CHAPTER XX.
A “Mystery”is not healthful for any one; even when the secret originates in brains as youthful as Octave’s; and though it did not solve the problem for the household, yet the visit of Miss Kinsolving had somewhat the effect of a thunder-storm upon a murky atmosphere. Certainly, after her few words of apology and approbation to Paula, that painstaking girl felt too happy to pay any further attention to the vagaries of the “conspirators,” Melville and Octave; Content had her thoughts drawn from it by the arrival of fresh letters and parcels from Japan; Christina was deep in some new volumes of old-time fairy tales, which her aunt had substituted for Luke’s story papers; and little Fritz lived mostly out of doors.
So if the “Mystery” did not die, the interest of those not immediately connected with it did die; and The Snuggery, for several consecutive days, appeared as the abode of perfect peacefulness.
“There is somethin’ boun’ ter happen!” said Rosetta to Abraham. “Whenever them young ones is still a minute it’s ’cause they’re a-hatchin’ out fresh monkey-shines. They hain’t any on ’em done nothin’ out o’ the beaten track this week er more. Not since Miss Ruth was to home.”
“Wall, I shouldn’t think ye’d hanker to hev ’em step off the ‘beaten track,’ as ye tell about. I’ve noticed that when they does step off they mostly steps a good pace. There was Octavy, now, who’d ever thort of a gal a-turnin’ a hull hay-riggin’ over on top of her; but she done it an’ come out purty near as good as ever. Reckon she is—jest as well as she was afore, an’ ’pears ter be gettin’ as plump as a pa’tridge. But Pauly, she don’t never seem to get inter no scrapes, like the rest on ’em.”
“Humph!” retorted Rosetta, drawing off the yellow buttermilk for Abraham to carry away to the pigs. “She got inter one the very fust night she arriv’. She scairt the life clean out o’ poor Mis’ Capers, but you seem ter fergit thet.”
“I hain’t bed no chance ter fergit it, bein’s yekeep talkin’ ’bout it. But don’t ye worry; this here Sunday-meetin’ sort of doin’s ain’t a-goin’ ter last long enough ter hurt us. My! but that buttermilk is rich!” And, wiping his lips on his shirt-sleeve, the farmer walked away stywards.
It is rarely safe to prophesy evil. It seemed as if the very mention of “scrapes” was enough, in that household, to induce one.
All summer long the pigs, which were the pride of Abraham’s heart, had been allowed to run about in some fields, and get their living pretty much as they would have done in a native state. But haying was over, and the good man had more time to devote to his “stawk” than he had had during that busy season just past. It appeared to him time to begin “fattenin’,” and that very day he had driven the pigs into a nearby enclosure, intending to shut them into their pens at night and feed them there.
For that purpose he had collected all the buttermilk Rosetta had to spare, and, walking noiselessly along over the grass-grown path, he raised the pail to the top of the high, board fence above the trough and emptied the contents in one mighty swish.
Though his eyes had been diverted by the gambols of some kittens in a tree, his feet had “almost gone theirselves” over the familiar way which led to the “fattening” quarters of many pigs departed long since, and it was an almost mechanical motion which had emptied the pail.
There was nothing mechanical, however, about the yells and shrieks which followed, nor in the tremendous jump which Abraham’s long limbs made backwards. The startled man stumbled over a milking-stool which he had also brought along, and landed beneath the kittens’ tree with a thud which sent them shying still farther upwards.
Then two heads appeared over the sty-wall, and two very red and angry faces gleamed from amid a flood of thick and clinging buttermilk.
“By the jingo!” cried Luke, in the accents of a story-paper hero. But his feelings were not at all story-paper-like, nor his further language that which would have been most approved.
“What in the name of apple-sass be ye a-doin’ thar?” demanded Abraham, as soon as he hadpicked himself up, and recognized the drenched persons as Luke and little Fritz.
“Why can’t ye mind yer own business?” retorted the angry Luke.
“I was. I was a-feedin’ the pigs—an’ if so be that ye belongs amongst ’em, all right. Ye’ve had yer supper.” And chuckling quietly to himself, the busy man stalked off, leaving his victims to recover their tempers and their cleanliness at their leisure.
“Jest as I was a tellin’ ye, Rosetty, ye needn’t ha’ worrited. Some kinks was a-boun’ ter happen. Thar was that lazy houn’, Luke, a settin’ in the pig-sty, an’ Fritzy alongside on him. I doused ’em both with buttermilk, an’ on your ’count I’m sorry, ’cause I s’pose ye’ll hev the youngun ter clean. But I ain’t sorry noways elst. I s’picioned that boy of mine was a readin’ them air yarns ter Fritzy, ’cause the little chap he’s full of the oddest kind o’ sayin’s ye ever heerd; an’ now I’ve kotched him. You lay it down, Luke Tewkskury won’t git no great chanst in the futur’ ter waste Mis’ Kinsolving’s time a readin’ trash, not whilst I’m his daddy! If hewants ter be sentimental, I’ll gin him a chanst ter be, a-plowin’ that ten-acre lot.”
This was all quite true, as Abraham had surmised. The disused pig-sty, shady and grass-grown, had formed a capital and unsuspected hiding-place for the fiction-loving Luke to while away an hour of time, nor did he know that it was so soon to be occupied by its natural tenants; and after Christina’s refusal to read any more of his exciting tales, he had turned to Fritz for sympathy, filling that youngster’s mind with the strangest muddle of stuff which ever floated through a little brain.
Fortunately, but a fraction of all he heard was comprehended, and a smaller fraction yet it was which remained to puzzle and excite the always excitable and, till now, carefully reared child.
A tiny seed of evil stayed,—so small that no one would have dreamed it could ever have worked him ill. It was the idea of “ghosts.” Not ghosts as they are usually considered, nor at all as they appeared to the impressible soul of Luke. A “ghost,” young Tewksbury would nosooner have tackled than a regiment of soldiers, and his own predilection was for “burglars.” Had he known it, “ghosts” and “burglars” meant, to Fritz, one and the same thing; and both he and his instructor longed for a chance to show their prowess and “have a fight with one.” Luke felt himself a hero of the deepest dye, and what Fritz thought of his own capacity to meet any and every emergency can be imagined.
Both were to have an opportunity of proving their own merits, and it came speedily on the heels of that buttermilk episode.
Luke slept in the house, though his father lodged at their own cottage, some little distance away. Sometimes Fritz was allowed to share Luke’s pleasant apartment, especially when there was a hunting trip in contemplation; for, young as he was, it had been one of Uncle Fritz’s requests that the little boy should be allowed the use of fire-arms, believing, it may be wisely, that if one is early trained to them, there is less danger of accident than when left to find out their use by lonely experiment. Luke was a “crack shot,” and game on the mountain was abundant.Fritz had already won a fair record,—for “going on nine,”—and he was ambitious of further achievements.
The lads, big and little, went to bed, and soon to sleep; Fritz’s small rifle and Luke’s pistol lying ready at hand against an early waking. But visions of white, drenching floods, burglars, and ghosts mingled with little Fritz’s dreams; induced in great measure by an unusually bountiful supper which Rosetta had given him as a consolation for his accident, and partly by their having sat up quite late to finish a most thrilling tale and to taste of a lunch which had been put up for their out-of-door breakfast.
“If we eat it over-night, we’ll make sure of it,” said Luke, facetiously. He was always hungry, and Fritz was not to be outdone in that or any other matter by any big boy living. So he ate as long as he could, and then he dreamed as fast as he could; and in the midst of both, it always afterwards seemed to him, he had sat up in bed and seen Luke at the window, looking out with a very mysterious air.
“What is it, Lukey?”
“Whis-st! Bu-ur-gla-rs!”
Fritz could almost hear Luke’s teeth chatter.
“Cracky! I bet he’s afraid! Abry-ham said he would be, if a real one came to town. I ain’t, though. I’m a gentleman. Gentlemen ain’t never afraid of nothin’. Pooh! I’ll show him!”
Creeping so softly out of bed in his bare feet that his companion did not hear him, he seized his little rifle and cautiously crept to the other open window.
On the grass below, a white figure was moving slowly about, in a vague sort of fashion, which, had either protector of the defenceless been wiser, he would have known belonged neither to any burglar nor ghost which ever troubled the repose of the peaceful.
Luke’s own weapon was poised, but he was so nervous and intensely excited that he delayed to fire; else would the tragedy have been great. But while he paused to steady himself, crack went the other rifle, and down dropped the “ghost.”
Then and there arose such shrieks and screamsas no burglar or disembodied spirit ever uttered, and which drove Luke in despair to hide his head beneath the bed-clothes, and Fritz to stand and gaze with rueful, half-dazed wonder upon one—two—three—a whole yard full of ghosts!