One autumn day after the leaves had faded and fallen, Nathan was busy husking corn, with less thought upon his task and the growing pile of yellow ears than of a promised partridge hunt on the morrow with his good friend Job. His father was chopping in a new clearing. Silas had been sent with the oxen to take some logs to Lemon Fair Mill. His mother grew uneasy at her spinning, for Seth did not come home to dinner, nor yet when the afternoon was half spent. After many times anxiously looking and listening in the direction of the clearing, and as often saying to herself, “What does keep father so?” she called to Nathan.

“I guess you’d better go and see what henders father so. I can’t think what it is. I hope it hain’t anything.”

“Perhaps he’s gone over to Callenders or some o’ the neighbors,” said Nathan. “I hain’t heard a tree fall for ever so long nor his axe a goin’ for a long time.”

“Mebby he’s cut his foot or something,” said Martha, beginning to cry.

“I can’t hear nothin’ of him for all the air’s so holler and everything sounds so plain,” said Ruth, listening again. “You’d better go and see what henders him. Mebby he can’t git home.”

As the boy anxiously hastened to the new clearing, the intense stillness of the woods filled him with undefined dread. His ears ached for some sound, the tapping of a woodpecker, the cry of a jay, but most of all, for the sound of axe strokes or his father’s voice. Silence pervaded the clearing also.

There, on a stump, was his father’s blue frock, one bit of color in the sombre scene. And yes, there was some slight flitting movement near the last tree that had been felled and lay untrimmed just as it had fallen, but it was only a bevy of chickadees peering curiously at something on the ground beneath them, yet voiceless as if their perennial cheerfulness was dumb in the pervading silence. So sick with dread he could scarcely move, the boy forced himself to approach the spot, and look upon that which he felt was awaiting him, his father lying dead beneath the huge, prone tree, that had crushed him in its fall.

The glowing sunset sky and the glistening waters of the lake grew black, the earth reeled. With a piteous groan of “Father! father!” the boy sank down as lifeless, for a space, as the beloved form that lay beside him in eternal sleep.

He awoke as from a terrible dream to the miserable realization that it was not a dream. Then walking, as still in a dream, not noting how he went nor by any familiar object marking his way, he bore home the woeful tidings.

Simple as were the funeral rites in the primitive communities, they were not lacking in the impressiveness of heartfelt sorrow nor in the homely expressions of sympathy for the bereaved and respect for the dead. So Seth Beeman’s neighbors reverently laid him to rest in the soil his own hand had uncovered to the sunlight. They set at his head a rough slate stone, whose rude lettering could be read half a century later, telling his name and age, and the manner of his death.

Ruth was left in a sorry plight, so suddenly bereft of the strong arm she had leaned upon, without a thought that it could ever be taken from her. Now she had only her son, a sturdy lad, indeed, but of an age to be cared for rather than to care for others. Toombs had proved better than he looked, kind enough, and a good worker, and familiar with the needs of the farm. When his time was out she had no means to pay his wages nor could she well get along without him. So he staid on, taking a mortgage, at length, on the premises in lieu of money, and becoming more and more important in Ruth’s estimation, though regarded with increasing dislike and jealousy by her son, who found himself less and less considered.

Months passed, dulling sorrow and the sense of loss, and bringing many a bitter change. The bitterness of Nathan’s life was made almost unbearable presently. His mother, of a weak and clinging nature, inevitably drifted to a fate a more self-reliant woman would have avoided. Worried with uncomprehended business, and assured by Toombs that this was the only way to retain a home for herself and children, yet unmoved by the kindly advice of Seth’s honest friends and neighbors, as well as the anger and entreaties of her son, she went with Toombs over to the Fort, where they were married by the chaplain stationed there.

With such a man in the place of his wise and affectionate father, Nathan’s life was filled with misery, nor could he ever comprehend his mother’s course. Though bestowing upon Martha and his mother indifferent notice or none at all, towards the boy the stepfather exercised his recently acquired authority with severity, giving him the hardest and most unpleasant work to do, and treating him always with distrust, often with cruelty.

“I hate him,” he told Ruth. “He’s sassed me every day since I come here, and I’ve got a bigger job ’an that to settle, one that I’d ha’ settled with his father, if he hadn’t cheated me by gettin’ killed.”

“Oh, what do you mean?” Ruth gasped. “I thought you and Seth was always good friends.”

“Friends!” he growled, contemptuously; “I hated the ground he walked on. Look here,” and Silas pulled out his leather pocketbook and took from it a soiled paper which he held before her eyes.

She read the bold, clear signature of Ethan Allen, and, with a sickening thrill, that of Seth Beeman under it.

“Yes, Ethan Allen and Seth Beeman and his neighbors whipped a man for claimin’ his own, and your boy went and gethered ’em in. Mebby you re’collect it.”

“I couldn’t help it,” she gasped. “I didn’t see it. I run and hid and stopped my ears.”

“Well, ’Rastus Graves ’ould ha’ settled his debts if he’d ha’ lived. But he died afore his back got healed over, and afore he died he turned the job over to his brother, that’s me, Silas Toombs, or Graves—they’re the same in the end.”

Ruth stared at him in dumb amazement and horror, while he proceeded, pouring forth his long concealed wrath.

“Well, I’ve got Seth Beeman’s wife, and, what’s wuth more, his farm, an’ his childern right ’nunder my thumb. I hope he knows on’t. And now, ma’am,” lowering his voice from its passionate exultation, “you don’t want to breathe a word o’ this to your nice neighbors or to your young ’uns. It wouldn’t do no good and it might be unpleasant all round. You don’t want folks to know what a fool you be.”

After this disclosure, Ruth lived, in weariness and vain regret, a life that seemed quite hopeless but for looking forward to the time when her son could assert his rights and be her champion. Her nature was one of those that still bend, without being broken, by whatever weight is laid on them.