Long had Alice been promised that she should see some night fishing. What it should be, filled Rose with mysterious imaginations. Hardy and tough Barton, who that afternoon had vacation in honor of Miss Rose, being three years her senior, felt the importance of his superior age, and taught and dictated in the most edifying manner.
The spears were sharpened, and Pete and Barton made torches, tying a rude tin cup to a short stick and filling it with turpentine and oil. A loose wick was provided, which was capable of giving a broad glare of light.
At length the suppеr was over; the two-horse wagon camе round; the girls were charged with extra shawls for use when returning. The light along the West was yet a day light, but was rapidly fading. Great clouds lay banked up far away in the south-west, and flashes of light shooting through them told of distant tunder-storms. But all the sky hitherward was clear and serene, and within an hour the moon would be up.
A drive of a mile brought the party to Broad Brook. It was one of those rocky and gravelly streams found in mountain regions, which emigrants settled upon the flat alluvial lands of the West long for, when in fevers they lie half asleep and half awake, and dream that they are back again at home, and see the water clear as crystal rushing over the pebbles, or widening into sheets, and, longing for its coolness, awake, and in their weakness shed tears for very home-sickness!
Broad Brook was of mountain origin. Into it came Glover's Brook from the ravine, famous for its wildness and its trout, and Twist’s River, and ever so many more mountain-fed little streams: so that by the time it had come down to Morse's Bridge it had become a stream of some dignity and power. Had its waters been compressed into narrow bounds, it would have been formidable for any one who should seek to ford it. But it preferred to spread itself, and to brawl over a wide bottom, and to wind along the edges of the hills, with meadows on one side and rocks on the other, now and then circuiting off far into the grass-lands, running deep, with many a pool. Above the bridge, for the most part, it hugged the hills, and was broad and shallow, better fitted for wading.
The party was soon upon its banks. The western light had grown dim. A steep bank on the far side of the river, clothed with trees, and especially held by the solemn black hemlock, served to shut out the little remaining twilight. The roar of the brook, its wild and threatening look, at first daunted Rose and Alice, and brought them close to each other, to Barton's great edification. That was because they were girls! He would show them! and without more ado he jumped into the water, not quite knee deep, and walked across and back, and let the water bubble up around his legs. The torches were soon lit, and Pete and Barton took each a spear, and, girdling a bag about them to hold the fish, began to move up the stream. From the banks, under ’Biah Cathcart's care, the girls watched the strange and wild scene. The smoky torches threw a red glare on the water, whose wrinkled face gave back the light in broken flashes. The bank obscurely loomed out from the other side, jutting forward, seemingly, as the light hazily revealed its rocks, and drawing back again when a clump of hemlocks or mountain laurels opened dark recesses through the foliage. Moving slowly against the rushing stream, passing the light along its surface, and surveying its bottom, Pete and Barton for a time seemed to find nothing. But as they neared a point where the water, swinging around, deepened a little, Barton plunged down his spear, and, with some commotion and tussle, held it there. His torch had almost fallen. But regaining his foothold, he soon lifted a large sucker above the water, the first prize of the evening. Scarcely was his trophy secured before Pete, who had been bending and searching the bottom, was seen aiming his spear, and with sudden stroke, retracted as soon, lifted a fish large enough to make the ashen spear-handle bend.
Growing bolder as they advanced, Rose and Alice imagined themselves in a fairy story. Pete and Barton, now in gloom and now shining out in the red light of the torches, seemed like gnomes. The trees, as the torches were carried under them, were lit up with an atmosphere such as no unenchanted trees ever knew. The water seemed to be some living thing, and scowled or laughed, winked and blinked, as if it knew something wild and dreadful. Now the stream left the hill, and moved between two rows of stiff alders, and the fishers were lost to the sight, only a faint red smoke flickering above the bushes, revealing their progress. Then winding back again, the stream brawled against the rocks, and ran for a long way under the projecting branches of hard-wood trees.
And now the girls, growing somewhat bolder and more familiar, wanted to go into the brook. Of course they could not. But couldn't somebody let them ride? How could 'Biah Cathcart carry two girls, seven years old, when the river bottom was so uneven? What if his foot should slip, or he should step down into a hole—where would the girls be?
But couldn't Pete take one, and the father take the other? Rose could ask for nothing which Pete would not do. He would have laid down in the river, or in a mud-hole, or climbed the steepest rock, or jumped the most dangerous chasm, if Rose told him to. And when, as they rounded a clump of bushes, Pete came near the bank, Rose said to him, “Pete mayn't I get on your shoulder?” the controversy was ended, and in a twinkling he was at the bank, and Rose was mounted; and Alice, not a minute after, was on her father's shoulder close behind, and all were in the foaming stream. And now I defy you, O painters, to render me in true form and color that scene—the wrinkle-faced river, ruddy and changeful—the overhanging boughs, up into whose obscure depths shoots a smoky, tremulous light—and the strange forms of men moving slowly along the water, bearing two maidens as sweet as ever dazzled the eyes of deluded mortals! Was it strange that Rose seemed to herself translated from the real world into one of dreams? The dizzy gravel at the bottom appeared to her to be running and racing; the water seemed like so many serpents red and black, wreathing together and winding in and out of coils that were endless in length and strange in their convolutions. Never had she seen such leaves as those there above her head, weird with light shot up upon them from beneath, and over all, the solemn black of the night sky!
They had well nigh reached the upper road when the moon rose, and poured its light full upon the bridge that now appeared not far ahead, and upon a party that sat in an open carriage gazing down upon this strange procession.
“Mercy—look down into that river! What is it, Hiram?”
“Wal, as near as I can see, it's a nigger sprouting and blossoming into a white folk. If ’Biah Cathcart warn’t a sober man, I should say that hindermost one was he, and his darter on his back. And if that one ahead ain't Pete and the Doctor’s Rose, I'll never kiss my wife agin. Scissors and pumpkins! if that ain't a spree! and here it is after nine o'clock at night! Hullo there! where’s Aunt Rachel? and where's the rest of the family? Ain't there any more comin'? You might jest as well have finished out the frolic and brought along every thing you've got, as to have them children out this time o' night!”
But Hiram's banter had no effect upon the party. All of them were keyed up too high with the sport. Pete gurgled and giggled; 'Biah said nothing, but smiled contentedly; and Barton alone had voice to shout, till the woods rung.
“You'd better take them children home, unless you want a bigger river on the top of 'em than you've got under 'em!” said Hiram, as he touched his ponies and started away.
Sure enough! The sky was gathering clouds. Low and distant thunder was heard. They must hasten back. Blinded and bewildered by the unnatural light and the swirling water, 'Biah and Barton would have followed down the bank but for Pete, whose head seemed as unaffected by the scene as a compass is by the commotion of waters. The winding of the river had given them a course of two miles, but scarcely half a mile need be traversed in a straight line, to bring them to the wagon. Following Pete, they soon were safely seated, and the horses, impatient and restive, as if by instinct aware that a storm impended, no sooner had their heads turned homeward, than they dashed off with full course. The sparks flew from under their feet. They grew more eager with each turn of the road, and 'Biah soothed and restrained them with both voice and rein. It seemed to the girls that the whole ride was like an arrow's rush. Bushes darkly loomed and disappeared, a faint glimmer of a house was extinguished in a second by their rapid passing. The wind was swaying the trees and rolling up the damp dust of the road, and the thunder shook the very ground as it fell nearer and nearer. They were not afraid. They secretly gladdened with the growing turmoil.
Aunt Rachel had been uneasy ever since the children left. Rex had been kept in the house lest his freaks should disturb the fishing. At every sound he lifted his muzzle. Often he went to the door, and smelt and whined. But now the storm was coming on. Aunt Rachel's fears grew painful. Every thunder-roll increased her alarm. The big drops were beginning to smite the panes of glass, when Rex bounced up with excitement, and gave a roaring bark which could mean nothing but their arrival. In good time! for, just as the party tumbled out, and the girls were borne in, the torrent descended; and when the light from the open door struck out into the air, sheets of water seemed literally to fulfil Hiram's hyperbole, that rivers of water would fill the heavens.
“Oh, father,” said Rachel Cathcart, “it is wild of you to have these children out on such a night! Come in, my darlings.”
But Rose and Alice were evidently too much excited and happy to need pity.
“Why, Rachel, do you suppose people catch cold when they are excited like these children?”
“But what would Doctor Wentworth say?”
“Say? Why he would say that such an experience was better than a dozen volumes of books—that it would give life to the imagination, that it would give the children impressions which would enlarge their whole after life—that's what he would say! and if he had been along himself, he would have enjoyed it better than any of us. Don't you think so, Rose?”
Rose sagely assented.
“Why, father, you seem as much excited as the children![”]
“Why not? I hope never to get over being young. I look back on this night as if I had been walking in a cave full of crystals. I shall never forget it, and I'll warrant the children never will. Such things clean off the drudgery and sameness of life, and reach toward a deeper meaning. At any rate, that's what the doctor'll say, to-morrow. You see if he don't.”
