Harper's Round Table, October 1, 1895 Part 2

"So Master William Shakespeare has grown rich as well as famous, has he?" you say, for all England knows by that time of his wonderful plays.

"Indeed yes," the landlord answers you. "See, across the trees, that big house yonder? It is New Place, bought in the spring of this very year of 1597, by Master Shakespeare, and put into fine repair. And there all his family live now--his old father, Master John, his wife, Mistress Ann, and all the children. But little Hamnet is not there, and I doubt not Master Shakespeare would gladly give all New Place and his theatre in London too, for that son of his back again, alive and well, and as happy of face as he used to be in the old house in Henley Street."

The landlord of the Bear is right. Hamnet Shakespeare ended his short life on the 11th of August, 1596, being then but eleven years old.

We know but little of his famous father's life; we know even less of the son he so dearly loved. Nor can any one say, had the boy but lived, whether he would have inherited anything of his father's genius.

The play of _Hamlet_ may have been called in memory of the boy Hamnet, so nearly are the names alike; even more is it possible that the lovely boy, Prince Arthur, whose tragic story is a part of Shakespeare's play of _King John_, may have been drawn in memory of the writer's dead boy.

For _King John_ was written in the year of young Hamnet Shakespeare's death, and with the loss of the boy he so dearly loved weighing upon his soul, the great writer, whose name and fame the years only make yet more great, may thus have put into words a tender memory of the short-lived little Hamnet, the gentle son of Shakespeare.

THE DEMON OF SNAGGLE-TOOTH ROCK.

BY AGNES CARR SAGE.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Decorative T]

here were weeping and wailing within the Saunders' modest "one-story-and-a-jump" cottage. Monongahela's eyes were red from crying; the twins, Dallas Lee and Jemima Calline, had for once lost their appet.i.te, even for corn-pone and mola.s.ses; and Was.h.i.+ngton Beauregard, the eldest of the brood of youngsters, frowned gloomily, and ground his teeth in deep if silent rage as he polished up his antiquated old rifle and thought upon vengeance. Only the baby crowed and gurgled as l.u.s.tily as ever, shaking his gourd rattle in blissful infantile ignorance of the loss that had befallen the family--a loss most keenly felt by the children, for it was that of the bonny ewe-lamb, their pet and plaything by day, and almost their bedfellow by night; while the manner of its disappearance was shrouded in profound mystery.

"Mebbe 'twas Butcher Killem who tuck him," suddenly suggested the lugubrious boy twin. "Tuck him to make roasts 'n' chops of; 'n' if it was, we may be eatin' Cotton Ball for dinner some of these fine days."

A dire prediction, which immediately sent Jemima Calline off into a wild paroxysm of grief, flinging herself flat upon the floor, and drumming a funereal tattoo with her best Sunday shoes on the gay rag carpet of domestic manufacture. "I'll never taste mutton again; never, never, the longest day I live," she howled.

"Now, Dallas Lee, see what you've done!" scolded Monongahela, usually called Monny for short. "You've set her off agin, and we'll have her in 'sterics direckly. Thar ain't no need of any sech fool talk either, and slanderin' your neighbor into the bargain. Mr. Killem is an honest man, who buys 'n' pays for all the critters he cuts up. Besides, I caught the lamb myself, and shet her up in the wood-shed before ever we started for the bush-meetin'. I locked the door 'n' took the key in my pocket. The door was still locked when we came back."

"Ya--as; but ye couldn't lock the hole in the roof," drawled Wash, looking up from his polis.h.i.+ng. "The hole pap 'n' I hev been calculatin'

to mend for some time back, but 'ain't got at yit, more's the pity.

Thar's where the thief come in. For thar on the s.h.i.+ngles is where the locks of wool are a-hangin'."

"But I can't see how anybody could clamber up thar, drop through a hole, and git back agin with a big kickin' beast in his arms; for if he'd killed it on the spot ther'd be blood spattered 'round."

"Mebbe n.o.body could, but mebbe some_thing_ might."

"Some thing! What sort of a thing? A fox or any other animal?"

"P'r'aps so," but Wash would say no more. He was famous for holding his own counsel, and did so now, until the yellow moon had risen from behind the glorious mountain peaks surrounding their little primitive West Virginia home, and he and his favorite sister wandered out together into the soft, pine-scented night. Then, however, their thoughts naturally reverted to the mysterious disappearance, and the girl asked somewhat curiously, "So, Was.h.i.+ngton Beauregard, you won't allow that the 'ornery'

thief what stole our pet come on two legs?"

"No, Monny, nor on four legs nuther," answered her brother. "Though I didn't want to say much afore the chillen. But I've been a-studyin' over this matter, and I begin to fear that he comes on wings."

"On wings! Law, then, he must be a bird! But I never saw a hawk or even an eagle big and strong enough to tote off a half-grown sheep like Cotton Ball. Strikes me it's dumb foolishness you're talkin', Wash."

"Waal, I dunno about that. Hevn't you heard the old hunters, on winter nights, tell of a curisome-winged thing that once made its nest over yonder on Snaggle Tooth?" and the youth pointed to a high, dark, jagged crag silhouetted against the purplish-blue sky. "It did a power of mischief in this neighborhood, totin' off chickens 'n' dogs 'n' sheep, and some say even tacklin' a calf. 'Twas a cute old fowl, so n.o.body could git a crack at it; but was up to so much devilment, that they called it the Demon of Snaggle-Tooth Rock."

"Oh, yaas, I've heard o' that often; but it was years ago, before you or I were born, an' the critter hasn't been raound here since."

"That's so; but what has been kin be; and the other day Tim Harkins tole me a yarn about jest sech a bird havin' been seen lately over Stonycliff way. A monstrous chap, something like a golden eagle, only bigger an'

wickeder-lookin', with a more crooked beak, an' feathers of a dirty brownish-gray. At the time I thought Tim was jest a-humbuggin', but after the little beast disappeared so unaccountable like, I begun to reckon it must be true, sure enough."

"Oh, Wash, I can't bear to think of it!" and Monny's face looked quite pale in the moonlight. "Poor, dear little Cotton Ball! Fancy that demon and his mate tearing her limb from limb. It 'most breaks my heart." And long after the girl had climbed the ladder leading to the low attic under the clapboard roof, which she had shared with the younger children ever since their mother's death one year before, she lingered at the tiny two-paned window gazing off at the peaceful-seeming hills, but in imagination following the lost lambkin to the eagle's grim eyrie on wild, inaccessible Snaggle-Tooth Rock.

"It is dreadful, dreadful; but I won't tell Jemima Calline," was her last thought as she crept into bed beside her sister.

For Monongahela was old beyond her fourteen years, and bravely strove to fill the place of their lost parent to the motherless little ones, sending them trim and tidy to school and "Methody meetin'," feeding them on plenty of bacon, corn-dodgers, and apple-b.u.t.ter, and every morning, in spite of grimaces, dosing them all round with "whiskey and burdock"

as an antidote against dyspepsia, the curse of that hog-eating, excessive coffee-drinking community.

Within a few days Was.h.i.+ngton's fears were painfully confirmed. Our young mountain folk were out one afternoon on the hill-side gathering ginseng and other herbs, when they met the circuit-rider who visited in turn the churches of their vicinity, and whom Mr. Saunders had frequently entertained. He paused for a chat, and informed them of the consternation created in a neighboring valley by the appearance of the terrible bird to prey upon any poultry or small animals left out over night; while one man had been severely wounded in an almost hand-to-claw tussle in order to save his dog.

The following morning, then, when Monny, with the baby toddling by her side, went out early to milk the cow, she heard a continuous firing, and came upon her brother armed with the old flint-lock rifle which he had inherited from his grandfather, popping away at the brown and purple cones on the top of a tall pine-tree, and deftly snapping off the one at which he aimed nine times out of ten.

"Well, Was.h.i.+ngton Beauregard, I'll allow you are a pretty fair marksman," she remarked, after a moment of admiring watching. "Not many private hunters kin wing a bird as well as you, kin they?"

"Reckon I could hold my own agin most of they-uns if I only had a new-fangled gun," returned the boy. "This old fowlin'-piece ain't wurth much, and I do hope I kin sell enough 'sang'[1] this year to buy another. 'Tain't much fun to git a fine aim at a buck and lose him 'cause your gun misses fire. As it is, though, I believe I could snip a curl off the baby's head an' hardly scare the darlin'. Jest hold him up, honey, an' let me hev a try." But to this William Tell arrangement Monny objected in horror, and scurried off with the infant, followed by Wash's roar of laughter and shout of "Ho, scare rabbit! But anyhow I mean to keep in practice,'n' hev a cold-lead welcome ready for that air eagle if he ever shows hisself this way agin."

The bird did not come; but about noon Tim Harkins did, ambling along on a rawboned sorrel nag, and reined up at the gate with a long-drawn-out "Whoa, thar'!"

"Wash Saunders! Oh, Was.h.!.+" he called, and that youth, rising from the dinner-table, appeared in the ramshackle porch.

"h.e.l.lo, Tim, is that you? Step in an' hev a bite, won't yer?"

"No, thankee. I'm jest on my way to a gander-pull over nigh the Springs, 'n' on'y stopped to fotch you a message. Ye wouldn't keer, naow, to hire out for a few weeks, at a dollar a day, would yer?"

"What to do?"

"Oh, jest to show a gentleman through the mountings, an' pint out the hants o' the wild birds. 'Pears this Perfessor, as they call him, is stoppin' over to the Spring Hotel, an' the landlord, Poke d.i.c.kson, axed me ef I knowed any o' the neighborhood boys who would like the job.

Somenn what wuz a first-rate shot, an' 'quainted with all the trails.

Yaas, I tole him Wash Saunders am the very chap, ef you kin git him.

But, I added, the Saunders air pooty ticky, an' Wash, mebbe, won't relish playin' pinter-dorg to any one. For, sez I, his pappy am a forehanded man, who keeps his fambly comf'ble. He hez a good corn 'n'

tobaccy field, 'n' the gyurls hez a kyarpet on the best room, 'n'

curtings to the windys, 'n' everything mighty slick. Still, sez I, 'twon't do no harm to ax, so here I be."

"Sho, Tim, you know I ain't so ticky as that. Dunno but I'd like it first rate, for I'm strivin' to get a new rifle. Granddaddy's old 'Sally Blazer,' as he used to name it, is about played out."

"Waal, naow, then, here's your chance, 'n' I'm real tickled. But I must be ajoggin'. G'lang, Juniper! Shall I tell Poke you will go over 'n' see the Perfessor?"

"Yes, I will, this very evenin'"; which the boy did, and returned jubilant. "It's a snap, a reg'lar snap," he declared to the group of brothers and sisters who ran to meet him. "Professor Stuart is real quality, an' no mistake. He's an orni--orni--waal, I don't rightly remember the name, but he's plumb crazy about birds, 'n' comed here a purpose to see those what live in West Virginia. It's a curous notion, but he's nice, 'n' so is Mis' Stuart, though she lies on a sofy most of the time, and looks drefful white 'n' pindlin'."

"Air there any chilluns?" inquired Jemima Calline.

"Yaas, two. An awful pooty gyurl, with eyes like brown stars, an' all rigged out in white, same as an angel, with big, puffy sleeves; an' the jolliest small boy you ever see. He's a downright little man, though he's only five year old, an' he's curls down to his waist."

"Waal, then, sence they were so friendly, I s'pose you came to some bargain?" said Monongahela.

"Sartain; an' I'm to meet Mr. Stuart to-morrer mornin' at the cross-roads an' show-him a red-bird's nest. He wants to collect eggs an'

live specimens."