n be heard in
the distance, the tinkle of a tin pail swinging musically to and fro,
the swish of an alder switch cropping the heads of the roadside weeds.
All at once a voice breaks the stillness. Is it a child's, a woman's, or
a man's? Neither yet all three.

"I'd much d'ruth-er walk in the bloom-in' gy-ar-ding,
An' hear the whis-sle of the jol-ly
--swain."

Everybody knows the song, and everybody knows the cracked voice. The
master of this bit of silent wilderness is coming home: it is Tom o' the
blueb'ry plains.

He is more than common tall, with a sandy beard, and a mop of tangled
hair straggling beneath his torn straw hat. A square of wet calico drips
from under the back of the hat. His gingham shirt is open at the throat,
showing his tanned neck and chest. Warm as it is, he wears portions of
at least three coats on his back. His high boots, split in foot and leg,
are mended and spliced and laced and tied on with bits of shingle rope.
He carries a small tin pail of molasses. It has a bail of rope, and
a battered cover with a knob of sticky newspaper. Over one shoulder,
suspended on a crooked branch, hangs a bundle of basket stuff,--split
willow withes and the like; over the other swings a decrepit,
bottomless, three-legged chair.

I call him the master of the plains, but in faith he had no legal claim
to the title. If he owned a habitation or had established a home on any
spot in the universe, it was because no man envied him what he took; for
Tom was one of God's fools, a foot-loose pilgrim in this world of
ours, a poor addle-pated, simple-minded, harmless creature,--in village
parlance, a "softy."

Mother or father, sister or brother, he had none, nor ever had, so far
as any one knew; but how should people who had to work from sun-up to
candlelight to get the better of the climate have leisure to discover
whether or no Blueb'ry Tom had any kin?

At some period in an almost forgotten past there had been a house on
Tom's particular patch of the plains. It had long since tumbled
into ruins and served for fire-wood and even the chimney bricks had
disappeared one by one, as the monotonous seasons came and went.

Tom had settled himself in an old tool-shop, corn-house, or rude
out-building of some sort that had belonged to the ruined cottage. Here
he had set up his house-hold gods; and since no one else had ever wanted
a home in this dreary tangle of berry bushes, where the only shade came
fr