THE LIGHT IN THE CLEARING

CONTENTS


BOOK ONE

WHICH IS THE STORY OF THE CANDLE AND COMPASS

CHAPTER
I The Melon Harvest
II I Meet the Silent Woman and Silas Wright, Jr.
III We Go to Meeting and See Mr. Wright Again
IV Our Little Strange Companion
V In the Light of the Candles
VI The Great Stranger
VII My Second Peril
VIII My Third Peril


BOOK TWO

WHICH IS THE STORY OF THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS

IX In Which I Meet Other Great Men
X I Meet President Van Buren and Am Cross-Examined by Mr. Grimshaw
XI A Party and--My Fourth Peril?
XII The Spirit of Michael Henry and Others
XIII The Thing and Other Things
XIV The Bolt Falls


BOOK THREE

WHICH IS THE STORY OF THE CHOSEN WAYS

XV Uncle Peabody's Way and Mine
XVI I Use My Own Compass at a Fork in the Road
XVII The Man with the Scythe
XVIII I Start in a Long Way
XIX On the Summit
Epilogue




BOOK ONE

Which is the Story of the Candle and the Compass



CHAPTER I

THE MELON HARVEST


Once upon a time I owned a watermelon. I say once because I never did it
again. When I got through owning that melon I never wanted another. The
time was 1831; I was a boy of seven and the melon was the first of all
my harvests. Every night and morning I watered and felt and surveyed my
watermelon. My pride grew with the melon and, by and by, my uncle tried
to express the extent and nature of my riches by calling me a
mellionaire.

I didn't know much about myself those days except the fact that my name
was Bart Baynes and, further, that I was an orphan who owned a
watermelon and a little spotted hen and lived on Rattle road in a
neighborhood called Lickitysplit. I lived with my Aunt Deel and my
Uncle Peabody Baynes on a farm. They were brother and sister--he about
thirty-eight and she a little beyond the far-distant goal of forty.

My father and mother died in a scourge of diphtheria that swept the
neighborhood when I was a boy of five. For a time my Aunt Deel seemed to
blame me for my loss.

"No wonder they're dead," she used to say, when out of patience with me
and--well I suppose that I must have had an unusual talent for all the
noisy arts of childhood when I broke the silence of that little home.

The word "dead" set the first mile-stone in the long stretch of my
memory. That was because I tried so hard to comprehend it and further
because it kept repeating its challenge to my imagination. I often
wondered just what had become of my father and mother and I remember
that the day after I went to my aunt's home a great idea came to me. It
came out of the old dinner-horn hanging in the shed. I knew the power of
its summons and I slyly captured the horn and marched around the house
blowing it and hoping that it would bring my father up from the fields.
I blew and blew and listened for that familiar halloo of his. When I
paused for a drink of water at the well my aunt came and seized the horn
and said it was no wonder they were dead. She knew nothing of the
sublime bit of necromancy she had interrupted--poor soul!

I knew that she had spoken of my parents for I supposed that they were
the only people in the world who were dead, but I did not know what it
meant to be dead. I often called to them, as I had been wont to do,
especially in the night, and shed many tears because they came no more
to answer me. Aunt Deel did not often refer directly to my talents, but
I saw, many times, that no-wonder-they-died look in her face.

Children are great rememberers. They are the recording angels--the
keepers of the book of life. Man forgets--how easily!--and easiest of
all, the solemn truth that children do _not_ forget.

A few days after I arrived in the home of my aunt and uncle I slyly
entered the parlor and climbed the what-not to examine some white
flowers on its top shelf and tipped the whole thing over, scattering its
burden of albums, wax flowers and sea shells on the floor. My aunt came
running on her tiptoes and exclaimed: "Mercy! Come right out o' here
this minute--you pest!"