128 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[July 28, 1906. 
Uncle Shaw and Some Others. 
Incidents of Life in a Vermont Village. 
It was in a country village away off in the 
northern part of Vermont, where the Connecti¬ 
cut River winds among the hills, that iust as 
the sun was setting after a warm, muggy day 
in June, Uncle Shaw, as everybody called 
him, espied a man coming along the coun¬ 
try road that led down from the hills. It 
was not a strange thing for a man to come along 
that way; but this man had something in his 
hand that was a puzzle to Uncle Shaw, -and it 
was strictly against his principles to let any¬ 
thing go by that he did not know all about. 
So as the man came near to the store, on the 
piazza of which Uncle Shaw, who was the village 
storekeeper, was seated on an inverted nail keg, 
he was hailed with the remark, “Hullo, Joe, 
what you been doin’ to-day?” 
Thus saluted, Joe turned his Steps toward the 
st'ore door, and stopping with one foot on tl e 
step, said: 
“Wall, bah gosh! I been know it that you was 
a old man, but I ain’t t’ink you was so bad dat 
you ain’t know what a man’s been doing when 
he have it a big string of fish like 1 got.” 
“Fish!” growled the storekeeper, “you call 
them little bits of trout, fish? I should be 
’shamed of myself going around hooking out 
trout so small that their tails grow nigh onto 
their gills.” 
This belittling of the fish did not please Joe, 
who, holding the string of trout before him. 
burst out: “Wall, sah, I more rudder been have 
it two t’ree dozen dem little trouts dan de 
bigges’ codfish you got on your store. Dem 
little trouts was good for eat and make a man’s 
feel glad he could eat something; but dose cod¬ 
fishes you sole my ole woman was so hard and 
salt a man can’t eat him ’less he run it trou 
a coffee mill and boil him more as six hour.” 
This retort was too much for the storekeeper, 
who was a little sensitive on such points, and 
no doubt he would have answered the French¬ 
man rather sharply had not the conversation 
been interrupted just then by the arrival of two 
young men. whose dress told that they were 
strangers. They were stopping at the hotel just 
across the common from the store, and seeing 
the string of fish, had come over to get a close 
view of them. 
One of them said to Joe: “Well, my friend, 
you seem to have had good luck to-day.” 
Joe glanced around at the speaker, and the 
look of pride that was on his face as he was 
talking to the storekeeper gave place to one of 
scorn, and with a look of contempt at the string 
of trout, he said, “No, sah; a good many mans 
would t’ink dem fish was big enough, but I was 
jus’ tole Mister Shaw dem fish was some 1 
dip up when I was get water for drinkin’.” 
“By George! Harry,” said the other young 
man, “1 would like to dip up a few of those 
myself.” 
“Where did you get them?” asked Harry. 
“Out on Cow Mountain road by the stone 
dam. I was out fixin’ fence, and, bah gosh! 
sah, dem trout was so thick, dat when I try to 
drink in the brook 1 can’t keep them out of 
my mouth, so I take it off my hat and dip up 
de water and jes’ have to drink trou de hole in it.” 
The boys looked at the storekeeper and then 
at Joe; but not a smile was on either face, and 
although they might not have believed it, they 
looked at the hole in the hat and said nothing. 
Just at this moment a cow with a large copper 
bell attached to her neck came running down 
the road enveloped in a cloud of dust and fol¬ 
lowed by a small boy, bare-headed and bare¬ 
footed, but wielding a big club with which he 
now and again was able to remove some of the 
dust that had settled on the cow’s sides. Joe 
recognized the sound of the bell, and turning 
around, shouted. “Here you, Edwar, what for 
you run dat cow? Ain’t I told you more as a 
t’ousand time better? Bah gosh! you'll make 
him hold his milk so high I can’t get more as 
two pails full.” And Joe, too, disappeared in 
the cloud of dust toward a little house back from 
the road in the corner of a pasture. 
The boys sat down on some boxes that were 
arranged along on the piazza of the store, and 
watched Joe as he emerged from the cloud of 
dust and with the string of fish in one hand and 
the boy in the other slowly followed the path 
toward the house, while the now quieted cow 
walked along ahead, catching a. bite of grass 
first on one side and then on the other. The 
old storekeeper returned from the store, which 
was also the post office, where he had gone to 
attend to a little girl, who, after he had got 
around the counter, asked if there “was any mail 
for our folks?” and received a very polite but 
decided reply in the negative. 
He resumed his seat on the nail keg and, look¬ 
ing at the boys, said, “Hain’t never been in 
these parts before, have ye?” 
“No,” said Harry, who was the older. “I 
never was; but Will was when he was a little 
fellow. He came with mother when Gran’pa 
King died.” 
“You don’t say? So Uncle Jim King was 
your grand-sir. Wall, I thought you looked like 
the Kings. And you've come up to spend the 
summer, have ye?” 
“No, sir, not to spend the summer; but we 
have heard father tell so much about the fishing 
up here that we wanted to come up to try it.” 
“I want to know. Want to go trout fishing, 
do ye? Wall, I don’t wonder. I ’spose you 
take after your father; he used to be a master 
hand to go fishing. I used to think he had a 
good deal rather go fishing than hoe corn.” 
“Father said there used to be good fishing in 
all of the brooks around here. How is it now?” 
“There is putty good fishing now back at the 
head of the brooks, and it would be better if it 
wa’n’t for that dum Canuck; he is fishing all 
of the time, and gets most of them about as 
soon as they air hatched.” 
“We thought we would like to go up to the 
head of Mill Brook and be gone two or three 
days. Do you think we could get many fish?” 
“Wall, I dunno. They say the fishing out there 
is not very good. Jock Poole went there this 
spring and didn't get but one basket full, and 
there wa’n’t many of them that would go over 
a half pound; but the land sake! you two boys 
would get lost up there all alone. If you are 
going inter the woods, you orter have a man 
along who can find his way out." 
“Father said we must take some one. Whom 
can we get? We will pay them,” said Harry. 
“Wall, the best man for you is that French¬ 
man, Joe: but I dunno as you can get him; he 
is awful busy just now; ’p'r’aps you might if 
you was to offer him a big pay, say a dollar and 
a half a day and eat him, he might go. But 
then I dunno as he would go for you. He is 
so busy; but p'r’aps if I should have a talk with 
him, I might induce him to go, specially as we 
have had some dicker together.” 
Uncle Shaw did not explain that Joe was 
owing him quite a bill, and that here was a 
chance to get some money on it. 
Just then a young man came along and took 
a seat on a flour barrel. He had a big straw 
hat on the back of his head, while his arms and 
shoulders were covered with a blue flannel shirt 
that was tucked into a pair of trousers that came 
nearly to his arms, and were in turn tucked 
into a pair of cowhide boots that, for size, were 
beyond comparison. After very slowly and care¬ 
fully filling his pipe and lighting it, he turned 
to the storekeeper and said, “Say, Shaw, did 
you hear about Green Marshel’s folks killing 
a bear?” 
“No; you don’t say so. They ha’n’t killed an¬ 
other bear out there, have they, George?” 
“That’s what they say,” said George. “There’s 
been one out there on Cow Mountain all the 
spring, and all the folks been trying to kill it. 
It killed two pigs for old Steve Pelham, and 
tipped Deacon Bowles’ hives of bees over, and 
they say it's killed more than a dozen sheep.” 
“How did Green Marshel come to kill it?” 
asked the storekeeper. 
“Wall,”, said George, “Green didn’t kill it him¬ 
self. You know that boy Teddy of his, the one 
they don’t let nobody see?” 
“What! the ‘non-compus’ one?” 
“Yes, lie’s been putty ugly of late, and Green’s 
folks don’t let him out much; he struck one of 
the oxen with his fist this spring and ’most 
killed it; so they have to keep him shut up. 
Well, he heard about there being a bear around, 
and he begged so hard that they used to let him 
out evenings when the men-folks- were around 
to watch him. So night before last he was up 
on the hillside behind the house, sitting on a 
stump and making that kind of whining, sing¬ 
ing noise he does when he is happy, and whit¬ 
tling with a big knife he made out of a pair of 
broken sheep shears. The folks had forgot all 
about him, till all at once there was the awfullest 
yelling and growling noise out there. Green 
rushed into the house after his gun and Miss 
Marshel rushed to find Teddy. Bill Berry—he 
has hired out there for all summer for thirteen 
dollars a month and a ticket to Montpelier to 
the circus, if one comes there—he hollered for 
everybody to run into the house, for the critter 
was a sidehill dingwaul. 
“Wall, Green had to stop to load his gun— 
for he'd shot it to a hawk the day that Deacon 
Bowlses hos run away—and while he was hunt¬ 
ing for a bullet to put in it, Miss Marshel had 
found Teddy wasn’t in the house, and mistrust¬ 
ing that the noise had something to do with him, 
she grabbed the hook that they have to let 
things down into the spring with—you know 
her cellar ain’t good—and started out. She 
says it was so dark that she couldn’t see much, 
but she run up putty near to the noise and saw 
a mess rolling round on the ground; and at 
last made out that it was Teddy and a big black 
animal. What it was she didn’t know, but 
thought by the size and growls that it was a 
bear. 
“She stood round a while trying to get a 
chance to whack it with the hook; but Teddy 
was on top part of the time, so she didn’t dare 
to. But when the bear got on top, she 
would take the hook and turn him over. 
“She thinks they were there a long while, but 
I don't s’pose it was more than a few minutes 
before Teddy got on top and the bear groaned 
once or twice and laid still. Green got there by 
that time and wanted to shoot, but she wouldn’t 
