Ronnie was up bright and early the next morning. All the time he was washing himself and brushing his teeth, he was trying to figure out what it was he had seen the night before.
It had looked somewhat like a flashlight beam hitting the thick foliage from underneath a tree. But that wouldn’t account for the way the light had reflected from the sloping-roof surface of one of the buildings.
“I reckon that was just about where the boarded-up building is,” he told himself.
He wondered if he should tell anybody about what he had seen. Nobody was likely to believe him. In fact, he was having a hard job trying to convince himself that his eyes hadn’t been playing tricks on him. Sometimes the netting in the screens made lights take on strange shapes and do crazy things. Or maybe it was the moon coming out suddenly from behind a cloud and lighting up the roof of the building. Yet this wasn’t the first time he had gazed out over the deserted village from his bedroom window, and he had never seen the light before. He pulled on his trousers and went down to the kitchen where he found his fatherat the table finishing a bowl of cold cereal. “Morning, Dad,” he said.
“Morning, Ronnie! What’s the special occasion—getting up so early, I mean?”
The boy explained about the plan Bill and he had made—how they hoped to attract tourists to the deserted village and perhaps earn some money too.
“Sounds like a fine idea to me, son!” Mr. Rorth nodded his head. “Let me know if I can help you in any way.”
Mr. Rorth washed his dish out at the sink and set it into the drain to dry. “A fine day for haying,” he said glancing out the window at the sky. “In a few days I’ll need you and Phil to help gather it in.”
After his father had left, Ronnie got his breakfast of fruit juice and cereal from the refrigerator and pantry shelf and then sat down at the table to eat.
While he was eating, he thought over all the things Bill and he would do that day to prepare for their new business venture. He jotted them down on a piece of scrap paper: “Clean out all the buildings that are in pretty good shape. Cut off all the branches that stick out over the dirt road and the cobblestone road. Clear a small parking place. Print a sign to put on the highway.”
Then he added: “Tell Bill what I saw last night?” He added two more question marks at the end of the words.
Just as Ronnie was finishing his meal, he heard Mrs. Butler drive up in her car. A few minutes later she came bustling into the kitchen. “Well,” she exclaimed, “aren’t you the early bird!”
She opened the cupboard door and placed her pocketbook inside. “Strangest thing about that blanket,” she saidto Ronnie. “I was sure I’d find it this morning. But I don’t see hide nor hair of it. Did you make your bed, youngster?”
Ronnie flushed. “No, ma’am,” he confessed.
“I might have guessed. Well, I’ll take care of it for you this once. ’Pears like you’ve got some mighty important things on your mind, or you wouldn’t be up so early. Keep your eyes peeled for that blanket.” She picked up the carpet sweeper from beside the refrigerator and hurried from the room.
Phil shuffled into the kitchen, still in his pajamas. He fell into a chair and yawned deeply. “That cereal looks O.K. Mind fixing me up a batch?”
“Help yourself. Be my guest.” Another idea had come to Ronnie and he jotted it down on his list: “Maybe make some circulars to leave around town telling about the village.” Lots of tourists came through Massena on their way to the Thousand Islands. Some might be interested in seeing the old glassworks.
Phil settled himself at the table with a bowl of corn flakes and a bottle of milk. “Watcha writing?” he asked his brother.
“Just jotting down some ideas about starting our business.”
“Maybe I’ll tag along and see what it’s all about. If it looks interesting, I’ll think about joining up.”
“Don’t put yourself out.”
“Aw, I don’t mind. In fact, it sounds kind of intriguing. Maybe I can pick up a few fast bucks to get that bicycle I’ve had my eye on.”
Ronnie put down the pencil, folded up the paper and stuffed it in his trouser pocket. “All the money we make isgoing into helping to save the village. If you want to come, you’d better get dressed because I’m taking off in a few minutes.”
“You can go on ahead. I’ll join you later.”
Ronnie washed out his plate and glass and put them away. Then he left the house. The sun was hardly over the treetops, and the grass still sparkled with early morning dew. A fine haze streaked the horizon, and the boy knew it was going to be hot before the day was over. He cut through the orchard, slid down the embankment, and cut into the forest where the buildings of the village were scattered.
On the cobbled road he paused and whistled shrilly, a signal to Bill. He listened, but no answer came back to him. Well, he’d wait for Bill by the boarded-up house.
He cut down the side path to the building. The bare earth, where the leaves had blown away, was damp from the night dew, and his bare feet padded noiselessly along. He broke out into the small clearing that faced the front of the building and stopped abruptly.
For a second he had thought the figure moving hurriedly away from the rear of the building was Bill, and he had been just about to whistle a greeting. Now he saw that it was a man, and while he could only see a portion of his shoulders and head, he thought of Mr. Caldwell, the man who had driven into the village the day before. “Hi, Mr. Caldwell!” he yelled.
The man turned for an instant to face the boy, then whirled about and hurried into the woods.
The man’s face had been in the shadows for that single instant he had faced Ronnie, and the boy still wasn’t surewhether he was the man who had paid them the visit and promised to return for a talk with Mr. Rorth. Ronnie shrugged, as if to tell himself that it really didn’t matter. If it had been Caldwell, he’d explain his actions later.
Ronnie decided to take a quick swing around the building to see if he could find anything that might tell him about the light he had seen the evening before. The rusty lock, snapped in place three or four years before when Grandfather had abandoned his search, was still in place. The window shutters were as tightly closed. Everything looked perfectly normal.
“Strangest thing ever,” he said to himself. He was beginning to believe hehadbeen seeing things the night before.
He spied a narrow crack where the shutter did not fit tight against the window frame, but it was a little too high to look through. But off in one of the thickets of hemlock saplings, he saw a fair-sized log. He grabbed hold of it, rolled it over beneath the window, and then wedged a smaller piece of wood under it to keep it from moving.
Holding onto the window frame for support, Ronnie climbed onto the log and placed his right eye against the crack. The room was dark except for the glow from a faint patch of light that found its way down the chimney flues.
The light, however, was sufficient for him to make a very puzzling discovery. Somebody, apparently, had spent the night sleeping in the boarded-up house! Spread out on the hearth was Mrs. Butler’s missing blanket. The stub of a candle was waxed securely to the floor, and a flashlight lay to one side.
“Hi, Ronnie!” he heard Bill’s voice behind him. “Gee, let me take a look inside too!”
Ronnie stepped down from the log. “Hi, Bill. I just discovered the queerest thing. You take a look and tell me whatyouthink.”
“Sure thing!” Bill was only too happy to comply. He climbed the log and, shielding his eyes, peered through the crack. A minute later he was down on the ground again facing Ronnie. “Looks like somebody’s been sleeping in there!” he exclaimed.
“Just whatIthought!” Ronnie agreed. “And that looks just like the blanket Mrs. Butler lost yesterday. I know it because it’s the one she uses when she takes her nap in the afternoon. I’d know that Indian blanket anywhere!”
“Well! Let’s go in and take a look around,” Bill exclaimed.
“In?” Ronnie was flabbergasted. “Why, I don’t know howhegot in! I just looked at the lock, and—and all the shutters are still nailed shut—Ithink.”
“Couldn’t be!” Bill started out on his own inspection tour. He joined Ronnie a few minutes later, shaking his head in disbelief. “You’re right,” he said. “I couldn’t find any way to get in, either. You’d better tell your dad about this, Ronnie!”
“I’ll sure do that,” he said.
“And maybe your grandfather will open up and take a look inside to find out what’s going on.”
“Yea, sure.” Ronnie was still too deep in thought to pay much attention to Bill’s remarks.Howhad the intruder gotten in? he asked himself over and over again. Mrs. Butler had hung the blanket on the line the day before, and now Ronnie was sure that it was inside the boarded-up building. Butwhohad put it there, andhowhad he gotten inside?
The boys didn’t give up searching for an answer until they had re-examined the four walls and had even climbed to the roof for an inspection. “Maybe he went down the chimney!” Bill suggested.
“Don’t be silly!” Ronnie laughed. “Even a baby couldn’t get down there.” He peered over the top and looked down the flue. “Besides, the swifts’ nest is still there, and it would be broken if anyone had gone down.”
Just then Bill spied Phil coming down the cobblestone road. “Hey, Ron-nie. Hey, Bill,” Phil called out.
“Don’t let on what we’ve found inside,” Bill warned Ronnie. “It’s our secret—yours and mine. O.K.?”
Ronnie nodded. They went down the path to meet Phil, who had seated himself on a fallen log to wait for them to join him. He had cut himself a walking stick from a wild cherry tree and was busy paring ringlets and designs by stripping off the bark. The live wood showed through, a pale green.
“Thought you’d never get here,” he said without looking up from his work. “How’s the business coming?”
“We haven’t started yet.” Bill turned to Ronnie. “I was thinking last night that first off, we’ve got to have an office to work in, and where we can keep all our stuff.”
“That’s right!” Ronnie agreed.
“How about one of the workers’ cottages?” Phil suggested. “Gramps fixed up a couple of them and they’re still in good shape.”
Ronnie and Bill agreed, and the three set off down the cobbled road, crossed Goose Brook and struck out down the overgrown path that led to the row of workers’ cottages. Only two of them were still in good repair, the two on eachend of the row that formerly contained close to a dozen. Of the rest, most had completely fallen to ruin. Only their foundations and chimneys were still standing. A few had walls, but the roofs were caved in and rotting.
The boys chose the one closest to the cobbled road and set to work cleaning it up. While Ronnie and Phil removed the debris that littered the floor, Bill ran home to get a broom and pail and mop.
By noontime the walls and floors had been mopped with water from the brook, a makeshift desk had been constructed from old lumber, and several rickety but serviceable chairs had been located in other buildings.
“We should have done this a long time ago,” Bill said, wiping the perspiration from his forehead, “even if it was just for a clubhouse. It’s real neat!”
Before leaving for lunch they agreed to return that afternoon and begin work on some of the items Ronnie had written on his list at breakfast that morning. “The road from the highway comes first,” he decided. “Then, cleaning up the buildings we’re going to use in our tour. Then, the sign.”
Phil groaned. “I just remembered,” he announced. “I’ve got a date with the hammock for the afternoon.”
When Ronnie came within sight of his own house fifteen minutes later, he recognized Mr. Caldwell’s station wagon parked near the back door. He’d already left Phil a good distance behind, so he began to run, afraid that he might already have missed something of importance.
Mr. Caldwell was in the barn, talking with Ronnie’s father. He looked up and smiled in the boy’s direction as Ronnie entered. “Hello, Ronald,” he said.
“Hi!” Ronnie answered.
Ronnie tagged along behind his father and Mr. Caldwell as they walked slowly from the barn and then stopped alongside Mr. Caldwell’s car for a few final words. Then Mr. Caldwell climbed into his station wagon and started the engine. Ronnie waved good-by.
“Dad,” he asked, following his father back to the barn, “what did he want?”
“Supposing you come up in the loft with me and help pile up the hay you knocked down the other day. Then I’ll be able to get the rest of it in after it’s finished drying on the fields. I’ll tell you about Mr. Caldwell while we work.”
Ronnie followed his father up the ladder. It was stifling hot in the loft. Mr. Rorth opened the two loft doors that faced onto the barnyard. Overhead a wasp darted angrily among the beams, droning like a model airplane.
Mr. Rorth picked up two pitchforks and handed one of them to Ronnie. “How come you’re so interested in this Mr. Caldwell?” he asked, starting to move some of the hay toward the rear of the loft.
Ronnie grinned. “I guess maybe because I’m just plain nosey!” he answered.
Mr. Rorth had gathered up a large pile of hay. Now he jabbed thetinesof his fork underneath it and heaved the load to the top of the stack. Then he turned to face the boy. “Couldn’t ask for a more honest answer than the one you gave me, could I?” he queried. “I’ll say this, though, about the man,” he went on, more seriously, “I’ll say that I was impressed by the way he talked. He seemed genuinely interested in antiques, particularly glassware. And apparentlyhe’s built up quite a name for himself as a connoisseur of old glass.”
Ronnie thought about what his father had just told him. “Dad, what’s a connoisseur?”
“A connoisseur? Well, he’s a person who knows a great deal about some special art subject. Caldwell got interested in glassware when he was a boy. It seems his family had a couple of pieces of Rorth glassware that had beenhandeddown from one generation to the next. He started doing some research on them, and pretty soon he was studying up on all makes of glassware. Now he’s writing a book on early American glassware. He wants to include a few chapters about Rorth glass.”
Ronnie stopped work long enough to turn toward his father. “And is that why Caldwell came to see you?” he asked.
“Yes, in a way.” Mr. Rorth leaned lightly on the handle of his fork. “He wants to spend some time here poking around in the buildings and talking with your grandfather about the history of the Glassworks. He thought maybe he could bed down in one of the buildings in the village.”
“Hedoes!” Ronnie exclaimed. “Golly, maybe he’ll help us set up our business, specially if he knows so much about glassware. Think he might, Dad?”
“Well, now, I don’t know. He’s coming here to learn more about it himself. But you ask him if you want.”
Ronnie went over to the opening of the loft and sat down on the edge with his feet dangling out over the barnyard. The perspiration was running down his body in streams, and he wanted to cool off. The hayseeds were sticking to his skin, too, and itching something awful.
His father came over and stood behind him, leaning on the handle of his fork, trying to catch a few puffs of the cooler air.
“When’s he moving in, Dad?” Ronnie asked.
“Right after lunch, I think. He went back to check out of the motel.”
“I wonder if he really slept in the motel last night,” Ronnie mused.
“Why do you ask that?”
“Becausesomebodyslept in the old office building, that’s why. And who else would it be excepting Mr. Caldwell?”
“That’s nonsense, Ronnie,” his father protested. “Why would Mr. Caldwell want to sleep in the old office building? And how would he get in without breaking down the door?”
“That’s what Bill and I were wondering too.”
Mr. Rorth shook his head slowly as if to say, “These kids!” and then picked up his fork and moved back to work. Ronnie got up and followed him. “Don’t you believe me, Dad?” Ronnie asked.
“Well,” Mr. Rorth said, grinning, “I’ll say I’m having a hard time believing you. For instance, how can you tell that a man slept there—what evidence do you have?”
“Well, there’s a little crack in the window, and Bill and I climbed up and looked through it. We saw the blanket Mrs. Butler was looking for last night.”
Mr. Rorth raised his eyebrows a bit and looked straight at Ronnie. “Well, thatisconvincing.” He thought about it for a moment. “Tell you what, Ronnie. I’m going down to the village later this afternoon to see if Mr. Caldwell got settled all right. I’ll take a look at the old office building on the way.”
“The crack is in the south window and you can peek in through there.”
“Never mind the crack. I’ll bring the key—if that old lock will still turn. Last time I looked it was wrapped with a cloth to keep it from rusting.”
“Not any more it isn’t,” said Ronnie.
After lunch Ronnie gathered together some tools and lumber to use in building a sign for the highway. With these under his arms, he stopped by the grape arbor where Phil was lying in the hammock. “You coming down?” he asked, hoping he would so he could carry some of the load.
Phil eyed the lumber and tools. “I’ll be down after my siesta,” he said. “Nobody with any sense exercises during the heat of the day.”
By resting his load on the ground every few hundred feet, Ronnie reached their new office without too much trouble. Bill hadn’t shown up yet, so Ronnie stretched out in one of their chairs, making plans for the afternoon while he waited for his friend.
But after five minutes he grew restless and decided he’d kill some time by taking another peek through the shutter into the boarded-up building. He slipped out of the office and made his way toward the building. Soon he was standing on the log and peering through the crack.
“Oh,no!” he exclaimed suddenly. “Now what’s Dad going to think of me?”
The blanket, candle, and flashlight were no longer in sight.