CHAPTER XVIGUESTS AND GHOSTSIt would never do to leave Piney out of any jaunts, Kit said, as the end of the week drew near again, and so Honey was commissioned as despatch bearer."Tell her we're going to walk from here over to Mount Ponchas, and back by way of the Spring House. We want to start at five Friday night.""Ought to start at daybreak for a hike," Honey replied. "Never heard of starting near sundown. You'll fetch up by dark at the rock ridge and sleep in a deer hollow.""Maybe we will," Kit responded hopefully. "I hadn't thought of that, Honey. It sounds awfully nice. If you could just get a peep at our lunch you'd want to hike too, no matter where we fetched up.""I've camped out along the river. Not this river. The big one down at the station, the Quinnebaug. We boys go down there when the bass is running and fish for them nights. Eels too.""Do you know a boy named Billie Ellis?" Kit asked suddenly. "Does he ever go along with you?""Billie Ellis? I should say not." Honey was very emphatic. "Judge Ellis wouldn't let him go along anywhere with the rest of us fellows. He caught a big white owl the other day over in the pines back of the Ellis burial ground.""I wish he'd come over our way some time. I'd love to know him. He sounds so kind of--well, different, don't you know?""He's different all right," laughed Honey, good-naturedly. "I remember once three years ago it was awfully cold, and we boys had been skating and went into the blacksmith shop to get warm, Abby Tucker's father's shop. And who should come in but Billie Ellis without any hat on, and only an old sweater and a pair of corduroy knickers on, and shoes and stockings. We asked him how he ever kept warm such weather, and what do you suppose he said?""What?" Kit's face was eager with interest."Said he had seven cats he kept specially to keep him warm. Said the Judge wouldn't let him have any fire, so he trained the cats to cuddle around him and keep him warm all night! Good-night. I'll tell Piney you want her to go along with you."Kit sat out on the terrace after he had passed up the hill road. Jean and Helen were upstairs with their father, and Doris was practising her music with her mother in the big living-room. Somehow, Mother's fingers made scales sound sweet. Honey had been gone about fifteen minutes when Kit heard the sound of a carriage coming along the level valley road. It couldn't be anyone for Greenacres, she thought; but just then the carriage turned in at the wide drive entrance and came up to the veranda steps."You had better wait," she heard a voice say, such a dandy voice, young and full of happy sounding. Then somebody bounded up the steps, three at a time, and crossed the veranda, with her sitting right there on the top terrace below the rose and honeysuckle vines. Kit was always precipitous in her conclusions. It flashed across her mind in one brilliant, intuitive wave that this was Ralph McRae, from Saskatoon. Doris's madcap verse ran riot through her brain:"Oh, Saskatoon,Don't come too soon--"There was no door-bell or even knocker, and the double doors stood wide open, but the screen doors were locked, inside, so Kit stood up and called."Just a minute, please. I'm coming."He waited for her, cap in hand and smiling. It was shadowy, but she saw his face and liked it. As she told the other girls later, it looked like all the faces you could imagine that had belonged to the real heroes' best friends, the Gratianos, and Mercutios, and Petroniuses of life."Is this Miss Robbins?" he asked, and Kit flushed at the tone. As if she didn't long seventeen hundred times a month to betheMiss Robbins like Jean."No. I'm only Kit," she answered. "You're our Mr. McRae, I think. How do you do?"He took her proffered hand and shook it warmly, until there were little red lines around her rings, and Kit led him around to the side door and let him in while she lighted a lamp."Mother's in here," she said, leading the way into the living-room. Mrs. Robbins sat by the west window. She loved the quiet rest hour after sundown, and Doris was playing with the soft pedal down. "Mother, dear," Kit said. "Mr. McRae's come from Saskatoon.""Just as if he'd stepped over the whole distance in about seven strides," Doris told later, after Mr. McRae had been safely disposed of in the guest chamber, and the family could discuss him safely. "I think he's awfully nice looking, don't you, Jean?""I can't think about his looks, Dorrie," Jean replied laughingly. "All I can do is wonder what he has come after. Does he want the house and farm? Or has his conscience troubled him so much about Piney and her mother and Honey that he's going to lay Greenacres on their front doorstep in restitution? Or did he just want to see what we all looked like?""Ask him," suggested Kit blandly. "He seems to be a very approachable young man so far as I can see.""He wanted to go up to Cousin Roxy's for the night and Mother wouldn't let him. That shows that she likes him.""Mother'd spread her wing over any lone wanderer after nightfall, Helenita. Wait and see what the morrow doth portend. We'll go for our hike just the same."The next day Mr. Robbins sat out in a big steamer chair on the veranda with the stranger, and seemed to enjoy his company wonderfully."I do believe, Mumsie," Jean said, "that poor Dad has been smothered with too much coddling. Just look at him brace up and talk to Mr. McRae.""I hope we can persuade him to stay with us while he is in Gilead.""He doesn't act as if he needed much persuading. They've rambled all the way from salmon culture to Alaska politics and whether alfalfa would grow in Connecticut. Now they're settling Saskatoon's future. It appears that if no cyclones hit it, Saskatoon will be a booming town. I'm glad we don't need any cyclone cellars here.""Jeanie, you tempt Providence with your jubilant crowing. Come and help me put up our lunch. Bacon and biscuit are going to be the staff of our existence, with gingerbread and cheese for the reserves."It had been agreed that the girls should meet at Greenacres that afternoon. Honey had been sent up to Maple Lawn with a note announcing the arrival of Ralph McRae, and inviting Cousin Roxy down for tea. She drove down about four, fresh as a daisy in her black and white dimity and big black sun hat with sprays of white lilacs on it. Ralph helped her out and stood smilingly while she ran her fingers through his thick brown hair and patted his shoulder."Just the sort of boy I expected Francelia'd have," she said happily. "Well set up and manly too from all appearances. Going to stay around a while, Ralph, and get acquainted?""Why, I'd like to, Miss Roxy. It was rather lonesome out West with none of my own people there. I've always wanted to come back here and see all of you. Mother used to talk a lot about you all to me when I was little. She didn't have anybody else to tell things to.""Like enough," Roxy responded rather soberly for her. "You must meet your cousins.""I didn't know I had any."Miss Robbins glanced over to the woodpile where Honey was sawing some chestnut tops for dry wood to mix in with the birch."Come over here, Honey," she called briskly. "This is the boy cousin and Piney's the girl, both children of your mother's own sister Luella. Guess we'll get this straightened out some time. Honey, this is Ralph McRae, your own blood cousin."Ralph took the tanned, supple hand of the boy in his, and held it fast, looking down at Honey's cheery, freckled face."I think we're going to be pals, old man," he said, and Honey's heart warmed to him. Nobody had ever before called him that.When Piney arrived with the other girls, she too was introduced, but she proved less pliable than Honey. Straight and tall, she faced her new cousin, every flash of her eyes telling him that she resented his having all while they had nothing, and Ralph could make no headway with that branch of the family.At five they were ready to start. Sally could not go, nor Nan, Carlie, or Tony. But the older girls were all there, and at the last minute Abby Tucker came hurrying along the road with a large paper bag."Thought I'd never get here, but I did," she said triumphantly. "I made popcorn balls for all of you. And I've got some red pepper too. Going to throw it at the ghost.""Why, you cold-blooded person," Kit exclaimed. "Red pepper at a poor harmless ghost! Shame on you."But Abby only smiled mysteriously and gave the girls to understand that red pepper was the very latest weapon for vanquishing ghosts.Jean had told each girl to bring a blanket. These were spread down and rolled up army-fashion until they looked like life buoys, then slung over the girls' shoulders. The commissary department consisted of Kit, Hedda and Ingeborg, who counted over their supplies almost gloatingly. Etoile had brought jam turnovers and deviled-egg sandwiches. Hedda had brought loaf cake and cheese,--cream cheese with sweet red peppers chopped up in it."So funny for Hedda to bring Italian stuff. You'd expect pickled walrus from her," Kit remarked."I like this," Hedda answered gravely. "I never tasted walrus."Ingeborg and Astrid brought sandwiches, made of rye bread with home-cured roast ham. And Piney appeared with a big bag of cherries, white-hearts and deep red ox-hearts."There's a loaf of gingerbread too, with raisins in it," she said."You're equipped for a journey over Chilkoot Pass," Ralph told them teasingly. "How many weeks will you be gone?""We'll be home tomorrow about sundown, good sir," Kit retorted haughtily. "Should you see the distant light of a signal fire you may come after us.""Piney can tell direction by the sun," Honey said. "You won't get lost with her along. Better keep out of the woods though. Mount Ponchas is due south."The girls left the grounds of Greenacres and turned into the open road. At each clear point they paused to wave back to the group on the veranda, but Jean and Ingeborg led at a good pace and the rest fell into it, following the river road to the old spring house. Helen started to sing with Piney, and the others joined in. The first mile seemed to vanish before they knew it, and even by the time they reached the old red saw-mill, where Mr. Rudemeir lived, they were not tired. He was the old Prussian sailor Honey had told them of. They met him driving a couple of heavy Percheron horses along the river path, and he waved an old pipe in friendly fashion."He's mighty nice," Piney said fervently. "Last summer there were some girls boarding up the valley, and they couldn't swim. One went out beyond her depth and he saved her life.""Bless his heart, let's give him a cheer," Kit proposed. "He needs encouragement."So they gave a rousing cheer, and the old man looked back in surprise, grinned, and waved again to them."Wait a minute," Jean said suddenly. "We've forgotten matches. Run back and ask him for some, Dorrie, please.""He asked where we were bound for," said Doris when she returned. "When I told him he said he guessed we'd have our hands full.""It's getting a little dark." Etoile glanced back over the shadowy road behind them."We've got a lantern and some candles," Astrid said comfortably, "and Tip for sentinel. There isn't anything to be afraid of that I can see.""'Speak for yourself, John,'" Kit quoted. "If we don't see or hear something I'm going to be awfully disappointed. And if we do hear anything coming slowly upstairs, don't flash the electric light right at it until it has a chance to show itself. I hope it will be a lovely pale green, like the ghost in Hamlet."Etoile stopped short in the middle of the road, her eyes wide with dread."I think perhaps I'd better go right back now, girls."But Kit and Ingeborg wound their arms around her waist and promised faithfully to guard her if she would only stick the night out. They went on up the long wood-road, past the falls above the mill, past Mud Hole where the boys fished for eels, past Otter Island where Hiram came to fish, and on to the old spring house. It was set far back from the road in a garden overgrown with weeds and tall timothy grass, and tiger lilies grew rankly in green clumps along the gray stone walls. The little wooden shelter over the well was knocked over and the boards that protected the windows had been pulled half off. Jean went to the kitchen door and found it unlocked. Only wasps and spiders were to be seen, and one stout old toad that backed hurriedly out of sight under the stone doorstep."Let's look it all over before it gets really dark," she said, and they went in and out of each bare room, upstairs and downstairs, into the old musty cellar, even into the low-roofed loft over the summer kitchen."Now, we know there's nothing here, don't we?" Kit said, after the tour of inspection was over, and they sat out on the grass near the well, with their lunch spread around them. "How perfectly wonderful things taste after you've tramped, don't they? More ginger cookies, please, Hedda.""Which room are we going to sleep in?" asked Abby. "I'd just as soon sleep out here all night on blankets, wouldn't you, Etoile?""We don't care if you want to," Helen agreed. "Try it on the little side porch. Then you can watch the cellar entrance because the ghost may decide to come up that way."It was getting quite dark by the time the supper remains were cleared away. Candles were lighted and set on the mantel in the front room and in the kitchen. Kit and Hedda had returned from a successful foraging expedition around the barn and corn house, and had brought back armfuls of hay to spread under their blankets on the floor. Tip, the brown water spaniel, took the whole affair very seriously and made the circuit of the grounds over and over again, chasing imaginary intruders."Well, girls, I guess we're all ready to go to bed, aren't we?" Kit called finally. "It's eight-thirty by Jean's watch, and we'll have to get an early start."They agreed it was the best plan and went into the big living-room where the fireplace was. The nights were still very cool up in the hills, so Hedda and Doris had been appointed wood gatherers and a fine dry wood fire blazed on the stone hearth. After they were ready for the night, they sat around this in a semi-circle, eating popcorn balls and telling stories, until all at once there came a sound that silenced every one and left them wide-eyed and scared.CHAPTER XVIIBILLIE MEETS TRESPASSERSIt was unlike any sound the girls had ever heard back at the Cove; almost like a human being in distress and yet like some animal cry too."It's a fox," whispered Astrid, getting nearer to her big sister."No, it isn't," said Abby. "That's a deer. They always yell like that when the moon's full.""It was right near, I think, right outside." Kit sat up eager and tense. "Shall I flash the light, Jean?""Not yet. Wait until it comes again. I think it was only some night bird."So they waited breathlessly. Every tiny creaking noise in the old house was intensified by the heavy silence. Jean rose and went to the window. The moon was not up yet, and it was hard to distinguish objects, but down in the garden she thought she saw something that looked like a cow lying down."I can't tell just what it is. It may be only a stray cow or horse," she said softly."Throw something at it," suggested Kit, hopefully. "Let's all throw something.""Just to see whether it jumps or not," Astrid assented. She hunted around and found some loose half bricks in the chimney place."Where's Tip? He hasn't barked once," remarked Abby."Dogs are always frightened when they see ghosts. Let me fire away at it first, girls." Astrid took aim and the half brick flew down at the dark object with a deadly thud, but there was no stampede. She leaned far out the window, staring at it anxiously. "It seems to me I can see it move and it has horns and a sort of woolly tail, girls.""Sounds like a yak," Kit chuckled. "I'm willing to do this much. I'll go to the door and open it, and you girls stay here with bricks to throw, and when I flash the light on it, if it jumps you can save me."But before she could carry out the plan the sound came again, longer and more thrillingly penetrating than before. It was a wail and a challenge and a moan all in one, not just one cry, but a prolonged succession of them. As soon as it stopped Piney exclaimed:"Now I know. That's an owl and it comes from the little garret over the 'ell' where we couldn't climb because there weren't any stairs. Don't you know, girls?""Sure, Piney?" Etoile's tone was almost trembling. "Never I hear such a cry.""Oh, I have. It's an owl, I know it is, one of those big ones. Riding through the woods at night coming home from town I've been half scared to death by one of them. Sounds like seventeen ghosts all rolled into one. Come along, Kit. You and I'll go hunt it up."The rest followed gingerly, a strange procession bearing candles, Kit leading with the flash, light. Tip stumbled up drowsily from the kitchen door and barked at them."Oh, yes, it's all very well for you to bark now," laughed Jean. "Why didn't you go after that noise?"They reached the "ell" room and found a trapdoor in the ceiling. Abby remembered seeing a ladder out in the back entry behind the door and this was brought in."And see this, girls," she exclaimed, running her finger over it. "No dust on the rounds. That shows it's been used lately.""Aren't we perfectly wonderful scouts? Abby, I love the way you never miss anything." Kit leaned the ladder up against the wall, and mounted it, with Piney close behind and the other girls at its base. "What if it shouldn't be an owl--"She stopped with her palm against the trapdoor. Raising it about an inch she flashed the light, and there was a great fluttering and flopping overhead."What did I tell you!" Piney cried excitedly. "Do it again, Kit. It can't hurt you and the light blinds it."So the trap-door was lifted again with the light of the electric hand lamp turned on full and Kit cautiously pulled herself up into the aperture. It was tent shaped and low, not more than four feet at its highest. But instead of being bare like the rest of the old house, there were certainly evidences of human occupancy. There was a tin can filled with fresh water, and a strip of rag carpet laid down on the floor. A box of fish hooks and neatly rolled lines lay on one side, and there was a small frying pan and a horn handled steel knife and fork. Rolled up in one corner was a pair of old overalls, and some books much the worse for wear lay beside them. Kit's glance took in everything, and last of all, backed into a corner and blinking hard, was the ghost itself,--a big white owl.Piney pulled herself up too, and reached out after the books gently so as not to frighten the owl any more. With a couple in her hand, they lowered the door again, and joined the others."It's an owl and a hermit's nest," Kit told them excitedly. "Open the books, Piney. Is there any name inside?"Piney read off the titles,"'Treasure Island' and 'Peveril of the Peak.' He's got a nice collection, hasn't he, whoever he is? There isn't any name inside. There's a bookplate in each though.""Let me see." Helen and Kit both tried to look at the same time. The bookplate was pasted in each, but it was a hard one to decipher. It looked like some cryptogram with its intertwined letter forms, and they gave it up for the night."Well, there was certainly fresh water in that tin," Kit said positively, "and that shows the haunted house is inhabited by something tangible, I mean something besides the owl. Let's go to bed very calmly and sleep. I'm sure we've laid the ghost."It did seem as though they had, for the remainder of the night was peaceful and safe except for the owl crying out lonesomely at intervals until about four o'clock, when the dawn came. Rolled in their blankets, the girls slept soundly until the sunlight threw broad golden beams into their quarters.There was no rope on the windlass at the well, so Ingeborg proposed that they go down to the river and wash there. It was lots of fun. They found that the dark and fearsome object they had heaved bricks at the night before was only a big gray rock half sunken in the ground.Along the river margin turtles sunned themselves in rows on the half-submerged logs, and a muskrat scuttled clumsily for cover at sight of the invaders."I wish we could go right in," said Jean, looking up and down the winding course of the river as she parted the alders; "but it isn't really safe when you don't know the water. This looks full of unexpected holes and snags. Where does it run to?""Down past the two mills, and rises away up in the Quinnebaug Hills," Piney told her, kneeling on a flat rock and splashing herself well. "Did you see that black snake hustle out of the way then? They're awful cowards. Yes, Jean, this comes from Judge Ellis's place about two miles beyond here, three and a half by road.""Judge Ellis? Billie's grandfather?""You talk just as if you knew him, Kit.""Well, I feel as if I do, and when I do I'm going to take him right under my wing and be a mother to him," said Kit defiantly."Who? The Judge?""No. This Billie person. Or I'll trot him home to Mother and let her be nice to him.""Here are some fishpoles, girls, hidden in the bushes," Doris called out. "Know what I think? There are boys around."All at once upstream they heard somebody whistling. At first it sounded almost like a bird trilling high and clear, but birds do not sing "Marching Through Georgia," so the girls sat there on the bank, sheltered from view by the alders, and waited until a flat bottomed row-boat came into view. Standing at the stern, one bare foot on the back seat and one on the cross seat, with a long punting pole in his hands, was a boy of about fifteen. His head was bare and his overalls were rolled above his knees. Whistling recklessly, sure of himself and the solitude, he came down the river and guided the boat to shore near where the girls sat. He hauled it up half-way out of the water, dropped the pole into it, and started up the bank before he caught sight of them."That's Billie Ellis," Piney said quickly, and waved her hand to him in friendly greeting. "Hello, Billie.""Hello," Billie returned. "Where'd you come from?""We came from Whence and are going Whither," Kit spoke up merrily. "Got some fish for breakfast?"Billie hesitated, trying to appear nonchalant, but plainly very much rattled at these persons who had taken up squatter rights on his domain. He rolled down his overalls very slowly and deliberately to gain time, and this gave the girls a chance to see just what he looked like, this Billie person, as Kit had dubbed him. He was taller than Honey by a good deal, with short-cropped curly hair rather nondescript in color, and big brown eyes, eyes as startlingly frank and uncompromising in their gaze as those of a deer. He was tanned a nice healthy brown, and his smile was extremely satisfying if one were looking for friendliness. Altogether, the Greenacre girls approved of Billie at sight. To the others he was more or less familiar, even while none of them knew him well."Where you all going?" he asked."Just walking over the country," Abby told him. "Where are you going, Billie?"Billie flushed at this direct query."Oh, I don't know," he answered lamely. "I come down the river a lot.""We fed the owl," Kit said innocently. "Just some bread and ham. I suppose it thought it had a new kind of mouse."Billie glanced at her with quick boyish indignation. They had not been satisfied with finding out his landing place and swimming hole. They had gone into the old house and discovered his secret den and the big white owl. He had always regarded girls as semi-dangerous, but this was worse than even he had expected. He turned to Piney as the one in the crowd that he knew best."What did you go into the house for?""Shelter for the night," Piney answered promptly. "The door was open and we went in. If folks don't want company they should keep their doors locked. Anyhow, nobody lives here and we didn't hurt a thing. We wanted to see the ghost."Billie grinned at this admission, a quick mischievous grin that made his whole face light up and seem to sparkle with fun."Did he come up and rattle his chains for you?""No, he didn't, and I don't believe he ever did for anybody else.""Maybe not," Billie agreed blandly. "How far up the river are you going?""To Mount Ponchas.""That's only seven and a half miles. You can go along up the hill road from here, and when you come to the state road that has telegraph poles on it, you turn off and go west. It's three hills over and you pass through one village, Shiloh Valley. When you come to Ponchas don't forget to look for the grave of the Cavalier.""Where's that?" asked Jean. "We haven't heard of it at all."This was touching Billie's heart in the right spot. He knew every rod of land for miles around Gilead and loved its old historic lore. The girls did not know it then, but life was rather a dull affair over at the Judge's place. There were only the Judge himself; Mrs. Gorham, his housekeeper; Farley Riggs, his general business man; and Ben Brooks, the hired man. It was rather an unsympathetic household for a boy of fifteen, especially one who had been unwelcome; but he had made friends with Ben and had found him a treasure house of information.There might be other sections of importance in the United States besides Gilead Center, Connecticut, but Ben held them in slight esteem. He had been born and brought up there and had never even wanted to go away. The sun had always risen and set for him beyond the encircling Quinnebaug Hills. He was about forty when Billie first came, genial, optimistic, rather good-looking, and an insatiable reader.Billie's two favorite occupations were ranging the country on personal hikes of exploration and sitting up in Ben's room over the corn house in the evenings, looking at his books and magazines and listening to him talk on current topics and historic events. No topic was too intricate for Ben to tackle. No government ever evaded him when it came to diplomatic tricks or ways. He was on to them all, as he told Billie.So now Billie remembered how Ben had told him about the mysterious stranger who had come to Gilead back in the earliest days of the settlement. The colonists had suffered much from Indian raids until there came into their midst a man whom they called the Cavalier. With his negro body-servant, he had lived amongst them and taught them defense against their savage foes, taught them the best way to win over the soil and reclaim the wilderness. Yet when he died they knew no more of him than on the first day when he rode into their village. His grave lay over on the south side of Mount Ponchas where he had wished it to be, near a rock where he had often held council with the Indians."Be sure to see it when you get there," Billie advised. "I wish I was going along with you.""Come over to our place, won't you, Billie?" Kit asked in her most neighborly way. "I'd like to ask you about some arrow heads we found. Will you?"Billie nodded his head nonchalantly. It was like giving a bird an invitation to call on you, or handing your card to a rabbit. But he watched them as they went up the hill road from the river, and when Doris turned and waved, he waved back. At least he was interested in his trespassers, even though he could not quite forgive them for having discovered his pet hiding place.CHAPTER XVIIIHARVESTING HOPESIt was noon before they reached Ponchas, although they might have gone ever so much faster if every new flower by the way had not coaxed them to linger. Then they came to a big mill in the heart of the woods, where the men were cutting out chestnut trees for ties. Then Shiloh Valley was so pretty it was hard to leave it. There was a little white church, with a square steeple and green blinds, standing on a large church green, a dot of a schoolhouse opposite, one lone store, and about nine houses. But each house was set in its own little domain independent and aloof, with its barn and granary, tool house and smoke house, woodshed and corn crib, and one had a silo and a forge besides.The only person they saw was a little girl coming out of the store, and she stood and watched them out of sight, with wide surprised eyes, just as if, Doris said, they were a circus."I suppose we're the most interesting sight she's seen in weeks. Wish I could run back and coax her to go with us."But Ponchas beckoned to them in the distance, a violet tinted cone of rock, and they kept steadily on until, as the shadows pointed north, they camped for luncheon at its base. Helen and Ingeborg went hunting the Cavalier's grave, but Hedda found it when she brought water from the spring house that had been built over a live spring gushing out at the base of the rock. Nearby was a heap of gray moss-covered rock piled into a cairn, with a rugged rock cross at the head twined with wild convolvulus. On it were cut the words:"He succored usThe Cavalier1679.""Well, I do think they might have told us more than that," Jean said, when the other girls came to look at it. "Perhaps, though, this would have pleased him better. Let's name him, girls.""Sir John Lovelace," said Helen."Oh, no, give him something sturdy; call him Modred or Gregory," Kit protested. "Gregory Grimshaw."They stood for a few moments in silence gazing at the quiet resting place, wondering what the real story was of the stranger it sheltered."I think his servant could have told if he had so wished," Etoile said wisely. "I will ask my father about him. He knows many of the old stories of the places around here. He came here from Canada when he was a very little boy. There were gray wolves around in the winter time, and the spring came earlier then. He has found arbutus the first week in March.""What kind of wild animals are here now?" asked Doris anxiously. "Nothing that's dangerous, is there?""Wild cats sometimes," Astrid said. "Deer, foxes, 'coons, muskrats, woodchucks, otters, rabbits, squirrels. What else, Ingeborg?""I can tell you of something that really happened over where I live," Abby interrupted. Under the excitement of the trip and its novelty, Abby had fairly bloomed. From a listless, rather unhappy girl she had become a sturdy, cheerful hiker. Kit had taken her under her wing from the start."It's fun getting hold of somebody so awfully hopeless," she had said, "and trying to make her see the sun shining and the flowers growing right under her nose. Abby's going to be happy. She's like some little half-drowned kitten."It was because nobody had ever taken any interest in her before. Her father was the blacksmith, a silent, rather morose man who had quarreled with his own brothers and never spoke to them. Her mother was a frail, nervous woman, so used to being yelled at that she jumped the moment anyone spoke to her. Jean had driven over there one day to get Princess a new set of shoes, and Mrs. Tucker had come out from the kitchen door, a thin, flat-chested woman with straggly hair and vacant eyes."How be ye," she said wistfully, looking up at the pretty new neighbor. "How's your Ma? And Pa? Sickly, ain't he? I suffer something fearful all the time. Sometimes my head feels as if it was where my feet are, and my feet feel as if they were where my head is. I can't seem to make any doctor understand what I mean, but that's exactly the way I feel, and it's fearful confusing."Then Abby had come out and sort of shooed her mother back into the house as one would a fretful hen."There was a circus up at Norwich," said Abby now. "And a real live panther escaped and the hunters said they found his tracks down our way. Then one night when I was in bed, they knocked on our door and said the tracks led right into our woodshed. And my father got out his shotgun and went with them, but I went down in the kitchen with Ma, because she's nervous, and when I started up the back stairs I saw its eyes shining at me right under my bed.""How could you see your bed on the back stairs?" asked Piney doubtfully."I left my door open and when I got on the middle stair I could see right in under my bed, and there it was.""Abby Tucker! What did you do?" exclaimed Hedda. "You never told me.""What do you suppose I did? I fell right downstairs. Guess you would have too, if you thought you saw a live panther under your bed. But it wasn't. It scooted out past me and it was our big tiger cat Franklin.""Did they find the real one?" asked Etoile."He is not anywhere around now, is he, Abby?""Oh, land, no," laughed Abby. "They got it over in the pine woods and it was half starved and cold. It went back to the circus.""Well," exclaimed Kit, with a sigh. "I used to think things were monotonous in the country, but I've changed my mind. There's something new happening here every minute."Just then Doris gave a little squeal of dismay, and jumped up."Something bit my hand," she said. The girls searched in the grass and found the breaker of the peace. It was a shiny pinching beetle."Don't kill it," Abby warned. "They bury the dead birds, Ma says. They're the sextons of the woods.""Maybe it thought I needed to be buried too," said Doris ruefully. "It nipped me good and plenty."When they started back they sang along the road, first old songs that all of them knew, and then Hedda sang two strange Icelandic songs her mother had taught her, lullabies with a low minor strain running through them."Day has barred her window close and goes with quiet feet,Night wrapped in a cloak of gray,Comes softly down the street,Mother's heart's a guiding star,Tender, strong and true,Lullaby and lulla-loo, sleep, lammie, now."The other was about the reindeer that would surely come and carry the baby away if it didn't go to sleep. She had a strong, sweet voice, and sang with much feeling. After hearing the other girls, Jean said they ought to have a glee club, even if they met only once a month."Just for music. Mother says that music is the universal language that everyone understands. Let's meet at our house next week, and give the afternoon to it.""I think we ought to meet somewhere else, not all the time at your home, Jean," Etoile demurred in her courteous French way. "We would be very glad to have you with us any time.""Then we will come, won't we, girls?" Jean agreed. "And Sally will enjoy that because she can sing too, and it will be near home for her. I think we are organizing splendidly."But the next few weeks were filled with home activities and it was hard to squeeze in time for all that they had outlined. There were berries to can and preserve, and Mr. McRae prolonged his stay, but only on condition that he be allowed to take hold of the farm, with Honey's help, and manage the haying and cultivating for them."I had no idea a man could be so handy," Kit declared. "He's mended the sink so we don't have to cart out all the waste water, and he's burned up the rubbish at the end of the lane, and he put new roofing on the hen houses, and he climbed up into the big elm and put up Doris's swing for her. I think he's a perfect darling.""Kit, dear, don't be so positive and so extreme," Mrs. Robbins warned gently. "It's very kind indeed of Ralph to help us, but don't let your speech run away with you.""I wish he belonged right in the family. I've always thought that every family should have a carpenter and a gardener in it. Mother dear, to see him climb down the well, right down into that thirty-foot black hole and fish out the bucket after Helen had dropped it in, was a sight for men and angels.""He's very capable," Mrs. Robbins agreed laughingly. "I think by the time he goes we will have everything on the place mended and repaired. I never saw a landlord like him.""He's a good doctor too, a doctor of the soul," Jean said soberly. "Dad's been fifty per cent. better since he came. I wish when he goes back to Saskatoon that he'd take Honey with him. Piney's able to help her mother, and Honey's heart is set on going West. They're own cousins and it would be splendid for him.""Honey's only fourteen, girlie. I think he's rather young to leave the Mother wings, don't you?"Jean pondered."I don't know, Mother. Mothers are wonderful people and darlings, but I do think that every boy needs a good father and if he can't get a father, then the next best man who can talk to him and teach him the--what would you call it?""The code of manliness?"."That's it. And Ralph seems so manly, don't you think so?""Do you call him Ralph, dear?""Well, he asked me to, mother, and I didn't want to refuse and hurt his feelings. I suppose it made him feel more at home. And Cousin Roxy says he's only twenty-four. I don't think that's old at all."It took three days to cut the hay on the Greenacre land, and the girls had a regular Greek festival over it. They all went down and followed the big rake and helped pitch the hay up on the wagon. Then Helen got her kodak and took pictures of them pitching, and riding on the load up the long lane, and of the big sleepy-eyed yoke of oxen."You know," Jean said, "it looks like some scene from away back in the colonial days. I love to watch the oxen come along that lane with the top of the load brushing the mulberry tree branches.""I'm so glad that you found out what those trees were," Kit teased. "Ever since we came here, you and Helen have been watching for apples to grow on them. I told you they were mulberry trees.""It's so nice," Helen said dreamily, "to have one in the family who is always right."Kit quickly fired a bunch of hay at her, but she dodged it and ran."Going to cut about nine ton or more," Honey said, coming up with a pail of spring water. "That ain't counting bedding neither. You can get fifteen a ton for bedding.""What's bedding?" asked Kit."Oh, all sorts of stuff, pollypods and swamp grass and such. Say, if you go down where Ralph's cutting now, you'll see a Bob White's nest and speckled eggs. Don't take any, though.""Isn't it lovely out here, Kit?" Jean wound her arm around Kit's waist as they crossed the meadow land. "I was lonesome at first but now I think I'd be more lonesome for this if I were away from it long.""I love it too, but wait until the north wind doth blow. What will all the poor Robbins do then, poor things?""We'll pull through," Jean said pluckily. "I don't feel afraid of anything that can happen since Dad really is getting better.""Isn't it funny, Jean, how we're forgetting all about the Cove and the things we did there?" Kit pushed back her hair briskly. She was warm and getting "frecklier," as Doris said, every minute. "I wonder when fall comes, if we won't miss it all more than we do now.""All what?""Places to go, mostly, and people who help us instead of us always helping them. Mother's turned into a regular Lady Bountiful since we came out here.""I think they've all helped us just as much as we've helped them," Jean said slowly. "We're getting bigger every minute. You know what I mean. Broader minded. At home we went along in the same little groove all the time. I think work is splendid.""Well, you always did have the faculty, you know, Jean, for staring black right in the face and declaring it was a beautiful delicate cream color. I suppose that's the stuff that martyrs are made of. Now, don't get huffy. You're a perfect angel of a martyr. I like it out here and I think the work is doing us good, but I'm like Helen, I don't want to stay here all my life, nor even a quarter of it. Mother said she wanted to let one of us older girls go back with Gwennie Phelps.""Back with her?" repeated Jean in dismay. "You haven't asked her up here this summer, have you, Kit?""I didn't. Helen did before we came away. Mother said she might. You know Mother's always had the happiness of the Phelps family on her mind.""But Gwennie! I wouldn't mind Frances so much.""Frances does not stand in need of missionary work. Gwennie does. Anyway, she's coming up the first week in August, and Mother says that either you or I can go back with her for two weeks before school opens. Do you want to go, Jean? Because I really and truly don't give a rap about it. I'm afraid to go for fear I'll like it and won't want to come back. I'm just dead afraid of the schools up here this winter." Kit's tone was tragic. "This year means so much to me in my work. I was getting along gloriously, you know that, Jean, and from what the girls here tell me, the schools can't touch ours in finish.""How are they in beginnings?" Jean asked laughingly. "You poor old long-sufferer, I know what you mean. Why don't you ask Dad and Mother to let you board down at the Cove with the Phelpses, and keep up your old class work right there until you finish High School anyway?""Seems like a desertion," said Kit. "We're here and we should stick it out. I think you'd better go back with Gwennie.""We ought to talk it over with Mother thoroughly. She thinks she's giving us a week of extra pleasure, probably, and to us it's a temptation that we're afraid we can't withstand, isn't that it?""Well, I feel like this, it's like taking a soldier out of the trenches and throwing him into a seaside week end.""Kit, you always exaggerate fearfully. You're a regular Donna Quixote, tilting at windmills.""But are you willing to go back?""I think we'll let Helen go. She will enjoy it and not take it a bit seriously. Helen's poise will carry her through any crisis triumphantly."Kit agreed that the thought of Helen was really a stroke of diplomatic genius. The waves and billows of circumstance only buoyed Helen up, lighter than ever. They never went over her or disarranged her curls a particle. Whenever Kit had one of her customary "brain storms" over something and Helen suggested that she was "fussy," Kit always retaliated with the statement that she was the only member of the family with any temperament. Jean had imagination, and Doris gave promise of much sentiment, but when it came to real temperament Kit believed that she had the full Robbins allowance."You can call it what you like, Kit. I'd leave off the last two syllables, though," Helen would say serenely."There you are," Kit always answered. "Only geniuses have any temperament and when you've got one in the family you deny it. You'll be sorry some day, Helenita. When you are darning stockings with a fancy stitch for your great grandchildren I shall face admiring throngs all listening for pearls of wisdom to fall from my lips.""What do you think you're going to be anyway?""Haven't made up my mind yet, but something fearfully extraordinary and special, Ladybird."So now when the proposition was made after supper that Helen return for a visit to the Cove with Gwen Phelps, Helen agreed placidly that it would be rather nice, and Jean and Kit looked at each other with a smile of deep diplomacy.
CHAPTER XVI
GUESTS AND GHOSTS
It would never do to leave Piney out of any jaunts, Kit said, as the end of the week drew near again, and so Honey was commissioned as despatch bearer.
"Tell her we're going to walk from here over to Mount Ponchas, and back by way of the Spring House. We want to start at five Friday night."
"Ought to start at daybreak for a hike," Honey replied. "Never heard of starting near sundown. You'll fetch up by dark at the rock ridge and sleep in a deer hollow."
"Maybe we will," Kit responded hopefully. "I hadn't thought of that, Honey. It sounds awfully nice. If you could just get a peep at our lunch you'd want to hike too, no matter where we fetched up."
"I've camped out along the river. Not this river. The big one down at the station, the Quinnebaug. We boys go down there when the bass is running and fish for them nights. Eels too."
"Do you know a boy named Billie Ellis?" Kit asked suddenly. "Does he ever go along with you?"
"Billie Ellis? I should say not." Honey was very emphatic. "Judge Ellis wouldn't let him go along anywhere with the rest of us fellows. He caught a big white owl the other day over in the pines back of the Ellis burial ground."
"I wish he'd come over our way some time. I'd love to know him. He sounds so kind of--well, different, don't you know?"
"He's different all right," laughed Honey, good-naturedly. "I remember once three years ago it was awfully cold, and we boys had been skating and went into the blacksmith shop to get warm, Abby Tucker's father's shop. And who should come in but Billie Ellis without any hat on, and only an old sweater and a pair of corduroy knickers on, and shoes and stockings. We asked him how he ever kept warm such weather, and what do you suppose he said?"
"What?" Kit's face was eager with interest.
"Said he had seven cats he kept specially to keep him warm. Said the Judge wouldn't let him have any fire, so he trained the cats to cuddle around him and keep him warm all night! Good-night. I'll tell Piney you want her to go along with you."
Kit sat out on the terrace after he had passed up the hill road. Jean and Helen were upstairs with their father, and Doris was practising her music with her mother in the big living-room. Somehow, Mother's fingers made scales sound sweet. Honey had been gone about fifteen minutes when Kit heard the sound of a carriage coming along the level valley road. It couldn't be anyone for Greenacres, she thought; but just then the carriage turned in at the wide drive entrance and came up to the veranda steps.
"You had better wait," she heard a voice say, such a dandy voice, young and full of happy sounding. Then somebody bounded up the steps, three at a time, and crossed the veranda, with her sitting right there on the top terrace below the rose and honeysuckle vines. Kit was always precipitous in her conclusions. It flashed across her mind in one brilliant, intuitive wave that this was Ralph McRae, from Saskatoon. Doris's madcap verse ran riot through her brain:
"Oh, Saskatoon,Don't come too soon--"
"Oh, Saskatoon,Don't come too soon--"
"Oh, Saskatoon,
Don't come too soon--"
There was no door-bell or even knocker, and the double doors stood wide open, but the screen doors were locked, inside, so Kit stood up and called.
"Just a minute, please. I'm coming."
He waited for her, cap in hand and smiling. It was shadowy, but she saw his face and liked it. As she told the other girls later, it looked like all the faces you could imagine that had belonged to the real heroes' best friends, the Gratianos, and Mercutios, and Petroniuses of life.
"Is this Miss Robbins?" he asked, and Kit flushed at the tone. As if she didn't long seventeen hundred times a month to betheMiss Robbins like Jean.
"No. I'm only Kit," she answered. "You're our Mr. McRae, I think. How do you do?"
He took her proffered hand and shook it warmly, until there were little red lines around her rings, and Kit led him around to the side door and let him in while she lighted a lamp.
"Mother's in here," she said, leading the way into the living-room. Mrs. Robbins sat by the west window. She loved the quiet rest hour after sundown, and Doris was playing with the soft pedal down. "Mother, dear," Kit said. "Mr. McRae's come from Saskatoon."
"Just as if he'd stepped over the whole distance in about seven strides," Doris told later, after Mr. McRae had been safely disposed of in the guest chamber, and the family could discuss him safely. "I think he's awfully nice looking, don't you, Jean?"
"I can't think about his looks, Dorrie," Jean replied laughingly. "All I can do is wonder what he has come after. Does he want the house and farm? Or has his conscience troubled him so much about Piney and her mother and Honey that he's going to lay Greenacres on their front doorstep in restitution? Or did he just want to see what we all looked like?"
"Ask him," suggested Kit blandly. "He seems to be a very approachable young man so far as I can see."
"He wanted to go up to Cousin Roxy's for the night and Mother wouldn't let him. That shows that she likes him."
"Mother'd spread her wing over any lone wanderer after nightfall, Helenita. Wait and see what the morrow doth portend. We'll go for our hike just the same."
The next day Mr. Robbins sat out in a big steamer chair on the veranda with the stranger, and seemed to enjoy his company wonderfully.
"I do believe, Mumsie," Jean said, "that poor Dad has been smothered with too much coddling. Just look at him brace up and talk to Mr. McRae."
"I hope we can persuade him to stay with us while he is in Gilead."
"He doesn't act as if he needed much persuading. They've rambled all the way from salmon culture to Alaska politics and whether alfalfa would grow in Connecticut. Now they're settling Saskatoon's future. It appears that if no cyclones hit it, Saskatoon will be a booming town. I'm glad we don't need any cyclone cellars here."
"Jeanie, you tempt Providence with your jubilant crowing. Come and help me put up our lunch. Bacon and biscuit are going to be the staff of our existence, with gingerbread and cheese for the reserves."
It had been agreed that the girls should meet at Greenacres that afternoon. Honey had been sent up to Maple Lawn with a note announcing the arrival of Ralph McRae, and inviting Cousin Roxy down for tea. She drove down about four, fresh as a daisy in her black and white dimity and big black sun hat with sprays of white lilacs on it. Ralph helped her out and stood smilingly while she ran her fingers through his thick brown hair and patted his shoulder.
"Just the sort of boy I expected Francelia'd have," she said happily. "Well set up and manly too from all appearances. Going to stay around a while, Ralph, and get acquainted?"
"Why, I'd like to, Miss Roxy. It was rather lonesome out West with none of my own people there. I've always wanted to come back here and see all of you. Mother used to talk a lot about you all to me when I was little. She didn't have anybody else to tell things to."
"Like enough," Roxy responded rather soberly for her. "You must meet your cousins."
"I didn't know I had any."
Miss Robbins glanced over to the woodpile where Honey was sawing some chestnut tops for dry wood to mix in with the birch.
"Come over here, Honey," she called briskly. "This is the boy cousin and Piney's the girl, both children of your mother's own sister Luella. Guess we'll get this straightened out some time. Honey, this is Ralph McRae, your own blood cousin."
Ralph took the tanned, supple hand of the boy in his, and held it fast, looking down at Honey's cheery, freckled face.
"I think we're going to be pals, old man," he said, and Honey's heart warmed to him. Nobody had ever before called him that.
When Piney arrived with the other girls, she too was introduced, but she proved less pliable than Honey. Straight and tall, she faced her new cousin, every flash of her eyes telling him that she resented his having all while they had nothing, and Ralph could make no headway with that branch of the family.
At five they were ready to start. Sally could not go, nor Nan, Carlie, or Tony. But the older girls were all there, and at the last minute Abby Tucker came hurrying along the road with a large paper bag.
"Thought I'd never get here, but I did," she said triumphantly. "I made popcorn balls for all of you. And I've got some red pepper too. Going to throw it at the ghost."
"Why, you cold-blooded person," Kit exclaimed. "Red pepper at a poor harmless ghost! Shame on you."
But Abby only smiled mysteriously and gave the girls to understand that red pepper was the very latest weapon for vanquishing ghosts.
Jean had told each girl to bring a blanket. These were spread down and rolled up army-fashion until they looked like life buoys, then slung over the girls' shoulders. The commissary department consisted of Kit, Hedda and Ingeborg, who counted over their supplies almost gloatingly. Etoile had brought jam turnovers and deviled-egg sandwiches. Hedda had brought loaf cake and cheese,--cream cheese with sweet red peppers chopped up in it.
"So funny for Hedda to bring Italian stuff. You'd expect pickled walrus from her," Kit remarked.
"I like this," Hedda answered gravely. "I never tasted walrus."
Ingeborg and Astrid brought sandwiches, made of rye bread with home-cured roast ham. And Piney appeared with a big bag of cherries, white-hearts and deep red ox-hearts.
"There's a loaf of gingerbread too, with raisins in it," she said.
"You're equipped for a journey over Chilkoot Pass," Ralph told them teasingly. "How many weeks will you be gone?"
"We'll be home tomorrow about sundown, good sir," Kit retorted haughtily. "Should you see the distant light of a signal fire you may come after us."
"Piney can tell direction by the sun," Honey said. "You won't get lost with her along. Better keep out of the woods though. Mount Ponchas is due south."
The girls left the grounds of Greenacres and turned into the open road. At each clear point they paused to wave back to the group on the veranda, but Jean and Ingeborg led at a good pace and the rest fell into it, following the river road to the old spring house. Helen started to sing with Piney, and the others joined in. The first mile seemed to vanish before they knew it, and even by the time they reached the old red saw-mill, where Mr. Rudemeir lived, they were not tired. He was the old Prussian sailor Honey had told them of. They met him driving a couple of heavy Percheron horses along the river path, and he waved an old pipe in friendly fashion.
"He's mighty nice," Piney said fervently. "Last summer there were some girls boarding up the valley, and they couldn't swim. One went out beyond her depth and he saved her life."
"Bless his heart, let's give him a cheer," Kit proposed. "He needs encouragement."
So they gave a rousing cheer, and the old man looked back in surprise, grinned, and waved again to them.
"Wait a minute," Jean said suddenly. "We've forgotten matches. Run back and ask him for some, Dorrie, please."
"He asked where we were bound for," said Doris when she returned. "When I told him he said he guessed we'd have our hands full."
"It's getting a little dark." Etoile glanced back over the shadowy road behind them.
"We've got a lantern and some candles," Astrid said comfortably, "and Tip for sentinel. There isn't anything to be afraid of that I can see."
"'Speak for yourself, John,'" Kit quoted. "If we don't see or hear something I'm going to be awfully disappointed. And if we do hear anything coming slowly upstairs, don't flash the electric light right at it until it has a chance to show itself. I hope it will be a lovely pale green, like the ghost in Hamlet."
Etoile stopped short in the middle of the road, her eyes wide with dread.
"I think perhaps I'd better go right back now, girls."
But Kit and Ingeborg wound their arms around her waist and promised faithfully to guard her if she would only stick the night out. They went on up the long wood-road, past the falls above the mill, past Mud Hole where the boys fished for eels, past Otter Island where Hiram came to fish, and on to the old spring house. It was set far back from the road in a garden overgrown with weeds and tall timothy grass, and tiger lilies grew rankly in green clumps along the gray stone walls. The little wooden shelter over the well was knocked over and the boards that protected the windows had been pulled half off. Jean went to the kitchen door and found it unlocked. Only wasps and spiders were to be seen, and one stout old toad that backed hurriedly out of sight under the stone doorstep.
"Let's look it all over before it gets really dark," she said, and they went in and out of each bare room, upstairs and downstairs, into the old musty cellar, even into the low-roofed loft over the summer kitchen.
"Now, we know there's nothing here, don't we?" Kit said, after the tour of inspection was over, and they sat out on the grass near the well, with their lunch spread around them. "How perfectly wonderful things taste after you've tramped, don't they? More ginger cookies, please, Hedda."
"Which room are we going to sleep in?" asked Abby. "I'd just as soon sleep out here all night on blankets, wouldn't you, Etoile?"
"We don't care if you want to," Helen agreed. "Try it on the little side porch. Then you can watch the cellar entrance because the ghost may decide to come up that way."
It was getting quite dark by the time the supper remains were cleared away. Candles were lighted and set on the mantel in the front room and in the kitchen. Kit and Hedda had returned from a successful foraging expedition around the barn and corn house, and had brought back armfuls of hay to spread under their blankets on the floor. Tip, the brown water spaniel, took the whole affair very seriously and made the circuit of the grounds over and over again, chasing imaginary intruders.
"Well, girls, I guess we're all ready to go to bed, aren't we?" Kit called finally. "It's eight-thirty by Jean's watch, and we'll have to get an early start."
They agreed it was the best plan and went into the big living-room where the fireplace was. The nights were still very cool up in the hills, so Hedda and Doris had been appointed wood gatherers and a fine dry wood fire blazed on the stone hearth. After they were ready for the night, they sat around this in a semi-circle, eating popcorn balls and telling stories, until all at once there came a sound that silenced every one and left them wide-eyed and scared.
CHAPTER XVII
BILLIE MEETS TRESPASSERS
It was unlike any sound the girls had ever heard back at the Cove; almost like a human being in distress and yet like some animal cry too.
"It's a fox," whispered Astrid, getting nearer to her big sister.
"No, it isn't," said Abby. "That's a deer. They always yell like that when the moon's full."
"It was right near, I think, right outside." Kit sat up eager and tense. "Shall I flash the light, Jean?"
"Not yet. Wait until it comes again. I think it was only some night bird."
So they waited breathlessly. Every tiny creaking noise in the old house was intensified by the heavy silence. Jean rose and went to the window. The moon was not up yet, and it was hard to distinguish objects, but down in the garden she thought she saw something that looked like a cow lying down.
"I can't tell just what it is. It may be only a stray cow or horse," she said softly.
"Throw something at it," suggested Kit, hopefully. "Let's all throw something."
"Just to see whether it jumps or not," Astrid assented. She hunted around and found some loose half bricks in the chimney place.
"Where's Tip? He hasn't barked once," remarked Abby.
"Dogs are always frightened when they see ghosts. Let me fire away at it first, girls." Astrid took aim and the half brick flew down at the dark object with a deadly thud, but there was no stampede. She leaned far out the window, staring at it anxiously. "It seems to me I can see it move and it has horns and a sort of woolly tail, girls."
"Sounds like a yak," Kit chuckled. "I'm willing to do this much. I'll go to the door and open it, and you girls stay here with bricks to throw, and when I flash the light on it, if it jumps you can save me."
But before she could carry out the plan the sound came again, longer and more thrillingly penetrating than before. It was a wail and a challenge and a moan all in one, not just one cry, but a prolonged succession of them. As soon as it stopped Piney exclaimed:
"Now I know. That's an owl and it comes from the little garret over the 'ell' where we couldn't climb because there weren't any stairs. Don't you know, girls?"
"Sure, Piney?" Etoile's tone was almost trembling. "Never I hear such a cry."
"Oh, I have. It's an owl, I know it is, one of those big ones. Riding through the woods at night coming home from town I've been half scared to death by one of them. Sounds like seventeen ghosts all rolled into one. Come along, Kit. You and I'll go hunt it up."
The rest followed gingerly, a strange procession bearing candles, Kit leading with the flash, light. Tip stumbled up drowsily from the kitchen door and barked at them.
"Oh, yes, it's all very well for you to bark now," laughed Jean. "Why didn't you go after that noise?"
They reached the "ell" room and found a trapdoor in the ceiling. Abby remembered seeing a ladder out in the back entry behind the door and this was brought in.
"And see this, girls," she exclaimed, running her finger over it. "No dust on the rounds. That shows it's been used lately."
"Aren't we perfectly wonderful scouts? Abby, I love the way you never miss anything." Kit leaned the ladder up against the wall, and mounted it, with Piney close behind and the other girls at its base. "What if it shouldn't be an owl--"
She stopped with her palm against the trapdoor. Raising it about an inch she flashed the light, and there was a great fluttering and flopping overhead.
"What did I tell you!" Piney cried excitedly. "Do it again, Kit. It can't hurt you and the light blinds it."
So the trap-door was lifted again with the light of the electric hand lamp turned on full and Kit cautiously pulled herself up into the aperture. It was tent shaped and low, not more than four feet at its highest. But instead of being bare like the rest of the old house, there were certainly evidences of human occupancy. There was a tin can filled with fresh water, and a strip of rag carpet laid down on the floor. A box of fish hooks and neatly rolled lines lay on one side, and there was a small frying pan and a horn handled steel knife and fork. Rolled up in one corner was a pair of old overalls, and some books much the worse for wear lay beside them. Kit's glance took in everything, and last of all, backed into a corner and blinking hard, was the ghost itself,--a big white owl.
Piney pulled herself up too, and reached out after the books gently so as not to frighten the owl any more. With a couple in her hand, they lowered the door again, and joined the others.
"It's an owl and a hermit's nest," Kit told them excitedly. "Open the books, Piney. Is there any name inside?"
Piney read off the titles,
"'Treasure Island' and 'Peveril of the Peak.' He's got a nice collection, hasn't he, whoever he is? There isn't any name inside. There's a bookplate in each though."
"Let me see." Helen and Kit both tried to look at the same time. The bookplate was pasted in each, but it was a hard one to decipher. It looked like some cryptogram with its intertwined letter forms, and they gave it up for the night.
"Well, there was certainly fresh water in that tin," Kit said positively, "and that shows the haunted house is inhabited by something tangible, I mean something besides the owl. Let's go to bed very calmly and sleep. I'm sure we've laid the ghost."
It did seem as though they had, for the remainder of the night was peaceful and safe except for the owl crying out lonesomely at intervals until about four o'clock, when the dawn came. Rolled in their blankets, the girls slept soundly until the sunlight threw broad golden beams into their quarters.
There was no rope on the windlass at the well, so Ingeborg proposed that they go down to the river and wash there. It was lots of fun. They found that the dark and fearsome object they had heaved bricks at the night before was only a big gray rock half sunken in the ground.
Along the river margin turtles sunned themselves in rows on the half-submerged logs, and a muskrat scuttled clumsily for cover at sight of the invaders.
"I wish we could go right in," said Jean, looking up and down the winding course of the river as she parted the alders; "but it isn't really safe when you don't know the water. This looks full of unexpected holes and snags. Where does it run to?"
"Down past the two mills, and rises away up in the Quinnebaug Hills," Piney told her, kneeling on a flat rock and splashing herself well. "Did you see that black snake hustle out of the way then? They're awful cowards. Yes, Jean, this comes from Judge Ellis's place about two miles beyond here, three and a half by road."
"Judge Ellis? Billie's grandfather?"
"You talk just as if you knew him, Kit."
"Well, I feel as if I do, and when I do I'm going to take him right under my wing and be a mother to him," said Kit defiantly.
"Who? The Judge?"
"No. This Billie person. Or I'll trot him home to Mother and let her be nice to him."
"Here are some fishpoles, girls, hidden in the bushes," Doris called out. "Know what I think? There are boys around."
All at once upstream they heard somebody whistling. At first it sounded almost like a bird trilling high and clear, but birds do not sing "Marching Through Georgia," so the girls sat there on the bank, sheltered from view by the alders, and waited until a flat bottomed row-boat came into view. Standing at the stern, one bare foot on the back seat and one on the cross seat, with a long punting pole in his hands, was a boy of about fifteen. His head was bare and his overalls were rolled above his knees. Whistling recklessly, sure of himself and the solitude, he came down the river and guided the boat to shore near where the girls sat. He hauled it up half-way out of the water, dropped the pole into it, and started up the bank before he caught sight of them.
"That's Billie Ellis," Piney said quickly, and waved her hand to him in friendly greeting. "Hello, Billie."
"Hello," Billie returned. "Where'd you come from?"
"We came from Whence and are going Whither," Kit spoke up merrily. "Got some fish for breakfast?"
Billie hesitated, trying to appear nonchalant, but plainly very much rattled at these persons who had taken up squatter rights on his domain. He rolled down his overalls very slowly and deliberately to gain time, and this gave the girls a chance to see just what he looked like, this Billie person, as Kit had dubbed him. He was taller than Honey by a good deal, with short-cropped curly hair rather nondescript in color, and big brown eyes, eyes as startlingly frank and uncompromising in their gaze as those of a deer. He was tanned a nice healthy brown, and his smile was extremely satisfying if one were looking for friendliness. Altogether, the Greenacre girls approved of Billie at sight. To the others he was more or less familiar, even while none of them knew him well.
"Where you all going?" he asked.
"Just walking over the country," Abby told him. "Where are you going, Billie?"
Billie flushed at this direct query.
"Oh, I don't know," he answered lamely. "I come down the river a lot."
"We fed the owl," Kit said innocently. "Just some bread and ham. I suppose it thought it had a new kind of mouse."
Billie glanced at her with quick boyish indignation. They had not been satisfied with finding out his landing place and swimming hole. They had gone into the old house and discovered his secret den and the big white owl. He had always regarded girls as semi-dangerous, but this was worse than even he had expected. He turned to Piney as the one in the crowd that he knew best.
"What did you go into the house for?"
"Shelter for the night," Piney answered promptly. "The door was open and we went in. If folks don't want company they should keep their doors locked. Anyhow, nobody lives here and we didn't hurt a thing. We wanted to see the ghost."
Billie grinned at this admission, a quick mischievous grin that made his whole face light up and seem to sparkle with fun.
"Did he come up and rattle his chains for you?"
"No, he didn't, and I don't believe he ever did for anybody else."
"Maybe not," Billie agreed blandly. "How far up the river are you going?"
"To Mount Ponchas."
"That's only seven and a half miles. You can go along up the hill road from here, and when you come to the state road that has telegraph poles on it, you turn off and go west. It's three hills over and you pass through one village, Shiloh Valley. When you come to Ponchas don't forget to look for the grave of the Cavalier."
"Where's that?" asked Jean. "We haven't heard of it at all."
This was touching Billie's heart in the right spot. He knew every rod of land for miles around Gilead and loved its old historic lore. The girls did not know it then, but life was rather a dull affair over at the Judge's place. There were only the Judge himself; Mrs. Gorham, his housekeeper; Farley Riggs, his general business man; and Ben Brooks, the hired man. It was rather an unsympathetic household for a boy of fifteen, especially one who had been unwelcome; but he had made friends with Ben and had found him a treasure house of information.
There might be other sections of importance in the United States besides Gilead Center, Connecticut, but Ben held them in slight esteem. He had been born and brought up there and had never even wanted to go away. The sun had always risen and set for him beyond the encircling Quinnebaug Hills. He was about forty when Billie first came, genial, optimistic, rather good-looking, and an insatiable reader.
Billie's two favorite occupations were ranging the country on personal hikes of exploration and sitting up in Ben's room over the corn house in the evenings, looking at his books and magazines and listening to him talk on current topics and historic events. No topic was too intricate for Ben to tackle. No government ever evaded him when it came to diplomatic tricks or ways. He was on to them all, as he told Billie.
So now Billie remembered how Ben had told him about the mysterious stranger who had come to Gilead back in the earliest days of the settlement. The colonists had suffered much from Indian raids until there came into their midst a man whom they called the Cavalier. With his negro body-servant, he had lived amongst them and taught them defense against their savage foes, taught them the best way to win over the soil and reclaim the wilderness. Yet when he died they knew no more of him than on the first day when he rode into their village. His grave lay over on the south side of Mount Ponchas where he had wished it to be, near a rock where he had often held council with the Indians.
"Be sure to see it when you get there," Billie advised. "I wish I was going along with you."
"Come over to our place, won't you, Billie?" Kit asked in her most neighborly way. "I'd like to ask you about some arrow heads we found. Will you?"
Billie nodded his head nonchalantly. It was like giving a bird an invitation to call on you, or handing your card to a rabbit. But he watched them as they went up the hill road from the river, and when Doris turned and waved, he waved back. At least he was interested in his trespassers, even though he could not quite forgive them for having discovered his pet hiding place.
CHAPTER XVIII
HARVESTING HOPES
It was noon before they reached Ponchas, although they might have gone ever so much faster if every new flower by the way had not coaxed them to linger. Then they came to a big mill in the heart of the woods, where the men were cutting out chestnut trees for ties. Then Shiloh Valley was so pretty it was hard to leave it. There was a little white church, with a square steeple and green blinds, standing on a large church green, a dot of a schoolhouse opposite, one lone store, and about nine houses. But each house was set in its own little domain independent and aloof, with its barn and granary, tool house and smoke house, woodshed and corn crib, and one had a silo and a forge besides.
The only person they saw was a little girl coming out of the store, and she stood and watched them out of sight, with wide surprised eyes, just as if, Doris said, they were a circus.
"I suppose we're the most interesting sight she's seen in weeks. Wish I could run back and coax her to go with us."
But Ponchas beckoned to them in the distance, a violet tinted cone of rock, and they kept steadily on until, as the shadows pointed north, they camped for luncheon at its base. Helen and Ingeborg went hunting the Cavalier's grave, but Hedda found it when she brought water from the spring house that had been built over a live spring gushing out at the base of the rock. Nearby was a heap of gray moss-covered rock piled into a cairn, with a rugged rock cross at the head twined with wild convolvulus. On it were cut the words:
"He succored usThe Cavalier1679."
"Well, I do think they might have told us more than that," Jean said, when the other girls came to look at it. "Perhaps, though, this would have pleased him better. Let's name him, girls."
"Sir John Lovelace," said Helen.
"Oh, no, give him something sturdy; call him Modred or Gregory," Kit protested. "Gregory Grimshaw."
They stood for a few moments in silence gazing at the quiet resting place, wondering what the real story was of the stranger it sheltered.
"I think his servant could have told if he had so wished," Etoile said wisely. "I will ask my father about him. He knows many of the old stories of the places around here. He came here from Canada when he was a very little boy. There were gray wolves around in the winter time, and the spring came earlier then. He has found arbutus the first week in March."
"What kind of wild animals are here now?" asked Doris anxiously. "Nothing that's dangerous, is there?"
"Wild cats sometimes," Astrid said. "Deer, foxes, 'coons, muskrats, woodchucks, otters, rabbits, squirrels. What else, Ingeborg?"
"I can tell you of something that really happened over where I live," Abby interrupted. Under the excitement of the trip and its novelty, Abby had fairly bloomed. From a listless, rather unhappy girl she had become a sturdy, cheerful hiker. Kit had taken her under her wing from the start.
"It's fun getting hold of somebody so awfully hopeless," she had said, "and trying to make her see the sun shining and the flowers growing right under her nose. Abby's going to be happy. She's like some little half-drowned kitten."
It was because nobody had ever taken any interest in her before. Her father was the blacksmith, a silent, rather morose man who had quarreled with his own brothers and never spoke to them. Her mother was a frail, nervous woman, so used to being yelled at that she jumped the moment anyone spoke to her. Jean had driven over there one day to get Princess a new set of shoes, and Mrs. Tucker had come out from the kitchen door, a thin, flat-chested woman with straggly hair and vacant eyes.
"How be ye," she said wistfully, looking up at the pretty new neighbor. "How's your Ma? And Pa? Sickly, ain't he? I suffer something fearful all the time. Sometimes my head feels as if it was where my feet are, and my feet feel as if they were where my head is. I can't seem to make any doctor understand what I mean, but that's exactly the way I feel, and it's fearful confusing."
Then Abby had come out and sort of shooed her mother back into the house as one would a fretful hen.
"There was a circus up at Norwich," said Abby now. "And a real live panther escaped and the hunters said they found his tracks down our way. Then one night when I was in bed, they knocked on our door and said the tracks led right into our woodshed. And my father got out his shotgun and went with them, but I went down in the kitchen with Ma, because she's nervous, and when I started up the back stairs I saw its eyes shining at me right under my bed."
"How could you see your bed on the back stairs?" asked Piney doubtfully.
"I left my door open and when I got on the middle stair I could see right in under my bed, and there it was."
"Abby Tucker! What did you do?" exclaimed Hedda. "You never told me."
"What do you suppose I did? I fell right downstairs. Guess you would have too, if you thought you saw a live panther under your bed. But it wasn't. It scooted out past me and it was our big tiger cat Franklin."
"Did they find the real one?" asked Etoile.
"He is not anywhere around now, is he, Abby?"
"Oh, land, no," laughed Abby. "They got it over in the pine woods and it was half starved and cold. It went back to the circus."
"Well," exclaimed Kit, with a sigh. "I used to think things were monotonous in the country, but I've changed my mind. There's something new happening here every minute."
Just then Doris gave a little squeal of dismay, and jumped up.
"Something bit my hand," she said. The girls searched in the grass and found the breaker of the peace. It was a shiny pinching beetle.
"Don't kill it," Abby warned. "They bury the dead birds, Ma says. They're the sextons of the woods."
"Maybe it thought I needed to be buried too," said Doris ruefully. "It nipped me good and plenty."
When they started back they sang along the road, first old songs that all of them knew, and then Hedda sang two strange Icelandic songs her mother had taught her, lullabies with a low minor strain running through them.
"Day has barred her window close and goes with quiet feet,Night wrapped in a cloak of gray,Comes softly down the street,Mother's heart's a guiding star,Tender, strong and true,Lullaby and lulla-loo, sleep, lammie, now."
"Day has barred her window close and goes with quiet feet,Night wrapped in a cloak of gray,Comes softly down the street,Mother's heart's a guiding star,Tender, strong and true,Lullaby and lulla-loo, sleep, lammie, now."
"Day has barred her window close and goes with quiet feet,
Night wrapped in a cloak of gray,
Comes softly down the street,
Comes softly down the street,
Mother's heart's a guiding star,
Tender, strong and true,
Tender, strong and true,
Lullaby and lulla-loo, sleep, lammie, now."
The other was about the reindeer that would surely come and carry the baby away if it didn't go to sleep. She had a strong, sweet voice, and sang with much feeling. After hearing the other girls, Jean said they ought to have a glee club, even if they met only once a month.
"Just for music. Mother says that music is the universal language that everyone understands. Let's meet at our house next week, and give the afternoon to it."
"I think we ought to meet somewhere else, not all the time at your home, Jean," Etoile demurred in her courteous French way. "We would be very glad to have you with us any time."
"Then we will come, won't we, girls?" Jean agreed. "And Sally will enjoy that because she can sing too, and it will be near home for her. I think we are organizing splendidly."
But the next few weeks were filled with home activities and it was hard to squeeze in time for all that they had outlined. There were berries to can and preserve, and Mr. McRae prolonged his stay, but only on condition that he be allowed to take hold of the farm, with Honey's help, and manage the haying and cultivating for them.
"I had no idea a man could be so handy," Kit declared. "He's mended the sink so we don't have to cart out all the waste water, and he's burned up the rubbish at the end of the lane, and he put new roofing on the hen houses, and he climbed up into the big elm and put up Doris's swing for her. I think he's a perfect darling."
"Kit, dear, don't be so positive and so extreme," Mrs. Robbins warned gently. "It's very kind indeed of Ralph to help us, but don't let your speech run away with you."
"I wish he belonged right in the family. I've always thought that every family should have a carpenter and a gardener in it. Mother dear, to see him climb down the well, right down into that thirty-foot black hole and fish out the bucket after Helen had dropped it in, was a sight for men and angels."
"He's very capable," Mrs. Robbins agreed laughingly. "I think by the time he goes we will have everything on the place mended and repaired. I never saw a landlord like him."
"He's a good doctor too, a doctor of the soul," Jean said soberly. "Dad's been fifty per cent. better since he came. I wish when he goes back to Saskatoon that he'd take Honey with him. Piney's able to help her mother, and Honey's heart is set on going West. They're own cousins and it would be splendid for him."
"Honey's only fourteen, girlie. I think he's rather young to leave the Mother wings, don't you?"
Jean pondered.
"I don't know, Mother. Mothers are wonderful people and darlings, but I do think that every boy needs a good father and if he can't get a father, then the next best man who can talk to him and teach him the--what would you call it?"
"The code of manliness?".
"That's it. And Ralph seems so manly, don't you think so?"
"Do you call him Ralph, dear?"
"Well, he asked me to, mother, and I didn't want to refuse and hurt his feelings. I suppose it made him feel more at home. And Cousin Roxy says he's only twenty-four. I don't think that's old at all."
It took three days to cut the hay on the Greenacre land, and the girls had a regular Greek festival over it. They all went down and followed the big rake and helped pitch the hay up on the wagon. Then Helen got her kodak and took pictures of them pitching, and riding on the load up the long lane, and of the big sleepy-eyed yoke of oxen.
"You know," Jean said, "it looks like some scene from away back in the colonial days. I love to watch the oxen come along that lane with the top of the load brushing the mulberry tree branches."
"I'm so glad that you found out what those trees were," Kit teased. "Ever since we came here, you and Helen have been watching for apples to grow on them. I told you they were mulberry trees."
"It's so nice," Helen said dreamily, "to have one in the family who is always right."
Kit quickly fired a bunch of hay at her, but she dodged it and ran.
"Going to cut about nine ton or more," Honey said, coming up with a pail of spring water. "That ain't counting bedding neither. You can get fifteen a ton for bedding."
"What's bedding?" asked Kit.
"Oh, all sorts of stuff, pollypods and swamp grass and such. Say, if you go down where Ralph's cutting now, you'll see a Bob White's nest and speckled eggs. Don't take any, though."
"Isn't it lovely out here, Kit?" Jean wound her arm around Kit's waist as they crossed the meadow land. "I was lonesome at first but now I think I'd be more lonesome for this if I were away from it long."
"I love it too, but wait until the north wind doth blow. What will all the poor Robbins do then, poor things?"
"We'll pull through," Jean said pluckily. "I don't feel afraid of anything that can happen since Dad really is getting better."
"Isn't it funny, Jean, how we're forgetting all about the Cove and the things we did there?" Kit pushed back her hair briskly. She was warm and getting "frecklier," as Doris said, every minute. "I wonder when fall comes, if we won't miss it all more than we do now."
"All what?"
"Places to go, mostly, and people who help us instead of us always helping them. Mother's turned into a regular Lady Bountiful since we came out here."
"I think they've all helped us just as much as we've helped them," Jean said slowly. "We're getting bigger every minute. You know what I mean. Broader minded. At home we went along in the same little groove all the time. I think work is splendid."
"Well, you always did have the faculty, you know, Jean, for staring black right in the face and declaring it was a beautiful delicate cream color. I suppose that's the stuff that martyrs are made of. Now, don't get huffy. You're a perfect angel of a martyr. I like it out here and I think the work is doing us good, but I'm like Helen, I don't want to stay here all my life, nor even a quarter of it. Mother said she wanted to let one of us older girls go back with Gwennie Phelps."
"Back with her?" repeated Jean in dismay. "You haven't asked her up here this summer, have you, Kit?"
"I didn't. Helen did before we came away. Mother said she might. You know Mother's always had the happiness of the Phelps family on her mind."
"But Gwennie! I wouldn't mind Frances so much."
"Frances does not stand in need of missionary work. Gwennie does. Anyway, she's coming up the first week in August, and Mother says that either you or I can go back with her for two weeks before school opens. Do you want to go, Jean? Because I really and truly don't give a rap about it. I'm afraid to go for fear I'll like it and won't want to come back. I'm just dead afraid of the schools up here this winter." Kit's tone was tragic. "This year means so much to me in my work. I was getting along gloriously, you know that, Jean, and from what the girls here tell me, the schools can't touch ours in finish."
"How are they in beginnings?" Jean asked laughingly. "You poor old long-sufferer, I know what you mean. Why don't you ask Dad and Mother to let you board down at the Cove with the Phelpses, and keep up your old class work right there until you finish High School anyway?"
"Seems like a desertion," said Kit. "We're here and we should stick it out. I think you'd better go back with Gwennie."
"We ought to talk it over with Mother thoroughly. She thinks she's giving us a week of extra pleasure, probably, and to us it's a temptation that we're afraid we can't withstand, isn't that it?"
"Well, I feel like this, it's like taking a soldier out of the trenches and throwing him into a seaside week end."
"Kit, you always exaggerate fearfully. You're a regular Donna Quixote, tilting at windmills."
"But are you willing to go back?"
"I think we'll let Helen go. She will enjoy it and not take it a bit seriously. Helen's poise will carry her through any crisis triumphantly."
Kit agreed that the thought of Helen was really a stroke of diplomatic genius. The waves and billows of circumstance only buoyed Helen up, lighter than ever. They never went over her or disarranged her curls a particle. Whenever Kit had one of her customary "brain storms" over something and Helen suggested that she was "fussy," Kit always retaliated with the statement that she was the only member of the family with any temperament. Jean had imagination, and Doris gave promise of much sentiment, but when it came to real temperament Kit believed that she had the full Robbins allowance.
"You can call it what you like, Kit. I'd leave off the last two syllables, though," Helen would say serenely.
"There you are," Kit always answered. "Only geniuses have any temperament and when you've got one in the family you deny it. You'll be sorry some day, Helenita. When you are darning stockings with a fancy stitch for your great grandchildren I shall face admiring throngs all listening for pearls of wisdom to fall from my lips."
"What do you think you're going to be anyway?"
"Haven't made up my mind yet, but something fearfully extraordinary and special, Ladybird."
So now when the proposition was made after supper that Helen return for a visit to the Cove with Gwen Phelps, Helen agreed placidly that it would be rather nice, and Jean and Kit looked at each other with a smile of deep diplomacy.