A BAD DAY'S WORK | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 10, 1881

A BAD DAY'S WORK.

"Court sits to-morrow," said farmer Campbell, one pleasant evening in early spring, to his son Thomas, a bright, sturdy lad of fourteen. "I am on that jury, you know, and shall have to be away from home for a week at least. Henry Greaves is coming here to work while I am gone, and if he does well, I shall hire him for the season. I shall leave everything in your care, however, and I know I can trust you to have the pasture fences put thoroughly in order, and to turn out the cattle, sheep and colts, as soon as there is sufficient feed for them. You understand all about the chores as well as I do myself; and I shall go away feeling thankful that I have a son who is trusty and capable of seeing to my affairs in my absence."

"The charge of this large farm, and the little jobs to be done upon it at this time of the year, seems a good deal to put upon a lad like you," said Henry Greaves to Thomas Campbell, the next morning after Mr. Campbell's departure for the shire town. The two boys were walking up through the pleasant chestnut woods toward the mountain pastures, to look after the fences there; Henry, a bold, dashing, bushy-haired youth, carrying an axe and a gun, and Thomas stepping alongside with an axe and a pail.

"I suppose you are used to hard work," went on Henry; "I overheard your grandfather tell your father, night before last, not to forget that you was a boy."

"Oh, I have never had to work hard," said Thomas, laughing, and not knowing whether to be vexed or amused. "As farming is to be my business, father thinks I ought to know how and when to do things. He says there is just as much need of intelligent farmers as there is of intelligent lawyers and docters; so he takes pains to have me understand all the 'whys and wherefores,' as he says. He leaves me in charge, to be sure, when he goes away, but I am not obliged to work hard enough to hurt me."

"Well, perhaps your grandfather thought the responsibility was too much for you; anyway he said, 'Remember what I tell you, my son, a boy is a boy,' and your father laughed, and said he, 'I'll risk Thomas.' It struck me as being a little hard-hearted. I shouldn't like it much if I were you to have him sitting in his cushioned arm chair up there at the court-house, and eating his nice hotel dinners, while you are here with this great farm on your hands to look after."

"I like the farm and all its machinery," replied Thomas lightly; "and father would much rather be at home than to be where he is; but every citizen has duties, you know; I wonder what he would say to us taking a gun along when we are going to our work?"

"Ha! ha!" laughed Henry. "I reckon he wouldn't like it much, and I didn't know but your mother would object to it; so I put the gun out of the window upon the roof of the shed, and climbed up there and got it. It's lucky for me that my window opens upon that flat roof. I can go in and out there any time—when I want to be on the sly. I thought it was best to have a gun along with us; we might have a chance to kill an Indian, or a bear on the mountain. The woods here, and the mountain up yonder, remind me of a book I am reading--about two such boys as you and I," said Henry, quickly turning the conversation away from the gun.

"Is that so? What did they do? Tell me all about it as we walk along," said Thomas eagerly, with the average boy's love of a story.

"Oh, they got so tired of working and grubbing on an old farm, that they run away from home and had great fun living by themselves in a sort of cave up on the side of the mountain," replied Henry, casting occasional glances at his companion to see how he was affected by the narrative. "They used to roam about the country, with their guns and fishing rods; and when the girls in the farm houses caught glimpses of them in their scarlet shirts, with fox's tails and bright bird's wings in their hats, they always fell in love with them. The boys milked the cows in the pastures at the foot of the mountain, and when the dairy maids could get no milk, they were frightened and said there were witches about. On moonlight nights these fellows had the greatest fun riding far and near over the country on unbroken colts, which they took from the mountain pastures. They often got up splendid dinners of game and fish—hallo! there's a partridge! hold my axe!" and quickly drawing the gun to his shoulder and firing, the pretty bird fell dead.

"We might have roast bird for dinner if we only had some salt," went on Henry, as he picked up his game.

"Oh, there's salt in the dinner-pail, that mother put in for us to eat on our boiled eggs, but we shall have no time to cook a game dinner and mend our fences at the same time," replied Thomas, half regretfully.

"Oh, well, what of that? let the old fence go to-day; there's plenty more days coming. You have never had any fun in all your life, poor fellow! I intend to teach you how to enjoy life. How jolly it would be if there were only some place that seemed like a cave where we could go."

"There is," said Thomas. "I was thinking about it when you were telling about the boys in the book. We call it the Old Mine. It's a place where a company once commenced working for iron ore, but there was not enough of it to pay the expenses."

"Splendid!" exclaimed Henry. "Let's go and see it, and perhaps we can fix it up and come up here and camp out sometimes; at least we can have fun about it, and when we come up to salt the cattle we can go in and eat our dinners and pretend that we are the 'Boy Outlaws of Moose Mountain.' I have got that book in my hip pocket, and two or three other ones besides, and we can read after our fire is made, while our bird is cooking."

"All right," said Thomas, with a look on his face as if it were not all right, at all, but as if he lacked the will to say so to his bolder and more daring companion. "It is up here, just up here a little way. This is the path, along by the brook;" and sure enough, he soon ushered his companion into quite a pretty, romantic little room, behind a big rock on the mountain side.

Henry fairly shook with delight when he saw it. "It is better than anything I ever thought of finding," he said. "We will make us a bed of hemlock boughs over in that corner, and 'hook' some blankets down at the house, along with a good many other things—dishes, you know, and things that we shall need. We might manage to lose our dinner-pail to-day," he added with a laugh; "It would be just the thing to milk in, and Esquire Taylor's cows are near by. Now let us fly around and kindle a fire," and he began to hew large chips from a fallen log, while Thomas scraped together dry pine cones and needles, and carried them into a niche in the rock which Henry declared, with much enthusiasm, must have been intended for a fire-place; he knelt down beside it now, and taking a card of matches from his vest pocket, he lighted one after another, until the last one was gone without succeeding in making a blaze among the accumulated kindlings.

Very angry at his non-success, he began to curse and to swear in a way that very much surprised and really frightened his companion.

"There are some sparks here, among the leaves," said Thomas, kneeling down in the place which Henry had left; "let me take your powder flask."

Henry tossed it to him, and ran out to look for some bits of birch bark. Just then there came a flash, then an explosion, and poor Thomas was rolling down the cliff, at the foot of which Henry picked him up for dead and carried him a little distance, to a rushing mountain brook.

An hour later, as Mrs. Campbell was singing her baby to sleep, the kitchen door opened, soft footsteps rapidly crossed the floor, and a low, suppressed voice behind her easy chair said:—

"Don't cry, mamma, I don't think I shall die."

Turning hastily, a sight confronted her vision which sent all the blood from her face to her heart; but the need for immediate action prevented her from yielding to the sensation of faintness that came over her.

Her idolized son stood shrinking before her, with a mere fragment of his pantaloons clinging to him, the only vestige of clothing on his poor burnt person. There were shreds of skin hanging from his blackened face, arms, and hands; the blood was running from his legs and feet, and he was writhing with pain.

Mrs. Campbell didn't stop to ask questions. She laid the baby on the bed, and took a freshly ironed sheet from the clothes frame, shook it out and laid it in the large, broad, old-fashioned cradle, which the hired girl had just made ready for the sleeping infant. Then the quick-minded, swift-handed mother poured a vessel of pumpkin, which she had prepared for pies, into the cradle, and tenderly laid her son down in the cool mass. She then completely covered him with molasses and lard, and white wheat flour from the baking table, which stood just at hand, and wrapped him carefully with the linen sheet, thus effectually shutting out the air from the wounded parts.

There was quite a gathering in the big farmhouse sitting-room that evening when Mr. Campbell, for whom a messenger was sent, arrived home.

"I advised you not to hire that Greaves fellow," said grandfather Campbell to his son. "I told you that he was poison clear through—round all the time with his pocket full of novels and boys' trashy periodicals; and I told you a boy was a boy, but you wouldn't listen to me."

"I think it was best for it all to happen just as it did," came in a plaintive voice from the mass of pumpkin, molasses, flour and linen in the cradle. "I don't know what I might have been led to if it hadn't."

"That is it," said grandmother. "Well may we pray, 'lead us not into temptation;' and let us all pray, too, for strength to withstand temptation when it comes to us in any form."

Thomas recovered after a long time, but he will always carry on his hands and face the scars and powder stains received that day in the cave on the mountain side. But he has over and over thanked God that his evil associations were so early and summarily cut off, else there would have been left ineffaceable scars and stains upon his heart.—Presbyterian Witness.