Night came down sweetly over the mountain that quiet day. It wrapped the village in soft gray folds; the stars came out hazily and shone with a misty golden light; the wind merely whispered in the pines and the hemlocks, and the sound of the falling water was lonely and sad in the ears of Azalea.
Yet she had to be out in the night because—well, that’s a secret. At least it was a secret from Jim. Because he would have laughed. She was to signal the other two girls. It had been agreed upon.
“You see, I nearly die, Sundays,” Annie Laurie had said. “Our house—really I can’t describe our house on Sunday. I feel as if my heart were turning into old red sandstone.”
To have the strong-beating heart of Annie Laurie turn into structural rock was something the friends could not permit. Anyway it would be an excellent thing for Azalea in themountain to know that her friends in the valley were doing well. She could tell if they were doing well, if the lantern was waved sideways; if anything was wrong it was to be swung up and down.
“But I reckon you-all had better not swing it up and down,” she had said, “for though I’ll know by that that something is wrong, of course I won’t know what it is. And the waiting to find out would be dreadful.”
“It will have to be a pretty dreadful ‘something’ to make us give the bad signal, won’t it, Annie Laurie?” Carin had remarked.
So it was with a light heart and a mysterious manner that Azalea, who was supposed to leave the kitchen-living room to go to her own little loft, stole out the back way, took the lantern from its nail, lighted it, and crept to the outlook. She had five minutes to wait before the time appointed, and these moments proved to be a “perfect caution” for slowness. She counted the seconds to make sure—and yet was not sure, for she managed to get in about two counts and a half to each second. However, at last she felt justified in bringing out her light from behind the tree bole where she had hidden it, andwaving it back and forth in enthusiastic announcement that all was right. She couldn’t help thinking with a throb of the heart how very, very right it all was! How sweet the day had been; how filled with comfort for body and soul; how beautiful to be loved as she was loved in that little home! Of course she might have repined that she had not been made Carin’s adopted sister and surrounded with all manner of luxuries, but the love she felt for Mrs. McBirney was too deep, too sincere, to permit such a thought to have a place in her heart for very long.
Yes, her home was a log cabin, and her family simple mountain people. But she could not feel cheated. The taste of the Things That Were was sweet on her palate, and her hope for the future bubbled in her heart as the spring, whose whispering she could hear, bubbled from the ground.
So back and forth in the gray air went her lantern, saying:
“All is well! All is well!”
Azalea actually laughed aloud to think of Carin, all in her Sunday best, stealing out of that stately drawing-room and creeping up thestairs to the huge cupola and standing there on the roof in the wind and night, waving her lantern. What fun it was to know a girl like that—a girl who wasn’t afraid to do things, if she was rich and beautiful. There was some “go” in Carin, no doubt about it, though she did look so delicate and alabasterish. Azalea loved to invent words, and she invented “alabasterish” on the moment.
Back and forth went her lantern, saying: “All is well! All is well!”
But what did that mean? Annie Laurie’s lantern, full and strong and like a star, had shone through the light mist and was being waved frantically up and down. Mercy! how it waved.
“All is wrong! All is wrong!” it protested.
What could that mean? Carin, of course, would know in a few minutes. She would telephone. But Azalea had no telephone and she would not be allowed to ride to the valley at night.
“All is wrong—oh, very, very, wrong!” the lantern kept on saying.
What could she do to let Annie Laurie know that she understood? Poor Annie Laurie, who was brave about everything! It was a real trouble, Azalea felt sure. Had one of the aunts fallen and broken a bone? Could Mr. Pace beill? Were the cattle poisoned? Azalea took her lantern and twisted it around and around until it must have looked to Annie Laurie like a snare of fireflies. Then Carin, understanding, did the same thing. After that it was dark on Carin’s roof; then Annie Laurie’s lantern disappeared too. They had gone to the telephone, Azalea inferred.
She stamped back through the dew, hot with impatience. “I shan’t sleep a wink to-night,” she declared.
She undressed in anguish of soul, sank on her knees and sent up a fervent prayer for her friend, and then throwing herself on what she expected and desired to be a sleepless bed, fell fast asleep.
Yet in her sleep she had many dreams, and in each of them Annie Laurie appeared, always in some horrid plight. Now wolves were chasing her; now she had fallen over the cataract; now the horses were running away with her; now she was speeding down the road again, away from the scorn of her schoolmates, and little drops of blood were falling on the road from her shattered heart.
But none of these things were anywhere nearthe truth, though nothing could be more terrible to Annie Laurie than what actually had happened.
It had come about after church. Dinner was over; the house had been tidied, and the two aunts and Mr. Pace and Annie Laurie sat in the sitting room before a fine fire. The aunts had taken out their pious books and were reading them. Mr. Pace was engaged in plodding sleepily through somebody’s account of the “Thirty Year’s War.” As for Annie, she was supposed to be writing to a friend, but as a matter of fact she was scribbling some verses which she meant to show to the girls the next day. Nibbling the end of one’s pen is more or less of a necessity when one is writing verses, and Annie Laurie, having got as far as that—and not much farther—was sampling the fine inky flavor of hers, and so chanced to look up and to let her glance fall on her father.
At first she was only conscious that his expression was not quite familiar to her. Then—well, then suddenly and terribly, she saw that he was indeed changed—that something frightful had happened to him. She sprang toward him, calling his name.
“Father—father!”
But no answer came.
The aunts came running, terror in their faces.
“Paralysis,” said Miss Adnah. “Zillah, call the doctor. Azalea, help me lay him down—yes, on the floor. Open the window. Go get his bed ready, Zillah, after you’ve got the doctor. We and the doctor between us must get him in bed.”
Annie Laurie did all she was told. She couldn’t realize what had happened. Something seemed to be whirling around and around in her brain, and all it said was:
“Isn’t Aunt Adnah wonderful? Isn’t Aunt Adnah wonderful?”
She was indeed a general in times of trouble. Why, once when she was young—but there isn’t time to tell Aunt Adnah’s story now.
There was time for nothing, it seemed. It had come like a lightning-flash. Even the doctor was unable to aid. Simeon Pace lay in his bed, looking at them with tortured eyes. It seemed to Annie Laurie that he was trying to make her understand something—with all his vanishing power he was trying to give her some important piece of information. She put her ear to hislips; she listened with the very ears of her soul; but the thing he wished her to know went into silence with him. A dread convulsion brought the end.
Annie Laurie, standing aghast, knew she was fatherless as well as motherless. Yet it couldn’t be! Why, only a little while before everything had been well. Had been well! That reminded her of the signal they were to send—the signal that was to remind each member of the Girl’s Triple Alliance that they had not forgotten each other. And they had agreed not to send the “bad” message unless something very terrible happened. They had laughed about it! And now the terrible thing really had happened. Or had it? Was it, perhaps, only a frightful dream? But no, it was true—and her heart ached so! If only the girls knew! Well, she would tell them. She sat near the clock, watching it. Perhaps when she let the girls know, her throat wouldn’t ache so with that new, strange, crushing pain. Perhaps her eyeballs would cease burning. How busy it seemed around the house! People were coming and going. They stopped to speak to her, and she found herself saying mechanically:
“Yes, I know. You are very kind. To-morrow I’ll understand better. Thank you—to-morrow.”
Out of sheer compassion they left her alone.
Seven o’clock. It was time for the signal. She found the lantern and made her way, unseen, to the roof. Azalea’s light shone at her from the gray air, far, far up the ridge. Carin’s light flashed from the roof of the mansion. All was well with them. They were laughing—Annie Laurie knew they were laughing. And she—she waved her lantern up and down and up and down with a kind of passion. She must make them know how deep was the sorrow that had befallen her. And they seemed to know. It was as if she could feel the streams of their sympathy rolling toward her. Yes, they understood. That queer fluttering of their lanterns assured her of it. Annie Laurie left her roof and descending into the attic, sank on an old settle there. She dragged a horse blanket over her and at last the storm of her anguish broke, and she wept and wept.
Was it a long time—weary hours and hours—before Annie Laurie found her way down the stairs? She never could be sure. A man, whom she did not at first recognize, was leaving her father’s room. For a second she felt like rushing at him to tell him that he, a stranger, should not be in there—in that sacred chamber where her father lay dead and defenseless. Then she saw that it was Mr. Disbrow, the undertaker, and realized what his task had been. He had been making her father ready for his last resting place.
But surely the man was not ashamed of his task! He shot one glance at Annie Laurie, and then without speaking, hastened down the stairs and out of the front door. Was he sorry for her and at a loss to say how sorry, and so had run away? Annie Laurie could understand that. She would have felt much the same way herself. Yet it was, she decided, an odd way for a man tofeel who was so often in the house of mourning as an undertaker naturally would be. However, it mattered little. She was glad he hadn’t spoken to her. And yet, when she thought of him as Sam’s father, it was curious that he hadn’t. Of course it might be that he knew nothing of the good friendship which existed between Sam and herself, and he might not approve of it anyway. The Disbrows were great for keeping to themselves. So were the Paces, but the Paces were busy folk; they liked their neighbors even if they didn’t see much of them. But one always had the feeling that the Disbrows shut themselves away from society because they had something against it—nobody quite knew what. Only Sam—Sam was different. He was made to live in the world and to enjoy it.
A vision of him, wide-shouldered, brown-haired—his hair would have curled a trifle if he had not continually discouraged it—brown-eyed, smiling, frank, energetic, arose before Annie Laurie. He had a ringing laugh, and the neighbors said he dared to laugh even in that silent shut-up house where his mother lay on her sofa, with mouse-like, cross-eyed Hannah watching beside her. It came over Annie Laurie thatshe had disliked them for things that were none of their fault. Mrs. Disbrow couldn’t help being ill; Hannah couldn’t help being cross-eyed; and it was beautiful of her to be always beside her mother.
Yet, as she paced the floor of her bedroom thinking about her father, with her tortured thoughts leaping this way and that as if they were struggling to escape from sorrow, a conviction came over her that sickness often was the fault of the person who suffered from it. She knew that an atmosphere of gloom hung over Sam’s house; that if he opened up the windows Hannah was told to close them; if he brought in flowers they had to be thrown out because they gave his mother a cold; if he built a fire in the fireplace for cheerfulness, it was considered unsafe, owing to a defect in the chimney. The stove was sufficient—and indeed more than sufficient, since the temperature of the room was at least eighty the winter through. Poor Sam! Annie Laurie knew that he had suggested that the chimney be mended so that they might sometimes sit by the open fire, letting the raging stove subside; he had urged Hannah to have an operation that would set her eyes straight,but the family had been too fearful of the results. So they sat in gloom and hideousness within their power to remedy. At least that was how it looked to Sam’s impatient, energetic nature, and Annie Laurie took the same view.
Miss Zillah came in after a time, with arms and words of comfort for her girl.
“Carin called up about seven o’clock,” she said, after a time when Annie Laurie had wept out her grief on her good aunt’s shoulder. “She seemed to know you were in trouble, though I don’t understand how she could have found out.”
Annie Laurie told her of the signalling.
“Well, she wanted to come right over to you, but I told her to wait until to-morrow. Was I right?”
Annie Laurie nodded.
“Get undressed now, poor one,” soothed Aunt Zillah. “See, I’ll open your bed and warm it for you. Put on this flannel nightgown, that’s a dear. And I’ll bring you a glass of milk—unless you want something heartier.”
It was wonderful, being petted like this. She had led a chilly life, had Annie Laurie. She had known kindness, but not, it must be confessed, warm love. Yet now Aunt Zillah’scompassion and affection wrapped her about like a cloak. How did the old song run?
“Come under my plaidie, the night’s gaun to fa’;Come in frae the cauld blast, the drift and the snaw;Come under my plaidie and sit down beside me,There’s room in’t, dear lassie, believe me, for twa.”
“Come under my plaidie, the night’s gaun to fa’;Come in frae the cauld blast, the drift and the snaw;Come under my plaidie and sit down beside me,There’s room in’t, dear lassie, believe me, for twa.”
Yes, she would get in under Aunt Zillah’s plaidie and she would let the dear old lady know that she was grateful to her for having asked her. So, when she had drunk the warm fresh milk and been tucked in her bed, she put her arms around Aunt Zillah’s wrinkled neck and gave her a long, long hug.
“We’ll never, never go back on each other, will we?” she whispered tremulously.
“Never, lass, never,” responded the old lady, the tears dripping from her eyes on Annie Laurie’s upturned face. So, sweetened by a sorrow, which was after all but a natural and right sorrow such as must come to all, Annie Laurie sank into the dead sleep of grief.
The next few days were blurred and strange. Friends came to the house. Flowers arrived inboxes. There were many telephone messages. The aunts were called up from the telegraph office. There was business to do at the cemetery; arrangements to make at the church. Through it all, Annie Laurie strove to do her part. There would be time enough for grieving afterward, she decided. The thing now was not to let too heavy a burden fall on her aunts, who were, as Annie Laurie seemed to discover for the first time, really getting to be old ladies.
But at last it all was over. The house was quiet and peaceful. And the help on the farm came to Miss Adnah for instructions.
It must have been three days after the funeral that Mr. Carson called one afternoon and asked to see Annie Laurie and her aunts. It was like him, in his thoughtfulness to include her, Annie Laurie thought. She did not know that Charles Carson, who liked almost everybody and who had the best will in the world toward all mankind, nevertheless, knowing as much of human nature as he did, thought it best to take her at once into council concerning matters that would affect her future life.
He was received in the stiff little parlor, the two sisters sitting opposite him in prim dignity,and Annie Laurie instinctively putting her chair near his.
“I am sure you will pardon me for speaking to you concerning your affairs,” he said in his hearty way. “I would not venture to do so uninvited, were it not a matter that in a way concerns me also.”
“Yes, sir,” said Miss Adnah and Miss Zillah in unison. Annie Laurie fixed her reddish-brown eyes upon him with devotion, and said nothing.
“The day before Mr. Pace died,” he went on, “I paid him twenty thousand dollars in cash.”
Annie Laurie stared; the sisters started.
“It seemed to me foolish enough to pass such a sum of money over in simple currency, but as you probably know, your brother”—he was now addressing himself to the elder ladies—“had a prejudice against banks. I wished to give him my check. He said he had no use for checks. He wanted money. It was a curious idiosyncrasy of his, but since he wished it that way I humored him. He put the roll of bills into his pocket—I paid the money to him at Mr. Heller’s bank—and drove away with it. That was Saturday afternoon. He died Sunday. I havecome to inquire—with only neighborly motives, I beg you to believe—whether or not you have seen anything of that roll of bills.”
There was a slight pause. Then:
“I have seen nothing of it, sir,” said Miss Adnah.
“Nor I, sir,” added Miss Zillah.
“Oh, and there must have been more money,” broke in Annie Laurie, “much, much more! I know papa always had a lot, Mr. Carson, but I haven’t an idea where he kept it. None of us had. If we ever asked him for money he would go away for a time and presently come back with the bills he meant to give us. He had some place where he hid it, and I used to think he ought to tell some one of us where it was.”
“I should think so, indeed,” said Mr. Carson rather heatedly. “Then you haven’t any of you a notion where he kept his funds?”
“Not an earthly idea!” cried Annie Laurie.
“We haven’t the faintest notion, sir,” said Miss Adnah. “I will confess now that sister and I got up in the night—last night it was—and looked everywhere in his room. We even lifted the edges of the carpet and took the back off the steel engravings. We looked, of course, in thebureau, and the chest and the closet. We found nothing. It was our intention to begin to-night searching in the other rooms of the house.”
“But why in the night, ladies?”
Miss Adnah looked rather offended, as if Mr. Carson had gone a little too far in asking such questions. But Miss Zillah broke out with:
“Oh, you see, sir, it seemed so silly and absurd for us to have to do a thing like that. My opinion is that brother Simeon should have kept up with the times and used a bank like other men. I hate to have the neighbors know what trouble and embarrassment he has put us to.”
Miss Adnah looked at her sister in amazement. She, who was so gentle of judgment and of speech, was actually criticising a Pace—and her own dead brother at that! But Mr. Carson turned a look of appreciation on the flushed little face of the old lady.
“The Paces are not all cranks, anyway,” was his thought. “This Miss Zillah seems a very sensible sort of a woman—quite fit to be related to Annie Laurie.”
The reflection would have surprised Miss Adnah very much had she known of it, for she regarded herself as a person of singular goodsense. Indeed, she secretly thought that she had, so far as the Paces were concerned, rather a monopoly of it. Zillah she regarded as something of a dreamer, too sentimental, or “soft,” as she put it, by half; and she felt very disapproving when she heard her pass uncomplimentary judgment upon one of the family. That was a privilege which Miss Adnah reserved for herself.
“You see, sir,” Miss Zillah went on, blurting out a family secret which Miss Adnah would have starved rather than let anyone know, “we haven’t a cent in the world. The small amount which my sister and I had in our purses has been used up during the last few days. We owe for all the expenses of our brother’s funeral. Really, I may say that we don’t know which way to turn.”
“My dear Miss Zillah,” responded Mr. Carson, “I will place a sum of money at your disposal immediately.”
Why, Miss Adnah wondered, did he turn to Zillah instead of to her? It seemed to her that it ought to be evident to anyone that she was now the head of the house.
“Moreover,” Mr. Carson went on, “I willdeposit the sum in the bank and send you the bank book. I know this will be more in accord with your ideas.”
There was a little twinkle in his eye as he said this, but Miss Zillah did not catch it. She was really much flattered that he should think her a person capable of conducting things in a businesslike way, and she would not have shown by the flutter of an eyelash how frightened she really was at the suggestion.
“Then,” continued Mr. Carson, “our next business will be to find that money. I propose that you call in one or two trusty neighbors, not given to gossiping, and that they assist you in looking over the premises. The money must be here somewhere. It merely devolves on us to find it.”
Miss Adnah made a gesture of distress.
“I don’t believe, sir,” she said, “that you can have any notion of how intensely distressing it is to us to do such a thing. And I may say that we have no neighbors who wouldn’t gossip. If you have any such, please show them to me.”
Annie Laurie, who knew her Aunt Adnah’s tempestuous nature, saw that a storm was rising, and she cast about for a way of diverting it.
“Aunt Adnah,” she broke in, “let Azalea and Carin help us hunt. You know if it’s a secret they’ll never, never, tell it. We’ve pledged ourselves to keep each other’s secrets, you see. And no one can look as hard as we girls can. We’re like ferrets.”
“An excellent idea, Miss Pace,” said Mr. Carson, nodding at Aunt Adnah. “Let the members of the Triple Alliance have a hand at it. It will seem natural enough for Annie Laurie’s friends to be here with her in her trouble; the girls will tell nothing; and their keen young wits are the best ones imaginable to set at this task.”
Upon consultation it struck the sisters that this would be the case. Bad as it would be to have three “young-ones” ranging over their orderly house, tearing up this and that, they would at least take the thing only as a sort of game. They wouldn’t be ill-natured and sneering about it as their elders might be.
So it was agreed that they would accept Mr. Carson’s offer of a generous loan of money, and that on Saturday the three girls were to start in under the direction of the Misses Pace, and make a search of both house and yard.
“Their eyes certainly are sharper than ours, Adnah,” Miss Zillah said.
“Yes,” snapped Miss Adnah, worn and weary with the difficulties of life, “they’re sharp enough. Oh, Zillah, Zillah, why should we Paces be humiliated like this?”
“No humiliation about it, sister,” Miss Zillah replied. “Take things a little easier, Adnah; let some one help us out. We’re very much shaken—very much shaken, indeed. We’re getting old, and we’ve had a great sorrow. If folks want to help, why let ’em.”
There was no doubt about it, they were shaken. The excitement and courage that had borne them up at first, failed them as the week went on. Miss Adnah, who had felt herself so able to attend to the business of the farm, not only found it beyond her power to give an order, but she found it impossible to fix her mind on the bookkeeping, which was a necessary part of the business. Annie Laurie had been obliged to consult with the help after her school hours, and to straighten out the accounts as best she could during the evening. They felt the need of a strong, quiet man of affairs—a good, reliable overseer—but the men who were helping them were notof that sort, and they knew of no one in the country who seemed to meet their need.
Saturday morning by nine o’clock, according to Annie Laurie’s invitation, Azalea and Carin arrived on their ponies. These being given to the stable men, the two girls, in no little awe at entering a house of sorrow, came in to pay their respects to Miss Zillah and her sister. The two sat shivering before the fire, tearful and nervous, and even Miss Adnah was now willing to give over the search for their lost fortune into the hands of these respectful and sympathetic girls.
“At first, my dear girls,” said Aunt Zillah brokenly, “it seemed as if we couldn’t let anyone in to help us and it’s hard enough now, but we’d rather it would be you than anyone.”
“Oh, Miss Zillah,” cried Azalea in her impulsive way, “we understand just how you feel. But Annie Laurie’s fortune just must be found, mustn’t it? Why, it’s a quest, you know. A sacred quest—like you read about.”
That glow which was Azalea’s greatest charm, lit up her dark face and Miss Zillah felt that here was a girl who was one of them. She need fear nothing from her. As for that sweet-faced Carson girl, with her golden hair and herlovely voice, how could anyone do anything but trust her? Yes, it was all as it should be. They were old women and must give their cares into the hands of others.
So the three girls began their never-to-be-forgotten search for Annie Laurie’s lost fortune.
Although the aunts had gone over the dead man’s room, they thought best to begin there. So thorough was their search that they even ripped open the lining of his coats; they looked in his shoes; they investigated his hat linings. Nothing was found.
Then they searched the hallways, the pantries and cupboards. They looked throughout the parlor, through the living room, through the kitchen. They had one of the men in to pull up the window sills. They took the bricks from the hearth. Nightfall found them wearily searching the dusty debris in the old attic.
Sunday was a day of rest for all of these people, but it was very, very hard for them to sit in idleness while their imaginations were rioting through the Pace property, searching out every corner and cubbyhole for the lost money. Naturally enough, Monday found the girls in no condition to settle down to their studies, and asMrs. Carson said, it was so much more important that the money should be found than that they should learn a lesson or two, that they were excused from school and permitted to resume their search.
The yard was their point of attack this morning. They looked over every inch of it, but nowhere did they see anything save the hard, frozen surface. No hollow tree offered a place for hiding. The solid substructure of the house forbade them to hope for anything there. Next they went to the barns, the stables and outhouses, but here the prospect was discouraging indeed.
“Besides,” said Annie Laurie, “when papa wanted to get money for any purpose he always went to his own room and locked the door. It seemed as if he must have kept it with him.”
“But how can that be,” argued Carin, dropping white and worn into her chair—they were in Annie Laurie’s room,—“when nothing has been found anywhere about his clothes? Why, the only pocketbook he appeared to have was that little one for silver. Didn’t you ever see him with a large leather pocketbook, Annie?”
“Never,” said Annie Laurie. “Never.”
“But now, when papa paid him that twenty thousand dollars,” Carin insisted. “Do you suppose he brought that home in his hand the way a child would a penny, or rolled it up in his pocket where it could fall out any minute? It doesn’t seem reasonable; honestly it doesn’t.”
And then, suddenly, Azalea had a vision. She saw a man come into a dark room—a room lighted only by a flickering fire. She saw him lay aside his coat, unscrew his tin arm, take something from the mantel shelf, place it within, then replace the arm and the coat. She remembered how he had asked her if she ever dreamed, and how she had said she never told her dreams, and he had said that was right. And she had remembered the look that had gone from him to her and back again—a look which was a promise on her part not to tell what she had seen and a message from him of confidence in her. She sat rigid, going over the scene again before she spoke. When she did the girls hardly recognized her voice.
“I know!” she said—not very loud.
“You know?” The others cried it together.
“He kept his money in his tin arm.”
“No!”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw him put some there once.”
“When?”
“Where?”
“The night Annie Laurie and I fell asleep on the sofa.”
“Tell me more, ’Zalie.”
“Yes, yes, I will. I’ll tell you everything. Oh, Annie Laurie, was the tin arm buried with him?”
“No—no, I’m sure it wasn’t. It was hanging on a nail in his bedroom the day after he was buried, but the aunts couldn’t bear to see it there and they carried it to the attic.”
“Then the money couldn’t have been in it after all.”
“Oh, it might still be there. Let’s go see.”
Up to the attic they went, trembling with eagerness. There, sure enough, from a beam hung the tin arm. Annie Laurie could not quite bring herself to touch it. It seemed almost like a part of her father. But Azalea took it down, convinced that she was right. She looked into it; carried it to one of the windows and lookedagain. She ran her fingers into the hand of it. She turned her disappointed face toward her friends. There was nothing there.
“All the same,” she said with earnestness, “itwasthere.”
“But then some one has taken it out.”
“That’s it,” said Carin. “Some one has taken it out.”
“Not the aunts!” cried Annie Laurie, fiercely.
“Oh, mercy no,” agreed Azalea, “not the aunts.”
“But who else handled the arm?” asked Carin.
Annie Laurie stood thinking. Then a deep flush spread over her face.
“I—I don’t—who else could have?” she stammered. She couldn’t bear to place anyone under suspicion.
But Azalea was more impulsive.
“Why Mr. Disbrow, the undertaker, of course,” she said. “He must have taken it off. He must have—” she stopped and the three stared at each other.
And then Annie Laurie remembered how he had crowded by her in the hall, not speaking, and looking the other way.
The three girls made up their minds to tell no one of their suspicions concerning the disappearance of Simeon Pace’s money. But Azalea could not but talk it over with Pa McBirney, and Thomas McBirney could not resist cogitating about the matter with Haystack Thompson, and he, in turn, was impelled to go with it to his trusted pastor, Absalom Summers. And Absalom whispered it to his Barbara, and Barbara—but perhaps she told no one. In looking the matter over afterward, she was almost sure that she had told no one. At least she hadn’t told of it right out. And Carin spoke of it only to her father; and he mentioned it merely to the banker Heller, and he only spoke of it to his fellow officers in the bank, and they told no one but their intimate friends.
As for Annie Laurie, she refrained with a mighty effort from confiding her suspicions to her aunts, and she warned her friends not to tellthem. Had they mulled that matter over and over during the long, lonely winter evenings, the poor girl would have felt as if she were losing her reason as well as her fortune. Indeed, the winter had settled down heavily over the Pace household. The dairy met with reverses. Two of the best cows died. The accounts would not balance. And worst of all, the helpers were hard to manage and would not take orders willingly from Miss Adnah. The strong will and hand of Simeon Pace were sorely missed.
And along with all this distress was the sense that Annie Laurie and her aunts had of burning injustice. Somewhere in the world was money in abundance, belonging to them. Just how much it was they could not even guess. Of Mr. Carson’s purchase money of twenty thousand dollars they felt sure. He had Simeon Pace’s receipt to show for that. But there was other money beyond question—the savings of years. The old aunts, waking in the night, would arise and fumble in the places in which they had looked so often; and Annie Laurie, strong and sensible as she was, found that it required all of her will to keep from following their example.
This girl, so straightforward, so energetic and hopeful by nature, found it almost intolerable to sit around, patient under injustice. She proposed to Mr. Carson that he should go to Hector Disbrow and accuse him of the theft of the money—tell him the whole thing was known, and that he must refund it or be arrested. But Mr. Carson shook his head.
“As a matter of fact, my dear,” he said, “the thing isn’t known at all. It is only surmised. Azalea, in semi-darkness, thought she saw your father put something in his arm. She may have been mistaken. Or even if she were not mistaken about his doing so on that particular occasion, it doesn’t in the least follow that your father carried the money in question there. Above all, it does not follow that it was in the arm the day of his death; or that, even if it was there, that the undertaker stole it. The tin arm must have hung in the room for days. Many persons visited that room. Any one of them might be guilty.”
“Then is there nothing at all that can be done, sir?”
“Nothing at present. I am watching Disbrow—indeed, I may say the whole community hashim under suspicion. If he is guilty be sure that sooner or later it will come out.”
“But here we are, getting deeper and deeper in debt to you!”
“Annie Laurie, I am convinced that every cent I have advanced you will be paid back to me in time. You are a brave girl. I trust you completely. I feel that you are going to make a success of life. Meantime, you are living on borrowed capital. But so are thousands of others. Back of it all, you must remember, is the fine farm as security. It is a perfectly clear business proposition. Have no fears, child.”
She strengthened under the tone he used in speaking to her. If he had pitied her, she would have broken down, but he merely put it to her that she was playing her part in the world, and she braced herself to play that part well and not disappoint him or any of her other friends.
She tried to avoid Sam Disbrow, yet it seemed to be her luck to meet him oftener than usual. He was very sorry for her, she could see, and he assumed his brightest and heartiest manner when he was with her, in his efforts to help her to be happy.
One day when there was a feeling of springin the air, and she had gone along one of the little winding paths through the pine wood, she met him with his gun on his shoulder and his dogs at his heels.
“Why, Annie Laurie,” he cried, “are you out hunting too?”
The deep suspicion and anger she felt toward his father put some irritation into her tone as she said:
“And why are you hunting, Sam? I thought you were working in the box factory office.”
“Well, so I was. You see, I had finished school here and dad couldn’t afford to send me away. I might have gone anyway, and somehow worked my way through Rutherford Academy, but Hannah said I oughtn’t to leave mother. So I stayed—though it didn’t seem to me quite the best thing to do. But now, suddenly, dad says I’m to go away to school. At first I refused. I was afraid it would mean pinching and scrimping for all the rest of them at home. But dad said, no, things were a little easier with him now, and I’d better take the chance while I had it.”
Annie Laurie stood before him in the path staring, while Sam waited in vain for her congratulations.
“So, yesterday,” he went on in a somewhat dashed tone, “a fellow came to the factory looking for work. He said he needed it very badly—had his mother to look after. So I spoke up and said I was leaving to go into the Rutherford Academy at the spring term, and that I’d get out and let him have my place. You see, there were a number of things I wanted to do around home before I went away. And I was just crazy to get off in the hills for a day or two. That’s the way with us down here, isn’t it, Annie Laurie? We can keep under roof only about so long. Then we have to go roving for a spell.”
Annie Laurie hardly heard what he said. She could with difficulty keep from breaking out with:
“But where is the money coming from that is to send you away to the academy? Didn’t you ask your father how he came by this money so suddenly? Have you no notion of what he has done to earn this money? Can you be living a lie—just as he is?”
There swept back to her memory the words the minister had said that day in church when she had caught Sam’s eye, and had known what he was thinking.
“Plant a lie in the garden of your soul,” he had said, “and it will flourish worse than any poisonous weed. Do not think you can uproot it when you will, for it will grow and grow till it is stronger than you, and not all your prayers and tears can rend its terrible roots out of your life.”
Sam had wondered, as she had, why the preacher should have talked like that to a congregation of good people. For they had all seemed good to her; but now she realized that if the Disbrows were living a lie perhaps other persons whom she knew and liked were doing so, too. For the first time in Annie Laurie’s life a tidal wave of suspicion, distrust and hatred of the world swept over her, and it seemed like a wicked place—a place made up of beings who tried to injure each other.
She felt so ill that she leaned against a tree.
Sam seemed to take no notice, however. He was watching his dogs, and talking on and on in his cheerful way.
“And another fine thing is going to happen,” he said. “Dad has got up spunk enough at last to send Hannah up to Williamsburg to have her eyes operated upon, and sis has found the courageto go. Do you know, I believe that after she gets those poor eyes of hers straightened she won’t be so shy and queer as she is now. I suppose she loathes going out where she’ll meet people, when she has to look all over the premises whenever she tries to fix her eyes on the person she’s talking to. Then, if dad could only get some one in to take care of poor mother, Hannah could go away to school too, perhaps, and grow to be a little more like other folks.”
Annie Laurie knew that Sam would not have talked about his own people in this free way to anyone but her. The two had spoken out their minds to each other for years, and it had come to be second nature for them to do it.
And now here they were with a black secret between them. She, Annie Laurie, who had meant always to be Sam’s true friend, was suspicious of him! Yet she could not look at him, standing there smiling in the spring sunlight, his eyes full of enthusiasm, and think him guilty of any knowledge of wrong-doing on the part of his father.
How very, very strange life seemed! Once she had thought it like a road. One had only to walk ahead, doing right and nodding to thepassers-by, and all would be well. Now she saw how it twisted, turned, and split—this road—and how difficult it was to tell which turning to take, or which by-path to seek.
Then an impulse came over her almost as strong and swift as one of those which were forever besetting Azalea.
“Sam,” she said, “I haven’t been in your house for years. Do you know, I would like to go. I’d like to go now. Do you think I might?”
Sam flushed a little and hesitated a moment.
“Why, yes, Annie, I don’t know why you shouldn’t. Mother doesn’t see many people, as you know; and they won’t be expecting you, but if you’ll take things as you find them—”
“Oh, yes, Sam,” she aid dryly. “That’s just what I mean. I want to take them as they are. I want to get acquainted with your family.”
He looked pleased and softened at that.
“Do you, Annie Laurie?” he said with a little thrill in his voice. “Well, that sure is nice of you. Not very many of the neighbors seem to care whether they live or die. Come along, then. Let’s go now.”
So they turned in the direction of the Disbrow house, Annie Laurie leading and Sam walkingbehind, nervously smiling, the dogs at his heels.
They turned in at the Disbrow place, passing through the sagging gate, and Sam uttered his first apology.
“I’ve tried and tried to get that old gate to stay up on the level,” he said. “But seems like we never have the proper tools to do anything with; and anyhow, the wood’s so rotten it won’t hold a nail, hardly.”
“Oh, a sagging gate is nothing,” answered Annie Laurie dully.
The little garden had not yet felt the influence of spring, and it looked dejected enough. Fragments of last year’s mosquito netting dangled at the windows; the paint of the little house was weather-worn; the arms were off the bench on the porch. Green shades kept the light from making its way into the low rooms. Indeed, so dim was the room into which Annie Laurie stepped that at first she could see nothing. The heat was fairly sweltering, and the atmosphere was lifeless and stale-smelling.
“Mother,” said Sam gently, “I’ve brought a friend to see you—Annie Laurie Pace.”
“Oh,” sighed a voice from the gloom, struggling between reproachfulness and naturalpoliteness, “have you? How do you do, Annie Laurie?”
“I’m very well, thank, you ma’am. Are you feeling any better?”
“No—no, I don’t seem to get any better. Sam, you’ll have to pull up a shade. Annie Laurie won’t be able to see a thing.”
Annie Laurie closed her eyes for an instant. She dreaded what she would see, and yet she had long wished to know the truth—to know what Sam’s strange home was like. She heard the shade being raised, and with something of an effort she opened her eyes and looked about. What she saw gave her a shock. Her own home was ugly enough, as she knew well; but poverty was here, and worse than poverty—indifference to appearances. The almost bare apartment wore that dejected and unhappy aspect of a room for which no one cares and in which no one hopes. It was a sad room—a sick room—with a long couch and its occupant for the chief objects.
Yes, the couch was long and wide, though the woman who lay on it was so small. Figured brown calico covered the bed, and the woman was dressed in a wrapper of faded blue. Therewas no collar about her throat—only the coarse open neck-band, showing a shriveled neck. Her face was bloodless and bleached like a vegetable that has grown in the dark, and out of it looked a pair of weary eyes, beneath which were deep, dark circles. Her hair—brown, touched with gray—was brushed back straight and flat from her bulging brow, and this, with her high-arched eyebrows, gave her an almost Chinese look. Her hands, thinner and more apathetic than any hands Annie Laurie ever had seen, lay on the calico cover.
“It’s not very often I have light let in here,” she said. “It makes my head ache so.”
Annie Laurie did not say that she ought not to have let it in for her, if that was the case. She couldn’t really feel that this was the case. She was glad the light was in the room for once, and by it, she moved toward Mrs. Disbrow’s bed, her hand outstretched with something almost like satisfaction, for she knew as she looked in that woman’s face, that if her fortune had been stolen from her by the undertaker, his wife did not know it. She was as convinced of this woman’s innocence when she looked at her, as she was of her pitiful condition. So she took one of theclaw-like hands in her own strong grasp and sat down beside her. Mrs. Disbrow’s face was quivering with the excitement of meeting a stranger.
“Sam often talks of you,” said his mother in her fluttering voice. “I’ve been wanting to see you. You’re a strong, fine girl, Annie.”
“Yes, I’m strong and well,” the girl answered. “I’m very thankful.”
“Well, I haven’t known a well day for years,” said the invalid. “Here I lie, racked with pain, and I declare I don’t know whether it’s one day or another.”
Annie Laurie felt herself bracing against this discouraged tone.
“Well,” she said, “I don’t suppose you really have to worry about what day it is. You have nothing to do—no Monday washing to think of, or Saturday baking. Some one else does all that for you.”
She spoke merely to present a cheerful side, but Mrs. Disbrow flushed a trifle. Annie Laurie saw that she had said something that annoyed her.
“Yes,” the sick woman replied still more dejectedly, “I’m nothing but a drag on my family.I often say to them that it would be better if I was out of their way.”
“I don’t suppose that makes them very happy—hearing you say that.” Annie Laurie replied in her hearty way. It really seemed to her as if that was the unkindest thing a mother could say to her children. “If only I could have my mother, sick or well, or any way at all, I’d be the happiest girl in the world. It’s terribly lonely being without a mother—or a father,” she added almost in a whisper.
Mrs. Disbrow reached out her hand and laid it on Annie Laurie’s.
“Poor girl,” she murmured with what was almost her first thought of anyone save herself, that winter.
“And—Oh, I feel so sorry for Sam and Hannah, with you ill always,” went on Annie Laurie. “Of course it spoils their happiness. It seems such a pity! Isn’t there anything that can be done, Mrs. Disbrow? Doesn’t any doctor know how to cure you? Haven’t you any idea yourself of what ought to be done?”
“Well, my husband talks of going West soon,” answered Mrs. Disbrow with something like vivacity—or rather, like a shadow of it. “I’mlooking forward to that. If we could get to a new place and to a new house, and if there was something to look forward to, and hope for the children to make something of themselves, I don’t know—maybe—” her voice trailed off and her eyes fixed themselves in an aimless reverie on the opposite wall.
So they were going West! That was the plan. The man who had been unable to give his family a chance, who had been broken by this long illness of his wife’s, who had failed to make his place among men, was going West. His chance had come to him at last. Had it come through theft? Annie Laurie found herself wishing that they might indeed have the chance, these poor people who seemed never to have been able to step out into the sunshine. Yet had they a right to this chance—if it meant her defeat? Could she let them go this way, while she was left to struggle with poverty?
The door opened and a girl entered. Hannah! She was so slender that Annie Laurie, who was broad of shoulder, with a backbone that might have been made of steel, wondered how the poor thing managed to keep upright. Her face was ivory-colored, her frock an ill-fittinggingham of a hideous “watermelon” pink. She turned her dreadfully crossed eyes on Annie Laurie—or to be correct, turned one of them on her—and looked at her resentfully.
“This is sister Hannah, Annie Laurie,” said Sam in rather a stifled voice. “You two girls ought to know each other, you know.”
“How do you do?” said Hannah, miserable with shyness.
“Oh, I’m pretty well, thank you, Hannah,” Annie Laurie answered, and then she added: “But I can’t say I’m very happy. You wouldn’t expect that. I’m very, very lonely without my father.”
She had risen and stood before the girl, with her bald little statement of sorrow, and Hannah, forgetting herself and her fears for a moment, looked up at Annie Laurie with sympathy in her face.
“Oh,” she said, “it’s too bad. I—I cried after I heard of it.”
She seemed astonished at herself for saying so much, and Sam looked at her with amazement. Had Hannah actually cried over some one else’s troubles?
“Did you?” exclaimed Annie Laurie. “Oh, that was sweet of you, Hannah.”
She forgot her Aunt Adnah’s axiom that the Paces seldom kissed, and leaned forward and planted a warm kiss on Hannah’s cheek.
“I like to know that,” she went on. “You see I feel so—so friendless.”
“Why, with your aunts and all?” inquired Mrs. Disbrow.
“I feel as if I ought to be protecting my aunts, you see,” explained Annie. “They are old and terribly broken by father’s death. And then, everything has gone so wrong with us. We haven’t been able to find father’s money anywhere, you know, and we’re really poor. We’ve no money to run the dairy on, and the men need overseeing, and I’ve blundered along with my bad bookkeeping. Altogether, it looks as if things were going to ruin, and I just can’t bear that, Mrs. Disbrow.”
“Why, you’ve always been so prosperous!” exclaimed Mrs. Disbrow. “My husband often has spoken of how prosperous your father was, and has contrasted him with himself. You see, Mr. Disbrow never has got on well here. His farm has paid poorly, and of coursethe undertaking business is of very little consequence in a community like this. I declare I can’t blame him for being discouraged and bitter and sort of half-hating the men who are successful. It’s hard to like people when everything is going against you.”
Annie Laurie swept her glance around the room again, taking in the brother and sister, and resting it at last on the sick woman.
“I suppose it is,” she said slowly. “I suppose it is. But Mrs. McBirney says you have to give out liking to have people like you, and that you have to think you are going to succeed in order to do it.”
“And you have to think well in order to be well, I suppose,” said the invalid angrily. “I suppose that’s her idea. Well, you can tell her for me that she’s mistaken.”
Annie Laurie did not look rebuked. She sat still, thinking.
“I know so little about sickness,” she said slowly, “that I can’t even sympathize the way I ought to, I suppose. Oh, Mrs. Disbrow, don’t you suppose you could go riding with me? I’m such a good driver, I wouldn’t let you be shakenup at all. Sam and Hannah could sit beside you to keep you from being joggled.”
“A pretty sight I’d make!” cried Mrs. Disbrow. “There’s too many of the neighbors would be peeking out to see what I looked like, after all these years of being shut away. No, thank you, child, I don’t believe I want to try.”
“But you could go at twilight. We could go when the neighbors are at supper. Wouldn’t it be fun, Sam? Could you sit up, ma’am?”
“No, I don’t believe I could. And even if I did, like as not I’d pay for it the next day.”
“But why not try? Maybe you wouldn’t have to pay for it. Oh, ma’am, it’s so wonderful to be out of doors. You can’t think what you miss staying in here—can she, Sam?”
“No,” said Sam, “she can’t have an idea. Oh, mother, you never would listen to me, though truly I believe you’d be ever so much better if you would get out. Please try. The three of us will be able to take good care of you.”
There was a moment’s silence, and then the boy flung out his arms with sudden passion.
“Oh, mother, mother, please try! Why need we all be so unhappy? Why can’t we have a little joy like other people?”
Annie Laurie felt the tears leap into her eyes. She had never before seen Sam as other than the cheerful, hearty boy, but now she knew that the cheerfulness and heartiness had been an imitation of the real thing. They had been but his courage masquerading as something else.
Mrs. Disbrow raised herself on her elbow and looked at her son. Suddenly a great light broke over her. She had not been the only sufferer in that house. Before her were the two whose youth she had shadowed with her pain.
“I’ll go,” she said in a strange voice. “When shall it be?”
“Now,” cried Annie Laurie. “I’ll run right home and have the men hitch up. Oh, Hannah, be sure she’s dressed warm enough. I’ll have something warm put in for her feet. Oh, Sam, maybe she’ll like it!”
She turned toward the boy with outstretched hands and he caught and held them for a moment. Then she was off, running as fast as she could to serve the people into whose house she had gone with the motives of a spy.
Of course Annie Laurie told Azalea and Carin all about it as the three sat together the next day after luncheon, in the schoolroom.
“Papa said he’d seen you,” Carin answered. “He was horseback riding and late getting home, and he said he saw you out with the Disbrows, and that Mrs. Disbrow looked like a ghost that had got back to earth and didn’t like it very well. But he thought you were wonderful to do that. He didn’t quite see how you could, feeling as you do, but he thought it lovely of you just the same!”
“Well,” said Annie Laurie. “You see I didn’t feel quite the way I thought I did when I saw that poor woman and Hannah; and then poor Sam looked at me as if he thought I could set his world right if I only would.”
“It’s a terribly twisted world,” mused Azalea. “Now, what if poor little Hannah has her eyes straightened, and Sam goes to college, and Mrs.Disbrow gets her health out West all out of the money that was stolen from you, Annie Laurie? Those are all good things to have happen.”
“Yes, they are,” answered Annie Laurie without anger. “They are good things. But you remember what Elder Mills said that last night about avoiding lies in word and act. I remember particularly because it was something like what the preacher had been saying over to the Baptist church only a few Sundays before. It seemed to me they were all harping on that subject, but I begin to see why, now. I can see that all false things are lies—that stealing is a sort of lie—a saying that something is yours which isn’t. It will be like that with the Disbrows, I suppose; no matter what good comes to them, it won’t seem good—at least not to Mr. Disbrow, who knows the truth about how he came by the money. It’s dreadful, when you come to think of it, that a nice boy like Sam should be having things out of that money he’s no right to.”
“You oughtn’t to speak as if it was an absolutely sure thing that he took the money, Annie Laurie,” warned Carin. “Papa says we mustn’t do that. He says it’s a kind of crime in itselfto accuse people of sins when you’re not sure they’re guilty.”
“I’ll try not to,” sighed Annie Laurie penitently, “but it’s very hard. And, oh, Carin, it’s getting to be so sad at the house with the old aunts always talking about the lost money and hunting and hunting for it, and the business going to pieces and I not able to prevent it.”
That night when the Carsons sat at dinner, Carin told her father that Annie Laurie had said Mrs. Disbrow was expecting her husband to take the family West.
Mr. Carson brought his fist down on the table.
“Now, that can’t be,” he cried. “I won’t have that! I simply won’t. No matter what risk I run of doing the man an injustice, I won’t have him leave this community. He’s under suspicion and he’s got to stay here. I’m sorry for him, sometimes, when I see him walk into town and all the men turn their backs on him and walk away. Of course, it isn’t really fair—or at least, it may not be fair, for it is possible that he is as innocent as you or I. But if he is guilty, he’s getting only a small part of what he deserves. At any rate, I can understand that he’s very uncomfortable in this town nowadays, andthat he’d like mighty well to get out of it. But he shan’t, if I have anything to say about it.”
The next morning, however, Annie Laurie came with startling news.
“They’re gone!” she cried as she dashed into the schoolroom.
“Who?” the girls asked in unison.
“The Disbrows.”
“No!”
“Yes, they have. I was walking along the road and I happened to look over toward their house, and there wasn’t any smoke coming from the chimney. And there was something about the place—I can’t describe it, because the curtains are forever down anyway—but something that looked deserted. So I pelted across the field and knocked at the door and no one answered. And then I tried the door and it was locked. I saw the chickens were gone, too, and the cow and the horses. They all went in the night.”
“But do you think Sam would let his family act like that?”
“Sam went to Rutherford yesterday to the academy. No, I don’t think he knew a thing about it. He came over after I got home from school to say good-bye, and he was very happyand—oh, well—good, you know. No one could have looked as he did if he had thought his father was a thief and his family sneaks.”
“But my goodness,” exclaimed Azalea, “don’t you suppose he’s noticed how the men were treating his father—turning their backs on him and all that? Pa McBirney said he just couldn’t bring himself to shake hands with him any more. Don’t you suppose Mr. Disbrow ever had spoken of that at home?”
“He always was bitter and fault-finding anyway,” said Annie Laurie. “Mrs. Disbrow told me that. I suppose a little more or less complaining wouldn’t mean anything to her.”
“But she certainly must have wondered at having the house torn up in an hour or two, and at setting out in the night that way like fugitives,” said Carin.
“Oh, well, you know she hated to go out driving with me for fear the neighbors would be peeping at her, so I suppose she was well pleased to go in the night. She’d hate to have folks find out what a poor little handful of things they had, and all that.”
“Of course,” said Azalea, “it would be easy enough to find which way they went, by thewagon marks. They must have had the cow tied on behind the wagon, and so they could be followed easily and overtaken if—if you wanted them to be, Annie Laurie.”
“Yes,—I know. If—I wanted them to be.”
The girl sank into a chair and rested her face in her hand, staring straight before her. Azalea and Carin said nothing. They were thinking very, very hard, too. The silence was long and intense. Then they heard Miss Parkhurst’s steps approaching down the hall. Annie Laurie struck her two hands together sharply.
“I can’t do it!” she cried. “I can’t let Sam’s people be chased like that and brought back. I may be wrong, and weak, and not fair to the poor old aunts, but I just can’t do it, that’s all there is to it.”
Carin and Azalea looked at her with perfect understanding.
“No,” said Carin softly, “you couldn’t do that, could you? Plenty of people could, and they’d be just and right—maybe. But you couldn’t, and I like you, Annie Laurie, because you can’t.”
Azalea clapped her hands.
“So do I!” she agreed. “It will all come right for you, Annie. That’s what dear MaMcBirney would say if she knew. Somehow it will all come right. But to have that poor, sneaking, miserable man chased, and that sick woman, and little Hannah who is half-frightened out of her life anyway—oo-oo-oo! You couldn’t.”
Miss Parkhurst opened the door. The three girls arose respectfully and answered her good morning.
“Algebra this morning,” she said briskly. Perforce they turned their thoughts to matters that were anything but exciting.
But if they could have known the experiences their friend Sam Disbrow was going through, their lesson would have been even poorer than it was—and Miss Parkhurst had already been obliged to tell them that as mathematicians she did not consider them brilliantly successful.
Sam had set off with a light heart. For the first time in his life he was going away from home—that depressing and melancholy home, against the gloom of which he had set all the forces of his really happy and brave nature. But the home had been too much for him. He could feel it slowly and surely dragging him down into that pit of gloom and distrust where the others lived, and to leave it behind, to havea chance to go to school and get the education which he felt he must have if he was to make anything of himself, filled him not only with joy but gratitude.
Of course, he still wondered how his father had been able to manage it. He knew that they were very poor—that his father had not been able to make a success at anything. His garden never flourished like that of his neighbors; his chickens never laid well; his cow gave only a fraction of the milk she should; his cotton was but a scanty crop; and even as an undertaker, the only one in Lee, he sometimes was passed over for his remote rival in Rutherford.
Recently things had been going even more wrong than usual. Sam could not explain it, but a general dislike of the whole Disbrow family seemed to have invaded the town. His father never had been popular, but lately Sam had noticed signs of actual aversion. How was it to be accounted for? If ever the faintest shadow of an idea as to the real reason for this dislike entered Sam’s mind, he thrust it out, strangled and unrecognizable, from his consciousness. He believed in his father because he believed in himself. He was not a person to whomsuspicion came naturally, although he had lived in the midst of it all his days. There is a thing called reaction—the sharp turning of the spirit against a condition or an idea. Sam had reacted against the gray dispositions in his family. He was ready to blossom into the scarlet of courage and good will, of power and joy, if only a little sun could shine on him.
And now it seemed to be shining. He was going away to school as other boys did. There would be a number of fellows he knew, and chief among them would be Richard Heller, the banker’s son. He liked Heller. He counted on him to “show him the ropes” at the academy.
It was a long time since he had been in the smart town of Rutherford. His heart leaped in him as he stepped out from the station, his bag in his hand, and felt the throb of the busy town about him. Automobiles were ranged in line about the station, carriages with well-kept horses stood in the shade beneath the fine elms, the paved streets were clean, the street cars new and fresh looking, and everywhere were busy, active people, moving along with that air of confidence and efficiency which too often was lacking at Lee. And it exhilarated Sam. All that wasstrong and eager in him liked it. He wanted to be a part of a community like that.
He took the street car that ran to the academy, and sat wrapt in interest at noting the fine homes, the well-kept lawns, the excellent public buildings. People were doing things here that were worth while, said Sam to himself. And he, in his way, was going to be a part of it. Perhaps he could stay in the Academy till he was graduated—with honors, maybe—and then he would stay on at Rutherford, and become a part of its busy, stirring life. He would have a home like the one he was passing, with tall windows, and the light streaming in through beautiful trees, and a porch like that, with his family sitting out on it in the open, and not hiding away in the shadow. Then there would be bright flowers, like those in that yard, and friends coming and going the way they were from that house. And they would be laughing—Annie Laurie loved to laugh—and sometimes they would eat on the lawn. But he drew himself up with a flush. What had Annie Laurie to do with it all? A girl like that—would she care seriously for one of the queer, shiftless tribe of Disbrow? Samhit his knee angrily. Let him attend to what was before him and stop thinking nonsense.