A COUNTRY STORY. BY JOHN CARVER. Good sir, reject it not, although it bring Ir was on a bitter cold evening in the month of December, that a number of neighbors had called in to say good-by to my cousin John, who was to start the next morning on a trip down the country, to dispose of some of the products of the farm. An hour or two had passed off very pleasantly over a mug of flip; the more distant visiters had dropped away as the evening wore on; the lumber-box had been loaded with firkins of butter, and boxes of cheese, and flitches of bacon, and all those innumerable knick-knacks which the farmer's wife sends to the market-town; the commissions for gowns and ribands, patterns and fashions, had been repeatedly given; and the remaining visiters were moving their chairs, as if half reluctant to quit the bright fireside, despite of the sleepy nods and yawns of my good grandmother; when my uncle roared out with his stentorian voice, "Stop neighbors, don't go yet! we'll have another mug of flip, and Bowgun shall tell us a story." It required but little urging to induce a general acquiescence in the proposal, for my uncle's flip and Captain Bowgun's stories were the toast of the whole neighborhood. Even my pretty cousin Jane, whose eyes had been closed for a long time, brightened up in the expectation of a tale, and every one's attention was directed to the Captain for the promised enjoyment. 6 “Well, boys, and what is it I'm to give you?" said Bowgun, in a tone something like that with which Matthews used to debut in his What's the news at Natchitoches?' and whom our old story-teller resembled in more points than one, "Well, boys, and what is it I'm to give you? Shall it be a love story, or a witch story, or a ghost story, or" "Oh, a love story, by all means," exclaimed my fair cousin, whose eyes were brightening like diamonds at the thought, and turned full upon the old captain; "let it be a love story, and a good ending, won't you, Captain ?" "Whist, Jenny," said my uncle, "what has such a child as you to do with love stories? Leave Bowgun to his own fancy, and I'll be bound he'll tell us something pleasant." "Doubtful about that!" answered the Captain ; "such cold nights as this, with three feet of snow in the old sap lot, and the prospect of a tramp through it, with the wind dancing rigadoons all the way, is n't just the thing to wake a man's ideas up to a good story. Any how, since your father asks it, I'll tell you one befitting the night, which I heard long ago, when I was a child; it's about the old haunted ground, over in Campton, where you know neither sheep, nor cattle, nor horses, ever live or thrive; and it was once, but that's long ago, the best piece of land in the country; and every traveller noticed how rich the farms were over the river." 66 Stop, Captain!" said my uncle, interrupting him; "it's dry work, talking,― taste a drop of this, just to wet your whistle ;" and filling a pint mug with the rich, foaming beverage, he handed it to the story teller, with "Much good may it do you, neighbor; bless your kind soul !" The old man took the mug from my uncle's hand, and sipping once or twice from the cream-like surface of the hot liquid, which, unfortunately, he loved but too well, he smacked his lips and replied, "Thank you, Square; that goes to the right place; now for the story." "I've told you," continued he, "that it's about the Campton marshes, where, you know, the cattle, and sheep, and horses, of the best farmer in old Strafford, would be scarce as my own in half a dozen years. It's been tried out and out repeatedly by many a hard worker; as any one may know from the large barns and snug houses, for many a mile, all unroofed by the winds and crumbling to ruins, with nobody to take care of them, and not a soul to live there, except it may be some old wrinkled crone, who has more to do with Old Nick than with anything in this world. And yet the grass grows on the meadows as I never saw it anywhere else, except in old Oxbow, up in Coos; and the land runs away so smooth and so green, as far as the eye can see, that it would do one's heart good to ride through it, if you didn't know that it was as deceitful as it is fair. Some people say, it's the fog that rises every morning, and makes it unhealthy; and others, that the water is bad, and breeds diseases in the stock who drink it; but, to my mind, it's more the curse of Satan on what the Lord made good, than anything else, as the story I am going to tell you will show. "There lived once upon the Bearcamp one William Montgomery, or, as he was called, Bill Mink, in consideration of his being the blackest white man anywhere about. It's a long time ago, before old Captain Lovewell had his battle at Fryeburgh with Powell and the Indians, when there was not a road from the Winnepissaukee to old Hampton, nor more than fifty settlers from Red Hill up to Canada. This Mink was the wonder of the country all about for strength, for he'd think nothing of felling an acre of first growth between sun and sun, and trimming it to boot; and he beat Samson in throwing a rock, or swinging an anvil with his teeth, or taking a barrel of cider as you would a two-gallon wallet up at arms' length, and drinking from the bung-hole. But though he was the leader in all the country frolickings, he was as mildtempered and peaceable a fellow as lived in the world, and would not have hurt a fly. For this reason many folks, who did not know Bill, fancied he was a coward; and some men found, to their cost, that, though he was good-natured to a fault, yet he was not to be abused out of reason. Young Sam Hurchley, a bullying, bragging tailor's apprentice, in the heat of a row which they all got into at a country fair, threw a glass full of spirits into Mink's face and eyes, and so maddened him, that he caught him by the collar like the grip of a vice, and tossing him into the air as if he had been a real puppy, as he was, and catching him at arms' length as he came down, so frightened the poor breeches-mender, that he never looked full in a man's face afterwards. "Well, it happened that Bill Mink was one evening at a house-warming, two or three miles from home, where there was no lack of good things to eat and to drink. Bill was the life of the company; and what with singing of songs, and telling of stories, eating of turkeys and chickens, and roast beef, and bacon, and drinking of good old cider, and New England and the best of Metheglin, he got somewhat irregular; not worse than the others, perhaps, for all were heartylike; and as they came home the woods rang with the |