1 **^K- *i ^j* "^ V-orfl *^~^rrz- - T^^^Z^ tV: i v' MRS. BURTON HARRISON UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES THE GIFT OF MAY TREAT MORRISON IN MEMORY OF ALEXANDER F MORRISON BAR HARBOR DAYS BY MRS. BURTON HARRISON AUTHOR OF "GOLDEN ROD: AN IDYL OF MOUNT DESERT" "HELEN TROY" ETC. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY FEXN AND UYDE NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE Copyright, 1887, by HARPER & BROTHERS. All righto ratrved. TO B., F., R, AND A. o 2 Wfiat is yon relic ? Ah, well may you ask it ! Amid the medley on my mantel-shelf, A gray-green sheaf thrust in an Indian basket, Watched by a pair of dragons in old Delft That one 'poor handful of Mount Desert grasses Enshrines a charm all other charms surpasses! Just as, within some queer-shaped Turkish vial, Attar of roses hoards its essence rare, And, when one idly gives the scent a trial, tilcst Araby escapes upon the air So, these frail tokens of a season vanished Call back, to live again, dear scenes long banished! Last night when sleet was dashing on my casement, And througJi forsaken streets the ^cild winds raved, As if to mock the once pure snow's abasement Within my lamp-lit room there rose, and braved With siccet appeal old winter's frosty greeting, A balm that witched me with its soft entreating. Lack came the visions I would fain remember. Waking, I dreamed myself where I would be. Gone was the scowling presence of Deccn/In r. Midsummer reigned at Eden in the 8t ! And from the earth, i < re n title, a fixing, (>rx c.i'liakd, iny grateful sense surprising. Once more I felt the soft salt air, in-blowing From ocean's azure field that eastward gleams; Once more I saw, in heavens at sunset glowing, Pageants, that throng and fade like stuff of dreams, Until, 'mid planets pale her bright way threading, Came the moon, o'er all her radiance shedding. Once more I stood upon the fir-crowned highland, Where fragrance lingers in the ambient air Watching the white surf leap on cliff and island, Watching the white gull swoop to rocks laid bare, Counting the sails that fleck the sparkling ocean, Hearing all nature stir in rhythmic motion. Or else, afloat, on some fair August morning, Aimless I voyaged, in a swift canoe Garlands of golden-rod my craft adorning Cleaving, to leave no scar, the mirrored blue ; Past the enchanted mountains in their slumber, Past crag, and point, and islet without number ; Rounding the Jieadland, where with tireless bluster Waves roll to caverns that repeat their roar ; Grazing the jagged reef, where sea-birds cluster, Fanned by the sun-warmed incense of the shore, And tJie sad bell-buoy tells its woful story, Whispering in nature's ear "Memento mori!" But, as these air-built visions thronged about me, Shifting, they glimmered slowly from my sight And, ere the world of work-a-day shall flout me For vain imaginings of spent delight, Haste I to trap in words the dream that passes, Borne on the breath of my Mount Desert grasses! ILLUSTRATIONS. DUCK BROOK Frontispiece. BAR HARBOR. To face -p. 22 A CANOE PARTY 46 PAUL PRY AND MINIMUS 56 A THUNDER CAVE CO AT SCHOONER HEAD 66 " ROCKING," AT MOUNT DESERT " 100 GREEN MOUNTAIN FROM EAGLE LAKE ... " 102 IN THE EARLY DAYS OF BAR HARBOR ... " 110 A GALA-DAY AT BAR HARBOR " 142 THE PORCUPINES " 150 AFTER THE STORM " 164 AMONG THE LILY-PADS " 1G8 "No LETTER!" " 176 BAR HARBOR DAYS. CHAPTEE I. IF any one had been in the woods along Duck Brook that crisp October day, he would have known we were there, before he saw our party ! We were noisy, I won't deny it, and our number would hardly account for all the clamor. Some of us shouted and sang and whistled, some of us barked, for very joy of living. But, indeed, we couldn't help it. The place was a deep dell between two wooded hillsides covered with last year's leaves, and decked with ferns and vines and berries of the summer just passed. Through this hollow ran a glorious mountain brook, ice-cold and sparkling from its parent lake above. Starting high amid the hills, it had stolen away under clumps of lady's - slippers, ferns, and pitcher-plants growing strong and tall to shelter its vagaries, and dashed headlong down the rocks. 2 15 AU HARBOR DAYS. I lore ami there ity waterfalls would hush their tumult in deep pools where trout lurked, and at midsummer boys rejoiced to plunge in for a swim. Thence, parting in a hundred wilful streamlets, it coursed towards the sea, between the mossy rocks that lined its bed, reuniting to laugh, to fret, to foam, to tinkle, until the great deep silenced it forever. A short life, and a merry one, was the mctto of Duck Brook ! At ordinary times the place was full of shadows. Flickering shadows from birch and oak and maple, whose boughs met above the w r ater. Tranquil shadows, of spruce and larch and balsam fir, with which the woods were filled. But it was autumn now, and as we climbed and slid long the steep path beside the brook, yellow and crimson leaves kept flattering down, and more and more blue sky kept showing overhead. There were five only in our party. Ourselves Paul Pry and Dame Trot two boys, and another person with a red shawl on her arm, and a book, which I never saw her open. But as I believe young people are the only ones to be considered nowadays, I will confine myself to telling you first about ourselves, and then of our masters. "We are fox-terriers, Paul and I. "When we first met, as you shall learn hereafter, Paul's beauty was under a cloud, and if any one had told me I could ever have been brought to think seriously of that skinny little thing, all pink in spots, I woului/t BAR HARBOR DAYS. 3 have believed it. Now, he has as pretty a white- satin coat as one would wish to see, and a gallant little figure. The fashionable craze, they call us, though I think it silly to class intelligent beings with bulrushes and blue china. Besides, we come of most respectable and well-authenticated families, and our pedigrees are kept in the toilet-table drawer. The gentleman who owns the kennel Paul came out of had several ancestors in the Mayflower; while the gentleman who bred me hasn't any ancestors, but he drives a four-in-hand, and you read about him a great deal in the society papers, which is every bit as good. We had set out to spend the morning in the woods, and our walk, so far, had been full of pleas ant surprises, such as finding a chilled field-mouse thawing herself in a patch of sunshine on the path ; picking wintergreen berries off their stems with our own little sharp teeth ; and starting up a partridge who whirred so suddenly away from us as to fright en my poor Paul almost into fits. For Paul, let me tell you in a whisper, is not like that hero of whom the boys are forever singing a certain u Abdullah Bulbul Ameer," who was " wholly impervious to fear." And ah ! what splendid sport it was, to patter through the dried leaves, and feel the fresh ones falling down so fast they tickled one ! Now up on the summit of the hill ; then, hurry skurry, down 4 BAR HARBOR DAYS. again, chasing each, other, nip and tuck, snatch and worry, dodging, growling, gripping, till, blind and heedless, we rolled heels over head down to the bottom of the ravine. Then the boys cheered us to begin again, and when we had all had enough of romping in the leaves, it was a fresh excitement to leave the path where so many tree-trunks, fallen across, made it a good deal of a scramble to get ahead. To follow up the stream, we determined to jump from one rock to another along its bed, a most fascinating thing to do in all cases, and on Duck Brook pecul iarly inviting. The boys, balancing-poles in hand, skipped ahead ; Paul and I followed, poising some times on the edge of a slippery boulder above a foaming eddy, and then springing into space in a neck-or-nothing jump. Often our hind-legs dangled in the water, and we narrowly missed a cold bath, which, of all things, I detest most heartily. (A warm bath is bad enough, you will allow, and soap rubbed in, under the pretence that it is good for one, is a miserable mockery.) The person with the book came after us, more leisurely. "When she did reach the spot where we awaited her, she only dropped down upon a rock- ledge and uttered the remark, " Was there ever such a day ?" "Mamma!" cried one of the boys, "You've said that five times already !" BAR HARBOR DAYS. 5 " I haven't the energy to be original. Come, boys, I insist upon a rest. This is far too lovely a place to be passed by in a hurry." She had laid the scarlet shawl upon the ground beside her. "With one bound I was upon it, nest ling in its folds. She, it, I, everything, was steeped in amber sunshine. At our feet, the brook had widened to a pool, and across it met the bare white arms of some birches, from which the golden leaves had dropped away to cover the surface of the w^ater. Above our heads swept down a great bough of purple-leaved moosewood, royal in coloring ; and all around glowed maples, red as blood. Yes, that place was good enough to stay in ! Our two boys set to work to cut long switches, and with them began to poke at the birch-leaves in the pool, and clear its choked-up outlets. The leaves, huddling together sluggishly at first, then breaking up by ones and twos, and then in larger groups, went drifting down the stream, till you might have thought Duck Brook was turned to liquid gold. This species of agreeable idling suggested a leaf -boat race, and they set out at once to organize their navy. I think, since you are to hear quite often of the doings of these lads, you will wish to know their names. Suppose we designate them by the school boy titles of "Minor" and "Minimus," which they were often called on to respond to ? What sort of boys they were, I shall leave you to find out. 6 BAR HARBOR DAYS. " Mine's ready !" shouted Minor. " So's mine," roared Minimus. " Mine's Yale," said Minor. " So's mine," answered his junior. " Oh ! look here, now, that's all rubbish, Minny. You'll have to take Harvard or Columbia or Prince ton, I don't care which." " But I'm a Yale man," pleaded Minimus. " "Who said you aren't ? But there's no fun to a race if both are on one side." " "Well, you take Harvard, and let me be Yale." " None of your nonsense," sternly said the elder. " I got it first, and, besides, I've the better right, be cause I'll get there first ; to Yale, I mean." Unconvinced, but overcome, Minimus elected to sail under the banner of Columbia. Starting the two boats side by side upon the crystal current, their owners followed, jumping from stone to stone, and occasionally directing the capricious craft by touches of the switch. Presently Yale's boat gave a lurch, narrowly es caped a whirlpool, righted itself, but had lost ground perceptibly. Columbia was ahead. " Kah ! rah ! rah !" shouted Minimus, who was by this time in the spirit of the thing. " C-o-l-u-m-b-i-a !" And, with that, his boat sailed in triumphantly across the goal. Poor Yale, circling giddily, was on the verge of swamping. Minor stopped short with a look of bitter wrath upon his face. BAR HARBOR DAYS. 7 " I don't care ! Hang your old boat ! I wouldn't be so mean as to stand up for a college where my big brother didn't go. Anyhow, I spose you 1 re going to Columbia when you grow up. If you do, you needn't speak to me." " But, Minor," began Minimus, quite paralyzed by this injustice, " you told me it was only make- believe. Let's sail the race again." " It's all the same. You don't really care for Yale. You'd just as soon go to Ilarmrd; any way," went on Minor, in a withering tone. " You'd better. I think they'd like you there." Minimus looked as if tears were ready to come into his soft, dark eyes. He glanced imploringly at his brother, and stood flipping the end of his switch into the water, hoping Minor might relent. " I don't think I'll play any more to-day," said Minor, turning away ; " perhaps not for a week. Come Paul ; come Trot. Let's look for pitcher- plants." It was treacherous of us to desert Minimus, but for the life of me I can't resist bounding up to fol low when any one goes anywhere. Hardly had we reached the crest of the hill before Minor, look ing back at the solitary little figure in the crimson Tarn o' Shanter cap, standing amid the rapids, felt his heart melt in him. " Hello, Minny ! Come up here. It's dandy. I saw a partridge rise. Don't I wish I had a gun ?" 8 BAR HARBOR DAYS. The quarrel bad vanished into 'thin air. By and by, when we returned to the person sitting upon the rock, we found a feast of pears and grapes and biscuits arranged on leaf-plates, and a silver cup with which to quaff the water of the brook. You may think we were not happy ! " Ah ! me," the person said, after a little while. " As if I didn't know what you are sighing for!" said Minor. " I know !" chimed in Minimus. " It's about going back to town." " I don't see why grown people should care so much," resumed the elder boy. " They don't have to go to school, and never handle an oar or a tennis- racquet again until next summer. Or take the twenty-two mile walk, or touch a fly-rod. I only wisli I'd kept a journal of all the things I've done." "I've read your journal," cried out Minimus. " It hasn't anything in it but how much your trout weighed every time, and your tennis scores, and the measure of fellows' leg-muscles." " Well, that will be better than nothing, when we're cooped up in the house in old New York, and the streets are full of snow or slush." " Minor is right," said the person. " I've known his elders to find fascination in reading the Maine game laws, and the height of the various mountains on the island, when a village paper comes to them in town. Yes, somebody ought to have written it BAR HARBOR DAYS. 9 all down ; but who ? That is the question. The truth is, we are abominable idlers." " Look at Dame Trot," cried out Minimus. " See how she has cocked one ear up, and seems to be un derstanding all we say !" " She is the wisest little thing," said Minor, haul ing me over to him by one leg (Oh ! I am used to such indignities). " She can do anything but speak, I'm sure." That's all they know about it. I wish Paul could testify as to my curtain lectures ! For, what ever my shortcomings, I never let slip an oppor tunity of permitting my dear Paul to know his faults ! " Then she ought to write out our summer on an island," said Minimus. " Won't you, Trottens dear ? I know it will be bully, and you've been everywhere witli us. What shall .we call it ? ' The Memoirs of Dame Trot?'" While they were chatting thus, an idea popped into my head. Why, indeed, should I not devote my leisure moments to this task. Of course I con sulted Paul. That was what we were busy about when we ran off up the bank, and began digging- together in the soft leaf -mould, and the boys thought we had found a muskrat's hole. Paul was not alto gether as disapproving of the scheme as I had feared. " While I should hardly call you actually gifted, 10 BAR HARBOR DAYS. Trot, my clear," ho said, " there is no denying you have a certain facility of expression, and might succeed in interesting the average reader of tran sient literature. That is," he went on, qualifying his praise, as became a superior creature," if you can bring yourself to restrain the tendency of women writers to gush and wander from the point. When I want to say it's a fine day, for instance, thermom eter so many degrees, wind southwest, and so on, I say that, and stop. You, on the contrary, would make a whole page of it. ' The orb of day arose majestically. Balmy zephyrs sighed among the leaf lets,' and all that kind of thing ; hey, Trot, old girl ?" Paul knows that if there's anything I can't abide, it's being called .old girl. To begin with, it is low ; and then I am naturally sensitive about the differ ence in our ages, since I am at least four months his elder. But I had to be satisfied with what he said about my writing. He also promised to criticise the chapters as I finish them ; and, though I don't know that I exactly fancy his doing so, he means well, I am sure. It is not only that I desire to put down what we did during the summer ; certain things came under my observation that I am sure nobody else saw. A little story wove itself in and out of our holiday ex perience which, as I think of it, seems so unreal I'm afraid it may float away altogether into mist if I don't capture it ! BAR HAKBOR DAYS. H And lastly, I desire to be known as I am ! Some day those boys of ours may read these pages, and then, too late, they will recognize the suppressed genius they used to maul and haul, under the pet name of Dame Trot ! Not that they do not treat me kindly, on the whole. Sometimes, when my nerves have been pe culiarly racked by their performances, they call me to them, and a:k me to sit in their laps, while they are reading " King Solomon's Mines," or "The White Chief of the Caffres " which is all very well in theory ; but a boy's lap is no good. Just wait till they get interested in the story, and, often as not, they forget you, and let you go flop between their knees upon the floor. CHAPTER II. THAT'S a very poor first chapter, Paul says. He thinks I should begin at the beginning, and tell how we came to live upon this lovely island. To do so, I shall have to rely a good deal upon what I've heard while lying around on laps, or on rugs with my nose in between the andirons, when the birch- wood sparks were popping so I couldn't go to sleep. AVell, it seems the people I live with now had lost a shepherd-dog named Colin Clout, and they wanted a successor to take with them to the coun try. To find one, the whole family had gone in a body to the bench show in the spring, and had there selected each a different specimen of dog hu manity, as the one thing needful for their united happiness. As it would have been a little trouble some to travel five hundred miles by rail in com pany with a golden collie, a Saint Bernard, a yard or so of Dachshund with lovely pleading eyes, a Gordon setter, and a pair of terrier-pups whose eyes were barely open, a discussion set in which ended in everybody's declaring he didn't care a bit how BAR HARBOR DAYS. 13 the matter was decided, provided everybody else would keep his temper. So they went away from that day's exhibition without any dogs at all, and at the end of the week had agreed to invest in two fox-terriers of conven iently portable dimensions. " There was a fellow there," remarked Minimus, reverting to the bench show, "who said he has some beauties at his house, and when a dawg is wanted for a family, Jerry Peters is my man. A father himself, and would scorn to tell a lie." " Then there was my beery one in velveteens," said Minor, " who said he keeps a terrier at the stable that he will sell me at half price ; and he know'd, wen he seed me steppin' up, I was the party for that tarrer." " We might let him fetch it here to look at, any way," said the lady who belongs to our boys. That night there was a mysterious ring at the door-bell, and the maid said there was a man with something in his pocket, waiting in the hall. The something in his pocket proved to bo a pret ty, shivery little creature, who, when a ball was bounced across the floor, ran after and caught it with the greatest animation. He was a fox-terrier pup, in color pinky white, with a black-and-tan spot around one eye, and a mere apology for a tail. But he was well-shaped and friendly, and the boye begged hard to keep him ; so the beery one said ho 14 BAR HARBOR DAYS. would let him go for twenty-five dollars that he was a daisy, worth every penny of his price. Paul Pry, they called him on the spot, from his habit of peering into every corner of the room. That night he slept in a wood -basket behind a Franklin stove. Kext morning he was found sneez ing dreadfully, and his eyes watered all the time. They treated him for influenza ; and, on Saturday, Minor, who was going to visit a cousin in the coun try, took Paul with him in a fruit basket, for change of air. On Monday morning the travellers returned, Paul sneezing more than ever, his young master looking utterly despondent. " I'm sure I don't know what's the matter with this beast," he said, " but when we got there the whole family seemed to be offended. They hid away their dogs, and advised me to keep Paul locked up alone until I should start back to town ; and I did. He howled his head off; and I was never so ashamed in all my life. A man told me I'd better drop him in the river. And I'll never take a dog visiting again, never !" Things grew worse that day. Paul drooped and dwindled, and the master of the house said he must be taken to a hospital or chloroformed. Ah ! what a dark chapter in the life of my beloved! As I write of it I shudder. Then the boys bundled the poor sufferer up in one of their own old baby- carriage Avraps, and car- BAR HARBOR DAYS. 15 ried him to the "Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals " for advice. They felt rather important ; and, in some vague way, expected the officers of the society to gather around them, shed ding tears of sympathy. It was a decided blow to have one man only look up above his newspaper, and, after hearing their story, write an address upon a card, and dismiss them without a glance at Paul. This address directed them, however, to a veteri nary hospital on the west side of town. Paul's queer little muzzle, peeping from the blanket, mado the way seem short, and they trudged along, talking more hopefully than before, my beloved one has since told me. Paul did not feel particularly cheer ful when he found out what was to be his fate. The " Yet," after examining him in a matter-of- fact way, pronounced it a case of well-advanced dis temper, which accounted for the alacrity of the beery one to part with him. Two weeks of board and treatment at the hospital would, no doubt, ' pull him through." You might have pulled him through a key-hole, Paul has often said to me, when he saw his destined quarters. A dark pen in an upper room. Some straw to lie on. For company, some dogs with broken legs, and a setter with six little pups, boarders like himself, and each party separated from the others by high partitions. Pills twice a day, forced down your throat, and your muz zle held until you swallowed them ! No squeals al- 10 BAR HARBOR DAYS. lowed, and good behavior enforced by the cracking of an odious whip. Poor dear ! my heart bleeds to think of it. It was during this depressing phase of my Paul's existence that a coachman brought me to the house where Minor and Minimus let their parents live with them. There was both doubt and caution ex hibited in my reception at that house. They were charmed with me, they said, but would rather keep me overnight, and observe my state of health, be fore deciding. My first performance, on being left there by the coachman, was to set out by myself on a voyage of discovery from top to bottom of the house. I nosed into every closet, examined under beds and couches, and tried the coal-scuttle. " You're a regular Dame Trot," the lady said on which I curled up in a sunny spot upon a carpet and went to sleep. There I lay, peacefully dream ing, until I heard a noise below stairs like an infant earthquake. " It's the boys come home from school," said the lady, who saw me jump. I ran to the top of the stairs, and looked over. " Why, it's Paul come back !" cried somebody. " It isn't, I tell you. Don't you see she's got a pair of black spectacles instead of one? It's the new one. Come on up, and see her." T\vo fellows, one a head and shoulders taller than BAR HARBOR DAYS. 17 the other, rushed up the stairs. Each of them seized me. The petting, teasing, and cajoling I en dured that hour was a fair sample of what my life has since been with this family. Not but what I will allow they have their virtues. Their chairs are pretty soft, and they never skim my milk. Yery soon, I found out I was to go upon a jour ney to live in a new house they were building on an island. I heard them talk of Paul, " Paul Pry," and wondered who he was ; till, at last, one day, the whole story of the two fox-terriers was related to a guest, and my heart beat high with the knowl edge that somewhere a kindred soul was waiting to blend with mine. But when ? " The Yet says Paul is nearly well," said Minor, returning from a visit to my future lord, " and the little fellow nearly jumped himself to pieces in his joy at seeing me. But they say we musn't let them be together for a week or so, or Trot might get dis temper." So, on this account, I suppose, I set out first, with the lady, to go to a country place where we were to spend some days before journeying to the island. I don't know if any one ever carried you in a hand-basket to a great big railway-station in New York ! It is, without exception, the most hateful, pushing, struggling place I ever got into ; and when we reached a kind of wicket-gate, on our way to take the train, there was a man there who was an absolute barbarian. 2 18 BAR HARBOR DAYS. " Sorry, ladies, but positively no dogs allowed in the passenger-coaches," was what he said, with an attempt at a fascinating smile. " I must ask you to take it to the baggage-room. Tickets, please " (to the people who were crowding on our heels). There was no help for it. We were forced back by the throng, and, with a sorrowful face, my mistress left me to the care of a luggage-man, who prom ised, in the most fervent way, to show me as much attention as a silver dollar could allow him in con science to expend. Oh! that dreadful baggage -car, and oh! that faithless man. He was going to stay in New York, after all ; and the man who should have got the sil ver dollar, and did not, was as cross to me as he could be. I was seized roughly, thrust upon the seat of a leather-bottomed chair, and in two min utes off went the train, I jostled and thrown about by every movement. Imagine the gloom of it, the noise of it, the cold heartlessness of those creatures, who laughed coarsely when I slid about on the slip pery chair-cushion. But this was nothing to what happened two hours later, when we reached Bridgeport, where the lug gage was transferred to another train. It was like a day of doom. Such crashing noises, such brutal observations, such, hurling back and forth of huge trunks and boxes, such utter jforgetfulness of me. And then I heard oh ! welcome sound a woman's BAR HARBOR DAYS. 10 voice upon the platform, earnestly thanking a gentle man for some service he had volunteered to render. It was my mistress, and the gentleman a friend who had promised to rescue me from impending ruin. He was a tall and stately man, and when he stooped down and took me to nestle in the hollow of a warm coat-sleeve, and soothed my trembling with kind words and strokings, I wanted to cry for gratitude. He carried me into the other baggage- car, and there stayed with me until the train was about to start. As he left, a woman pushing a perambulator be fore her came running along the platform. She had barely time to take out the occupant, a very sleepy baby with a pink thumb in its mouth, and fly back, when the men, seizing the perambulator, whisked it in beside me, and our train moved off. There I was, alone, unseen. If anybody blames me for yielding to temptation, I ask him to put himself for a moment in my place. Oh ! that warm and cosy nest vacated by the passenger with the pink thumb in her mouth ! With a light spring, I jumped from a trunk into the very middle of the blessed baby's pillow. I glided down beneath a blanket embroidered with rosebuds and green leaves ; somebody threw a travelling tarpaulin over the per ambulator. I remember nothing more ! When I awakened from a delicious sleep, the train hands had found me out, and were laughing good- 20 BAR HARBOR DAYS. naturedly as they took off the tarpaulin. I sneaked out, and at the next stopping-place was handed to my mistress. We had reached our journey's end ; and I don't believe the baby with the thumb was ever the wiser or the worse for my performance. I pass over my adventures until, a week later, we found ourselves steaming into a long, dark, gloomy tunnel of a place, which people said was Boston. I had heard of Boston, and would not have believed it looked like that, until I saw with my own eyes. But this is the advantage of travel ; you learn to judge for yourself instead of trusting to exagger ated statements. I could not wonder to hear my mistress say, that, after meeting somebody whose name I did not catch, and getting something to eat, she intended to go on at once to Mount Desert. As we got out of the train, and were looking around that Boston, there came toward us a boy holding under his arm a dog (exactly like me, I thought), and attended by a maid. The boy was streaked with coal-dust, and was eating peanuts. When he saw us he rushed forward with an excla mation of delight, and threw both arms around the lady's neck, letting my double slide upon the plat form. They were Minimus and Paul, who by train from New York had reached Boston an hour before ourselves. All my attention was concentrated upon my des tined comrade. Through his veil of grime I fan- BAR HARDOK DAYS. 21 cied I saw a sympathetic gaze fixed on me. I longed to be near him, that I might pour out all my feelings. But no ! we were not allowed to rub noses even. Minimus said the Yet thought it would be wiser to keep the pups apart until Paul's cough had wholly left him; and Paul, confirming this, gave a croupy little choke. We were put into a carriage, on opposite seats, and during a joggling drive, we knew not where, conversed by glances only. Then we came to an other long, narrow, smoky, crowded, perspiring Boston, with people carrying hand-bags and tread ing on each other's heels, and trains drawn up be hind a paling. It was the close of a warm May day, and there was no life in the atmosphere. Every body looked pale and hurried, and everything smelt stale. The first thing was to visit the baggage- room and provide accommodation for Paul Pry and myself during the long night's journey we were to take. By good luck, we found a man who was neither gruff nor grasping. lie even patted us, and took Minimus across to a grocery where they purchased two Wooden boxes. Mine was labelled " Greenfield's Crystal Starch," and Paul's was " Ex tra Superior Huckleberries, Canned." Fed and rested, we lapsed into sweet sleep, lying on clean hay at the bottom of our cages. It was a blessed time, for too soon again began that terrible racket and rumble of the train. 22 BAR HARBOR DAYS. Out of the long, dark pent-house we sped into the freshness of twilight air. But don't talk to me of the delights of travel ! It is a very small compensation for all I underwent to be able to say that I have seen two Bostons ! And that night, that night ! I heard Minimus telling another boy, some time later, that he thought it jolly fun to "lark it on the sleeper going down to Mount Desert !" There was nothing larky in our experience, ex cept getting up at daybreak to be put out at Ban- gor. Paul whimpered and moaned the whole night through. I could hear him, although not close enough to speak. When the first pink streaks of dawn came into the horizon, I strained my eyes to see him, and tried to let him know I was near. Then our train stopped and, without an apology, rattled, creaked, groaned, and dislocated itself a dozen times in succession, and at last stood still. The people in the sleeper were not disturbed, but we in the baggage-car were seized, carried out, and dumped upon the floor of a room near the buffet. I heard them say something about transfer to the car for Bar Harbor, but was too sick and wretched to care. Mustering up courage to stand feebly on my hind-legs and peep over at Paul's box, I saw my future liege looking too woe-begone for words. lie had actually shrivelled in the night. " Oh ! Paul Pry," I said to him, " how miserable BAB HARBOH. BAH HARBOR DAYS. 23 we both are ! But have you never heard that the darkest hour is just before the dawn?" Paul cheered up a very little, and then suggested that if we were both to yelp together it might ac complish something it would at least relieve our overburdened hearts. I agreed, and I flatter myself our morning con cert has never been equalled in Bangor. "We cer tainly got more unkind criticisms from the railway people than we looked for. But it brought our mistress, who, hearing us in her stateroom in the Pullman, dressed in wild haste and tore to our relief. Warm milk from the buffet, and a little sympathy, supported us through the remainder of the journey. By eight o'clock that morning we were freed from our prison-cells, wrapped in warm shawls, and car ried on board a little steamer that started briskly out upon the waters of a glorious bay. "VVe had come into a new world a world of blue and dancing waves, of blue and tranquil sky, of bluer misty mountains towering on the far horizon beyond the water-line. Ere long came a view of wooded islands standing like sentries before a vil lage of many scattered houses and hotels. The little steamer whistled fiercely as, passing between two of these islands, we approached a broad and stately wharf. " Hello !" said Minimus, in a tone of some excite ment. " There's Jonesy on the pier." 2-i BAR HARBOR DAYS. " Jonesy T said his mother, vaguely. " Who is he?" "Well! Don't know Jonesy! He's the half back on our team. He's had whooping-cough, and came here to get well. Won't we go it, now !" CHAPTEE III. ON the wharf my mistress called a blackboard, and, although she had hard work in inducing Minimus to part with his beloved Jonesy long enough to visit their hotel, finally succeeded in stowing us all upon the seats. Paul, as I have said, was not as beautiful then as now, and in this early morning light, after the long, hard journey, was the most dejected little creature I ever beheld. lie had hardly spirit enough left to hold his head up, and shivered so that my mistress wrapped him in a rug and clasped him in her arms, telling him to cheer up, for his trials were at an end. But Paul contin ued limp, and well he might, as you will see when I pursue my story. "We drove along a straggling street, lined with huge hotels and shops and bazaars all of these structures painted in different colors, with towers and bay-windows, and arcades and verandas stuck on anywhere it occurred to the builder to put them, without architectural rhyme or reason. Ev erything was clean, trim, and smart as new coats of 26 BAR HARBOR DAYS. paint and kalsomine could make it. The shop peo- pie were arranging a tempting supply of wares in their windows, open to public gaze. Books, bon bons, soda-water, bric-a-brac, flowers, Turkish curi osities, Florida curiosities, draperies, millinery, ten nis racquets and caps, all bespoke preparations for a season of summer pleasuring in a crowded and free handed watering-place. It made us young ones prick up our ears to hear my mistress say how many pounds of bonbons alone had been sold at Bar Har bor the preceding season. It seemed like the Golden Age come to reign on earth. I knew, then, how it was possible for people to be so happy as they are said to be in this most favored spot. Not even the novelty of our surroundings could, however, distract my attention long from the con templation of P. Pry, Esq., as he lay upon my lady's knee. Although I could not in justice admit to my self that on so brief an acquaintance I loved, I felt strongly drawn to him. "When I gazed at his thoughtful Roman profile, at the black circle in vading one of his eyes, at his sparse covering of hair, at his spotty ears cocked up so comically, I said within myself, Dame Trot, stand firm! heed not the scoifing of the idle world ! beneath yon un prepossessing exterior lurks a true and gallant nat ure. It is better to be good than beautiful ; so I once heard Minimus read out from his copy-book. In this dawn of my subsequent attachment to BAR HARBOR DAYS. 27 dear Paul you may conceive my feelings when, di rectly after our arrival at the hotel, the proprietor came to my mistress with a long face. lie had nothing against the little critter himself, the proprietor wished to say, but there was them in the house as said they hadn't ca'allated to hev their dawgs run resks. " Good gracious !" said my mistress ; " we might as weir have brought scarlet fever or whooping- cough as Paul Pry. Of course I never meant him to go with other dogs. I told them to put him in the stable as soon as w r e arrived." In came Minimus with his tale of woe. Paul, having declined to stay in the stable, had gone on a voyage of discovery for himself ; had been snapped at by a paralytic poodle belonging to one of the boarders ; had driven a fat pug belonging to an other boarder to the verge of apoplexy by his pranks ; had finally taken refuge in the bedroom of a choleric old gentleman, to be kicked out witli words of wrath, and was now yelping on the stairs. For two days the problem of what to do with Paul continued to rack the family mind. I saw him going for melancholy walks with the maid or Min imus tugging at his leash, Paul making every effort to go back, or sidewise, or any way but forward, lie moped, he dwindled, he wailed, whenever left alone. What was the remedy ? Until we were able to go into our own cottage, then preparing for 28 BAR HARBOR DAYS. us, Paul was destined to make himself and every body around him thoroughly uncomfortable. At last, one morning, a boy came to my mistress when, after exercising Paul, she was entirely out of breath. He was a boy no one could fail to look at twice, with large eyes of the color of violets, and a tangled mat of golden curls under his old straw hat. A sensitive face and an honest one ; the violet eyes meeting yours fearlessly, and yet veiled at moments as if with a shadow unexplained. " Poor little doggie," said the lad, in a curiously soft voice, "he seems kind o' restless with the string." " He is a poor little doggie, sure enough," said my mistress. " How would you like to come to this beautiful island for the first time in your life and spend your whole time locked up in a dark room or led out at the end of a string '?" " I heard about the little fellow when I took grandmammy's chickens to sell at the hotel. I " here he hesitated, and the color came into his cheek. " I wish / could keep him for a bit. There ain't nothing to hurt him down our way." " What is your name ? where do you live ?" asked my mistress, fired by a sudden thought, as the lad stooped to pat Paul, who, rejoiced at a friendly overture, went over immediately on his back in the dusty roadway. I was in the arms of Minimus just then. "We were BAR HARBOR DAYS. 29 taking our airing, after this fashion unsatisfactory to all concerned. " I'm Christy Perkins, ma'am," answered the stranger, simply ; " most anybody on the island would tell you 'bout me. I live with grandmam- my, down yonder at "Witch Cove, they call it, close on to Fernley Hall. You'd pass near it any day when you'd drive down to Great Head. Folks often gets out o' their buckboards and comes down to see our rocks. But they don't do so as much since Mr. Smith he put up a board to warn off trespassers. Grandmammy takes in washin' in summer-time for the rusticators, and she sells her eggs and chickens, and I pick berries. Everybody knows me, ma'am, and I'd be good to him. He could run loose all day long. It's beautiful down our way, folks thinks. There's a bit of beach where he could play, and lots of rocks." " And what would grandmammy say ?" " She won't mind, ma'am. She don't never mind when I go out or come in, or what I do, long as the Avork is regular. He could sleep on the foot of my bed, too." His face grew brilliant with animation. Evident ly his whole soul was in the project. " "Well, Christy," said my mistress, after a mo ment's thought, " I will gladly let you take him, and pay you for his board. No meat to eat, mind you, and not much of anything but milk. But, to 30 BAR HARBOR DAYS. satisfy myself that grandmammy is in favor of our arrangement, my little boy and I will drive down to Witch Cove this afternoon and see you." " And bring him, too ? said the lad, with eager eyes. "Oh, that's nice! Please don't mind her, ma'am ; she don't mean anything by it, but she's kind o' cross an' cranky-like to strangers." AVe took a " cut-under " that's the Maine vernac ular for an uncovered carriage with wheels turning directly beneath the front seat and I sat in my mistress's lap behind, while Minimus and Paul Pry perched beside the driver. When we asked the way to Witch Cove the man looked rather puzzled. " Fernley Hall, ma'am, they call it now, since them rich city folks built their fine house there. A mint o' money they've spent upon the place, gradin' and diggin' up the boulders, and turfin' down to the water's edge. Why, there's a thou sand dollar's worth o' loam ef there's a cent put onto their tennis court, an' turf an' blastin' extry. I ought to know, for I was to work down there myself all last year a'most, after I cum off the mack erel fleet with a weakness in my chest." " No, I don't wish to go to Fernley Hall to-day," said my mistress, smiling, " I merely want to find out where Mrs. Perkins lives the grandmother of little Christy." " Excuse me for kinder takin' a liberty, ma'am," said the driver, who was a good-natured, soft- voiced BAR HARBOR DAYS. 31 kind of a man. "If you're goin' to get the old woman to do work for you the best way's to send her word by Christy. She's straight enough, and tends to her washin' regular ; but she's an awful hard old customer to talk to." " Then she does live at Witch Cove ?" pursued my mistress. "It's a kinder curious story," answered the man, settling for a comfortable gossip, as we rolled along a beautiful smooth road, keeping in sight the water. "Ever since I kin remember, and I was born and bred on the island, Widow Perkins's folks hev owned that bit o' property. It's a lot, 'bout two acres, I guess, dovetailed into the Fernley Hall place, just where you kin see it from the grand piazzy. The rocks there are reckoned fine, and there's a cave on the shore beyond that's awful pretty at low tide. The rest is mostly wild land, 'cept one little bit of a garden spot where she gets her vegetables, and a grass-patch for her cow." " Why do they call it Witch Cove," interrupted Minimus, who was fond of scenting out romances promising a germ of the sensational. "Is she a witch herself ?" " She's enough of a crank to be one, that's a fact. But the name was to the place when my great grandfather came here, cabin-boy off a ship from Nova Scotia, an' 'lowed he'd settle. In his time there was a reg'lar witch- woman had her cabin 32 UAR HARBOR DAYS. where the parlor chimney's built to Fernley Hall. Half Indian, half French, she was. Perkins's folks got their land from her.. She always said she never would die in her bed, that witch-woman did. Sure enough, she was drowned, and they found her long afterwards down on the shore of Ironbound Island ; know'd her by the ring she wore a red stone, that winked and blazed like fire, 'twas said." " What became of the ring ?" asked the little boy, whose flesh began to creep agreeably. " Oh ! they couldn't get it off, and it was buried with her." " Is that true ?" asked Minimus, drawing a long breath of satisfaction. " I got it from my grandfather. His father was one of the party that found her when they went ashore at Ironbound, one November night, to seek shelter from a gale." " What did your great-grandfather do for a liv ing ?" u Fished, and went to sea, like the rest of us. He was a fine old standard. Never knew a day's ill ness in his life. Lived to ninety-one, and brought up thirteen children, all buried in the graveyard over yonder." " Tell me some more about the witch-woman, please." " Well, I don't know as there's much I want to say. She had a son, a hunter, over to Moosehead BAR HARBOR DAYS. 33 Lake. After she was drowned off the cliff, her cabin took fire and burned down. Other folks claimed the land, and when her son came back here with his wife, to settle, they 'lowed him the point where Wid ow Perkins lives now. There he built him a little house, and his wife and baby stayed in it while he went off on long huntin' trips on the mainland. He was killed in a row with a half-breed guide, and his wife moped dreadful after him. When she died her girl married Perkins, who was a stranger in these parts a hunter, like the father. Perkins warn't never here long enough for people to neighbor up to him, so I've heard my father say. A queer fel low, and none too kind to his wife." " And there were children ?" asked my mistress, who had begun to take interest in this rather wof ul history. " That's the part I know, from my own knowl edge," said the driver, reluctantly. " If ever there was a lot of young rascals born and bred 'twas them three oldest Perkins lads. There warn't one of 'em but what shipped to foreign parts because that little cabin on Witch Cove was too hot to hold him, as the sayin' is. She was a hard woman, but, first and last, she's led a hard life. She's hard, but square" he concluded, devoting himself for the moment to his horse, who shied at an imaginary foe in a bush upon the roadside. " How do you mean that Christy's grandmammy 3 34: BAR HARBOR DAYS. is square 2" asked the little boy, who had a fashion of dwelling on remarks in general conversation af ter other people had let them go. " She must be a very queer-looking person. I hope we are going to see her." " She's honest. That's what I mean to say, young man, and it's a thing we islanders set store by. To hear the capers them Perkins boys cut, you wouldn't believe an ounce of her blood was in their veins. I was shipmate with the second son myself once, on a voyage to the Bahamas, and a bad lot he was, through and through." " Where are they now ? Did they turn pirates ?" asked Minimus. " In Davy Jones's locker, every mother's son of 'em. When news came that first one, then the other, was lost at sea then that the third, 'Zekiel, had jumped overboard in a spree in harbor at New Orleans the old woman never cried a drop. She just shut her mouth grim, and hoed up her potato- patch with a will." " How came she to get Christy, then ? Oh ! I hope he wasn't the son of one of those bad men." " Christy ! Well," said the man, irrelevantly, " everybody likes little Christy. As nice a boy as ever drew breath Git up, you Buck ! What do you mean by cocking up your ears at that old stump i" 1 " Goodness !" said my mistress, as Buck began BAR HARBOR DAYS. 35 backing across the road in the direction of a pre cipitous hillside, " I hope he's not going to do this every time we meet a stump." " Never you fear, ma'am," said the driver, " he knows just as well as you do that stump's a stump. But he wants to be took notice of. Git up, you Buck." I sympathized with Buck. Often had I barked once had I chewed the embroidery off my lady's dressing-slipper for the very self-same reason. But when we got into the middle of the road again and went on at a whizzing pace, I felt some curiosity to hear the conversation resumed between Minimus and the driver. I had not long to wait. " Was it Christy's father, or his mother, who be longed to Widow Perkins ?" asked the boy, persist ently. " His father, sonny," answered the man. " The widow's youngest ; a fine, handsome fellow, straight as a pine ; Ned, his name was ; the best fisherman, the best shot anywhere about here. Never would ha' thought he came out of the same nest as them three varmints, his brothers. When he was nine teen year old, married little Nancy Judson, from Rockport ; pretty as pink shoes, she was. You, Buck, ha' done your nonsense! That's Fernley Hall, down yonder, ma'am see it through the opening between the trees. Splendid site. Mr. Smith paid a round price for them six acres on the 36 CAR HARBOR DAYS. shore. Best sale ever made at the Harbor, people say. Boston architect (he pronounced it archytect), first-class gardener, stabling for eight horses, and the chairs and sofys framed in pure gold, so they say. Why, I see one oil-painting go in that hall door myself that measured ten foot from eend to eend. Two pyanners, a cat-boat, two row-boats, and a canoe. That young Smith chap's dreadful shy o' water, I've heerd tell, 'less he's in a steamboat with a band of music and plenty o' champagne, and then he most in gineral keeps inside.'' " But I am surprised," said my mistress, " that Mr. Smith didn't buy out the Widow Perkins. His money would have been a fortune to the old woman, and she could have educated Christy. Her little cottage, hanging to the rocks over there, must be in line with their drawing-room windows." " Buy her out ! Money couldn't do it, ma'am," exclaimed the driver, with some vehemence. " It's common talk how Mr. Smith -has offered her to name her price. The madam first talked herself hoarse, and then cried herself sick about it, but they could no more move Mrs. Perkins than they could take up Green Mountain and toss it into the sea." " She must be an old woman, and you said her youngest son is dead, also ?" "N-o, ma'am," the driver replied, hesitating. " The truth is, we natives don't talk much about BAR HARBOR DAYS. 37 Ned Perkins. It's a kinder sore subject. lie went to school with me, and we sailed a voyage together, and I thought I knew him well. If anybody had told me disgrace would come near Ned Perkins, I'd ha' thrown the lie into their teeth. . . . But he's gone gone away from his mother, and his poor little wife, Nancy Judson that was, lies in her grave, heart broken. There ain't a living soul to-day would dare to go to Widow Perkins and ask whether Ned's alive or dead. Git up, you Buck." A wind from the sea came up and moaned among the pines. Often, when the sky was blue and stainless, the summer sun shining so that warm scents arose from the flowery fields, we used to hear that moaning wind at Mount Desert. We drove past the gravelled entrance of Mr. Smith's avenue, past his porter's lodge, with the golden letters over the gate announcing Fernley Hall, and, to reach the shore, took a rough country lane on the outskirts of the millionaire's domain. The widow's cottage, built of spruce boards sil vered by time, was roofed with logs of unhewn birch, tufted with moss and lichen. Blending witli the gray of granite, and backed by a dark mass of fir-trees, it seemed part and parcel of the rocky coast the shell of some secretive animal, who pres ently, lifting a lid, would extend a long, thin arm in search of prey. The cliff on which it stood, seamed by a hundred fissures, yawned near the verge, to 432247 38 BAR HARBOR DAYS. reveal a black abyss, where frothy lines of surf came stealing or swirling in, according to the tem per of the sea. A poor place to bring tip a child in, you would say ; but, at the noise of wheels, there was Christy's sunny head popping up between the rocks down on the shore, and immediately he came, nimbly as a goat would, up the sheer face of the cliff, a look of brilliant happiness upon his face. On his shoulder sat a tame squirrel, who, at sight of Paul and me, skurried down from his post and ran away, never pausing till he had reached the peak of the cottage- roof, whence he looked on us disdainfully. " Silly Billy !" cried his master. " You will be better friends with nice little doggie soon. Please, may I keep him now ?" " Have you asked grandmammy ?" said my mis tress. " Oh, yes, ma'am. She said I might do as Pd a mind to, so long as she ain't bothered. We've got milk a plenty. I milk old Suke myself, and he can have it warm." We looked about in vain for some trace of life in the lonely habitation besides that afforded by Chris ty, his squirrel Billy, and the red-nosed cow grazing at her tether on a patch of cleared ground at the back. Just then the door opened, and grandmammy appeared. She was a stern old woman, tall and straight, her face weather-beaten and wizened, her BAR HARBOR DAYS. 30 eyes piercing bright. "When my mistress spoke to her, civilly enough, she answered in a harsh voice that what she'd told the lad she'd stick to, and there was an end on't. "With that, clapping the door to after her, she went within. My mistress made no comment. She told the man to drive us a little way into the field beyond the road, and there Christy came, a flush on either cheek, his head bowed as if prepared to hear his joy was to be taken from him. "I am glad to leave my little dog with you, Christy," the lady said, in a cheerful voice. "I don't think he could have a better place to get over his troubles in. You must remember what I told you about his food, and keep him warm at night. For the rest, I'm sure even Minimus here would think it a treat to have such a lovely hospital." " Oh, ma'am, if } T our boy could only come down and play on our beach he'd see how nice it is," cried Christy, enchanted. "Would you like to stop here, while I take the rest of my drive, darling," asked my mistress. " I shall be waiting on the main road for you about an hour from now." This being agreed upon with alacrity, I had to undergo the trial of seeing Paul Pry follow these boys. All three of them ran down a path along the shore, and slid from sight so rapidly you would have thought they had tumbled in the sea. But AVC 40 BAR HARBOR DAYS. " caught glimpses of them, and heard tongues going like mill-wheels. "]STo, my dear Dame Trot," said my mistress, stroking me as if she divined my disappointment. "Let us take our drive quietly, and leave thoso lords of creation to their own devices. Poor little Christy !" Poor little Christy! Paul told me afterwards, and Minimus told us, when we picked him up again according to appointment, that Christy's play place Avas the most beautiful he ever saw. " There's a secret cave, with sea-anemones and star-fish by the hundred, where Christy's going to take me some day soon," said Minimus. " Christy's got a dory of his own, and we w T ent out a little way and caught more pollock than we knew what to do with, in five minutes. And their beach is 'be-youti- ful, mamma. It's only six feet long, just under that huge cliff, and the pebbles and shells on it are as fine as if they'd all been picked and polished. I've got both pockets full of beauties, but don't put your hand in, please ; there are some fish-hooks, and sea- urchins, and a whopping dead star-fish I'm saving for Minor's collection. We had star-fish races, mamma. Mine was named Genesta, and Christy's Puritan. I named 'em. Genesta beat. The course was between two rocks, and we touched 'em up with switch es. Christy's going to keep Genesta for me in a rock pool. When Minor comes I may swap her, BAR HARBOR DAYS. 41 but not for his silver pencil though. You know, mamma, his second best, the one Cousin Lucy gave him Christmas. He's always trying to work that off on me. I wish people wouldn't think boys like silver pencils. You lose the lead first thing, and you never get another. They're most as bad as sleeve-buttons to give a boy. . . . You just ought to have seen the squirrel come down the cliff when Christy called him. He was afraid of Paul Pry at first ; but, when he found out Paul was afraid of him, lie strutted along. Paul sneaked up to me, and tucked his head under my arm. He likes Christy, mamma. I believe all animals like Christy. Be fore I came away Paul had snuggled up to him just as he does to Minor and me. Oh ! I have had a splendid afternoon. I wish Minor would hurry up and come to Mount Desert." So accustomed was my mistress to follow out her own train of thoughts to the accompaniment of this wagging little tongue, that she only looked at him abstractedly. " Poor little Christy !" she murmured again, and put one arm around her boy's shoulders, and so drove home through the westering sunlight. CHAPTER IY. WE were to move into our own house in a few days, and I, for one, was heartily glad. I could look forward, for the first time in my life, to the sweets of liberty. In hotels Minimus and I felt obliged to be so dreadfully prim and well-behaved. Minimus said it was wearing on him to have to think about his finger-nails so much. Then, when his mother was sitting on the veranda, talking to ladies and gentlemen, and he happened to come along, there were certain ceremonies to be un dergone that, to say the least, the victim did not fancy. " What is your name, my dear 2" the ladies and gentlemen would say, in a flattering manner. " Min imus, eh ? How old are you, Minimus ? Do you like Bar Harbor better than IS"ew York ?" and so on. " Then, when they meet a fellow again," the little boy remarked, "they pass me by without speaking, often as not. I hate people who are po lite to you only when your mother's there." This was my grievance, exactly. The acquaint- BAR HARBOR DAYS. 43 anccs of my mistress would praise me to the skies, and pat and stroke me till I was quite upset inter nally, when she had me in her lap. Then, if I ven tured into an open doorway or hall on my own re sponsibility, I was told to " Get out," and " Be off with you ;" and once, if you will believe me, I was kicked gently but firmly kicked out of his room by a gentleman who had previously told my mis tress that I was a bang-up little creature, and would take first prize at any bench show. These experiences gave me a painful insight into the insincerity of human nature. Other peculiari ties of the biped race calling themselves the rulers of animal creation struck me no less vividly. Some times I even felt as if the milk of human kindness were prematurely curdled in my breast. This may account for the slight vein of cynicism apparent in my writings. I used, for instance, to go to see Flossy, an Eng lish friend of mine stopping near us at what they called a family hotel, comparatively quiet and un exciting. " Yery select," I heard an old lady with a bit of black lace over the wide parting of her hair say to an old lady in a sailor-hat. I think, of the two, I preferred the old lady with the bit of lace, though the one with a sailor-hat was always in high spirits, and ready for anything proposed in the way of entertainment. They had also, at Flos- sy's house, a mamma with four daughters, who, 44 BAR HARBOR DAYS. from morn to eve, from week's end to week's end, went out somewhere on pleasure bent. Nobody ever saw those young women without their hats by day. They would rush in, declaring they were tired to death, although that had certainly been the jolli- est morning yet ; pounce upon their meals, eat while chattering incessantly, and set out again in a buck- board. In the evening they went to hops at the other hotels in turn. If at these hotels there chanced to be entertainments to which they were not invited, they would make up parties to go on the piazzas and look in at those who were. Once, Flossy said, a lady nobody knew, asked a young man everybody knew, to help her to give a fashion able party. lie said it might be managed if every fellow he asked could fetch his own young lady, and all the hostess had to do was to provide the supper and the band. Flossy's indefatigable girls went to that entertainment, of course, but I never heard that the method on which it was conducted had in creased in vogue. They said at breakfast next day they thought it would be larks, but found it a great bore. The old lady with the bit of lace on her head observed to the old lady with the sailor-hat that in her day things were differently managed. She dared say she was a little old-fashioned in her no tions, but the idea struck her painfully. To which the old lady in the sailor-hat said, " After all, what are the odds ? One needn't know the hostess if one BAR HARBOR DAYS. 45 meets her in town next season, and the croquettes were delicious" She had been present as a chap- erone. When we first went to Bar Harbor there were more ladies than gentlemen, and they were compar atively unemployed. But as the season waxed, and every boat contributed a fresh load of available ma terial, the young ladies went into the serious busi ness of the summer with a will. Sometimes we set out to make calls ; once, in a huge hotel, where we got no farther than the piazza, " the same old fish-pond!" somebody said to my mistress, as she laughingly held her hands up to her ears to ward away the sound of hundreds of voices engaged in animated converse. I looked about for the fish pond, but saw no water of any kind. What I saw was enough young people to stock a western terri tory. They were in a large bare hall, sitting on the stairs, sitting on the counter that served to bar ricade the hotel office, walking, two-and-two, up and down the entries. There were enough of them in addition to completely fill an immense veranda, extending half-way around the hotel. The hum of their mingled voices made a vast wave of sound, heard, but uncomprehended, by the novice shortly after landing at the Bar Harbor wharf. When I say young people, I mean, of course, to be taken with a grain of allowance for innocent re liance on fleeting first impressions. Perhaps if I 46 BAR HARBOR DAYS. say that some of them acted as if they were young, or dressed as if they were young, I may be more correct. Certain it is that all of them walked with peculiar lightness of gait. All of them talked with a vibrant thrill of excitement in their voices. There was one gentleman I particularly noticed. Pie blocked our way, and I could not help noticing him. lie wore a striped orange and black " blazer " (so Paul tells me these highly-colored coats are called), knickerbockers, heather mixture stockings, a blue flannel tennis-cap, and a scarlet satin scarf. When he turned around, with an apology for impeding my lady's progress, I observed he had gray hairs and wrinkles enough for two grandfathers. My mis tress said to a friend there was some mistake about the geographical situation of Ponce de Leon's foun tain. The historians had stationed it at the wrong end of the American continent. I did not under stand her, and, in fish-ponds and fountains, felt my self getting considerably beyond my depth. Most of the people at that wonderful hotel were dressed in costumes suggestive of tennis or boat ing, of mountaineering, or of going down to the sea in ships. I heard of a young man who went the rounds of the village during an entire season attired in correct yachtsman's dress. He was an innocent youth and ungrammatical ; and when somebody who met him later on inquired why he was not then with his craft, he replied, with a puzzled look, " / ain't got a yacht ; who said I had ?" BAR HARBOR DAYS. 47 Paul says I should begin a new paragraph, and take a fresh pen to do honor to the young ladies we saw around the fish-pond. lie says if he were a fish he wouldn't " play " at all, but bite with his eyes shut, and be spared the trouble of making his mind up which to choose. I tell Paul this is absurd, and that as I set out simply, to give some idea of the ways of life cf this now famous place of resort, I will do so, without wandering from the point into exaggerated statements. They were a pretty enough set of girls, no doubt, but dress and surroundings had a deal to do with their general effectiveness. I should like to know, for instance, who could look actually plain in a white tailor-made frock, with a red Tarn o' Shan- ter cap upon her head, and a big bunch of golden- rod at her breast, seated in a birch-bark canoe, being paddled about Frenchman's Bay by a good-looking young fellow in flannels ? Paul says the sentiment and construction of that sentence are essentially feminine. I hope they are, I tell him, since if I am clever, and an author, I trust I may never lose the spirit of my own sex in an at tempt to compete, on literary ground, with his. To go back to those girls. They rowed, they ca noed, they climbed, they buckboarded, they bowled, they sailed, they danced, they rode on horseback, they picnicked with tireless energy. Those among them established by the vox populi as queens pre eminent found it difficult to accommodate their en- 48 BAR HARBOR DAYS. gagements to the arbitrary divisions of time in gen eral acceptation as hours of wakef illness. Days were naturally too short when three to five hours, morning and afternoon, were allotted to sit ting on a rock and listening to analyses of the ten der passion, as original in treatment as they were exclusive in application. Thus it was that it became necessary for young ladies much in demand to di vide and subdivide their time for distribution among their admirers ; to stroll with Mr. Jones on the plank-walk at ten, to canoe with Mr. Smith at ten- thirty, to eat caramels with Mr. Robinson at eleven- fifteen, and so on. It did not seem to occur to the young men to remonstrate against their part of the work, any more than it did to the backboard drivers, ranged in a long row in the street below the fish-pond, to demur when they were signalled. Everybody knows that philandering is as inevitable at Mount Desert as are mackerel and picnics. The day we went to the fish-pond it was the only time I was there, and I remember it, partly be cause Paul scolded me for letting a bold French gentleman stare at me. He was a poodle, so black you couldn't see an expression of any kind upon his face, and had been shorn like a lion, with sweet little tassels on his legs and tail. His name was M. Rex Caniche, and I don't deny his staring, but can a woman always make herself forbidding to the other BAR HARBOR DAYS. 49 sex ? That day I made acquaintance with a Blue Skye, from whom I obtained some interesting facts. Her name was Lily. The lady who belonged to her was considered a great beauty. Tall and showy, with rosy cheeks and a long waist, and a little red veil worn over the tip of her nose, she was exactly like a fashion-plate. This lady made no end of fuss over Lily, kissing her and calling her pet names. Lily had a new bow every morning to match her lady's gowns. The day I saw her it was cardinal, and so big Lily could hardly walk under it. "Well, Lily waddled over in my direction, and told me that woman of hers was the most awful fraud the place contained. " She's married, and leaves her husband and three of her children at home in town. The other two are here, tucked away in a cottage with the nurse, while she spends the day on the hotel piazza, or on the plank- walk. They call her the Chief of the Broadway Squad, she's so steadily on the go crossing the street with different men in tow. She's got a lanky boy at home, nearly as old as that little dude she's holding on to now. Isn't she afraid she'll lose him, though ? lie don't like dogs. That's the reason I'm allowed to get off with you. I positively hate her kisses," went on poor Lily, in whose round bright eyes under her tangled forelock I could discern the gathering tears. " She told a dinner-table full of peo ple once she couldn't et there sooner because I was 4 50 BAR HARBOR DAYS. . threatened with convulsions from eating wedding- cake. The truth was her gown didn't come home, and she was going on like a f ury before her dressing- glass. The worst thing is those miserable children ; they are as much neglected as infant Hottentots. No, he positively wo?i't ask her to go in his canoe. I'm glad of it. She'll have to put up with Smithers in a row-boat. She never takes Smithers unless the rest have failed. There she goes ! ' Lily darling !' ' Lily sweetest !' The same old tune. Ugh ! What hypocrisy. Good-bye, Mrs. Trot. Unless a better man turns up between here and the wharf we're booked to. go with Smithers in the boat." And poor Lily, in a state of the utmost dejec tion, allowed herself to be swooped down upon and tucked away a mere bundle of fluff under her lady's arm. I never met a sadder case of confiding nature warped by contact with the customs of the fashionable world. CHAPTER V. AND now we had left the village, and were estab lished" in a house so near the water it was like living in a yacht. But there were drawbacks even to this pleasure. It was a new house, and Minimus and I thought the women in charge of putting things to rights, as they expressed it, were dreadfully severe. They were forever spying at our feet when we came in, and rushing at us when we wanted to sit down on the new chairs and sofas. Minimus privately con- lided to me that he liked the place much better when it was full of carpenters and shavings. How ever, it was beautiful June weather, and we lived a great deal out of doors. The fields were full of daisies and blue iris and uncurling ferns, and you could hardly tell the buttercups from the yellow butterflies that rested on them. Besides, they had promised me Paul Pry for a companion at a- very early date; and Minimus had hope that Minor's school term would soon be at an end. Beyond that, neither of us had anything in particular to ask of Fate. 52 BAR HARBOR DAYS. One afternoon, when there was a shower, they were unpacking china, and some men were carry ing in large pieces of furniture which refused to go up any of our stairs and everybody said " Get out," and things like that, to Minimus and me so we retired, feeling a little disconsolate, to find amusement in the Den. This was the one place from which even the women did not drive us. It was a room shingled inside, the walls covered with oars and paddles, bows and arrows, racquets, creels, and fishing-rods. It had no furniture but a table and some chairs, and there was a fireplace and andirons, and a door open ing on a path directly to the water. As you may suppose, this spot was especially designed for the use of boys and dogs, and I have seen it so full of 'em there wasn't room for another earthly thing but a plate of cookies and a jug of lemonade. Here we sat, and Minimus whittled out the hull of a boat ; while I, as usual in moments otherwise unoccupied, took a nap. By and by the rain stopped, and the grass and daisies shone in the returning sun. It was impossible to stay in-doors, with nature wooing us like that ; so down went the jackknife and the boat-hull, up jumped my little master, up jumped I, in a twinkling. Minimus ran first to ask his mother if he might go to Christy's. He found that lady surrounded by and interviewing the following persons, only : BAR HARBOR DAYS. 53 A carpenter, about extra shelves ; A painter, about the right tint for a cornice ; A man with a carpet-bag, who had come to hang some shades and couldn't wait ; A woman from Otter Cliffs, with nice fresh eggs to sell ; A farmer from Hull's Cove, with potatoes ; Two rival grocerymen, solicitous of custom ; The chicken-woman ; The pig-man, about the kitchen refuse ; and A maid, inquiring if she remembered where she had put the tack-hammer. " Oh ! Minimus, isn't it too far for you to walk, my boy ?" " Not a bit, mamma. Besides, I can get a lift, or hitches, any time." Neither of us waited to pursue the subject fur ther. Off we ran into a crystal atmosphere. Yery soon a good-natured countryman, driving a load of loam, took us up beside him on the plank serving as seat ; Minimus in his sailor-suit of clean blue and white striped drilling, and I in my snowiest coat for I had been, to my disgust, bathed only that morning. When we jumped down and, thanking the man, ran across lots to Christy's cottage, we saw him weeding a garden bed. Paul Pry, engaged in a jumping-match with a grasshopper, was behind him. Silly Billy, as usual, was on his shoulder. 54 BAH HARBOR DAYS. " Hello !" said Minimus. "Hello!" said Christy. "How's Genesta" asked Minimus. " She's all right, but Puritan died the next day after you were here. Look at Silly Billy, what friends he is with Paul ! Why do you hold your hand over Dame Trot's nose ?" " To keep her from catching it, you know," said Minimus, jerking his chin towards Paul Pry, w r ho made lively demonstrations of a desire to get at me. " We always used to when we passed a house in our block where they had scarlet fever." " I don't believe you need trouble any more," said Christy, his face clouding a little. "Paul don't cough, and he don't sneeze; and he's lively as a kitten all day long, and eats more milk! Tom Spriggins says he's as well as he's ever going to be, and I meant to come up your way and fetch him back, to-morrow." Christy gave a sort of gulp ; Minimus loosed his hold of me. Paul's little white body flashed across the garden path ; I after him. The first use we made of our permission to be together was to have a circus. Such a thing as catching one of us, or stopping our mad career, the two boys never dreamed of. Whiz ! bang ! we went, up into the woods, over the garden beds, into the cow-pasture, down to the perilous verge of the cliff ; back again, down the beach-path to the lower rocks, BAR HARBOR DAYS. 55 till, at last, gripping and growling, holding on to each other by the teeth, we lost our footing and plunged heels over head into the sea. O-o-h ! How cold it was ! Ice-splinters seemed to sting our skin. Could we swim ? That was the question. There was no time to speculate upon this point. Swim we did, straight in to the shore, where the two boys stood cheering us with shouts of triumph. I believe we would have been frozen then, but that it occurred to us to have another circus. When that was over, the blood was tingling in our veins and we felt ready to meet a bull-dog. Ah, me! The tender retrospect. Since then, Paul and I have never parted. If Paul cocks up his ears, I bark ; if he whines, I run about, sniffing out the difficulty. We share each other's joys, sor rows, bones, and dog-biscuit. If at times I have to complain of a little l>rusquerie in my beloved con sort, a slight tendency to snub or satirize, I bid my self recall his sterling virtues, his tried and proved qualities of head and heart. From that day his health was established. He grew strong and stocky. The only mark he bears of the malady that preyed upon his youth is an in ability to utter a good, round, fair-and-square fox- terrier bark. He is so sensitive on this point that I induced him to take lessons, privately, of me, in an accomplishment I, without vanity, may lay claim to 56 EAR HARBOR DAYS. possessing liberally. Oh, yes, I can bark. I can rend the skies with shrill, continued yapping, if I try ! But, spite of all ray efforts, Paul can only give vent to howls ; long, dreary, eerie, blood-curd ling howls, uttered with his nose up, head thrown back, and an expression of woe unspeakable upon his visage. Poor, dear fellow ! I suppose none of us are without our weaknesses, but there is another trifle I should like to set down here. Paul is, in his own estimation, as brave as Julius Caesar. With a chick en, or a grasshopper, or a mouse, he is really terri ble. But confront him with the bellows, and he is at once reduced to a state of abject terror. Reason as you may, you can't convince him that this useful little instrument, all yellow leather and brass tacks, is not fraught with deadly peril to him. When our boys, as I regret to say they too often do, chase him into a corner and puff cool blasts of wind upon his nose with it, Paul actually shrivels up with fear ! I would that my liege lord had not these defects, but which of us is perfect ? " I say, you'll miss the little beggar," Minimus observed, as he and Christy stood " shying " stones into the water. " Yes, he's powerful company to me," Christy answered, with a sigh. " But I've got Silly Billy, and I never counted on keeping your little dog longer'n this." PAT I, PHY AND MINIMI'S. BAR HARBOR DAYS. 57 " I've got a green snake in an Apollinaris bottle you may have," said Minimus, in a burst of gener osity ; " he snaps like anything, and I was keeping him for Minor. Minor's my brother, you know ; not my biggest brother. lie's five feet ten, and the captain of a foot-ball team. They're the champions, and they've licked most all the schools in town. Gollylesia ! I just wish you could see Long, their half-back, kick." " I'd rather see the Brooklyn Bridge," answered the island-boy. " Grandmammy's got it pasted on the wall, and I've read about it many a time ; that and the obelisk." " Well, the bridge is some fun, when you go over it in those cable cars and walk back. The day papa took us we went first to Fulton Market to see the fish, and a man there filled our pockets full of shrimps, and we ate 'em all the way. You crack 'em, just like peanuts." " Did you ever pick up winkles ?" asked Christy, feeling more at home. " There are lots here, and clams, too. Let's, will you ?" Conversation from this point was of a very dis jointed character. The two lads capered about barefoot on the sharp stones of the beach, as if they were dancing on red-hot ploughshares, and, to rest their feet, sank their toes in oozing mud, where the tide had left it moist and sparkling in the sun. Christy's powers as a contributor to general in- 58 BAR HARBOR DAYS. formation on subjects appertaining to sea and shore impressed Minimus profoundly. There was some thing fascinating to the little town boy in these stories reeking of salt, having in them an echo of " the everlasting thunder of the long Atlantic swell." Stories of whales and porpoises, of cod and hake and haddock, strong and fierce, of ravening shark and clog-fish, of sword-fish, harpooned from the deck of a slanting schooner ; of mackerel-fishing, with its ups and downs of luck. And they had in them the charm of recital by an actual participant in the scenes described. For this slender Christy, with-his pathetic blue eyes and rose-tinted cheeks, had been from babyhood accustomed to rough it with the fishermen, who took him out whenever they had a chance. It did not occur to his grandmother to try to keep him from the sea. Every man child among those born to her had gone the same way. Was not she well accustomed to trim her lamp at sunset, and set it within the little casement, to cover in the fire and go to bed, leaving food and drink on the table for those who might, but oftenest did not, re turn ? If Christy came in wet, he dried himself by the blaze of birch logs, or else shook the rain from his worn jacket, and laughed as he sat down to his beans and bacon. Ofttimes his dinner was a bit of blueberry pie and a morsel of cheese, eaten upon the rocks or in the dory, while on the rounds look ing after his lobster-pots, or fishing for flounders BAR HARBOR DAYS. 59 and pollock. Such a tiling as overshoes was un heard of in the cabin, a point on which Minimus congratulated him warmly. " I say, Christy, I wish I was in your place for a ' while," he exclaimed. " Minor and I would like to make a bonfire of our pea-jackets and ulsters, and throw in every pair of rubber shoes and every um brella in the country. I 'spose now," after a mo ment's meditation, " if you have a little tickle in your throat you're not bound in honor to tell your grandmammy ?" Christy was ready to admit that. " Then you don't have to gargle," Minimus went on, in a melancholy tone (gargling was the sum and crown of objectionable operations at our house), " and if you want to go out roller-skating on the sidewalk on a frosty day you don't have to argue yourself black in the face to persuade your grand- mammy to let you go without your great-coat." No, Christy had none of these drawbacks to con tend with. In summer he was up at sunrise, milk ing the cow, feeding the chickens, looking for eggs, attending to their little garden. Often as not, when grandmammy had a good big wash from the hotels, he had no regular meals, and his days alternated between hanging out the linen on the lines, taking it in, and going out in the dory, picking berries, or digging clams for supper. That was their busy time, when the island was full of rusticators. In autumn (30 EAR HARBOR DAYS. the " city folks" dropped away with the bright leaves from the boughs, and by December the whole face of nature had changed to frowns and darkling glances. The soft Italian sky was draped in nun's gray. The sapphire bay was blurred with frequent gales and blocked with floating ice. The granite ledges of the Porcupines were lashed with curling surf, leaping at times so high as to deposit the shells of sea-urchins upon the skeleton roots of fir- trees on the cliffs. Then the ocean swell came in, furiously dashing its arctic waves upon the buttress of Egg Eock Light or sucked into the thunder-caves at Schoon er Head, to arise again, spouting defiance in spray- like mist a hundred feet above. But no matter what turmoil went on at their feet, those beautiful, brooding, motherly mountains sat serene. Christy had their rock-ledges to gaze at, ice-bound and shin ing in the eastern sun. Their fir- woods, a veritable land of Christmas trees, went into hoods of snow, but otherwise made no alteration in their mode of life during the winter season. Theirs was the ele ment of rest decreed by Nature's God unto this lit tle jagged bit of land, left at the mercy of the wild north sea. Told, even after Christy's boy-fashion, these things had power to excite in Minimus a feeling of insur rection against home, school, and conventionalities of metropolitan life. He was prepared to resign all A TIirNDKU ( AVK. BAR HARBOR DAYS. 1 of them in favor of a winter spent with his new found friend in the cabin on the cliff. While talk ing, they occupied themselves with picking winkles off the rocks, where the fat and clammy creatures clung persistently, and in lifting stones to detect the presence underneath of clams, who showed themselves very clever in burrowing in the mud, and were betrayed only by jets of water rising to the surface. " I'll run up to the house with this here mess for grandmammy," said Christy, after a fair division of their spoils. " We'll leave yours in this rock-pool till you're a mind to go. Say, don't you want to see su'thing real pretty ? They're in that cave round yonder near the point o' rocks I told you 'bout. It's sea-anemones, an' if city folks knew 'bout 'em they'd be carrying 'em off in pails to the hotels." " Ho\v do we get there ?" asked Minimus. "Oh, shin around the rocks. It's easy enough, 'cept when you git to a oig boulder, and then you have to grip it, and trust to luck." This prospect was too inviting to be resisted, and they set out to skirt the fringe of rough and jagged rock around the coast between them, and the point desired. Now and again they stopped to quench their thirst at the fairy rivulets of clear cold water coursing from hidden springs in the fir-tipped heights above, to mingle with the sea. When tired, they lay full length upon ledges matted with rock (52 BAR HARBOR DAYS. fern, and screened from sight by thickets of wild rose, pink with blossoms. Once Minimus charged Christy with tickling him in the ear, at a point where a misstep might have plunged him into the kelp-lined caverns far below. Christy denied, Min imus persisted, and there might have been a quar rel, but that my master espied, close to the spot whereon his head was pillowed, a single harebell courtesying on an elastic stem of wirelike brown. " Oh, you little mischief !" cried Minimus to the harebell. He had stretched out his hand to pick it, but a second thought made him draw back. " I wouldn't like any one to take me away from such a pretty place," he said. . And the hare-bell nodded assent ! CHAPTER VI. PRETTY soon we came to a huge rock, rising straight and smooth in a column from the sea, topped with a tangled mass of fern and wild-roses, like a periwig. As to getting over it, only flies could have walked up the side of such a barrier. " We're stuck," said Minimus. " Not yet," shouted Christy, who was ahead of him, investigating the situation. " I've been many a time around this old fellow. There's a ledge here under water, broad enough to hold you easily, if you only mind your steps." " All Tight," "said Minimus. " I'll follow. But there's one thing certain. These puppies must stay here till we come back ; they can't wade, and we can't carry them." Paul and I behaved as many spoiled children have behaved before us. "We whined and whim pered, and protested against being left. Finally, in spite of a stern order from our master, Paul dashed breast high into the water and tried to make his way around by swimming, with the immediate 64 BAR HARBOR DAYS. result of being nearly carried off on a receding wave. " You little goose," cried Minimus, as, with great difficulty, he fished my liege out by a hind -leg. " You haven't an ounce of brains, I do believe. Christy, I'll tell you what. Let's each button one of the dogs inside his jacket. Lucky I've got a sailor-shirt on.'' This plan suited us exactly. Paul, after being dried by one of those useful handkerchiefs gener ally found in a wad at the bottom of a boy's trou sers pocket, was secured in Christy's breast, his head looking out most comically. Shoes and stockings were next strung around Christy's neck, and Mini mus, after a good laugh at his appearance, made haste to follow suit with me. Why we were not as flat as flounders after the climb which followed I have never known. Luck ily, we and the two boys got off with a few scratch es and bruises, but nobody thought of making a complaint. On the other side of the rock column we found Christy's cavern, and crept inside to rest. I had heard a good deal about gnomes and elves and fai ries since I came to my present residence, and had privately thought it very foolish and unreal talk, till I saw that cave of Christy's. You must remem ber that everything outside was warm and bright and sparkling as the afternoon sun could make it. BAR HARBOR DAYS. C5 When we stood under the great prismatic arch, framing a beautiful living picture of sea and isl ands, and looked into the cool, greenish light of the mysterious recess beyond, I could have sworn those shadowy depths were peopled by a hundred fairy folk. What a place for pixie-housekeeping ! Minimus said this first, and I made the same re mark to Paul, in dog English, passing it off as orig inal. Paul asked me what pixies are, and when I told him water-fairies, he looked satirical. Paul never had the least imagination ! The whole inside of the cavern was soft red in color, streaked and fretted with the most beautiful iridescence, and worn by the waves into patterns like lace-work. At half -tide, as it was then, the sea came only to the outer limit of the arch, and with in was a bit of smooth floor of polished pebbles, scattered with shells and star-fish while in every crevice of the rocks were the loveliest starry flowers of blue and crimson, their fringed petals swaying to and fro. Living flowers ! Breathing flowers ! A palpitating garland ! " Pretty, be'ent they ?" said Christy, with propri etary condescension. "But I'd as lief not handle 'em. Folks says they've got poison-bags. Ever see a 'nemone fishing for its food ? They're powerful greedy critters." This, although not romantic, was interesting to all of us. The two boys squatted down with their QQ BAR HARBOR DAYS. noses close upon the wonders of the anemones' re treat, and Paul and I looked and listened, till a great swash of water on our heels gave warning it was full time to go. Outside the cave the situation was unpromising. A wind, rising towards sunset, had roughened the water into waves, and the submerged path around the big rock was now in a state of lively commo tion, forbidding all thought of return as we had come. Overhead, the coast rose into an impracticable cliff, and the only way open to us ended in a knife- blade reef, completing the semicircle that began with Christy's home. "When there ain't no two ways, we've got to take the one," said Christy, calmly, after a pause, during which both boys' hearts beat hard. " I was a blamed fool to get you into this scrape, but I've been in worse ones along this coast afore. Lucky it's daylight and the sea is middlin' calm." " "What are you going to do, Christy ?" asked Min imus. "Oh! do you think this is an adventure? I've never had one, and Minor's had so many. He got bit by a dog, and set the house afire, and blew off his eyebrows with a powder-cracker." But Christy did not answer. He was climbing along the rocks this side the reef, surveying the foothold they afforded. " I want a signal-flag," he said, returning. " Lucky AT S( IinoNKH HEAD. BAR HARBOR DAYS. 67 you've got a white shirt on. Off with it. Here's a pretty good pole I've found." Minimus obeyed, tugging at his garment till stopped by the beaten-silver buttons inserted in the cuffs by loving hands at home that morning. The sight of them brought a lump into his throat, tears into his eyes. But he said nothing, and quietly helped Christy to rig up a flag. This done, Christy resumed command. " You stay here, just here," he said. " Don't get frightened when you see me out on the reef. I'm pretty sure-footed, I tell you, and I've got to make grandmammy see us, or break a trace." Welcome slang! Minimus felt cheered exceed ingly. He even smiled. " Here goes !" shouted Christy, and off he clam bered along the black line of the rocks, wet to the skin by flying surf, and holding his banner bravely. " Hooray !" shouted Minimus, with all his lungs. I barked. Somehow Paul was not in the spirit of the thing. His tail lay flat, his ears drooped. What could have ailed my hero?" " Hooray !" returned Christy. He had reached the farthest practicable rock, and stood there wav ing with immense enthusiasm. What a tiny object he seemed amid the tumult of the surf ! " I see something red in the window," called Minimus. " It's the 'curtain. She saw us," answered Christy. 68 BAR HARBOR DAYS. " Can she get a man in time ? " asked Minimus, voicing the fear that rose within. " A man ?" said Christy, scornfully. " Grand- mammy's better'n a man. She'll come herself. Look, and you'll see her go down to the dory." Minimus looked, and saw emerge from the cabin door a tall, gaunt figure, walking straight and swift down the little path. The rocks hid her for a time, but very soon we beheld the lumbering old dory turn the point, with grandmammy inside. Slow work it was for her to row to us ; slower it seemed. Christy had climbed back to our perch by now, and we huddled there together, a wet, forlorn, but not disheartened little group, the waves breaking upon the ankles of the lads. "Brace your back against the rock," directed Captain Christy. "You take one dog and I the other, or the first thing they'll be washed away." I fell to the lot of Minimus. I nestled in his arms, and when he kissed me between thje eyes, I licked his cheek, and tasted something salt and warm. I knew what it was, because everything else was salt and cold. " I was thinking of mamma, Trotsey," he whis pered in my ear, little knowing how well I under stood. The last ten minutes that we stood there wait ing might as well have been an hour. When the dory came in alongside the rock we were stiff with BAR HARBOR DAYS. C9 cramp and cold. Nothing surprised me more than the composure of Christy's grandinammy in greet ing us. " In with you, lads," she said, coldly. " Fools you be to resk your lives for play, when there's danger 'nuff an' to spare ahead o' ye." Into the bobbing dory we tumbled, one by one. Christy took one of the oars, Minimus the other, and before long had restored the circulation of their blood. As for Paul and me, we for a time cher ished vague intentions of making springs into the witch-woman's lap, but gave it tip, and shivered be neath the thwarts. Talk came to a standstill. The boys had all they could do to pull against the tide, while grandmam- my sat still and stern, looking far away towards the western sky. IS"o fire ever seemed so bright as that handful of birch and pine dropped on the coals of the cabin hearth, when finally we dragged our tired feet across the threshold of Christy's home. It was Christy who took down from the dresser some cold coffee in a pot, and put it to heat upon the embers. It was Christy who ran back into an inner room, emerging with a pair of brass-tipped "Sunday shoes, and his scarlet Sunday stockings. It was Christy who produced a large wedge of apple- pie, and two saucers on which to share the frugal feast. The old woman, having rescued the boys, be stowed, apparently, no further thought on them. YO BAR HARBOR DAYS. " I swan ! we never noticed when your shoes and stockings floated off the ledge," said the host. " You'll have to wear mine home ; I guess they'll fit you. Here, puppies, I'll give you a saucer of porridge and milk apiece. Little Paul, I'll miss you in bed to-night, old doggie ! To Minimus this feast of cold pie and scalding coffee, blended with loving-kindness, was nectar and ambrosia. It was his nearest approach to the cov eted experience of a shipwrecked mariner, as de scribed in the story - papers. Slowly toasting his toes, he endued them with Christy's shoes and stockings, and then a remorseful thought of his ex pectant mother quickened his lagging movements. " Good-bye, old fellow," he said, " I want you, please, to keep my sleeve-buttons, though of course it's only a little tiny thing, beside what you've done for me to-day ; and I don't like to take Paul away from you one bit, except that he's mamma's dog, not mine." " I ca'allate it'll be seventy-five cents a week for the critter's board," here interposed the mistress of the house, in chilling accents. Minimus, trying not to see that Christy's face grew red, rose up and bowed politely. " Of course, Mrs. Perkins, my mother under stands, and we shall send the money for Paul Pry to-morrow." " I won't have any money," exclaimed Christy, BAR HARBOR DAYS. 71 almost fiercely. " He's he's slept with me nights, and waked me up a' lickin' my face." Here the boy, who had so calmly faced the dan gers of the sea, broke down in a passionate fit of tears. My master looked very much as if he de sired to do the same thing ; but, squeezing Christy's hand and calling us to come, he walked aAvay into the gathering darkness. Half-way home a relief expedition, sent out in a cut-under to overhaul him, heard the familiar whis tle of " Tit-Willow," and discerned, amid the shad ows of the deep wood road, a little figure thrusting both hands into his breeches pockets as he trudged along. CIIAPTEK VII. SHORTLY after this event a post-card, slipped into the mail-bag for New York, carried the following effusion : "DEAR MINOU, Can I ware your blew tennis cap please hurry up and come up here it is dandy I had an advenshur in a cave the pupies are all right dont be Huffy about that Pad you can have it I was only funning please come I want you every day. Yours truly MINIMUS." And then, one morning, everybody in our house ran to doors and windows waving to the steamer as she swiftly cut her way across the bay. A little later a buckboard drove up, and out jumped our middle-sized boy, carrying on his back a creel, and in his hand a bundle of brand-new fly-rods. Minor submitted to be kissed and cuddled with exemplary grace, and, although he had been since the previous morning on the rail, announced his intention to set out immediately to fish a trout- brook on Dry Mountain. " Oh, don't, Minor !" pleaded his brother, knowing full well that his own inability to restrain convcr- BAR HARBOR DAYS. 73 sation made him impossible as a companion on such occasions. " You haven't seen the dock, or the tennis-court, or anything. Don't fish until to morrow." Minor relented, and we all ran down together to the shore. There sat, like a duck upon the water, such a pretty boat ; broad-bottomed, yet light as a cork, painted white without, and within left in the natural tints of the wood, shellacked. Across her thwarts lay two pairs of oars, and in the stern ap peared, in crimson letters, the name, Sea-Urchin. "Isn't that a surprise for you?" exclaimed Mini mus, capering about. " She's mine. I bought her with the money in my bank, and the fellow that made her teaches me how to row. Let's go out in her every morning and every afternoon, and come home only to dinner and to tea." " All right," said Minor ; and, in a trice, Sea - Ur chin was pulled in alongside the plank-walk, and her crew, including us, jumped in. "We pulled out upon the beautiful clear water, and around us swam the long, sharp bodies of the pollock, and the ugly, distorted sculpins which the boys liked better to watch over the boat's edge than to take upon their lines. Once, our bow ran into a huge jelly-fish as big as a barrel-top, like a bleeding sponge shut up in a transparent bag. Other jelly-fish we saw were little cups of silvery white, with black rings to rep resent their eyes. 74 BAR HARBOR DAYS. " Hello !" said Minor ; " that's a good sign. Mackerel aren't far off when these little fellows come around. Gemini ! Here's a school of jelly fish with all the eyes torn out. Greedy old beasts those mackerel are." " Well, almost everything preys on them" said Minimus. " Sharks and porpoises, and all the big fish, and sea-gulls. There's a gull now getting ready for fishing with all her might." " Slow up, or we'll scare her off," said Minor. " Isn't she a pretty creature ?" The gull, after describing innumerable curves, had arranged for business with a will. Watching her opportunity, she swooped low, dashed up a little jet of sparkling brine, and was off into the air bearing a good -sized mackerel in his iridescent livery of green and gold. " Poor fellow," said Minor, reflectively ; " I s'pose he'll think it wasn't worth while swimming all the way from the coast of Delaware to be nabbed like that." " She might as well get him as we," remarked Minimus. "I vote we row ashore and get our lines." Minor's sentiment was short-lived. Changing their course, they pulled back to the dock. Minimus ran up the bank, disappeared at the den door, and reappeared with a pail and lines. A few pollock, taken in for bait, were cut up by that universal BAR HARBOR DAYS. 75 pocket-knife, into whose uses it does not do to in quire too closely, and our philanthropists proceeded to emulate the example of the sea-gull. " Here's number one," whispered Minor, and, with a jerk, in he whisked a beautiful shining mackerel. Another and yet another followed in quick succes sion, and then Minimus felt a pull upon his line. " In with it," said Minor, and in it came a hid eous, goggling sculpin, at sight of which Paul Pry turned away his head and burrowed into Minor's tail pocket, while even I felt a shudder of repulsion. " I tell you what," said Minor, " I can't handle those nasty things without feeling sick, so we'd better cut away the hook and toss him overboard." This was done, and the monster, with an Indian ornament dangling at his nose, returned to his na tive element. A half -hour later, when the pail was half full of mackerel, Minor felt a brisk tug at his line. "It's a whopper this time," he exclaimed, trium phant and hauled out the identical old sculpin they had cast away, nose-ornament and all ! Laughing and fishing on that peerless summer's day, blue above, blue below, the free air blowing, not a care in their hearts, I questioned if the cynic who asked where happiness is to be found outside the dictionary might not read his answer there. "Gemini AVilkins!" cried out the emancipated schoolboy. " When I think I'm going to have three 76 BAR HARBOR DAYS. solid months of this, I'd like to howl. You don't know what a fellow feels. You aren't in Latin. Every now and then, just from habit, I shut my eyes and gabble ' ad, ante, con, in, inter, ob,post, prcc, pro, sub, and super, and sometimes circum? But isn't it good to open 'em and find myself out here on Frenchman's Bay ? I just wish I had old Allen and Greenough here to feed the sculpins with." Paul and I thought he alluded to his masters at the school. It was quite a relief to hear him say he meant the Latin grammar. " Don't you wish you were Christy ?" observed the sympathetic Minimus. " He never heard of Allen and Greenough, and he can take cold whenever he wants to, only he never does. Oh, Minor ! you're sure to like Christy, and we'll have such fun to gether." "He must be a pretty good sort of a fellow," said Minor, coolly. He was trying hard to subdue a sort of jealousy which would arise whenever he thought of that adventure with Christy in the cave, allotted by unkind fate to his junior instead of to himself. " If it hadn't been for Christy I don't believe the puppies and I would have been alive to-day," pur sued the smaller boy ; " and it was all mamma could do to get him to take some money for Paul Pry. It was his grandmammy who took it, after all. And Christy knows a trout-brook that I'll tell to BAR HARBOR DAYS. 77 you, if you'll cross your heart you'll never tell Jonesy ; because I promised, don't you see ?" Minor kindled into sudden interest. What fish erman could resist news of a trout-brook undivulged to the mass of summer visitors ? " We'll go down to Christy's house day after to morrow," he said. " I'm sure he's a bully fellow, and I'm glad you found him out. To-morrow, you see, I'm going by myself to fish that little stream. You know ?" This mystery was observed invariably, when the subject of a fishing-ground was broached. Certain spots, known to the initiated few, were to be dis cussed in whispers only. " I wish I could go with you," boldly ventured Minimus. On the strength of the fact that his brother had so recently arrived, it might be possi ble to find him in a lenient mood. " I'm sorry, Minny," said the stern elder, quite compassionately, for him. " But you know when you talked so much the last time I had to make a rule, and I can't break it now. But I'll give you my little old tennis-cap, the blue one you wrote to me about, and next week I'll take you for a walk up Green." " I don't exactly know whether it's selfish, mam ma," pursued the same speaker that evening, after tea, when we sat around a few burning pine-cones piled on some balsam-boughs upon the hearth. 78 BAR HARBOR DAYS. " But I'm almost glad when. I have to fish alone. Just suppose you get a pool where the trout are, and the other fellow doesn't. You feel like a per fect sneak every time you take one out." Early next morning he was down-stairs, eating a cold breakfast on. the kitchen table, while his broth er's nose was still buried in the bed-clothes. With a parcel of luncheon in his creel he stepped out into the waking world, as fresh and happy-hearted as a lad need be. It was at this point that Paul and I beset him with wild .entreaties to be allowed to fol low. " Nice little puppies," he said, caressing us ten derly. " You'd be famous company, but I'm afraid to trust you. Go home, now, and Minimus will take you for a run after breakfast." But we had no idea of giving up so easily. We waited till he had turned his back, then dashed off through the tall meadow-grass by a cross-cut, and met him on the high-road. " You naughty little things !" he began, angrily ; then relenting, as we jumped all over him, stroked us both. " I've a great mind to take Trot, but what shall I do with Paul?" The milkman, driving briskly along the road in his hooded cart, offered a solution of this difficulty. Paul, captured and pinioned beneath his stalwart arm, was to be carried ignominiously home. I fol lowed Minor along the plank-walk, through the BAR HARBOR DAYS. 79 sleepy village, into the road beneath the crest of Strawberry Hill, where the swamp willows on either side were twinkling as the sun struck their dewy foliage. How sweet it smelt, how still it was! Excepting a boy or two driving cows, and men going to their work, we met no one. There was no dust, no procession of gay vehicles, as usual. It is a grand thing to feel that you have Bar Harbor to yourself, I tell you ! Ere long we branched off into a road where the mountains rose on either side like camels' humps. The gorge between them Avas filled with tangled undergrowth, and the scene was so desolate it fair ly took away our spirits. On the slope of one of these gloomy summits lay an avalanche of shiv ered granite, amid which pale flowers bloomed here and there, and scant shrubs struggled for existence. Scattered over it were the skeletons of ancient forest trees, covered with gray moss and luxuriant lichen. I noticed that Minor whistled a good deal when we were passing through this place. I believe he felt as glad as I did when we struck off into the woods beyond. It was like Graciosa stepping out of her prison- well into Percinet's enchanted forest ! In the nar row path that Minor took, I think a grown person would have found it hard to stand upright. It was more of a tunnel than a path, bedded in bunch-ber- 80 BAR HARBOR DAYS. ries and fern, where birch and balsam interwove their boughs "And a gloom divine was all around, And underneath was the mossy ground." We walked over great beds of trailing arbutus, where the waxen blossoms had shrivelled on their stems in spring-time for want of a hand to pick them, and still clung trembling to the tough green leaves. The pleasant thing was that none of the living creatures we encountered seemed at all afraid of us. A little green snake writhed across our path way, and paused under a tuft of Indian pipe to spy at us. A chipmunk sat quietly upon his branch and nibbled his pine nut. A woodpecker drummed his way up a tree-trunk leisurely ; and, better than all, we came upon a most beautiful ruffled grouse, sitting amid a ring of little ones, as proud and queenlike as could be. "When she saw us, however, she arose, and in an instant had fluttered, with her young, into the thicket. It was like conjurer's work, to see her melt into that screen of green young fo liage. And now my master heard the sound his heart rejoiced in, the trickle of running waters. To reach it, he dived headlong into a tangle of slender birches, and came out on the edge of a sparkling, dancing, roguish little stream, now hiding itself under overhanging grasses, now gleaming between BAR IIARDOU DAYS. 81 moss-grown boulders, now widening to still pools printed with shadows of green leaves. I saw that boy's eyes shine Avith a sudden rapt ure. Casting himself at full length on the bank, he rolled for a moment as a colt does in a past ure. But time was precious, and his fingers itched to be handling the new flies, so neatly packed, in all their gaudy prettiness, in the book within his creel. Just here he saw some bits of pine and balsam come floating down the current. Far up above him on the mountain he heard the ring of a wood-cut ter's axe. And then, before he had time to be sur prised, he caught sight of a fish a silvery, pearly fish, with red spots on its sides, lurking beneath an overhanging rock in the stream below ! The blood rushed into my master's cheek. Instinctively he reached out for his fly -rod, the new, the costly fly-rod, a mark of especial indulgence from his fa ther. What an opportunity to flesh his maiden sword, to practise the newly-acquired underhand cast ! His hand fell first upon an alder pole he had cut and trimmed for pastime on the road. In a tin box were some w r orms, " brought along in case of accident" merely. Early habit triumphed over sci ence. In two minutes more a worm was on the hook, the line tied to his pole. He was fishing as boys have fished since the infancy of Time. And, if you will believe me, the trout took to that worm 82 I5AK HAKBOK DAYS. as naturally as if there were no such things in ex istence as hackles, brown and gray. Minor landed him! After that came an extraordinary run of luck. He kept on with the worms, until there lay upon the moss beside us upon my word of honor as a well-bred terrier thirteen trout of no ignoble size! " I believe the wood-choppers frightened 'em down stream, Dame Trot," said my master, when, the pool being empty, he could relax his vigilance. " There ! You are the best little lady in the world to take a-fishing." I dozed, while he packed his fish in fern and ate some gingerbread. By and by we resumed our tramp. In some spots my master fished until he was tired, and caught nothing but silly minnows that had to be thrown back with a great gash in their poor mouths, as a lesson against curiosity. Elsewhere he took trout by twos and threes. When noon came, and the sun sent straight beams down into our leaf-roof, the cook's parcel was un folded. All fisher-boys know how delicious, about noontide, are those hunky sandwiches the women always make for a day in the woods though you do look down on them in scorn at setting out, and wish lunch grew on trees, to save the bore of carry ing it. Minor and I, between us, ate four large beef- sandwiches, two hard-boiled eggs, and six ginger- BAR HARBOR DAYS. 83 cakes ; and he also found in the bottom of his pocket a piece of molasses taffy, which I shared. With that, my master said he " s'posed he could make out " till supper-time. Our dining-room was a clear space under a low- swung birch bough ; and, for table, we had a flat rock cushioned with red-tipped moss. Minor sat on the edge of it dangling first his toes, then his heels, into the ice-cold water. The delicious refreshment of this operation gave him a new idea, which was to wade up the stream and strike a mountain path he remembered, or thought he did, to have taken the year before. I kept to the bank, jumping the stream where it was narrow, forcing my way through tufts of wild bamboo and bracken ; while Minor, laughing and cheering me, strode splashing on ahead. He did not seem to object to the chill of the water, which I found most unpleasant. Here and there he tried his fly-rod in a pool large enough to warrant it, but the fish failed to respond. Little cared he, with twenty -two trout already on his shoulders! At last we reached a cross path he thought he recognized. On went the shoes and stockings, and off went we to skirt, as we supposed, the mountain's flank. Oh! that deceitful mountain. Her evil spirits were all abroad to trick and lure us as the after noon closed in. One path cut into another, and none of them led anywhere. S_j. BAU HARBOR DAYS. And lo! rolling in from the Atlantic, over the mountain's crown, came a vast, majestic column of fleecy white. "Gemini "NVilkins, Trot!" observed my master. " If that fog has come to stay, we're lost." CHAPTER VIII. PAUL condemns the close of my last chapter as too sensational. He says they will be expecting a night spent upon the mountain, and a harrowing picture of our alarm till rescue came. Or one, per haps, of Minor lying stiff and stark under a tree, with Dame Trot scattering leaves upon his corpse ! Let me make haste to say that nothing of the sort occurred. When we found we were cut off by the fog, my master, w r ho has lungs like a pair of bellows, began to shout. We listened, to hear no answer but the derisive echoes from the cliffs. Then Mi nor leaned his back against a tree, looking rather blank. If you want to know how it feels to be under circumstances like ours then, just go to Mount Desert. The fog was not a moist, relaxing one, but comparatively dry, and the chill of death was in its embrace. What we felt most at that juncture was the sudden cold. Before we had time to give vent to many reflections on our hard lot wo heard the noise of slowly-moving wheels, and 86 KAll HARBOR DAYS. from behind the misty curtain a voice called out to us, " Hello ! Who be you ?" You may believe we answered promptly. Plung ing down a steep bank, Minor found himself upon the high-road he had quitted hours ago, and not far from the point where we turned into the woods. "We had been moving in a circle ! The wheels belonged to a cart drawn by an old white horse, and filled with a load of sods, the daisies still blooming on them. Better than all, the driver, who seemed to identify my master, told him the sod was an order, on the way to his own horns. Minor, with his creel and rods, and I, with my indomitable spirit, were assisted to the front seat of the cart, where another boy was already perched, holding the ancient reins. The other boy was Christy ! He knew me in a minute, and petted me. But Minor had never seen him, and Christy, being a shy little fellow, did not reveal himself. Minor told the tale of his day's adventure to admiring hearers. Footsore and weary though he was, my master found ample compensa tion in the display of the contents of his creel. Spite of slow motion the time passed rapidly, and when we reached his mother's house he tumbled out comparatively fresh, and ready to appear before the united family as a conqueror. " Would you and the other little feller like to go BAK HARBOR DAYS. 87 out with me some day and sec my lobster-traps ?" the stranger boy said, shyly. " Yes, thanks. I'd like to ever so much," an swered Minor. " Then you know my brother?" " Him and me's bin round consid'able," was the response. " How's Paul Pry P "Why, you're Christy!" cried Minor, in a de lighted tone. The glow of this discovery accompanied him into the house, extending to Minimus, who rushed out excitedly, and to my Paul, who showed his glad ness at my return by chewing my ear upon the spot, and insisting on a romp. Christy, carried into the Den by main force, was the hero of the hour. When his comrade sum moned him to go, the little fellow carried away as many spoils of our boys' collection of treasures as they could prevail on him to take. The fog that had so ensnared us on the mountain lasted two days, during which our house, and a lit tle fringe of green around it, seemed hanging in the clouds. We could hear the water booming on our rocks, but saw nothing. The steamer Sappho, crossing the bay on her way from the railway ter minus, was heralded by a series of melancholy toots ; and the steam-yachts now beginning to fill up the harbor, with the many tugs and launches always on the go, and the outside steamers coming in from Portland and from Rockland, made all the noise 88 I5AH IIAKBOR DAYS. they could, to keep us from feeling lonesome. For tunately, as I said before, there is not often such a thing as a wet fog to be found at Mount Desert. They are left for those regions farther south, where the waters are not the freezing current setting down from Baffin's Bay, but the warm overflow of the Gulf Stream. Bar Harbor fogs are undeniably so frigid that at the first approach of one people kin dle the fire, for which logs are kept laid upon the hearth the summer through. But they are rarely ill-mannered fogs, such as penetrate the bones, and mould shoes, and melt starched collars, and take hair out of crimps ; so I have often heard the ladies say. When a fog came on, it was a signal for us to take up all sorts of neglected household tasks and in-door occupations. The piano was made to give forth merry waltzes, books were read, letters were written, diaries resumed, embroidery brought out. "While the blockade lasted it was a kind of Christ mas holiday in-doors. On the morning of the third day there \vere symptoms of a change. The fog took on a silvery lustre. We saw, over against Bald Porcupine, the dazzle of white canvas where the sunlight settled on the sails of a yacht whose hull was still invisi ble. Green summits of the islands next emerged from void. A flock of sea-gulls, circling in the mist, tricked tjie eye into belief that a snow-storm was in BAR HARBOR DAYS. 89 progress. And suddenly the great white curtain was drawn up, showing the fair familiar prospect. At once the water was alive with sails and oars. All nature had awakened to an ecstasy of motion after trance. That day was one when the entire family kept jumping up and running to the windows and ve randa. Nothing was heard but " Did you see that burst of sunshine through the fog ?" or, " Look at the purple streaks the clouds print on the water !'' and so on. I remember it particularly, because we came very near being shipwrecked through trusting to appearances of calm upon the sea. Longing for a row, we set out to go to the Indian wharf: my mistress, the two lads and ourselves, with, fortunately, a boatman in command. When we pulled away from our dock the water was ab solutely smooth. In ten minutes a flaw of wind swept over the bay, ruffling its surface into long green ridges, capped with foam. Our boys cried out delightedly, but my mistress looked anxious, and after we had shipped one or two seas that drenched the spinal columns of poor Paul and myself,! too began to wish the voyage at an end. As usual with our experiences of hair -breadth escapes, nothing in particular happened beyond our getting very wet ; by laboring hard the man was able to run the boat in-shore to a gravelly bit of beach, where we landed, to walk home. 90 BAR HARBOR DAYS. Tho western sky was piled with clouds, the air had a flavor of autumn, and the waves kept roll ing in noisily. Not a bit of canvas was to be seen in harbor, only bare masts and pitching hulls ; but far out beyond the islands we beheld a two-masted schooner under sail, flying like a sea-ghost before the gale. It was the sort of evening when one's thoughts turn to lamp and fireside with peculiar relish, even while exulting in the tumult out-of- doors. At night it blew up so cold, December seemed upon us. Blankets were heaped upon the beds ; back-logs w T ere brought from the cellar; there was a sense of intense exhilaration in the atmos phere. And above the heaving sea we saw the northern sky palpitate with rosy radiance, while bursts of light came and went like the opening of windows into heaven. I heard this day spoken of by people afterwards as a " specimen of Mount D.esert," so I thought I had better write down how it appeared to me. Having failed to reach the Indian encampment on that occasion, we walked there the next day. Nothing worthy of note occurred until we encoun tered, in a cove where a small fresh-water stream flowed to the sea, a most agitating cow. I observed my mistress gather her skirts around her and look to the right and left, as if seeking some easier meth od of reaching the path beyond where the cow stood. BAR HARBOR DAYS. 91 She even said "Good Sukey," in a tremulous tone of voice. The boys, who cleared the stream at a bound, stood on the other side and kept saying " Silly !" " Oh ! come on," and other disrespectful things ; and when my mistress finally made up her mind to pass the enemy, I observed her close her eyes. We followed suit, and when safely up on the steep hillside above, I turned and barked furiously at the creature. If I am any reader of animal physiognomy, that cow possessed the worst traits of which her species is capable. It was a pleasant walk across the bluff leading to the Indian camp. So many wild-roses grew there, amid thickets of sweet-fern and vanilla grass, that the air was embalmed with odors. Approaching the settlement in the rear, we saw more of their in side life than in front, where all is swept and gar nished for customers. Old women hovering over pots and kettles ; girls up to their elbows in dye- stuff; old men mounting birds, curing seal -skins, or hanging upon lines the dyed splits to be woven into baskets ; dogs and babies without number. I was disgusted by the variety of curs that came skulking and snuffling after Paul and me the ugly, ill-bred creatures. Worse than all was a huge cat, black as jet, with eyes of glaring green, who met me in a narrow path, and hunched her back up, spitting venom and defiance. If my reader (Paul says I ought to call you "gentle reader," but it 92 BAR HARBOR DAYS. seems to me old-fashioned) has never been to Mount Desert, it may bo well to give here what informa tion I have been able to pick up about the Indians, in their summer camp, Avhich everybody goes to see. My mistress told the boys they must look re spectfully upon these tribes, since they were lords of the soil long years before the mushrooms of sum mer aristocracy sprang up in Maine. During the Revolution the Penobscots were allies of the colo nists, she said, and for their services were allowed to keep a large tract of land on the Penobscot Eiver. But, like most old grandees in this America of ours, they have parted with their estate, and are strug gling on to-day in the effort to make an honest living. That they are brave, patient, and law-abiding in the communities where they wander now as aliens, none deny. In religion many of them are Catholics, at tending on Sunday the little Church of St. Sylvia, nestling beneath the crest of Maiden Hill at Bar Uarbor. I remember we met an Indian maiden once upon her way from mass, and, in her fashion ably-made polonaise of ruby velvet, and Gainsboro' hat and plumes, she looked like a bird-of-paradise in a barn-yard, beside the island girls. With these Penobscots unite certain Passama- quodies in the business of supplying Bar Harbor visitors with their wares. Their dwellings, half tent, half booth, are erected to leave a well-swept carriage-road between the lines, and here, every day BAR HARBOR DAYS. 93 during the season, conie throngs of people from whom an unsuspected philosopher like myself is able to derive a good deal of quiet fun. To see the young ladies, for example, going the rounds trying their accustomed coquetries of shopping upon those Indians ! Little shrieks, pouts, conversation meant to edify the man behind the counter, flirtation with attendant swains, are so much wasted ammunition. Lo ! the poor Indian, looks down upon them utterly. Within the booths are draperies of red and blue and orange calico, or bunting. Broad shelves, serv ing as counters, present a charming medley of har monious colors. Baskets of every shape and tint are piled into glowing masses. Seal-skins and deer skins, pipes and sticks fashioned from distorted roots, canoes and paddles great and small, snow- shoes, lacrosse-bats, bows and arrows, moccasins and caps what do not their skilful fingers put into cap tivating guise to witch away the money of the idler ? Then there are gulls' breasts and wings, stuffed owls, pearly grebe plumage, and, their latest novelties, wood-baskets and flower-pots of birch- bark, etched with a frieze of native scenes. Lola, the queen, is a sovereign of generous pro portions, living in a circular tent, around which are planted vines of the California cucumber, and sun flowers. We found her that day sitting on a low split-bottomed chair, knee to knee with a gossip in shawl and bonnet, suggesting Betsy Prig. Fast as 94 BAR HARBOR DAYS. her hands could fly she was shaping a waste-paper basket of deep, soft yellow, braided with vanilla grass. Her majesty accorded us but small consid eration until she caught a glimpse of Paul and me. Then her dull eye lighted up, and her lips parted to give utterance to this immortal phrase : " Humph ! Reel pooty little dogs !" Which, for a remark from royalty, is as original as one could ask for. My mistress bought of Lola a flat basket to hold handkerchiefs, then passed on to a tent where the proprietor, a stately old fellow, wore a clean gauze undershirt, with bran-new slop shop trousers. At his feet sat the prettiest little maid, with ripe red lips, and dusky hair tied up with a knot of crimson ! They had dressed her in a petticoat of yellow stuff and a dark-blue jersey. Spite of the visitors who came and went, she kept busy with the playthings in her lap a china doll, some shells, some bits of silk and ribbon packed in a small tin box. A visitor, in talking with the owner of this tent, asked for news of his ne'er-do-weel nephew, a Moosehead guide of unsavory reputation. " John ?" grunted the Indian ; " John he git hanged pooty soon. Do John good to hang him, anyway." In another tent we found a pretty young woman, helping her husband to dispose of the sweet grass baskets, for which they were particularly famed. BAR HARBOR DAYS. 95 The man, a good-looking fellow, wore a smart red shirt, with bands of Indian work, and an embroid ered belt. It so happened that every basket of which my mistress asked the price was valued at " one-dollar-half." While waiting for her to make selection, the young squaw heard a sound we had not noticed in the rear tent, darted in there, and presently reappeared carrying in her arms a rose bud of a baby. " Oh ! what a beauty !" exclaimed my mistress. " I suppose you will sell him, too, for a dollar and a half." " !Kot for all the money in the world !" answered the mother, her stolid face becoming suddenly aglow with feeling, as she hugged her treasure close. It was a pretty little scene. My mistress bought a square basket, then a long basket, then a round basket, a basket with a lid, and a basket without a lid. Everybody does the same at Bar Harbor. When the visitors prepare to go away the agony of packing these fragile acquisitions is met by the Indians, who put them up in barrels, to be sent to distant points, often across the ocean. And thus it is that in a hundred homes remote from the Maine island arises at midwinter the fragrance of summer walks in fields beside the sea. Let the wind rave as it lists, the sleet dash on the window panes, a whiff of sweet grass brings back Mount Desert ! 96 BAR HARBOR DAYS. " Trotty," at this point interrupts my Paul, " I have a grave fault to find with you. You're not connected. You're not statistical. Kobody would undertake to visit Mount Desert with } T OU to guidd him. In short, my dear, you are a disappointment." "What am I to do ? I'm not a guide-book. I didn't set out to lead a blind man by a string ; and it's too late to alter it. I could cry. But no ! Paul isn't everybody. And, for all his criticism, I don't believe he could have done it bet ter. I suppose he would have put in the distances, and the heights of mountains, which I never can remember. Oh, dear ! I must do something to re deem my character. Our boys say you are a copy cat, if you write in anything that's been already printed, but here have I found such a nice card, en titled " Legal Kates," given us by a buckboard man last summer. Please read it. It tells you every thing, as straight as can be, about the things you ought to see, and never stops to gush about the views : DRIVES FROM BAR HARBOR. LEGAL RATES. SECTION 8. The folio-wing shall be the rates of fare, for the conveyance of persons and for the hire of vehicles and drivers, within the town of Edeir. Vehicles with one horse, per hour $1 CO do. do. per day G 00 Vehicles with two horses, per hour 2 00 do do. per day 1200 BAR HARBOR DAYS. 97 FROM BAR HARBOR TO S. W. Harbor and return for each passenger $2 00 Top of Green Mt. and return, do. do 1 05 N. E. Harbor via Otter Creek, and return via the Sound for each passenger 1 50 Somesville and return for each passenger 1 25 Beech Hill do. do. do 1 50 Wood's District and return via Salisbury's Cove for each passenger 1 25 Town Hill and return for each passenger 1 25 Hull's Cove, via Eagle Neck and Beechneck for each passenger 1 00 Ovens and return for each passenger 1 00 Otter Creek do. do. do 75 Great Head do. do. do 75 Sch'r Head do. do. do 75 Eagle Lake do. do. do 75 Foot of Kebo Mt. do. do 50 For the 22-mile drive via Somesville for each passenger. 2 00 There ! I feel better now. I've been statistical. " Cela soulage /" as I heard of a Frenchwoman say ing, when she boxed her husband's ears though of course I don't approve of her ! E". B. I hope Paul will read this. 7 CHAPTER IX. "WE arc going to have a gypsy party at Eagle Lake, Dame Trot," said my young friend Minimus, one July morning, when I had just seen a large buckboard, drawn by four stout little mountain horses, with red tufts in their heads, swing around the circle and pull up before the front door of our house. " Take the dogs ? Why not ? Of course we shall," said a man's voice on the porch, in answer to some remark from the hall inside. " They will behave splendidly ; I'll answer for it." The person who spoke was the master of the house. At his apparently unimportant and kindly observation a grin overspread the guileless counte nance of Minimus. Minor, who came around from the kitchen yard, stuffing his pockets with ginger- cookies, by way of incidental lunch upon the road, also smiled broadly. The children's mother, who issued from the door, her arms laden with wraps and boat - cushions, parasols, and paper -covered books, wore around her lips an expression of sup- BAR HARBOR DAYS. 99 pressed mirth. Two of the maids, engaged in help ing the backboard man to pack in the rear of his vehicle a huge hamper of provisions, were discreet ly hilarious. Why this was, nobody told me. It may have been the reflection upon holiday faces of such a July sun as shines for Mount Desert alone. Some how or other I could not help suspecting the en tire household had been party to a plot by which Paul and I were to be admitted to the joys of gyp- sying on Eagle Lake. Paul, who had been inside the hall, informed me afterwards that my mistress had merely said to my master in a casual kind of way, " Of course, it'll never do to carry these little rascals. They are sure to be in everybody's way." Sometimes, not often, my master would take the opposite side of a question ; and this was one of those times, though of course nobody in the house had supposed such a thing to be possible ! Paul jumped several feet into the air from pure joy, and I followed his example, both of us turning a summersault upon a nasturtium-bed before we got right side up again. Luckily we had no pea- jackets, or fishing-tackle, or anything to get before we started. We stuck there, close to the tail of the buckboard, until it left. Nobody ever found us out of the way when an expedition was ready to set off. After a great deal of talk, and much running back into the house again for forgotten ulsters, BAR HARfeOR- IXASS. ' ' lose his spirits when he was put on the buckboard seat beside my mistress's maiden aunt from Kala- mazoo, who asked him a good many questions about botany and geology. On the seat immediately be hind the driver sat the bicycle young man. Next him a large, round, red-straw hat, with a steeple- crown and lots of red feathers. When the hat turned around you saw it had a very pretty girl inside; but from the rear it was principally hat. Next to the red hat, Minimus was perched. He had a rubber sling, and from his pocket took out no end of buckshot, which rattled through the trees along the roadside during the whole course of our drive. " Look there ! Did you see that ?" Minimus would cry, hailing Minor, sitting next his mother in the rear. " I don't believe I ever came nearer hit ting a chipmunk in my life." Which was indis putable. Up hill and down dale the buckboard rolled mer rily. When we reached places where the road went sharply down into a valley, to mount immediately a steep ascent, the driver gave a soft little chirrup and off the four horses dashed at a gallop, never pausing till they reached the first " thank-ye-marm " on the hill beyond. The first time this occurred, my mistress's maiden aunt became panic-stricken. She seized the coat-sleeve of the canoe young man. She wore black kid gloves, too long in the fingers, and IIARPOR DAYS. I think she must have pinched him. What else could account for the frown upon his brows, and a certain smothered exclamation heard by me alone ? At Eagle Lake there is a sort of wayside inn, in a clearing among the pines near the steamboat wharf. We went in to inquire about the boats we had en gaged by telephone. The young man who informed us it was all right, and preceded us to the spot of embarkation, wore a glistening silver shield upon the lapel of his coat. Minor's quick eyes discerned the legend inscribed thereon. Falling behind, he called the attention of his brother to the fact that their guide was a " champion contortionist," having won his badge by distinction in the field of this es pecial branch of athletic accomplishment. " When we come back this way, if there's time, he says maybe he'll contort for us," added Minor. " Well, I don't mind seeing him," said the world- weary Minimus. " But we've been to all the india- rubber men that Barnum could scare up !" Three row-boats, courtesy ing on the rippled sur face of a jewel-bright lake, received our numbers. Minor, on whom his mother was fond of depending for her aquatic pleasures, claimed one pair of the oars in her boat. I sat in my mistress's lap, watch ing the strong, regular stroke of our youthful scull er. With his Tarn o' Shanter set on the back of his brown head, the loose collar of his blue-flannel shirt unbuttoned, the familiar frown upon his brow, i.l.M I N MOUNTAIN FIU)M EAOI.K LAKE. BAR HARBOR DAYS. 103 with flushed checks and arms bared for action, he was a picture of health and happiness. In the bow sat the bicycle young man, who seemed to have a great deal to say to my mistress, with very little variety in the theme, which was the perfections of Baltimore girls in general, and of a certain young lady in a red-straw hat, in particular. My mistress listened in a patient sort of way. She seemed to find pleasure enough in looking before her at the green hillsides curving down to form the hollow which holds this inland sea. I noticed that from shore to shore of the two extremities of the lake she said about five words. And yet the bicycle young man told the canoe young man, in my hearing, while they were having their cigarettes after lunch eon, a little later, that he had never found my mis tress so agreeable before. In mid-lake there passed us the toy steamboat Wauginett, with her quota of tourists, bound for the ascent of Green Mountain. Looking up the seared and barren mountain-side we saw a train creeping cautiously down the perilously steep in cline. Minor said it was a serpent, who had his lair in the mountain-top, descending to gorge him self with mortals. Willing victims they are, appa rently, since all summer long the little railway does a thriving business. Tourists in high hats, with paper collars and odious word ! gripsacks ; tour ists in Derby hats, with baggy English trousers ; 104 KA R HARBOR DAYS. tourists in rainbow-flannel coats, with heclless can vas shoes come and go, with appropriately-attired females in their wake. Everybody should see Green Mountain from the top, they say, and almost everybody does. Way up on its denuded summit is a great hotel, which, when the electric lights are set ablaze at nightfall, looks from below like an illuminated lyre. Eagle Lake .has another most important mission to fulfil beside that of carrying pleasure-seekers upon her billowy bosom. From her crystalline depths flows the great water-supply of Bar Harbor. Silvery brook-trout, of noble proportions, are caught in this favored lake, and in winter fishermen from the village take them in numbers through holes cut in the ice. After a couple of miles or more of steady rowing we had reached the try sting-place. One interesting feature of our boat was that it carried the luncheon- hamper, and myself. So when we got there first, driving our bows in between a huge boulder and a smooth, wide stone, I naturally felt that the suc cess of the occasion was established. We scrambled ashore, finding our way around the sandy beach to a spot delightfully overshad owed by birches and fragrant balsams. Scattered about were gray masses of granite, overgrown with rock-fern. On the edge of the woods behind us grew gnarled and twisted cedars, forming natural BAR HARBOR DAYS. 105 arm-chairs. "Waves that were hardly more than wrinkles on the blue made a gentle motion amid the sedge-grass at our feet. From the forest-depths came a smell of ferns and balm and spicery. It was not hard to be happy there. By the time the other boats came leisurely ashore, Minor and the bicycle young man had worked won ders in the way of preparation. Driftwood, dis torted roots made gray and polished by the action of waves and sunshine, broken boughs of fir and cedar, dried bracken and pine-cones were heaped together against a rock and set ablaze. A table cloth laid on the dry sand was decked around the edge with ferns and buttercups. Then Minor and the bicycle young man unpacked the basket. Good ness ! how my mouth watered. It is painful to have to confess it, in a literary fox-terrier of esthet ic taste, but when I saw the things that came out of that hamper I had to yelp ! Paul heard me from his boat and yelped back. He told me, when he reached my side, that the air of the lake had made him positively ravenous. He did not think it possible to hold out two minutes longer. For my dear Paul's sake I then was guilty, for the first time in my life, of a most unladylike action. I walked right down to the middle of the table-cloth, between the mayonnaise salmon and the devilled lobster, and helped m} T self to a chicken- wing. Strangely enough, nobody but my mistress BAR HARBOR DAYS. saw mo do it, and she looked so distressed by my breach of good manners that my heart smote me. Although I had carried that wing some distance off, I took it back to her and laid it in her lap. Then I rolled over on my back and cringed, a way we fox-terriers have of asking to be pardoned. " JSTo, thank you, Trotty," said my mistress, laugh ing. " You may have it now, you naughty little girl." By the time Paul and I had crunched that bone between us, and had returned to join the company, there was the canoe young man, with a dish-towel pinned around his waist, and a chefs cap made of a newspaper, cooking beefsteaks on the embers of our lire. There was the young lady with the red- straw hat, cutting up tomatoes on a bed of ice. There was the maiden aunt, without her black-kid gloves, making coffee. There was the master of our house, lying on a sand bank in the sun, under the impression he was doing the main part of every body's work. There was Minimus, barelegged, in the shallow water, catching minnows in a pail. There were the bicycle young man, cooling cham pagne in the lake, and Minor cracking ice for it. A newly-married couple I haven't mentioned be fore, chiefly because of their temporary objection to be included with unemotional humanity, had re tired to a little distance and were heaping up sand hills to cover with their rugs. They seemed to BAR HARBOR DAYS. 107 think the shore of Eagle Lake was a desert of the most approved pattern the place people, just be fore and after their honeymoon, talk about flying to, in company with the chosen of their hearts. Lastly, there was our mistress calling upon every body to come and eat her feast. Oh, that feast ! For the only time that I can remember such a thing, Paul and I got more than we cared to eat. No stingy, jaw-breaking dog-bis cuit, no chopped things from other people's plates. It was grand ! glorious ! As for Minor and Minimus, those two boys began at A and ate down to Z, on the bill-of-fare. Minor broke down first, and put away his plate with a sigh of genuine regret. But that astonishing Minimus kept it up some time longer. For a boy of slender build, with rather a sentimental cast of face, he is the most valiant trencherman of my acquaintance. We lounged and dozed and chatted quietly dur ing an hour or so of that golden afternoon. Then, consigning our traps to a boatman, who, towing two of the boats, rowed in the third, on his return to our starting-point, we set out to cross on foot the carry between the lake and Jordan's Pond. " Say, rather, to plunge headlong into Fairy Land," cried the romantic young lady of our party. If Fairy Land be green, and still, and dc\vy ; a solitude of garnered fragrance, of fir-boughs shut ting out the blue above ; of fern, knee-high to mor- 108 BAR HARBOR DAYS. tals, a very jungle for fairy feet to err in ; of moss under foot, moss coating the rocks scattered along the narrow trail, moss on tree-trunks, moss every where ; of hidden brooks and birds, that made mu sic for the wayfarer ; of clustering crow's-foot, ar butus, shepherd's-pipe, and partridge-berry then was our lady right. We met two young men in knickerbockers car rying canoes upon their heads. They looked like some queer kind of perambulating turtles, as they bobbed up and down the rough path, and from under their birch-bark roofs came the smothered strain of " The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la." " Oh ! '' broke out impatiently the master of our house. " Bother the flowers of spring !" chimed in Minor and Minimus, interrupting him. " That was not what I intended to say," remarked the master, mildly ; "it's not half strong enough to express my feelings. I might as well be back in Kew York, with the hand-organs." " Will this please you better 3" said the bicycle young gentleman, who, among other accomplish ments, had a very sweet voice, in singing : " Under the greenwood tree, Who loves to lie with me, And turn his merry note Unto the sweet bird's throat. BAH HARBOR DAYS. 109 Come hither, come hither; come hither, Here shall he see No enemy But winter and rough weather." " ' More, more, I prithee more ,' " said everybody ; and then the woods rang with songs and glees, and catches. They sang all 'they knew, from " Scot land's Burning," and " Three Blind Mice," to that robust old English hunting-chorus : " A southerly wind, and a, cloudy sky, Proclaim it a hunting morning; Before the sun rises away we will fly, Dull sleep and a downy bed scorning. To horse, my brave boys, and away, Bright Phcobus the hills is adorning; The face of all nature looks gay, 'Tis a beautiful scent-laying morning. Hark hark, forward, Tirrila, tirrila, tirrila!" As the last joyous tirrila died in the silence of the wood we saw daylight at the end of a bowery vista. Paul and I bounded ahead, the lads upon our heels. "We came out upon the pebbly beach of another per fect lake, locked in the chill embrace of cliffs that rose on either side. Here more boats aAvaited us, and we again embarked, to dawdle away the re mainder of the day. Half way across the lake, the boat with Minor in it came to a standstill, then veered off under the shadow of the cliff. "Well did I know what he had BAK HARBOR DAYS. in mind, and greatly did I lament my ill-fortune in being in the other boat. I saw the fly-rod unpacked, and the landing-net bestowed upon the boatman. Then Minor stood up and cast, while the hearts of Minimus and Paul and I swelled with honest prido in reflecting upon our connection with the hero of the hour. For we knew he would have luck. None of us were at all surprised when one of our gentle men remarked, " Hullo ! That boy has got a rise." All other business was suspended, while we watched him tire his prey. Presently, down went the landing-net, and up came a splendid lake- trout. Then only, an exultant cry arose from Minimus. "I couldn't help that squeal," said the little boy, repentantly. "It was just squeezed out of me." It was not till towards sunset that the fishing-boat came up with ours. Minor's first prize, weighing a pound and a half, had been followed by several smaller. His face, burned to a uniform deep red, expressed purest satisfaction. Why, ah, why did that summer's sun go slanting to its rest one half the lake in shadow, the rest like molten silver? Did it not serve to remind the master of our house that a buckboard was awaiting us on shore ? I don't know, however, but that one of the pleas- BAH HARBOR DAYS. HI antest features of a buckboard party is the drive home in the cool of evening, amid the uprising thyiny fragrance of the fields, the spicy odors of the forest, and the waft of brine that comes into one's nostrils when a turn of the road brings to view a glimpse of tossing sea. As we drove through the village, we saw signs at some of the hotels that those inevitable "hops" were beginning to be in progress. I hope I am not a misanthrope, but I must protest against the extraor dinary fancy for this form of entertainment. Why sensible people, who journey here to rid themselves of the wear and chafe of work-a-day employment, or society monotony, should consider it a joy to put on evening clothes and caper in those melan choly halls, I know not ! I heard a gentleman say once that such entertainments bear to those of the actual world of fashion the relation of cleaned gloves to new ones. But the ladies cried him down, and told him his comment was neither just nor witty. And they went on as before. They gener ally do. It is true that men in flannel shirts and knicker bockers are no longer to be seen waltzing with girls in low-cut gowns that have served their seasons in the ball-rooms of Delmonico and in Washington. The men who do not care to dress now haunt the verandas and discuss the crowd inside. And ah ! how pretty those girls inside are, to be sure, after BAR HARBOR DAYS. their clays spent in rowing, canoeing, climbing, rid ing in Bar Harbor air. From all quarters of the continent they gather, and unite in a veritable rose bud garland ! Yes, one forgives the hotel hops for bringing them together ! CHAPTER X. ANOTHER morning, when the bay was rippled with little waves, enough to make a delicious lapping sound upon our bows, we pulled over to call on a schooner, anchored a stone's-throw from our shore. Our lads were on terms of highest sociability with these anchored fishermen, and were almost daily in the habit of visiting their craft, secured this side the bar from the fierce undertow that makes great steam yachts roll unceasingly farther down beyond the pier. Often as not the skipper was ashore for the day, and our boys, fastening their painter to the schooner's cleats, would climb aboard, fancying themselves monarchs of the deck. Many a stolen voyage did they thus take ; in imag ination, now merchantmen, now whalers, now pi rates of the most unyielding pattern. To-day our masters were aglow with animation about an offer that had been made them to buy for thirty dollars a baby -schooner, then courtesying on the tide beside her consort. True, they labored un der the double disadvantage of an empty exchequer, BAR HARBOR DAYS. and a positive dash of cold water on their schemes from authorities at home. But what are obstacles to Hope springing eternal, and all the rest of it (I would have finished the quotation, but that Paul said " Copy Book !" when he looked over my shoul der). So, with longing eyes fixed on the coveted treasure, they rowed around her, and bade her own ers not part with her until they had had an oppor tunity to refuse to buy. It was a comical thing that, although each boy knew the other to be within little less than a hun dred years of the time when he could expect to sail the baby-schooner for himself, Minor assumed quite naturally, and Minimus was imposed on by that as sumption, that he should be the skipper. " You'll have to behave yourself pretty well be tween now and then, I'll tell you,"' said Minor, with importance ; " it will be a good deal of a responsi bility for me to take you out on cruises." " I'll work, Minor," exclaimed his brother, ear nestly. " You know I can do everything 'most, but ship the staysail ; and I'll let you have those rubbers for your sling-shot crotch, as soon as we get home." " Yery well, then ; but whether I keep you or not, will depend entirely on your obedience to or ders. We'll take Christy, of course, and Jonesy, though I'm afraid Jonesy's a molly-coddle kind of boy on the water. Maybe we'll sail to Marblehead and see the race." BAR HARBOR DAYS. 115 "And when you get sea-sick," suggested Mini mus, with a gleam of malice, knowing the weak point of his superior officer, " I'll have a chance to sail her by myself." " Mind your oar there, and stop your gabbling," cried Minor, a flush deepening the sunburn of his cheek. Paul Pry thought he would throw oil upon the waters by engaging me in a romp. One or two of our tricks were always to be relied on in making our boys laugh, and these we now tried successfully. While we all were as merry as could be, we heard a squeaky voice in the air, apparently : " Lively crew, haint yer ?" We had come, without noticing it, close to a fish ing craft that had anchored under the shoulder of Bar Island in the night. On deck sat a queer-look ing old fellow, yellow as parchment, and dressed in a } r ellow tarpaulin suit, chopping herring for bait, with a pail between his knees. " Good-morning," said the boys, politely. " We noticed you had anchored here, and we called your boat Grubby. Not that there's any reason for it," Minor made haste to add, fearing to give offence ; " but we've silly names for everything." " Iley ?" squeaked the little old man. He was quite deaf, but that did not prevent the boys from extracting sundry morsels of information as to what his boat cost when it was new, how many lish he had taken in a season, and would he kindly 116 BAR HARBOR DAYS. tell them, to settle a dispute, which the storm-jib was? " Why, sakes alive !" said the old man, smiling, to display a single tooth, " ye're as chipper as a nest o' birds. 'Pears to me I've got gran' children 'bout the age o' you two, out in Dakoty somewheres. I ain't heerd from Abijy in a year or so. Abijy's my youngest, thirty-five, I guess. Never had no fancy for the sea ; and Seth's a shoemaker, an' the gals is merried an' dead long sence." " I wish you would tell us some of your advent ures," said Minor, pleased to come upon a commu nicative spirit. " Sea-stories, I mean !" he added, in a high soprano. " Sea-stories, hey ! Waal, youngsters like to hear yarns, sartin sure. Don't know as there's anything out the way to tell you. When a man's followed the sea for up'ards o' fifty year an' I went a cabin- boy when I was hardly turned o' twelve it's kind er same-like. Lemme see. I bought the schooner daown to Bosting before wife died. Paid five hun dred dollars for her daown. Wife, she was powerful sot on me ownin' my own boat. Luck turned arter that. Fust, wife she died, and then my oldest gal, Mariey, while I was cruisin' off the Isle o' Shoals. Them gals took arter wife, sartin. I'm one o' the old pine knots, I guess. Never took an ounce o' doctor's stuff, an' never had a sickness in my life 'ceptin' rum-sickness once in port, an' that was BAR HARBOR DAYS. 117 i sorter accident" here he indulged in another toothless grin. -Where do you live, when you're at home?" asked Minimus, in trumpet-tones. " Home ! Why, jest here, where you sees me ; summer an' winter. I sails her up an' down the coast, 'twixt here an' Bosting. Pretty snug, inside." " What was the worst storm you ever had ?" asked the inquisitor. * Waal, I guess 'twas that sleet storm, comin' in port to Gloucester, seven year back, one Christmas Eve. Wind nor'west, heavy seas washin' over her and freezin' hard, till there was four inch o' ice on deck. Had to turn the ash-pan from the cabin stove bottom up'ard on the deck to make a foothold, an' my beard and ITar friz lively." ' ; That is a very interesting story," said Minor ; " thank you very much. If you like, we'll come again to see you." " We couldn't have gone on deck if he had asked us," remarked Minimus. "It was too dreadfully fishy for anything ; and I wish he had a few more teeth, even two more would be something." " I vote we take him out a pie, next time we go. Apples would be no use." u He might bake 'em," suggested Minimus. " I say, Minor, the flag's up ! Let's go and see the her rings in the weir. Old Grubby said it's the biggest catch this season." 118 BAR HARBOR DAYS. Accordingly the Sea-Urchin grated her bow on the pebbly bar beneath the fish-houses. Securing her in safety from the rising tide, we picked our way over the stones to the weirs beyond. On the shore wagons were in waiting, and as fast as one was filled with the barrelled herring it was driven across the bar to a steamer on the pier. Up to their knees in water stood men in tarpaulins and rubber boots, ladling from dories hauled up beside the beach thousands of silvery fishes. Behind them were the boats already emptied of their loads, painted blue or red without, and within gorgeously lined with iridescent scales that caught the sunshine. "See those barrels, Minny," said his brother, "they've got ice at the bottom, and when they're full more ice goes in on top of the fish." " I wonder what ' W. Gardner, Boston,' means to do with all these fish," said Minimus. " As many red herring as grow in the sea, I think there are." " Bait for the fishing-fleet down to Boston," vol unteered one of the tarpaulins. " Eight berrels to this load, Charley. All right. Go ahead. I guess you can make out to get across." Off went the wagon, grinding heavily upon the pebbles, the horses accepting their fate with com plete indifference to the fact that already a part of the road was under water, and that, in a short time, it would be entirely submerged. The boys ran down for a moment to peep into 15 All IIAIIBOR DAYS. 119 the weirs fences of ragged stakes and interwoven branches, with dead leaves clinging to them, in a melancholy way. Spite of the barrelling that had gone on since daybreak, the pounds were still alive with the swarming, shining victims. " Poor little things !" said Minor. " If the big fish don't get 'em, the summer boarder does. One thing is certain. You can't believe herrings, as you see 'em here, or strung up in the wood-smoke over on the island, are those same smelly ones in the cor ner groceries in town. It must take all the winds of Mount Desert to blow the badness out of them." " I'm going up to the flag-staff, to look at the view," said Minimus. Paul and I, strange to say, had no fixed plans, and were quite satisfied to adopt the first suggestion that came up. It is a charming old hill-top, where stands the farm-house whose gable windows seem always like a pair of eyebrows cocked up in astonishment at the changes in Bar Harbor. Resting there, beneath the flag-pole, it occurred to me that I had not come upon a better place from which to picture for my readers the appearance of the village. I own that, at first sight of the city of hotels, the mind is apt to lose itself in mere whimsi cal speculations as to the numbers of sets of cottage furniture, of wood-slat springs, of washbowls, of cakes of soap, of keys and keyholes, required to provide for the demands of the summer population. 120 BAR HARBOR DAYS. I tried to fancy how far around the island would extend the bird-bath dishes in use at the hotels. But look again, and presently there fades out ev erything from that landscape but the mountains. The vagrant village, the stores, fish-houses, wharves, the confusion of architecture, the incongruity, the old and new jostling each other are all forgotten in the mood imposed by those stately dominating summits. They are to-day what they were to the illumined eyes of earliest pilgrims to this Eden of the East. So, too, is the sea unchanged that of old laved the granite feet of the Enchanted Island. " Skip that, old girl !" says abominable Paul. " Be warned in time, and skip it." Pity me, my reader, what am I to do ? When we took our boat again, the pencil-mark of a path across the blue water was entirely effaced. Standing on a narrow and rapidly-vanishing strip of land under the fish-house, were some people who had been caught by the tide in their walk upon the island. To dwellers near the bar, it is a source of almost daily entertainment to sit calmly on their verandas, and, with an opera-glass, study the ex pression and movements of persons so entrapped. Sometimes ladies have submitted to be carried like meal-sacks by their gallant cavaliers. Others pre fer wading, and, in one way or another, much di version is to be had by an industrious observer. BAR HARBOR DAYS. 121 This time we were able to effect a rescue, and our boat ferried to the opposite shore in safety a very hungry couple, whose hotel gong sounded afar in a tantalizing rumble. ' In the afternoon Christy came, and, the lady of our house having offered a reward for the services of the three lads in what she called " tidying up the rocks," we had a very busy time. It should be said that for this purpose exclusively a man had been for some days past engaged to work. He was a mild- mannered, loose-jointed native, fond of smoking and of looking out to sea. He came early in the morn ing, stayed till six in the afternoon, and, during the week, had succeeded in making some nice collec tions of dead leaves, dried vines and branches, which the wind generally scattered before he could get around to them with a wheelbarrow. He was a very pleasant man, the boys reported, could tell them lots of things they liked to hear, and distin guished himself by discovering a bees' nest in the bushes, which he allowed them to burn out. For this reason they had styled him the " bumbly-bee man," and he continued to be known among us by no other title. To-day the bumbly-bee man had elected to stay away, and, armed with brooms and rakes, the bovs went down upon the rocks above the sea-wall to usurp his privilege. Perilous but pleasant thoy found it to cling with 122 RAR HARBOR DAYS. one arm to a tree, and rid the crevices, where blue bells longed to grow, of encumbering rubbish ; to clear the roots of fern and golden-rod and aster yet to bloom. And, last of all, to comb down from the hillside to the beach huge piles of dry leaves and branches as a nucleus for bonfires. Then, when evening came, the crowning joy of lighting beacons to blaze up beneath a rocky bas tion ! Away into the shadows of the bay streamed the red glare, continually fed by driftwood from the beach. Around the blaze skipped three cheery demons accompanied by Paul and me in all their intri cate evolutions. And by and by something large and round, and virgin gold in color, arose into the heavens and put out lesser lights. "While we stood rapt and silent, to render homage to that summer moon, I can remember, a peculiarly appetizing fragrance was wafted from the kitchen of our house. " It's waffles," remarked Minor, sententiously, and after that not all the witcheries of land and sea and regnant queen of night could hold us captive. We left the bonfires to their fate. The glare lessened, became a fitful blaze, then smoldered sullenly, till the rising tide swept over and extinguished it for ever. Later on, with sated appetites, we came back to view the scene. The boys' mother had just begun BAR HARBOR DAYS. 123 to repeat to them some poetry in praise of moon light on the sea, when she remembered they had forgotten to fetch the grass-rake from the rocks. Sentiment was merged into prompt maternal chid ing, but in vain. The grass-rake had gone off with the tide, as also a new basket bought that day ! "It would have been cheaper, perhaps, to keep on with the bumbly-bee man," she murmured, pen sively. CIIAPTEE XL I HOPE my mistress will never see what follows. I don't want to hurt her feelings, but I must say I think people who are making a new lawn are not apt to be agreeable. When we first came to live here in June she had found a fine crop of pale-green grass coming out all over her circle, bank, and ter race. As the blades increased in size, she used to get up early in the morning to measure them ; she watched like a dragon to see that nobody set foot on them ; and listened abstractedly to the conver sation of all visitors unless it chanced to turn upon the Methods of Causing Turf to Grow in a hith erto Barren Spot. She habitually carried grass- seed in her pocket, and, on uprooting a weed, would pop a couple of atoms into its place, with an air of determination to carry her point and banish all in vaders. Later on we detected her transplanting knots of grass from gravel path to border, and trim ming them with the silver-mounted scissors from her dressing-case. But these peculiarities were mild compared with BAR HARBOR DAYS. 125 her habit of manoeuvring that long, black, slimy ser pent of a garden-hose all over the place. Such a thing as an afternoon nap upon the lawn was im possible, though one of the boys disgraced himself by observing that if you wanted to keep dry you'd better stand in the spot mamma was aiming for. Each member of the household was in turn del uged ; and the same fate befell an urbane gentle man who called with a series of pictures of phe nomenal roses and tomatoes, which he shot out in a long, unfolding scroll at the moment he obtained the eye of the person of the house. It fell out that a chipmunk had set himself to dig a cavern in this cherished lawn, and being dis covered and routed, the hole was left to be lilled up on the morrow. Chancing to find ourselves alone near the spot, Paul and I thought we would enjoy a little digging on our own account. " You, I think, had better do the work, Dame Trot," said Paul. " My recent illness has left me a little weak. Besides, it is better on such occasions for one to exert the brain-power, and you, my love, will hardly lay claim to that share of the enter prise." I consented, of course, and, screened by a rock overgrown with vines, I dug almost to China, be fore Paul suddenly exclaimed Shall I tell you what he said ? I blush so, it is quite painful. But remember that dearest Paul had been exposed to us- 120 BAR HARBOR DAYS. sociations of which my refined nature knew nothing. Of course he learned it at that dreadful veterinary place. I only hope you will not understand him. He said, " Cheese it, the Cop !" There was my mistress, who had come out on the veranda. I thought she did not see us, for she immediately sat calmly down on the upper step, and appeared to be busied about a tub of red geraniums. " Pshaw !"' said Paul, waxing valiant. " She don't care. Let's keep on to Hong Kong." But I had reckoned without my hostess. I forgot that immediately beneath the geranium-tub was a faucet under the projecting verge of the veranda floor, to which a length of hose was generally at tached. A stream of intensely cold water struck me amidships, so Paul said. He got only his two- inch tail wet, and could afford to be witty on the subject ! I was so insulted, so aggrieved, that I re tired to a place we called Bonypart a museum for bones and scraps and sulked till dinner-time. My heart swelled with a sense of unappreciated merit. It was one of those me-against-the-world moments we have all of us experienced. Then a revengeful spirit took possession of me. I remembered a new door-mat that was to be sent back to the village shop to be exchanged. I told Paul where it was, and proposed to him to drag it from the shelf, and fetch it to our lair beneath the alders. BAR HARBOR DAYS. 127 " What Larks, Trot !" said Paul, and off he ran to fetch it. Nobody saw him, and, falling upon it, tooth and nail, in ten minutes' time we reduced that mat to shreds. Tufts of jute flew through the air and lodged among the bushes, enough to keep the birds in nest-lining for years to come. When the ruin was complete, we faced each, other calmly. " I am avenged," I said ; " I feel better now, but hungry. There is the lunch-bell, Paul. I think if you could find a tid-bit, I could eat." " Hum !" said Paul. " They're pretty close up there, around the kitchen, since the orders were given to keep us on dog-biscuit." " No, Paul !" I said, decidedly. " I protest. Shat tered as my nervous system is to-day,! am not strong enough to tackle a dog-biscuit. A merry thought of chicken, if you can, or some sponge-cake. Only, do be quick." Paul disappeared, but in a very short time re turned dejected, cakeless, chickenless. " They are a family of tyrants," he said, scorn fully. " See here, Trot, if you'll believe it, I went into the dining-room and gave them every one of my best tricks in succession. I jumped, I coaxed, I stood on my hind-legs, and rumbled in my throat. Nobody noticed me, though I saw the boys had shiny places in their eyes, and twitches in the cor ners of their mouths. In my discouragement I licked the hand of Minimus, which hung below the 128 BAR HARBOR DAYS. table-cloth. I tried to control myself, and to seem to know nothing of any door-mat." " ' Don't forget to cut a switch directly after luncheon,' said the father of our boys. ' Those puppies must be taught not to do wanton damage to property, before they are a day older.' ' : " < Won't Trotty catch it, though !' said Minor." At these words alow groan escaped me. " Paul," I whispered, trembling, " is he really going to whip us ?" In Paul's sympathy he hunted up a favorite old marrow-bone of ours we had buried in the neigh borhood, and together we gnawed on it till our nervousness was in some degree allayed. Then Paul proposed to me to run away to Christy's. "Haven't I heard them often tell how Colin Clout ran away the first time he heard a powder- cracker go off, and never stopped till he reached a farmer's sixteen miles away, where he had spent the winter ? Let us, my Damelet, emulate his ex ample. Let us flee from tyrant rule." Losing no time in debate, we fairly clipped it by the kitchen porch. Easy enough to run across the meadow to the road, where grasses two feet high concealed us from observation from the house. As we tore through the village people looked after, but nobody offered to stop us, supposing the boys, as usual, to be upon our heels. When we passed some lads holding bunches of bulrushes for BAR HARBOR DAYS. 129 sale to ladies and gentlemen as they drove by, one of them stooped down and tried to seize Paul ; but my comrade slipped through his fingers and re joined me. No time now for those pleasant side- journeys into the bushes, and up on banks, and into house-yards ! When at last, weary and worn, we gained the shelter of a wood, we lapped from a stream run ning under some grasses by the way, and laid down panting upon a bed of moss. Around us grew blue berries so large and juicy as to seem like grapes. After nibbling a good many we felt refreshed, and able to converse. " Not a bad place to camp out," Paul said, look ing around him critically. "A fellow might do worse." " Oh, Paul !" cried I, " I've just thought of a dreadful thing. It's on the road to Christy's that the swill-man's bulldog lives." " Bulldogs, my dear," answered my consort, calm ly, " are not as formidable as half the world sup poses them to be. I found that out the other day, when that fellow with the ugly mug and bandy legs brought his master to call at our house, lie was as mild as milk, for all his fierce expression. Don't you remember how I laid him out behind the ash-barrel ?" " True, darling," I rejoined. " But he was a thor oughbred, and had been taught good manners. The 130 BAR HARBOR DAYS. one I mean runs before the swill-man's cart, and one day, when you were looking out of the drawing-room window and howling at something in the road, the wretch told me if he ever caught you off the place he'd make mincemeat of you in short order." " Tut, tut, my Dame," answered Mr. Pry, airily, "I have no recollection of the incident to which you refer. To be timid is, however, an engaging weakness in one of your sex. Conquer your fears, my love, and rely on me to defend you in any dan ger. And now, as the afternoon is waning, let us be off again." We trotted along, neck to neck, under the arching branches of the forest-road. "Whenever wheels were heard, we darted into the woods and hid till they had passed. At length we reached the point where two roads came together, one leading to the shore where Christy lived, the other to some unknown point inland. But oh ! dismay ! There, on Christy's road, was the swill-man's cart, and loafing along ahead of it was the brute of a bulldog who had threatened to make mincemeat of my future hus band. Paul saw him as soon as I did, and became promptly nerveless. " It's a vertigo to which I'm subject, Trot," he said, affecting to have seen nothing. What was to be done ? Paul solved the problem by setting out with all his legs down the inland BAR HARBOR DAYS. 131 road, and I, trusting the enemy had not espied us, tore after him. We brought up at a roadside cottage, once paint ed buff, but faded now to grayish yellow. In the yard grew marigolds and sweet mint, and an old- fashioned vine straggled around the portal. A path leading to the door was edged with clam-shells, and two conchs flanked the door-step. The skull of a whale, used as a garden-seat, occupied the centre of a ragged grass-plot. The door was open ; you could see, inside, a tea-table spread with some dishes on a red-checked cloth, and in the middle a plated caster the whole covered with a piece of pink mosquito-netting to keep away the flies. " I rather like the looks of that pound-cake I see beneath the netting," said Paul, who had recovered his spirits in short order. "If we could only in gratiate ourselves into the affections of the woman of the house. The question is, apparently, is there a woman of the house ?" He was answered by the appearance from a back kitchen of a thin woman with no shape to her, wearing a mustard-yellow gown of calico, with spots of blue. Her scanty hair was rolled in a tight knot at the back, and skewered with a horn comb many sizes too large for the service expected of it. She had in her hands a dish of boiled cab bage, and another of milk-toast. Putting them upon the table, she went to the back door and blew 132 BAR HARBOR DAYS. a blast on a tin horn. Then she proceeded to ex tract from a corner somewhere an old, old man, whom she roughly but not unkindly placed in a split-bottomed chair with arms and a patch-work cushion, beside the table. " "Where's Charley, Susan ?" queried the old man, in a piping tone. " The land sakes, gran'ther," she said, in a hard, metallic voice. " To hear you talk, a body wouldn't think Charley'd been drowned these fifteen year. Oh ! he's coming, pretty soon," she called out, in a louder tone, which served to keep him quiet for a while. "Where's Bill, Susan?" began the feeble pipe again. " Keep a bit o' cheese for Bill to eat with his pie. He's a good boy, Bill the best o' the lot, I ca'allate." " Bill," said the woman, a spasm shooting across her face, " Lord knows where father is sence the Mary Jane foundered off Monhegan five year back. Bill's all right, gran'ther," she added, cheerfully. " !Now eat your dip-toast while it's hot, and stop worrying about the boys." Two young men came in and took their seats, their faces shining from brown soap and water. They were tall and loose-jointed, and bronze of color. Where the shirt of one of them was open at the front I saw a ship under full sail tattooed in blue upon his hairy breast. BAR HARBOR DAYS. 133 " Did you sec Bill anywheres ?" the old man in quired, eagerly. " Oh ! Uncle Bill's all right, gran'ther," they an swered, as the woman had done. It seemed to be an every-day affair. The old fellow quieted, they set to work eating and talking about the hay they had put away that day, the prospect of lobsters in their traps to-morrow, and the like. Presently gran'ther pushed back his plate and began to cry. " And I saved ten men off that sinking ship with these here hands," he faltered. " Yes, you did, gran'ther ; surely everybody knows 'bout it," said Susan, soothingly. " Why, don't you 'member 'twas all about it in the Boston paper? It's pasted in the fam'ly Bible there. Yonder's the silver cup they giv' you, on the mantelshelf." " And nobody saved my boys. Not one on 'em. I that followed the sea faithful for over fifty years, and it took all four on 'em, Charley and Bill and Tom and 'Liphalet you'll keep Bill's bit o' cheese, Susan? Don't forget." " lie's middlin' bad to-day," said Susan, as the old fellow fell back into his chair, silent at last, but with tears un wiped upon his withered cheeks. " Try the vinegar with your cabbage, 'Lish. You'll find it good and strong." As we looked in upon this scene we bad no fur ther hankering for pound-cake. Paul and I turned away quite dejected. 134: BAR HARBOR DAYS. " It's enough to give any one the creeps," said Paul, who could not bear to be called upon to sym pathize. " Let's try the house beyond, Trotty. I see a baby in. the doorway. It's sure to be more cheerful." At this house we found not only a baby, but five or six older children, who came tumbling out to look at us. We were seized and petted and hauled around till our outcries brought a man in shirt sleeves, who had been sitting within at supper. "Well, if them ain't a neat little pair!" he said, admiringly. " Ha'done, children. Them dogs has run away from some o' the rusticators, I'll be bound. Here, wife, give 'em a sup o' milk and some o' that cold porridge." Eagerly we devoured the food, being, by this time, quite worn out, and no longer on our high horses. While wife was rocking to sleep the youngest of the brood, husband sat smoking his pipe upon the doorstep. I heard them talk about keeping us till some reward should be offered by our owners. That, and the fact that thpse distracting children had nearly torn us limb from limb, decided us to seize on the earliest moment to escape. Happily the cottage was too full of children to allow an inch of extra space for puppies, and we accordingly were taken to a cow-stable, a tiny place, where hens were also kept, and the door was closed upon us. BAR HARBOR DAYS. 135 " We may as well sleep here, Paul," I said, look ing around me, to discover a pile of hay still smell' ing of the meadow, " and early to-morrow, before the man is stirring, we can easily jump from that little window up above the hay." " I'm agreeable," yawned Paul, affecting to stretch himself full length upon the hay. That mischievous Paul Pry ! He was only wait ing an opportunity to snatch at the patient brown cow's tail. She, kicking promptly, sent him up on top the hay-pile, where the squawk of frightened hens showed he had one of them between his teeth. Then what a rumpus ! Out came the man, swear ing at us, as he stumbled across the threshold. I sprang up beside Paul upon the hay-mow. " Quick ! quick ! Out of the window, Paul," I urged, and he obeyed. I did likewise, and we could hear the man tramping around, and the hens mak ing a deafening uproar, as we ran off in the twi light. I may as well insert here the copy of a document received some time later by my mistress, who was easily identified as the owner of the two runaways : Missis - To Ezra Hopkins, Dr. To hen fritcned by dogs so as she wudent lay 75 cents. To eggs bruk by dogs 10 cents. To board of dogs 10 cents. Total.. . 95~~ 136 BAR HARBOR DAYS. This bill, brought to the house by a shock-headed little boy, had to be explained to our proprietor, who, in this way, became aware of a brief portion of our adventures. The ninety -five cents was paid, and I grieve to state this was not the only bill for damages brought against Paul and me that sum mer. Still running, we returned along the road by which we came. To reach Christy gentle and loving Christy was the goal of all our hopes. Turning down the fork of the road leading along the shore, we scampered past the swillman's house in tremen dous agitation. But our enemy was not on guard. The little brown cottage was steeped in starlit si lence. From afar we saw the windows of Fernley Hall, lighted as for a party, and upon the night air floated out above the boom of surf upon the rocks the sound of violins and harp. In the wood-road katy-dids and tree-frogs were making a cheerful noise, and we had just begun to feel less wild and scared, when we met two alarming apparitions. The first was a big horned-owl, swooping down with such a fierce glare in her saucer eyes that we huddled together, shaking in our bones. The next was a strange, great, graceful creature, bounding across the road, followed by another and still an other of its kind, plunging into the dew- wet bracken of the woods beyond. Red deer, these, wandering from their inland BAR HARBOR DAYS. 137 haunts, and puzzled to account for the Waldteufel waltzes. Buried in shadows we found the Witch Cove cabin. How out of harmony it seemed with the lights and music of its neighbor, Fernley Hall ! Uncertain what course to pursue, we made our way around the well-known path to the water-front) where, as Paul surmised, the little lamp was burn ing in the window, the curtain drawn before it. " Shall I bark, Paul ?" I asked. "And have the witch down on you with her broomstick. Not if I knows myself!" he said. " Christy's in bed, no doubt, and if the worst conies to the worst, we can slip into the cow-shed for the night." "Paul!" I said, in a discouraged kind of way, " I don't think running away is as much fun as it looked." " Perhaps you'd have liked to stay and ' catch it,' " he suggested, a little crossly. " Don't, please ; I can bear anything better than ridicule." " There you go, now," he said. " Just like you. Always ready to drop into pathetics. Brace up, old girl. Nobody's killing you." I was silent. This form of treatment was one to which I could never become resigned. While we crouched there, disappointed and forlorn, some thing happened which, as I look back at it, seems 138 BAR HARBOR DAYS. as unreal and startling as the pageant of a dream. Could I have dreamed it, think you ? Crossing the line of light projected on the water by the lamp, glided a boat containing a solitary man. Somewhere in the woods a wakeful bird gave ut terance to a long, soft, sighing note. The rower stopped, scanned the shore-line, and resumed his course. He was coming ashore, no doubt, but why at this forsaken spot ? How still it was, but for the dip of oars and the swashing of the tide upon the rocks! From the Hall came a fresh burst of music. How the stars throbbed in the deep blue summer sky ! AVere we surprised to hear a stir inside ? A hand pulled at the red curtain, lifted the window. A stern gray face peered out into the starlight. I could plainly see the look that came upon it a wild, despairing, appealing look ; as if hoping, yet certain of cruel disappointment. The boat grazed the shore. Out of it the man stepped, securing it and the oars, like one familiar with the spot a tall, muscular fellow. He strode up the path haltingly, and with furtive glances back and forth. Now, there came upon the peering face at the window still another look one of joy, that trans figured it. She put her finger to her lip, enjoining silence. Hooded and cowled, she came out to meet him. And she dropped into his arms like one stone dead. IJAIl HARBOR DAYS. 139 The man staggered as he caught her. He took her to the light and tried to gain a view of the in side of the cabin, but failed. Taking a flask from his pocket, he poured some of its contents between her lips, and with a shuddering sigh she op'ened her eyes and gazed up at him. " Mother. "Why, don't you know me, mother ?" he stammered. His face was dark with sunburn, and overgrown with a heavy beard. His eyes seemed to shift about, as if they could not meet the look that searched his soul. " Know you ?" whispered the woman, withdraw ing herself weakly from his arms. " Ay, that I do, my boy. But hush ! speak low ! The child's asleep inside." " I'll swear I'd forgotten him," he answered. " But kids are dangerous, when a man's in my fix." " Christy believes you're dead. If you come in side" "If I come inside. That's a pretty welcome, old lady. Of course I'll come inside, and warm myself and get a good square meal. What do you s'pose I've come for ?" " But you can't you can't be free ?" " Free. "Why not ? If I'd a few dollars in my pocket I'd like to see who'd keep up with me. But I'm stuck for money to get on." " And was that all that brought you, Ned," she asked. Could it be the stern witch-woman, who 140 BAR HARBOR DAYS. spoke as a mother speaks to the baby on her breast ? " My boy ! my boy ! Had ye no thought of the mother that's been waitin' ye all these years. And have you forgot the lamp, Ised, that I promised to keep burnin' till you come. Oh ! if I'd believed in prayin', I'd ha' prayed when I put a match to it. But my heart has hardened since they shut you up." Burning tears ran down her cheeks, but there was no kiss to stanch them. " We're wasting time, mother," he said, roughly. " Come, I'm in need of food. S'pose I tell you I left a keeper with a knife in him, when I broke jail the other day. I've worked my way along the coast so far, and I've got a pal over yonder, dodging around Sheep Porcupine in a cat-boat we hired at Lobster Point. He'll take me off at daybreak, and if I've got the tin I'm safe to join the gang at Lit tle Shark Island, where he belongs." "Pirates and robbers, all of them," she said, fiercely. " And I've lived an honest life for this !" " Come, stop preaching, can't you, and take me in the house. You always was a saving body. It can't be you haven't laid aside a bit of cash." " Yes, you shall have it all. Every cent. A hun dred dollars, I'd toiled to put away against the time your sentence was served out." " A hundred !" the fellow said, with an oath. "That's better than I looked for. Better than food and drink, is cash." BAR HARBOR DAYS. " But, Ned. Only one moment more. "We can't talk inside, for fear the child '11 hear it. He's a light sleeper, Christy is. I've been offered a big price for this land, but I wouldn't part with it, be cause I'd promised you you'd find the lamp a burnin' in the window, no matter when you come. There's no use any longer. I'll sell out, now, and come to you, no matter where. You're my own lad, Ned ; I loved you best of all. If I had to walk through blood I'd come to you." An evil gleam of triumph lent him the semblance of a smile. As they stood there, the witch-woman and the guilty man, hand-in-hand among the shad ows, there came from within the cabin the sound of a child's voice. " Grandmammy ! Where are you ?" I saw the man start, and a look of terror come into his eyes. " Mother ! That's Nancy's voice !" Then from the cabin window, where the light fell full upon it, a face looked out into the darkness. A face with sleepy, violet eyes, and tangled locks of gold. " My God !" the man cried, putting both hands before his eyes, " it's Nancy's ghost !" What happened after this I cannot say. Moved by a common impulse, we ran together from the spot. CHAPTER XII. EAELT next morning somebody, stirring in our house, heard us whimpering and scratching at the laundry door. We were let in, and never did two foot-sore and dirty little vagabonds climb more joy fully into bed than we to our basket beneath the tubs. At breakfast-time great was the rejoicing at our return. Washed and rubbed, allowed to lie on the cushion of a wicker-chair, which they called the dog's Kirvana, no mention made of door-mats and chipmunk-holes, we were the meekest and most grateful fox-terriers to be found. Our hearts swelled with love. "We kept licking all the hands we could get hold of. " If puppies could only speak, and tell us where they went !" one of the boys observed. If we could speak ! What a tale we had to tell ! The thought of that dark secret weighed upon our minds. Oh ! how would it all end ? At flood-tide that morning a pretty little sloop came to anchor off our shore, and our boys danced A CAI.V -DAY AT I'.AK IIAIUJOU BAR IIAUBOR DAYS. 143 about in delight at the prospect of a day of deep- sea fishing. Among guests invited to be of the party (from which it was specified that all mothers, nurses, and other females, Dame Trot excepted, were to be rig orously excluded), were two little lads of five and seven. These mariners contributed to the pleasure of the day as follows : Two pairs of wild-rose cheeks ; two pairs of soft brown eyes ; two hearts swelled by a spirit of high emprise; two sailor-suits of navy blue, and two tongues that went like mill-wheels. Then, loosening sails, our skipper let the Bonnibel fly over the wind-ruffled water across the bar, slack ening her speed when we began to thread our way between the crowded shipping of the harbor. To see that harbor at its best and gayest, one should choose a splendid day at midsummer, when a yacht squadron has put into port for a week of pleasuring. Backed by the gray of granite, the green of fir-woods, the blue of sky and sea, the stranger crafts in holiday attire, their flags afloat, are courtesying and tugging at their anchors in the tremendous undertow. The great steamboats- glass houses upon wheels are resting beside their piers, after the outside passage overnight. The ferry-boat is ploughing her way past ledge and cliff to yonder shadowy speck upon the mainland, where the express-trains wait for her. Schooners and 144 BAR HARBOR DAYS. sloops, shining with new paint and gilded figure heads, steam-launches and tugs, carry innumerable parties, on pleasure bent. Here and there some long, black hull, red smoke-stack, and weblike rig ging of a stately steam-yacht is haunted by a score of row-boats and canoes, whose occupants survey her curiously. From far and near, along the Atlantic coast, come white- winged visitors ; everything that can run a sail out to the breeze seems drawn as by a magnet to these waters. Crawling among them, with glo rious disregard of what they think of patched brown canvas, go the homely coasters. Yonder busybody, with " "Water and Ice " emblazoned on her mainsail, is the cantiniere of the port, bustling from yacht to yacht. Crossing our bow glides a canoe, propelled by two young girls, one of them kneeling, bare headed, and straight as a dart, to wield her paddle. And now, ho ! for the fishing-grounds beyond Egg Rock Light. The spirits of our party were at high est pitch during the sail hither, when a favoring breeze attended us. But the wind fell unexpected ly and refused to pick itself up again, the boys de clared. Not far from the lighthouse our skipper decided to make a virtue of necessity, and set to trolling. Hand-lines, baited and unwound, were dropped over the sides, and on the countenance of each fish erman sat a look of determined jollity. BAR HARBOR DAYS. 145 Drifting with the tide, Bonnibcl had settled down into a deliberate rocking progress across a series of long, green, oily swells, while overhead the mid day sun smiled with malicious ardor in a cloudless sky. What had come over us ? Looking from one to the other, I saw the corners of mouths drawn down, pallid cheeks, eyes from which all brightness had died out. " Oh ! see here, cap'n," said Minor, in a subdued voice, "let's move on; I don't believe we'll have any kind of luck in a stupid place like this." "Can't better ourselves till that dratted breeze comes up again," said the skipper, cheerfully. " There, you've got one, sir. Steady, now ; haul her in steady or she'll slip." 'Not even the honor of taking the first cod, and a bouncing one at that, could bring a smile to Minor's face. His work accomplished, he precipitately dis appeared to tell his woes to Neptune. " I don't believe I'm so very fond of cod-fishing," said a mournful little pipe, coming from the older of our baby tars, the roses of whose cheeks were fast turning to violets, despite his plucky efforts to keep up. Lifted from his seat, he was cradled in strong arms, and petted until he fell asleep, his ex ample followed, happily, by his junior. A bed of rugs received them both, and Paul and I climbed up to nestle at their feet. 10 146 BAR HARBOR DAYS. Cod came flying in in fine style after that, but the crew remained as glum as a convention of un dertakers. "Minor." "What, papa?" " Did it ever occur to you to wonder at Colum bus?" " If I had been old Columbus I'd have let the At lantic alone, I know." "For the last half -hour some verses have been running through my brain which I think you will appreciate. " ' What if wise men had, as far back as Ptolemy, Judged that the earth, like aii orange, was round; None of them ever said, "come along, follow me, Sail to the west and the East will be found." Many a day before Ever they'd come ashore, Sadder and wiser men They'd have turned back again. But that lie did not, and did cross the sea, Is a pure wonder, I must say, to me.' " The boys laughed in chorus. " I know a verse a fellow told me on the steamer last year, when we were going home," said Jonesy, a guest of the occasion. " It's short, but it's to the point." " To stay upon shore I will ever endeavor, I do not approve of the frantic Atlantic." " Hallo, papa !" cried Minor, excitedly. " What BAR HARBOR DAYS. 147 a pull you had ! Gemini AVilkins ! I believe you've got a whale !" Sea-sickness was forgotten in the excitement that ensued. After a long struggle, which left upon the captor's hands enduring red marks from the line, he hauled in an eighteen-pound cod, and tossed him, flopping and furious, in the tank on top of the others. And lo ! from the boundless field of silver to the east arose a whiff of freshness, a delicious stirring of the tepid atmosphere. The breeze was on its way it came ! Every brow was bared to its ca ress, every pair of lungs drank in the nectar. And in a little while we were speeding ahead, around the lighthouse, set on its granite shelf festooned with sea-weed, alert and buoyant as befits true mar iners to be ! The baby tars awoke, chirping like birds at dawn. The lunch-basket, surveyed with sickly scorn until that moment, became suddenly the centre of inter est. Soon not a crumb remained of its liberal pro viding. The boys said that eighteen-pound cod had brought our luck. Homeward-bound, the skipper made himself as agreeable to the lads as only a teller of sea-yarns can to a group of town-bred boys. Meanwhile one of the gentlemen of the party took out a newspaper and began to read. " Hallo !" he said, " here's an excitement for you, boys." 148 BAR HARBOR DAYS. " What is it ?" they cried in unison, basely' desert ing the loquacious skipper. "This fellow, Hopkins, they've tracked all the way from the - - penitentiary to Clamport, over on the mainland, not far from here. It seems he overpowered and half-killed his keeper, and got away in the most daring fashion. Must be familiar with the coast. Is supposed to have been originally a member of that notorious Whacker gang of des peradoes at Little Shark Island. The whole neigh borhood is out searching for him near Clamport, as a big reward is offered by the authorities, bat they think it likely he'll slip between their fingers." " He ain't the first, by a long shot, that's took shelter in them woods," said the skipper. " Ef you've ever hunted over there, sir, you'd see how easy 'tis to hide. An' a hundred miles of forest on a stretch makes it a hard job to track a run away. Ef the feller's got any claim upon them Whacker boys, the police'd 'bout as well shut up shop, I'm thinkin'. They'd stand by him to the death ef he'd had a hand in any of their devil's work. Hopkins, did you say? 'Taint a name I ever heered before among 'em. But then I ain't so well acquainted here as most. I'm a Monheganer myself. Ef you'd let me hev a look at that there paper, when you're through with it, I'd be thankful to ye. It's a kinder interestin' story, the quiet way things keep along here on the island." BAR HARBOR DAYS. 149 Having luncheon from the basket did not inter fere with a hearty meal at home, on the return ; and while the family were chatting around the ta ble, we ascertained that an illumination was prom ised for that evening by the yachts in harbor. I do not care to comment here upon Paul's habit of jumping upon people about to set out, no matter where, and insisting that he shall be made one of the party. My own method, since I arrived at months of discretion, is to stand around in conven iently noticeable places, and look pathetic, and if any one observes me, to wag my abbreviated tail with fervor. This policy I pursued, with signal success, on the evening of the illumination. A young man was going, in his canoe, to view the scene from the wa ter, and Paul and I had both accompanied him to the dock, where, after carrying his craft upon his head to the end of the plank- walk, he reversed it in the sea, and stepped lightly into the centre. " No, no, Paul Pry. Go home, sir !" he remarked, positively. " A canoe is no place to wriggle in. Trot may come, if she likes. /She knows how to keep her weather eye peeled in a canoe." Did I ? It was mysterious, though flattering, but I lost no time in accepting the invitation. Paul whined, and ran back the plank-walk, only to re turn upon the rocks, seeking in every way to move our hearts. He would even venture a little way 150 BAR HARBOR DAYS. into the water, and then turn back, and run along the coast to another point, until he became a mere receding speck of white in the darkness. It was a dry, warm night, the sky like polished steel, the water like a mirror, as we slid out upon the bay. Along the shore some bonfires had been built that flamed out splendidly into the night, and here and there a herald rocket shot up from ship or wharf, scattering a sheaf of blue or emerald stars. I have heard people say this motion of a canoe over a sea of glass at moonrise on a night in midsum mer at Mount Desert is like nothing that ever was on sea or land and I endorse them. Who gives a thought to the fact that a strip or two of birch- bark, a few stitches, a daub of resin, only, are be tween him and the sculpins ? Skimming the water as a sea-gull skims it ; rest ing in exquisite indolence upon a deerskin in the bottom ; hearing the paddle dip with rhythmic reg ularity ; breathing the mingled salt and balm of the transparent air ; seeing the moon rise, her silver track crossed and recrossed by silhouettes of silent voyagers like us, higher and higher till the dark mountain-sides are flooded with her light ! Is it a wonder that the canoeist amid such surroundings is content to bid farewell to prudence, remonstrance, memory ? lie is, which is enough ! And suddenly, what looks like a bridge of colored tire springs up between Bar Island and the pier. BAR HARBOR DAYS. 151 The entire line of yachts is aglow with Chinese lanterns hung from stem to stern along the rigging. Rockets and blue-lights whiz and blaze from unex pected quarters. A launch, carrying musicians, trails like a glow-worm about the harbor. Globes and melons of imprisoned fire appear on every row- boat and canoe, to be repeated in the tranquil sea. How glad I was that, without being aware of the accomplishment, I knew how to keep my weather eye peeled in a canoe ! I would not have missed this for the world. And, seeing the water was so calm, my companion thought he would prolong his voyage by going outside among the islands, to view the effect at greater distance. It was while we were rounding the rocky point of Sheep Porcupine that a surprising thing oc curred. A dory, lumbering along, passed close to us, we moving so noiselessly as to be unperceived. Within it sat a man, with a hat slouched down upon his eyes. He was evidently making for the island beach. " Fine sight this," called out my comrade, as he shot by. The man, unlike the klinders in general, made no reply beyond a surly grumble. The meeting would not, perhaps, have been worth a comment, but that a burst of blue light from the deck of a. schooner not far off lit up his face with a sudden ghastly glare. It was the visitor to the widow 152 ' BAK HARBOR DAYS. Perkins's cottage! I saw his face distorted with a frown, but my comrade's attention was just then diverted to a fire-fountain upon the distant pier. " That is the last of it, my Trot," he said to me, with a sigh. " I'll be hanged if such a night was meant to sleep in ! Let's paddle up into the bay, and drift about till midnight." This scheme met with my approval. On our way we passed more people in boats and canoes, gliding out of the shadows of the islands into the placid moonlight cheerful phantoms, sending forth bursts of shout and song and laughter. And so the midsummer-night's festival wore to its close. Paul was sitting up for me when I got homo. He said he had been out with the family in a row- boat, and that, anyhow, you can see just as well from a row-boat as a canoe. When I wanted to tell him the details of my adventure, he remarked that he was sleepy and did not care for conversa tion at that hour. " All the same," I said ; " the canoe was heav enly. How I wished, Paul dear, that you had known how to keep your weather eye peeled in a canoe." I cannot imagine why Paul, at this, was crosser than before. He quite flew out at me, and said he wouldn't give a fig to go in a canoe. They were foolish, risky things, and if he had anything to say BAR HARBOR DAYS. 153 upon the subject, I would never set foot in one again. But dear me ! We have all heard our Pauls talk that way, haven't we ? Somehow or other, it never seems to make much difference. CHAPTER XIII. WE wore sitting, the boys, Paul, and myself, on the summit of Sheep Porcupine, in company with Christy Perkins and Cousin Tommy. Please don't ask me who Cousin Tommy is. I must have been absent from the house the first time he came to see us ; and, provoking as it was, I had no way of picking up the dropped link in my chain of rec ollections. I could not go up to any one, as you would, for example, and say, " Oh ! really now, ex cuse my stupidity, but it's quite escaped me to what branch of the family Cousin Tommy belongs." Or, " Let me see, now, how does Cousin Tommy spell his surname ?" He was a tall, thin gentleman, who dressed in spotless flannels, and the calves of his legs were the glory of our boys, owing to their abnormal devel opment of muscle. Minimus almost had a pitched battle with Jonesy, because of Jonesy's unbelief in the asserted girth of Cousin Tommy's calves. Cousin Tommy was always inventing long tramps for our boys to take, and they found him most BAH HARBOR DAYS. 155 agreeable. On this occasion he had consented to accompany them for the afternoon to Sheep Por cupine a little reluctantly, because it was impos sible to go there afoot. But the recollection that some pretty tough climbing might be had after landing from the boat caused him to feel the after noon would not be entirely thrown away. We had scrambled to the top over boulders hid in grass, along narrow paths, where life-everlasting was just coming into bloom, and plumes of golden- rod were brightening, and had emerged upon an open space, looking over at the village. "Well," said Cousin Tommy, after an exceed ingly brief rest, " I think I'll tramp around a bit, and see the view from the east side of the island. AVho'll go with me ? Don't all speak at once." Minor went. He had an honest share of Cousin Tommy's spirit. Minimus thought he and Christy would stay and watch the water-jug and the sand wiches they had brought along to refresh the inner man upon this expedition. Besides, there was cold coffee in a tin-pot, carried with some pains over the rocks upon the ascent, in order to give excuse for the camp-fire the lads desired to make. "We'll have the coffee hot for you when you come back," cried Minimus, as the others disap peared in a sudden dip of the hills. " I'm so glad you could come with us, Christy," said the little boy, while they were gathering sticks 156 BAR HARBOR DAYS. to heap up in the elbow of a rock. " It wouldn't have been half the fun without you." " I'm glad, too," said Christy. " Just happened so. Grandmammy told me to run off and pick ber ries, or do what I'd a mind to. First off I thought I'd stay, as grandmammy is sick like, but she said she did'n want nobody round, an' there warn't no chores to do." " When my mamma has a headache," said the other, " she lets me cure it. Just put a little eau- de-cologne on, and blow, and she'll get well right aAvay, generally." Christy stared. " I took a lot o' lobsters from my pots yisterday an' to-day," he said, changing the subject, through inability to cope with the difficulties it presented. " You'd a laughed to see 'em clawin' and chawin' at one another. They fetched a good price in the village, too ; lobsters is kinder skeerce this season." " Oh, Christy, it must be such fun to sell things," remarked his friend, with an envious sigh. "I'd like to buy part of your dory, and go in partner ship with you. Minor and I have broken ours up, you know. He's gone in with Jonesy. There, light the match, will you. Off she goes. We'll let her burn down to embers before we heat the cof fee. That'll give 'em time to get back. I wonder if Minor'll run upon those old sheep we chased last summer ?" BAR HARBOR DAYS. 157 While the lads talked, Paul and I laid on the moss beliind them. " How they chatter, Paul !" I said. " Now, when I am in the presence of a scene like this, I like to bo silent, and compose." " Compose away," said Paul ; " only, if you're do ing another chapter of the book, do me the favor to omit all scenery." Omit scenery ? How could I, in the face of that laughing sea, that warmth of color, that abundant life? From Sheep Porcupine we saw the water all around us tinted of the true blue of the sapphire or the gentian of the Alps. The summer sunshine fell like a wash of gold upon the shores of Mount De sert. The cliffs glittered, the tree-tops sparkled as they stirred, the sea reflected light from a million facets. Away over towards the lighthouse we caught a glimpse of the mackerel fleet, a colony of sail-boats, prowling in the wake of their elusive prey. And beneath our feet, the surf ran in to break in a shower of diamonds on the rocks. Oh, what a world to live in! What had we happy dwellers here in common with toiling multitudes afar, with sorrow or with sin?" There was a rustle in the woods behind us a stealthy rustle followed by silence. The boys nev er even heard it, but I did, and my ears went up at once. I could not resist a single short, shrill bark. 158 BAR HARBOR DAYS. " What do you hear, Dame Trot ?" asked my lit tle master. " Perhaps it is that old ram and the wild sheep. Listen a minute, Christy, and, if it is, \ve'll charge them, and have a jolly race." The rustle began again, changing to a footstep. Then, over the shelving pile of rocks beneath which our fire sent up a curl of smoke, a man looked down. I knew him in an instant, but of course the boys did not. When he saw Christy he recoiled, and a half -smothered oath came from his lips. But there was no longer, in his eyes, the superstitious fear. It was rather an expression of hatred and repugnance. " Picnic, eh ?" he said, with an attempt at jocu larity. " I wonder if you've got a mouthful to give a hungry man ?" " Certainly," said my master, rising politely. " I suppose you've been out all day on the water, and forgot to take your lunch." " You've hit it, youngster," was the answer, with a harsh laugh. As the man, looking right and left, came down the rocks, we saw how torn and soiled his clothes were, how haggard and pale his face. The lads drew back from him instinctively. " Oh, you needn't be afraid, you kids," he said, addressing himself to Minimus, and avoiding the other with his eyes. " All I want of you is food and drink. Water in the jug? Give it to me, quick." The boys served him without a word. He seized BAR HARBOR DAYS. 159 the jug, and, pouring out one cupful after another, drank eagerly. He took the sandwiches, and ate them with ravenous haste ; and then, lifting the lid off the pot, peered in, smelt of it, put the coffee on to be heated, and sat down by the fire. I knew by the look on the faces of both boys that they were badly frightened. But they gave no sign beyond breathing a little quicker and be coming very solemn. The man asked questions in a furtive way. He found out how we had come to the island, and who was of our party. As his hunger was appeased, and after drinking the hot coffee, he seemed to gain more spirit. " So you've got a row-boat lying idle on the beach, eh ?" he asked ; " and the gentleman won't want to be going home this hour, I guess. See here. What do you say to making a dollar by taking a note out for me to that sloop lying west of us. You can tell your folks, you know. They won't mind your doin' a favor to a gentleman in trouble." I saw, by the expression of my little master's eyes, that he thought this was a queer sort -of a gen tleman. The man's manner was cajoling, but it did not reassure them. " Fact is, I've been all night here. Had an acci dent to my boat last night," he resumed, confi dentially. " It went off with the tide while I was lookin' at the fireworks, and there ain't been a soul 160 BAR HARBOR DAYS. upon the island till you got here. If I can get word to that sloop, the captain's a friend of mine, and he'll take me off all right." The boys drew back a few steps, and consulted together in whispers. " You mustn't go," said Christy. " You ain't used to managin' a boat outside, an' you wouldn't be let. I'll do it, if anybody does, long as it's your boat, an 7 you give me leave." " Wouldn't you rather row out there with me, sir?" he said, taking the spokesman's place, and looking the stranger full in the shifty eyes. The sound of Christy's voice made a sort of shiv er run through our unpleasant visitor, but, rallying up in a dogged kind of way, he said, gruffly, " I ain't asked you to take me anywheres, I guess. Do what you're bid, and here's the dollar besides, I've got my traps to gather up down on t'other shore." Taking out a new pocket calendar, he tore out a blank page and scribbled on it with a pencil, thrust ing the note, with a piece of silver, into Christy's hand. "I don't want the dollar," said Christy. "It ain't my boat to hire." And, handing the money back, he ran off down the steep side of the cliff, a short cut to the beach. " He's a rare specimen," said the man, looking after the boy with a laugh more repulsive than his BAR HARBOR DAYS. 1G1 frown. " Wonder what stock lie sprung from ! Well, sonny, seein' as you've done me a good turn, s'pose you take it, and I'll be gettin' back to where I spent the night." " You are welcome to our boat," remarked Mini mus, briefly, holding his hands behind him. " You're a pair o' bloomin' innocents," said the man, with a grin, as he let the silver slip back into his pocket. " Just as you like, though ; only you'll be sure to mention that I offered you the cash. A gentleman always pays his way, don't he ? Ta-ta ! I'm off. Hold on to them wild beasts o' yourn, they look dangerous. My compliments to the folks at home, not forgetting gran'ma and the baby. Ta ta!" And with this, to my master's great relief, he took his leave, looking around and behind him first, then scrambling with extreme agility up the rocks, and disappearing in the thick woods on the island crest. All this time I had been drawn up stiff and tense, my teeth set, and ready for a spring. " Why, Trotsey dear," said my master, in a rather shaky voice, " you look as if you thought you were a mastiff. Oh ! I do wish Minor and Cousin Tommy Avould come back." lie ran to the highest point of rocks he could command, and stood there, following Christy's course upon the water eagerly. There was the 11 102 BAR HARBOR DAYS. cat-boat, tacking about in an aimless kind of way, and as our boat pulled alongside of her we plainly saw the man on board come to the side and take the folded paper from Christy's hand and read it. Then a whistle sounded from the deck, and there was Christy, rowing back for dear life. " There wasn't anything else for us to do, Cousin Tommy," said Minimus, when they returned, after describing the encounter. " To tell the truth, he scared us. pretty badly." " It isn't that I mind your doing him a service with the boat," said Cousin Tommy, " but the fel low must be a bully, if not worse. Serve him right to expose him in the papers. He ought to be kicked out of his hotel." " I don't think he's anybody who stays at a hotel. He's not like any one I ever saw upon the island. He had such dreadful eyes. Oh ! Cousin Tommy. I wish we might go home now, instead of waiting for the picnic." And, seeing how the heart had been taken out of things by our adventure, Cousin Tommy acquiesced. Packing the basket and beating out the fire, they went down the cliff path to meet Christy at the shore. Christy had nothing wherewith to feed our curi osity. The captain of the sloop was a dark man, lie said, but there his powers of description ended. "VVe scanned the rocks for a glimpse of our late intruder, BAR HARBOR DAYS. 163 but saw no sign of him. Oddly enough, instead of coming inshore at once, the cat-boat resumed her trick of tacking up and down between the islands. " Queer business, very," said Cousin Tommy, in a dissatisfied sort of wa} T . Looking back amid the lengthening shadows, as we neared our dock, we lost sight of her entirely. They had rowed hard coming home, for, as the sun had set, a change came upon the weather, and the sky showed gathering clouds. In an incredibly short time after our landing a mighty norther came whistling across the bay, driving the surface of the water from wrinkles into waves, from waves to pounding breakers. As the gale increased in vio lence the tide rose over its utmost boundary, curling above the sea-wall and lashing the limit of the lawn. The dock, entirely submerged, broke up, and, despite the efforts of a man, tethered to a line, who waded out breast high to secure the remnants, part of it went off beyond recall. As night closed in, to peer through the windows was to behold a waste of surging Avater under a starless sky, no rain falling, but blast after blast of wind, bearing down upon the house, 'till it seemed to be rocking like a bul rush. By dawn next day, when weary watchers fell asleep, whether they would or not, the gale had spent its fury. A band of saffron glowed in t In- eastern sky, and of the carnival of overnight there BAR HARBOR DAYS, were left but white-caps, bounding on a field of blue, and long, curling tongues of foam that licked the rocks around the island. Then it was that everybody made haste to fall into procession along the road to Schooner Head. As early in the day as was practicable, our party turned in at the wicket gate, where a meadow path leads to the Spouting Horn. Here, in the little bay, Avhere at ordinary times a gentle surf laves the wild- flowers growing in thickets on the bank, were now a mass of noisy breakers, hurrying, hustling, frothing in a mad assault upon the rocks. And out upon the. Head ! What a sight to be remembered. The wide waste of ocean, broken up into seething bil lows, laced with flying surf! The cliffs, where timid people stand shuddering, where strong-brained folk rejoice exultingly to be, are split into yawn ing fissures, ending in black abysses set with jagged peaks. Far below is the Thunder Cave, where lean ing towers of emerald go reeling in, to be driven up resistlessly, and burst with a cannon's roar through the pit's mouth a hundred feet above. The tumult of the sea ! the wild exhilaration of the air ! and above, the blue sky, looking down on the havoc of the night. We watched the Portland steamer go laboring by in the direction of Great Head, and around the lighthouse one or two plucky schooners scudding before the wind. But, with. this exception, there AKTKK TIIK STolJM. I5AU HARBOR DAYS. 1(55 was no break in the restless, foam-swept field, so that we plainly discerned at a great distance flot sam of various kinds torn from its moorings farther up, and speeding out to sea. Logs of wood, casks, lumber, floats, an empty fishing-dory, astray and tossing like a cork ; and then an object never to be seen unmoved a boat, keel uppermost, her single sail dragging through the furrows of the waves ! At this spectacle a chill fell on the gay assem blage of people looking down securely from the cliffs. The tale it told was more eloquent than words. "When we drove home through the village we heard the story of the wreck, already caught up and bandied about the wharves and streets. Late on the evening of the day before, a return ing fisherman had seen, in the rough water off Burnt Porcupine, a cat-boat, evidently in distress. Hail ing the two men in her he offered them his help, which was refused, with oaths and an admonition to mind his own affairs. "Which, the wind a-blowin' like it was, I con cluded for to du," the man said, dryly. At daybreak the capsized boat was going out to sea with the tide, to be ultimately, no doubt, recov ered and towed in by some craft homeward bound. Until this should happen, no clue could be had t<* the identity of those who sailed in her, since in quiry at all the wharves failed to ascertain that a 1(56 BAR HARBOR DAYS. boat was missing which answered to her descrip tion. The general belief was that when the fierce sea wearied of playing with her prey and tossed the bodies on some distant shore public curiosity would be sated, and not before. CHAPTER XIY. AFTER tlic great gcale, the weather settled down into a series of long bright days, making of out door life a golden potion, to be slowly sipped. And yet, at the approach of the first day of September, many of the summer guests took flight from Mount Desert, as if the breeze that blew down from the spice woods on the heights bore a hint of pestilence. Yes, " the season " was at an end. The season of madding crowds at the hotels, of scrambles for daily bread, of overloaded buckboards, of choruses sung out of tune, of cotillons danced in hotel dining-rooms, of lobster-salad administered in birch-bark platters on lone rocks by the sea, of vows plighted with reck less prodigality by moonlight in canoes, of prom enading upon verandas from morn to dewy eve! Every boat and train bound southward carried num bers who had been participants in these dubious joys. But of quiet people, contracting their evening circle around the fire of the hotel parlors, and rejoicing in the return of cream for coffee, and of rest for weary ears; of cottagers, finding themselves once more 168 BAR HARBOR DAYS. face to face with the unwonted spectacle of house hold gods, there remained a goodly number. These lingerers knew what to look for in the pe culiar mellowness of atmosphere immediately be fore and for a long time after the equinoctial gales. And when, amid the fir-woods clothing hills and islands, autumn tints began to flame on the decidu ous trees, and the sea seemed to be " falling asleep in a half-dream," people gave up attempting to be anything but gypsies on the tramp. Then were arranged, by our friends, a series of the most delightful expeditions one can imagine: excursions by boat, buckboard, or steam-launch, to all 'points of interest about the island; excursions where the numbers were neither too great nor too small, the temperature neither too hot nor too cold, and the atmosphere was thoroughly to be relied upon for long-distance views! But for the fact that my domestic critic is lying in wait for me with a rod in pickle, I might be tempted to dilate upon one drive in particular to Beech Hill, a place where you climb up a rocky stairway to reach a summit, whence, looking down, you behold the greater part of the beautiful island stretched in a green map at your feet, cleft by the silver fiord of Somes Sound, and adorned by many a sparkling lake-gem ! Here, sitting on beds of juniper, both fragrant and elastic, you may, if you have nerve enough, look down a sheer precipice of granite hundreds of feet into the BAR HARBOR DAYS. 1(59 silent shadows of Echo Lake beneath, where, ap- proaching from the other side, voyagers, in season, sometimes take an ancient scow to idle away a morning among the lily-pads. "When we were there AVC remarked a curious absence of animal life in the landscape. There Avere feAV birds. A coAv-bell, tink ling on the lower mountain-side, struck the ear pleas antly ; and it Avas a relief to look over the hills and far aAvay at the vistas of blue billows chasing each other beyond the limit of the island. As our party grouped itself picturesquely among the rocks on Beech Hill top that afternoon, an en thusiastic Harvard man Avas heard to declare the scene Avas a veritable idyl of Theocritus (Paul and I doing duty for the sheep !), where shepherds couch on grassy slopes above the sea, and pipe the praises of their fair. "Whereupon a young lady it AA*on't do to say what city claimed her remarked that she neA'cr did mind a pipe if it was in the open air, and would he kindly pass the butter-cups the last re quest sounding more pastoral than it looked, as, Avith a somewhat constrained air, he leaned oA~er and handed her a box with edges of lace paper, fre quently to be seen on out-door occasions of the kind, containing a species of bon-bon much in vogue that season. I have one poignant recollection of the Beech Hill day. There it AA T as I discovered the tread HM-V of Flossv, the Yorkshire friend of Avhom I havr 170 BAR HARBOR DAYS. previously spoken. It was the eve of her departure with her mistress to return to their home at New port, and I suppose she thought that, as our paths lay separate in future, there was no need for further dissimulation of friendship) with me. For the first time it flashed on me in watching that creature's manoeuvres to gain Paul's exclusive attention that I, from the beginning, had been used as a stepping- stone to his favor. She began by sneering at my neat little collar of brass links, and wondering if my mistress could not afford (afford, forsooth !) to give me a silver bangle with a bell, like hers. I an swered warmly, and appealed to Paul, who pre tended to be looking at the view. Flossy went on saying disagreeable things ; and, at last, calling to Paul to follow me, I turned and indignantly left the blueberry patch where these incidents occurred. Here comes the incredible part of my story. Paul not only resumed his close study of the landscape, but, when I addressed him, was attacked with sud den deafness. Flossy laughed insultingly, and I waited to hear no more. Not knowing how else to dispose of myself, I ran after two of those peripa tetic people on every party who can never keep still, but must always be investigating some new perch on the rocks or point where the view looks incomparably better than it could possibly assume to look to the people left behind. In this case the explorers turned out to be just at that development BAR HARBOR DAYS. 171 of mutual passion whore words aro a fleeting 1 show, and action is all that is required as they say upon the dramatic stage so my time was not altogether lost, nor were my opportunities for taking notes perceptibly diminished, while in their company. It was about as funny as such things are generally, and my ill-temper vanished rapidly ; but when the declining sun brought us all together once more, Paul and Flossy were missing ! I found them, sitting side by side under a prick ly bush, apparently oblivious of time and me. I reached there, to hear Flossy tell Paul she felt sure Dame Trot could never thoroughly understand and appreciate a nature like his ; and a lot more of maudlin praise, to which Mr. Pry was listening, with a smirk of self-satisfaction I cannot pretend to put into words! I held my breath long enough to think how Flossy had depended on me to introduce her everywhere earlier in the season; how often she had vowed she despised females whose sole stock-in- trade in dealing with the opposite sex was flattery ; how she protested she fairly reverenced my intellect, and had always said so, when a question arose as to 'my personal appearance; how enough things to flee my soul with vengeful longings and then ! all, then I pounced on her, and shook her till the wind raised her silken coat into a fleecy cloud ! If she had resembled an animated new door-mat before this encounter, after it she looked like the door-mat 172 BAR HARBOR DAYS. upon which several pairs of feet have been wiped ! Flossy's shrieks summoned her despairing mistress, and mine, and the tragedy was brought abruptly to a close. During the long drive home Flossy nestled to her lady, whimpering, and I sat quietly trium phant on my lady's lap. Paul took care to remain at a safe distance from both of us, and, as my deceit ful enemy left Bar Harbor for Newport next morn ing, was not indulged to any extent in compliments for days to come which, I am glad to say, had a very salutary effect upon his volatile spirit. It was some time since we had seen Christy, and we had begun to miss the dear little fellow from our sports and councils, w T hen it befell us to pay our last visit to the cabin, under the following circum stances : "We were hunting for mushrooms around our ten nis-court, and great fun it was to spy and jump for the little pinky-white buttons in the grass, as well as the full-grown disks, which w^e considered less desirable. While thus engaged, one day, I came upon a beautiful little short-eared owl, trapped on a night excursion through our stop-nets, and falling helplessly over, to hang head down until released. I barked vigorously, and Mr. Pry, who was engaged in his favorite amusement of springing for butter flies upon the wing (which he caught in his mouth and chewed, although they always made him sick), ran over to join me. Between us, we must have BAR HARBOR DAYS. 173 scared the poor thing out of the little wits that re mained to her, after her prolonged inversion of the brain. However, the boys came along pretty soon, and set her free with pocket-knives an operation more to her advantage than to that of the tennis- net. She was a beauty. Soft brown-gray in plu mage, and, when she recovered her natural poise on a chair-back in the Den, with an air of royalty in chains. There was an attempt to nourish her majesty by extending on the end of a canoe-paddle a mouse, which, with a rattle in her throat, she grabbed, flying across the room with it to perch upon an oar-rack. ]SText day they found under neath her perch a compact ball, made of her victim's skin and bones. Mice failmg, they had recourse to bits of raw meat, accepted but ungra ciously ; and, the reproach of her sightless eyes prov ing too much for her tender-hearted captors, they put her in a peach-basket and set out to consult Christy as to the propriety of further endeavor to bring her up by hand. Truly, it did seem cruel to keep anything of the bird kind in durance vile at a season when there was such extraordinary activity pre vailing among their tribes. The robins had already Mown, chick- a-dees were twittering diligently over their prepa rations for departure ; swallows, hawks, an eagle now and then, crows and gulls were perpetually on the wing around us. As to the wood birds, we heard 174 BA1 > HARBOR DAYS. them often consulting together whether such fools there could be, as creatures willing to exchange these tents of gold and crimson for uncertain win ter-quarters in a distant south. And on our own beach, stepping out into the lapping tide in a doubt ful, high-shouldered kind of way, we spied a crane, who, at my bark, humped herself up and flew away over a sea like lapis-lazuli. Ducks rocked in pairs upon the water, and, diving, would reappear at a great distance, shedding the sparkles from their wings. Even the humming-bird who had haunted our flower-beds and boxes since June showed him self a lingerer like the rest, and went on sipping wine of heliotrope. On the way out of the village we met Christy himself, looking a little downcast. " I'm go'ne an errand for grandmammy," he said, in answer to the boys' vociferous greeting. " It's only to the post-office, and if you'll sit here under the trees and wait, I'll be back pretty soon. Mebbe she ain't nothin' more for me to do this forenoon, an' we can play a bit." They readily consented, and during the time that elapsed before we again saw the little fellow in his torn straw-hat and jacket like a faded leaf, master Paul improved the opportunity to get us into dis grace by charging some ducks waddling about the yard of a roadside house. The ducks ran about fussing and quacking, and out came the woman BAR HARBOR DAYS. 175 with a dipper of water, which, aimed at Paul, suc ceeded in filling Minor's shoe. Altogether we were flurried, and generally out of spirits, when Christy, running, came up with us again. " I'm real glad to see you," he said, with his old beaming smile. " I was kinder 'f raid you might be gettin' back to the city, so many's gone. Lemme carry the owl. Ef you'll leave her in our woodshed I guess I can tame her pretty quick, an' let her do her mousin' for herself. Them creatures like to catch 'em alive every time. I had one, once, and sold her for a dollar to a city man that was goin' back to Boston." " I don't believe there's anything you couldn't tame, Christy," cried his companions, Avith genuine admiration. When we reached the cabin the boys hung back, while Christy, half opening the door, went in, Paul and I following. The little place was clean swept, and a fire was burning. In a chair beside it sat the witch-woman, but I never saw so changed a face and figure. Her head drooped upon her breast, her cheeks were sunk and haggard. Only her eyes seemed living, and they burned with an eager, watchful gleam, like sparks half buried in the ashes. " You are there, Christy ?" she said, starting fee bly from her chair. " Well, what have you got to say to me ?" 170 BAR HARBOR DAYS. " The same thing, grandmammy." "No letter!" she cried, in a voice of anguish. " Again, and again, and again, no letter. Boy, you ain't lost it by the vrav ? You ain't lying to me? Speak!" " Ef I ever lied to you, grandmammy, I'm lying now," said the boy, patiently. " He said you needn't trouble to send me every day, if you are sick. If a letter comes, he'll see it gets to you by some one of the folks comin' this way." " You didn't let him see you was over-anxious, lad ?" cried she, trying to calm herself. " You knowed it was about a little matter o' business, didn't you ? They gossip so, you know, an' it was my own affair, not theirs my OTTO, my own," and she began rocking back and forth, half closing her eyes and pressing her lips together. " You wouldn't let me make you a cup of tea, grandmammy 2" Christy ventured, presently, uncer tain how to proceed. " Xo, no, child," she said, wearily. " Run away and do what you've a mind to, till it's dinner-time. I'm better off by myself." " 'Lije Tompkins giv me this here piece o' news paper," Christy went on, timidly. " He said it had all about the findin' o' that Whacker feller's body down to Ironbound o' Tuesday, if I'd want to read it. Most everybody's talkin' 'bout how " Christy did not finish his sentence. He was ar- BAR HARBOR DAYS. 177 rested by the ghastly pallor that came upon her face. " Whacker !" she gasped, " Whacker ! Good God, it can't be ! Give me the paper, lad. Don't stop here. I'll read it to keep me company. A passle o' lies, most likely, like all the rest. I won't hev you talkin 'to 'Lije Tompkins 'bout things it ain't Lies, I tell you, lies ! It worn't Whacker, an' the other one worn't Go, go ; do you want me to take the stick to you. I won't .be spied upon." " I wasn't spying, grandmammy," the boy said, in a low voice, moving towards the door. " I'll go if you make me, but " Go, I tell you !" she interrupted, harshly, with a motion as if to strike him. He shrank out of the door and stood for a mo ment irresolute. The boys had run down to their old playground on the shore. He heard their cheer ful voices, then, turning, rushed back to the cow shed and, throwing himself upon a pile of hay, burst into a passion of tears. Poor Christy ! He, who was everybody's friend, must carry his own burden unshared, unlightened ! We could not bear to see him crying so, and, with a couple of light bounds, reached his side, snuffing the hands clasped over his eyes, and licking the wet places we c;>uld find between his fingers. His squir rel, too, thiil had been in the rafters hunting for the 12 178 BAU HARBOR DAYS. nuts often hidden there for him, ran swiftly down, to whisk his bushy tail caressingly on Christy's cheek. " Ef grandmammy would only let me love her !" the boy sobbed, and in his loneliness and yearning he hid his face, and did not see that the old woman, with a livid face and tottering steps, had followed him into the shed. " Christy." Christy sprang to his feet. There she stood, the stern old witch-woman, holding both arms out to him. " Christy ! My poor orphan boy. That I could drive away the only livin' bein' that's left to warm my heart." Quick as thought he was clinging to her neck, raining sweet kisses on her furrowed cheeks. Little knew he or cared what had wrought this tardy wonder. To console was more to him even than to be consoled, and the nature were adamant that could resist his tender ministrations. " It won't seem so hard now, grandmammy," he said, wiping his eyes. " Leavin' the old home and all. Only you must hurry an' get well, an' be the same as you use ter." " Grief don't kill, boy," she said, hoarsely. Al ready, her unwonted demonstration over, she was lapsing into her old sombre self ; but with a differ ence. BAR IIAKBOK DAYS. 17Q " Grandmammy," persisted Christy, " if you mind goin' away from here so much, why don't you tell 'em so ? It ain't too late, is it ?" " Too late ?" she repeated. " Oh, my God ! the poor ignorant child, he don't know what he's talk- in' 'bout. Too late. My heart will break." Christ}'- had never seen her shaken by such a storm. She let him lead her into the house and place her in her chair. Our boys had played until they were tired, before Christy, with a very sober face, came down the cliffs. . " Hush !" he said, holding up one finger. " Grand- mammy's asleep, I think. She's been quiet, now, this good while, and I'm goin' to get the dinner." " Well, we're sorry she's ailing, Christy, and we must go now, but we've had a very nice time on the beach," said the boys in concert. " Won't you walk with us across lots to the turning of the lane ?" " Yes," said Christy ; " and I'll train the owl for you the best I can." " We can't take her back to town, anyhow," said the boys. " So perhaps you'd better keep her in your " Happy Family." Isn't it too bad it's all so nearly over. Next summer, when we come up here again, we'll see you just as often, Christy. We like you awfully, you know." To their surprise, Christy's large blue eyes were full of tears, i !el'< >re he could answer, a lath dressed 180 BAU HARBOR DAYS. in fine clothes, and driving a village cart with a groom behind her, turned into the lane. For a wonder, the lady of Fernley Hall, for it was she, was all smiles and self-complacency. " The very first thing I shall do, Wilson," she re marked, reining in her horse, to look down the bit of lane overgrown with golden-rod and aster, "after I have got rid of that eyesore of a cabin, will be to plough this lane up and grass it, and put out a board warning all trespassers to keep away. Of course people will want to be poking in to get down to the rocks. But Fll stop if, they will see, if I have to go to law." She was a very decided person in speech and manner, and we all felt relieved when, without looking at the boys where they had stooped down to pick a few late blackberries under their crimson leaves, Mrs. Smith chirruped to her fat cob, and, jingling many silver chains, turned out of the lane and drove away. What we did was, with one accord to look at Christy. " It's true," he said, with a forlorn kind of a smile. " I've known it for a week, that grandmamniy's 'bout made up her mind to sell to Mr. Smith, and leave the Harbor. It's that that's troublin' her, I guess. We're sorter fond of the old place." I remember we stood silent and sad for a moment before our little group broke up. So clear and still BAR HARBOR DAYS. the autumn midday was, that the ring of a sports man's gun, duck-shooting far out on the bay, sound ed quite near to us. And the sea laughed and glit tered as if it did not hold the secret of Christy's in heritance of shame. That night, for the first time in many a year, the country people- said, no light was seen to burn in the Witch Cove cabin window. NOTA BENE. I HATE observed that when people read anything in print about an actual place, they invariably go to hunting up localities, and peopling them with characters from real life. Don't try this plan, I beg of } T OU, with little Christy's story. My tale is but a gauzy one at best, and if you handle it, I can not promise that it will not vanish like a cobweb in your grasp. I sign myself DAME TEOT. BY MRS. BURTON HARRISON. BAR HARBOR DAYS. A Talc of Mount Desert. Illus trated by Fenn and Hyde. IGino, Cloth, $1 25. A bright story of life at Mount Desert. ... Is is exceedingly well done, and the scenery, the ways of the people, and the social methods of the rusticators lend interest to the book. Christian Advocate, N. Y. The book is bright and readable. Courier, Boston. A delightful book about Mount Desert, its summer inhabitants, their sayings and doings. N. Y. Sun. One of the most attractive books of the season, and will be in great demand by readers who wish an original, captivating summer idyl. Hartford Post. It is all appropriate, and graceful, and sunny-hearted, and sweet-natured, and true to life. Yes, the optimists are truer to life than the pessimists; and this dainty chronicle of summer wanderings where the fun is not all selfish pleasure, but tuned to sympathy with those less fortunate, is a blessing not in disguise. Critic, N. Y. A breezy book, full of happy hits and Bar Harbor groups. ... A bright, sweet-tempered story, prettily illustrated. Chicago Herald. HELEN TROY. IGmo, Cloth, $1 00. It is a breezy little society novel, with a pretty plot and a number of capitally drawn characters. ... It is always bright, fresh, and entertaining, and has an element of naturalness that is particularly pleasing. The de scriptions are very spirited, the conversations are full of point and often genuinely witty, and the tone of the whole is both refined and delicate. Saturday Evening Gazette, Boston. The book is written with exceeding cleverness, and abounds in delight ful little pictures. The Critic, N. Y. Mrs. Harrison's style is crisp, epigrammatic, piquant ; she shades her characters artistically, paints from real life, and, without hurrying the reader along, never lets her story drag. . . . The merit of the work lies in the fidelity of its portraiture and the felicity of its utterance. X. Y. ll< rn!" <> ''.'/ Tiiai 1 , Jitmtil^i' ynv/MiW, to (in;/ jmrt "f tin THEIR PILGRIMAGE. By CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. Richly Illustrated by C. S. REINHART. pp. viii., 304. 8vo, Half Leather, $2 00. Aside from the delicious story its wonderful portraitures of character and its dramatic development the book is precious to all who know any thing about the great American watering-places, for it contains incompar able descriptions of those famous resorts and their frequenters. Even without the aid of Mr. Reinhart's brilliant drawings, Mr. Warner conjures up word-pictures of Cape May, Newport, Saratoga, Lake George, Richfield Springs, Niagara, the White Mountains, and all the rest, which strike the eye like photographs, so clear is every outline. But Mr. Reinhart's de signs fit into the text so closely that we could not bear to part with a single one of them. "Their Pilgrimage" is destined, for an indefinite succession of summers, to be a ruling favorite with all visitors of the mountains, the beaches, and the spas which are so marvellously reflected in its pages. JV. Y. Journal of Commerce. The author touches the canvas here and there with lines of color that fix and identify American character. Ilerein is the real charm for those who like it best, and for this one may anticipate that it will be one of the prominent books of the time. Of the fancy and humor of Mr. Warner. which in witchery of their play and power are quite independent of this or that subject, there is nothing to add. But acknowledgment is due Mr. Reinhart for nearly eighty finely conceived drawings, and to the publishers for the substantial and rich letter-press and covers. Boston Globe. No more entertaining travelling companions for a tour of pleasure re sorts could be wished for than those who in Mr. Warner's pages chat and laugh, and skim the cream of all the enjoyment to be found from Mount Washington to the Sulphur Springs. . . . His pen-pictures of the charac ters typical of each resort, of the manner of life followed at each, of the humor and absurdities peculiar to Saratoga, or Newport, or Bar Harbor, as the case may be, are as good-natured as they are clever. The satire, when there is any, is of the mildest, and the general tone is that of one glad to look on the brightest side of the cheerful, pleasure-seeking world with which he mingles. ... In Mr. Reinhart the author has an assistant who has done with his pencil almost exactly what Mr. Warner has accom plished with his pen. His drawings are spirited, catch with wonderful success the tone and costume of each place visited, and abound in good- natured fun. Christian Union, N. Y. Mr. Reinhart's spirited and realistic illustrations are very attractive, and contribute to make an unusually handsome book. We have already com mented upon the earlier chapters of the text; and the happy blending of travel and fiction which we looked forward to with confidence did, in fact, distinguish this story among the serials of the year. N. Y. Evening Post. PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK. The above work sent by mail, pontage prepaid, to any part of the United Statef or Canada, on receipt of the price. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. Form L9-25m-9,'47(A5618)444 UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES T rr>r> * T-.I r PS T rll D U*<.^T^ t t.J-lT-1 loly H2l]5b Harrison - Bar Harbor days DEC 10 195J LIBRARY FACILITY 401 1 PS 1819