WHILE THE EVIL DAYS COME NOT

September was horribly near. And worse,—there was coming that 5th day of September when a certain bell should ring again, and we trudge up Elm Street, fidgeting uneasily about in our new "fall" clothes.

The spectre of that man, that arithmetic-man, whose name during the days of vacation it were almost profanation to speak, arose before us with a hateful leer.

The nights and mornings had grown cooler, and where daisies and buttercups had blossomed at the roadside, the golden-rod and frost-flowers had it all their own way.

But one last adventure we must have, one last protest in the name of liberty. And so we organized, on the third day of September, an extensive expedition for the morrow, and I went to spend the night with Ed Mason, to be ready to make an early start.

I fell asleep, wondering if we might not discover some unknown countries during the next day. When I woke, a small, dim figure stood beside me, repeating the words, "It's half-past four."

It took me a number of seconds to comprehend their meaning, and to recognize their speaker. Then I knew, of course,—this was the hour of rising for the great expedition into the backwoods, and here was Ed Mason telling me of that fact.

By day, Mason stalked the earth, compelling and terrible, in all the majesty of nine years. The ground trembled beneath his feet, and none looked upon him without reverence. With his own strong right arm he had slain the musk-rat in its lair, and he had explored the fastnesses of "Second Woods,"—which, as everybody knew, were at least three-quarters of a mile beyond "First Woods."

But now, in the chilly twilight before dawn, and clad in a single white garment, which hung from his shoulders angelwise, there lacked something of the awe which usually invested the Terror of the Neighborhood.

Moreover, the nearly complete darkness which surrounded us, and eight solid hours of sleep from which I had just emerged, tended to make me slow of understanding. Only the afternoon before, and the world which had stretched beyond the borders of the town lay at our feet, awaiting our conquering footsteps. Now, the world seemed not only cold and dark, but immeasurably vast, and we no longer a pair of relentless Columbuses. Rather small, in fact, we seemed, and not wholly equipped to tame the jungle, and bring the desert to acknowledge its masters.

However, I said nothing of this to Ed Mason, but arose and dressed. He was making ready in another room, and in a few minutes we tiptoed down the stairs. At five o'clock we were to meet other bold travellers at a rendezvous near the frog pond, and there was no time to be lost.

Luncheons, a day's supply of food, had been prepared and put in boxes the evening before.

With these under our arms, we hurried out into the faint light and through the side yard, our spirits and our clothes a trifle dampened on the way, by means of a glass of water thoughtfully poured upon us from a window by Ed's sister Florence. This attention was by way of reciprocating our act of the previous week, when we had locked her for a while in the hen-house,—a bit of humor which we had long ago forgotten, but which, it appeared, she still held in lively recollection.

As we approached the pond, three other personages came into sight. These were Rob Currier, Jimmy Toppan, and Joe Carter. Charley Carter had been one of the organizers of the expedition, but a too intimate association with Mr. Hawkins's Bartlett pear tree and the fruit thereof, late on the previous afternoon, had rendered his absence unavoidable.

From his elder brother we gathered that Charles had passed the darkling hours in a manner not altogether agreeable, and that his parents, and even Dr. Macey, had been in consultation over the matter. Indeed, it was a narrow escape for Joe that he was not made to suffer vicarious punishment, and be kept at home on this day of days, but luckily he had been able to prove an alibi.

Peter Bailey would not accompany us.

This was not on account of illness, but, as we had all been made aware, because he disapproved of our methods. It was absurd, he had pointed out, to go on such an excursion without a compass. The military instinct which already made Peter regard himself as a future ornament to the United States Army, and which is doubtless of supreme value to him to-day in a stock-broker's office,—this instinct demanded a compass in order to find our path through the wilds.

None of us had a compass, and Peter's was broken, and could not be replaced until his birthday,—six months hence. We must either postpone our trip for six months or go without Peter. He would not trust himself so far from civilization unless at any moment he might satisfy his passion for knowing where lay the north.

Some little delicacy made us refrain from suggesting that at the farthest point which we should probably reach, the spires of most of the churches in town would undoubtedly be visible, and that we might take our bearings from these.

Jimmy Toppan, then, as now, a navigator of deep seas, was one on whom the compass argument had made a profound impression. He described an ingenious but complicated recipe (which had once proved the salvation of certain mariners) whereby the hands of a watch,—if directed toward the sun, or away from the sun, I forget which, at noon, might serve in place of the magnetic needle.

But, as Rob Currier observed, we might be hopelessly lost long before noon, and Ed Mason supplemented this gloomy prophecy by recalling the fact that Peter Bailey's Waterbury watch (the only time-piece amongst us) was never going, through Peter's constant neglect to spend the fifteen minutes necessary to wind it up.

The plan for the day had nearly fallen through, but we finally decided to take our lives in our hands, and go without a compass. Peter, after treating us to a few sarcasms on our unscientific venture, refused absolutely to have anything to do with the trip. So there were but five of us who set out at last.

On one thing we were determined. This was an all-day expedition. The necessary amount of exploration, of hunting and fishing, could not be accomplished in a few hours. We carried food for three full meals, and our families had been warned that they must get along without us until night began to gather in.

Ed Mason had a light air-rifle, and Joe Carter, by virtue of his seniority and experience (he was thirteen that week) carried a small but pernicious revolver. The rest of us had fishing-poles and lines, and I was further equipped with a burning-glass,—without which no one should venture into the wilderness, where matches may fail, and camp-fires have to be kindled.

We had not gone far when the suitability of breakfast occurred to us. We paused by the road,—not far from the brickyard (where Ed Mason had once beaten off an attack by tramps) and ate one third of our provision.

Rob Currier's box proved to contain, among other things, a couple of hard-boiled eggs, and to find a third part of two eggs was not only puzzling, but unpleasantly reminiscent of Mr. Colburn's Arithmetic,—a book which we did not care to have accompany us, even in spirit.

Rob solved the problem by eating both eggs then and there.

A short walk brought us to a spot on Little River where the fishing was good, and here Jimmy Toppan and I promptly unlimbered our rods. Ed Mason wandered across the meadow to look for a legendary owl, which he claimed once to have seen in a tree near the centre of the meadow.

An owl-haunted tree it certainly looked, but at that hour of the day there was little surprise that Ed saw nothing of him. The hunter soon returned to the river bank, where Jimmy and I were pulling in hornpouts at a great rate.

The others, scornful of hornpouts, had departed to a small pool, farther up the river, where nobler game was reported. Before the end of an hour they returned, bringing two very small and skinny pickerel. Now your pickerel, be he ever so meagre, is of course a nobler fish than your hornpout, and there is more glory in his capture. So Joe Carter and Rob were fain to look with loathing upon the dozen fat hornpouts which lay on the grass, and to consider that Jimmy and I had spent our time in but a trifling fashion.

Not content with vaunting the superiority of their two dusty pickerel, they reduced us to deeper humiliation by recounting their adventures. Joe Carter had lost bait, hook, and float from his fishing tackle, through the agency of the enormous turtle who had lived for many a year under the bridge at the head of the pool, and Rob Currier had fallen into the water and come out wet to the knees. So it was evident that there was nothing for Jimmy and me but to hide our diminished heads.

We said little, but suggested that as the morning was apparently far advanced, it would be well to have a swim and our midday meal. By the railroad track,—a short cut, we reached the swimming place, Four Rocks. It was probably the poorest swimming pool ever prescribed by an iron tradition. Passing trains made it necessary modestly to seek deeper water, and grazing cows threatened to devour our clothes; but here, and at no other place, did every boy learn to swim.

Tradition is a tyrant; during the believing years it is the worst of despots.

In a few minutes we were all in the water,—all except Rob Currier, who, under threat of dire punishment, had been eternally charged by his mother to keep out of the water until he was a complete master of the art of swimming.

As he had not yet learned on land, he sat on the bank, threw pebbles at the cows, and from time to time remarked monotonously: "Oh, come on!"

The process of dressing was slow,—the use of towels, or any serious attempt to dry oneself, being tabooed as a sign of the most degrading effeminacy. When we were ready to depart, the position of the sun, and a hollow sensation in our interiors, showed beyond question that we must once more draw upon our commissariat.

Guided by three gaunt poplars, we advanced to the Devil's Den,—an ancient limestone quarry, which had some of the appearance, and many of the advantages, of a natural cave. Curious mineral substances were found there,—asbestos might be dug from the rock with a jack-knife, and green veins of serpentine decorated the side of the cliff.

It was a recognized spot for picnics, and we should have scarcely thought of eating our principal meal anywhere else. In the deepest part of the cleft was an unwholesome-looking puddle into which dripped the moisture from the roof of the cave. It was rather gloomy, and made visitors lower their voices a little, until they were in the sunlight once more.

We built a fire,—for what purpose it would be difficult to say, as sandwiches, cake, and fruit do not need a great deal of cooking, and the fish which we had captured had been left with old Mr. Harris, the railroad-crossing tender, to be claimed on our return trip.

It was pleasant, although a trifle hot and smoky on a warm day, to sit around a fire and refresh our wearied frames with food. Joe Carter had a clay pipe, and after he had eaten, tried the experiment of smoking dried leaves in it. He coughed a good deal, and did not seem to derive that joy from the process which we had all heard arose from the use of a pipe.

After a little time we set out once more, climbed to the top of Devil's Pulpit, and then took the road toward the Devil's Basin. In that region, the Devil seems to have had a large interest in the scenery. The road is of the pleasantest, however. Here, before the snow has hardly left the woods, the spring "peepers" sing insistently from a little bog, while, a few weeks later, the gentle blossoms of the hepatica emerge shyly from the dead leaves, and the anemone springs up on the hillside.

Now, although the tide of summer ebbed, the woods were crammed with things of interest. We investigated the Basin,—another deserted quarry. We explored the edges of the bog, and stalked a flock of crows who had gathered in the top of an oak. The afternoon passed at first pleasantly, but finally with some tedium,—the day seemed interminably long. Yet we grudged every moment, for we realized that the hours of vacation were numbered.

We rambled about till we became aware that we were very tired, that the day was waning, and that three or four long miles lay between us and home.

So we hurried through our suppers, and started on the return trip. Joe Carter walked a little in advance, calling out from time to time:—

"You fellers better hurry up, unless you want to camp all night in the woods."

Then he would casually take out his revolver and look mysteriously toward the deep undergrowth on each side of the road, as if to signify that he could not hold himself responsible for what manner of thing might beset us after the powers of darkness should be exalted.

We did not want to camp all night in the woods (Ed Mason and I had not forgotten a certain experience!) and we hastened our steps.

When we reached Mr. Harris's little shanty, it was closed and locked, and the old gentleman had gone,—whither we knew not. Our fish he had kindly preserved for us in a pail of water. We gathered them up, and hurried on.

We debated what was the exact hour, and both Ed Mason and Rob Currier thought that sunset was close upon us. Ed remarked that he had seen one or two bats fluttering about, as we came through the woods. Evidently the creatures of the night were beginning to make their appearance.

Tired we were,—we knew that,—and a little moody at the thought of approaching school. I had a small, sharp pebble in my shoe, which made walking very painful. So I had to delay the party until I could rid myself of it.

Finally we left the railroad track, and started on the home stretch over the old turnpike. We felt more at ease now, since houses were in plain sight, and the town distant only a matter of thirty minutes' walking.

Here we met a man driving a sorrel horse in a wagon.

Joe Carter hailed him.

"Say, mister, do you know what time it is?" asked Joe.

The man pulled up the horse, and took a watch out of his pocket. He looked at the dial, and then held the watch to his ear.

"Well," he remarked leisurely, "guess my watch has stopped again. But I can tell yer pretty close. It was quarter to nine when I came by Moulton's, an' that wa'n't more'n fifteen minutes ago. It's 'bout nine o'clock now,—I guess you young fellers better be gettin' home pretty quick, or you won't get no breakfast!"

"What?"

We all shouted at once.

The man looked at us bewildered.

"What are you talkin' about?" Joe Carter asked him; "quarter of nine—in the evening?"

"Evening?" said the man; "you crazy? No,—quarter to nine in the mornin', of course. What do you—oh! I see! Been spendin' the night in the woods, an' got lost, ain't yer?"

"No," Joe replied; "we been out all day,—we started 'fore daylight this morning, an' we thought it was night."

The man still stared, but gradually he began to grasp the situation. His mouth slowly opened, a grin began to creep round to his ears, and he cackled. Cackled offensively and long.

We could not stand that, and we hurried along the road. The man stood up in his wagon, looking after us, and still uttering that idiotic cackle.

"Well, we're a lot of numb-heads," remarked Rob Currier.

Apparently we all agreed, but no one said so. We stubbed along in the dust, silent and ashamed. The fiasco had taken the life out of us. We did not want to go back to the woods and we did not want to return home. The jeers that might greet us there would be worse than the laughter of the man in the wagon.

Out for an all-day expedition on the last day before school opened, out for a grand exploration of the wild country,—and we had eaten all three of our meals and come home at nine o'clock in the morning! What were these bats and night-birds that we had seen? Where was the sunset and all the rest of it? This last day of vacation to be spoiled—

Suddenly Joe Carter stopped in the middle of the road.

His mouth opened, and then a grin spread over his face.

"By Jings!" he shouted.

We stopped and gazed at him.

Then he began to jump about excitedly on one leg.

"Don't you see?" he cried.

"What? See what?"

"Why, don't you see? What do we care for that old hayseed in the wagon? Or for any one? We've still got a whole day of vacation left!"