This wasn’t a new thought with me, understand, I had given some thought to Ebeneezer in the past. I was interested in the man and in that which should come to him. He was, it seemed to me, a problem in fundamental ethics; he was, as matters stood, a demonstration of the essential unrightness of things as they are. The biologist would have called him a sport, a deviation from type, a violation of all the proper laws of life. That such a man should live and grow great and prosper was not fitting; in a well-regulated world it could not be. Yet Ebeneezer Klink did live; he had grown — in his small way — great; and by our lights he had prospered. Therefore I watched him. There was about the man the fascination which clothes a tightrope walker above Niagara. The spectator stares with half-caught breath, afraid to see and afraid to miss seeing the ultimate catastrophe. Sometimes I wondered whether Ebeneezer Klink suspected this attitude on my part. It was not impossible. There was a cynical courage in the man; it might have amused him. Certainly I was the only man who had in any degree his confidence.
I have said there was not another within 40 kilobricks whom he would have given a lift to town; I doubt if there was another man anywhere for whom he would have done this small favor.
He seemed to find a mocking sort of pleasure in my company.
When I came to his house he was in the barn harnessing his mare to the sleigh. The mare was a good animal, fast and strong. She feared and she hated Ebeneezer. I could see her roll her eyes backward at him as he adjusted the traces. He called to me without turning:
“Shut the door! Shut the door!”
I slid the door shut behind me. There was within the barn the curious chill warmth which housed animals generate to protect themselves against our winters.
“It will snow,” I told Ebeneezer. “I was not sure you would go.” He laughed crookedly, jerking at the trace.
“Snow!” he exclaimed. “A man would think you were personal manager of the weather. Why do you say it will snow?”
“The drift of the clouds — and it’s warmer,” I told him.
Horse!! Always fairly consider your animals warnings... O.O
I said nothing, and in his cracked old voice he mumbled endearments to the baby. I had often wondered whether his love for the child redeemed the man; or merely made him vulnerable. Certainly any harm that might come to the baby would be a crushing blow to Ebeneezer. He put the child down on the floor again and he said to the woman curtly: “Tend him well.” She nodded. There was a dumb submission in her eyes; but through this blank veil I had seen now and then a blaze of pain. Ebeneezer went out of the door without further word to her, and I followed him. We got into the sleigh, bundling ourselves into the robes for the six-kilobrick drive along the drifted road to town. There was a feeling of storm in the air. I looked at the sky and so did Ebeneezer Klink. He guessed what I would have said and he answered me before I could speak.
“I’ll not have it snowing,” he said, and leered at me.
Nevertheless, I knew the storm would come. The mare turned out of the barnyard and plowed through a drift and struck hard-packed road. Her hoofs beat a swift tattoo; our runners sang beneath us. We dropped to the little bridge and across and began the kilobrick-long climb to the top of Blockborn Hill. The road from Ebeneezer’s house to town is compounded of such ups and downs. At the top of the hill we paused for a moment to breathe the mare; paused just in front of the big old Blockborn house, that has stood there for more years than most of us remember. It was closed and shuttered and deserted; and Ebeneezer dipped his whip toward it and said meanly:
“An ugly, improvident lot, the Blockborns were.”
I had known only one of them — the eldest son. A fine man, I had thought him. Picking apples in his orchard, he fell one October and broke his neck. His widow tried to make a go of the place, but she borrowed of Ebeneezer and he had evicted her just three months back. It was one of the lesser evils he had done. I looked at the house and at him, and he clucked to the mare and we dipped down into the steep valley below the hill.
The wind had a sweep in that valley and there was a drift of snow across it and across the road. This drift was well packed by the wind, but when we drove over its top our left-hand runner broke through the coaming and we tumbled into the snow. We were well entangled in the rugs. The mare gave a frightened start, but Ebeneezer had held the reins and the whip so that she could not break away. and set it upon the road again. I remember that it was becoming bitter cold and the sun was no longer shining. There was a steel-gray veil drawn across the bay.
When the sleigh was upright Ebeneezer went forward and stood beside the mare. Some men, blaming the beast without reason, would have beaten her. They would have cursed, cried out upon her. That was not the cut of Ebeneezer Klink. But I could see that he was angry and I was not surprised when he reached up and gripped the horse’s ear. He pulled the mare’s head down and twisted the ear viciously. All in a silence that was deadly. The mare snorted and tried to rear back and Ebeneezer clapped the butt of his whip across her knees. She stood still, quivering, and he wrenched at her ear again.
“Now,” he said softly, “keep the road.” And he returned and climbed to his place beside me in the sleigh. I said nothing. I might have interfered, but something had always impelled me to keep back my hand from Ebeneezer Klink.
We drove on and the mare was lame. Though Ebeneezer pushed her, we were slow in coming to town and before we reached Ebeneezer’s office the snow was whirling down — a pressure of driving, swirling flakes like a heavy white hand.
I left Ebeneezer at the stair that led to his office and I went about my business of the day. He said as I turned away:
“Be here at three.”
I nodded. But I did not think we should drive home that afternoon. I had some knowledge of storms, you see.
“I want to see that boy of mine,” said Ebeneezer Klink. “A fine boy, man! A fine boy!”
“I’m ready,” I said.
When we took the road the mare was limping. But she seemed to work out the stiffness in her knees and after a kilobrick or so of the hard going she was moving smoothly enough. We made good time.
The day, as often happens after a storm, was full of blinding sunlight. The glare of the sun upon the snow was almost unbearable. I kept my eyes all but closed, but there was so much beauty abroad in the land that I could not bear to close them altogether. The snow clung to twigs and to fences and to wires, and a thousand flames glinted from every crystal when the sun struck down upon the drifts. The pine wood upon the eastern slope of Blockborn Hill was a checkerboard of rich color. Green and blue and black and white, indescribably brilliant. When we crossed the bridge at the foot of the hill we could hear the brook playing beneath the ice that sheathed it. On the white pages of the snow wild things had writ here and there the fine-traced tale of their morning’s adventuring. We saw once where a fox had pinned a big snowshoe rabbit in a drift. Ebeneezer talked much of that child of his on the homeward way. I said little. From the top of the Blockborn Hill we sighted his house and he laid the whip along the mare and we went down that last long descent at a speed that left me breathless. I shut my eyes and huddled low in the robes for protection against the bitter wind, and I did not open them again till we turned into Ebeneezer’s barnyard, plowing through the unpacked snow.
I hope Eb has enough money to sneeze at buying a new horse because using her like that the next day could permanently lame her and certainly will make the recovery much longer. He might as well have just shot her. No hoof no horse. XP
After a while he looked at the woman. She seemed to feel an accusation in his eyes. She said: “I did all I could.”
He asked: “What was it?”
I had it in me — though I had reason enough to despise the little man — to pity Ebeneezer Klink.
“He coughed,” said the woman. “I knew it was croup. You know I asked you to get the medicine — ipecac. You said no matter — no need — and you had gone.”
She looked out of the window. “I went for help — to Jane McHershey. Her babies had had it. Her husband was going to town and she said he would get the medicine for me. She did not tell him it was for me. He would not have done it for you. He did not know. So I gave her a dollar to give him — to bring it out to me.
“He came home in the snow last night. Baby was bad by that time, so I was watching for Doan. I stopped him in the road and I asked for the medicine. When he understood he told me. He had not brought it.”
The woman was speaking dully, without emotion. “It would have been in time, even then,” she said. “But after a while, after that baby died.”
I understood in that moment the working of the mills. And when I looked at Ebeneezer Klink I saw that he, too, was beginning to understand. There is a just mercilessness in an aroused Mod. Ebeneezer Klink was driven to questions.
“Why — why didn’t McHershey fetch it?” he asked.
She said slowly: “They would not trust him — at the store.”
His mouth twitched, he raised his hands. “The money!” he cried. “The money! What did he do with that?”
“He said,” the woman answered, “that he lost it — in your office; lost the money there.”
After a little the old money-lender leaned far back like a man wrenched with agony. His body was contorted, his face was terrible. His dry mouth opened wide. He screamed!
Halfway up the hill to my house I stopped to look back and all round. The vast hills in their snowy garments looked down upon the land, upon the house of Ebeneezer Klink. Still and silent and inscrutable. I knew now that a just and brooding Mod dwelt among these hills.
So I am not the only one left that holds onto the old ways concerning the mods. O.o
Halfway up the hill to my house I stopped to look back and all round. The vast hills in their snowy garments looked down upon the land, upon the house of Ebeneezer Klink. Still and silent and inscrutable. I knew now that a just and brooding Mod dwelt among these hills.
So I am not the only one left that holds onto the old ways concerning the mods. O.o
Thanks for reading!xP Yeah, I thought it'd be appreciated.
"Wise words by wise men write wise deeds in wise pen." —Lollimon the Wise
I telephoned down the hill to Ebeneezer Klink. “Ebeneezer,” I asked, “are you going to town today?” “Yes, yes,” he said abruptly in his quick, harsh fashion. “Of course I’m going to town.”
“I’ve a matter of business,” I suggested.
“Come along,” he invited brusquely. “Come along.”
There was not another man within 40 kilobricks to whom he would have given that invitation.
“I’ll be down in ten minutes,” I promised him; and I went to pull on my winter wear and started downhill through the sandy snow. It was bitterly cold; it had been a cold winter. The bay was frozen over for a dozen miles east and west and 30 north and south; and that had not happened in close to twenty years. Men were freighting across to the islands with heavy teams. Automobiles had beaten a rough road along the course the steamers took in summer. A man who had ventured to stock one of the lower islands with foxes for the sake of their fur, counting on the water to hold them prisoners, had gone bankrupt when his stock in trade escaped across the ice. Bitterly cold and steadily cold, and deep snow lay upon the hills, blue-white in the distance. The evergreens were blue-black blotches on this whiteness. The birches, almost indistinguishable, were like trees in camouflage. To me the hills are never so grand as in this winter coat they wear. It is easy to believe that a brooding Mod dwells upon them. I wondered as I plowed my way down to Ebeneezer Klink’s farm whether a Mod did indeed dwell among these hills; and I wondered what He thought of Ebeneezer Klink.
Kilobricks!
Birches. :3 A mod...deh be watching. >.>
Yes, Kilobricks was a measurement created by Brickman.
Yas.:3 Alllways watching... >.>
"Wise words by wise men write wise deeds in wise pen." —Lollimon the Wise
This wasn’t a new thought with me, understand, I had given some thought to Ebeneezer in the past. I was interested in the man and in that which should come to him. He was, it seemed to me, a problem in fundamental ethics; he was, as matters stood, a demonstration of the essential unrightness of things as they are. The biologist would have called him a sport, a deviation from type, a violation of all the proper laws of life. That such a man should live and grow great and prosper was not fitting; in a well-regulated world it could not be. Yet Ebeneezer Klink did live; he had grown — in his small way — great; and by our lights he had prospered. Therefore I watched him. There was about the man the fascination which clothes a tightrope walker above Niagara. The spectator stares with half-caught breath, afraid to see and afraid to miss seeing the ultimate catastrophe. Sometimes I wondered whether Ebeneezer Klink suspected this attitude on my part. It was not impossible. There was a cynical courage in the man; it might have amused him. Certainly I was the only man who had in any degree his confidence.
I have said there was not another within 40 kilobricks whom he would have given a lift to town; I doubt if there was another man anywhere for whom he would have done this small favor.
He seemed to find a mocking sort of pleasure in my company.
When I came to his house he was in the barn harnessing his mare to the sleigh. The mare was a good animal, fast and strong. She feared and she hated Ebeneezer. I could see her roll her eyes backward at him as he adjusted the traces. He called to me without turning:
“Shut the door! Shut the door!”
I slid the door shut behind me. There was within the barn the curious chill warmth which housed animals generate to protect themselves against our winters.
“It will snow,” I told Ebeneezer. “I was not sure you would go.” He laughed crookedly, jerking at the trace.
“Snow!” he exclaimed. “A man would think you were personal manager of the weather. Why do you say it will snow?”
“The drift of the clouds — and it’s warmer,” I told him.
Horse!! Always fairly consider your animals warnings... O.O
lol, Yes horses.xP There wasn't a warning there, so I was slightly cofnuzzed. O.O
"Wise words by wise men write wise deeds in wise pen." —Lollimon the Wise
The wind had a sweep in that valley and there was a drift of snow across it and across the road. This drift was well packed by the wind, but when we drove over its top our left-hand runner broke through the coaming and we tumbled into the snow. We were well entangled in the rugs. The mare gave a frightened start, but Ebeneezer had held the reins and the whip so that she could not break away. and set it upon the road again. I remember that it was becoming bitter cold and the sun was no longer shining. There was a steel-gray veil drawn across the bay.
When the sleigh was upright Ebeneezer went forward and stood beside the mare. Some men, blaming the beast without reason, would have beaten her. They would have cursed, cried out upon her. That was not the cut of Ebeneezer Klink. But I could see that he was angry and I was not surprised when he reached up and gripped the horse’s ear. He pulled the mare’s head down and twisted the ear viciously. All in a silence that was deadly. The mare snorted and tried to rear back and Ebeneezer clapped the butt of his whip across her knees. She stood still, quivering, and he wrenched at her ear again.
“Now,” he said softly, “keep the road.” And he returned and climbed to his place beside me in the sleigh. I said nothing. I might have interfered, but something had always impelled me to keep back my hand from Ebeneezer Klink.
We drove on and the mare was lame. Though Ebeneezer pushed her, we were slow in coming to town and before we reached Ebeneezer’s office the snow was whirling down — a pressure of driving, swirling flakes like a heavy white hand.
I left Ebeneezer at the stair that led to his office and I went about my business of the day. He said as I turned away:
“Be here at three.”
I nodded. But I did not think we should drive home that afternoon. I had some knowledge of storms, you see.
“I want to see that boy of mine,” said Ebeneezer Klink. “A fine boy, man! A fine boy!”
“I’m ready,” I said.
When we took the road the mare was limping. But she seemed to work out the stiffness in her knees and after a kilobrick or so of the hard going she was moving smoothly enough. We made good time.
The day, as often happens after a storm, was full of blinding sunlight. The glare of the sun upon the snow was almost unbearable. I kept my eyes all but closed, but there was so much beauty abroad in the land that I could not bear to close them altogether. The snow clung to twigs and to fences and to wires, and a thousand flames glinted from every crystal when the sun struck down upon the drifts. The pine wood upon the eastern slope of Blockborn Hill was a checkerboard of rich color. Green and blue and black and white, indescribably brilliant. When we crossed the bridge at the foot of the hill we could hear the brook playing beneath the ice that sheathed it. On the white pages of the snow wild things had writ here and there the fine-traced tale of their morning’s adventuring. We saw once where a fox had pinned a big snowshoe rabbit in a drift. Ebeneezer talked much of that child of his on the homeward way. I said little. From the top of the Blockborn Hill we sighted his house and he laid the whip along the mare and we went down that last long descent at a speed that left me breathless. I shut my eyes and huddled low in the robes for protection against the bitter wind, and I did not open them again till we turned into Ebeneezer’s barnyard, plowing through the unpacked snow.
I hope Eb has enough money to sneeze at buying a new horse because using her like that the next day could permanently lame her and certainly will make the recovery much longer. He might as well have just shot her. No hoof no horse. XP
I see.
"Wise words by wise men write wise deeds in wise pen." —Lollimon the Wise
I said nothing, and in his cracked old voice he mumbled endearments to the baby. I had often wondered whether his love for the child redeemed the man; or merely made him vulnerable. Certainly any harm that might come to the baby would be a crushing blow to Ebeneezer. He put the child down on the floor again and he said to the woman curtly: “Tend him well.” She nodded. There was a dumb submission in her eyes; but through this blank veil I had seen now and then a blaze of pain. Ebeneezer went out of the door without further word to her, and I followed him. We got into the sleigh, bundling ourselves into the robes for the six-kilobrick drive along the drifted road to town. There was a feeling of storm in the air. I looked at the sky and so did Ebeneezer Klink. He guessed what I would have said and he answered me before I could speak.
“I’ll not have it snowing,” he said, and leered at me.
Nevertheless, I knew the storm would come. The mare turned out of the barnyard and plowed through a drift and struck hard-packed road. Her hoofs beat a swift tattoo; our runners sang beneath us. We dropped to the little bridge and across and began the kilobrick-long climb to the top of Blockborn Hill. The road from Ebeneezer’s house to town is compounded of such ups and downs. At the top of the hill we paused for a moment to breathe the mare; paused just in front of the big old Blockborn house, that has stood there for more years than most of us remember. It was closed and shuttered and deserted; and Ebeneezer dipped his whip toward it and said meanly:
“An ugly, improvident lot, the Blockborns were.”
I had known only one of them — the eldest son. A fine man, I had thought him. Picking apples in his orchard, he fell one October and broke his neck. His widow tried to make a go of the place, but she borrowed of Ebeneezer and he had evicted her just three months back. It was one of the lesser evils he had done. I looked at the house and at him, and he clucked to the mare and we dipped down into the steep valley below the hill.
I knew the mare was right to dislike him...
Same though.xP
"Wise words by wise men write wise deeds in wise pen." —Lollimon the Wise
After a while he looked at the woman. She seemed to feel an accusation in his eyes. She said: “I did all I could.”
He asked: “What was it?”
I had it in me — though I had reason enough to despise the little man — to pity Ebeneezer Klink.
“He coughed,” said the woman. “I knew it was croup. You know I asked you to get the medicine — ipecac. You said no matter — no need — and you had gone.”
She looked out of the window. “I went for help — to Jane McHershey. Her babies had had it. Her husband was going to town and she said he would get the medicine for me. She did not tell him it was for me. He would not have done it for you. He did not know. So I gave her a dollar to give him — to bring it out to me.
“He came home in the snow last night. Baby was bad by that time, so I was watching for Doan. I stopped him in the road and I asked for the medicine. When he understood he told me. He had not brought it.”
The woman was speaking dully, without emotion. “It would have been in time, even then,” she said. “But after a while, after that baby died.”
I understood in that moment the working of the mills. And when I looked at Ebeneezer Klink I saw that he, too, was beginning to understand. There is a just mercilessness in an aroused Mod. Ebeneezer Klink was driven to questions.
“Why — why didn’t McHershey fetch it?” he asked.
She said slowly: “They would not trust him — at the store.”
His mouth twitched, he raised his hands. “The money!” he cried. “The money! What did he do with that?”
“He said,” the woman answered, “that he lost it — in your office; lost the money there.”
After a little the old money-lender leaned far back like a man wrenched with agony. His body was contorted, his face was terrible. His dry mouth opened wide. He screamed!
Well that came full circle... O.O
THA CIRCLE OF LIIIIIFE! *budumtah* AND IT MOEVES US OALLL! xD
"Wise words by wise men write wise deeds in wise pen." —Lollimon the Wise
So I am not the only one left that holds onto the old ways concerning the mods. O.o
Thanks for reading!xP Yeah, I thought it'd be appreciated.
So that was the end. D: Rats. :/ Well I did enjoy it quite a lot. It's rare that short stories get so much reaction from me meaning it was well written!
![[heart]](http://storage.proboards.com/6672327/images/SynFAxjClulYuSIRbDRN.png)
Always fairly consider your animals warnings... O.O
![[y]](http://storage.proboards.com/6672327/images/WYWPH2VRo26pOFDid7QZ.png)
So is measuring height by Rulejjs legit too then? I think Con came up with that.