The Light in the Clearing Part 16

Mr. Barnes put down the flat iron and picked up the poker and tried its strength on his knee as he told how he had heard that it was a growing country near the great water highway of the St. Lawrence. Prosperous towns were building up in it. There were going to be great cities in Northern New York. What they called a railroad was coming. There were rich stores of lead and iron in the rocks. Mr. Barnes had bought two hundred acres at ten dollars an acre. He had to pay a fee of five per cent. to Grimshaw's lawyer for the survey and the papers. This left him owing fourteen hundred dollars on his farm--much more than it was worth.

One hundred acres of the land had been roughly cleared by Grimshaw and a former tenant. The latter had toiled and struggled and paid tribute and given up.

Our cousin twisted the poker in his great hands until it squeaked as he stood before my uncle and said:

"My wife and I have chopped and burnt and pried and hauled rocks an'

shoveled dung an' milked an' churned until we are worn out. For almost twenty years we've been workin' days an' nights an' Sundays. My mortgage was over-due, I owed six hundred dollars on it. I thought it all over one day an' went up to Grimshaw's an' took him by the back of the neck and shook him. He said he would drive me out o' the country. He gave me six months to pay up. I had to pay or lose the land. I got the money on the note that you signed over in Potsdam. n.o.body in Canton would 'a'

dared to lend it to me."

The poker broke and he threw the pieces under the stove.

"Why?" my uncle asked.

Mr. Barnes got hold of another stick of wood and went on.

"'Fraid o' Grimshaw. He didn't want me to be able to pay it. The place is worth more than six hundred dollars now--that's the reason. I intended to cut some timber an' haul it to the village this winter so I could pay a part o' the note an' git more time as I told ye, but the roads have been so bad I couldn't do any haulin'."

My uncle went and took a drink at the water pail. I saw by his face that he was unusually wrought up.

"My heavens an' earth!" he exclaimed as he sat down again.

"It's the brain colic," I said to myself as I looked at him.

Mr. Barnes seemed to have it also.

"Too much note," I whispered.

"I'm awful sorry, but I've done everything I could," said Mr. Barnes.

"Ain't there somebody that'll take another mortgage?--it ought to be safe now," my uncle suggested.

"Money is so tight it can't be done. The bank has got all the money an'

Grimshaw owns the bank. I've tried and tried, but I'll make you safe.

I'll give you a mortgage until I can turn 'round."

So I saw how Rodney Barnes, like other settlers in Lickitysplit, had gone into bondage to the landlord.

"How much do you owe on this place?" Barnes asked.

"Seven hundred an' fifty dollars," said my uncle.

"Is it due?"

"It's been due a year an' if I have to pay that note I'll be short my interest."

"G.o.d o' Israel! I'm scairt," said Barnes.

Down crashed the stick of wood into the box.

"What about?"

Mr. Barnes tackled a nail that stuck out of the woodwork and tried to pull it between his thumb and finger while I watched the process with growing interest.

"It would be like him to put the screws on you now," he grunted, pulling at the nail. "You've got between him an' his prey. You've taken the mouse away from the cat."

I remember the little panic that fell on us then. I could see tears in the eyes of Aunt Deel as she sat with her head leaning wearily on her hand.

"If he does I'll do all I can," said Barnes, "whatever I've got will be yours."

The nail came out of the wall.

"I had enough saved to pay off the mortgage," my uncle answered. "I suppose it'll have to go for the note."

Mr. Barnes' head was up among the dried apples on the ceiling. A movement of his hand broke a string of them. Then he dropped his huge bulk into a chair which crashed to the floor beneath him. He rose blus.h.i.+ng and said:

"I guess I better go or I'll break everything you've got here. I kind o'

feel that way."

Rodney Barnes left us.

I remember how Uncle Peabody stood in the middle of the floor and whistled the merriest tune he knew.

"Stand right up here," he called in his most cheerful tone. "Stand right up here before me, both o' ye."

I got Aunt Deel by the hand and led her toward my uncle. We stood facing him. "Stand straighter," he demanded. "Now, altogether. One, two, three, ready, sing."

He beat time with his hand in imitation of the singing master at the schoolhouse and we joined him in singing an old tune which began: "O keep my heart from sadness, G.o.d."

This irresistible spirit of the man bridged a bad hour and got us off to bed in fairly good condition.

A few days later the note came due and its owner insisted upon full payment. There was such a clamor for money those days! I remember that my aunt had sixty dollars which she had saved, little by little, by selling eggs and chickens. She had planned to use it to buy a tombstone for her mother and father--a long-cherished ambition. My uncle needed the most of it to help pay the note. We drove to Potsdam on that sad errand and what a time we had getting there and back in deep mud and sand and jolting over corduroys!

"Bart," my uncle said the next evening, as I took down the book to read.

"I guess we'd better talk things over a little to-night. These are hard times. If we can find anybody with money enough to buy 'em I dunno but we better sell the sheep."

"If you hadn't been a fool," my aunt exclaimed with a look of great distress--"ayes! if you hadn't been a fool."

"I'm just what I be an' I ain't so big a fool that I need to be reminded of it," said my uncle.

"I'll stay at home an' work," I proposed bravely.

"You ain't old enough for that," sighed Aunt Deel.

"I want to keep you in school," said Uncle Peabody, who sat making a splint broom.

While we were talking in walked Benjamin Grimshaw--the rich man of the hills. He didn't stop to knock but walked right in as if the house were his own. It was common gossip that he held a mortgage on every acre of the countryside. I had never liked him, for he was a stern-eyed man who was always scolding somebody, and I had not forgotten what his son had said of him.

"Good night!" he exclaimed curtly, as he sat down and set his cane between his feet and rested his hands upon it. He spoke hoa.r.s.ely and I remember the curious notion came to me that he looked like our old ram.

The stern and rugged face of Mr. Grimshaw and the rusty gray of his homespun and the hoa.r.s.eness of his tone had suggested this thought to me. The long silvered tufts above his keen, gray eyes moved a little as he looked at my uncle. There were deep lines upon his cheeks and chin and forehead. He wore a thin, gray beard under his chin. His mouth was shut tight in a long line curving downward a little at the ends. My uncle used to say that his mouth was made to keep his thoughts from leaking and going to waste. He had a big body, a big chin, a big mouth, a big nose and big ears and hands. His eyes lay small in this setting of bigness.