Chapter III: Part 3

Bartlett knew of this unfortunate tendency of the general's and resolved to get rid of those books and maps and papers. With every mile indicated and nicely tabulated, every turn and landmark mentioned, it would be almost impossible to get off the beaten route, and they must avoid telegraph stations and post-offices as much as possible. The success of the scheme lay in keeping Batchelor away from all touch and communication with the city. They must, if possible, get lost, and with the multitudinous books and maps they would not be able to. Therefore, they must get rid of the books and maps.

When they had separated to prepare for the trip, Bartlett returned hastily to the garage. No one was in sight except a strange chauffeur lounging in the doorway. Bartlett collected all the literature from the general's car and hastened back to the hotel. Surreptitiously, he entered an empty room near the one assigned to him and when he emerged again, his arms were burdenless and he was smiling gently.

They waited for the Watermelon on the porch, intending to have an early supper and start while it was still light. Bartlett greeted the returning youth with relief and lead the way to the dining-room. He mentioned a small village some thirty miles to the north, where they could find accommodations for the night in an old farm-house.

"Friends of mine," said he. "I go there every fall."

The general rose to get his blue book. "We will look it up," said he.

Bartlett stopped him. The town was not in the book. He knew, for he had tried to find it.

"The maps will do," said the general, who liked to locate every town visually on the maps or in the books before he undertook to motor there.

Desperate, Bartlett declared that it was not on the maps. But the general would not be daunted. They could put it on the maps themselves if they knew in which county it was, near what post-office--

"We don't want to locate it," said Bartlett, growing stern and cross of a necessity.

They found the cars waiting at the steps and a small crowd to see them off and wile away the time before supper.

Bartlett said, as he knew the way, he would lead. "We need only two cars. Mr. Batchelor's car can be left until we return."

"Three cars might come in handy," protested the general, who objected to every suggestion not his own, on principle.

"Why?" asked Bartlett coldly.

"Mr. Batchelor might become offended at us and want to ride by himself," suggested Henrietta, laughing.

"Yes," agreed Billy, who, though young and charming, was sometimes lacking in that reserve that should have stamped her father's daughter. "He and dad are fighting each other now on 'Change."

Henrietta flushed, the Watermelon laughed and the general looked pained at the thought of any possible lack of congeniality.

"My dear Billy," said Bartlett, "the third auto would be extremely handy for you and your tongue, at least."

Billy glanced miserably from one to the other. "Why, Daddy, you told me, yesterday--"

"I have told you many things," said Bartlett, "both yesterday and the day before."

He took the general by the arm and gently but firmly thrust him into his car, getting in himself and taking the wheel. The young folk could ride in the tonneau and Alphonse follow in the general's car with the luggage.

The cars started down the hill in the first sweet flush of evening. Birds were going to bed with noisy upbraidings. A few cows at the pasture bars watched them pass with great, stupid, placid eyes, jaws going slowly, rhythmically, as they waited for the milking time. Now they flashed from the shadows of the woods to the open country, pastures and rolling grain fields on each hand. Now they plunged among the trees again with the drowsy twitter of birds and the clear babbling of a brook somewhere off among the ferns and brambles.

The Watermelon leaned back in the deep soft cushions of the big car and smiled a smile of calm and peace and comfort. The car ran smoothly, noiselessly, little breezes laden with the sweetness of the approaching night wandered by, on each side of him was a pretty girl. Tramping idealized! It was living idealized. And that morning, hungry, shabby, unshaved, he had been content to lie in the sweet lush grasses of a chance meadow, under a butternut tree, with the convivial James and the corpulent Mike! He crossed one well-pressed, silken leg over the other and saw by the wayside, lounging in the shadows, waiting for the car to pass, the two, James and Mike--Mike, fat, red-faced, dirty, his frowsy hat pulled aslant over his small, bleary eyes, shoulders humped from long habit in cold weather, toes coming out of his boot ends; James, clean shaven, but otherwise no better dressed, no cleaner, both chewing tobacco with the thoughtful rumination of the cows watching over the pasture bars at the end of the wooded lane.

Over the trees, the sun was dropping from sight. Clearly and sweetly on the quiet air of the eventide, the church bells began to toll from the village below them in the valley.

Billy nudged the Watermelon to call his attention to the two weary figures by the wayside.

"Poor fellows," said Henrietta softly, lest they hear her.

The Watermelon glanced at them in lofty disgust and catching James' eye, his own flickered the fraction of an inch and he raised his hands languidly to adjust the brown silk tie at his throat. When they had passed, he turned and waved a graceful farewell. He explained to Billy as they swept on into the deepening dusk.

"You might as well encourage the poor fellows. They probably want to ride as well as I." And Henrietta fancied that possibly his father had looked thus on a Sunday, in the pulpit of a country church.

"Yes," agreed Billy. "They may be perfectly dandy fellows."

"Assuredly," laughed Henrietta. "The stout one fairly radiated truth and nobility, a manly, upright youth."

"I don't care," declared Billy warmly. "You can't always tell from appearances. You ought to know that, Henrietta. Clothes don't make the man."

"Nor his manners," laughingly retorted Henrietta.

"Sure," said the Watermelon. "Father used to say that manners didn't count any more than the good apples on the top of the box to hide the rotten ones beneath."

"I think your father was a cynic," said Henrietta sharply, into whose ears Billy had been recounting the sayings of the absent divine.

"Yes," admitted the Watermelon, "he was."

"Cynicism is a sign of failure," quoted Henrietta. "Surely your father wasn't a cynic."

"Yes, he was," declared the Watermelon, "and you didn't make that up yourself. You heard some failure say it. Father used to say, and he's right, that if a man reached forty without becoming a cynic, he was a fool and might better never have reached forty. A success can be a cynic, for cynicism is simply a pretty good idea of the meanness of human nature and no unfounded expectation of anything especially decent coming from it, isn't that so? Father used to say that love was divine, hate devilish and meanness just cussed human nature, and a mixture of the three in more or less degree made man."

"Your father was a philosopher," laughed Henrietta. "I would like to have met him."

"I thought the papers said--" began Billy, in her slow, anxious way to get things right.

"Yes, they did," interrupted the Watermelon, "and they were right."

It was quite dark now. Bartlett stopped a moment while Alphonse lit the lamps, and then they went on and on, faster and faster, into the summer night. Once in a while they passed a lighted farm-house and a dog rushed out and barked at them. Twice they whirled through small villages and the villagers, going home from church, paused to watch them pass and be swallowed up in the dark ahead. The air was full of fireflies. A whippoorwill called plaintively from the bushes, and low in the west were flashes of heat lightning, with now and then an ominous rumble of distant thunder. Silence had settled on all, even Billy mused in her corner, half asleep.

The general had been worried for some time. They were apparently getting nowhere. He felt that he should have consulted the blue book. He was about to suggest that they stop and get the book from the rear car, when Bartlett waved toward the dark bulk of a house looming out of the night, some little way ahead.

"That's the place," said he. "We can spend the night there and get one of the best chicken breakfasts I ever ate."

The general looked at the place and rallied his sinking spirits. It appeared dark and he should say it was deserted, but Bartlett doubtless knew what he was talking about. The people probably lived in the kitchen. He was hungry and tired and the thought of hot sausages, bread and jam and milk and then a soft cool bed was nearly as good as the reality. He turned gaily to the quiet three in the tonneau.

"Wake up and hear the birds sing."

Bartlett glanced back and laughed. "Asleep, eh? We're there," he added, turning the car neatly into the open driveway. "Guess you won't refuse a good supper very strenuously."

The drive was rough and they rolled slowly tip to a great dark house, standing on a slight rise of ground, a typical New England farmhouse, square and gaunt and unadorned, with a small front stoop and a long side porch. From the trees behind the house, came the dismal cry of a hoot owl, as the cars came to a rest, and an answering cry from the grove across the road.

"Ghosts," whispered the general.

"Oh, hush," pleaded Billy. "There is no need of fooling with things like that."

"This house ain't lived in," said the Watermelon, as he slipped from the car to straighten his cramped legs.

"Folks gone to bed," explained Bartlett cheerfully, since he was not the one who had gone to bed. "We will just have to rout them out."

He shut off the power and alighted from the car, pulling off his gloves. Alphonse came up in the other car and peered out at the dark, quiet, lonely house and shook his head with forebodings.

"There isn't any one here," insisted the Watermelon, "asleep or awake."

The general climbed out. "If we had consulted the book--"

"My dear sir," interrupted Bartlett, a bit irritated, "the book could not possibly have told us that the family had moved since last fall when I spent two weeks here, hunting."

"Certainly not," laughed Henrietta, who spent a good part of her life steering with infinite care and constantly growing skill between the Scylla of her father's wrath and the Charybdis of the hurt feelings of those whom the general had offended. "This is simply one of the unforeseen misfortunes of the road."

"Besides," said Bartlett, "we don't know that the Higginses have gone!"

"Don't you see that there aren't any signs of life?" demanded the Watermelon. He had lived by his wits so long that he noticed instinctively the little things which mean so much and are generally overlooked. "If there was any one here some window would be open on a night like this, wouldn't it?"

*CHAPTER X*

*THE DESERTED HOUSE*

"Wonderful, wonderful!" murmured Henrietta in the tones of the famous Watson.

Bartlett looked at the house and nodded gloomily. "I guess you are right. Funny they should have left without writing me about it. I have known them for years."

"I will get the blue book," said the general, with the calm satisfaction of one who at last comes into his own. "We can return to the nearest village--"

"What do we want a blue book to do that for?" sneered Bartlett. "I should think two motor-cars could do it, provided we followed the road."

"Hold on a shake," said the Watermelon. "I will get in a window and open the door."

"We had better not," objected Henrietta, "Wouldn't that be house-breaking?"

The general agreed. "Certainly. It is warm and we can spend the night outside quite comfortably if you do not want to return to the village."

Billy shuddered and glanced appealingly at the Watermelon. A deserted house was bad enough, but outside where the owls called dismally from the woods and where bats flitted by in the dark held possibilities infinitely worse.

"I have known these people longer than I have Billy," said Bartlett. "I used to come here when I was a kid. It will be all right to break in. They are like my own folks."

The Watermelon immediately jumped to the porch, disdaining the few steps, and disappeared behind the vines which covered one end and concealed the window.

Bartlett turned reassuringly to the general. "It will be all right, Charlie. Don't worry about it. Why, I've always called Mrs. Higgins, Aunt Sally."

Visions of hot sausages, bread and milk die hard when one is hungry and the general snorted. "That's all right. I am hungry enough to break into the Bank of England if it resulted in something to eat, but what can we find in an empty house?"

"Ghosts," said Henrietta.

Billy pinched her. "If you think there are ghosts in there, Henrietta, I simply won't go in."

"Certainly there are ghosts," said Henrietta. "There always are in empty houses. Where else do you find them?"

"We will return to the village," declared the general, "and get something to eat. I will get the book--"

"An empty house is better than the countryside," said Bartlett. "And we have plenty to eat in that basket Henrietta put up."

"If there is something to eat--" wavered the general.

A light gleamed a moment through the crack of the door and then the door opened and the Watermelon grinned at them in the light of a small smoky lamp he held.

"Where did you get the lamp?" asked the general as the Watermelon led the way in.

"Found it," said the Watermelon. "The place is furnished. The family is probably only away for a visit." He set the lamp on the table and from long habit wiped his dusty hand on his trouser leg. "I fell over everything in the room before I got next to the fact."

He glanced about with some pride and the others stood in a semicircle and stared around. The room was a typical country kitchen, a huge stove side by side with a large chintz-covered rocking-chair. A dresser for the crockery and a haircloth lounge took up one side. There was a center-table with a red checked cloth, a few chairs and a sewing-machine near the window. On the walls were a number of cheap prints and several huge advertising calendars With gay pictures of young women in large hats and low-cut dresses.

Bartlett glanced around and at every unfamiliar object his heart sank lower and lower and his first sickening suspicion became a painful fact. He had never been in that room before. The Higginses had never lived there. Everything was strange, the furniture, the rugs, the very shape of the room. Where were they? Whose house had they unceremoniously broken into? A clammy chill crept down Bartlett's back and his florid face grew still redder.

None of the others was noticing him. The general was prowling around to see that the enemy could not come upon them unawares. The Watermelon had lifted the basket on to the table and the girls were preparing gaily to set forth the repast, all three rummaging in closets and drawers for plates and knives and forks.

The general returned to the table. "All serene along the Potomac," said he, thrusting his hands into his pockets and peering into the basket with renewed hope. Henrietta smiled gaily. She had pushed aside her auto veil, her cheeks were flushed with the joy of the adventure and her eyes bright.

"Father," said she, "in all our lives, we have never had an adventure before, because you persist in using those blue books."

The general laughed and helped himself to a sandwich.

Billy opened the dresser and peered gingerly in, her small nose wrinkled for any unforeseen emergency. She had taken off her hat, and her soft yellow hair, bound back by a black velvet snood, escaped around her temples in tiny waves. Her eyes, thought the Watermelon, were brighter than the lamp upon the table and her laughing, kissable mouth redder than the crimson lips of the fair creatures in the gay calendars on the wall. Her hand upon the latch of the door was so near his own, that he was tempted to put his on it, but instead slipped his into his pocket with a delicacy he did not recognize in himself. She was a girl, young and sweet and attractive, and because she was attractive, she had been flung into the maw of the Street, a victim of the age's insane desire for money and more money. Each dainty curl, each flash and disappearance of her single dimple had been reckoned as so much in dollars and cents. So the Watermelon put his hand in his pocket and only watched her with poorly veiled admiration.

"Do you know what I am looking for?" she asked, glancing at him, her eyes full of mischief.

"For the family silver," said the Watermelon. "We might as well take some souvenir of our visit."

"I don't believe the family silver is silver," said she. "I am trying to find a bucket which you can take to the well and fill for tea. It will give you an appetite."

"We will let Alphonse go for the water," said the Watermelon, turning over the articles on the dusty, crowded shelves. "The general sees to the cars. We will give Alphonse a chance to earn his pay."

"You should do something to earn yours," said she.

"What is mine?" he asked, trying to see into her eyes.

"We must find that bucket," said she, gazing innocently upward at the higher shelves. "I love to muss around among other people's things. They are so much more interesting than your own. I wonder why."

"We can't be amused with ourselves and our things," said the Watermelon. "We are too important. Father used to say nothing else was really important but ourselves and what affected us."

Henrietta, fussing with the alcohol lamp at the table, laughed. "Why didn't your father write a book," she asked, "a philosophy? It would have been a deal more interesting than James or Spencer or Decant."

"He used to say that a man who knew life never wrote about it. It would be too painful. It wouldn't sell."

There was a heavy step on the porch and Bartlett turned quickly with sickening fear. It was Alphonse come from putting the cars away in the shed beside the barn. Bartlett wiped his brow and swallowed heavily. This was terrible, this being in another man's house unlawfully. The utterly hopeless inability to explain satisfactorily took all one's nerves away. He glanced at the other four, merrily unconscious of his ghastly discovery, their thoughts filled only with the desire to eat.

"Billy," said he sharply, "what are you doing in that closet? Come away at once."

"I was only trying to find a bucket," stammered Billy.

"Those things don't belong to you. You have no right there." And Bartlett sternly and promptly shut the door.

Billy drew back hurt. "I don't see why it is so wrong to break into a man's pantry," said she, "after you have broken into his house. Besides, Daddy, you have known these people all your life."

"That's the trouble," said Bartlett desperately, with a rush, "I don't know these people. I have never been here before." He glared defiantly at the general, daring him to suggest the blue book.

For a moment no one spoke. Alphonse at the door, hat in hand, the general by the table, another prematurely acquired sandwich in his hand half way to his mouth, Henrietta, busy with the flame of the tiny alcohol lamp, Billy before him, the Watermelon on the edge of the dresser where he had seated himself, all stared in dull surprise. The Watermelon broke the silence.

"Better to break into another man's house than have him break into yours," said he. He glanced at Bartlett with just the flicker of amusement in his mild gray eyes, thinking that Bartlett had got lost already, deliberately, with the intention of spending the greater part of the following day finding themselves, and so successfully passing one day of the seven. Bartlett glanced at the young man and flushed. It seemed to him for one fleeting moment that the youth with the sleepy eyes knew a bit more than Bartlett cared to have him know, cared to have any one know, that he even seemed to suspect him of having got lost on purpose. Then the sleepy eyes turned again to Billy and the older man told himself that he was mistaken. He was growing nervous and reading his own intentions in every one's eyes. He strove to regain the mastery of his nerves by airy indifference.

"A slight mistake," said he.

"Ah, yes," said Henrietta, "as when you go off with another man's umbrella."

She turned down the flame, which threatened a conflagration, and put the cap on, extinguishing the lamp. One did not take tea in another's house when one had entered by mistake and through the window. One merely got out again, quietly and with no unavoidable delay.

The general, with rare nerve, took a bite from the sandwich and laid it on the table. He drew his handkerchief and wiped his hands. "I will get the blue book," he began busily, his mouth still rather full.

"We don't need the blue book to tell us to get out," said Henrietta, a bit tartly. She looked at the dainty pile of sandwiches, the cold chicken, cakes and olives on the table with the wooden plates and gay paper napkins she had arranged for the coming feast and hesitated. She wished some one was courageous enough to suggest that they eat before they leave.

"Certainly not," said the general. "But if we had consulted them before we left--"

"Sort of in the fashion of an oracle," sneered Henrietta as she began slowly to gather up the napkins and the wooden plates.

"Tell me," said Bartlett calmly, impersonally, not as one desiring an argument, but simply as a humble seeker after knowledge, with no prior views on the subject, "tell me, can you never make a mistake if you have a blue book?"

"No," said Henrietta, "never. With the blue book one could go directly to Heaven. It would be impossible not to."

Billy laughed.

"Billy would laugh at her funeral," said Bartlett coldly.

"We haven't anything to cry about," said the Watermelon, frankly unconcerned. "It's for the man who owns the house to do the crying."

"How did we get here?" demanded the general, as Alphonse went to get the blue book, for the general could no longer be gainsaid in his desire for his book. "Is this where the Higgins' home should be?"

"Why, no, father," said Henrietta, "or it would be here."

"I meant, Henrietta, did we come the right way? If we took every turn and have come far enough and not too far, this should be the Higgins' house."

"It should be," admitted Bartlett. "But it isn't."

Through the open door came the many noises of the summer night, the incessant hum of insects, the plaintive cry of the whippoorwill, the strident chorus of the frogs in the pond back of the bam. A moth, fluttering around the dingy lamp, fell on the table with scorched wings and Billy tenderly pushed it on a plate and carried it to the door.

"Why not eat here?" suggested the Watermelon, unimpressed by the aspect of the affair as it struck the others. "We can hunt for the Higginses afterward. They ought to be around somewhere unless we're helplessly lost."

Henrietta smiled and took out the napkins she had laid back in the basket. "It won't take us long," she agreed. "We don't need to have any tea."

"No," protested Bartlett, glancing at the door and listening for the crunch of wheels on the gravel without, "no, we must leave at once. We aren't lost. The Higginses' is probably the next house."

"Suppose it isn't," said Billy.

"Just so," said the general. "We will return to the village and put up at the hotel. It isn't late."

"It's half-past eleven," said Henrietta, glancing at her watch.

Alphonse returned, blase, indifferent. "There are no books," said he, devoid of all interest in the affair.

"No books?" cried the general. "Alphonse, what has become of them? Did you take them out of the car before we left?"

"No," said Alphonse, and violent, positive protestations could not have been more convincing.

"But where are they? I left them in the car."

"They probably fell out, father," said Henrietta.

"They have never fallen out before," snorted the general, with base suspicions against Henrietta.

"We can get another to-morrow," said Henrietta. "We will simply return to the hotel in the village for the night." And once more she replaced the napkins in the basket.

"Yes," agreed Bartlett. "There is a good hotel near the railroad tracks."

"Where are the railroad tracks?" asked the general, who had lost all faith in Bartlett's knowledge of the country. "We passed no railroad tracks."

"Just before you come to the village," retorted Bartlett, irritated as a badgered animal. "You have to cross them as you come up the main street."

"We crossed none," said the general, with the indifference of one who realizes that there is no more to hope for. The boat is sinking, let it sink. The last cent gone and the landlord coming for two months' rent. Let him come.

"No," said Billy gently, "we didn't, father."

"Why, we did, we must have," protested Bartlett. "I always come here on the railroad train. They have to flag it, but it stops. Why, I know there are tracks there."

The general did not attempt to argue. "We are lost," said he, and one knew that the unfortunate event was entirely due to the scorn of others for the blue book.

"No," said Henrietta kindly, "there were no tracks. I remember saying to Billy I was glad there was one town not spoiled by the garish contamination of the world. Didn't I, Billy?"

"Yes, she did," admitted Billy, looking pityingly at her father.

"If we didn't pass through Wayne, we are lost and the Higgins' home is probably miles from here and there is no use looking for it," said Bartlett, and smiled--grimly, the general thought; happily, the Watermelon thought. It would be rare luck to be lost thus early.

They were all gathered around the table, except the Watermelon and Alphonse. Alphonse still stood by the door, hat in hand. He was merely a paid hireling. His master's affairs were none of his. The Watermelon still sat on the dresser and swung his feet. The predicament was only one of the many he was more or less always involved in and not worth thinking about. Batchelor and the police did not worry him that night. It was too early.

"Why not eat something before we go?" he said. "We have been here about an hour now, and another hour won't make our crime any the worse."

"Yes," agreed Henrietta promptly, surprised at her own depravity. "Let's," and again she took out the plates and napkins.

"Suppose they come back," softly whispered Billy.

Instinctively they all glanced at the door, and Henrietta paused with her hands on the edge of the basket.

The Watermelon laughed. "You ain't worrying because you broke into another's house," said he. "What's fretting you is that you may be found out."

"It's awful," acknowledged Billy. "I feel funny in my stomach and have creeps up my back."

"So have I," said Henrietta, and nodded grimly.

"Do what you please," said Bartlett. "But don't get caught."

"They won't come," said the Watermelon. "They have been gone for quite a time and aren't coming back."

"Ah, my dear Holmes," said Henrietta, "explain your deductions."

"They've been gone long because there is so much dust on everything and the house smells so close. They won't be back to-night because none of the neighbors have been in to leave anything for them to eat and there aren't any chickens in the chicken-house. Alphonse would have stirred 'em up if they had been there."

"Suppose some one passes and sees the light," suggested the general, tempted to the breaking point by the dainty supper so near at hand and the thought of the terrible apology of a meal they would get at the dilapidated hotel they had passed in the village. And above all things, the general loved his meals.

"We are at the back of the house and it is almost twelve. Every one is in bed and those who aren't are drunk and wouldn't be believed anyway."

"It's five miles to the village," added Bartlett with no apparent relevance.

"Aw, be game," encouraged the Watermelon. "Be sports."

"Just being hungry is enough for me," declared Henrietta, taking the last of the edibles from the basket.

*CHAPTER XI*

*A NIGHT'S LODGING*

The general hesitated. It was not lawful, not right. They had broken into another man's house and should leave at once. But all his life he had lived by rules and regulations, followed life's blue book as persistently and as well as he did the auto blue book. Now he was lost, the blue book was gone and there was an indefinable pleasure in letting go the rules and regulations that had governed him so long. In the warm June night, with the youthful, foolish Billy, and the irresponsible Watermelon, the general's latent criminal tendency came uppermost, that tendency in all of us once in a while to do wrong for the sake of the adventure in it, for the excitement and fascination, rather than for any material gain. In the experience of being in another man's house unknown and uninvited by the owner, of listening for the rattle of a wagon turning in at the gate, for the crunch of a foot on the gravel without, there was an exhilaration he had not known for years. He felt that a bold lawlessness which he had never had and had always felt rather proudly was only kept under by the veneer of civilization, was rising in him and that he was growing young again. He had always believed that if the occasion arose, he could out-Raffle Raffles.

"It will not do any harm," he thought with the remains of his old conscience. "We will go directly after supper."

It was a jovial meal. The conversation waxed merrier and merrier. The general grew younger with every mouthful and Bartlett more and more genial. He forgot that he was kidnapping a famous young financier, and told all his most enjoyable stories with the skill of many repetitions. When they had finished, no one for a while made any motion to clear up the table preparatory to leaving. Billy, with her chin on her hand, thoughtfully gathered up the crumbs still on her plate and transferred them to her mouth. Henrietta leaned back in her chair, her hands clasped behind her head, gazing dreamily at the flickering lamp. Bartlett and the general smoked in contented silence and the Watermelon rolled a cigarette with his long, thin fingers, his old clay pipe discarded with his rags. Alphonse was already asleep. A snore from his corner drew their attention.

The Watermelon licked his cigarette paper and glanced at Billy. "He's got his nerve," said he, putting the cigarette in his mouth and reaching for a match.

"I don't think that any of us have been lacking in nerve to-night," said the general, with no little pride.

"You're dead game sports," admitted the Watermelon. "Let's stay all night."

"It's morning already," said Henrietta. "We have stayed all night."

"Let's sleep here," said the Watermelon. "We can leave early."

"Er--er--are there any beds?" asked the general.

"Father, father," cried Henrietta, "you are backsliding."

The general protested, immensely flattered.

"Father used to say if you didn't backslide once in a while, goodness wouldn't be goodness but a habit," said the Watermelon.

The general always looked back on that night and the week that followed with wonder, thankfulness and pride. When the Watermelon, waiting for no further consent, picked up the lamp and started to investigate the bedrooms, the general was the first to follow him.

They found two bedrooms on the ground floor, and though the beds only had mattresses and pillows on them, even the Watermelon did not suggest a search for sheets and pillow-cases. The girls took one room, the men the other. Alphonse was aroused enough to be dragged to the haircloth sofa in the kitchen, from which he kept falling during the course of the night with dull thuds that woke no one but himself.

The Watermelon was having the time of his young life. Abstract problems of right and wrong did not trouble him. He took each event as it came and never fretted about it when it was over or worried about the next to come. Last night in the open with the fat Mike and the languid James, all dirty, all tired, all tramps, he had slept as peacefully and had fallen asleep as quickly, as he did that night in a comfortable bed with an austere member of the New York Stock Exchange as bedfellow and a retired general of the United States army on the couch at the foot. The whole adventure was diverting, amusing, nothing more. He took each day as it came and let the morrow take care of itself. Batchelor would probably try to make trouble, but if Bartlett were as successful as he hoped to be, and kept on getting lost, there was little danger from that source. Bartlett, desiring secrecy as much as the Watermelon, had effectually silenced the enterprising reporter at the hotel.

It was early when Bartlett awoke. The birds were singing riotously in the vines over the porch and the sun streamed through the cracks in the shabby window shade. He yawned and stretched, glancing with amusement at the general, still raising melodious sounds of slumber from the couch at the foot of the bed. Then suddenly he became aware that the place at his side was empty, that the Watermelon was gone. He crawled stealthily out of bed and dressed, filled with misgivings.

Batchelor had consented so readily the day before to come with them that now, when he had had time to think it over, he might have regretted his decision and be already on the way to the railroad, somewhere. His had been the master mind to conceive the check and ruination of the cotton scheme, and surely he would see the folly in what he had done the day before, when lured on by the pretty, bewitching Billy. He would realize now in the clear light of day that he must return to the city or get word to his brokers somehow. He might even then be in a telegraph office, sending a despatch of far-reaching importance.

Bartlett dressed with feverish haste and hurried out to the side porch. The Watermelon was there, sitting in the sun, his feet hanging over the edge of the porch, talking carelessly with the immobile Alphonse. Both were smoking and both had apparently been up for some time. Had Batchelor been to the village and telegraphed already? He would have had time to go and return if he had used one of the cars.

The Watermelon looked up. "Hello," said he.

"Hello," said Bartlett. "Been up long?"

"Not so long," said the Watermelon.

"Are the cars all right?" asked Bartlett.

"I haven't been to see," returned the Watermelon, rolling another cigarette.

Bartlett drew a sigh of relief and started after Alphonse for the shed beside the barn.

The Watermelon had not had time to walk to the village and back, besides telegraphing. Bartlett paused and glanced over his shoulder.

"Aren't you coming?"

"No," said the Watermelon. "I ain't bugs about the gasolene buggies."

Bartlett walked on, shrewdly guessing that the languid youth was waiting for Billy. Her charms, it seemed, had not grown any less effective. He decided that he would not try to get in touch with his broker. He could trust him to take care of the city end of the business if Batchelor were to be eliminated until the following Sunday. Batchelor was an ordinary youth and if Billy's charms were not enough to hold him, finding himself an equal and on friendly footing with people in what his policeman father and washerwoman mother reverently called "society," would probably turn his otherwise level head completely. Bartlett admitted to himself, as he gazed abstractedly at the shining cars, that the young man had not appeared visibly impressed either by himself or the general. But Batchelor was clever and would hide his elation.

The Watermelon's slow drawl at last aroused him.

"Cut it," said the Watermelon. "The cops are coming."

One of New York's leading citizens, bank president and corporation director, felt a slow, cold, clammy chill creeping up his spinal column. His first instinctive desire, like that of the small boy caught robbing an apple orchard, was to hide. Last night was one of those unfortunate occurrences it were best to pass over in silence. He turned and glanced at the house. The place looked deserted in the morning sunshine. The blinds were drawn, the doors shut. The general and the girls apparently still slept, and no country variety of New York's "finest" with warrant and shotgun could be seen approaching. Alphonse looked up from the car and gazed a moment at the house with the scornful indifference for the law and its minions of the confirmed joy-rider.

"I do not see any one," said Bartlett with calm dignity.

"They are creeping up on us," said the Watermelon cheerfully. "Trust the rube to do the thing up in style. Three men came along. They stopped down by the gate and talked, pointing up here, then one ran on to the village to get help, I suppose, and the other two are waiting down there."

"I will go and explain that it was a mistake," said Bartlett.

"Now, don't do that," adjured the Watermelon. It was just possible that the police had already picked up his trail and he preferred the chance of escaping in a car to stealing away by himself, through the woods, a tramp again, leaving behind him Billy and a week of fun. "Alphonse can bring up the cars and we can slip away before the reinforcements come. See?"

"I will explain that it was a mistake--"

"Mistakes," said the Watermelon coldly, "aren't on the cards in school and the law. Come up to the house and see the others first, anyway."

"One can afford mistakes as well as any other luxury," said Bartlett. "Money is all the fellows want."

"Let's talk it over first with the others, anyway," urged the Watermelon, feeling that it might be that money was not all they wanted.

They found the general and the girls in the kitchen putting it in order.

"Certainly," said the general with the calmness of one immune from the law. "We will explain."

"What?" asked Henrietta, as she drew shut the basket lid and slipped in the catch.

"Father used to say that if what you've done makes a fight, explanations will only make another," said the Watermelon. While he had the time he realized that he should slip away, but there was a chance that the police, finding their youthful quarry in the society of a general and a reputable and wealthy citizen of New York, could be impressed with the belief that they had made a mistake, and the Watermelon was always ready to take chances. Still, there was no need of running needless risk, and if he could persuade them all to escape with him in the cars, he would do it.

Henrietta nodded. Billy was for an instant flight. "We might as well," she explained lucidly, eying her father questioningly.

"Not at all," said Bartlett. "Money is all they want."

"An explanation," said the general, "will be sufficient. We do not want any tampering with the law." He picked up his hat and started for the door as he would sally forth and demand the surrender of a beaten foe.

"But, father," Henrietta's clear voice made him pause, "what can we explain?" She pushed back her auto veil and gazed from one to the other in gentle deprecation. "How we got in? But they wouldn't want us to explain that. You see, they can surmise that."

The general came back to the table. A little firmness, tempered with a lucid explanation in words of one syllable had always been his method in dealing with the weaker sex. "My dear Henrietta, we can explain why we are here."

"Why are we?" asked Henrietta meekly.

"Why are we?" demanded the general. "Because we took it for the house of a very old and dear friend."

"But as soon as we entered, father, we knew our mistake."

"Henrietta," said the general, "I can not argue with you."

"No, father," agreed Henrietta. "But when we found out our mistake, why didn't we leave?"

"I can not argue with you, Henrietta," repeated the general.

"Money," said Bartlett, "is all they want. They always fine all motorists for breaking speed laws. It becomes a sort of habit with them."

"This ain't breaking the speed laws," warned the Watermelon. "This is house-breaking."

"Sir," demanded the general, "do you accuse me, me, of house-breaking?"

"The whole damn family," said the Watermelon bruskly. He wanted to slip away quietly, whether the men at the gate were waiting for him alone or for all of them, having a tramp's dislike for anything that smacked of a possibility of falling into the hands of the law. "This is some different from speed-breaking," he added gloomily.

"This is preposterous!" cried the general. "That I, _I_, should be arrested! Why, I refuse to be. No one has a right to arrest me."

"If you break into another person's house, father--" began Henrietta.

"But, Henrietta, I am not a house-breaker. I deny the charge."

"We all are," said Henrietta. "That is all I can see to it."

"Money--" began Bartlett again, the refrain of his life. He felt he could not be arrested and haled before a magistrate, even such an humble one as a country justice of the peace. His whole scheme would be ruined. Batchelor would probably want to return to the city as soon as he could bail himself out, and not care to have anything more to do with motor trips run on similar lines.

"No," snapped the general, "we will have no graft."

"Graft," sputtered Bartlett. "Who suggested graft? A wise manipulation of the financial end of a difficulty will more often save you than not. There is no graft in paying for a night's lodging."

"Under the present circumstances, paying for a night's lodging is graft," declared the general.

"It's graft, then, or prison," snapped Bartlett.

"Prison," said the general heroically.

"Prison is foolish," said Billy, "when one has a motor-car and can get away."

"Besides," said Bartlett, "graft is not dishonest for the man who gives the bribe."

"It ain't," agreed the Watermelon, "if the man has money enough to give publicly to some college or institution."

Henrietta drew on her gloves. "I think you are all cynics," said she. "Graft is dishonest."

"Why?" asked Bartlett, turning to her. "Why, Henrietta?"

"Because," said Henrietta firmly.

"The only dishonor is playing on another man's weakness, using that for your own ends. If I know a man has a price, am I dishonest to take advantage of the knowledge? No, certainly not. The dishonor is in him who has a price, whose dirty little soul cares so much for money that he lets his manhood go at so much in dollars and cents, like merchandise."

"Ah," cried Henrietta with quick sympathy for the tempted. "Poverty is so terrible and money such a temptation. It doesn't seem to be fighting fair to take advantage of it."

"Father used to say that it would take the constitution of an ostrich, the empty head of a fool and the nerves of a prize-fighter to stand poverty," said the Watermelon, thinking of those days when there were eight children and no money.

"I think," said Billy, as one propounding a wholly original suggestion, "that we should go at once."

"If we have done wrong," said the general, "we should suffer for it. We should not attempt to evade the consequences of our acts."

There was a heavy step on the porch without. The general turned pale, Bartlett reached for his pocket-book and Billy leaned weakly against the knobby end of the haircloth sofa. Only Henrietta and the Watermelon were quite calm, the latter with the calmness of desperation, the former, of despair.

*CHAPTER XII*

*THE KEY TO THE SITUATION*

The Watermelon accepted the inexorable with the tramp's sang-froid; Henrietta with a sweet dignity, though slightly flushed. The door had been shut before the conference began and the person on the porch had not come in sight of the windows. With a slow wink at Henrietta, the Watermelon strode to the door. Instinctively the general started to lay his hand on the young man's arm as he passed, to detain him a moment, but instead picked up his hat from the table and hoped that no one had seen that involuntary little gesture. The Watermelon threw open the door with a bit of a flourish and Alphonse, stolid, unsmiling, entered.

There was an involuntary sigh of relief from all, even the general.

"Well," asked the Watermelon, "what are the sleuths doing?"

"Where are the cars, Alphonse?" asked the general sternly, in the reaction of the suspense of the moment before.

"I left them at the back door," answered Alphonse, as one who understood perfectly the whole aspect of the case and realized that sometimes a quiet exit is more to be desired than great acclaim. "I thought you would not want them seen from the front."

"I have no objection to my car being seen by everybody," returned the general with a wave of his hand, which appeared to include the universe.

The back door was locked and the key gone, and the Watermelon had hurried to the door into the sheds and was struggling with the rusty lock. "This is the way," said he, "through the woodshed. That door's locked and there ain't a key; family probably left that way. I noticed the woodshed route this morning."

"We can shut this door on the side porch and lock it just as we found it," said Henrietta.

She shut the door and Alphonse as quietly turned the key. She lowered the window the Watermelon had opened and, finding that he had broken the lock in doing it, she slipped a dollar from her purse and left it on the ledge. It seemed to Henrietta to leave more, to pay for their night's lodging, would simply be adding insult to injury. One can not take unpardonable liberties with another's possessions and then pay for it in the gold of the land.

"Come," said she.

The Watermelon had already opened the door and was working on the lock of the one in the woodshed. Henrietta paused in the house door, the basket on her arm, and glanced back at the others. "Come on," said she.

"I will explain," began the general, with a firmness that was fast weakening.

"Father," said Henrietta, "you can not explain. Graft is dishonest. The only thing we can do is to run."

Billy grabbed up her gloves and obeyed with alacrity. Bartlett and the general followed in dignified majesty. Alphonse came last and shut each door as they passed through. With no undue haste, and yet with no loitering to admire a perfect summer morning, they climbed into the cars; Alphonse alone in the general's, the other five in Bartlett's, with Bartlett at the wheel.

"Shall we rush them?" suggested the Watermelon with happy anticipation.

Alphonse, like the voice of reason, calm, unemotional, blase, spoke: "There is a cow lane back of the barn. It is wide enough for the cars. It leads into the road farther on. I left the bars down."

"You're a man, Alphonse," said the Watermelon.

They glided without further comment through the barnyard into the rocky, tree-shaded cow lane. The general glanced behind. No one was in sight. The lane was narrow and rough, last spring's mud having hardened into humps and ridges from the passing of many feet. The cars ran slowly of a necessity, and while the engines throbbed, the noise was not loud, and the slight hill on which the house stood deadened the sound and concealed the cars from any one in front.

Henrietta leaned toward the Watermelon, who sat on the small seat just in front of her and just behind the general. "On such an occasion as this," she asked, "what did 'father' used to say?"

"Nothing," said the Watermelon. "There were two times when he never said anything, one was when he was asleep and the other was when he was escaping from the police."

"Oh," cried Billy, "he was a minister, why should he have had to escape from the police?"

"He left the ministry," explained the Watermelon.

"What did he say when he left it?" teased Henrietta.

"Good-by," said the Watermelon.

Then the cars turned into the road and two men stepped from the bushes on either side. They were tall, raw-boned country men, in flapping straw hats and blue jeans. Each carried a shotgun in the crook of his arm with a tender pleasure in the feel of it, each chewed a big piece of tobacco and each was apparently more than enjoying the situation. The Watermelon, leaning forward, with wary eyes, was pleased to see a look of surprise flit across their square-jawed, sun-tanned faces as they saw the second car slowly following the first, and four men instead of one, as the telegram had said "one man in a big red touring car," the make and engine number given.

For a moment the general could think of nothing to say. If he had been permitted to sally forth from the front door, he could have explained clearly, emphatically, with all his old-time belief that being himself no one could possibly doubt him or his good intentions. But now, caught thus, acknowledging his guilt by his surreptitious leave-taking, he did not know what to say, where to begin. Bartlett reached for his pocket-book.

"What's the make of your car?" demanded the taller of the two of Bartlett, laying his hand on the fender.

Surprised, Bartlett told, thankful that he had not been asked for his name.

"Engine number?" demanded the man.

Bartlett gave it.

"License number?"

"Great Scott!" snapped Bartlett. "What do you want next? My age? My number is on the back of my car. I have so many cars I have forgotten it. Go and look, or ask my man. Alphonse, what's the number on the back?"

"97411," droned Alphonse coldly.

"Be both these cars yours?" asked the man, puzzled and a bit disappointed.

"That car," said the general pompously, "is mine. Allow me." He drew his card-case from his pocket, and to the tall man's consternation and Bartlett's horror, presented him with his card. The two withdrew and consulted a moment. Clearly the family party before them was not the young man wanted in Wilton for stealing a motor-car and a suit of clothes, but for all that, what were they doing in an empty house?

"We can arrest 'em and get a fine anyway," said the taller of the two, and the other agreed.

The Watermelon leaned forward with languid interest, his hat on the back of his head. "How d'ye do?" he drawled. "What are you doing with the popguns?"

"Hunting," grinned the spokesman pleasantly.

"Any luck?" asked the Watermelon.

"Bet cher life!" said the man. "Got what we were after."

"Bear?" asked the Watermelon innocently.

"Autos," said the man.

"Sir," began the general. He felt a pressure on his shoulder so firm, that, irritated, he turned to remonstrate with Henrietta. One could not explain the situation with any degree of pride in the first place, still less so, if some one behind were apparently endeavoring to suppress one.

The Watermelon frowned. "We weren't breaking any speed limit, unless the snail is the standard you regulate your speed laws by." The men no longer believed that they had caught the thief, but if they insisted on taking the party before a magistrate, each would have to give his name. With the general present, fictitious names would only be so much waste of breath, and the Watermelon had no desire to give his assumed name to any one in the employ of the law.

"Naw," sneered the man, spitting with gusto. "There're other things to break besides speed laws."