Cicely Hallowell sighed deeply as she pushed away the heap of papers before her and brushed back the hair from her aching forehead. She was weary of her task and the room was growing dark and cold. She was beginning, moreover, to be uneasily conscious that the two men at the far end of the long table had forgotten her presence behind the pile of great ledgers and were talking of things that she was not meant to hear.
Half an hour earlier her brother Alan had rushed in to see whether she were not ready for their afternoon ride and had been disappointedly impatient when she shook her head.
"It is a glorious day, so cold and the roads so deep in snow. The horses are like wild things, and will give us a famous gallop up the valley. Oh, do come, Cicely."
But no, she must stay in the big gloomy countinghouse, to finish the letters that she had promised to copy for her father, while Alan had flung off, saying over his shoulder, as he departed to take his ride alone:
"It is very wrong to miss fun and adventure by toiling and moiling here. Think how the sea will look and how the blasts will be blowing over our Windy Hill!"
The place seemed very cheerless and empty after he had gone. The long windows gave little light on that gray winter afternoon, and the big fireplace with its glowing logs was at the far end of the room. There were shadows already on the shelves of heavy ledgers lining the walls, and on the rows of ship's models all up and down the sides of the big countingroom. Those lines of dusty volumes held records that Alan was forever reading, tales of wonderful voyages, of spices and gold dust and jewels brought home from the Orient, of famines in far lands broken by the coming of American grain ships, of profits reckoned in ducats and doubloons and Spanish pieces of eight. Cicely was fond of drawing and loved, far more than copying dull letters, to make sketches of those miniature vessels in the glass cases that stood for the Hallowell ships that had scoured the oceans of the world. They had been wrecked on coral reefs in hot, distant seas, they had lain becalmed with priceless cargoes in pirate-infested waters, their crews were as skillful with the long guns as they were at handling the sails, their captains were as at home in Shanghai or Calcutta as they were in the streets of the little seaport town where they had been born. Cicely could remember when the bigcountingroom had been crowded with clerks and had hummed like a beehive with the myriad activities of the Hallowell trade. It was a dull and empty place now, and the fleet of Hallowell ships was scattered, some lying at anchor, some dismantled and sold, some fallen into the hands of the enemy. For this was the third year of that struggle with England that the histories were to call the War of 1812.
Cicely, for all her thirteen years, looked very small, sitting there at the end of the long table, in her "sprigged" high-waisted gown, her feet in their strapped slippers perched on the rung of the high office stool. She had just taken up her pen to begin writing again when the voices of the two men by the fire rose so suddenly that she dropped it, startled. Her father's tone fell almost immediately to strained quiet, but Martin Hallowell, his partner, went on with angry insistence. She knew him to be hot-headed and impetuous, but she had never heard such words from him before.
With a quick, eager motion that was the embodiment of impatient greed, Martin was running his finger down the columns of the ledger before him.
"There is no ship like a privateer, and no privateer like theHuntress," he was saying. "Send her on one more voyage and we shall be rich men."
There was an ugly tremor in his voice, that quavered and broke in spite of his attempts to keep it calm.
"I do not care to be one of those who gathersriches from a war," returned Reuben Hallowell, Cicely's father. There was something in the dry calm of his answer that seemed to stir Martin to uncontrollable anger.
"It is like you, Reuben Hallowell," he said, "to be willing to ruin my plans by your foolish scruples just when a real prize is within reach. But I vow you shall not do it. You shall be a wealthy man in spite of yourself, and let me remind you that, two years ago, before we built theHuntress, you were a precious poor one."
The Hallowell partners were not brothers, but cousins, with Cicely's father much the older of the two. They had inherited the business from their fathers, for such an ill-assorted pair would never have been joined together from choice. Many of their discussions ended in stormy words, but never before had Martin's dark face showed such white-hot, quivering rage as when he arose now, gathered up his papers, and went away to his own room, closing the door smartly behind him. Cicely got up also and went down the long countingroom to where her father sat by the fire.
"I heard what you and Cousin Martin were saying," she told him hesitatingly, "I am afraid you did not remember that I was there. But it does not matter, for I did not understand what Cousin Martin was so angry about."
"There is no reason why you should not understand," her father replied, rather slowly and wearily,she thought, "although sometimes I am not certain that I understand these troubled times myself. Across the seas the Emperor Napoleon, a long-nosed, short-bodied man of infinite genius for setting the world by the ears, has been warring with England for the last ten years and more. He and the British, with their blockades and embargoes and Orders in Council have long been striving to ruin each other, yet have achieved their greatest success in ruining a peaceable old gentleman in America who relies on his ships to bring him a livelihood. To oppress neutral shipping leads in the end to war, although I vow that often Congress must have felt that it should toss up a penny to determine whether the declaration should be against France or England. Some stubborn British minister, however, decided to countenance the stealing of sailors from our ships to fill up the scanty crews of their own navy, and a stubborn British nation felt that it must back him, so in the end the war was with England."
"And have we not won many glorious victories?" asked Cicely.
"Ay, there have been victories; out of her fleet of seven hundred and thirty sail, England has lost a handful to us and we have shown how small our navy is and how great is its spirit. There have been passages of arms on land, also, of which we do not love to talk. And we have sent out our privateer vessels, armed ships that prey upon England's commerce, yet do not belong to our navy. They havedone great things, have cut deep into England's overseas trade, and have brought home many a valuable prize to fill the pockets of their owners. Such a vessel is ourHuntress, built at your Cousin Martin's instigation and launched at the moment when our fortunes were at their lowest ebb. Since we had not sufficient funds to equip her, nearly every one in this town put money into her, from John Harwood the minister down to Jack Marvin who digs our garden. It was a patriotic venture and a risky one, but she has brought home great profits in prize money and our own share has reëstablished the firm of Hallowell. Your Cousin Martin says that one more voyage will bring us not only profit, but real wealth. But I say," he struck his hand suddenly upon the table, "I say that there shall not be another."
"Why?" The question was startled from Cicely by his sudden vehemence, yet it was not from him that she was to receive the answer. The door opened to admit Martin Hallowell, who had come back, apparently, for a last word.
"You say," he began at once, "that theHuntressneeds refitting and cannot be made seaworthy in less than a month?"
His partner nodded.
"I say that she shall sail in a week," declared Martin.
"And I say no," cried Reuben Hallowell.
"You say, too, that the war is nearly over, that the Peace Commission is sitting at Ghent, and thatrumors are coming home that they are near to an agreement. That is your excuse for wishing to keep our privateers at home. You are a foolish and an overscrupulous man, Reuben Hallowell, for I say that such a reason makes all the more haste for her to be gone. We should reap what profit we can while there is yet time." He leaned forward, his dark, eager face close to theirs, all caution forgotten in the intensity of his purpose. "Once at sea theHuntressis beyond reach of tidings or orders. If she should take her last and richest prizes a little after peace has been declared, who will ever know it?"
He was silent and stood staring at them with unwavering, defiant eyes. Cicely could hear her sharply drawn breath as she waited for her father to answer.
"We are partners no longer, Martin Hallowell," he said. "We were not born to work together and it is clear that we have come to the parting of the ways. To-morrow we will make division of our holdings, for I tell you plainly that I will have no more to do with you and your dishonest schemes."
"It shall be as you say," Martin agreed, quick to press home an advantage. "And since it was I who urged the building and launching of theHuntress, it is only proper that she should fall to my share. She shall sail this day week, as I have told you. And you, my dear cousin, for your effort to stop her, shall soon be a most regretful man."
He went out, this time closing the door very gently behind him. The echoes of his vague threat seemed to hang in the great room long after he was gone.
"What—what can he do?" questioned Cicely.
Her father, with a visible effort, answered cheerfully, "An angry man loves to threaten, but we have naught to fear from him. And now," he gathered the big ledger under his arm, "I must work for a little in the countingroom and then we will go home."
Cicely, left alone, went back to fetch her letters and stopped for a moment at one of the long windows to look down upon the harbor where theHuntressdipped and swayed at anchor, a stately, beautiful thing that seemed to quiver with life as she rocked in the choppy seas, her shimmering reflection, beginning to be colored by the sunset, rocking and dancing with her.
"Oh, I must draw it," cried Cicely, catching up a sheet of fresh paper. "If only the light holds and the ship does not swing round with the tide!"
The minutes passed while she worked eagerly, but finally was forced to lay down her pencil, unable to see more in the dusk. The door flew open and some one came in with the impulsive rush that belonged only to her brother Alan.
"What, Cicely, still here and trying to draw in the dark? Let me see what you have done," he exclaimed. He lit a candle and examined the paper."I vow, that is good. Oh, Cicely, thatHuntressis a wonderful ship!"
For some reason there was a cold clutch at Cicely's heart.
"Yes?" she answered faintly.
"I have just had such a talk with Cousin Martin," the boy went on excitedly. "I did not quite understand the way of it, but he said that he and my father were to divide, and that theHuntresswas to be his own, entire. He wants me to go with her on her next voyage. He says the war is not nearly done and that there will be many months of fighting and prize-taking still. He thinks a great fellow of sixteen like me should have been a ship's officer long ago, and I think so, too. What a good fellow Cousin Martin is!"
Alan admired his elder cousin greatly, Cicely well knew, and he had, indeed, a touch of the same excitable, headstrong nature. She could well understand how Martin Hallowell had dazzled the boy with tales of what he would see and do. Had there been such a plan in her cousin's mind when he first uttered his threat against her father? Or had it only flashed upon him as he met Alan running up the stairs, eager, vigorous, and ready for any adventure?
"It is all arranged," declared Alan, "except just to tell my father."
"No, no," she cried wildly, but he did not even listen.
"I will go in and speak to him now," he said.She could not even cry out as the door closed behind him.
Alan had his father's stern and steady pride, but there were differences of temperament that led to frequent clashes of will between them. Reuben Hallowell loved both his motherless children, but he understood his son less well than his daughter. What would be the result of that interview, Cicely wondered, sitting quaking beside the candle that burned so lonely in the gloom. Would her father know how to be firm and patient, how to undo the harm that Martin Hallowell had wrought? It seemed, as she sat there, shivering, that she could not endure the suspense.
She had not long to wait. The door banged open and Alan stood for a moment on the threshold.
"My father forbids my sailing on theHuntress. I have told him I should go in spite of him," he said.
He walked away along the corridor and down the stone steps, his feet quicker and lighter than Martin Hallowell's but his footsteps sounding, in some vague, terrible way, like his cousin's as he strode out and down the stairs.
Her father came in a moment later.
"You should have been at home long since this, my child," was all he said, and they went out together, without further talk of the matter, into the sharp air of the snowy night.
At the corner of the steep, narrow street, Cicely caught sight of Martin Hallowell talking to a manwhom she recognized as an old seaman who had sailed for years upon the Hallowell ships. Something Martin had said must have angered the sailor, for he was talking loudly, regardless of who might hear.
"No," the old man was saying, "there's not every one in the world will do your bidding, though you may think so. You can defy the old one and talk over the young one to go your way, but there's one man will not sail on any ship of yours and that's Ben Barton. I'll starve ashore first."
Cicely's quick ear caught his words as she and her father passed by on the other side of the snow-muffled street. It did not seem that Reuben Hallowell had heard.
One day passed, two, three, four days, and Cicely's one thought was that theHuntresswas to sail in seven. Workmen were swarming all over her like bees, hammering, calking, and painting, yet it was plain that they could not do in a week what needed a month to finish. Alan was at the wharf all day, holding frequent conferences with his cousin. Reuben Hallowell went to and fro among the townspeople, urging them to say that the ship in which they were part owners must abide at home. But either because they were less sure of peace than he, or because their eyes were blinded by past good fortune and hopes of future gain, they would not listen. Between father and son no words were passed, sinceeach was waiting for the other's stubborn pride to give way.
On the fifth day Cicely had gone out to ride, on a clear, snowy afternoon, with the white world shining before her and with the highway iron-hard under the horses' feet. She missed Alan sorely, for this was their favorite road, up the valley to the west of the town, as far as the round bare hill with the single oak tree that they liked to call theirs. The servant with her had dropped behind, and she was just turning her horse into the bypath leading to the hill when she saw a sturdy figure coming down the slope. The brown face, tattooed hands, and the small bundle of possessions done up in a blue handkerchief could only be a sailor's, a sailor who proved to be Ben Barton.
"I'm going to the next seaport to find another berth, since I've refused to sail on theHuntress," he explained in answer to her questions. "Mr. Martin has had to get a new skipper and a new crew, for none of the old hands would sail when they heard it was against your father's wishes. There was a bark came in from Delaware to be laid up for repairs, with mostly Swedes aboard, and they have manned theHuntressfrom her. The ship is to sail on Friday at midnight, with the turning tide, but she goes without Ben Barton."
He dropped his voice and came nearer.
"I will tell you this—though I should not," he said. "There's some one to join at the last minute,who will get into a boat waiting at the wharf in the dark, some one you love, miss, who ought to be stopping ashore with the rest of us. You should find some way to keep him back."
"Oh, if I only could!" she cried.
"There's only you can do it," he answered. "Hallowell blood can only be ruled by Hallowell blood, as we say on Hallowell ships. Well, I'll be going on again. I had climbed the path, there, to take one more look at the harbor, where you can see it between the hills. Maybe your father will find a place for me when his vessels go to sea for trade again, and I'll never forget him nor you, Miss Cicely. Do you remember how you and your brother once hid under the wharf, and called out from that echoing place as though you were lost souls out of the sea? There was one honest old sailorman that nearly lost his wits for terror, since we seafaring folk have no love for ghosts. Mark my words, there will no good come to theHuntressfrom setting sail of a Friday. For that alone I would stay ashore though there's other things to hold me, too."
He strode away down the snowy road, leaving Cicely, smiling at first at the recollection of that game that had so frightened him when she and her brother had played at ghosts, then grave in a moment when she thought how soon that brother was to be gone. On Friday, the day after to-morrow, hewould sail unless she could stop him. But how could she?
The next day she made the desperate effort of appealing to her father, but quite in vain. Reuben Hallowell would not believe either that theHuntresswould sail or that his son would go with her.
"And if Alan wishes to cut himself off from his own people forever, let him," he said finally, unable to endure the thought that any one should dare to defy his will. Friday came, the shadows of Friday night stole through the big house, yet nothing had been done.
Cicely sat by the fire in her chintz-hung bedroom, leaning back against the flowered cushion of the big armchair, gazing into the flames. In the next room she could hear vague sounds of Alan's preparations, feet going to and fro, a door opening and closing, a pair of heavy boots dropped upon the floor. The night was dark outside, with a blustering wind and occasional flurries of snow that struck sharply against the window.
It was ten o'clock. The sounds had ceased as though Alan had finished making ready and was waiting, perhaps sitting silent in the dark, perhaps lying down for an hour or two of sleep before the fateful hour of the high tide. Cicely heard her father, below, barring the door, putting out the candles, making ready for a night that would surely bring him no sleep. Presently he passed her door, glanced inside, and came in to stand for a minutebeside her fire. How worn he had grown to look just within the space of this last week! He said scarcely a word; it was as though his unhappiness merely craved company and shrank from the knowledge of what the night might bring.
At last he said, "You should be in bed. Good night, my dear."
As he went out he turned to look back at her with a glance of haggard, helpless misery. It was as though he said:
"My pride has bound and stifled me. I cannot speak a word to stop him, but won't you, can't you, persuade him, somehow, not to go?"
Very carefully and without a sound, Cicely rose and went to her closet, to take down her warm fur cloak. She had realized, in the moment of seeing her father's pleading look, that she had a plan, one that had been in her mind ever since the day that she had talked with Ben Barton. What she had really lacked was courage to put it into execution. Yet now, as she drew the cloak about her and pulled down her hood, her hands did not even tremble, nor did her determination falter. The house was absolutely still as she stole noiselessly down the stairs and slipped out of the door.
For a girl who had almost never been allowed upon the street alone, the wintry night should have been full of terrors, but to Cicely they meant nothing. As she ran down the steep High Street with the gale blustering behind her, she saw things thatshe had never believed existed—a burly waterman quarreling with his wife behind a dirty lighted window, the open door of a tavern showing a candle-lit room with a crowd of shouting sailors drinking within, a furtive black shadow that skulked into an alleyway and remained there, silent and hidden, as she passed.
She reached the wharves at last, where the wind was stronger and where the waves slapped and dashed against the barnacled piles, throwing their spray against the windows of the locked warehouses. Even now she did not hesitate. She ran, a gray, flitting form, across the open space at the head of the wharf and disappeared.
There was a wait of a few minutes, then came the dip of oars through the dark and the sound of men's voices talking above the high wind. Martin Hallowell was coming ashore in the boat that was to carry Alan away. Beyond them, the lights of theHuntressshowed where she was getting up sail. Martin made the landing with some difficulty, climbed the ladder to the wharf, and stood bracing himself against the heavy wind.
"We are a little early," he said. "Hold fast there with the boat hook. He will be here in a——"
His voice was drowned by a strange sound, an unearthly wailing that seemed to rise from the water beneath, but which filled the air until there was no saying from what direction it came. It lifted anddropped, hung sobbing and echoing above the water, then died away.
"Holy St. Anthony help us!" cried the nearest sailor. "It is the soul of some poor drowned creature caught among the weeds."
"Give way," roared the man at the rudder, and with one accord the oars dropped into the water.
"Stop, wait! It—it is nothing, you fools," cried Martin Hallowell, but his own voice quavered with terror, and carried little reassurance to the frightened men.
The boat hung doubtfully a ship's length from the pier, the oars dipping to hold it into the wind, the men hesitating, ashamed of their terror yet fearing to come closer. Again the cry broke forth, resounding again and again, mingling in terrible, ghostly fashion with the splashing and gurgling of the water. The boat shot away into the dark, just as Alan came running down the wharf, shouting to them to come back. The sailors, however, bent to their oars, unheeding; the lantern in the stern dipped and jerked as they rowed away, and the light finally went out of sight as the boat drew alongside theHuntress. It was just possible to make out the big ship as she weighed anchor and, rolling and plunging, moved slowly out into the tideway.
"She's gone—without me!" cried Alan. "Oh, they might have come back, the cowards!"
"Did you hear that—that terrible sound?" asked Martin Hallowell. In a second's pausebetween the breaking of two waves, it was possible to hear his teeth chatter.
"Terrible!" cried Alan in disgust. "That was only my sister Cicely, hiding under the wharf. It was a game we once played to frighten Ben Barton. Come out," he ordered sternly, kneeling down and thrusting an arm into the dark space to help her.
Out Cicely came, wet and shivering, with her hair streaked with mud and her hands scratched and cut by the sharp barnacles. Her face showed white in the dark as she looked up appealingly at her brother, but he turned from her without a sign. Before she could follow him, Martin Hallowell had seized her by the arm.
"You?" he cried. "You?"
He shook her until she was dizzy, until the dark, windy world spun before her eyes, he cried out at her with a terrible voice and with words that she only half understood. All the rage stored up within him during his bitter struggle to get his ship under way, all the baffled hopes of his small-spirited revenge, all the shame for his recent terror broke forth into blind fury against the girl who had stood in his way.
"I will teach you," he shouted, grasping her arm tighter until she winced with pain, "I will show you that you can't——"
His words were cut short by a stinging blow across the mouth from which he staggered back, droppingCicely's arm and staring in gaping astonishment at his assailant.
"That is my sister," said Alan, very stiff and quiet and suddenly very like his father. "Whatever she has done you are not to touch her. She has ruined my chance of sailing with theHuntress, but at least she has shown me what—what you are, Martin Hallowell."
With his arm about Cicely, Alan went down the pier, while Martin, confounded and silenced, stood staring after them. The two said nothing as they climbed the High Street, although much must have been passing in the boy's mind. As he pushed open their own door and came into the dusky hallway he spoke for the first time.
"Can you wait here by the fire a minute, Cicely? I am going up first to—to tell my father what a fool I have been."
The weeks of winter passed, news came that peace had been signed on Christmas Eve, one after another the ships of war came straggling home. Some had taken prizes, all had been harried by the winter storms—and none brought news of theHuntress. One Carolina vessel that put in for repairs told of picking up a crew adrift in boats and of setting them aboard a ship bound for Chesapeake Bay and the coast of Delaware.
"They were most of them Swedes," the sailors told Alan, "and they were not very willing to talkof the ship they had lost, but it might have been theHuntress."
Reuben Hallowell was straining all his resources to send his idle ships to sea and to reëstablish the trade of peace. Yet when he urged his fellow townsmen to strive to gain the commerce America had lost, lest it be gone forever, they still hung back.
"We must know first where we stand," they said. "There is hope still that we have not lost theHuntressand that she will come to port with fortune for us all."
A stormy February passed and there came at last a gusty day of March. It was a Sunday, with the air clean after a shower, and with all the townspeople moving down the High Street from their churches at the hour of noon. There had been a tempest of wind and rain, but it had cleared leaving the waters still gray but with the sky turning to blue. Cicely was among the first, walking with her father and brother, and had stopped, as they came to their own door, to glance down at the harbor laid out in a circle of moving blue water below them.
"Oh, look, look!" she cried suddenly.
A ship was sailing slowly up the bay, a stately ship that dipped a little and rose again as she came, but held her course steady for the wharves. Her sails shone white in the fitful sun, the lines of her hull showed dark against the gray water, the tracery of her rigging and even the colors of her flag were distinct against the sky, and yet—she did not seemlike any ship they had ever seen before. Cicely having drawn that vessel, line for line, masts, hull, ropes, and spars, knew that this was theHuntress, yet what was so strange about her? Why was she so steady in those changing gusts of wind, what was there that made her sails so shining and transparent, like the texture of a cloud?
The girl was aware that, among the crowd that had gathered to watch the strange vision, Martin Hallowell was pushing to the front, gazing with all his eyes. Ben Barton, too, who had come back the week before, to ask for a place on Reuben Hallowell's ships, was pressing close to Alan's elbow.
"The wind's dead off shore and here she comes straight in," she heard the old sailor mutter. "Not even theHuntresscould sail like that. And yet it is theHuntressright enough."
The vessel came nearer and nearer, then of a sudden stopped, quivered, as though struck by a violent adverse wind. Her main topsail blew out suddenly and went streaming forth in the gale, a jib split to ribbons before their eyes, and spar after spar was carried away. She careened, as though before a hurricane, her foremast came down with a soundless smother of sail and wreckage. Further and further she tilted, and then suddenly she had vanished and there was nothing left but the March sunshine and the tossing, empty bay.
The crowd stood breathless, waiting for some oneto speak. It was only Ben Barton who was able to find his voice.
"I've heard of such things before," he said. "The wise skippers all say it is a mirage, but the wiser sailormen say it is a message from another world. She's gone, ourHuntressis, and there's no wind under heaven will ever blow her home again."
Martin Hallowell had swung on his heel and was walking away down the street facing the fact, finally, that his venture was at an end. A tall man with dangling watch seals edged up to Cicely's father.
"I am satisfied at last, Reuben Hallowell, that our ship is lost," he said. "We did wrong to wait for war to make our fortunes, and it is high time that we went back to the lesser risks and the smaller gains of peace. Will you let me join in lading your next vessel? You are the only man among us who has known when a war ends and peace begins."
"I'm thinking there will be some tall ships sailing out of this port soon," said Ben Barton, speaking low to Cicily and Alan. "It will be on a better craft than theHuntresseven that your brother will be officer before long. What seas we'll cruise, he and I, and what treasures we'll bring back to you, Miss Cicely. I'd go with the son of Reuben Hallowell to the ends of the earth—if only he never asks me to put to sea of a Friday!"
Throughout the telling of the story, Polly and Janet had been very busy sorting and putting together the little honey boxes that were to be set in larger frames and hung in the upper story of the beehives. There was now such a great heap of them ready that the Beeman gathered them into a basket and, summoning Oliver to help him, carried them outside. He did not, immediately, go down the slope to the beehives, but set the basket on the step and sat down on the bench beside it.
"You had something to tell me," he said, "something that disturbed and excited you. I thought it might be better for you to wait a little. I should like to hear it now."
"Yes, it is clearer in my head now," Oliver agreed. "It is about my Cousin Jasper that we are visiting. I want to help him, though"—he smiled at the recollection, yet made frank confession—"that first day I was here I was so angry I almost hated him."
"If I thought that were true," responded his friend gravely, "I should have to ask you never tocome here again, not only because I am fond of your cousin myself, but because I value my bees. There is an old superstition that you must not hate where bees are, for they feel it and pine away and die. I cannot have my bees destroyed."
The boy, looking up quickly at his broad, friendly smile, realized that the man believed neither the old superstition, nor that Oliver entertained any evil feelings.
"Perhaps," went on the Beeman, "the bees were in some danger that first day. You had it in mind, then, to go away for good, I think."
Oliver nodded. He wondered how he could ever have made that selfish resolution to run away.
"How did you know?" he asked.
"I had guessed it from—oh, various things. I am about the age of your Cousin Jasper, but I know more than he about people of your years from being Polly's father. I even had some idea of what was the immediate cause of your going." The boy flushed so guiltily that he went on, in kindly haste, "I am troubled about Jasper Peyton myself—yes, don't look surprised, I know him well enough to call him that. We all know one another in Medford Valley. I—I even work for him sometimes. Now tell me what you think is wrong."
Oliver, as he set forth his tale, had a feeling that not all of it was new to his listener, but he hearkened attentively to all that the boy had to say,frowning when he heard of Anthony Crawford's insistent and disagreeable visits.
"Your cousin doesn't know how to deal with a man like that," he commented. "He is too upright himself to know the mean, small, underhand ways that such a person will take to get what he wants. I know Anthony Crawford, too, and what he is trying to accomplish. It will take all of us, every one, to beat him. But we will, Oliver, I vow we will."
"What can we do, what can I do?" the boy persisted. He felt ready to accomplish great things at once. "And can't you explain to me what it is all about?"
To his great disappointment, the other shook his head.
"I feel that if your cousin does not wish to tell you himself, I ought not to," he said, "though I should like you to know. But there are two things that you can do. One is not to be impatient with your cousin when he makes tactless mistakes about—about how you are to be entertained. He depends on you and Janet for a little cheerfulness in his house."
"That isn't much to do," observed Oliver. "I hope the other is more."
"It is only this. To borrow a boat from John Massey—can you manage a sailboat? Good, I thought you looked like the sort of boy who could—and take a cruise up and down Medford River where it skirts that level farming land in the valley.I want you to bring me word of how the dikes are holding. You may not see what bearing that has upon the matter, but I assure you it means a great deal. Anthony Crawford thinks that he is a very clever man, but he is preparing a pitfall for himself, unless I am very much mistaken. And you and I may be at hand to see him tumble into it. The only thing is to see that he doesn't harm others as well as himself."
Oliver had one more question to ask.
"I want to know your last name, and Polly's," he said. "I can't think how you knew mine and I had quite forgotten to wonder about yours until Janet reminded me that I had never heard it. I have no name for you but the Beeman."
"If you want a longer name for Polly, you can call her Polly Marshall," his friend answered, "but as for me I rather like being called the Beeman. We will keep to that title a little longer if you are willing. And now it is high time that I gave some attention to my bees."
Oliver had no difficulty, later in the day, in borrowing the sailboat from John Massey, although he was obliged to give the vague message, "that man who keeps bees up the hill said you would lend her to me."
"Sure, I will," replied John Massey heartily. "Just be careful you don't go aground on the bars. The river is shallow for this time of year, though it can be pretty fierce when the floods are up."
Oliver shook out the shabby sail, set the rudder for a long tack downstream, and was off. The breeze was coming in gentle puffs, so that the boat moved slowly through the water, the ripples making a sleepy whisper under the bow and the tiller, now and then, jerking lazily under his hand. One side of the stream was marshy so that he pushed into tall grass and cat-tails and startled an indignant kingfisher who was dozing on a dead tree. The bird went skimming off, a flash of blue and white that he followed as he came about.
On the other side, the current ran close beside the high banks of earth that protected the fields within. The channel was scoured deep and the restless stream was cutting into the dikes, washing long black scars just above the water line.
"That oughtn't to be," pronounced Oliver, and was glad to see that, farther downstream, the carving away of the earth had been stopped by patches of broken stone. For at least a mile, however, at the bend of the river, the banks were crumbling and neglected.
He could look up and see, first the farms of the low-lying land, the treetops and pointed silos just showing above the dike, then the hillside, with the wavering white line of the road, then that strange, shabby dwelling of yellow stone almost hidden in its cluster of trees. Above it showed Cousin Jasper's house, very big and red, set upon the slope almost at the top of the ridge. On the other side of the streamthere were fewer dwellings, the wooded slope rising to the more open green of the orchard and then to the grassy declivity of the Windy Hill. As he neared the bridge he passed a long gray stone house with its gardens a glowing mass of color that came down to the water's very edge. This, he remembered, was the abode of Cousin Eleanor, and he laughed at himself as, even at this safe distance, he steered his course very cautiously along the opposite bank.
At the bridge he was obliged to turn, and run before the wind to make his way upstream again. He lay stretched out comfortably along the rail, paying little attention to the boat and thinking of many things. There was Cousin Jasper—how Oliver had misjudged him that day he thought of running away. His cousin had been tactless and stubborn, but the Cousin Eleanor affair had been well meant, after all.
"I'll never meet her, though. I won't give in," he declared, almost aloud, and realized, in a breath, that his persistence and Cousin Jasper's were both cut from the same piece.
"I'm sorry for him and I'll help him," he told himself, "and perhaps he will learn something about boys after a while."
And there was Anthony Crawford! He flushed again as he thought of the man's gleeful delight when he had caught him looking over the wall. What power could he have, and what was the disgrace of which he had spoken? The Beeman wasalmost as mysterious as the others also; he had certainly managed to evade the question when Oliver had asked his name.
"The only one that there isn't a mystery about is Polly," he declared as he came to John Massey's little landing and rounded with a sweep to the boat's mooring.
Meanwhile Janet, who had been left to her own devices, had stumbled into an adventure of her own. She had made ready to go with her brother, but Cousin Jasper had called her to look at some new roses and had delayed her so long that the impatient Oliver had finally gone without her. When Cousin Jasper had returned to the house, she wandered rather disconsolately up and down the hedged paths and, finally coming to the big gate, she stood looking out. The road stretched away invitingly across the hillsides, the sleepy stillness of the afternoon was broken only by the occasional drone of a motor and by the grinding wheels of a big hay wagon that labored along the highway in the dust.
She walked out along the road, thinking that she would find a vantage point to look down to the river and see how Oliver was faring. The way presently crossed an open ridge whence she could see the smooth stream and the sail creeping slowly out from the green shore. For some time she stood watching its progress, wishing vainly that she might have gone, until she became suddenly aware that some one was staring at her. Turning, she saw that a childwith very yellow hair and very round blue eyes was sitting between two alder bushes on the edge of a ditch, gazing at her intently.
"What are you doing?" she asked, astonished, for the youngster, a square little boy of four or five years old, seemed far too small to be on the road alone.
"I was wishing I could go home," he answered.
There was a slight quivering of his chin as he spoke, as though the problem was rather a desperate one, but he was determined not to cry. "I was wishing on that hay wagon when it went by," he explained sedately. "I shut my eyes so I wouldn't see it again and break the luck, and when I opened them, you were there."
He climbed over the ditch and came to her side to tuck his hand confidently into hers. There seemed to be no doubt in his mind that she would take him home.
"Can you show me where you live?" she asked as they went along together.
"Oh, yes," he answered cheerfully. "There was a cow eating beside the road, and I passed it once, but it looked at me so hard when I went by that I was afraid to go back. I'll show you."
They walked along for some distance, he tramping sturdily by her side and chattering contentedly, giving her all sorts of miscellaneous and unsought information, that his name was Martin, that he had a little brother, that the brother was crying whenhe went away from home, that his mother was crying a little, too, that they had a red calf in the barn, and that there was a scarecrow in the field beside their house. He led her into a crossroad, then down a narrow, shady lane, where, as he had said, there was a mannerly old black cow grazing beside the way, who came to the end of her tether rope to greet them.
"I'm not afraid with you here," young Martin asserted boldly, and was even persuaded to pat the smooth black and white face of the friendly creature while Janet fed her a handful of clover.
When they reached a broken-hinged gate at the end of the lane, the girl began to realize that she was coming to the same place that Oliver had described to her. She stopped, feeling that she would rather not go on, but the little boy tugged at her hand.
"My father isn't here," he told her, as though some unhappy knowledge of his father's character made him understand her hesitation, "and my mother's crying."
With some reluctance, Janet pushed open the gate and went in.
A faded, shabbily dressed woman sat on one of the unpainted benches of the shady stoop, holding a baby in her arms. As Martin had said, slow tears of helpless misery were rolling down her cheeks, while from the bundle that she held came the worn-out, tired wail of a sick child.
"I don't know much, but I would like to help you," Janet said, sitting down beside her, while the woman choked with a fresh gush of tears at the unexpected offer of aid and sympathy.
"I don't dare put the baby down, he cries so," she managed to say at last. "Could you go into the kitchen and heat some water and bring out the blanket that I hung up to warm? I don't doubt the fire is out by now, but I haven't been able to move for fear he would begin choking again. Do you think you can manage?"
Janet managed very well, with Martin trotting at her heels to tell her where things could be found. She heated the water, warmed the blankets, and even rummaged out the tea caddy and brewed a cup of hot tea for the weary mother.
"You are a real blessing, my dear," said the woman as she put down the empty cup. "This boy has been sick with croup all night and I had quite forgotten that I had no breakfast."
"Has his father gone for the doctor?" Janet asked, as she brought out a cushion for the baby, who seemed to be quieter now and almost ready to drop asleep.
"No," replied the woman briefly.
She offered no explanation. It was evidently not a thing to be expected that Anthony Crawford should take an interest in an ailing child.
As Janet went back and forth, she was struck by the surprising charm that the old house showedwithin, quite out of keeping with its littered door-yard and outward disrepair. The white woodwork had gone long unpainted, it was true, and the floors were worn and uneven, but there was an airy spaciousness in the rooms, a comfortable dignity in the old mahogany furniture, and the grace of real beauty in the curved white staircase with its dark, polished rail. Everything was spotlessly clean, from the faded rag rugs to the cracked panes of the windows. The kitchen was, to her, the place of chief delight, for it ran all across the back of the house, with a row of low windows wreathed in ivy and commanding a wide view across the meadow lands beside the river. There was a modern cooking stove at one end of the room, a cheap, hideous, ineffective affair, but at the other was still the old fireplace, with its swinging crane, its warming cupboards, and its broad, stone-flagged hearth.
The baby was so much better that his mother was actually able to smile and to lean back contentedly in the corner of the bench.
"He is better off out here in the air," she said. "I believe he will be able to sleep in a little while. Now if I just had a strip of flannel to wrap around his chest! You would have to go up into the garret to look for it, and maybe rummage in one or two of the boxes. But I believe there should be some in the big cedar chest back under the eaves."
Guided by the faithful Martin, Janet climbed the stairs to the garret, where, in the warm, dusty airthat smelled of hot shingles and lavender, she went poking about, seeking the roll of flannel that Mrs. Crawford assured her was there. She could find everything else in the world—old clocks, spindle-legged chairs, a high-backed, mahogany sofa, and a spinning wheel. At last she discovered what she needed in a box far under the eaves, but in pulling it out so that she could raise the lid, she knocked down a row of pictures that leaned against it. She bent to pick them up and set them in order again, then stopped to stare at them with a gasp of delighted astonishment.
Janet loved beautiful things, especially pictures, and she could be sure, at one glance, that these were pictures such as one does not often see. She remembered being taken by her father to a famous gallery to see a landscape so much akin to the one before her that they had undoubtedly been painted by the same artist, a green hillside with sailing clouds above it, on a clear October day, "the sort that makes you feel that you can see a hundred miles," as Janet put it. There was another, a winding white road running up a wind-swept valley with the trees bowing to a storm and a spatter of rain slanting across the hill, there was a portrait of a fierce old lady and another of a man with lace ruffles and a satin coat. There was a long, cool wave, breaking upon a beach where the whiteness of the sun-splashed sand was so vivid as almost to hurt her eyes.
She set them out in a row against the eaves and sat back on her heels to look her fill. Such pictures, to be gathered here in the dusty attic, to crack and warp and fade into ruin! She could not understand how they could have come there, nor did she spend much thought in wondering, so lost was she in that pure delight that the sight of truly beautiful things can bring. An old print with a cracked glass and broken frame caught her attention almost the last of all. It showed a ship, a tall frigate, under full sail, and had all the quaint primness of the pictures of a hundred years ago. The group of people supposed to be standing on the wharf was composed of gentlemen in very tight trousers and ladies with very sloping shoulders and absurd, tiny parasols. The vessel floated on impossible scalloped billows, but no old-fashioned stiffness could disguise the free beauty of the ship's lines and the grace of her curving sails. Her name was inscribed in faded gold letters below—"TheHuntress, 1813." The Beeman's tale was still so vivid in her mind that there was no need for her to wonder where she had heard that name before.
"Why, it was a real story," she exclaimed, "and I thought he was only making it up!"
As she moved the print to a better light, a smaller picture, almost lost among the rest, fell down between two frames and rolled across the floor. She took it up and saw that it was a miniature, painted on ivory and framed in gold, the portrait of a younggirl with high-piled brown hair and eager, smiling eyes.
"It looks like Polly," Janet thought, "but it could not really be a picture of her."
She turned it over and found the single name engraved on the back, "Cicely, æt. 17."
"Martin," she cried in the sudden inspiration of discovery, "Martin, come here quickly and tell me what is your whole name."
The little boy came out from a far corner where he had been examining dusty treasures on his own account and stood for a minute just where a beam of slanting sunlight dropped through the tiny window under the roof.
"Martin Hallowell Crawford," he said.
She would always remember just how he looked, standing there with the sunshine on his yellow mop of curly hair, his chubby face smiling and then whitening suddenly as they both heard a sound behind them. She turned to see Anthony Crawford standing upon the stair.