For Trove it was a day of sowing. The strange old tinker hadfilled his heart with a new joy and a new desire. Next morning hegot a ride to Hillsborough--fourteen miles--and came back, reading,as he walked, a small, green book, its thin pages covered thickwith execrably fine printing, its title "The Works of Shakespeare."He read the book industriously and with keen pleasure. Allencomplained, shortly, that Shakespeare and the filly had interferedwith the potatoes and the corn.
The filly ceased to take food and sickened for a time after the damleft her. Trove lay in the stall nights and gave her milksweetened to her liking. She grew strong and playful, and forgother sorrow, and began to follow him like a dog on his errands upand down the farm. Trove went to school in the autumn--"Selectschool," it was called. A two-mile journey it was, by trail, but afull three by the wagon road. He learned only a poor lesson thefirst day, for, on coming in sight of the schoolhouse, he heard arush of feet behind him and saw his filly charging down the trail.He had to go back with her and lose the day, a thought dreadful tohim, for now hope was high, and school days few and precious. Atfirst he was angry. Then he sat among the ferns, covering his faceand sobbing with sore resentment. The little filly stood over himand rubbed her silky muzzle on his neck, and kicked up her heels inplay as he pushed her back. Next morning he put her behind afence, but she went over it with the ease of a wild deer and camebounding after him. When, at last, she was shut in the box-stallhe could hear her calling, half a mile away, and it made his heartsore. Soon after, a moose treed him on the trail and held himthere for quite half a day. Later he had to help thrash and waslaid up with the measles. Then came rain and flooded flats thatturned him off the trail. Years after he used to say that work andweather, and sickness and distance, and even the beasts of thefield and wood, resisted him in the way of learning.
He went to school at Hillsborough that winter. His time, whichAllen gave him in the summer, had yielded some forty-five dollars.He hired a room at thirty-five cents a week. Mary Allen bought hima small stove and sent to him, in the sleigh, dishes, a kettle,chair, bed, pillow, and quilt, and a supply of candles.
She surveyed him proudly, as he was going away that morning inDecember,
"Folks may call ye han'some," she said. "They'd like to make foolof ye, but you go on 'bout yer business an' act as if ye didn'thear."
He had a figure awkward, as yet, but fast shaping to comeliness.Long, light hair covered the tops of his ears and fell to hiscollar. His ruddy cheeks were a bit paler that morning; the curvein his lips a little drawn; his blue eyes had begun to fill and thedimple in his chin to quiver, slightly, as he kissed her who hadbeen as a mother to him. But he went away laughing.
Many have seen the record in his diary of those lank and busy days.The Saturday of his first week at school he wrote as follows:--
"Father brought me a small load of wood and a sack of potatoesyesterday, so, after this, I shall be able to live cheaper. Myexpenses this week have been as follows:--
Rent 35 cents Corn meal 14 " Milk 20 " Bread 8 " Beef bone 5 " Honey 5 " Four potatoes, about 1 " -- 88 cents.
"Two boys who have a room on the same floor got through the weekfor 75 cents apiece, but they are both undersized and don't eat ashearty. This week I was tempted by the sight of honey and was foolenough to buy a little which I didn't need. I have some meal leftand hope next week to get through for 80 cents. I wish I couldhave a decent necktie, but conscience doth make cowards of us all.I have committed half the first act of 'Julius Caesar.'"
And yet, with pudding and milk and beef bone and four potatoes and"Julius Caesar" the boy was cheerful.
"Don't like meat any more--it's mostly poor stuff anyway," he saidto his father, who had come to see him.
"Sorry--I brought down a piece o' venison," said Allen.
"Well, there's two kinds o' meat," said the boy; "what ye can have,that's good, an' what ye can't have, that ain't worth havin'."
He got a job in the mill for every Saturday at 75 cents a day, andsoon thereafter was able to have a necktie and a pair of fineboots, and a barber, now and then, to control the length of hishair.
Trove burnt the candles freely and was able but never brilliant inhis work that year, owing, as all who knew him agreed, to greatmodesty and small confidence. He was a kindly, big-hearted fellow,and had wit and a knowledge of animals and of woodcraft that madehim excellent company. That schoolboy diary has been of greatservice to all with a wish to understand him. On a faded leaf inthe old book one may read as follows:--
"I have received letters in the handwriting of girls, unsigned.They think they are in love with me and say foolish things. I knowwhat they're up to. They're the kind my mother spoke of--the kindthat set their traps for a fool, and when he's caught they use himfor a thing to laugh at. They're not going to catch me.
"Expenses for seven days have been $1.14. Clint McCormick spent 60cents to take his girl to a show and I had to help him through theweek. I told him he ought to love Caesar less and Rome more."
Then follows the odd entry without which it is doubtful if thehistory of Sidney Trove could ever have been written. At leastonly a guess would have been possible, where now is certainty. Andhere is the entry:--
"Since leaving home the men of the dark have been very troublesome.They wake me about every other night and sometimes I wonder whatthey mean."
Now an odd thing had developed in the mystery of the boy. Evenbefore he could distinguish between reality and its shadow that wesee in dreams, he used often to start up with a loud cry of fear inthe night. When a small boy he used to explain it briefly bysaying, "the men in the dark." Later he used to say, "the menoutdoors in the dark." At ten years of age he went off on a threedays' journey with the Allens. They put up in a tavern that hadmany rooms and stairways and large windows. It was a while afterhis return of an evening, before candle-light, when a gray curtainof dusk had dimmed the windows, that he first told the story, soonoft repeated and familiar, of "the men in the dark"--at least hewent as far as he knew.
"I dream," he was wont to say in after life, "that I am listeningin the still night alone--I am always alone. I hear a sound in thesilence, of what I cannot be sure. I discover then, or seem to,that I stand in a dark room and tremble, with great fear, of what Ido not know. I walk along softly in bare feet--I am so fearful ofmaking a noise. I am feeling, feeling, my hands out in the dark.Presently they touch a wall and I follow it and then I discoverthat I am going downstairs. It is a long journey. At last I am ina room where I can see windows, and, beyond, the dim light of themoon. Now I seem to be wrapped in fearful silence. Stealthily Igo near the door. Its upper half is glass, and beyond it I can seethe dark forms of men. One is peering through with face upon thepane; I know the other is trying the lock, but I hear no sound. Iam in a silence like that of the grave. I try to speak. My lipsmove, but, try as I may, no sound comes out of them. A sharpterror is pricking into me, and I flinch as if it were aknife-blade. Well, sir, that is a thing I cannot understand. Youknow me--I am not a coward. If I were really in a like scene fearwould be the least of my emotions; but in the dream I tremble andam afraid. Slowly, silently, the door opens, the men of the darkenter, wall and windows begin to reel. I hear a quick, loud cry,rending the silence and falling into a roar like that of floodingwaters. Then I wake, and my dream is ended--for that night."
Now men have had more thrilling and remarkable dreams, but that ofthe boy Trove was as a link in a chain, lengthening with his life,and ever binding him to some event far beyond the reach of hismemory.