OR THE WORLD BEWITCHED.

Andy’s folks had gone to town, and left him at home to take care of the house, watch the garden, and amuse himself.

Andy had a new bow and arrow, and he thought it would be great sport to have nothing to do all the afternoon but to shoot at the robins and woodpeckers.

So, as soon as the wagon was out of sight, and the gate shut, he ran into the orchard, and began the fun. He kept near enough to the house to see if anybody came to the door, and near enough to the garden to see if the pigs got into it; and whenever he saw a bird, he sent an arrow after it. But the robins soon found out what he wanted, and flew away when they saw him coming. Their beautiful red breasts would have been capital marks, if they had only waited for him to get a good shot. The wrens were not afraid, but they were so small he could not hit them. And the swallows kept flying about so, twittering and darting here and there, that he knew he would have to practise a long time before he could take them on the wing. The yellow-birds and blue-birds were so shy, that he could hardly see one in sight of the house. So there was no game left but the woodpeckers.

But woodpeckers are cunning fellows. They run up the trees, and stick in their bills, and hop about, and fly from one tree to another so fast, that it takes a pretty smart boy to hit one. They were tame enough, and would sometimes let Andy come quite near; they would stop pecking a moment, and hold up their red heads to take a good look at him; then they would begin to drum again in the merriest way, making little holes in the old peach-trees, which began to look like wooden soldiers that had gone through the wars and been shot in hundreds of places. But the instant Andy drew the bowstring and took aim, they knew well enough what it meant; and it was provoking to see them dodge around on the bark and get out of sight just in time to let the arrow whiz by them. Then they would go to pecking and drumming again so near, that he wished a dozen times that he had some kind of an arrow that would shoot around a tree and hit on the other side.

At length Andy grew tired of this fun; and he had lost his arrow so many times in the grass, and had to hunt for it, that he got vexed, and thought it would be much better sport to go and shoot a chicken.

Now he did not mean to kill a chicken, and he did not really think he would be able to hit one. But often we do things more easily when we are not trying very hard, than when we are too anxious. So it happened with Andy. He tried his luck on the speckled top-knot, which everybody considered the handsomest chick that had been hatched that summer. He drew his bow, let go the string, and the speckled top-knot keeled over. He ran up to it, very proud, at first, of his good shot, but frightened enough when he found that the chicken only just kicked a little, and then lay quite still.

Andy turned it over, and tried to stand it upon its legs, and thought what he should tell his parents.

“I’ll say a hawk flew down and killed it! But I shot at the hawk, and he let it drop, just as he was flying away with it.”

This was the story he made up, as he took poor top-knot and laid it down by the well-curb.

He was still wishing to shoot something that was alive, and, seeing the cat creeping along on the fence watching for a mouse, he concluded to try his luck with her. So he drew up, aimed, and fired. Puss was so intent on watching the mouse that she paid no attention at all to the arrow, which struck the rail a little behind her, and glanced off towards the house. Andy heard a sound like shivered glass, and, running up, saw to his dismay that he had broken a window.

Now he had been told never to shoot his arrow towards the house; and how to conceal the accident and avoid punishment he couldn’t at first imagine. The glass lay scattered on the pantry shelf, and the hole in the pane was large enough to put his hand through.

“I’ll say Joe Beals came and wanted my bow, and because I wouldn’t let him have it, he threw a stone at me, and broke the window.”

And having made up this story, he searched for such a stone as Joe would be apt to throw, and, having found one, placed it on the pantry floor, to appear as if it had fallen there after passing through the glass.

These accidents made him dislike his bow, and he hung it up in the wood-shed. Then he made a lasso of a string, and caught the cat by throwing the noose over her head. But Puss did not like the sport as well as he did, and gave him such a scratch that he was glad to let her run off with the lasso. Then he thought he would plague the old sow by getting one of her little pink-white pigs; but the instant he had caught it up in his arms, it began to squeal; and the mother, hearing it, ran after him with such a frightful noise, throwing up her great, savage tusks at him, that he dropped it, and ran for his life. She stopped to smell of Piggy, and see if it was hurt; and so he got away, though he was terribly frightened.

Then Andy thought of his toy ship; and having stopped the holes in the sink, and pumped it full of water, he called it his ocean, and launched the “Sea-bird.” With a pair of bellows he made wind, and with a dipper he made waves; and by placing a kettle bottom upwards in the middle of the sink he made an island; and the good ship pitched, and tossed, and rolled in a very exciting manner. At length he resolved to have a shipwreck. This he managed, not by putting the ship on a rock, but by putting a rock on the ship. He used for the purpose the stone Joe Beals did not throw through the pantry window, and the “Sea-bird” went down, with all her crew on board. He then opened the holes in the sink, and the tide, going out, left the vessel on her beam-ends, stranded.

It would have been well for Andy if he had been contented with such innocent pastimes, without doing mischief to the cat, or chickens, or pigs, or trying to shoot the pretty birds that fly about the orchards, singing so sweetly, and eating the worms that destroy the trees.

But nothing satisfied him; and to have some better fun than any yet, he determined to stand in the door and scream, “Fire!” He could not imagine greater sport than to see the neighbors come running to put out the fire, and then laugh at them for being duped. He did not consider that they would have to leave their work, and run a long distance, till they were quite out of breath; or that his laughter would be a very mean and foolish return for the good-will they would show in hastening to save his father’s house; or that, in case the house should really take fire some day, and he should call for help, people might think it another silly trick, and stay away.

He stood in the door, filled his lungs with a long breath, opened his mouth as wide as he could, and screamed, “Fire! fire! fire!”

Three times. He thought it so funny, that he had to stop and laugh. Then he took another breath, and screamed again, louder than before, “Fire! fire! fire! fire! fire!”

Five times; and he heard the echoes away off among the hills; and, looking across the lot, he saw old Mother Quirk hobbling on her crutch.

Old Mother Quirk was just about the queerest woman in the world. She had a nose as crooked as a horn, and almost as long. It crooked down to meet her chin, and her chin crooked up to meet her nose. And some people said she could hold the end of a thread between them, when she wished to twist a cord with both hands, although I doubt it. Her face was so full of wrinkles, that the smallest spot you could think of had at least twenty in it. Her eyes were as black as charcoal, and as bright as diamonds. She was very old; and her back was bent like a bow; and her hair was perfectly white, and as long and fine as the finest kind of flax; and she was so lame that she could never walk without her crutch.

She was a good woman though, people said, and knew almost everything. She could tell when it would rain to-morrow, and when it would be fair. She would shut her eyes, and tell you all about your friends at a distance; describe them as plainly as if she saw them, and inform you if anything pleasant or unpleasant had happened to them. She knew more about curing the sick than the doctors did; and once when Andy had hurt his foot by jumping upon a sharp stub, and it was so sore for a week that he could not step, and it had been poulticed and plastered till it was as white and soft as cheese-curd, Mother Quirk had cured it in three days, by putting on to it a bit of dried beef’s gall, which drew out a sliver that the doctors had never thought of. She was always ready to help people who were in trouble; and now, when Andy screamed fire, she was the first to come hobbling on her crutch.

“What is burning, Andy?” she cried, as she came through the gate. “Where is the fire?”

“In the bottom of the well!” replied Andy, laughing till his side ached. “O, ho, ho! why don’t you bring some water in a thimble, and put the well out? O, ho, ho! Mother Quirk!”

There was fire in the old woman’s eyes just then, if not in the well. It flashed out of them like two little streams of lightning out of two little jet-black clouds. She lifted her crutch, and I am not sure but she would have struck Andy with it, if she had not been too lame to catch him.

“Put the well out, ho, ho, ho!” laughed Andy, hopping away.

“I would put you in, if I could get hold of you!” said Mother Quirk, shaking her crutch at him. “You wouldn’t be dancing around so on that foot of yours, if I hadn’t cured it for you, and this is the thanks I get for it!”

That made Andy feel rather ashamed; for he began to see how ungrateful it was in him to play the old woman such a trick.

“It isn’t the first time you’ve made me run for nothing, with my poor old crutch,” she went on, as he stopped laughing. “The other day you told me your mother was sick abed, and wanted to see me; and I left everything and hobbled over here; and didn’t I find her ironing clothes in the kitchen, as well a woman as she ever was in her life, you little rogue!”

Andy laughed again at the recollection. “You was smoking your pipe,” said he, “with your old black cat in your lap, and ’t was fun to see you jump up and catch your crutch!”

“Fun to you! but do you think of my poor old bones? I’m almost a hundred years old,” said Mother Quirk; “and shall I tell you what I’ve learnt all this time? I’ve learnt that the meanest thing in the world is to treat ill those who treat you kindly; and that the worst thing is lying.”

Andy was sobered again, and the old woman continued:

“What if everybody and everything should lie? What if we could never know when to believe what our friends and neighbors tell us? What if my crutch should lie, and, when I lean on it, break and let me fall?”

“I think it would be fun!” said Andy.

“And what if the ground you stand on should not be the ground it appears to be, but a great pit, and should let you fall into it when you think you are walking on the grass? Suppose that everything was a lie, that nothing was what it pretends to be, that the whole world should trick and cheat us?” cried the old woman, raising her voice.

“I should like to see the spot!” said Andy, giggling again.

“Should you?” almost shrieked the old woman, with a terrible look.

“Yes!” and Andy grinned at a safe distance.

“Then try it!” exclaimed Mother Quirk.

And holding her crutch under her shoulder, she brought her hands together with a loud slap. Although Andy was at least three yards off, it seemed to him exactly as if she had boxed his ear. He was almost knocked down, and his head hummed like a beehive; but he could not, to save his life, tell which ear had been boxed, nor which he ought to rub. For a minute, he kept whirling around, as dizzy as a top. Then a voice cried, “Catch that rabbit!”

J. T. Trowbridge.

(To be continued.)