A Tale of the Tow-Path

THE RESULT OF A WHIPPING.

Hoeing corn is not very hard work for one who is accustomed to it, but the circumstances of the hoeing may make the task an exceedingly laborious one. They did so in Joe Gaston’s case. Joe Gaston thought he had never in his life before been put to such hard and disagreeable work.

In the first place, the ground had been broken up only that spring, and it was very rough and stony. Next, the field was on a western slope, and the rays of the afternoon sun shone squarely on it. It was an unusually oppressive day, too, for the last of June.

Finally, and chiefly: Joe was a fourteen-year-old boy, fond of sport and of companionship, and he was working there alone.

Leaning heavily on the handle of his hoe, Joe gazed pensively away to the west. At the foot of the slope lay a small lake, its unruffled surface reflecting with startling distinctness the foliage that lined its shores, and the two white clouds that hung above in the blue sky.

Through a rift in the hills could be seen, far away, the line of purple mountains that lay beyond the west shore of the Hudson River.

“It aint fair!” said Joe, talking aloud to himself, as he sometimes did. “I don’t have time to do anything but just work, work, work. Right in the middle of summer, too, when you can have the most fun of any time in the year, if you only had a chance to get it! There’s berrying and bee-hunting and swimming and fishing and--and lots of things.”

The look of pensiveness on Joe’s face changed into one of longing.

“Fishing’s awful good now,” he continued; “but I don’t get a chance to go, unless I go without asking, and even then I dassent carry home the fish.”

After another minute of reflection he turned his face toward the upland, where, in the distance, the white porch and gables of a farmhouse were visible through an opening between two rows of orchard trees.

“I guess I’ll just run down to the pond a few minutes, and see if there’s any fish there. It aint more’n three o’clock; Father’s gone up to Morgan’s with that load of hay, and he won’t be home before five o’clock. I can get back and hoe a lot of corn by that time.”

He cast his eyes critically toward the sun, hesitated for another minute, and then, shouldering his hoe, started down the hill toward the lake; but before he had gone half-way to the water’s edge he stopped and stood still, nervously chewing a spear of June-grass, and glancing alternately back at the cornfield and forward to the tempting waters of the lake.

“I don’t care!” he said at last. “I can’t help it if it aint right. If Father’d only let me go a-fishing once in a while, I wouldn’t want to sneak off. It’s his fault; ’cause I’ve got to fish, and that’s all there is about it.”

In a swampy place near by he dug some angle-worms for bait. Then, taking a pole and line from the long grass behind a log, he skirted the shore for a short distance, climbed out on the body of a fallen tree that lay partly in the water, and flung off his line.

Joe had not long to wait. The lazy motion of the brightly painted float on the smooth surface of the lake gave place to a sudden swinging movement. Then the small end dipped till only the round red top was visible. In the next instant that too disappeared, and the pole curved till the tip of it almost touched the water.

For a second only Joe played with his victim. Then, with a quick, steady pull, he drew the darting, curving, shining fish from its home, and landed it among the weeds on the shore.

Flushed with delight, he hastened to cast his line again into the pool. Scarcely a minute later he pulled out another fish. It seemed to be an excellent day for the sport.

Indeed, he had never before known the fish to bite so well. They kept him busy baiting his hook and drawing them in.

He was in the high tide of enjoyment. The cornfield was forgotten.

Suddenly he became aware that some one was standing behind him among the low bushes on the shore. He turned to see who it was. There, confronting him, a frown on his face, stood Joe’s father.

The pole in the boy’s hands dropped till the tip of it splashed into the water; his face turned red and then pale, and there was a strange weakness in his knees.

He drew his line in slowly, wound it about the pole, and stepped from the log to the shore. As yet no word had been said by either father or son, but Joe had a vague sense that it was for him to speak first.

“I thought,” he stammered, “that I’d come down and see--and see if--if the fish was biting to-day--”

“Well,” said his father, grimly, “are they biting?”

“They’ve bit first-rate,” responded the boy, quickly. “I’ve got fourteen in this little puddle here.”

“Throw them back into the pond,” commanded Mr. Gaston.

Joe bent over, and taking the fish one by one from the little pool of water where he had placed them, he tossed them lightly into the lake. He came to one that, badly wounded, was floating on its side.

“’Taint any use throwing that one back,” he said. “It’s--”

“Throw it back!” was the stern command.

Joe threw it back. When this task was completed, Mr. Gaston said,--

“Have you got your knife in your pocket, Joseph?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Cut me a whip, then,--a beech one; you’ll find a good one on that sapling.”

Joe took his knife and cut from the sapling indicated a long, slender branch. He trimmed it and gave it to his father. He well knew the use to which it was to be put; and although his spirit rebelled, though he felt that he did not really deserve the punishment, he obeyed without a word.

“Joseph,” said his father, “do you remember my warning you last week not to go fishing again without my permission, and my telling you that if you did, I should whip you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, I suppose you expect me to keep my word?”

Joe said nothing.

Mr. Gaston stood for another moment in anxious thought. He did not wish to whip the boy, surely. Though he was outwardly a cold man, he had all a father’s affection for Joe; but would he not fail of his duty if he did not punish him for his disobedience?

“Joseph,” he said, “can you think of any better remedy than whipping?”