CHAPTER XVIIVAN THE RESCUER

‘Pa!’ said Betsy“‘Pa!’ said Betsy.”CHAPTER XVIIVAN THE RESCUER

‘Pa!’ said Betsy“‘Pa!’ said Betsy.”

“‘Pa!’ said Betsy.”

“‘Pa!’ said Betsy.”

IT was a June morning; the air was soft, still, and windless. Betsy came out on the honeysuckle porch carrying a basket of lunch. Van lay there in the sweet sunshine.

“School is over and vacation has begun, Vanny-Boy, and Aunt Kate says we may have a picnic, if you’ll take good care of me. We’re going up to the Reservoir, and we’re going for a whole day. We are going to have the time of our lives. Now, what do you think of that?”

With a bark of joy he began dancing around her, and all the way past the buildings he measured the rods with little yelps of delight. Freedom was his once more, and gladness radiated from him in every direction. Eastward, up Bow Lane they turned, Van always in the lead, while straying cats and chickens no longer needed to flee at his approach.

A sleepy, winding road was Bow Lane, making a great curve past meadows and farmhouses, till it lost itself in the hills. A golden glow filled all the valley ahead of them, and the hills rose out of the mist like dreams, barely outlined in delicate amethyst against the glory of the sky. Down into a ravine they went, where a brook sang its morning song far below the bridge that spanned it. Here Van leaped from rock to rock down the steep bank to the very edge of the little stream, and lapped his fill of the sweet water. Acrossthe brook he bounded, never wetting his feet, then up the other side as if he were a winged thing, till he joined Betsy once more.

Up the brook a little way, on a boulder, sat a tramp, who started as he saw the dog, and then looked up to watch the little girl as she crossed the bridge. But Betsy did not see him, and Van only gave a contemptuous bark in his direction.

On and on they went, up the brown road that unwound itself out of the mist between two lines of velvety green. The country swam higher and higher out of the vapor, and resolved itself into fields of standing corn, wheat, or clover, that spread everywhere, dew-pearled. The rainbow ropes that bound earth to sky spun themselves up, up, till the dreaming hills turned from amethyst to sapphire, then emerald.

Out of the fog that veiled the upland, sprang an army of tall, thin cedar trees, standing like soldiers, singly or in groups. They appeared to be marching up the hill in a happy-go-lucky way, as if it were not necessary to keep rank and step when armies go on a holiday. Betsy saluted gayly as she passed, and it almost seemed as if they returned the salute and presented arms, sofriendly did the whole world appear that lovely morning.

Now Betsy and Van plunged through a grove of chestnuts and beeches, where the road looked like a tunnel of green, opening into fairyland. Beyond lay a fallow field. Here they left the road, and waded knee-deep through grass and flowers hung from tip to tip with filmy fairy garments, tended by spidery washerwomen.

Betsy laughed at her soaked shoes, and shook defiance at the dew with her short skirts. Van cared for nothing except to race hither and yonder, covering ten feet of distance to Betsy’s one, until he was halted by a mass of rock too high and steep for him to clamber over. He looked back to see what his mistress would do in the face of such an obstacle. But Betsy knew the secret, and instead of trying to climb, she simply skirted the foot of the rocks until she came to an opening, where a narrow, grassy path led around the barrier, and there before them lay the miracle!

A great limpid opal, in whose bosom were reflected the white rocks and tall forests of the hill-summit, every pebble, every leaf, hanging fromthe shore-line, as perfect in the reflection as in the reality. Oh, this was surely a morning to lose all sight of the border-land between the Land of Everyday and the Land of Faery! This was the Reservoir, made by the hand of God to store water, cool, clear, and wonderful, for man’s use. Betsy’s delight grew in thrills as she settled herself under an overhanging rock, to take in the marvel of it.

“Now, Van, you can turn yourself upside down and inside out. There’s a squirrel! You may chase him, if you want to, and there’s a butterfly, and you may chase him, too. Only don’t go off and leave me.”

What a morning that was! Every minute full of new delights, and all too short. Hunger pressed them at an early hour to take their nooning, and they refreshed themselves with the contents of the basket, and drank tin cups of nectar from the opalescent pool. Van sat up and begged and did every trick he knew in payment for the largess with which Betsy rewarded him. He even risked his life doing “Dead Dog,” for he did it in the face of a piece of doughnut, and with such absolute abandon that he started rolling downthe bank, and was only saved from being really a dead dog, or rather, a wet one, by Betsy, who clutched him just as he was going over the edge.

A thin film of gray had drawn itself over the sky until the gold was all gone, and the sun had quite disappeared. The air had grown hot and breathless.

“I think I’ll take a rest,” said Betsy at last. “It’s as still as anything up here.”

She curled herself up in a grassy hollow where the early sun had dried the dew, and Van also curled himself comfortably on her skirt, and was soon in the Happy Hunting Ground of Dreams.

A strange stillness settled over the place; nothing stirred save an uneasy bird in the thicket across the pool; the pool itself became a gray pearl in a setting of silence. Everything in the world seemed asleep, and Betsy caught the general drowsiness, closed her eyes, and passed off into visions of Elfland.

Presently she awoke. She felt a curious sensation, as if some one was watching her. Van gave a low growl. She rose to her knees, looked around, and saw a man looking down at her.

Suddenly her heart stood still, and her breath caught in her throat. She looked again.

“Hullo, Bet!”

“Pa!” said Betsy.

“Sure it is. It took ye some time to recognize yer dad. Wasn’t expectin’ the pleasure, was ye? My! but ye look as neat as a cotton hat. Yer Aunt Kate’s dolled ye up mighty fine. Butshecan’t hev ye. Ye are goin’ to come along withme. I need ye. I jest been waitin’ till I caught ye off by yerself. They beat me in court this mornin’, but I seen ye comin’ up here afore they done it, and now, by gum, I’ll beatthem!”

All Betsy’s heart rose in revolt—to go back to the old days of hunger and rags and beatings! This was not her father. It was the man who had killed her mother by leaving her to starve.

“I’m not going with you,” said Betsy, sturdily.

“Oh, yes, ye air.”

“I won’t go. You went off and left us, and Ma died, and I ’most did. You aren’t my father any longer.”

“Oh, yes, I am, Miss H’ighty-t’ighty, an’ I’d like to hear any one else say I ain’t. A child’s duty is to its dad, and ye air goin’ to come rightalong with me, and the Court kin go to kingdom come. I got ye a nice new ma, and she’ll curl yer hair fer ye. Ye won’t need yer Aunt Kate.”

Betsy stood aghast. She could not speak for the horror of it all. This father who, in the old days, had beaten her for little or nothing, who had deserted his family, leaving them in the face of dire poverty, taking with him all the money in the house, now claimed her. She was not so young that she had not known and understood it all. She summoned up all the strength of her eleven years.

“I won’t go, I tell you!”

“An’ I’d like to see ye help yerself.” He seized and lifted her from the ground with no effort.

“Ye ain’t much weight. I kin manage ye all right. Keep still, will ye!”

Betsy kicked and screamed and struggled.

“Now, let up, there. Ye kin kick and screech, but ’twon’t do ye no good; there ain’t no one to hear ye.”

Van, who had been keeping up a low growling, thought this was the cue for him to enter. With a leap he caught the man’s leg in his teeth, andheld on with all the strength and tenacity of that bull-dog ancestor of his.

“Leggo,—you!” snarled the man, but Van held on valiantly.

“You call off that dog, Bet, or I’ll kill him, and I’ll lam-bast you!”

Betsy, thoroughly frightened for her pet, made Van let go; but her heart was so full of anger that any thought of fear for herself was banished. She only felt that she must keep still, and not make things worse. She must think, hard.

“Make that dog go home!”

“Home, Van! Go home!”

Van slunk to the rear, but Betsy, looking back, saw him standing, grieved and bewildered. Then, after a minute he disappeared.

“Ye kin walk ef ye like, but I’ll keep an eye on ye, and a hand, too.”

Half leading, half dragging her, Al Wixon went deeper into the forest on the far side of the pool. A trackless way it was, but they came out at last in a tiny clearing where stood a hut, apparently deserted. It was, in fact, only a wooden shanty that had been built for temporary shelter near an abandoned quarry.

“There! I’ll hive ye up here till I git my things and come back. Ye can’t git out, and it’s no use to holler. No one kin hear ye. We’ll start to-night, and work along up New York State and into Canady, and then ye kin sing fer yer Aunt Kate. I reckon ye thought ye was goin’ to be made a lady of, did ye? Gosh! Ye air growin’ purty! Look like yer ma used ter, a leetle mite.”

“Don’t you speak of my mother to me,—you——!”

“He, he! Spitfire! Well, I kin lick that out’n ye when we git to Canady. Now set easy, and ef you yip, I’ll take yer head off! I’ll be back afore night. I got to git some duffle I left in town.”

Al Wixon’s footfalls died away, and Betsy drew a longer breath and looked around. There was only one window and a door. The window was nailed up on the outside, and the door, too, was fastened on the outside with two bars put rudely across. The window had only one pane of glass, anyway, and was too small to crawl through, even if the glass were broken.

Betsy leaned against the door to think. She would be taken away, and would never see Aunt Kate and Uncle Ben again. And Van would beleft behind. Where was the little comrade now?

“Oh, Vanny-Boy!” she wailed.

Sh! What was that? She listened. A scratching sound, and then a little whine on the other side of the door.

“Van!” she whispered. “Oh, my little Van, are you there?”

The answer was a desperate scratching in the dirt under the door, which had no sill. Betsy could hear the dirt fly, as Van worked madly to get in to his mistress. An inspiration leaped in her brain.

“He’s digging under to get in to me. Why can’t I dig, and get out to him?”

It was the one chance. She looked around the bare little room. Nothing there, except a small rusted stove in one corner, now falling to pieces, and the floor was simply the dirt of the clearing. Not a thing to dig with. Yes, there was one thing, the lid on the top of the little stove. It was red and eaten with rust, but still stout enough for service.

“Now,” she said, as she settled to work, “we’ll make the hole big enough in no time, and if Pa doesn’t get back too soon!——”

She wasted no more breath on words. The old stove-lid proved an effective instrument in the light earth. Together they worked; Betsy inside and Van outside the old door. If her father came back before the hole was big enough, he might kill Van, and she would never get back to the Hill-Top. Desperately she worked; her breath coming in little sobbing gasps that caught and choked her. With nervous, trembling hands she dug down, and down. The ground had been packed by the tramp of the quarry-men in days past, but the earth-worms had lightened the soil a little, and it was possible, even with the mean tool she held, to dig into it.

Soon a black muzzle was in sight; a few more strokes on either side, and Van had wriggled through and was in her aching arms.

But she must not stop. She must keep on digging. Van seemed to understand. He did not bark, but stood, alert and eager, waiting.

Now Betsy could get her head through the hole, now her shoulders; then a few more frantic strokes of the old stove-lid, and she dragged her whole body through the opening. Her prettydress was torn and earthstained, but she wasfree!

A light rain was beginning to fall; she did not mind that, only there were no long afternoon shadows to point the way home, and even the little country-bred Betsy was quite lost. Which way should she turn? In any case she must get out of the clearing and into the woods where her father could not find her.

She started to run to shelter, but Van gave a short, quick bark, and ran in the other direction. Then he came back, and off again, as if he would have her follow him.

“Perhaps he knows,” thought Betsy. She turned and followed him across the clearing and into the forest.

And Van did know. Many a time he had scoured those woods with Thatcher, and even if he had never had been there before, he could have followed his own trail back. With his nose to the ground, he started into a gully, looking back to see that his mistress was coming; then down a rocky hill into a place so dark that it seemed as if the twilight had already come. Nowup and out, through some burned ground, over a brook, through a long stretch of unbroken wood, and then, before them lay the Reservoir, its gray mirror broken into millions of tiny ripples by the falling raindrops.

Beyond lay the field of the cedar soldiers, on guard. Betsy knew the way now, although the dusk was gathering. Across the valley she could see the Hospital buildings looming, and the lights as they flashed up in the corridors.

Something was coming! Was it her father returning? She must hide. Crouching behind a boulder and holding Van’s muzzle she waited.

A man bearing a pack on his back slouched past, and went on up the road they had just traveled. Betsy’s heart stopped pounding as he disappeared. She started once more on her journey, but drew back as another sound was heard. Listen! That was a carriage, surely. In the waning light Betsy peered from behind a tree, and then leaped to meet the coming vehicle.

They were both there, Uncle Ben and Aunt Kate, bundled up in mackintoshes. Aunt Kate sprang to the ground, and straight into her armsran a bedraggled, wet little figure, while Van leaped in ecstasies.

“My darling! My own child!”

“Auntie Kate, Uncle Ben! Oh, Auntie Kate, Pa tried to get me, and he shut me up and Van scratched me out.” In a flame of words, tears, and laughter the whole story was poured out.

They drove home through the gathering night and falling rain, Betsy tucked in the middle, and Van at her feet. Presently Betsy asked,

“He couldn’t have me, could he, Auntie Kate?”

“No, dear. And we have something to tell you; it was to have crowned a happier day than this. But the end is all right. The court has decided the matter. The man who was your father will never dare come again, and Uncle Ben and I have legally adopted you, so now you are our very own little girl. This was Alvin Wixon’s last effort, after his failure before the judge.”

Betsy slipped an arm around each of the two who were beside her.

“Why, then,—you are my father and mother,—and—My! but I’m glad!”

“And you are not Betsy Wixon any more. From now on you are Betsy Johns.”

“Oh, Auntie Kate—Mother!” whispered Betsy.

The heart of Betsy was unlocked now, forever.

THE END

Printed in the United States of America.

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