Crowded Out o' Crofield; or, The Boy who made his Way by William O. Stoddard (read my book txt) 📗

the miller. "The water'll run off, though. I'll tell you what I'll do, Jack. I'll sell it for two hundred dollars, considering the flood."

"If father'll take it, will you count in the fifty you said you owed me?" inquired Jack.

The miller made a wry face for a moment, but then responded, smiling:

"Well! After what you've done to-night, too: saved all there was on the first floor,—yes, I will. Tell him I'll do it."

They all turned suddenly toward the dam. A high ridge of water was sweeping down across the pond. It carried a crest of foam, logs, planks, and rubbish, shining white in the moonlight, and it rolled on toward the mill and the dam as if it had an errand.

Crash—roar—crash—and a plunging sound,—and it seemed as if the Crofield dam had vanished. But it had not. Only a section of its top work, in the middle, had been knocked away by the rushing stroke of those logs.

A frightened shout went up from the spectators, and it had hardly died away before there followed another splintering crash.

"The bridge!" shouted Jack.

The frail supports of the bridge, brittle with age and weather, already straining hard against the furious water, needed only the battering of the first heavy logs from the boom, and down they went.

"Gone!" exclaimed Mr. Ogden. "The hotel's gone, and the meeting-house, and the dam, and the bridge. There won't be anything left of Crofield, at this rate."

"I'm going to get out of it," said Jack.

"I'll never refuse you again," replied his father, with energy. "You may get out any way you can, and take your chances anywhere you please. I won't stand in your way."

The roar of the surging Cocahutchie was the only sound heard for a full minute, and then the miller spoke.

"The mill's safe," he said, with a very long breath of relief; "the breaking of that hole in the dam let the water and logs through, and the pond isn't rising. Hurrah!"

There was a very faint and scattering cheer, and Jack Ogden did not join in it. He had turned suddenly and walked away homeward, along the narrow strip of land that remained between the wide, swollen Cocahutchie and the fence.

At the end of the fence, where he came into his own street, away above where the head of the bridge had been, there was a large gathering. That around the mill had been nearly all of men and boys. Here were women and girls, and the smaller boys, whose mothers and aunts held them and kept them from going nearer the water. Jack found it of no use to say, "Oh, mother, I'm too muddy!" She didn't care how muddy he was, and Aunt Melinda cared even less, apparently. Bessie and Sue had evidently been crying; but Mary had not; and it was her hand on Jack's arm that led him away, up the street, toward their gate.

"Oh, Jack!" she exclaimed, "I'm so proud! Did you ride fast? I'm glad I can ride! I could have done it, too. It was splendid!"

"Molly," said Jack, "I don't mind telling you. The sorrel mare galloped all the way, going and coming, up hill and down; and Molly, I kept wishing and thinking every jump she gave,—wishing I was galloping to New York, instead of to the Four Corners!

"Molly," he added quickly, "father gives it up and says I may go!"

CHAPTER VI. OUT INTO THE WORLD.

Monday morning came, bright and sunshiny; and it hardly reached Crofield before the people began to get up and look about them.

Jack went down to the river and did not get back very soon. His mind was full of something besides the flood, and he did not linger long at the mill.

But he looked long and hard at all the pieces of land below the mill, down to Deacon Hawkins's line. He knew where that was, although the fence was gone.

"The freshet didn't wash away a foot of it," he said. "I'll tell father what Mr. Hammond said about selling it."

A pair of well-dressed men drove down from Main Street in a buggy and halted near him.

"Brady," said one of these men, "the engineer is right. We can't change the railroad line. We can say to the Crofield people that if they'll give us the right of way through the village we'll build them a new bridge. They'll do it. Right here's the spot for the station."

"Exactly," said the other man, "and the less we say about it the better. Keep mum."

"That's just what I'll do, too," said Jack to himself, as they drove away. "I don't know what they mean, but it'll come out some day."

Jack went home at once, and found the family at breakfast. After breakfast his father went to the shop, and Jack followed him to speak about the land purchase.

When Jack explained the miller's offer, Mr. Ogden went with him to see Mr. Hammond. After a short interview, Mr. Ogden and Jack secured the land in settlement of the amount already promised Jack, and of an old debt owed by the miller to the blacksmith, and also in consideration of their consenting to a previous sale of the trees for cash to the Bannermans, who had made their offer that morning. Mr. Hammond seemed very glad to make the sale upon these terms, as he was in need of ready money.

When Jack returned to his father's shop, he remembered the men he had seen at the river, and he told his father what they had said.

"Station?—right of way?" exclaimed Mr. Ogden. "That's the new railroad through Mertonville. They'll use up that land, and we won't get a cent. Well, it didn't cost anything. I'd about given up collecting that bill."

Later that day, Jack came in to dinner with a smile on his face. It was the old smile, too; a smile of good-humored self-confidence, which flickered over his lips from side to side, and twisted them, and shut his mouth tight. Just as he was about to speak, his father took a long, neatly folded paper out of his coat pocket and laid it on the table.

"Look at that, Jack," he said; "and show it to your mother."

"Warranty deed!" exclaimed Jack, reading the print on the outside. "Father! you didn't turn it over to me, did you? Mother, it's to John Ogden, Jr.!"

"Oh, John—" she began and stopped.

"Why, my dear," laughed the blacksmith, cheerfully, "it's his gravel, not mine. I'll hold it for him, for a while, but it is Jack's whenever I chose to record that deed."

"I'm afraid I couldn't farm it there," said Jack; and then the smile on his face flickered fast. "But I knew Father wanted that land."

"It isn't worth much, but it's a beginning," said Mary. "I'd like to own something or other, or to go somewhere."

"Well, Molly," answered Jack, smiling, "you can go to Mertonville. Livermore says there's a team here, horses and open carriage. It came over on Friday. The driver has cleared out, and somebody must take them home, and he wants me to drive over. Can't I take Molly, Mother?"

"You'd have to walk back," said his father, "but that's nothing much. It's less than nine miles—"

"Father," said Jack, "you said, last night, I needn't come back to Crofield, right away. And Mertonville's nine miles nearer the city—"

"And a good many times nine miles yet to go," exclaimed the blacksmith; but then he added, smiling: "Go ahead, Jack. I do believe that if any boy can get there, you can."

"I'll do it somehow," said Jack, with a determined nod.

"Of course you will," said Mary.

Jack felt as if circumstances were changing pretty fast, so far as he was concerned; and so did Mary, for she had about given up all hope of seeing her friends in Mertonville.

"We'll get you ready, right away," said Aunt Melinda. "You can give Jack your traveling bag,—he won't mind the key's being lost,—and I'll let you take my trunk, and we'll fit you out so you can enjoy it."

"Jack," said his father, "tell Livermore you can go, and then I want to see you at the shop."

Jack was so glad he could hardly speak; for he felt it was the first step. But a part of his feeling was that he had never before loved Crofield and all the people in it, especially his own family, so much as at that minute.

He went over to the ruined hotel, where he found the landlord at work saving all sorts of things and seeming to feel reasonably cheerful over his misfortunes.

"Jack," he said, as soon as he was told that Jack was ready to go, "you and Molly will have company. Miss Glidden sent to know how she could best get over to Mertonville, and I said she could go with you. There's a visitor, too, who must go back with her.

"I'll take 'em," said Jack.

Upon going to the shop he found his father shoeing a horse. The blacksmith beckoned his son to the further end of the shop. He heard about Miss Glidden, and listened in silence to several hopeful things Jack had to say about what he meant to do sooner or later.

He listened in silence.

"Well," he said, at last, "I was right not to let you go before, and I've doubts about it now, but something must be done. I'm making less and less, and not much of it's cash, and it costs more to live, and they're all growing up. I don't want you to make me any promises. They are broken too easily. You needn't form good resolutions. They won't hold water. There's one thing I want you to do, though. Your mother and I have brought you up as straight as a string, and you know what's right and what's wrong."

"That's true," said Jack.

"Well, then, don't you promise nor form any resolutions, but if you're tempted to do wrong, or to be a fool in any kind of way, just don't do it that's all."

"I won't, Father," said Jack earnestly.

"There," said his father, "I feel better satisfied than I should feel if you'd promised a hundred things. It's a great deal better not to do anything that you know to be wrong or foolish."

"I think so," said Jack, "and I won't."

"Go home now and get ready," said his father; "and I'll see you off."

"This is very sudden, Jack,", said his mother, with much feeling, when he made his appearance.

"Why, Mother," said Jack, "Molly'll be back soon, and the city isn't so far away after all."

Jack felt as if he had only about enough head left to change his clothes and drive the team.

"It's just as Mother says," he thought; "I've been wishing and hoping for it, but it's come very suddenly."

His black traveling-bag was quickly ready. He had closed it and was walking to the door when his mother came in.

"Jack," she said, "you'll send me a postal card every day or two?"

"Of course I will," said he bravely.

"And I know you'll be back in a few weeks, at most," she went on; "but I feel as sad as if you were really going away from home. Why, you're almost a child! You can't really be going away!"

That was where the talk stopped for a while, except some last words that Jack could never forget. Then she dried her eyes, and he dried his, and they went down-stairs together. It was hard to say good-by to all the family, and he was glad his father was not there. He got away from them as soon as he could, and went over to the stables after his team. It was a bay team, with a fine harness, and the open carriage was almost new.

"Stylish!" said Jack. "I'll take Molly on the front seat with me,—no, the trunk,—and Miss Glidden's trunk,—well, I'll get 'em all in somehow!"

When he drove up in front of the house his father was there to put the baggage in and to help Mary into the carriage and to shake hands with Jack.

The blacksmith's grimy face looked less gloomy for a moment.

"Jack," he said, "good-by. May be you'll really get to the city after all."

"I think I shall," said Jack, with an effort to speak calmly.

"Well," said