were kept so, human beings would not get so many diseases from eating their flesh.

The cow, poor unhappy creature, never, as long as she lived on Dingley Farm, lost a strange, melancholy look from her eyes. I have heard it said that animals forget past unhappiness, and perhaps some of them do.

I know that I have never forgotten my one miserable year with Jenkins, and I have been a sober, thoughtful dog in consequence of it, and not playful like some dogs who have never known what it is to be really unhappy.

It always seemed to me that the Englishman's cow was thinking of her poor dead calf, starved to death by her cruel master. She got well herself, and came and went with the other cows, seemingly as happy as they, but often when I watched her standing chewing her cud, and looking away in the distance, I could see a difference between her face and the faces of the cows that had always been happy on Dingley Farm. Even the farm hands called her "Old Melancholy," and soon she got to be known by that name, or Mel, for short. Until she got well, she was put into the cow stable, where Mr. Wood's cows all stood at night upon raised platforms of earth covered over with straw litter, and she was tied with a Dutch halter, so that she could lie down and go to sleep when she wanted to. When she got well, she was put out to pasture with the other cows.

The horse they named "Scrub," because he could never be, under any circ.u.mstance, anything but a broken-down, plain-looking animal. He was put into the horse stable in a stall next Fleetfoot, and as the part.i.tion was low, they could look over at each other. In time, by dint of much doctoring, Scrub's hoofs became clean and sound, and he was able to do some work. Miss Laura petted him a great deal. She often took out apples to the stable, and Fleetfoot would throw up his beautiful head and look reproachfully over the part.i.tion at her, for she always stayed longer with Scrub than with him, and Scrub always got the larger share of whatever good thing was going.

Poor old Scrub! I think he loved Miss Laura. He was a stupid sort of a horse, and always acted as if he was blind. He would run his nose up and down the front of her dress, nip at the b.u.t.tons, and be very happy if he could get a bit of her watch-chain between his strong teeth. If he was in the field he never seemed to know her till she was right under his pale-colored eyes. Then he would be delighted to see her. He was not blind though, for Mr. Wood said he was not. He said he had probably not been an over-bright horse to start with, and had been made more dull by cruel usage.

As for the Englishman, the master of these animals, a very strange thing happened to him. He came to a terrible end, but for a long time no one knew anything about it. Mr. Wood and Mr. Harry were so very angry with him that they said they would leave no stone unturned to have him punished, or at least to have it known what a villain he was. They sent the paper with the crest on it to Boston. Some people there wrote to England, and found out that it was the crest of a n.o.ble and highly esteemed family, and some earl was at the head of it. They were all honorable people in this family except one man, a nephew, not a son, of the late earl. He was the black sheep of them all. As a young man, he had led a wild and wicked life, and had ended by forging the name of one of his friends, so that he was obliged to leave England and take refuge in America. By the description of this man, Mr. Wood knew that he must be Mr. Barron, so he wrote to these English people, and told them what a wicked thing their relative had done in leaving his animals to starve.

In a short time, he got an answer from them, which was, at the same time, very proud and very touching. It came from Mr. Barron's cousin, and he said quite frankly that he knew his relative was a man of evil habits, but it seemed as if nothing could be done to reform him. His family was accustomed to send a quarterly allowance to him, on condition that he led a quiet life in some retired place, but their last remittance to him was lying unclaimed in Boston, and they thought he must be dead. Could Mr. Wood tell them anything about him?

Mr. Wood looked very thoughtful when he got this letter, then he said, "Harry, how long is it since Barron ran away?"

"About eight weeks," said Mr. Harry.

"That's strange," said Mr. Wood. "The money these English people sent him would get to Boston just a few days after he left here. He is not the man to leave it long unclaimed. Something must have happened to him.

Where do you suppose he would go from Penhollow?"

"I have no idea, sir," said Mr. Harry.

"And how would he go?" said Mr. Wood. "He did not leave Riverdale Station, because he would have been spotted by some of his creditors."

"Perhaps he would cut through the woods to the Junction," said Mr.

Harry.

"Just what he would do," said Mr. Wood, slapping his knee. "I'll be driving over there to-morrow to see Thompson, and I'll make inquiries."

Mr. Harry spoke to his father the next night when he came home, and asked him if he had found out anything. "Only this," said Mr. Wood.

"There's no one answering to Barron's description who has left Riverdale Junction within a twelvemonth. He must have struck some other station.

We'll let him go. The Lord looks out for fellows like that."

"We will look out for him if he ever comes back to Riverdale," said Mr.

Harry, quietly. All through the village, and in the country it was known what a dastardly trick the Englishman had played, and he would have been roughly handled if he had dared return.