Chapter VII: Part 7

But the sprites of mystery were still abroad at Hopefield. The room was unoccupied save for the trunks. Hezekiah had vanished. Instead of sitting there to await the coming of her aunt, she had silently departed, without leaving a trace. Miss Hollister glanced up at the trap-door in the ceiling, and so did I. It was closed, but I did not doubt that Hezekiah had crawled through it and taken herself to the roof. Miss Octavia would probably order me at once to the battlements; but worse was to come.

"Mr. Ames," she said, "will you kindly lift the lid of that largest trunk."

I had not thought of this, and I shuddered at the possibilities.

She indicated the trunk upon which Hezekiah had sat and nibbled her cracker not more than ten minutes before. Could it be possible that when I lifted the cover that golden head would be found beneath? My life has known no blacker moment than that in which I flung back the lid of that trunk. I averted my eyes in dread of the impending disclosure and held the candle close.

But the trunk was empty, incredibly empty! My courage rose again, and I glanced at Miss Octavia triumphantly. I even jerked out the trays to allay any lingering suspicion. Why had I ever doubted Hezekiah? Who was she, the golden-haired daughter of kings, to be caught in a trunk? She had slipped up the ladder while I talked to her aunt and was even now hiding on the roof; but it was not for me to make so treasonable a suggestion. Miss Octavia might press the matter further if she liked, but I would not help her to trap Hezekiah.

Miss Hollister did not, to my surprise and relief, suggest an inspection of the roof. She nodded her head gravely and passed out into the hall.

"Mr. Ames, if I implied a moment ago that I doubted your story of the dropping of that tan pump from a Beacon Street roof or window, I now tender you my sincerest apologies."

She put out her hand, smiling charmingly.

"Pray return to the occupations which were engaging you when I interrupted you. You have never stood higher in my regard than at this moment. To-morrow you may tell me all you please of the ghost and the mysteries of this house, and I dare say we shall find the bones of that British soldier somewhere beneath the foundations. As for that trifling bit of leather you hold in your hand, it's rather passe for Beacon Street. The next time you tell that story I suggest that you play your game of drop the slipper from a window in Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia. Still, as I always keep an umbrella in the check-room of the Parker House, I would not have you imagine that I look upon Boston as an unlikely scene for romance. The last time I was there a Mormon missionary pressed a tract upon me in the subway, and I can't deny that I found it immensely interesting."

XV

LOSS OF THE SILVER NOTE-BOOK

Hezekiah on the roof was safe for a time. Miss Octavia's gentle rejection of my Beacon Street anecdote and her intimation that Hezekiah had been an unbilled participant in the comedy of the ghost had been disquieting, and in my relief at her abandonment of the search I loitered on downstairs with my hostess. I wished to impress her with the idea that I was without urgent business. Hezekiah would, beyond doubt, amuse herself after her own fashion on the roof until I was ready to release her. As I had quietly locked the trunk-room door and carried the key in my pocket I was reasonably sure of this. Humility is best acquired through tribulation, and as Hezekiah sat among the chimney-crocks nursing one stockinged foot and waiting for me to turn up with her lost slipper, it would do her no harm to nibble the bitter fruit of repentance with another biscuit. I should find her much less sure of herself when I saw fit to seek her on the roof. It was a pretty comedy we were playing, but it was best that she should not too complacently take all the curtains. Hezekiah's naughtiness had been diverting up to a point now reached and passed, but the time had arrived for remonstrance, admonition, discipline. And it should be my grateful task to point out the error of her ways and urge her into safer avenues of conduct. Such were my reflections as I attended Miss Octavia in her descent.

The memoranda of my adventures at Hopefield Manor fall under two general headings. On the one hand was the ghost and the library chimney; on the other the extraordinary gathering of Cecilia's suitors. As I followed at Miss Octavia's side, she seemed to have dismissed the ghost and the fractious chimney from her mind; her humor changed completely. As in the morning when, unaccountably abandoning her habitual high-flown speech, she had asked me about Cecilia's silver note-book, she seemed troubled; and when we had reached the second floor she paused and lost herself in unwonted preoccupation.

"Let us sit here a moment," she said, indicating a long davenport in the broad hall. For the first time her manner betrayed weariness. She laid her hand quietly on my arm and looked at me fixedly. "Arnold," she said,--"you will let me call you Arnold, won't you?" she added plaintively, and never in my life had I been so touched by anything so sweet and gentle and kind,--"Arnold, if an old woman like me should do a very foolish thing in following her own whims and then find that she had probably committed herself to a course likely to cause unhappiness, what would you advise her to do about it?"

"Miss Hollister," I answered, "if you trusted Providence this morning to send you a corps of servants when yours had been most unfortunately scattered by ghosts or rumors of ghosts, why will you not continue to have confidence that your affairs will always be directed by agencies equally alert and beneficent?"

She flashed upon me that rare wonderful smile of hers; she looked me in the eyes quizzically with her head bent slightly to one side; but for once her usual readiness seemed to have forsaken her. Could it be possible that she was losing faith in her own play-world, and that the tuneful trumpets of adventure and romance which she had set vibrating on her own key jarred dully in her ears? It passed swiftly through my mind that it was incumbent on me to win her back to complete belief in the potency of the oracles that had called to her old age. She had dipped her paddle into bright waters and had splashed up all manner of gay imaginings, and what disasters awaited her now if she beached her argosy and found no gold at the end of the rainbow! It occurred to me, prosaic man and chimney-doctor that I was, that no one should be disappointed who has heard the dream-gods calling at twilight, or wakened to the chanting of the capstan-song, or heard the timbers creaking in the stout old caravel of romance as it wallows in the seas that wash the happy isles. I had not crawled through so many chimneys but that I still believed that dreams come true, not because they will but because they must! And in the case of Miss Octavia Hollister I felt a great responsibility; for what irremediable loss might not result to a world too little given these days to dreaming, if she, who at sixty had turned her heart trustfully to adventure, should find only sorrow and disappointment? The thing must not be! I was feeling the least bit elated over my success in solving the riddle of the ghost, and I knew that the hidden chambers and stair would delight her when I revealed them on the morrow; so I quite honestly sought to restore her to the joy of life. I felt that she was waiting for me to speak further, and I plunged ahead.

"Our meeting in the Asolando was the most interesting thing that ever happened to me, Miss Hollister. I was rapidly becoming hopelessly cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in to saucy doubts and fears as to the promise of life held out to us in the nursery, where, indeed, all education should begin and end. Your appearance at the Asolando that afternoon was well-timed to save me from death in a world that was rapidly losing for me all its illusion and witchery. But now that you have so readily won me back to the true faith, I beg of you do not yourself revert to the dreary workaday world from which you rescued me."

I had never in my life spoken more sincerely. I had never been so happy as since I knew her, and I was pleading for myself as well as for her--there where, from her own doorstep and in her own garden, one who listened attentively might hear the faint roar of trains bound toward the teeming city along iron highways. It was with relief that I saw my words had struck home. She touched my hand lightly; then she took it in both her own.

"You really believe that; you are not merely trying to please me?"

"I was never half so much in earnest! Please go on in the way you have begun. And have no fear that the charts will mislead you, or that the seas will grind your bark on hidden shoals. Shipwreck, you know, is one of the greatest joys of our adventures,--we have to be wrecked first before we find the island of the treasure-chests."

She sighed softly, but I felt that her spirits were rising.

"But those men down there? How shall I manage that?" she asked eagerly.

I snapped my fingers. We must get back into the air again. And it was remarkable how readily my long-untried wings bore me upward. The earth, after all, does not bind us so fast!

"I don't know the game; but I have found out a lot of things without being told, so tell me nothing! Remember that I have something quite remarkable, startling even, to show you to-morrow. I have even overcome, you know, the obstacle you placed in the way of my discoveries by sending in ahead of me this morning for the plans of the house."

I watched her narrowly, but she was in no wise discomfited.

"Well, I burned them the moment Hilda brought them back," she laughed. "I had faith in you, and I wanted you to manage it all for yourself. I rather guessed that you would go to Pepperton. That was when I still believed."

"But you must go on believing. Make-believing is the main cornerstone and the keystone of the arch of the happy life."

"You are sure you are not mocking a foolish old woman?"

"You are the wisest woman I ever knew!" I asserted, and my heart was in the words.

"I believe you have persuaded me; but Cecilia"--

She was again at the point of loosening her hold upon the cord that linked her shallop to Ariel's isle, but my own youth was resurgent in me.

I rose hastily, the better to break the current of her thought.

"Those men down there! They are in the hands of a higher fate than we control. I don't know the game"--

"But if"--she broke in.

"But if you gave away the secret, explained it to me, you would throw me back into my darkest chimney to hope no more. Leave it to me; trust me; lean upon me! I assure you that all will be well."

She bent her head and yielded herself to reverie for a moment. Then she sprang to her feet in that indescribably light, graceful way that erased at least fifty of her years from the reckoning, and was herself again.

"Arnold Ames," she said, laughing a little but gazing up at me with unmistakable confidence and liking in her eyes, "we will go through with this to the end. And whether that slipper really fell at your feet in Beacon Street or in the even less likely precincts of Rittenhouse Square, or under the windows of the Spanish Embassy in Washington, I believe that you are my good knight, and that you will see me safely through this singular adventure."

And I, Arnold Ames, but lately a student of chimneys, bent and kissed Miss Octavia's hand.

She led the way to the library, where I thought it well to appear for a moment, and I was heartily glad that I did so. It was joy enough for any man that he should have earned such glances of hatred and suspicion as the suitors bent upon me. There they were, some standing, some seated, about Cecilia. I bowed low from the door, feeling that to offer my hand to these gentlemen in their present temper would be too severe a strain upon their manners. As Miss Octavia appeared, several of them advanced courteously and engaged her in conversation. She found a seat and called the others to her, on the plea that she wished to ask them their opinion touching some matter,--I believe it was a late rumor that Andree, who had gone ballooning to discover the Hyperboreans, had been heard of somewhere.

Cecilia appeared distrait, and I wondered what new turn her affairs had taken. She rose as I crossed the room, and from her manner I judged that she welcomed this chance of addressing me.

"You have scorned the library to-night. Has there been trouble? Is Aunt Octavia alarmed about anything?"

I was sure that this inquiry covered some ulterior question. Hartley Wiggins, listening with a bored air to Miss Octavia's discussion of Andree's fate, glanced in our direction with manifest displeasure in our propinquity. Cecilia Hollister was a beautiful, charming woman of the world, but I felt her spell less to-night. It may be that the presence of Hezekiah's slipper in my inside coat-pocket, pressing rather insistently against my ribs, acted as a counter-irritant. I certainly could not imagine myself possessed of one of Cecilia's slippers! If I had tried my fictitious Beacon Street episode on Cecilia, she would undoubtedly have expressed her scorn of me. The hollisteritis germ, that had heretofore infected me only intermittently, was now exerting its full tonic power. In trying to hold Miss Octavia to her covenants with the lords of romance, I had strengthened my own confidence in their bold emprise. The gravity with which the suitors gave heed to Miss Octavia's ideas on arctic ballooning touched my humor. Cecilia had but to state her perplexity and I would interest myself promptly in her business. If I had been asked that night to enlist in the most hopeless causes I should have done so without a quibble, and died cheerfully under any barricade.

Our time was short; at any moment the suitors might cease covertly glaring at me, drift away from Miss Octavia, and interpose themselves between me and the girl on whom they had set their collective hearts.

"You are in difficulty, Miss Cecilia," I said; "please tell me in what way I may serve you."

"I don't know why I should appeal to you"--

"No reason is necessary. I have told you before that you need only to command me. We may be interrupted at any moment. Pray go on."

"I have lost an article of the greatest value to me. It has been taken from my room."

For a moment only I read distrust and suspicion in her eyes as it occurred to her that I had access to every part of the house; but my manner seemed to restore her confidence. And she could not have forgotten that her own father had met her secretly on the roof of a house that was denied him, and that I was perfectly cognizant of the fact.

"I am sure you can be of assistance," she said. "There's something behind this ghost-story; some one has been in and about the house; you believe that?"

"Yes. There has really been a sort of ghost, you know."

She shrugged her shoulders. Cecilia had no patience with ghosts, and we were losing time. My conversation with Cecilia was annoying Wiggins, as was plain from his nervousness. Wiggins's courtesy was unfailing, but there are points at which the restraints of civilization snap. Cecilia realized that time passed and that she had not stated her difficulty. She now lowered her voice and spoke with great earnestness.

"I went to my room for a moment, while Aunt Octavia was above, with you I suppose, just after the chimney gave another of its strange demonstrations. I remembered that I had left my little silver-bound book, that I usually carry with me, on my dressing-room table. It contains a memorandum of great importance to me. It positively cannot be duplicated. I am sure it was there when I came down to dinner. But it was not on my dressing-table or anywhere to be found."

"You may be mistaken as to where you left it. You would not be absolutely positive that you left it on the dressing-table?"

"There is not the slightest question about it. I had been looking at it just before dinner. I had sent you a note, you know, immediately after you came back, and hurried down to see you."

"Yes. I recall that. You were in the library when I came down. And I think I remember having seen the little trinket,--slightly smaller than a card-case, silver-backed and only a few leaves. You had it in your hand the other night when I came in after Mr. Hume had left."

She flushed slightly at this, but readily acquiesced in my description. Miss Octavia's inquiry as to whether I had seen the book came back to me; and no less clearly her withdrawal of her question almost the moment she had spoken it.

I felt the sudden impingement of Hezekiah's slipper upon my own conscience, if I may so state the matter. Hezekiah, playing ghost, had confessed to me that she had visited Cecilia's room. Hezekiah, amusing herself with the library chimney and frightening the servants by stealing into the forbidden house through the coal-hole, was a culprit to be scolded and forgiven; but what of Hezekiah mischievously filching an article of real value to her sister! I did not like this turn of affairs. I must get back to the roof, find Hezekiah, and compel her to return the silver book. Only by tactfully managing this could I serve well all the members of the house of Hollister. But first I must leave Cecilia with a tranquil mind.

"I thank you for confiding this matter to me, Miss Hollister. Please do not attach suspicion to any one until I have seen you again."

"But if you should be unable to restore"--

"I assure you that the book is not lost. It has been mislaid, that's all. I shall return it to you at breakfast. I give you my word."

"Do you really mean it?" she faltered. "Please keep this from Aunt Octavia! I can't tell you how important it is that she be kept in ignorance of my loss. The consequences, if she knew, might be very distressing."

I could not for the life of me see what great importance could attach to those few leaves of paper in their silver case, but if Miss Octavia and Hezekiah were interested in it as well as Cecilia, it must have a significance wholly unrelated to its intrinsic value. It is the way of professional detectives to suggest impossible theories merely to conceal their own plans and intentions, and as I had reached a point where my tongue was astonishingly glib in subterfuge and evasion, I suggested that it might perhaps have been one of the new servants, or indeed the Swedish maid.

"We will look into the matter, Miss Hollister. At breakfast I shall have something to report. Meanwhile silence is the word!"

Miss Octavia was carrying the invincible John Stewart Dick away to the billiard-room. He glared at me murderously as he trailed glumly after the lady of the manor. The others were crowding about Cecilia again, and I yielded to them willingly. As I sauntered toward the door Ormsby detained me a moment. His manner was arrogant and he hissed rather than spoke.

"I'm directed to command your presence at the Prescott Arms to-morrow at twelve o'clock. The business is important."

"I regret, my dear brother, that I shall be unable to sit with you at that hour in committee of the whole, and for two reasons. The first is that I am paired with Lord Arrowood. You refused to take him into your base compact, and allowed him to be thrown out of the inn for not paying his bill. The act was deficient in generosity and gallantry."

"Then I suppose you would think it a fine thing for such a pauper to marry a woman like that,--like that, I say?" and he jerked his head toward Cecilia.

"I consider a lord of Arrowood as good as the proprietor of a knitting-mill any day, if you press me for an opinion," I replied amiably.

"And this from a chimney-sweep?" he sneered.

"You flatter me, my dear sir. I've renounced soot and become a gentleman adventurer merely to prevent a type that long illumined popular fiction from becoming extinct. I advise you to fill the void existing in the heavy-villain class; believe me, your talents would carry you far. Study Dumas and forget the wool-market, and you will lead a happier life. My second reason for declining to meet you at the Arms at twelve to-morrow is merely that the hour is inconvenient. I assume that you mean to urge luncheon upon me, and I never eat before one. My doctor has warned me to avoid early luncheons if I would preserve my figure, of which you may well believe me justly proud."

"You're a coward, that's all there is to that. I dare you to come!"

"Well, as I think of it I 'd rather be dared than invited. If I find it quite convenient I shall drop in. But you need n't keep the waffles hot for me. Good evening."

It did not seem possible that I, the timid, uncombative and unathletic, had thus cavalierly addressed a dignified gentleman in a white waistcoat who was perfectly capable of knocking me down with a slap in the face. Valor, I aver, is only another of the offsprings of necessity.

XVI

JACK O' LANTERN

I hurried back to the trunk-room and had soon gained the roof. The moon was harassed by flying clouds that obscured it fitfully, and a keen wind swept the hills. I crept over the several levels of roof thinking that any moment I should come upon Hezekiah; I searched a second time, peering behind chimney-pots, and into dark angles; but to my disappointment and chagrin my young lady of the single slipper was nowhere in sight. I found, however, lying near the library chimney, a trunk-tray that required no explanation. With this Hezekiah had blocked the flue, and I smiled as I pictured her tip-toeing to reach the chimney-crock, and dropping the tray across the top. How gleefully she must have chuckled as she waited for the flue to fill and send the smoke ebbing back into the library, to the discomfiture of her aunt and sister and the suitors gathered about the hearth! The spirit of mischief never whispered into a prettier ear a trick better calculated to cause confusion.

I had thought Hezekiah secure when I locked the trunk-room door, but I had not counted upon the versatility and resourcefulness of that young person. I dropped to the second roof-level and inspected the down-spouts, but it was incredible that she had sought the earth by this means. I swung myself to a third level, and after much groping for my bearings, decided that an athletic girl of Hezekiah's venturesome disposition might, if she set no great store by her neck, clamber off the kitchen-roof by means of a tall maple whose branches now raspingly called attention to their slight contact with the house. It was here that the walls of Hopefield thrust themselves into the shoulder of a rough rocky knoll, and it was perfectly clear now that the chambers of the earlier house around which the mansion had been built were neatly enfolded by the walls on the east side.

As the moon cruised into a patch of clear sky something white fluttered from a maple limb, and I bent and pulled it free. I took counsel of a match behind the kitchen chimney, and found that it was a handkerchief that had been knotted to the tip of the bough. No one but Hezekiah would have thought of marking her trail in this fashion. I held it to my face, and that faint perfume that had been a mystifying accompaniment of the passing of the mansion ghost became nothing more unreal than the orris in Hezekiah's handkerchief-case. The wind whipped the bit of linen spitefully in my hands. I reasoned that if Hezekiah the inexplicable had not meant for me to know the manner of her exit she need not have left this plain hint behind; but the swaying maple bough did not tempt me. I hurried back across the roof to secure the trunk-tray, resolved to dispose of it, seek the open, and find the errant Hezekiah if she still lingered in the neighborhood.

I looked off across the windy landscape before descending, and as my eyes ranged the dark I caught the glimmer of a light, as of a lantern borne in the hand, in the meadow beyond the garden. It paused, and was swung back and forth by its unseen bearer. It shed a curious yellow light and not the white flame of the common lantern; and now it rose a trifle higher and slowly resolved itself into a weird fantastic face.

Three minutes later I was out of the house, using the backstairs to avoid the company in the library, and had crossed the garden and crawled through the hedge. As I rose to my feet a voice greeted me cheerfully,--

"Well done, Chimney-Man! You were a little slow hitting the trail, but you do pretty well, considering. How did you manage with Aunt Octavia about that slipper? I had a narrow escape in the second-floor hall, when I came out of Cecilia's room. I must have lowered a record getting upstairs. And one shoe is n't a bit comfortable. Allow me to relieve you!"

"Here's your slipper. You ought to be ashamed of yourself."

"For losing my slipper? I thought Cinderella had made that respectable."

She placed her hand on my shoulder, lifted her foot, and drew the pump on with a single tug.

"Well, what did Aunt Octavia say?"

"Oh, she had thoughts too dark to express. You probably heard what we said. It was she who found the slipper!"

Hezekiah laughed. The wind caught up that laugh and whisked it away jealously.

"She found it and carried it to you, Chimney-Man, and I skipped just as you began that beautiful story about finding it in Beacon Street. Hurry and tell me how you got me out of it."

"How did you know I would try to explain it? You did a perfectly foolhardy thing in roaming the house that way, scaring Lord Arrowood nearly to death, to say nothing of me. Why should I help you?"

"Oh, you're a man and I was just a little girl who had lost her slipper," she replied. "I was sure you would fix it up."

"Well, I like your nerve, Hezekiah! I had to lie horribly to explain the slipper, and Miss Octavia did n't swallow more than half my yarn."

"Oh, well, if it was a good story, Aunt Octavia would n't mind. She'd have minded, though, if you had n't tried to get me out of it. That's the way with Aunt Octavia. I hope you made a romantic tale of it."

"I can't say that it would place me among the great masters of fiction, Hezekiah, but as lies go I think it had merit. And I 'll improve if I stay here much longer."

"Oh, you'll stay all right. Aunt Octavia has no intention of letting you go. When she left the Asolando that afternoon she met you, she had her plans all made for kidnapping you."

"She did n't tell you so, did she?"

"No; because I have n't seen her and I'm not supposed to see her, you know, until Cecilia is all fixed."

"Married?"

"Um," replied Hezekiah.

She drew from behind a boulder by which we stood a pumpkin of portable size, which I surmised had been carved into the most hideous of jack o' lanterns by the shrewd hand of Hezekiah. I took it from her with the excuse of relieving her, but really to turn the light of the fearsome thing more directly upon her. The wind blew her hair about her face; hers was an elfish face to-night. With a pleasant tingling I met her eyes. The light of a jack o' lantern is not of the earth earthy. Even when you know perfectly well that it's only a candle stuck in a pumpkin, you are not fully satisfied of its mundane character. In its glow one becomes a conspirator, ready for treason, stratagems and spoils. More concretely, in these moments a small archipelago of freckles revealed itself about Hezekiah's nose and caused my heart to palpitate strangely. Her sun-browned cheek was perilously near. I hoped that she would bend forever over the lantern, so that I might not lose the tiny shadows of her lashes, or, again, the laughter of her brown eyes as she glanced up to ask my judgment as to the security of the candle. She viewed her handiwork with feigned solicitude, the tip of her tongue showing between her lips. Then the mirth in her bubbled out, and she drew away and clapped her hands together like a child.

"Come!" she cried. "If you are good and won't begin preaching about my sins, I'll show you the funniest thing you ever saw in your life."

In my joy of seeing her I was neglecting Cecilia's commission. Very likely Hezekiah had forgotten all about her theft; hers, I reasoned, was a nature that delighted in the nearest pleasure. I would follow her jack o' lantern round the world for the chance of seeing the fun brighten in her brown eyes, but I had made a promise to Cecilia and I meant to fulfill it.

She led me now across the meadow, over a stone wall, up a steep slope, and by devious ways through a strip of woodland. I bore the jack o' lantern,--she had bidden me do it, with some notion, I did not question, of making me _particeps criminis_ in whatever mischief was afoot. Dignified conduct in a man of twenty-eight, in his best evening clothes, carrying a jack o' lantern over stone walls, under clumps of briar, and through woods whose boughs clawed the night wildly! The moon lost and found under the flying scud was in keeping with the general irresponsibility of a world ruled by Hezekiah.

She swung along ahead of me with the greatest ease and certainty. Occasionally she flung some word back at me or whistled a few bars of a tune, and when I slipped and nearly fell on a smooth slope she laughed mockingly and bade me not lose the pumpkin. Once, when a boy, I stole a watermelon and bore it a mile to the rendezvous of my pirate band camped at a riverside; but carrying a pumpkin, even a hollow one, is attended with manifold discomforts. It would help, I reflected, to know just what I was lugging it for, but Hezekiah vouchsafed nothing. When I threatened to drop the grinning gargoyle she laughed and told me to trot along and not be silly; and a moment later she stopped and demanded that I repeat fully the story I had told her aunt of the finding of the slipper.

"You are better than I thought you were, Chimney-Man!" she declared, when I had concluded and added her aunt's comment. "You may be sure that tickled Aunt Octavia. You can lie almost as well as an architect. Aunt Octavia says architects are better liars than dress-makers."

"It was my weakness for the truth that caused me to abandon architecture. For heaven's sake, what are you up to?"

I had kept little account of the direction of our flight, and I was surprised that we had now reached the stile over which I had watched the passing of the suitors on the afternoon of my meeting with Hezekiah in the orchard.

"This is the appointed place," she remarked, taking the pumpkin from me and dropping down on the far side of the stile.

"Hezekiah, I've trotted across most of Westchester County after you, and my arm is paralyzed from carrying that pumpkin. I must know what you're up to right here, or I'll go home. Besides, there's a mist falling and you'll be soaked. What do you suppose your father thinks of your absence at this time of night?"

"Oh, he'll never forgive me for not letting him in on this. This is the grandest thing I ever thought of. Sit on this step and gently incline your ear toward the house. It's about time those gentlemen were leaving Cecilia, and they'll be galloping for their inn in a minute, and then"--

Hezekiah whistled the rest of it.

While we waited, she bade me reset the candle and snuff the wick, which I did of necessity with my fingers. Sitting on a stile with a pretty girl is an experience that has been commended by the balladists, but surely this felicity loses nothing where the night is fine. When you get used to sitting in a drizzle in your dress-suit, while your shirt-bosom assumes the consistency of a gum shoe and your collar glues itself odiously to your neck, I dare say the ordeal may be borne cheerfully, but my expressions of discomfort seemed only to amuse Hezekiah. While we waited for I knew not what, I tried once or twice to revert to the silver note-book, but without success. Hezekiah was a mistress of the art of evasion with her tongue as well as her feet!

"Wait till the evening performance is over and I'll talk about that. 'Sh! Quiet! Crawl over there out of the way, and when I say run, beat it for the road."

These last phrases were uttered in a whisper, her face close to my ear. She gave me a little push, and I withdrew a few yards and waited. The ground, I may say, was wet, and the drizzle had become a monotonous autumn rain.

The light of the lantern fell warmly upon Hezekiah's face as she held its illumined countenance toward her, crouching on the stile-steps. I heard now what her keener ear had caught earlier--the tramp of feet along the path. The suitors were returning to the inn, and the voices of one or two of them reached me. One--I thought it was Ormsby--was execrating the weather. They were stepping along briskly, and my remembrance of their retreat over this same stile through the amber evening dusk was so vivid that I knew just how they would appear if a light suddenly fell upon the path.

The nature of Hezekiah's undertaking suddenly dawned upon me. No one but Hezekiah could ever have devised anything so preposterous, so utterly lawless; but in spite of myself I waited in breathless eagerness for the outcome. I could not have interfered now, if I had wished to do so, without betraying her and involving myself in a predicament that could not redound to my credit.

Nearer and nearer came the patter of feet, and I heard, for I could not see, the scraping of Hezekiah's slipper,--a wet little shoe by now!--as she crept higher on our side of the stile. The first suitor groped blindly for the steps, slipped on the wet plank, growled, and rose to try again. That growl marked for me the leader of the van. Hartley Wiggins, beyond a doubt, and in no good humor, I guessed! The others, I judged, had trodden upon one another's heels at the moment Wiggins stumbled. Thus let us imagine their approach--six gentlemen in top hats headed for a stile on a chilly night of rain.

It was at this strategic moment that Hezekiah pushed into the middle of the stile-platform, its grinning face turned toward the advancing suitors, the jack o' lantern her hand had fashioned.

I marked its position by its faint glow an instant, but an instant only. The world reeled for a moment before the sharp cry of a man in fear. It cut the dark like a lash, and close upon it the second man yelled, in a different key, but no less in accents of terror. The first arrival had flung himself back, and so close upon him pressed the others and so unexpected was the halt, that the nine men seemed to have flung themselves together and to be struggling to escape from the hideous thing that had interposed itself in their path.

All was over in a moment. In the midst of the panic the lantern winked out, and instantly Hezekiah was beside me.

"Skip!" she commanded in a whisper; and catching my hand she led me off at a brisk run. When we had gone a dozen rods she paused. We heard voices from the stile, where the gentlemen were still engaged in disentangling themselves; and then the planks boomed to their steps as they crossed. They talked loudly among themselves discussing the cause of their discomfiture. The lantern, I may add, had been knocked off the stile by the thoughtful Hezekiah when she blew out the light.

A moment more and all sounds of the suitors had died away. I stood alone with Hezekiah in the midst of a meadow. She was breathing hard. Suddenly she threw up her head, struck her hands together, and stamped her foot upon the wet sod. I had waited for an outburst of laughter now that we were safely out of the way, but I had reasoned without my Hezekiah. Her mood was not the mood of mirth.

"Well, Hezekiah," I said when I had got my wind, "you pulled off your joke, but you don't seem to be enjoying it. What's the matter?"

"Oh, that Hartley Wiggins! I might have known it!"

"Known what?" I asked, pricking up my ears.

"That he would be afraid of a pumpkin with a candle inside of it. Did you hear that yell?"

"Anybody would have yelled," I suggested. "I think I should have dropped dead if you'd tried it on me."

"No, you would n't," she asserted with unexpected flattery.

"Don't be deceived, Hezekiah; I should have been scared to death if that thing had popped up in front of me."

"I don't believe it. I gave you a worse test than that. When I switched off the lights and swung a feather duster down the stair-well by a string and tickled your face you did n't make a noise like a circus calliope scaring horses in Main Street, Podunk. But that Wiggins man!"

"He's a friend of mine and as brave as a lion. Out in Dakota the sheriff used to get him to go in and quiet things when the boys were shooting up the town."

"Maybe; but he shied at a pumpkin and can be no true knight of mine. Cecilia may have him. I always suspected that he was n't the real thing. Why, he's even afraid of Aunt Octavia!"

"Well, I rather think _we 'd_ better be!"

I wanted to laugh, but I did not dare. I was not prepared for the humor in which the panic of the suitors had left her. I did not quite make out--and I am uncertain to this day--whether she had really wished to test the courage of her sister's lovers or whether she had yielded to a mischievous impulse in carrying the jack o' lantern to the stile and thrusting it before those serious-minded gentlemen as they returned from Hopefield. In any event Hartley Wiggins was out of it so far as she, Hezekiah, was concerned. She trudged doggedly across the field until we came presently to the highway.

"My wheel's in the weeds somewhere; please pull it out for me. I'm going home."

"But not alone; I can't let you do that, Hezekiah."

"Oh, cheer up!" she laughed, aroused by my lugubrious tone. "And here's something you asked me for. Don't drop it. It's Cecilia's memorandum-book. Give it back to her, and be sure no one sees it, and you need n't look into it yourself. And we've got to have a talk about it and Cecilia. Let me see. There's an iron bridge across an arm of that little lake over there, and just beyond it a big fallen tree. To-morrow at nine o'clock I'll be there. I've got to tell you something, Chimney-Man, without really telling you. You'll be there, won't you?"

"I'll be there if I'm alive, Hezekiah."

I had found the wheel and lighted the lamp. She scouted my suggestion that I find a horse and drive her home. The lighting of the lamp required time owing to the wind and rain; but when its thin ribbon of light fell clearly upon the road, she seized the handle-bars and was ready to mount without ado.

She gave me her hand,--it was a cold, wet little hand, but there was a good friendly grip in it. This was the first time I had touched Hezekiah's hand, and I mention it because as I write I feel again the pressure of her slim cold fingers.

"Sorry you spoiled your clothes, but it was in a good cause. And you 're a nice boy, Chimney-Man!"

She shot away into the darkness, and the lamp's glow on the road vanished in an instant; but before I lost her quite, her cheery whistle blew back to me reassuringly.

XVII

SEVEN GOLD REEDS

I woke the next morning to the banging of Miss Octavia's fowling-piece. In spite of the crowding incidents of the day and night I had slept soundly, and save for a stiffness of the legs I was none the worse for my wetting. The service of the house was perfect, and in response to my ring a man appeared who declared himself competent to knock my dress clothes into shape again.

I should hardly have believed that so much history had been made in a night, if it had not been for certain indubitable evidence: Cecilia's silver note-book; Hezekiah's handkerchief, which I had forgotten to return to her; and a patch of tallow grease from the jack o' lantern that had attached itself firmly to my coat-cuff.

Cecilia met me at the foot of the stairs, looking rather worn, I thought. We were safe from interruption a moment longer, as her aunt's gun was still booming, and I followed her to the library.

"Please don't tell me you have failed," she cried tearfully. "That little book means so much, so very much to us all!"

"Here it is, Miss Hollister," I said, placing it in her hand without parley. "I beg to assure you that I return it just as you saw it last. Please satisfy yourself that it has not been tampered with in any way. I have not opened it; and it has not left my hand since I recovered it."

She had almost snatched it from me, and she turned slightly away and ran hurriedly over the leaves.

In her relief she laughed happily; and with one of her charming, graceful gestures she gave me her hand.

"I thank you, Mr. Ames; thank you! thank you! You have rendered me the greatest service. And I hope you were able to do so without serious inconvenience to yourself."

"On the other hand it was the smallest matter, and instead of being a trouble I found the greatest pleasure in recovering it."

I stood with my hands thrust carelessly into my trousers pockets, rocking slightly upon my heels to convey a sense of the unimportance of my service. It was a manner I had cultivated to meet the surprise and gratitude of my clients when I had brought a seemingly incurable flue into a state of subjection. I think I may have appeared a little bored, as though I had accomplished a feat that was rather unworthy of my powers. A doctor who prescribes the wrong pill and finds to his amazement that it cures the patient, might improve upon that manner, but not greatly.

"You naturally wonder, Miss Hollister, how I found this trinket so readily. And in order that you may not suspect perfectly innocent persons, I will tell you exactly how I came by it. It was your belief that you had left it on your dressing-table. But as a memorandum-book of any character pertains to a writing-desk rather than to a dressing-table, my interest centred at once upon such writing-table as you doubtless have in your room."

"There is a writing-desk, in the corner by the window, but"--

"Ah, you are about to repeat your belief that you left the book on the dressing-table and that it could not have moved to the desk. May I ask whether you did not, just before you came down to dinner, scribble me a line asking for an interview?"

"Why, yes; I remember that perfectly."

"You wrote in some haste, as indicated by the handwriting in your message. It is possible that you wrote and destroyed one note, or perhaps two, before you had expressed yourself exactly to your liking. We are all of us, with any sort of feeling for style, prone to just such rejections."

"It is possible that I did," she replied, coloring slightly. "I was extremely anxious to see you."

"Very well, then; is it not possible that in throwing the rejected correspondence cards into the waste-paper basket that stands beside your desk,--there is such a basket, is there not?"

"Yes," she replied breathlessly.

"Is it not possible, then, that that little booklet, hardly heavier than paper itself, may have been brushed off without your seeing it?"

"It is possible; I must admit that it is possible; but"--

"It is on that 'but' that any theory implicating another hand must break. What I have indicated is exactly what must have happened. To the nice care that characterizes the house-keeping of this establishment we must now turn. I find that when I go to my own room after dinner it is always in perfect order,--pens restored to the rack on my writing-table, brushes laid straight on the dressing-table, and so on. The well-trained maid who cares for your room, seeing scraps of paper in the basket by your desk, naturally carried it off. When I accepted your commission last night I went directly to the cellar, sought the bin into which waste paper is thrown, and found among old envelopes and other litter this small trinket, which but for my promptness might have been lost forever."

"It does n't seem possible," she faltered.

"Oh," I laughed easily, "possible or impossible, you could not on the witness-stand swear that the book had not dropped into the waste-paper basket precisely as I have described."

"No, I suppose I couldn't," she answered slowly.

My powers of mendacity were improving; but her relief at holding the book again in her hand was so great that she would probably have believed anything.

"You see," she said, clasping the book tight, "this was given me for a particular purpose and it contains a memorandum of greatest importance. And I was in a panic when I found that it was gone, for my recollection of certain items I had recorded here was confused, and there was no possible way of setting myself straight. Now all is clear again. I feel that I make poor acknowledgment of your service; but if, at any time"--

"Pray think no more of it," I replied; and at this moment Miss Hollister appeared and called us to breakfast.

"If it is perfectly agreeable to you, Arnold, I will hear the story of the finding of the ghost at four o'clock, or just before tea. I have sent a telegram to Mr. Pepperton asking him to be present. He 's at his country home in Redding and can very easily motor down. As no motors are allowed on my premises he shall be met at the gate with a trap."

"You have sent for Pepperton!" I exclaimed.

"That is exactly what I have done, and as he knows that I never accept apologies under any circumstances, he will not disappoint me. In addition to reprimanding him for not telling me of the secret passage in this house, I have another matter that concerns you, Arnold, which I wish to lay before him. The new cook that Providence sent to my kitchen yesterday is the best we have had, Cecilia, and I beg that you both indulge yourselves in a second helping of country scrambled eggs."

Miss Octavia made no further allusion to the incidents of the night, but went on turning over her mail. I have neglected to say that her library contained a most remarkable array of books in praise of man's fortitude and daring. I have learned later that these had been assembled for her by a distinguished scholar, and many of them were rare editions. A "Karlamagnus Saga" elbowed Malory and the "Reali di Francia;" and Roland's horn challenged in all languages. She greatly admired and had often visited the Chateau de Luynes, and had a portfolio filled with water-color and pen-and-ink drawings of it. Such books as Viollet-le-Duc's "Dictionnaire du Mobilier Francais" I constantly found lying spread open on the library table. She read German and French readily, and declared her purpose to attack old French that she might pursue certain obscure _chansons de geste_ which, an Oxford professor had told her, were not susceptible of adequate translation. Why should one read the news of the day when the news of all time was available! Magazines and reviews she tolerated, but no newspaper was as good as Froissart. She therefore read newspapers only through a clipping bureau, which sent her items bearing upon her own peculiar interests. By some error the story of a heavy embezzlement in a city bank had that day crept in among a number of cuttings relating to a ship that had been found somewhere off the Chilean coast with all sails set and everything in perfect order, but with not a soul on board. She expressed her bitterest contempt for men in responsible positions who betrayed their trusts: highway robbery she thought a much nobler crime, as the robber dignified his act by exposing himself to personal danger.

"In our day, Arnold," she said, placing her knife and fork carefully on her plate, "in our day the ten commandments have lost their moral significance and retain, I fear, only a very slight literary interest."

She reminded Cecilia of an appointment to ride that morning; in the early afternoon she was to install a new kennel-master; and otherwise there was a full day ahead of her. It was a cheerful breakfast table. A letter from my assistant confirming his telegraphed resignation did not disturb me; Miss Octavia showed no further signs of abandoning her quest of the golden coasts of youth, and Cecilia, having recovered her notebook, faced the new day cheerfully.

A little later I met Miss Hollister in the hall dressed for her ride.

"Arnold, you may ride whenever you like. I may have forgotten to mention it. What have you on hand this morning?"

"An appointment with a lady," I replied.

"If you are about to meet the owner of that Beacon Street slipper I wish you good luck."

She was drawing on her gauntlets, and turned away to hide a smile, I thought; then she tapped me lightly with her riding-crop.

"Cecilia's silver note-book was missing last night. She told me of her loss with tears. She has it again this morning. Did you restore it?"

"It was my good fortune to do so."

"Then allow me to add my thanks to hers. You are an unusually practical person, Arnold Ames, as well as the possessor of an imagination that pleases me. You are becoming more and more essential to me. Cecilia approaches, and I cannot say more at this time."