Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 8.djvu/201

 One Slimmer. A Reminiscence.

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��lying at one side, and listened to the worms sawing away, under the bark.

Soon Mr. Wetherell came back with the steers, and dropped the salt down in spots. We watched them lick it up.

I asked Mr. Wetherell why those logs were left there.

" O, Bascom is a poor, shiftless kind of a critter. I s'pose the snow went off before he got ready to haul them to the mill ; but if he had peeled them in June or July, they would have been all right ; but now they will be about sp'iled by the worms."

Mr. Wetherell got Darby turned around after much backing and getting up, for the lane was narrow, and we started homeward.

As we rode slowly along, Mr. Wetherell asked me : " Have you ever been to the beach?"

I told him, " Yes, and I enjoyed it."

He said : " I always liked to go, but Mis' Wetherell has a dread of the water, ever since her brother Judson was drowned."

" Was he a sailor? " I asked.

"Yes, he was a sea-capt'n. He married a Philadelphy woman, and they sailed in the brig Florilla. She was -wrecked on the coast of Ireland. She run on a rock, and broke her in two amidships. Her cargo was cotton,

��the bales floated in ashore, and formed a bridge for a second or so. The first mate and one of the sailors ran in on this bridge, but the next wave took them out and scattered them, and there was no way to save the rest. Judson and his wife, and all the crew, except the mate and one sailor, were all drowned. The mate stayed there for some time, and buried the bodies which washed ashore. He found Judson's body first, and had most given up finding his wife's, when one day she washed into a little cove, and he buried them side by side. He came here to our bouse, and told us all about it. It was awful. It completely upsot Mis' Wetherell. Her health has been poor for a good many year. She has bad neuralgy spells."

" Come, Darby, get up ! you are slower than a growth of white oaks."

After several vigorous jerks. Darby started off at a long, swinging gait, and ■we soon reached home.

Only once more did I watch the sun go down behind the western hills, light- ing them up with a flood of crimson light ; while a tender, subdued gleam rested for a moment on the eastern summits, like the gentle kiss a mother gives her babe, when she slips him off her arm to have his nap.

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