I have said that the Carters owed their little farm to the creek. That
is to say, their farm was made up chiefly of marsh, or diked meadow,
which had been slowly deposited by the waters of the creek at high tide,
then captured and broken into the service of man by the aid of long,
imprisoned ramparts of sodded clay. This marsh land was inexhaustibly
fertile, deep with grass, purple in patches with vetch blossoms, pink
and crimson, along the ditches with beds of wild roses. Outside the dikes
the tawny current of the creek clamored almost ceaselessly, quiet only
for a little while at high water. When the tide was low, or nearly so,
the creek was a shining, slippery, red gash, twisting hither and thither
through stretches of red-brown, sun-cracked flats, whitened here and
there with deposited salt. Where the creek joined the Tantramar, its
parent stream, the abyss of coppery and gleaming ooze revealed at ebb
tide made a picture never to be forgotten; for the tidal Tantramar does
not conform to conventional ideas of what a river should be.
Had the creek been their only creditor the Carters would have been
fortunate. As it was, the little farm was mortgaged up to its full value.
When Captain Carter died of yellow fever on the voyage home from Brazil,
he left the family little besides the farm. To be sure, there was a share
in the ship, besides; but this Mrs. Carter made haste to sell, though
shipping was at the time away down, and she realized almost nothing
from the sale.
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