The squire hated and despised boys, and made it a point to ignore them whenever it was possible. For this very reason they delighted to annoy him by hailing him whenever they met him. Young Joe Warren had a way of driving the squire nearly into fits by pretending to mistake him for one Captain Kendrick, who was the bitterest enemy the squire had, and then always apologizing for his mistake by explaining to the squire that he could not tell them apart.
“Good morning, Squire Brackett, glad to see you back again!” cried Henry Burns, in the heartiest fashion imaginable, as the squire stepped on to the wharf.
“Humph! Morning—morning,” grunted the squire, as he eyed Henry Burns suspiciously.
Henry Burns smiled most affably, as though the squire had been his dearest friend and adviser.
“Why, how do you do, squire?” said George Warren, cordially.
Squire Brackett scowled angrily at him, but answered, “How d’ye do?” as short as he could.
Just then young Joe made his appearance.
“How are you, Captain Kendrick?” he bawled, loud enough to be heard all over the wharf.
The crowd began to smile, and young Joe added, hastily:
“Oh, I beg pardon, Squire Brackett—always take you for Cap’n Kendrick—strange how you do look so much alike.”
“You little idiot,” yelled the choleric squire, “I’d Cap’n Kendrick you with a rawhide, if I had the say of you,—insulting an honest man with a name like that,—every one of you ought to be in State prison. And you, you’re the worst one of all, Jack Harvey,” pointing to the latter, who had just come upon the wharf. “And you, too!” shaking his fist at Tom and Bob. “You’re sly, but you’ll get caught yet. You’re a pack of young rascals, every one of you. Don’t any of you come around my house, if you don’t want to be chewed up. Here, you brute! Quit that!”
“‘YOU’RE THE WORST ONE OF ALL, JACK HARVEY’”“‘YOU’RE THE WORST ONE OF ALL, JACK HARVEY’”
“‘YOU’RE THE WORST ONE OF ALL, JACK HARVEY’”
The dog had snapped viciously at a child that ran past, causing her to scream with fear.
Just then the freight-agent called out to the squire:
“You’ll have to come in here and see about this freight of yours,” he said. “It’s all mixed up. And don’t bring that dog in here, or the crew may take him for a piece of freight and run a truck against him.”
At one corner of the freight-house on the wharf was a big iron ring, to which the squire tied the dog.
“I wouldn’t advise anybody to meddle with him,” he said; but the advice seemed hardly necessary, for the dog showed its teeth and sprang savagely at any one who ventured to come near.
There were some expressions of indignation that such a dangerous brute should be brought to the island.
Every one did keep as far out of the dog’s way as possible, excepting Tim Reardon, who, after a whispered consultation with Jack Harvey, after which the latter disappeared behind the freight-house, seated himself just out of the dog’s reach, and caused that animal to froth at the mouth and nearly strangle itself in trying to get loose, by pointing a finger at the dog and making a loud hissing noise between his teeth.
Not content with this form of annoyance, Tim Reardon varied it now and again by darting a hand out at the dog, as though in an attempt to seize him by the throat. To which the maddened animal, with true bulldog ferocity, responded with savage rushes as far as the rope would permit, his wide-open jaws fairly dripping with rage and disappointment.
If there was any design on the boy’s part to distract the dog’s attention from what Jack Harvey was doing at the corner of the freight-house, to which the dog was tied, it succeeded admirably. Moreover, it is certain that, when Harvey reappeared, Tim stopped teasing the brute, and he and Harvey walked around to the rear of the freight-house.
The freight-house was situated almost at the end of the wharf on its seaward side, so near to the edge of the wharf that there was only room for a single person to walk along on the outside, and that at the risk of losing one’s balance and falling off the wharf. The ring to which the dog was tied was on the side near the end, and was not visible to those standing on the front of the wharf. Any one going around to the further side of the freight-house at this moment might have seen Harvey and Tim standing there,—Harvey nearest the ring and holding a knife in his hand.
The steamer in landing had made a complete circuit in the harbour, and had come alongside the wharf with her head pointing out into the bay, so that now, as Captain Chase called out “All aboard,” and gave orders to cast off bow and stern lines, the boat was ready to steam directly away from the wharf. The gangplanks were drawn in. There was a tinkling of bells; a great commotion as the steamer’s wheels began to revolve rapidly; a general waving of handkerchiefs from the wharf to those who were bound farther down the bay; the steamer began to glide away from the wharf, when suddenly somebody shrieked:
“The dog! The dog! Run! Run! He’s broken loose.”
And before the crowd had time to scatter, the dog, infuriated with the tormenting it had received at the hands of Tim Reardon, dashed toward it. Men, women, and children fled in terror. Squire Brackett, who came running out of the freight-house, did not dare face the dog, but dodged back into the freight-house and slammed the door shut, in a cold sweat of fear.
The boys, most of them, rushed for points of safety, clambering up the ends of the spiling that jutted above the floor of the wharf, and young Joe and Tom Harris, being at the very edge of the wharf, and having no other means of escape, and nothing to defend themselves with, dropped off the wharf into the water and swam to shore. Several of the other boys and some men scrambled about for clubs to ward off the brute’s fierce rush.
Among these latter was Henry Burns. Realizing on the instant that to attempt to flee was worse than hopeless, he had glanced about for something to defend himself with, and had seized upon a broken piece of oar. Grasping it with both hands, he stood, calmly awaiting the attack. The dog, seeing him right in his path, rushed at him, and when within a yard of the boy suddenly gave a spring, as though to seize him by the throat.
Henry Burns, summoning all his strength, aimed a terrific sweeping blow at the dog, but it missed its mark. Meeting no obstruction, the force of the blow swung the boy completely around, so that he lost his balance and fell sprawling upon the wharf, while the piece of oar flew from his hands and landed far out in the water.
A strange thing had happened. The crowd, pausing breathlessly in the midst of flight, had seen with horror the dog spring at Henry Burns; but the animal’s leap had a most extraordinary termination. All at once the dog was jerked violently backward through the air, and fell heavily on the wharf, yelping with surprise and fright. Then it was dragged rapidly across the wharf, and the crowd yelled with derision as they saw that the rope by which the dog had been tied to the ring had been unfastened or cut from the ring, and had been fastened to the rope which had been thrown from the steamer, and the other end of which was made fast to the steamer’s hawser.
As the boat steamed away it drew the rope after it. There was no possible escape for the dog. Struggling as best it could, barking and yelping, and snapping madly at the rope, it braced itself for one instant on the edge of the wharf, and then was dragged over and fell, still struggling, to the water below. The steamer kept on its way a short distance, and then stopped. The rope was drawn in by a deck-hand and the dog hauled to the railing of the steamer, but it was not taken aboard, for nobody on board wanted a dead dog. The deck-hand cut the rope, and the body splashed into the water.
Thus perished the squire’s bulldog, unmourned, save for the squire himself, who raged about the wharf, looking for some boy whom he might accuse of the trick, and vowing untold vengeance upon the perpetrators of it. But, one and all, they had wisely dispersed, the guilty and the innocent alike, and the squire was soon left alone in his wrath.
Who had done the thing? The crowd did not know, for it had been too excited to notice that Jack Harvey and Tim Reardon had emerged from behind the freight-house just at the critical moment when the dog had sprung at Henry Burns.
As for Henry Burns, he was the hero of the hour.
There had been on the whole so much excitement attending the squire’s arrival that few had noticed a stranger who had come ashore soon after Squire Brackett. He had not waited on the wharf, but had gone directly to the hotel. There Henry Burns met him later; for the man sat at Colonel Witham’s table, as that was the only one then available.
The new arrival was the sort of guest to please the colonel, for he was extremely quiet. He walked only with the aid of a cane, and then, apparently, with great effort, stopping frequently to rest. He told them he had been very ill; that his health had broken down with overwork, and he had accordingly tried cruising along the coast. His friends had left him up the river some days before, and would call for him.
He was a man a little under middle age, of medium height and thick-set, with black hair and a pale, smooth-shaven face. He was evidently somewhat a man of the world and had travelled abroad, for, seated before the fireplace in the office that evening, he talked for some time of his travels.
But there were other things of more interest to the boarders than this quiet, reserved stranger, who did not play cards and who hobbled about with a cane. There was, above all, a morning paper from town, which bristled with startling head-lines, descriptive of a robbery of the residence of one of the richest men in the town. It told how the thieves, three in number, had entered the house where Mr. Curtis, the owner, was sleeping alone, in the absence of his family; how they had put a pistol to his head and made him get up and open a safe, from which they had taken several hundred dollars in money and a jewel-case containing a diamond necklace and other gems to the value of several thousand dollars.
The jewels, it said, were the property of Mrs. Curtis, and most of them had been bridal presents. A reward of $500 was offered for their return or for information leading to the arrest of any one of the robbers.
The article stated further that Mr. Curtis was positive he could identify the man who subsequently bound and gagged him, his mask having but partially concealed his face. He was, he said, a man of about medium height, with black hair, black moustache, and heavy black beard, broad-shouldered, thick-set, and unusually active and powerful.
All this, as it was read aloud, threw the guests into the greatest possible excitement, as a great part of them were from the very town and knew the Curtis family, by reputation if not personally.
It did not, of course, interest the stranger guest, for he nodded in his chair and nearly dozed off several times during the reading. Still, when the guests had dispersed, he picked up the paper from a chair and took it with him to his room.
It was the very next night following that of his arrival that Henry Burns met with a surprise.
On the night in question there was a full moon about half-past ten o’clock, and, as Henry had agreed with Tom and Bob to meet them at their tent, he opened his window, stepped out on to the ledge and started to climb to the roof.
Mackerel had struck in at the western bay, and the boys had planned to paddle down the island that night, carry their canoe across the short strip of land that saved the island from being cut into almost equal halves by the sea, launch it again in the western bay, and paddle around to where the Warren boys’ sloop lay anchored in Fish Hawk’s Cove. Then they were all to try for mackerel early in the morning.
Henry Burns stepped softly out, grasped the lightning-rod, and, with a quickness that would have amazed the worthy Mrs. Carlin, scrambled to the ledge over the top of his window. There he paused a moment for breath, and then climbed up the lightning-rod, hand over hand, and gained the roof.
He had proceeded then across the roof but a little ways, when he heard suddenly, almost directly beneath him, the sound of footsteps. Some one was coming up the stairs that led to the roof.
Henry Burns had barely time to conceal himself behind a chimney when the trap-door in the roof was softly opened, and he saw the head and shoulders of a man emerge through the opening. Henry Burns lay flat on the roof, in the dark shadow cast by the chimney. The moon shone full in the man’s face, and Henry Burns saw, to his amazement, that it was the stranger guest. The sickly, weak expression in the man’s face was gone, and in its stead there was a sinister, bold look, which seemed far more natural to his powerful physique.
Suddenly the man, with the strength and ease of an athlete, sprang lightly out on to the roof. He still carried his cane, but he had no use for it, save to clutch it in one hand more after the manner of a cudgel than a cane.
Henry Burns, for once in his life, was afraid. It was all so strange and incomprehensible.
Once upon the roof, the man straightened himself up, threw out his chest and squared back his broad shoulders. He was erect in stature, without the suggestion of a stoop. He seemed to exult in the freedom of the place, like one who had been kept in some confinement. When he walked across the roof to the edge facing the sea, there was no suggestion of any limp in his gait. It was quick and firm, but noiseless and almost catlike.
What did it mean? Henry Burns thought of the robbery. Could the man have had anything to do with that? Why had he pretended to be weak and ill? Why had he come to this out-of-the-way place, pretending that he was an invalid? Surely he could have no designs upon any one on the island. There was no house there that offered inducement to a robber, if the man were one.
It must be that his coming was an attempt to hide himself away—to secrete himself. But why? The description of the robber that had bound Mr. Curtis—did that tally with the appearance of this man? Broad shoulders, medium height, active, powerful,—all these agreed. But the black moustache and heavy beard. The stranger’s face was smoothly shaven. That transformation, however, could have been quickly effected.
One thing was certain. It would not be well that this man, a pretended invalid, but strong, and armed with a heavy cane, that had suddenly become transformed from a cripple’s staff to a cudgel, who could but have some dark motive in thus disguising and secreting himself, should find himself watched and his secret discovered. Henry Burns crouched closer in the shadow of the chimney, and hardly dared to breathe. The evil that he had so accidentally uncovered in the man, his own helplessness compared with the other’s strength, and the dangerous situation, there upon the house-top, made him afraid. If they had been upon the ground he would have feared less.
The man scanned the moonlit waters of the bay long and earnestly. His survey done, he paced a few times back and forth, swinging the cane, and then, stealing noiselessly to the doorway, disappeared down the stairs, closing the trap-door after him.
Henry Burns lost little time in descending to the ground. On the way to the boys’ camp that night he made two resolves: first, that he would keep to himself, for the present, at least, the stranger’s secret; second, that, whatever that secret was, he would find it out if any clue was to be had upon that island. The second resolution, he thought, rather included the first, since, the greater the number of those who knew of the stranger’s secret, the greater the chances of his suspicions being aroused.
Another thing that disturbed Henry Burns not a little was the knowledge that his excursions over the roof were now attended with greater risk than ever. It would not do to encounter the stranger there unexpectedly. What might not the man, suddenly aroused, and desperate, as Henry Burns believed him to be, do to him, if he found himself discovered? A fall from such a height must mean instant death, and who was there to suspect that he had not fallen, if he should be found next day lying upon the ground?
In the future he must know whether the roof were occupied or not before he ventured upon it, and especially must he be careful when returning late at night.
Henry Burns resolved to keep the man’s secret for a time, for the reason that he was firmly convinced he had not come to the island to commit any wrong there, but to hide away. The island offered every advantage for the latter, and no inducement for the former. The man’s design certainly was to secrete himself. Still, Henry Burns had no intention of letting the man escape from the island. He would watch also for those friends that the man had said were to come for him with their yacht, and he would make sure that they did not sail away again. Though but a boy, the stranger’s secret was in dangerous hands, if he had but known it. And yet luck was to effect more than Henry Burns’s scheming.
Tom and Bob were waiting impatiently when Henry Burns arrived at the tent. They launched the canoe, the three embarked, and soon left the tent and then the village behind. They glided swiftly along the picturesque shore till they came at length to the narrows; here they carried the canoe across and launched it again in the western bay. In an hour from the time they had left the tent, they had come alongside the sloopSprayin Fish Hawk’s Cove, and the Warren boys had sleepily made room for them in the cabin.
It was crowded for them all there, and it may have been for that reason that Henry Burns did not sleep soundly,—either that, or because of the figure of a man that he could not drive from his mind, and that appeared to him, half-dreaming and half-awake, as a figure that hobbled along, stooping and bent, but which suddenly sprang up before him, lithe and threatening, and brandishing in his hand a cudgel that looked like a cane.
At four o’clock next morning, when Arthur Warren tried to rouse the other boys, they were loath to turn out. It was warm inside, under the blankets, and the sea air outside was cool and damp. Out in the cockpit Arthur lighted an oil-stove, which they always carried aboard, made the coffee in a big pot, and set it on to boil. Then he called the sleepers in the cabin again.
“Come you, Art, shut up out there! How do you expect any one can sleep, with you bawling out in that fashion?”
This was from George Warren, whose voice denoted that he was only about half-awake.
“Don’t want you to sleep any more,” answered Arthur. “Want you to get up and fish.”
“Don’t care to fish,” said George, still only half-awake.
“Well,” persisted Arthur, “may I inquire what you did come over here for?”
“Certainly you may. I came over here to sleep. I like the air over here. Now, please don’t disturb us any more, Arthur. You can be decent, you know, when you’ve a mind to be.” And with this request, drowsily mumbled, George pulled the blanket comfortably about him and settled back for another nap.
At this juncture, however, his brother poked his head in at the companionway and yelled at the top of his lungs:
“Hulloa, there! Hulloa, I say! There’s a school of mackerel breaking off the point. Wake up, every lazy lubber aboard!”
“Say, Art, you’re a mean scoundrel,” said George Warren, emerging once more from the blankets. “You know there isn’t a mackerel in sight. I’ll be just fool enough to look out of the window, though, so you can laugh, so get ready.” And George looked sleepily out of the little cabin window.
He had no sooner done so, however, than he sprang up, exclaiming, excitedly:
“There they are, sure enough. Boys, get up! Get up! There’s a school of mackerel breaking off the point, as sure as we’re alive.”
The boys needed no further urging. They dressed and scrambled out on deck. Not far away from the sloop could be seen plainly that tiny chop-sea which is caused by the breaking of a school of mackerel. The calm surface of the water was broken there by a series of miniature ripples which could not be mistaken. The fish were there, but would they bite?
“They are coming this way,” said Arthur. “We can soon reach them with the throw-bait. We shall not have to leave the sloop.”
Hastily they got the bait out. It was a bucket filled with scraps of fish and clams, chopped fine and mixed with salt water. Taking a long-handled dipper, Arthur half-filled it with the bait and threw it as far as he could out toward the school of fish.
The mackerel seized upon it greedily. From the sloop the boys could see them dart through the water after it as it slowly sank. The water was fairly alive with fish, ravenously hungry.
“Hurrah!” cried Arthur. “They’re hungry as sharks. Get the lines out, quick.”
In a twinkling every boy had a line overboard; but, to their disappointment, not a fish would bite. They still seized the throw-bait that was cast out, but not one of them would take a baited hook.
“If that isn’t a regular mackerel trick, I’ll eat my bait,” said George Warren. “Cap’n Sam said mackerel would often act that way, though I never saw them when they wouldn’t bite before. He says they will play around a boat for hours and not touch a hook, and, all of a sudden, they’ll commence and bite as though they were starving.”
The boy’s words were unexpectedly verified at this moment by a sudden twitch at his line and by corresponding twitches at all the other lines. The fish had begun biting in earnest. The next moment the boys had three or four aboard, handsome fellows, striped green and black, changing to a bluish shade, and soon the cockpit seemed alive with them.
It was new sport for Tom and Bob, but they soon learned to tend two lines, one in each hand; to drop one and haul the other in at a bite, and to slat the mackerel off the hook with a quick snap, instead of stopping to take them off by hand.
The mackerel bit fiercely, sometimes at the bare hook even, like fish gone crazy. It seemed as though they might go on catching them all day long, for the water was alive with them; but all at once the fish stopped biting as abruptly as they had begun. They still played around the boat, but not a fish would touch a hook.
“We may as well put up our lines, boys. They are through biting for this morning,” said Arthur Warren. “Besides, we have more fish now than we know what to do with.”
There was no doubt of that. They had caught several hundred of the fish—enough to supply the village.
“We’ll make friends with every one in town,” said George Warren. “These are the first mackerel of the season, and we will give away all we cannot use.”
“I feel as though I could eat about four now,” said young Joe.
“I can eat at least six,” said Henry Burns.
“We’ll try you and see,” said Arthur, producing an enormous frying-pan from a locker and a junk of pork from another. “Tom, you’re the boss cook of the crowd. You fry the fish while the rest of us clean up the boat, make things shipshape, and get ready to sail.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” said Tom, rolling up his sleeves. “Let’s see, four apiece is how many?”
And soon the appetizing odour of the frying fish, mingled with that of the steaming coffee, saluted most temptingly the nostrils of the six hungry boys.
It was several hours after this, when the yacht was bowling along in the western bay, near the head of the island, before a fresh southerly breeze, that young Joe said:
“I know how we can play a stupendous joke on everybody in the village.”
Joe being the youngest of the brothers, and of the party, and it being therefore necessary that he should be occasionally squelched, George merely said:
“You don’t think of anything, Joe, but playing jokes.”
“All right,” retorted Joe, “seeing you are all so wildly enthusiastic, I’ll just keep it to myself.”
“Nonsense, Joe, don’t be huffy,” said Arthur, whose curiosity was aroused. “Tell us what it is, and if it is any good we’ll try it, won’t we, boys?”
There being an unanimously affirmative reply, young Joe proceeded.
“Well,” said he, “there’s no risk at all about this. You know the old farmhouse on the bluff across the cove? Everybody in the village believes it is haunted. I found that out yesterday, when I was in Cap’n Sam’s store. The house hasn’t been lived in for two years, and not a soul in the village has dared to go near it at night in all that time. If any of them had to stay over there all night, they would sleep out in the woods rather than go into the house.
“You see, the house belonged to a man by the name of Randall, Captain Randall, who lived there with his wife. This was a little more than two years ago. He owned a little fishing-smack, in which he went short trips down the coast. One night in a storm he drove in on to the bluff; the smack was pounded to pieces, and he was drowned. His wife died not long after.
“Since then, the villagers have thought the house haunted. They hear shrieks from there during the night, and think they see strange lights in the windows. They were discussing it in the store yesterday. Cap’n Sam declared that, only a few nights ago, when he was coming across the cove from Billy Cook’s, he saw the ghost of Captain Randall pass out of the back door of the old house and disappear in the woods.
“Billy Cook, who lives up the cove, was in the store, too. He said he and his wife hear screams come from there often in the night, especially when it is storming; and two other villagers said they had seen lights in the windows long after midnight.
“That new boarder at Colonel Witham’s was in there, too, Henry. He said he knew houses were haunted, and told several stories about ghosts, which he said were true. But I believe he knew they were lies, and he was only amusing himself; but that’s nothing to do with the matter. The villagers seemed to believe all that he said.
“Now, what I propose is, that we manufacture some brand-new ghosts for them, some they have never seen before. There are some red and green lights up at the cottage, that were left over from the Fourth of July, which we can burn inside the house, after letting out a few screeches that will arouse the village. Then we’ll wrap sheets around us and run past the windows, while the lights are burning. We’ll have something wrapped in white to fling off the cliff, too, in a flare of light.
“Then we’ll run down through the woods and take everything with us. And if we don’t have some fun the next day listening to the ghost-stories about the village, why, my name isn’t Joe, that’s all.”
“That’s not such a bad scheme, Joe,” said George.
“It’s a daisy,” said Henry Burns, “and easily done. What’s to hinder our going up there to-night and taking up the lights and the sheets and looking the place over? I never was inside the old house myself, though I have been close to it at night, and never saw or heard of any ghosts. We can carry a lantern up with us and light it after we get inside. If any one sees the light from the village he will think it’s the ghosts walking again.”
“I don’t like so much of this running around in the night,” said Tom, flexing his biceps. “A fellow must have sleep to keep in condition, but I guess they can count on us in this case, can’t they, Bob? It’s too good to be missed.”
“You bet!” replied Bob. “We can turn in and sleep this afternoon. Count me in, for one.”
“Then,” said George, “suppose we all start from our cottage at ten o’clock to-night. We’ll launch the rowboat from the beach and slip across and look things over.”
So it was agreed.
The yacht had long turned the head of the island and was beating down alongshore in the eastern bay. Presently they rounded the bluff and came into the cove. It was nearly noon.
High up on the bluff, and several rods back from the edge of the cliffs, was the old farmhouse; it stood out conspicuously, though at some distance from the water-front, for the land rose quite sharply and the house occupied the top of the eminence. Around it, on all sides except that facing the village, was a dark, heavy growth of hemlocks and pines. It was a mysterious, shadowy place, even by day; but when darkness set in about it, standing off solitary and alone, as it did, from the rest of the village, with the waters lying between, it is little wonder that superstition inhabited it with ghosts and that it was a spot to be shunned.
At the outermost end of the cliffs that protruded into the bay, a ravine, where the ledge at some time had been rent apart, led from the water up toward the cottage, affording a precarious pathway. There was a natural stairway of rock for some distance from the water’s edge, and at the end nearest the old house a series of clumsy wooden stairs led up from the ravine to the surface of the bluff. These were now old and rather rickety; but a light person, at some risk, could still use them.
The villagers, as a rule, avoided the house and this pathway to the bluff. If they had occasion to go ashore there, they usually landed farther up the cove at a beach, and walked through the woods at a distance from the house. No one cared to go very near it.
When the sloop had come to anchor in the cove opposite the Warren cottage, the boys took a boatload of mackerel ashore, besides a basketful in the canoe. They carried them around to every cottage in the village, and even to the hotel, though, as George Warren remarked, they would have to get Colonel Witham out of bed some night in a hurry to make up for it.
Certainly the village, supping that night on their catch, was inclined to forget and forgive them many a prank that had been stored up for future punishment.
When Henry Burns made his exit across the roof that night, he made a careful survey before climbing out on it to see that the stranger was not there. There were no signs of him, and Henry got away safely. Tom and Bob were at the Warren cottage when he arrived. Everything was in readiness, and they all set out for the shore.
“These clouds in the sky are favourable,” said Tom. “If it was as bright as it was last night, we might have to postpone our trip. This mackerel sky, through which the moon shines dimly, is just the thing.”
“Everything seems to be favourable,” added George, as they hurried down the bank to the beach.
And yet not quite everything, for, when they had reached the shore and came to look for the boat, it was not there.
“That’s too bad,” cried young Joe. “And we left it here at five o’clock, too, after washing it out thoroughly, because we had brought the mackerel ashore in it.”
“Who could have stolen it?” asked Tom.
“No one,” replied Joe. “Nobody ever has a boat stolen in this harbour. Some one who wanted to cross the cove has borrowed it. We shall find it all right in the morning,—but that don’t help us out now. It’s provoking enough, and strange, too, after all, that the one who took it didn’t step up to the cottage and let us know, as the cottage is so near. But boats are almost common property here; any man in the harbour would lend us his boat in a minute.”
“We must do the next best thing,” said Arthur, “and take one from the slip at the wharf. No one will want his boat at this hour.”
“Though some one does seem to want ours,” broke in Joe. “Curious, isn’t it, that whoever it is should come around into the cove and get our boat, when there are any number at the slip?”
It certainly was rather strange.
Following Arthur’s suggestion, the boys proceeded to the slip and embarked in a big dory, the property of Captain Sam. Then they rowed quickly across the cove.
It took them but a few minutes to reach the other shore, for the cove was smooth as glass. They headed for the bluff, and pointed directly into the black, shadowy hole which they knew to be the natural landing-place. It was a peculiar, narrow little dock, completely rock-bound, except for the passage leading into it. It lay entirely in the shadow, but they had landed there before, and knew just where to steer for a shelf, or ledge, of rock that made a natural slip.
Still, their familiarity with the place did not prevent them from bumping suddenly into a rowboat that lay moored there. They pushed it aside to make a landing, and found to their amazement that it was their own.
“Hulloa!” cried George, springing out on to the broad, shelving ledge; “that is queerer still. Here’s the oldAnna, and what in the world is she doing here? Who can have brought her? And what for? There’s something strange about it. Why, there isn’t a man in the village that would dare go near the haunted house at night, and yet somebody is over here now, for some reason.”
If it were possible for Henry Burns to be excited ever, he was so now.
“Get in here, quick, George,” he said, “and don’t make any noise. I think I know what it means, and I’ll tell you just as soon as we get out of here. We can’t get away any too soon, either.”
“Why not take theAnnaout with us?” said young Joe, “and pay somebody off for running away with it? He would only have to walk a few miles around the cove to get back again—”
“No, no, leave the boat where it is,” said Henry Burns. “And let’s get out of here quick.”
“Why, what’s the matter with you, Henry?” asked George, jumping back into the boat and giving it a vigorous shove off. “Any one would think to see you that some one was being murdered up there.”
Henry Burns’s earnestness was sufficient to convince them, however, that something serious was involved in their actions, and they made haste to get out into the cove again.
“Row for the beach above, boys,” continued Henry Burns, “and we will go up to the old house through the woods. I think I know who is up there in the house, and if I am right it means that we may make an important discovery. The man who I think is up there is Mr. Kemble.”
“What! The cripple?” asked Tom.
“This is another one of Henry Burns’s jokes,” said George. “You’re having lots of fun with us, aren’t you, Henry?”
“I tell you I am in earnest,” said Henry Burns. “We won’t burn any lights to-night, and you better make up your mind to that, right off. There’s more serious business ahead of us.”
And then, when they had landed on the beach and had drawn the boat noiselessly up on the shore, Henry Burns told them of the adventure he had had on the roof of the hotel. How he had seen the stranger throw off his disguise of weakness, and become, suddenly, a man of strength and action; how he believed the man to be somehow connected with the thieves who had committed the robbery, and how he believed that the man was now up there in the haunted house, though for what purpose he could not tell. It might be he had something to conceal there.
“Cracky!” exclaimed Tom, when Henry Burns had finished his story. “This beats ghost hunting all hollow; but we are by no means certain that it is this stranger who is up there.”
“No, but I believe as Henry does, that it is he,” said George Warren. “Who else would have any object in being up there this hour of the night? We know from what Henry saw that the man is dangerous, that he seems to be in hiding—”
“And that if he should catch one of us spying on him up there in the old house, he wouldn’t hesitate to shoot,” interrupted young Joe, who would rather have risked the meeting with a legion of ghosts than with one real live thief, armed and desperate.
“That’s true enough,” answered Henry Burns; “but we must not give him that opportunity, if it is he, which, of course, we’re by no means sure of. At any rate, we want to see and not be seen by whoever is there, and we cannot go any too quietly.”
Then, as the tide was rising, and they might be gone some time, they lifted the dory and carried it up out of the reach of high water, after which they began the ascent of the hill. There was not a breath of wind stirring, and there was not a sound of life in the woods. The tide crept in softly, and not even a wave could be heard on the shore.
Out through the trees they could see, as they climbed, glimpses of the water, calm and placid as a mill-pond, lit up dimly by the moonlight shining through a patchwork of clouds that covered all the sky. Beyond this the darkness of the village was accentuated by a light here and there, glimmering from the window of some cottage.
Then they came to the brow of the hill, and could see the haunted house through the trees. They approached cautiously. It looked gloomier than ever, with its sagging, moss-grown roof, its shattered window-panes, and the door in the side hanging awry from a single hinge.
In what once had been the dooryard there were a few straggling clumps of bushes, and thistles and burdocks grew in rank profusion.
It was a sight to dampen the ardour of stouter hunters than this band of boys. But when, added to all this, there suddenly flashed across one of the windows a ray of light, faint and flickering, but discernible to them all, and which the next instant disappeared, they halted irresolutely and debated what they should do.
It was finally determined that Henry Burns and Bob White should go on ahead to the old house, while the rest waited at a little distance till they should reconnoitre. The two set off at once, while the others waited behind a clump of trees. They did not have to wait long, for the two returned shortly, telling them to come on softly. When within a few rods of the house they dropped on their hands and knees and crept along.
All at once the two ahead stopped and whispered to the others to listen. They heard noises that seemed to come from the cellar, which sounded as though some one was digging in the earth. Then, as they came within range of a long, shallow cellar window, they saw the rays of a lantern.
They crept up closely and peered in through the pane. There, in the damp, dingy, cobwebbed cellar of the haunted house, dimly lighted by the rays of a lantern, which stood on an old wooden bench, a man was working. He had his coat off and was digging in the ground with a spade, throwing up shovelfuls of the hard clay.
The rays of light from the lantern were not diffused evenly throughout the cellar, but shot out in one direction, toward the spot where the man was at work; and this because it was neither the ordinary ship’s lantern, nor yet a house lantern, but a small dark lantern, such as a burglar might carry on his person, with a sliding shutter in front.
The man’s sleeves were rolled up, displaying arms that were corded with muscle, and on which the veins stood out as he worked. He handled the spade awkwardly enough, but made up in strength for his lack of skill. Presently he paused and looked up, and they saw that it was, as Henry Burns had prophesied, the stranger guest.
A curious occupation for one who was cruising for his health! Indeed, he looked so little like a man that was weak and ill, and so much like one that was powerful and reckless and devoid of fear, as the light of the lantern caused his figure to stand out in relief against the darkness, that, though they were six and he but one, had he seen them and sprung up, they would have fled in terror.
Then, as he stooped down to grasp the lantern, they drew quickly back from the window. It was well they did so, for, taking up the lantern, the man flashed it upon the window-panes, and then, turning it in all directions, threw the rays of light in all parts of the cellar and out through a window opposite. Then he set it down again; and it was evident his suspicions had not been aroused, for he resumed his digging.
After a few minutes he threw down the spade and produced from the darkness a small tin box, which they had not seen before, which he deposited in the hole he had dug. Then he shovelled the earth back upon it, stamping it in with his feet, and so refilled the hole. The remaining loose earth he scattered about the cellar.
The boys waited no longer, but crept back to the edge of the woods. In a few minutes they saw a faint flash of light through one of the windows in the floor above, and presently they saw the man come out of the door in the front of the house. He had extinguished the lantern and was still carrying the spade. As he walked quickly down the path to the landing-place, he left the path and hid the spade beneath some underbrush, after which he disappeared over the edge of the cliff. Finally they saw him out in the middle of the cove, pulling vigorously for the other shore.
“Well,” said Henry Burns, as they watched him out of sight, “there are lots of sick men whom I would rather meet over here in the night-time than that same Mr. Kemble.”
“He’s as strong as a lion,” said young Joe. “Did you see the veins stand out on his arms as he worked? I felt like making for the woods every time he straightened himself up, with that spade in his hand.”
“I don’t believe any of us felt any too comfortable,” said Tom, “though I’m sure I shouldn’t be afraid to meet him in the daytime, with Bob and one of the rest of us. It’s the influence of the night-time that frightened us. And he seemed to be right in his element in it.”
“Let’s dig that box up and get away from here and discuss the matter afterward,” said George. “It’s getting late, and we don’t want mother to worry. I’ll get the spade.” And he ran and brought it.