Mr. Sherwood, in overalls and an old cap, had been sifting cinders out behind the shed. They had to be careful of fuel as well as of most other things. Momsey would not open the long envelope until he had been called and had come in. Nan still wore the bright colored bandana wound about her head, turban-wise, for a dust cap. Papa Sherwood beat the ashes from his hands as he stood before the glowing kitchen range.
“What is it?” he asked calmly. “A notice of a new tax assessment? Or a cure-all advertisement of Somebody's Pills?”
“It's from Cousin Adair,” said Momsey, a little breathlessly. “And it's been lying at our door all the time.”
“All what time?” asked Mr. Sherwood curiously.
“All the time we have been so disappointed in our inquiries elsewhere,” said Momsey soberly.
“Oh!” responded her husband doubtfully, and said no more.
“It makes my knees shake,” confessed Nan. “Do open it, Momsey!”
“I, I feel that it is important, too,” the little lady said.
“Well, my dear,” her husband finally advised, having waited in patience, “unless it is opened we shall never know whether your feeling is prophetic or not. 'By the itching of my thumb,' and so forth!”
Without making any rejoinder to this, and perhaps without hearing his gentle raillery, Mrs. Sherwood reached up to the coils of her thick hair to secure woman's never-failing implement, a hairpin.
There were two enclosures. Both she shook into her lap. The sealed, foreign-looking letter she picked up first. It was addressed in a clerkly hand to,
“MISTRESS JESSIE ADAIR BLAKE, “KINDNESS OF MESSRS. ADAIR MACKENZIE & CO. “MEMPHIS, TENN., U.S.A.”
“From England. No! From Scotland,” murmured Nan, looking over her mother's shoulder in her eagerness. She read the neatly printed card in the corner of the foreign envelope:
KELLAM & BLAKE HADBORNE CHAMBERS EDINBURGH
Mrs. Sherwood was whispering her maiden name over to herself. She looked up suddenly at her husband with roguish eyes.
“I'd almost forgotten there ever was such a girl as Jessie Adair Blake,” she said.
“Oh, Momsey!” squealed Nan, with clasped hands and immense impatience. “Don't, DON'T be so slow! Open it!”
“No-o,” her mother said, with pursed lips. “No, honey. The other comes first, I reckon.”
It was a letter typewritten upon her cousin's letter-head; but it was not dictated by Mr. Adair MacKenzie. Instead, it was from Mr. MacKenzie's secretary, who stated that her employer had gone to Mexico on business that might detain him for several weeks.
“A letter addressed by you to Mr. MacKenzie arrived after his departure and is being held for him with other personal communications until his return; but being assured that you are the Jessie Adair Blake, now Sherwood—to whom the enclosed letter from Scotland is addressed, I take the liberty of forwarding the same. The Scotch letter reached us after Mr. MacKenzie's departure, likewise. Will you please acknowledge the receipt of the enclosure and oblige?”
This much of the contents of the secretary's letter was of particular interest to the Sherwoods. Momsey's voice shook a little as she finished reading it. Plainly she was disappointed.
“Cousin Adair, I am sure, would have suggested something helpful had he been at home,” she said sadly. “It, it is a great disappointment, Robert.”
“Well, well!” replied Mr. Sherwood, perhaps not without some secret relief. “It will all come out right. At least, your cousin hasn't refused his assistance. We shall be established somewhere before he returns from his Mexican trip.”
“I, I did depend so much upon Adair's good will and advice,” signed Momsey.
“But, dear me suz!” gasped Nan impatiently. “What are you folks bothering over that for? It isn't Cousin Adair that I want to know about. It's this letter, Momsey,” and she seized the thin yet important envelope from Scotland and shook it before her mother's eyes.
“Better look into it, Momsey,” advised Mr. Sherwood easily, preparing to return to the cinder sifting. “Maybe it's from some of your relatives in the Old Country. I see 'Blake' printed in the corner. Didn't your father have an uncle or somebody, who was steward on the estate of a Scotch Laird of some renown?”
“Heck, mon!” cried Momsey, with her usual gaiety, and throwing off the cloud of gloom that had momentarily subdued her spirit. “Ye air a wise cheil. Ma faither talked muckle o' Uncle Hughie Blake, remimberin' him fra' a wee laddie when his ain faither took him tae Scotland, and tae Castle Emberon, on a veesit.”
Nan and Papa Sherwood laughed at her when she assumed the Scotch burr of her forebears. With precision she cut the flap of this smaller envelope. She felt no excitement now. She had regained control of herself after the keen disappointment arising from the first letter.
She calmly opened the crackly sheet of legal looking paper in her lap. It was not a long letter, and it was written in a stiff, legal hand, instead of being typewritten, each character as precise as the legal mind that dictated it:
“Mistress Jessie Adair Blake, (Known to be a married woman, but wedded name unknown to writer.)
“Dear Madam: It is my duty to inform you that your father (the late Randolph Hugh Blake) was made sole beneficiary of his late uncle, Mr. Hugh Blake, the Laird of Emberon's steward, by a certain testament, or will, made many years ago. Mr. Hugh Blake has recently died a bachelor, and before his demise he added a codicil to the above testament, or will, naming you, his great niece, his sole heir and beneficiary.
“There are other relatives who may make some attempt to oppose your claim; but none of near blood. Your title to the said estate is clear; but it is quite necessary that you should appear before our Courts with proofs of identity, and so forth. On receipt from you of acknowledgment of this letter, with copies of identification papers (your grandfather's naturalization papers, your father's discharge from army, your own birth certificate and marriage lines, and so forth) I will give myself the pleasure of forwarding any further particulars you may wish, and likewise place at your command my own services in obtaining possession for you of your great uncle's estate.
“The said estate of Mr. Hugh Blake, deceased, amounts, in real and personal property, including moneys in the bank, to about the sum, roughly estimated, of 10,000 pounds.
“Respectfully, your servant,
“Andrew Blake, Solicitor and Att'y.”
Nan had leaned over her mother's shoulder, big-eyed, scarce believing the plainly written words she read. It was preposterous, ridiculous, fanciful, a dream from which she must awake in a moment to the full realization of their dreadful need of just such a godsend as this.
It was her father's voice that roused the girl. He had not seen the letter and Momsey had read it silently to herself.
“Look out, Nancy! What is the matter with your mother?”
With a cry the girl caught the frail little lady in her arms as the letter slipped unheeded from her lap to the floor. Mrs. Sherwood's eyes were closed. She had fainted.
So said Mrs. Sherwood, opening her eyes to see the scared face of Nan close above her. Then she saw her husband at her feet, quietly chafing her hands in his own hard, warm palms. She pulled hers gently from his clasp and rested them upon his head. Mr. Sherwood's hair was iron-gray, thick, and inclined to curl. She ran her little fingers into it and clung tightly.
“Let, let me get my breath!” she gasped. Then, after a moment she smiled brilliantly into the wind-bitten face of the kneeling man. “It's all over, Robert,” she said.
“My dear!” he cried thickly; while Nan could not wholly stifle the cry of fear that rose to her lips.
“It's all over,” repeated the little woman. “All the worry, all the poverty, all the uncertainty, all the hard times.”
Mr. Sherwood looked startled indeed. He had no idea what the letter from Scotland contained, and he feared that his wife, who had already suffered so much, was for the moment quite out of her head.
“My poor Jessie,” he began, but her low, sweet laugh stopped him.
“Not poor! Never poor again, Robert!” she cried. “God is very good to us. At the very darkest hour He has shown us the dawn. Robert, we are rich!”
“Great goodness, Jessie! What do you mean? Exclaimed Mr. Sherwood, stumbling to his feet at last.
“It's true! It's true, Papa Sherwood!” Nan cried, clapping her hands. “Don't you call ten thousand dollars riches?”
“Ten, thousand, dollars?” murmured her father. He put his hand to his head and looked confusedly about for a seat, into which he weakly dropped. Nan had picked up the letter and now she dramatically thrust it into his hand.
“Read that, Papa Sherwood!” she said commandingly.
He read the communication from the Scotch attorney, first with immense surprise, then with profound doubt. Who but a young imaginative girl, like Nan, or a woman with unbounded faith in the miracles of God, like her mother, could accept such a perfectly wonderful thing as being real?
“A hoax,” thought the man who had worked so hard all his life without the least expectation of ever seeing a penny that he did not earn himself. “Can it be that any of those heedless relatives of my wife's in Memphis have attempted a practical joke at this time?”
He motioned for Nan to bring him the envelope, too. This he examined closely, and then read the communication again. It looked all regular. The stationery, the postmark, the date upon it, all seemed perfectly in accord.
Mrs. Sherwood's gay little laugh shattered the train of her husband's thought. “I know what the matter is with you, Papa Sherwood,” she said. “You think it must be a practical joke.”
“Oh!” gasped Nan, feeling a positive pain at her heart. This awful possibility had never entered her mind before.
“But it isn't,” went on her mother blithely. “It is real. Mr. Hugh Blake, of Emberon, must have been very old; and he was probably as saving and canny as any Scotchman who ever wore kilts. It is not surprising that he should have left an estate of considerable size——-”
“Ten thousand dollars!” breathed Nan again. She loved to repeat it. There was white magic in the very sound of such a sum of money. But her father threw a conversational bomb into their midst the next instant.
“Ten thousand dollars, you goosey!” he said vigorously. “That's the main doubt in the whole business. It isn't ten thousand dollars. It's fifty thousand dollars! A pound, either English or Scotch, is almost five of our dollars. Ten thousand dollars would certainly be a fortune for us; fifty thousand is beyond the dreams of avarice.”
“Oh, dear me!” said Nan weakly.
But Mrs. Sherwood merely laughed again. “The more the better,” she said. “Why shouldn't we be able to put fifty thousand dollars to good use?”
“Oh, we can, Momsey,” said Nan eagerly. “But, will we be let?”
Mr. Sherwood laughed grimly at that; but his wife continued confidently:
“I am sure nobody needs it more than we do.”
“Why!” her daughter said, just as excitedly, “we'll be as rich as Bess Harley's folks. Oh, Momsey! Oh, Papa Sherwood! Can I go to Lakewood Hall?”
The earnestness of her cry showed the depths to which that desire had plumbed during these last weeks of privation and uncertainty. It was Nan's first practical thought in relation to the possibility of their changed circumstances.
The father and mother looked at each other with shocked understanding. The surprise attending the letter had caused both parents to forget, for the moment, the effect of this wonderful promise of fortune, whether true or false, on imaginative, high-spirited Nan.
“Let us be happy at first, Nan, just in the knowledge that some money is coming to us,” Mrs. Sherwood said more quietly. “Never mind how much, or how little. Time will tell all that.”
“Now you talk like father,” cried Nan, pouting.
“And let father talk a little, too,” Mr. Sherwood said, smiling, “and to you both.” His right forefinger struck the letter emphatically in his other hand. “This is a very wonderful, a blessed, thing, if true. But it has to be proven. We must build our hopes on no false foundation.”
“Oh, Papa Sherwood! How can we, when the man says there——-”
“Hush!” whispered Momsey, squeezing her excited little daughter's hand.
“In the first place,” continued Mr. Sherwood quietly and gravely, “there may be some mistake in the identification of your mother, child, as the niece mentioned in this old man's will.”
“Oh!” Nan could not help that gasp.
“Again, there may be stronger opposition to her claim than this lawyer at present sees. Fifty thousand dollars is a whole lot of money, and other people by the name of Blake will be tempted by it.”
“How mean of them!” whispered Nan.
“And, above all,” pursued Mr. Sherwood, “this may be merely a scheme by unprincipled people to filch small sums of money from gullible people. The 'foreign legacy swindle' is worked in many different ways. There may be calls for money, by this man who names himself Andrew Blake, for preliminary work on the case. We haven't much; but if he is baiting for hundreds of Blakes in America he may secure, in the aggregate, a very tidy sum indeed.”
“Oh, Father!” cried Nan. “That's perfectly horrid!”
“But perfectly possible. Let us not swallow this bait, hook, line and sinker. You see, he sends no copy of the will in question, or that codicil relating to your mother's legacy; nor does he offer identification or surety as to his own standing. Don't let the possibilities of this wonderful thing carry you off your feet, my dear.”
Nan's lip was quivering and she could scarcely crowd back the tears. To have one's hopes rise so high only to be dashed——-.
“Don't completely crush us, Papa Sherwood, with your perfectly unanswerable logic,” said his wife lightly. “We'll remember all these strictures, and more. We can at least put the matter to the test.”
“Quite so,” agreed her husband. “We will prepare the papers requested by this Scotch attorney. I will even inquire of a good lawyer here something regarding the Scotch laws in such a matter as this, if it will be necessary to make a personal appearance before the local courts over there. And perhaps we can find out the true standing of Mr. Andrew Blake, of Kellam & Blake, Edinburgh. It will cost us a little money, and we can ill spare it now; but to satisfy ourselves——-”
“We will throw a sprat to catch a herring,” quoted Momsey cheerfully.
“Quite so,” repeated Mr. Sherwood.
“But, dear, DEAR!” moaned Nan. “Is that all it is going to amount to? Don't you really believe it's all true, Papa Sherwood?”
“I can't say that I do, my dear,” returned her father gravely. “Such romantic things as this do not often happen outside of story books.”
“Then, I declare!” cried Nan desperately, “I wish we lived in a story book!”
“Your father will make inquiries at once, honey,” said Momsey easily, seemingly very little disturbed herself by her husband's doubts and fears. To her mind this wonderful turn of fortune's wheel was in direct answer to prayer. Nothing could shake her faith in the final result of her husband's inquiries. Yet, she was proud of his caution and good sense.
“I do think it is dreadful,” murmured Nan, “to believe one's self rich for only a minute!”
“Have patience, honey,” said her mother.
“Meanwhile,” added Mr. Sherwood, rising, “I will go back to sifting cinders.”
But Nan did no more sweeping that day.
Nan said nothing to Bess Harley, her particular chum and confidant, about the wonderful letter that had come from Scotland. Although Momsey and Nan talked the legacy over intimately that Saturday afternoon, and planned what they would really do with some of the money “when their ship came in,” the young girl knew that the matter was not to be discussed outside of the family circle.
Not even the hope Nan now cherished of accompanying her chum to Lakeview Hall when the next school year opened was divulged when the two girls were together on Sunday, or on the days that immediately followed.
Nan Sherwood went about her household and school tasks in a sort of waking dream. Imagination was continually weaving pictures in her mind of what might happen if the vista of new fortunes that had opened before the little family in the Amity Street cottage really came true.
Papa Sherwood's first reports on the matter of the Scotch legacy were not inspiring.
“Mr. Bludsoe says we'd better go slow,” he said seriously. Mr. Bludsoe was a lawyer of high repute in Tillbury. “This letter may be written by an attorney in Edinburgh; but there are rascally lawyers there as well as elsewhere. Bludsoe had correspondents in London. They may be able to inform him regarding the firm of solicitors, Kellam & Blake, if the firm really is entered at the Scotch bar.”
“Oh! But won't that mean delay?” murmured Nan.
“Meanwhile,” said her father, smiling at her impatience, “we will prepare the papers identifying your dear mother so that, if this wonderful new fortune should be a reality, we can put in a proper claim for it. Just the same,” he added to his wife, when Nan had left the room, “I have written to that machine shop boss in Chicago that I am ready to come to work any day he may send for me.”
“Oh, Robert!” gasped the little lady. “Won't you believe?”
“Like the darkey who was asked if he believed the world was round, and said, 'Ah believes it, but Ah ain't dead sho' of it.' I presume this great fortune is possible, Jessie, but I haven't perfect and abiding faith in its existence, FOR us,” said her husband.
But Momsey had just that quality of faith. She went singing about her household tasks and her usual smile beamed quite beatific. So said Dr. Christian, who stepped in to see her, as was his custom every few days.
“What's this? What's this?” the old medical practitioner demanded of Mr. Sherwood, on the porch, where he usually made his report, and to which Nan often stole to listen openly to them discuss her mother's case. “I find her in a state of happy excitement, and that is quite right, Robert, quite right, if the hopes that are the wellspring of it are not quenched. What does it mean? Have you arranged the sea voyage I advised?”
Papa Sherwood's face changed suddenly. He looked oddly, Nan thought, at the doctor. “I don't know but that is it, Doc,” he said. “That sea voyage may be in the offing.”
“Best thing that could happen to her, best thing that could happen to her!” declared the old physician with emphasis, as he stumped away.
Nan wondered what that could mean. A sea voyage for Momsey? Of course, for all of them. She could not imagine Momsey going anywhere without her and Papa Sherwood.
She knew she was not to say anything about what she heard pass between her father and the doctor on the porch. Indeed, Nan was no bearer of tales in any event. But she was very curious. The steam from the cauldron of Mystery seldom arose in the little “dwelling in amity” save about Christmas time or just previous to Nan's birthday. But Papa Sherwood certainly was enigmatical and Momsey was mysteriously happy, as Dr. Christian had said.
“And we'll put steam heat in the little house. You know, Robert, we've always wanted to,” Nan's mother suddenly said one evening as they all sat around the reading lamp, and quite apropos of nothing at all. Then she laughed, flushing prettily. “There! You see what my mind runs on. I really can't help it.”
It was only a day or two later that the second letter came from Memphis. Mr. Adair MacKenzie had returned from Mexico and evidently one of the first duties he performed was to write his Cousin Jessie his congratulations.
“A letter on quite another matter,” this epistle read, “from our distant kinsman, Andrew Blake, of Kellam & Blake, apprised me that the ancient Hugh Blake, steward to the Lairds of Emberon for so many years, was dead and that his property was willed to your father, whose appearance as a lad at Emberon pleased the old man greatly.
“You are to be congratulated. The estate is considerable, I understand. Your husband's troubles which are mentioned in your letter that I found awaiting my return will now be over. For, although Andrew Blake intimates that there may be considerable opposition in the courts there, over the money going to an American heir, you will be able in the end to establish your rights.
“Believe me, my dear Jessie, I know of nobody in our family to whom I would rather see fortune come than to yourself and your dear ones. If I can be of any assistance, financially, or otherwise, in helping you obtain your rights in this event, believe me, I stand ready to give such aid. Do not hesitate to call upon me. My regards to your husband and little girl whom I have never seen; Alice and John join me in expressing our good wishes for your happy future. I remain, with the old love I always had for you, Your cousin, Adair MacKenzie.”
“Now, Robert, what have you to say?” cried Momsey triumphantly, while Nan danced a fandango about the room.
“This much,” replied her husband, smiling. “Our minds are relieved on one point, at least. Kellam & Blake are respectable attorneys. We will send our communication to Mr. Blake at once, without waiting for Mr. Bludsoe's enquiries to bear fruit. Your Cousin Adair knows the Scotch firm, and of course vouches for their trustworthiness.”
“Dear me, Papa Sherwood, you are so practical!” sighed Nan. She meant “vexing;” they were interchangeable terms to her mind at this exciting point. “Can't you work up any enthusiasm over Momsey's wonderful fortune?”
“Its existence is established, it would seem, beyond peradventure,” said Mr. Sherwood drily. “But our attempt to obtain the fortune is not yet begun.”
“Why, ee!” squealed Nan. “You don't really suppose anybody will try to keep Momsey from getting it?”
“Exactly that,” said her father. “The Blakes are a widely scattered clan. There are probably a number of people as close in blood-tie to the old man who has just died as your mother, my dear. These people may all bob up, one after another, to dispute Momsey's claim.”
“But, dear me!” gasped Nan. “The money was willed to Momsey.”
“Nevertheless, these other relatives, if there be such—can keep Momsey out of the enjoyment of her rights for a long time. Court processes are slow, and especially so, I should judge, among the canny and careful Scotch. I think we would better leave it to the lawyers to settle. We cannot hasten the courts by worrying over the fortune.
“I think,” pursued Papa Sherwood judiciously, “that instead of spending our time discussing and dreaming of the fortune in Scotland, we would better go right on with our tasks here as though there were really no fortune at all.”
“Oh, my!” whispered Nan, her eyes clouding. “That's because of my last fortnightly report. I know I fell behind in history and rhetoric.”
“Don't be too hard on us, Papa Sherwood,” said Momsey brightly. “Anticipation is more than half of every pleasure. I lie awake every night and spend this great fortune of ours to the very last penny.”
“Of course,” the little lady added, with more gravity, “I wouldn't really spend fifty thousand dollars so recklessly as I do in my mind. But I can found schools, and hospitals, and educate Nan, and give you, Papa Sherwood, a great big business, and buy two automobiles, and——-”
“Enough! Enough!” cried Mr. Sherwood, in mock seriousness. “You are a born spendthrift, Momsey. That you have had no chance to really be one thus far will only make your case more serious when you have this legacy in your possession. Two automobiles, no less!”
“But I want you both, my dears, to bear one very important fact in mind. Roughly estimated the fortune is ten thousand pounds. To be exact, it may be a good deal less at the start. Then, after the lawyers and the courts get through with the will and all, the remainder that dribbles into your pocket, Momsey, may be a very small part of ten thousand pounds.”
“Oh, how horrid, Papa Sherwood!” cried Nan. “We won't listen to him, will we, Momsey?”
“Oh, yes we will,” her mother said quietly, but smiling. “But we will still believe that the world is good and that God has given us great good fortune. Papa talks very sensibly; but I know that there is nothing to fear. We are going to be very well off for the rest of our lives, and I cannot be thankful enough for it.”
At that Mr. Sherwood literally threw up his hands. “Nevertheless,” he said, “I expect to go to Chicago next Monday, to begin work in the machine shop. The boss writes me that I can come at that time.”
“I will get your clothes ready for you, Robert,” said Momsey calmly. “Perhaps you will feel better in your mind if you keep busy during this time of waiting.”
It happened, however, that Mr. Sherwood did not go to Chicago to work in the machine shop. Something happened before the week was out, that quite put his intention aside.
Indeed, Nan declared that two important happenings just then changed the current of affairs at the little cottage on Amity Street and that she had a principal part in the action of the first of these unexpected happenings.
It was lovely skating on Norway Pond, and both Nan and her chum, Bess Harley, were devoted to the sport. Nan had been unable to be on the ice Saturdays, because of her home tasks; but when her lessons were learned, she was allowed to go after supper.
It happened to be just at the dark of the moon this week; that kept many off the ice, although the weather was settled and the ice was perfectly safe. Sometimes the boys built a bonfire on Woody Point, with refuse from the planing mill, and that lit up a good bit of the ice.
But once out on the pond, away from the shadows cast by the high banks, the girls could see well enough. They were both good skaters, and with arms crossed and hands clasped, they swung up the middle of the pond in fine style.
“I just love to skate with you, Nan,” sighed Bess ecstatically. “You move just like my other self. We're Siamese twins. We strike out together perfectly. Oh, my dear! I don't see whatever I am to do if you refuse to go to Lakeview with me.”
Nan could scarcely keep from telling Bess of the wonderful new fortune that seemed about to come to her; but she was faithful to her home training, and only said:
“Don't fret about it, honey. Maybe something will turn up to let me go.”
“If you'd let my father pay your way——-?” insinuated Bess.
“Don't talk of that. It's impossible,” said Nan decisively. “It's a long time yet to fall. Maybe conditions will be different at home. A dozen things may happen before school opens in September.”
“Yes! But they may not be the right things,” sighed Bess.
She could not be too melancholy on such a night as this, however. It was perfectly quiet, and the arch of the sky was like black velvet pricked out with gold and silver stars. Their soft radiance shed some light upon the pond, enough, at least, to show the girl chums the way before them as they skimmed on toward Powerton Landing.
They had left a noisy crowd of boys behind them, near the stamp Factory, mostly mill boys, and the like. Bess had been taught at home to shrink from association with the mill people and that is why she had urged Nan to take this long skate up the pond. Around the Tillbury end of it they were always falling in with little groups of mill boys and girls whom Bess did not care to meet.
There was another reason this evening for keeping away from the stamp factory, too. The manager of that big shop had hired a gang of ice cutters a few days before, and had filled his own private icehouse. The men had cut out a roughly outlined square of the thick ice, sawed it into cakes, and poled it to shore and so to the sleds and the manager's icehouse.
It was not a large opening in the ice; but even if the frost continued, it would be several days before the new ice would form thickly enough to bear again over that spot.
Elsewhere, however, the ice was strong, for all the cutting for the big icehouses had been done long before near the Landing. The lights of Powerton Landing were twinkling ahead of them as the two friends swept on up the long lake. The wind was in their faces, such wind as there was, and the air was keen and nippy.
The action of skating, however, kept Nan and Bess warm. Bess in her furs and Nan in her warm tam-o'-shanter and the muffler Momsey had knitted with her own hands, did not mind the cold.
The evening train shrieked out of the gap and across the long trestle just beyond the landing, where it halted for a few seconds for passengers to embark or to leave the cars. This train was from Chicago, and on Monday Papa Sherwood expected to go to that big city to work.
The thought gave Nan a feeling of depression. The little family in the Amity street cottage had never been separated for more than a day since she could remember. It was going to be hard on Momsey, with Papa Sherwood away and Nan in school all day. How were they going to get along without Papa Sherwood coming home to supper, and doing the hard chores?
Bess awoke her chum from these dreams. “Dear me, Nan! Have you lost your tongue all of a sudden? Do say something, or do something.”
“Let's race the train down the pond to Tillbury,” proposed Nan instantly.
The lights of the long coaches were just moving out of the station at the Landing. The two girls came about in a graceful curve and struck out for home at a pace that even the train could not equal. The rails followed the shore of the pond on the narrow strip of lowland at the foot of the bluffs. They could see the lights shining through the car windows all the way.
The fireman threw open the door of his firebox to feed the furnace and a great glare of light, and a shower of sparks, spouted from the smokestack. The rumble of the wheels from across the ice seemed louder than usual.
“Come on, Bess!” gasped Nan, quite excited. “We can do better than this! Why, that old train will beat us!”
For they were falling behind. The train hooted its defiance as it swept down toward Woody Point. The girls shot in toward the shore, where the shadow of the high bluff lay heavily upon the ice.
They heard the boys' voices somewhere below them, but Bess and Nan could not see them yet. They knew that the boys had divided into sides and were playing old-fashioned hockey, “shinny-on-your-own-side” as it was locally called. Above the rumbling of the train they heard the crack of the shinny-stick against the wooden block, and the “z-z-z-zip!” of the missile as it scaled over the ice.
“Those boys will get into the ice-hole if they don't look out,” Nan had just said to her chum, when suddenly a wild yell arose from the hockey players.
The train was slowing down at the signal tower, and finally stopped there. A freight had got in on the main track which had to be cleared before the passenger train could go into Tillbury station. The coaches stood right along the edge of the frozen pond.
But it was nothing in connection with the evening train that caused such a commotion among the skaters near the stamp factory. There was a crash of breaking ice and a scrambling of skaters away from the spot. The boys' yells communicated panic to other people ashore.
“He's in! He's in!” Nan and Bess heard the boys yelling. Then a man's voice took up the cry: “He'll be drowned! Help! Help!”
“That's old Peter Newkirk,” gasped Nan, squeezing Bess' gloved hands tightly. “He's night watchman at the stamp works, and he has only one arm. He can't help that boy.”
The youngsters who had been playing hockey so recklessly near the thin ice, were not as old as Nan and Bess, and the accident had thrown them into utter confusion. Some skated for the shore, screaming for ropes and fence-rails; others only tried to get away from the danger spot themselves. None did the first thing to help their comrade who had broken through the ice.
“Where are you going, Nan?” gasped Bess, pulling back. “You'll have us both in the water, too.”
“We can save him! Quick!” returned her chum eagerly.
She let go of Bess and unwound the long muffler from about her own neck. “If we could only see him!” the girl said, over and over.
And then a brilliant idea struck Nan Sherwood, and she turned to shout to old Peter Newkirk on the shore. “Peter! Peter! Turn on the electric light sign! Turn it on so we can see where he's gone in!”
The watchman had all his wits about him. There was a huge electric sign on the stamp works roof, advertising the company's output. The glare of it could be seen for miles, and it lit up brilliantly the surroundings of the mill.
Peter Newkirk bounded away to the main door of the works. The switch that controlled the huge sign was just inside that door. Before Nan and Bess had reached the edge of the broken ice, the electricity was suddenly shot into the sign and the whole neighborhood was alight.
“I see him! There he is!” gasped Nan to her chum. “Hold me tight by the skirt, Bess! We'll get him!”
She flung herself to her knees and stopped sliding just at the edge of the old, thick ice. With a sweep of her strong young arm she shot the end of the long muffler right into the clutching hands of the drowning boy.
Involuntarily he seized it. He had been down once, and submersion in the ice water had nearly deprived him of both consciousness and power to help save himself. But Nan drew him quickly through the shattered ice-cakes to the edge of the firm crystal where she knelt.
“We have him! We have him!” she cried, in triumph. “Give me your hand, boy! I won't let you go down again.”
But to lift him entirely out of the water would have been too much for her strength. However, several men came running now from the stalled passenger train. The lighting of the electric sign had revealed to them what was going on upon the pond.
The man who lifted the half-drowned boy out of the water was not one of the train crew, but a passenger. He was a huge man in a bearskin coat and felt boots. He was wrapped up so heavily, and his fur cap was pulled down so far over his ears and face, that Nan could not see what he really looked like. In a great, gruff voice he said:
“Well, now! Give me a girl like you ev'ry time! I never saw the beat of it. Here, mister!” as he put the rescued boy into the arms of a man who had just run from a nearby house. “Get him between blankets and he'll be all right. But he's got this smart little girl to thank that he's alive at all.”
He swung around to look at Nan again. Bess was crying frankly, with her gloved hands before her face. “Oh, Nan! Nan!” she sobbed. “I didn't do a thing, not a thing. I didn't even hang to the tail of your skirt as you told me. I, I'm an awful coward.”
The big man patted Nan's shoulder lightly. “There's a little girl that I'm going to see here in Tillbury,” he said gruffly. “I hope she turns out to be half as smart as you are, sissy.” Then he tramped back to the train that was just then starting.
Nan began to laugh. “Did you hear that funny man?” she asked Bess. “Do stop your crying, Bess! You have no reason to cry. You are not hurt.”
“But, but you might have been, been drowned, too,” sobbed her chum. “I didn't help you a mite.”
“Bother!” exclaimed Nan Sherwood. “Don't let's talk about it. We'll go home. I guess we've both had enough skating for tonight.”
Bess wiped away her tears and clung to Nan's hand all the way to their usual corner for separating. Nan ran home from there quickly and burst into the kitchen to find Momsey and Papa Sherwood in the midst of a very serious conference.
“What is the matter?” cried Nan, startled by the gravity of her father and the exaltation upon her mother's face. “What's happened?”
“A very great thing, Nan, honey,” said Momsey, drawing her daughter to her side. “Tell her, Papa Sherwood.”
He sighed deeply and put away the letter they had been reading. “It's from Mr. Blake, of Edinburgh,” he said. “I can no longer doubt the existence of the fortune, my dears. But I fear we shall have to strive for it in the Scotch courts.”
“Oh!” cried Nan, under her breath.
“Mr. Blake tells us here that it is absolutely necessary for us to come to Scotland, and for your mother to appear in person before the court there. The sum of money and other property willed to Momsey by her great uncle is so large that the greatest care will be exercised by the Scotch judges to see that it goes to the right person.”
“As your mother once said, we must throw a sprat to catch a herring. In this case we shall be throwing a sprat to catch a whale! For the amount of money we may have to spend to secure the fifty thousand dollars left by Mr. Hugh Blake, of Emberon, is small, in comparison to the fortune itself.
“We must go to Scotland,” finished Mr. Sherwood firmly. “And we must start as soon as possible.”