The Deserter, and Other Stories: A Book of Two Wars. Frederic Harold

his researches he was glad to run upon some salt, because it would help toward making the mess on the stove palatable. But it would not be easy to tell with what emotions he discovered that there was absolutely not another eatable thing in the house.

      The room had grown decently warm again, under the influence of the roaring fire, and now it began to be filled with what Mose believed to be a most delicious odor.

      The conviction, though to any one else it might well have seemed unwarranted, was pardonable in Mose perhaps, for he himself had tasted his last warm meal nearly sixty hours before.

      He munched the turnip peelings almost contentedly as he recalled this fact. Perhaps there would be some of the stew left, after the old man had eaten his fill. If not, there were parts of the fowl which could still be utilized.

      An absurd sort of fantasy—a kind of foolish day-dream—began all at once to rise before him. He seemed to see himself eating the whole of that glorious stew, lingering with all his soul over the luxury of each piping-hot mouthful, and giving his father none at all.

      This visionary thing grew so upon him, so gripped and enthralled his mind, that it made him dizzy and faint to put it away from him. When, a few minutes later, the smell of burning warned him that the cooking was done, and he lifted the pan from the stove, this brutal temptation rushed savagely at him again. He set the pan on the table, and walked away, not daring to lift the cover.

      There were two or three old plates on the shelf, and a tea-cup. Mose got them all down, and arrayed them on the table, with such cutlery and spoons as he could find. He made a motion then to take off the improvised lid from the frying-pan, but once more drew back. It was as if he could not trust himself.

      He knelt by the bedside again, now, and putting his arm under his father's neck sought to raise him to a more upright posture. Old Asa opened his eyes as before, and made an effort to whisper something, but he lay an almost inert weight in his son's arms.

      Mose swung the tick round, propped the end of it up against the wall and raised his father into a half-sitting posture.

      In this position the old man's face took on a sudden expression of interest and reviving intelligence. He had begun to smell the savor of the food.

      Looking upon that pallid, vacant, starved face, and wasted, helpless form, Mose, starving himself, felt strong enough to defy the most appetizing stew in the world. He took off the cover with decision, and dipped the tea-cup up half full of the smoking contents. It was too hot, evidently, to be given to the old man at once, and it was also very thick.

      Mose took it out to the dismantled woodshed, and spooned in snow until it seemed of the right temperature and consistency. He dipped a little finger into it to further satisfy himself, but he would not even lick that finger afterward. It was too dangerous to think about.

      Mose fed his father as a mother might a baby—watching solicitously to see that he did not eat too fast or choke himself. After the first cupful, he brought a chair to sit in, and held the tick against his knee while old Asa, leaning more lightly upon it, helped himself.

      There was a little left at last for Mose, and he swallowed it gravely, with a portentous rush of sensations within, but keeping up as best he could an indifferent exterior. It left him still hungry, but he had much more important things to dwell upon than that.

      The meal worked wonders upon the old man. The combined influences of food and warmth seemed for a few minutes to send him off to sleep again.

      Mose sat looking down upon him in silence, and noting that something like color was stealing back into his face.

      All at once, however, Asa Whipple sat upright, lifted his hands to brush back the hair from his forehead, and, turning his face up to look at his son, smiled. There was no lack of comprehension in his gaze. He had regained his tongue as well. He patted Mose's knee as he spoke.

      "Mose," he said, in a voice strangely altered and aged, but clear enough, "I'm kind o' 'shamed to tell it, but I'd laid down here just to go to sleep for good. I thought for quite a spell there, after you come in, that I was dreaming—sort o' out o' my head, you know."

      "How did you come to let yourself down like this, dad?" was the only reply Mose had at hand.

      "Rheumatiz," Asa explained. "It laid me up—I couldn't git around, an' nobody come near me. I ain't seen a soul since the big snowfall—up'ards of a fortnight. But—but it's all right now, ain't it, Mose? An' to think o' your comin' home here like this, right in the nick o' time. How did you come to git off, Mose?"

      For answer there fell the crunching sound of footsteps on the crusted snow outside, then of a loud, peremptory knock on the door.

CHAPTER IV.

       THE "MEANEST WORD."

       Table of Contents

      Mose Whipple had lifted his head in apprehensive inquiry at the sound of the footsteps outside the door of the cabin. He sprang to his feet when the sharp knock on the door followed. Holding a hand downward with outspread fingers as a warning to silence, he tiptoed out to the middle of the room, then paused and listened.

      The knock came again, bolder and more peremptory still.

      Vague notions of resistance were shaping themselves in Mose's mind. He glanced up at the shot-gun hanging on the chimney behind the stovepipe, and in another instant had it down, with his thumb on the hammer.

      "Loaded?" he asked in a whisper, testing the percussion-cap with his nail.

      The old man nodded. Then he, too, laboriously rose to his feet. Bent as his form was, he stood a taller man than his son. He rested one hand on the table for support, and stretched out the other with a masterful gesture.