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