【英文文学】The Deserter, and Other Stories.docx

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1、【英文文学】The Deserter, and Other StoriesCHAPTER I. DISCOVERIES IN THE BARN.It was the coldest morning of the winter, thus far, and winter is no joke on those northern tablelands, where the streams still run black in token of their forest origin, and old men remember how the deer used to be driven to th

2、eir clearings for food, when the snow had piled itself breast high through the fastnesses of the Adirondacks. The wilderness had been chopped and burned backward out of sight since their pioneer days, but this change, if anything, served only to add greater bitterness to the winters cold.Certainly i

3、t seemed to Job Parshall that this was the coldest morning he had ever known. It would be bad enough when daylight came, but the darkness of this early hour made it almost too much for flesh and blood to bear. There had been a stray star or two visible overhead when he first came out-of-doors at hal

4、f-past four, but even these were missing now.The crusted snow in the barnyard did throw up a wee, faint light of its own, for all the blackness of the sky, but Job carried, besides a bucket, a lantern to help him in his impending struggle with the pump. This ancient contrivance had been ice-bound ev

5、ery morning for a fortnight past, and one neednt be the son of a prophet to foresee that this morning it would be frozen as stiff as a rock.It did not turn out to be so prolonged or so fierce a conflict as he had apprehended. He had reasoned to himself the previous day that if the pump-handle were p

6、ropped upright with a stick overnight, there would be less water remaining in the cylinder to freeze, and had made the experiment just before bedtime.It worked fairly well. There was only a good deal of ice to be knocked off the spout with a sledge-stake, and then a disheartening amount of dry pumpi

7、ng to be done before the welcome drag of suction made itself felt in the well below, like the bite of a big fish in deep water.Job filled his bucket and trudged back with it to the cow-barn, stamping his feet for warmth as he went.By comparison with the numbing air outside, this place was a dream of

8、 coziness. Two long lines of cows, a score or more on a side, faced each other in double rows of stanchions. Their mere presence had filled the enclosure with a steaming warmth.The ends of the barn and the loft above were packed close with hay, moreover, and half a dozen lantern lights were gleaming

9、 for the hired men to see by, in addition to a reflector lamp fastened against a post.The men did not mind the cold. They had been briskly at work cleaning up the stable and getting down hay and fodder, and the exercise kept their blood running and spirits light. They talked as they plied shovel and

10、 pitchfork, guessing how near the low-mercury mark of twenty below zero the temperature outside had really fallen, and chaffing one of their number who had started out to go through the winter without wearing an overcoat.Their cheery voices, resounding through the half-gloom above the soft, cracklin

11、g undertone of the kine munching their breakfast seemed to add to the warmth of the barn.The boy Job had begun setting about a task which had no element of comfort in it. He got out a large sponge, took up the bucket he had brought from the well, and started at the end of one of the rows to wash cle

12、an the full udder of each of the forty-odd cows in turn. In a few minutes the milkers would be ready to begin, and to keep ahead of them he must have a clear start of a dozen cows.When he had at last reached this point of vantage, the loud din of the streams against the sides of the milkers tin pail

13、s had commenced behind him.He rose, straightened his shoulders, and shook his red, dripping hands with a groan of pain. The icy water had well nigh frozen them.It was a common thing for all about the barn to warm cold hands by thrusting them deep down into one of the barrels of brewers grains which

14、stood in a row beyond the oat-bin. The damp, crushed malt generates within its bulk so keen a heat that even when the top is frozen there will be steam within. Job went over and plunged his cold hands to the wrist in the smoking fodder. He held them there this morning for a luxurious extra minute, w

15、ondering idly as he did so how the cows sustained that merciless infliction of ice-water without any such comforting after-resource.Suddenly he became conscious that his fingers, into which the blood was coming back with a stinging glow, had hit upon something of an unusual character in the barrel.

16、He felt of it vaguely for a moment, then drew the object forth, rubbed off the coating of malt, and took it over to the lamp.It was a finger-ring carved out of a thick gutta-percha button, but with more skill than the schoolboys of those days used to possess; and in its outer rim had been set a litt

17、le octagonal silver plate, bearing some roughly cut initials.Job seemed to remember having seen the ring before, and jumped to the conclusion that some one of the hired men had unconsciously slipped it off while warming his hands in the grains. He went back with it to the milkers, and went from one

18、to another, seeking an owner.Each lifted his head from where it rested against the cows flank, glanced at the trinket, and making a negative sign bent down again to his work. The last one up the row volunteered the added comment:You better hustle ahead with your spongin off; Im just about through he

19、re!The boy put the circlet in his pocketit was much too large for any of his fingersand resumed his task. The water was as terribly cold as ever, and the sudden change seemed to scald his skin; but somehow he gave less thought to his physical discomfort than before.It was very funny to have found a

20、ring like that. It reminded him of a story he had read somewhere, and could not now recall, save for the detail that in that case the ring contained a priceless jewel, the proceeds of which enriched the finder for life. Clearly no such result was to be looked for here. It was doubtful if anybody wou

21、ld give even twenty-five cents for this poor, home-made ornament. All the same it was a ring, and Job had a feeling that the manner of its discovery was romantic.Working for a milkman does not open up so rich a field of romance that any hints of the curious or remarkable can be suffered to pass unno

22、ticed. The boy pondered the mystery of how the ring got into the barrel. For a moment he dallied with the notion that it might belong to his employer, who owned the barn and almost all the land within sight, and a prosperous milk-route down in Octavius.But no! Elisha Teachout was not a man given to

23、rings; and even if he were, he assuredly would not have them of rubber. Besides, the grains had only been carted in from town two days before, and Mr. Teachout had been nursing his rheumatism indoors for fully a week.It was more probable that some one down in the brewery at Octavius had lost the rin

24、g. When Job had been there for grains, he had noticed that the workers were cheerful and hearty fellows. No doubt they might be trusted to behave handsomely upon getting back a valued keepsake which had been given up as forever gone.Perhapswho could tell?this humble, whittled-out piece of gutta-perc

25、ha might be prized beyond rubies on account of its family associations. Such things had happened before, according to the story-books; and forthwith the lad lost himself in a maze of brilliant day-dreams, rose-tinted by this possibility.He could almost behold himself adopted by the owner of the brew

26、erythe fat, red-faced Englishman with the big watch-chain, whom he had seen once walking majestically among his vats. Perhaps, in truth, Job was a trifle drowsy.All at once he roused himself with a start, and began to listen with all his ears. The milkers behind him were talking about the ring. They

27、 had to shout to one another to overcome the fact of separation and the noise in their pails, and Job could hear every word.I tell you who had a ring like thatMose Whipple, one of them called out. Dont you remember? He made it with his jack-knife, that time he was laid up with the horse kickin him i

28、n the knee.Seemss if I do, said another. He was always whittlin out somethin or othera peach-stone basket, or an ox-gad, or somethin.Some one was tellin me yesterday, put in a third, that old man Whippf sick abed. Nobody aint seen him around for upards of a fortnight. I guess this cold snapll about

29、see the last o him. Hes been poorly all the fall.He aint never ben the same man since Mose listed, remarked the first speaker; that is if you call it listin when a man takes his three hundred dollars to go out as a substitute.Yes, and dont even git the money at that, but jest has it applied to the i

30、nterest he owes on his mortgage. Thats payin for a dead horse, if anything is in this world!Well, Mose is the sort o chap that would be workin to pay for some kind o dead horse all his life, anyway. If it wasnt one itd be another. Never knew a fellow in all my born days with so little git-up-and-git

31、 about him. He might as well be shoulderin a musket as anything else, for all the profit hed git out of it.A chip of the old block, if there ever was one. The old man always wanted to do a little berryin, an a little fishin, an a little huntin, an keep a dozen traps or so in the woods, an hed throw

32、up the best-payin job in the deestrict to have a loafin spell when the fit took himan Mose was like him as two peas in a pod.I remember one year, Mose an me hired out in the middle o March, an we hadnt fairly begun early ploughin before he said he wasnt feelin right that spring, an give up half his

33、months wages to go home, an then what do we see next day but him an his father down by the bridge with their fishpoles, before the snow-waterd begun to git out o the creek. What kin you do with men like that?Make substitutes of em! one of the milkers exclaimed, and at this there was a general laugh.

34、Every one on the farm, and for that matter on all the other farms for miles round, knew that Elisha Teachout had been drafted the previous summer, and had sent Moses Whipple to the front in his place. This relation between the rich man and the poor man was too common a thing in those war times to ex

35、cite particular comment. But, as Mr. Teachout was not beloved by his hired men, they enjoyed a laugh whenever the subject came up.Job had gone over to the lamp, during the progress of this talk, and scrutinized the ring. Surely enough, the clumsily scratched initials on the little silver plate, obvi

36、ously cut down from an old three-cent piece, were an M and a W.This made it all the more difficult to puzzle out how the ring came in the barrel. The lad turned the problem over in his mind with increasing bewilderment.He had known Mose Whipple all his life. His own father, who died some years ago,

37、had accounted Mose among his intimate friends, and Jobs earliest recollections were of seeing the two start off together of a spring morning with shot-guns on their shoulders and powder-flasks hung round their bodies.They had both been poor men, and if they had not cared so much for huntingat least

38、if one of them had notJob reflected that probably this very morning he himself would be sleeping in a warm bed, instead of freezing his hands in the hard employ of Elisha Teachout.It was impossible not to associate Mose with these recriminatory thoughts; yet it was equally impossible to be angry wit

39、h him long. The boy, indeed, found himself dwelling upon the amiable side of Moses shiftless nature. He remembered how Mose used to come round to their poor little place, after Jobs fathers death, to see if he could help the widow and her brood in their struggle.After Mrs. Parshall had married again

40、, and gone West, leaving Job to earn his own living on the Teachout farm, Mose had always kept a kindly if intermittent eye on the boy. Only the previous Christmas he had managed, somehow, to obtain an old pair of skates as a present for Job, and when he had gone to the war in the following August,

41、only the fact that he had to sell his shot-gun to pay a pressing debt prevented his giving that to the boy for his own.The news that old Asa Whipple was ill forced its way to the top of Jobs thoughts. He resolved that that very day, if he could squeeze in the time for it, he would cut across lots on

42、 the crust to the Whipple house, and see how the lonely old man was.As the milkers said, old Asa had been poorly since his Mose went away. It was only too probable that he had been extremely poor as well.Even when Mose was at home, theirs was the most poverty-stricken household in the township. Left

43、 to his own resources, and failing swiftly all at once in health, the father had tried to earn something by knitting mittens and stockings.It had looked funny enough to see this big-framed, powerfully built old man fumbling at his needles like some grandmother in her rocking-chair by the stove.It oc

44、curred to Job now that there was something besides humor in the picture. He had been told that people were making woollen mittens and stockings now, like everything else, by machinery. Very likely old Asa couldnt sell his things after he had knit them; and that might mean starvation.Yes, that very d

45、ay, in spite of everything, he would go over and see.He had finished his task now. The milkers had nearly finished theirs. Two of the hired men were taking the cloth strainers off the tops of all the cans but one, and fastening on the covers instead. He could hear the bells on the harness of the hor

46、ses outside, waiting with the big sleigh to rush off to town with the milk. It was still very dark out-of-doors.Job put away his water-bucket, warmed his hands once more in the grains-barrel, and set about getting down a fresh supply of hay for the cows. Six weeks of winter had pretty well worn away

47、 the nearest haymow, and the boy had to go further back toward the end of the barn, into a darkness which was only dimly penetrated by the rays of the lantern.Working thus, guided rather by sense of touch than of sight, the boy suddenly felt himself stepping on something big and rounded, which had n

48、o business in a haymow. It rolled from under his feet, and threw him off his balance to his hands and knees. A muttered exclamation rose from just beside him, and then suddenly he was gripped bodily in the clutch of a strong man.Frightened and vainly struggling, Job did not cry out, but twisted his head about in the effort to see who it was that he had thus strangely encountered. There was just light enough from the distant lantern to reveal in the face so menacingly close to hisof all unlooked-for faces in the worldthat of Mose Whipple!Why, Mose! he began, in bewil