"So much—in Poketown?" ejaculated the minister, suddenly brought out of his reverie.

"Yes, sir."

"But I thought Poketown was a particularly satisfactory place. There really is very little to do here. We have a very clean political government, remarkably so. Of course, that fact would not so much interest you, Janice. But the life of the church is very spiritual—very. We have no saloons; we seldom have an arrest——"

"Oh, I never thought of those things," admitted Janice. "There isn't really anything for young people to do in the Poketown Church, I know. But outside——"

"And what can be done outside?" asked the minister, and perhaps he winced a little at the confidence in Janice's voice when she spoke of the church system which kept the young people at a distance.

"Why, you know, there are the boys. Boys like Marty—my cousin. He goes to school now, it's true; but he's down town just as much as ever at night. And there's no good place for the boys to go—to congregate, I mean."

"Humph! I thought once of opening the church basement to them," murmured Mr. Middler. "But—but there was opposition. Some thought the boys might take advantage of our good nature and be ill-behaved."

"So they continue to hang around the hotel sheds and the stores," pursued Janice, thoughtfully, without meaning to be critical. "Boys will get together in a club, or gang. Daddy used to say they were naturally gregarious, like some birds."

"Yes," said the minister, slowly.

"They ought to have a nice, warm, well-lighted room where they could go, and play games, and read,—with a circulating library attached. Of course, a gymnasium would be too much to even dream of, at first! Why! wouldn't that be fine? And isn't it practical? Do say it is!"

"I do not know whether it is practicable or not, Janice," said the minister, slowly, yet smiling at her. "But the thought is inspired. You shall have all the help I can give you. It ought to be in the church——"

"No. That would scare the boys away," interposed Janice, with finality.

"Why, my dear? You speak as though the church was a bogey!"

"Well—but—dear Mr. Middler! Just ask the boys themselves. How many of them love to go to church—even to Sunday School? I mean the boys that hang about the village stores at night."

"It is so—it is so," he admitted, with a sigh.

From this sprang the idea of the Poketown Free Library. It was of slow growth, and there is much more to be said about it; but Janice found her personal troubles much easier to bear when she began trying to interest the people of Poketown in the reading-room idea.

And didn't Mr. Middler bear something of his own away from that visit to The Overlook—something that glowed in his heart? He preached quite a different kind of a sermon that next Sunday, and the text was one of the most helpful and living in all the New Testament.

Some of the older members of his congregation shook their heads over it. It was not "strong meat," they said; there was nothing to argue about! But a dozen troubled, needy members who heard the sermon, felt new hope in their hearts, and they got through the following week—trials and all!—much easier than usual.



CHAPTER XVI

"SHOWING" THE ELDER

No millionaire library-giver had found Poketown on the map. Or else, the hard-headed and tight-fisted voters of that Green Mountain community were too sharp to allow anybody to foist upon them a granite mausoleum, the upkeep of which would mainly advertise the name of the donor.

The Union Sunday School had a library; but its list of volumes was open to the same objections as are raised to many other institutions of its kind. Nor was a circulating library so much needed in Polktown as a reading and recreation room for the youth of the village.

Aside from her brief talk with Mr. Middler, Janice Day advised with no adult at first as to how the establishment of the needed institution should be brought about.

The girl had studied Marty, if she had had little opportunity of becoming acquainted with other specimens of the genus boy. She knew they were as bridle-shy as wild colts.

The idea of the club-room for reading and games must seem to come from the boys themselves. It must appear that they accepted adult aid perforce, but with the distinct understanding that the room was theirs and that there was not to be too much oversight or control by the supporting members of the institution.

The scheme was not at all original with Janice. The nucleus of many a successful free library and village club has been a similar idea.

"Marty, why don't you and your chums have a place of your own where you can read and play checkers these cold nights? I hear Josiah Pringle has chased you out of his shop again."

"Ya-as—mean old hunks!"

"But didn't somebody spoil a whole nest of whips for him by pouring liquid glue over the snappers?"

"Well! that was only one feller. An' Pringle put us all out," complained the boy, but grinning, too.

"You wouldn't have let that boy do such a thing in your own club-room—now, would you?"

"Huh! how'd we ever git a club-room, Janice? We had Poley Haskin's father's barn onc't; but when we tried to heat it with a three-legged cook-stove, Poley's old man put us out in a hurry."

"Oh, I mean a real nice place," said the wily Janice. "Not a place to smoke those nasty cigarettes in, and carry on; but a real reading-room, with books, and papers, and games, and all that."

"Oh, that would be fine! But where'd we get that kind of a place in Poketown?" queried Marty.

That was the start of it.

There was an empty store on High Street next to the drug store. It was a big room which could be easily heated by a pot stove and a few lengths of stovepipe. It was owned by the drug-store man, and had been empty a long time. He asked six dollars a month rent for it.

It was just about this time that Janice learned she possessed powers of persuasive eloquence. The druggist was the first person she "tackled" in her campaign.

"It's a secret, Mr. Massey," she told him; "but some of the boys want a reading-room, and some of the rest of us are anxious to help them get it. Only it mustn't be talked of at first, or it will be all spoiled. You know how 'fraid boys are that there is going to be a trap set for them."

"Ain't that so?" chuckled the druggist.

"And we want your empty room next door."

"Wa-al—I dunno!" returned the man, finding the matter suddenly serious, when it was brought so close home to him.

"Of course, we expect to pay for it. Only we'd like to have you cut the rent in two for the first three months," said Janice, quickly.

"Say! that might be all right," the druggist observed, more briskly. "But I don't know about all these harum-scarums collecting around this corner. I have been glad heretofore that they have hung around Pringle's, or Joe Henderson's, or the hotel, instead of up here. They've been up to all sorts of mischief."

"If they don't behave reasonably they'll lose the reading-room. Of course that will be understood," said Janice.

"You can't trust some of 'em," growled the druggist. "Never!"

"We'll make those who want the reading-room make the mischievous ones behave," laughed Janice.

"Well," agreed the druggist, "we'll try it. Three dollars a month for three months; then six dollars. I can afford no more."

"So much for so much!" whispered Janice, when she came away from the store. "At least, it's a beginning."

But it was a very small beginning, as she soon began to realize. She had no money to give toward the project herself, and it was very hard to beg from some people, even for a good cause.

There was needed at least one long table and two small ones, as well as some sort of a desk for whoever had charge of the room; and shelves for the books, and lamps, and a stove, and chairs, beside curtains at the windows. These simple furnishings would do to begin with. But how to get any, of all, of these was the problem.

Janice went to several people able to help in the project, before she said anything more to Marty. Some of these people encouraged her; some shook their heads pessimistically over the idea.

She wished Elder Concannon to agree to pay the rent of the room for the first three months. It would be but nine dollars, and the old gentleman could easily do it. Since closing his pastorate of the Union Church, years before, Mr. Concannon had become (for Poketown) a rich man. He had invested a small legacy received about that time in abandoned marble quarries and sugar-maple orchards. Both quarries and orchards had taken on a new lease of life, and had enriched the shrewd old minister.

But Elder Concannon let go of a dollar no more easily now than when he had been dependent upon a four-hundred-dollar salary and a donation party twice a year.

It was not altogether parsimony that made the old gentleman "hem and haw" over Janice Day's proposal. Naturally, an innovation of any kind would have made him shy, but especially one calculated to yield any pleasure to the boys of Poketown.

"I don't dispute but you may mean all right, Miss Day," he said, shaking his bristling head at her. "But there's no good in those young scamps—no good at all. You would waste your time trying to benefit them. They would turn your reading-room into a bear garden."

"You do not know that, sir," said Janice, boldly. "Let us try them."

"You are very young, Miss Day," said the Elder, stiffly. "You should yield more easily to the opinions of your elders."

"Why?" demanded the girl, quickly, but smiling. "We young ones have got to learn through our own experiences, haven't we? When you were young, sir, you had to learn at first hand—isn't that so? You would not accept the opinions of the older men as infallible. Now, did you, sir?"

The Elder was a bit staggered; but he was honest.

"Ahem!" he said. "For that very reason I desire to have you accept my advice, young lady. It will save you much trouble and heartache. These boys need a stronger hand than yours——"

"Oh, my goodness!" gasped Janice. "I wouldn't undertake to have anything to do with governing them—no, indeed! I thought of speaking to Mr. Haley—if I could interest him in the project—and get him to keep an eye on the reading-room at night. But the boys will have to understand that they can only have the benefits of the place as long as they are on their good behavior."

"Ahem!" coughed the Elder again. "Mr. Haley is a very bright young man—an especially good Latin scholar. But I fancy he finds the boys quite enough to handle during the daytime, without having the care of them at night. And—to be frank—I do not approve of the idea at all."

"Then—then you positively will not help us?" asked Janice, disappointedly.

"You have not proved your case—to my mind—Miss Day," said the old gentleman, sternly. "It is not a feasible plan that you suggest. The young rascals would make the place a regular nuisance. They would be worse than they already are—and that is saying a good deal."

"I am sorry you think that, sir," returned Janice, quietly. "I think better of them than you do. I believe the boys will appreciate such a place and—if I can find enough people to help—I hope to see the reading-room established."

"I disapprove, Miss—I disapprove!" declared Elder Concannon, almost angrily, for he was not used to being crossed, especially in any semi-public matter like this. "You will find, too, that my opinion is the right one. Good-day, Miss. I am sorry to find one so young impervious to the advice of her elders."

"I'll just show him! That's what I'll do—I'll show him!" was the determination of the girl from Greensboro. "And I don't believe Poketown boys are much worse than any other boys—if they only have half a chance."

Fortunately all those to whom Janice went in her secret canvass were not like the opinionated old minister. Several subscribed money, and insisted upon paying their subscription over to her at once so that she might have a "working fund." Janice set aside three dollars for the first month's rent of the store and with the remainder purchased a second-hand table, some plain kitchen chairs, and some lumber. She began to use this subscribed money with some little trepidation, for—suppose her scheme fell through, after all?

She got her uncle to agree to the needed carpenter's work; a painter gave her a brush and sufficient wood-stain to freshen up all the woodwork of the store. Miss 'Rill came and helped her clean the place and kalsomine the walls and ceiling. A storekeeper gave her enough enameled oilcloth to cover neatly the long table. Hopewell Drugg furnished bracket lamps, and gave her the benefit of the wholesale discount on a hanging lamp and reflector to light the reading-table.

Walky Dexter did what carting was needed. Janice and her aunt made the curtains themselves, and they put them up so as to keep out the prying eyes of all Poketown, for the community now began to wonder what was going on in the empty room next the drug store. As Walky had been bound to secrecy, too, the curious had no means of learning what was going on. It was just as though the printing office of a thriving town newspaper had burned down and there was no means of disseminating the news. This was the effect of the muzzle on Walky Dexter!

It was at this point that Janice took Marty, and through him, the other boys, into the scheme.

"What would you boys each pay in dues to keep up a nice reading-room such as we talked about, Marty?" she asked her cousin.

"Aw, say!" grunted Marty. "Let's talk about the treasure chest we've found in our back yard. That sounds more sensible."

"Wouldn't you be glad of such a place?" laughed Janice.

"Say! would a duck swim?" growled the boy, thinking that she was teasing him. "Bring on your old reading-room, and we'll show ye."

That very afternoon she and Miss 'Rill had given the last touches to the room. It was as neat as a pin; the lamps were all filled and the chimneys polished. It was only a bare room, it was true; but there were possibilities in it, Janice was sure, that would appeal to Marty. She put on her hat and held her coat out for him to help her into.

"I'm going down town with you to-night; Marty," she said, smiling. "I've got something to show you."

"Huh! What's it all about?"

"You come along and see," she told him. "It's just the finest thing that ever happened—and you'll say so, too, I know."

But she refused to explain further until they turned up High Street and stopped at the dark and long-empty shop beside the drug store.

"Oh, gee! In Massey's store?" gasped Marty, when his cousin fitted a key to the lock.

"Come in and shut the door. Now stand right where you are while I light the lamp," commanded Janice.

She lit the hanging lamp over the table. The soft glow of it was soon flung down upon the dull brown cloth. Marty stared around with mouth agape.

His father had built a sort of counter at one end, with a desk and shelves behind it. Of course, there was not a book, or paper, in the place as yet—nor a game. But Marty needed no explanation.

"Janice Day! did you do all this?" he demanded, with a gasp.

"Of course not, goosey! Lots of people helped. And they're going to help more—if you boys show yourselves appreciative."

"What's that 'appreciative' mean?" demanded Marty, suspiciously.

"No fights here; no games that are so boisterous as to disturb those who want to read. Just gentlemanly behavior while you are in the room. That's all, besides a small tax each month to help toward the upkeep of the room. What do you say, Marty?"

"You done this!" declared the boy, with sudden heat. "Don't say you didn't, for that'll be a lie. I never saw a girl like you, Janice!"

"Why—why— Don't you like it?" queried Janice, disturbed.

"Of course I do! It's bully! It's great!" exclaimed Marty. "Lemme show it to the boys. They'll be crazy about it. And if they don't behave it'll be because they're too big for me to lick," concluded Marty, nodding his head emphatically.

Janice burst out laughing at this, and pressed the key into his hand. "Until we get organized properly, you will take charge of the room, won't you, Marty?"

"Sure I will."

"You'll need a stove; I think I can get that for you in a day or two. And lots of folks have promised books. I've written to friends in Greensboro for books, too. And several people who take magazines and papers regularly have promised to hand them over to the reading-room just as soon as they have read them. And you boys can bring your checkers, and dominoes, and other games, from home, eh?"

Marty was scarcely listening; but he was looking at her with more seriousness than his plain face usually betrayed.

"Janice, you're almost as good as a boy yourself!" he declared. "I'm not sorry a bit that you came to Poketown."

Janice only laughed at him again; yet the boy's awkward earnestness warmed her heart.

The girl was finding in these busy days the truest balm for her own worriments. Nothing more was heard of Mr. Broxton Day; yet Janice felt less need of running alone into the woods and fields to find that comfort about which she had told the minister.

Besides, it soon grew too cold for frequent jaunts afield. The small streams and pools were icebound. Then, over the fir-covered heights, sifted the first snow of winter, and Poketown seemed suddenly tucked under a coverlet of white.

The reading-room was an established fact. An association to support it was formed, divided into active and honorary members. The boys, as active members, themselves contributed twenty-five cents per month each, towards its support. Tables for games were set up. A goodly number of books appeared on the shelves. From Greensboro a huge packing-case of half-worn books was sent; Janice's friends at home had responded liberally.

Files of daily and weekly papers were established and magazines of the more popular kind were subscribed for. Nelson Haley gave several evenings each week to work as librarian, and to keep a general oversight of the boys. To tell the truth, he did this more because Janice asked him to than from personal interest in the institution; but he did it.

Slowly the more pessimistic of the townspeople began to show interest in the reading-room. Mr. Middler openly expressed his approval of the institution. Mr. Massey, the druggist, reported that the boys behaved themselves "beyond belief!"

At length, even old Elder Concannon appeared unexpectedly in the reading-room one night to see what was going on. He came to criticise and remained to play a game of "draughts," as he called them, with Marty Day himself!

"Them young scalawags, Elder," declared Massey, when the old gentleman dropped into the drug store afterward. "Them young scalawags are certainly surprising me. They behaved themselves more like human bein's than I ever knowed 'em to before. An' it's a nice, neat, warm room, too, ain't it, now?"

"Ahem! It appears to be," admitted Elder Concannon, and not so grudgingly as might have been expected. "But where's that young girl who had so much to do with it at first—where's that Day girl?"

"Why, pshaw, Elder! she don't have nothing to do with the reading-room," and the druggist's eyes twinkled. "Don't you know that she only starts things in this town? She sets folks up in the business of 'doing for themselves'. Then she goes along about her own business.

"What's that? Well, I dunno. I'm wonderin' myself just where she'll break out next!"



CHAPTER XVII

CHRISTMAS NEWS

It bade fair to be an old-fashioned northern New England winter. Janice Day had never seen anything like this in the prairie country from which she had come.

There three or four big storms, the traces of which soon melted, had been considered a "hard" winter. Here in Poketown the hillside was made white before Thanksgiving, and then one snow after another sifted down upon the mountains. Tree branches in the forest broke under the weight of snow. Sometimes she lay awake in the night and heard the frost burst great trees as though a stick of dynamite had been set off inside them.

The lake ice became so thick that the steamboat could no longer make her trips. Walky Dexter became mail carrier and brought the mail from Middletown every other day.

Janice found the time not at all tedious in its flight. There really was so much to do!

As for real fun—winter sports had been little more than a name to the girl from the Middle West before this winter. The boys had got their bob-sleds out before Thanksgiving. Toboggans were not popular in Poketown, for the coasting-places were too rough. At first Janice was really afraid to join the hilarious parties of boys and girls on some of the slides.

Marty, however, owned a big sled, and she did not want her cousin to lose his good opinion of her. He had declared that she was almost as good as a boy, and Janice successfully hid from him her fear of the sport that really is a royal one.

A favorite slide of the Poketown young people was from the head of the street on which Hopewell Drugg's store was located, down the hill, past the decayed dock on which Janice had first seen little Lottie Drugg, and on across the frozen inlet to the wooded point in which Lottie declared the echo dwelt.

When the whole lake froze solidly, the course of the sleds was continued across its level surface as far as the momentum from the hill would carry the bobs. There was skating here, too; and many were the moonlight nights on which a regular carnival was held at the foot of these hilly streets.

Walky Dexter owned a great sledge, too, and when he attached two span of horses to this, and the roads were even half broken, he could drive parties of Poketown young people all over the county, on moonlight sleigh-rides. Janice was invited to go on several of these, and she did so. Her heart was not always attuned to the hilarity of her companions; but she did not allow herself to become morose, or sad, in public.

Yet the gnawing worriment about her father was in her mind continually. It was an effort for her to be lively and cheerful when the fate of Mr. Broxton Day was so uncertain.

Her more thoughtful comrades realized the girl's secret feelings. She was treated with more consideration by the rough boys who were Marty's mates, than were the other girls.

"Say, that Janice girl is all right!" one rough fellow said to Marty Day. "I see her scouring the papers in the readin'-room the other night, and she was lookin' for some news of her father, of course."

"I reckon so," Marty answered. "We don't know nothing about what's become of him. They stand 'em up against a wall down there in Mexico and shoot 'em just for fun—so Walky Dexter says. Dad says he never expects to hear of Uncle Brocky alive ag'in."

"And yet that girl keeps up her pluck! She's all right," declared the other. "Gee! suppose she should come smack upon the story of her father's death some night there in the readin'-room? Wouldn't that be tough?"

From this conversation sprang the idea of a sort of Brotherhood of Defense (in lieu of a better title) among the boys who used the reading-room whose existence Janice Day's initiative had established. Whoever got the papers from the mail and spread them on the file in the reading-room, first examined the columns carefully for any mention of the execution of prisoners by either belligerent party in Mexico; especially was the news searched for any mention of the lost Mr. Day.

Sometimes, when the news story suggested one of these horrible executions, the whole paper was "lost in the mail." At least, when it was inquired for, that was the stock reply. The boys made sure that Janice should never see such blood-chilling accounts of Mexican activities.

It drew toward Christmas. Janice had another sorrow, of which she never said a word. Her spending money was nearly gone. She saw the bottom of her narrow purse just as the season of giving approached!

There were so many things she wanted to do for all her friends, both in Poketown and back at Greensboro. Some few little things she had made, for her fingers were both nimble and dexterous. But "home-made" presents would not do for Uncle Jason, Aunt 'Mira, Marty, and a dozen other people towards whom she felt kindly.

She had begun to worry, too, about what would finally happen to her if her father never came back! How long would the bank continue to pay her board to Uncle Jason? And how was she to get clothes, and other necessary things?

In the midst of these mental tribulations came a letter from the Greensboro bank, addressed to Janice herself. In it was the cashier's check for twenty-five dollars, and a brief note from the official himself, stating that Mr. Day, before ever he had separated from his daughter, had looked forward to her Christmas shopping and instructed the bank to send on the fifteenth of December this sum for her personal use.

"Dear, dear Daddy! He forgot nothing," sobbed Janice, when she read this note, and kissed the check which seemed to have come warm from her father's hand. "Whatever shall I do all through my life long without him, if he never comes back?"

Christmas Eve came. The clouds had been gathering above the higher peaks of the Green Mountains all day, and, as evening dropped, the snow began falling.

Janice and Marty went down town together after supper. Even Poketown showed some special light and life at this season. Dusty store windows were rejuvenated; candles, and trees, and tinsel, and wreathes blossomed all along High Street. Janice was proud to know that the brightest windows, and the most tastefully dressed, were Hopewell Drugg's. And in the middle of the biggest window of Drugg's store was a beautiful wax doll, which she and Miss 'Rill had themselves dressed. On Christmas morning that doll was to be found by Lottie Drugg, fast asleep with its head on the blind child's own pillow!

Janice had to run around just to take a last peek at the window and the doll, while Marty went to the post office for the evening mail. Papers and magazines were due in that mail for the reading-room; and, despite the fact that the snow was falling more heavily every minute, there would be some of the "regulars" in the reading-room, glad to see the papers.

Janice had turned her own subscription for the New York daily over to the reading-room association; and when she wanted to read the New York paper herself, she went to the files to look at it. Weeks had passed now since there had been anything printed about that district in Chihuahua where her father's mine was located.

Coming back, down the hill from Drugg's, Janice saw that Marty had not gone at once into the reading-room and lit the lamps. Her cousin was standing in the light of the drug-store window, a bundle of papers and magazines under his arm, and one paper spread before his eyes. He seemed to be reading eagerly.

"Hey, Marty! come on in and read! It's awful cold out here!" she shouted to him, shaking the latch of the reading-room door with her mittened hand.

Marty, roused, looked up guiltily, and thrust the quickly folded paper into the breast of his jacket. "Aw, I'm comin'," he said.

But when he came to open the door Janice noticed that he seemed to fumble the key greatly, and he kept his face turned from her gaze.

"What's the matter, Marty?" she asked, lightly.

"Matter? Ain't nothin' the matter," grunted the boy.

"Why, Marty! you're crying!" gasped Janice, suddenly.

"Ain't neither!" growled the boy, wiping his rough coat sleeve across his eyes. "Snow's blowed in 'em."

"That's more than snow, Marty," was Janice's confident remark.

"Huh!" snorted Marty. "Girls allus know so much!"

He seemed to have suddenly acquired "a grouch." So Janice went cheerily about the room, singing softly to herself, and lighting the lamps. Nobody else had arrived, for it was still early in the evening.

Marty stole softly to the stove. The fire had been banked, and the room was quite chilly. He rattled the dampers, opened them, and then, with a side glance at his cousin, pulled the paper from within the breast of his jacket and thrust it in upon the black coals before he closed the stove door.

"Where's the New York paper, Marty?" Janice was asking, as she arranged the Montpelier and the Albany papers on their files.

"Didn't come," grunted Marty, and picked up the empty coal hod. "I got to git some coal," he added, and dashed outside into the snow.

Instantly the girl hastened across the room. She jerked the stove door open. There lay the folded paper, just beginning to brown in the heat of the generating gas. She snatched it from the fire and, hearing the outer door opened again, thrust the paper inside her blouse.

It wasn't Marty, but was one of the other boys. She did not understand why her cousin should have told her an untruth about the New York paper. But she did not want an open rupture with him here and now—and before other people.

"I'm going right home," she said to Marty, when he came back with the replenished coal hod. "It's snowing real hard."

"Sure. There won't be many of the fellows around to-night, anyway. Peter here will stay all evening and lock up—if Mr. Haley don't come. Won't you, Pete?"

"Sure," was the reply.

"Then I'll go along with you," declared Marty, who wasn't half as ashamed to escort a girl on the street nowadays as he had been a few months before.

Now, Janice had intended running over to Hopewell Drugg's store and looking at the paper Marty had tried to destroy. She did not for a moment suspect what was in it, or why her cousin had told her a falsehood about it. But she saw she would have to defer the examination of the news-sheet.

"All right. Come along, Marty," she agreed, with assumed carelessness.

The boy was very moody. He stole glances at her only when he thought she was not looking. Never had Janice seen the hobbledehoy act so strangely!

They plowed through the increasing snow up Hillside Avenue, and the snow fell so rapidly that the girl was really glad she had come home. She entered first, Marty staying out on the porch a long time, stamping and scraping his boots.

When he came in he still had nothing to say. He pulled his seat to the far side of the glowing stove and sat there, hands in his pockets and chin on his breast.

"What's the matter with you, Marty?" shrilled Mrs. Day. "You ain't sick, be ye?"

"Nop," growled her son.

That was about all they could get out of him—monosyllables—until Janice retired to her own room. The girl was so anxious to get upstairs and look at that paper she had recovered from the reading-room fire, that she went early. When she had bidden the others good night and mounted to her room, however, she did something she had never done before. She unlatched her door again softly and tiptoed out to the landing at the top of the stairs, to listen.

Marty had suddenly come to life. She heard his voice, low and tense, dominating the other voices in the kitchen. She could not hear a word he said, but suddenly Aunt 'Mira broke out with: "Oh! my soul and body, Marty! It ain't so—don't say it's so!"

"Be still, 'Mira," commanded Uncle Jason's quaking voice. "Let the boy tell it."

She heard nothing more but the murmur of her cousin's voice and her aunt's soft crying. Janice stole back into her cold room. She shook terribly, but not with the chill of the frosty air.

Her trembling fingers found a match and ignited the wick of the skeleton lamp. She had, ere this, manufactured a pretty paper shade for it, and this threw the stronger radiance of the light upon a round spot on the bureau. She drew out the scorched paper and unfolded it in that light.

She did not have to search long. The article she feared to see was upon the first page of the paper. The black headlines were so plain that she scanned them at a single glance:

THE BANDIT, RAPHELE, AT WORK

A Fugitive's Story of the Christmas-Week Execution in Granadas District

TWO AMERICANS DRAW LOTS FOR LIFE

John Makepiece Tells His Story in Cida; His Fellow-Prisoner, Broxton Day, Fills One of Raphele's "Christmas Graves"



CHAPTER XVIII

"THE FLY-BY-NIGHT"

Janice Day could never have told how long she sat there, elbows on the bureau, eyes glued to those black lines on the newspaper page. The heat of the tall oil lamp almost scorched her face; but her back was freezing. There was never anything invented—not even a cold storage plant—as cold as the ordinary New England farmhouse bedchamber!

But the girl felt neither the lamp's heat, nor the deadly chill of the room. For a long time she could not even read beyond the mere headlines of the article telegraphed from Cida.

This seemed to be conclusive. It was the end of all hope for Janice—or, so she then believed. There seemed not a single chance that her father could have escaped. No news had been good news, after all. This story in the paper was all too evil—all too certainly evil!

By and by she managed to concentrate her numbed mind upon the story itself. There is no need to repeat it here in full; when Janice had read it twice she could not easily forget its most unimportant phrase.

The man, John Makepiece, with Broxton Day, of Granadas district, had been held "incommunicado" for months by the bandit, Raphele. This leader had fought with his commando for the Constitutionalists at the battle of Granadas; but he was really an outlaw and cutthroat, and many of his followers were brigands like him.

The prisoners had been held for ransom. Several of the Mexican captives of Raphele had managed to pay their way out of the villain's clutches; but both Americans refused to apply to their friends for ransom. Indeed, they did not trust to Raphele's protestations, believing that if any money at all for their release was forthcoming, it would only whet the villain's cupidity and cause Raphele to make larger demands.

Raphele feared now to remain longer in that part of Chihuahua. His unlawful acts had called down upon his head the serious strictures of the Constitutionalist leaders. They were about to abolish his command.

In his rage and bloodthirstiness he had declared his intention of either destroying his remaining prisoners, or sending them to their homes crippled. But the two Americans he treated differently. With fiendish delight in seeing those two brave men suffer, he had commanded them to cast lots to see which should be escorted beyond the lines, while the other was marched to the edge of an open grave, there to find a sure and sudden end under the rain of bullets from a "firing squad."

John Makepiece had drawn the long straw. There was no help for it. He rode away on a sorry nag that was given him, and from a distant height saw the other American marched out to the place of burial, and even waited to see the puff of smoke from the guns as the soldiers fired at the doomed man.

The details were horrible. The effect upon Janice was a most unhappy one. For more than an hour she sat there before her bureau in the cold room, her gaze fastened upon the story in the newspaper.

Then the family came up to bed. Aunt 'Mira saw the light under the girl's door.

"Janice! Janice!" she whispered. "Whatever is the matter with you?"

Aunt 'Mira had been crying and her voice was still husky. When she pushed open the door a little way and saw the girl, she gasped out in alarm.

"Oh, my dear!" sobbed Aunt Mira. "Do you know?"

Janice could not then speak. She pointed to the paper, and when Aunt 'Mira folded her in her arms, the girl burst into tears—tears that relieved her overcharged heart.

"You run down an' open up the drafts of that stove again, Jason," exclaimed the fleshy lady, for once taking command of affairs. "This child's got a chill. She's got ter have suthin' hot, or she'll be sick on our hands—poor dear! She's been a-settin' here readin' all that stuff Marty told us was in the paper—I do believe. Ain't that so, child?"

Janice, sobbing on her broad bosom, intimated that it was a fact.

"That boy ain't no good. He didn't burn up the paper at all. She got holt on it," declared Uncle Jason, quite angry.

"Oh, it wasn't—wasn't Marty's fault," sobbed Janice. "And I had to know! I had to know!"

They got her downstairs, and Mrs. Day sent "the men folks" to bed. She insisted upon putting Janice's feet into a mustard-water bath, and made her swallow fully a pint of steaming hot "composition." Two hours later Janice was able to go to bed, and, because she hoped against hope, and was determined not to believe the story until it was thoroughly confirmed, she fell immediately into a dreamless sleep.

When she awoke on Christmas morning, it was with a full and clear knowledge of what had happened, and a pang of desolation and grief such as had swept over her the night before. But she set herself to hope as long as she could, and to suppress any untoward exhibition of her sorrow and pain, while she made every effort to find out the truth about her father.

The family was very gentle with the heartsick girl. Even Marty showed by his manner that he sympathized with her. And she could not forget that he had tried his very best to keep the knowledge of the awful crime from her.

Janice brought down with her to the breakfast table the little presents which she had prepared for her uncle, and aunt, and cousin. There were no boisterous "Merry Christmases" in the old Day house that morning; even Uncle Jason wiped his eyes after saying grace at the breakfast table.

After all, Janice was the most self-controlled of the four. She said, midway of the meal:

"I cannot believe all of that dreadful story in the paper. I want to know more of the particulars."

"Oh, hush! hush!" begged her aunt. "I read it. It's too horrible! I wouldn't want to know any more, child."

"But I must know more—if there's more to be known. I believe I can telegraph to Cida. At least, Mr. Buchanan at Juarez may know something more about this man's story. I wish there was either telegraph, or telephone, in Poketown."

"Gee, Janice!" exclaimed Marty. "Nobody could git over to Middletown to-day. Not even Walky Dexter. The wind blowed great guns last night, and the roads are full of drifts."

"But it doesn't look so from my window," said his cousin.

"Pshaw! all you can see is the lake. Snow blowed right across the ice, an' never scarcely touched it. But there's heaps and heaps in the road. Say! we got ter dig out Hillside Avenue—ain't we, Dad?"

"A lot of snow fell in the night—that's a fact," admitted Uncle Jason.

"But I see somebody coming up the street now," cried Janice, jumping up eagerly from the table.

It was Walky Dexter, plowing his way through the drifts in hip boots.

"This is sure a white Christmas!" he bawled from the gate. "I got suthin' for you, Janice. Hi tunket! can't git through this here gate, so I'll climb over it. Wal, Janice, a Merry Christmas to ye!" he added, as he stumped up upon the porch, and handed her a little package from Miss 'Rill.

"I am afraid not a very merry one, Walky," said the girl, shaking his mittened hand. "Come inside by the fire. Uncle Jason, where is that paper? I want Mr. Dexter to read it."

"Oh, dear, me!" murmured Walky, when he saw the heading of the Mexican telegraph despatch. Then, with his fur cap cocked over one ear, and his boots steaming on the stove hearth, he read the story through. "Oh, dear, me!" he said again.

"I want you to try to get me to Middletown, Walky," Janice said, with a little catch in her voice. "Right away."

"Mercy on us, child! a day like this?" gasped her aunt.

"Why, the storm's over," said Janice, firmly. "And I must send some telegrams and get answers. Oh, I must! I must!"

"Hoity-toity, Miss Janice!" broke in Walky. "'Must' is a hard driver, I know. But I tell ye, we couldn't win through the drif's. Why, I been as slow as a toad funeral gettin' up here from High Street. The ox teams won't be out breakin' the paths before noon, and they won't get out of town before to-morrer, that's sure, Miss."

"Oh, my dear!" cried her aunt, again. "You mustn't think of doing such a thing. Wait."

"I can't wait," declared Janice, with pallid face and trembling lip, but her hazel eyes dry and hard. "I tell you I must know more."

"I can't take ye to Middletown, Janice. Not till the roads is broke," Walky said, firmly, shaking his head.

"Hi! here comes somebody else up the road," shouted Marty, from outside.

Janice ran, hoping to see a team. It was only a single figure struggling through the snow.

"By jinks!" exclaimed Marty. "It's the teacher."

"It is Mr. Haley," murmured Janice.

The young collegian, well dressed for winter weather, waved his hand when he saw them, and struggled on. He carried a long parcel and when he went through the more than waist-high drifts he held this high above his head.

"Hi, there!" yelled Marty, waving his mittened hands. "Ain't you lost over here, Mr. Haley?"

"I see somebody has been before me," laughed Nelson Haley, following Walky Dexter's tracks over the fence and up to the cleared porch. "How do you do, Miss Janice? A very happy Christmas to you!"

"Thank you for your good wish, Mr. Haley," she replied, soberly. "But it is not going to be a very glad Christmas for me, I fear. Oh! is it for me?" for he had thrust the long pasteboard box into her arms.

"If you will accept them, Miss Janice," returned the young man, with a bow.

"Open it, Janice!" exclaimed Marty. "Let's see."

"I—I——"

"Lemme do it for you," cried Marty, the curious. He broke the string, yanked off the paper, and Janice herself lifted the cover. A great breath of spicy odor rushed out at her from the box.

"Oh! Mr. Haley! Cut flowers! Hothouse flowers! Wherever did you get them?" cried Janice, drawing aside the tissue paper and burying her face in the fragrant, dewy blossoms.

"Aw—flowers! Huh!" grunted Marty, in disappointment.

"I am glad you like them so," said Nelson Haley. "Marty, I didn't bring them to you. But here is something that will please you better, I know," and he put into the boy's hand a combination pocketknife that would have delighted any out-of-door youth. "Only you must give me a penny for it. I don't believe in giving sharp-edged presents to friends. It cuts friendship, they say," and the collegian laughed.

"Golly! that's a dandy!" acknowledged Marty. "Here's your cent. Thanks! See what Mr. Haley gimme, Maw!" and he rushed into the house to display his treasure.

Haley and Janice were left alone in a sheltered corner of the porch.

"Oh, Mr. Haley," the girl repeated. "How lovely they are! And how kind of you to get them for me! How did you ever secure such fresh cut flowers 'way up here? Nobody has a hothouse in Poketown."

"They come from Colonel Van Dyne's place at the Landing."

"'Way down there!" exclaimed Janice, in wonder. "Why, it's farther than Middletown. That's where I took the boat to get here?"

"I guess so, Miss Janice."

"But—but the boats aren't running," she cried, in amazement. "And these flowers are so fresh."

"My boat is running," and Haley laughed. "I brought them up for you yesterday afternoon. Got in just before it began to snow hard."

"Mr. Haley! The lake is frozen solidly!"

"Sure," he laughed. "But my boat sails on the ice. Didn't you hear that I had built the Fly-by-Night? It's an ice boat—and it's a dandy! I hope to take you out in it——"

"An ice boat?" cried Janice. "Oh! you can—you shall! You can take me to the Landing. There is a telegraph office there, isn't there?"

"Why—why——Yes! At the railroad station," the young man admitted, rather amazed.

Janice stepped up to him, with the pasteboard box of flowers in her arms, and her eyes shining in expectation.

"Oh, Mr. Haley! You must take me down there. Won't you?"

Marty ran out again, and heard what she said. "Where you goin'?" he demanded. "Mr. Haley can't ice boat you to Middletown."

"To the Landing," begged Janice.

"By jinks! so he can," shouted the boy. "Lemme go, too, Mr. Haley. You'll want somebody to 'tend sheet on the Fly-by-Night."

"But I do not understand?" queried the teacher, staring from one to the other of the excited pair.

"You—you tell him, Marty!" said Janice, turning toward the door. "I must put these beautiful flowers in water. Come in, Mr. Haley, and get warm."

But the teacher remained out there on the wind-swept porch while he listened to what Marty had to tell. The girl's trouble struck home to the generous-hearted young man. He was moved deeply for her—especially upon a day like this when, in the nature of things, all persons should be joyous and glad.

"I will take you to the Landing, if the breeze holds fair," he declared and he pooh-poohed Mrs. Day's fears that there was any danger in sailing the ice boat. He had come up from the Landing himself the night before in an hour and a half.

"What a dreadful, dreadful way to spend Christmas Day!" moaned Aunt 'Mira, as she helped Janice to dress. "Something's likely to happen to that ice boat. I've seen 'em racing on the lake. Them folks jest take their lives in their han's—that's right!"

"I'll make the boys take care," Janice promised.

Aunt 'Mira saw them go with fear and trembling, and immediately ensconced herself in the window of Janice's room, with a shawl around her shoulders, to watch the flight of the ice boat after it got under way down at the dock.

Janice, and the teacher and Marty had fairly to wade to the shore of the lake. The drifts were very deep on land; but, as Marty said, the wind had swept the ice almost bare. Here and there a ridge of snow had formed upon the glistening surface; but Mr. Haley made light of these obstructions.

"The Fly-by-Night will just go humming through those, Miss Janice. Don't you fear," he said.

There were few people abroad in High Street, for it was not yet mid-forenoon. Most who were out were busily engaged shoveling paths. The three young folks got down to the dock, and Haley and Marty turned up the heavy body of the ice boat and swept the snow off.

There was a good deal of a drift of snow right along the edge of the lake; but they pushed the ice boat out beyond this windrow, with Janice's help, and then stepped the mast and bent on the heavy sail. It was a cross-T boat, with a short nose and a single sail. The steersman had a box in the rear and in this there was room for Janice to ride, too. The sheet-tender likewise ballasted the boat by lying out on one or the other end of the crosspiece.

There was a keen wind, not exactly fair for the trip down the lake; yet their sheet filled nicely on the longer tack, and the Fly-by-Night swept out from the Poketown dock at a very satisfactory speed.

"We'll hit the Landing in two hours, at the longest, Miss Janice," declared Nelson Haley. "Keep your head down. This wind cuts like needles. Too bad you haven't a mask of some kind."

He was wearing his motorcycle goggles, while Marty had one of those plush caps, that pull down all around one's face so that nothing but the eyes peer out, and was doing very well.

As the ice yacht gathered speed, Janice found that she could not face the wind. Nor could she look ahead, for the sun was shining boldly now, and the glare of it on the ice was all but blinding.

The timbers of the boat groaned and shook. The runners whined over the ice with an ever-increasing note. Ice-dust rose in a thin cloud from the sharp shoes, and the sunlight, in which the dust danced, flecked the mist with dazzling, rainbow colors.

When the ice boat came about, it was with a leap and bound that seemed almost to capsize the craft. Janice had never traveled so fast before—or so she believed. It fairly took her breath, and she clung to the hand-holds with all her strength.

"Hi, Janice!" yelled Marty, grinning from ear to ear. "How d'ye like it? Gittin' scaret?"

She had to shake her head negatively and smile. But to tell the truth there was an awful sinking in her heart, and when one runner went suddenly over a hummock and tipped the ice boat, she could scarcely keep from voicing her alarm.



CHAPTER XIX

CHRISTMAS, AFTER ALL?

Janice Day possessed more self-control than most girls of her age. She would not, even when her heart was sick with apprehension because of the story in the newspaper, give her cousin the opportunity of saying that she showed the white feather.

She lay close to the beam of the ice boat, clung to the hand-holds, and made no outcry as the craft flew off upon the other tack. Had the wind been directly astern, the course of the Fly-by-Night would have been smoother. It was the terrific bounding, and the groaning of the timbers while the boom swung over and the canvas slatted, that really frightened the girl.

It seemed as though the mast must be wrenched out of the boat by the force of the high wind filling the canvas. And the shrieking of the runners! Janice realized that the passage of an ice boat made as much noise as the flight of a fast train.

She could scarcely distinguish what Nelson Haley shouted at her, and he was so near, too. He pointed ahead. She stooped to look under the boom and saw a great windrow of snow—a huge drift more than six feet high—not half a mile away.

This drift stretched, it seemed, from side to side of the lake. They could not see what lay beyond it. Janice expected the others would drop the sail and bring the ice boat to a halt. Some roughness in the ice, or perhaps a narrow opening, had caught the first driven flakes of snow here the night before. The snow had gathered rapidly when once a streak of it lay across the lake. Deeper and deeper the drift had grown until tons of the white crystals had been heaped here in what looked to Janice to be an impassable barrier.

"Oh! Oh!" she shrieked. "Won't you stop?"

Nelson Haley smiled grimly and shook his head. Marty uttered a shriek of exultation as the ice boat bore down upon the drift. He was quite speed-mad.

"Hang on! hang on!" commanded Nelson Haley.

Another moment and the frightened Janice saw the bow of the boat rise—as it seemed—straight into the air. Amid the groaning of timbers and the shrieking of the wind, the Fly-by-Night shot up the steep slant of the drift and over its crest!

The cry Janice tried to utter was frozen in her throat. She saw the ice ahead and below them. Like a great bird—or a huge batfish leaping from the sea—the ice boat shot out on a long curve from the summit of the hard-packed snowdrift.

The shock of its return to the ice was terrific. Janice felt sure the boat must be racked to bits.

But the Fly-by-Night was strongly built. With the momentum secured by its leap from the drift, it skated over the ice for a mile or more, with scarcely a thimbleful of wind in its sail, yet traveling like a fast express.

Then it answered the helm again, the wind filled the sail, and they bore down upon the Landing on a direct tack.

"Gee! Ain't it great?" cried Marty, as Nelson Haley signaled him to drop the sail. "Don't that beat any traveling you ever done, Janice?"

Janice faintly admitted that it did; but neither the boy nor Nelson Haley realized what a trial the trip had been to the girl. Janice was too proud to show the fear she felt; but she could scarcely stand when the Fly-by-Night finally stopped with its nose to the shore, just beyond the steamboat dock.

Popham Landing was scarcely larger than Poketown; only there were canning factories here, and the terminus of the narrow-gauge railroad on which Janice had finished her rail journey from Greensboro the spring before. So it was a livelier place than the village in which the girl had been living for eight months.

Colonel Van Dyne, owner of one of the canning factories, had a fine home on the heights overlooking the lake. It was with the colonel's gardener and superintendent that Nelson Haley had an acquaintance, and through that acquaintanceship had obtained the cut flowers from the colonel's greenhouse.

When the three had hurried up the half-cleared landing to the railroad station, Janice fairly staggering between her two companions, the office was closed and nobody was about the railroad premises. It was a holiday, and no more trains were expected at the Landing until night.

Janice all but broke down at this added bad turn of affairs. To come all this distance only to be balked!

"It's jest blamed mean!" sputtered Marty. "Telegraph shops ain't got no right to shut up—in the daytime, too."

"It's not a Western Union wire," explained Nelson. "The railroad only takes ordinary messages as a matter of convenience. But wait! That door's open and there's a fire in the waiting-room, you see. Just because this card says the agent and operator won't be here till five o'clock doesn't mean that he's gone out of town. Besides, I'll see my friend, Jim Watrous."

This was the gardener and general factotum at Colonel Van Dyne's. The Poketown school-teacher hurried away, and left Janice and Marty sitting together in the railroad station.

"He'll find some way—don't you fear, Janice," said the boy, with much more sympathy than he had ever shown before. Janice squeezed his hand and hid her own face. She could not forget how Marty had tried the evening before to hide the knowledge of her father's fate from her. This was a much different Marty than the boy she had first met at the old Day house on her arrival at Poketown.

In half an hour Nelson Haley was back with the operator and agent. The gardener at Colonel Van Dyne's knew the man personally. The story in the newspaper, and an explanation of who Janice was, did the rest.

"There isn't any better day than Christmas, I reckon," said the telegraph operator, when he shook hands with the girl and she tried to thank him in advance for the trouble he was taking on her behalf, "to do a helpful deed. And I want to help you, Miss Day, if I can. Write your messages and I will put them through as rapidly as possible. I shall have plenty of time to go home for dinner between the sending of your telegrams, and the receiving of the answers. Now, don't worry at all about it."

"Oh, dear!" half sobbed the girl. "Everybody is so good to me."

"Not a bit more than you deserve, I am sure," laughed the operator. "Now, Miss, if you are ready, I am."

Janice knew just what she wished to say. If she had not written the messages she was anxious to send, she had already formulated them in her mind. It was but a few minutes' work to write both—one to Mr. Buchanan at Juarez, and the other addressed to the man, John Makepiece, who claimed to have been a fellow-prisoner with Mr. Broxton Day.

When the messages were sent, all they could do was to wait. Janice had expected that she and Marty and Mr. Haley would have to camp in the waiting-room of the station during the long interval, and the girl was very sorry that, because of her, her friends would have to forego any holiday dinner.

While Janice was engaged, Nelson Haley had been off on an excursion of his own. He came tramping back into the station just as the operator closed his key and told Janice that there was nothing to do now but wait.

"And I'm afraid it will be an awfully tedious time for you, Marty," said the girl. "I'm sorry. Aunt 'Mira was going to have such a nice dinner for you, too!"

"Huh! I guess I won't starve," growled the boy. "Mebbe we can find some sandwiches somewhere—and a cup of coffee. By jinks! flyin' down the lake like we did, did make me sharp-set."

"If you're hungry, then, Marty," broke in Nelson Haley, "we'll all go to dinner. It's just about ready by now, I reckon."

"Aw! don't fool a feller," said Marty, ruefully.

The school-teacher laughed at him. "I'm not fooling," he said. "I was quite sure Miss Janice would be hungry enough to eat, too; so I found a kind woman who is willing to share her dinner with us. Come on! She and her daughter are all alone. The storm has kept their friends from coming to eat with them, so we're in luck."

The three had quite a delightful dinner at the Widow Maltby's. Nelson had told her and her daughter something about Janice's trouble, and the good creatures did everything they could to make it agreeable for the girl.

As for Marty, the "lay-out," as he expressed it, was all that heart could desire—a boy's heart, at least! There was turkey, with dressing, and cranberries, and the usual vegetables, with pie and cake galore, and a pocketful of nuts to top off with.

Janice was afraid that the dinner would cost Nelson a great deal of money, until she saw him fairly press upon the good widow a two-dollar bill for their entertainment!

"And I ain't right sure that I'd ought to take anything at all," the widow declared. "An' at sech a time, too! We'd never been able to eat all o' them vittles, Em and I, an' we're thankful to have somebody come along and help us. An' it sure has perked us up right smart."

Nelson had been very gay at the dinner, and had kept the widow and her daughter in good humor. But with Janice, as they walked back to the station (Marty had gone off on some matter of his own), the young man was very serious.

"I sincerely hope, Janice, that you will hear better news from your father or his friends on the border than the newspaper gave last night. The trains are snowbound, and no morning papers have reached the Landing yet, so nobody here knows more than we do about the matter. Don't set your heart too strongly upon hearing better news—that's all."

"I do not need that warning," Janice told him, with a sigh. "But I felt as though I should quite go all to pieces if I had to sit still and just wait. I had to do something. I can't tell you how thankful I am to you for your trouble in bringing me down here."

"Trouble?" cried Nelson Haley. "You know it is a pleasure, Janice," and just then they reached the railroad station and found the operator at his telegraph key again.

"I was just going to hunt you up, Miss Day," he cried, beckoning her into the office. "Do you know, young lady, that you have suddenly become a person of considerable importance?" and he laughed again.

"Me?" cried Janice, in amazement.

"You are the tea party—yes, ma'am! You are an object of public interest. Two New York papers have sent to me for five-hundred word interviews with you——"

"My goodness me!" gasped Janice. "How dreadful! What does it mean?"

"Your father's case has been taken up by the big papers all over the country. It may be made a cause for American intervention. That is the talk. The newspapers are interested, and the truth about your father is likely to be known very quickly. All the special correspondents down there on the border have been set to work——Ah! and here is something from your man at Juarez."

The telegrapher had caught the relay number of the despatch then coming over the wire, and knew that it was from Juarez. "Hello!" he chuckled, when the sounder ceased. "Your man is certainly some brief—and to the point."

He scratched off a copy of the message and put it into Janice's eager hand. The girl read it out loud:

"J. M. always a story-teller. Have telegraphed consular agent at Cida for later particulars. I consider any news of B. D. good news.

"JAMES W. BUCHANAN."

"That Buchanan evidently knows the John Makepiece who is telling this yarn," observed the telegraph operator, "and he doesn't have much confidence in him."

"Oh, dear!" murmured the girl. "Maybe it's even worse than Makepiece reported."

"Hardly," broke in Nelson Haley, quickly. "He intimated that your father was surely dead. But this friend of yours at Juarez says any news at all is good news."

"Keep your heart up, Miss," urged the telegraph operator. "And do tell me a little something about yourself, so that I can satisfy these insistent newspapers."

"Oh, dear, me! I don't want to get into the newspapers," cried Janice, really disturbed by this possibility.

"But folks will be awfully interested in reading about you, Miss Day," urged the man; "and the newspapers are going to do more than anybody else for you and your father in this trouble. You may make sure of that."

But it was because of the operator's personal kindness that Janice submitted to the "interview." Nelson Haley entered into the spirit of the affair and wrote down Janice's personal history to date, just as briefly and clearly as the girl gave it under the operator's questioning. Young Haley added a few notes of his own, which he explained in the operator's ear before the latter tapped out his message to New York.

It was only when Janice saw the paper a few days later that she realized what, between them, the school-teacher and the telegraph operator had done. There, spread broadcast by the types, was the story of how Janice had come to Poketown alone, a brief picture of her loneliness without her father, something of the free reading-room Janice had been the means of establishing, and a description of the flight down the lake on the Fly-by-Night on Christmas morning, that she might gain further particulars of her father's fate.

It was the sort of human-interest story that newspaper readers enjoy; but Janice was almost ashamed to appear in public for several days thereafter!

However, this is ahead of our story.

The wait for further messages from the border was not so tedious, because of these incidents. By and by an answer came from the American consular agent at Cida, relayed from Juarez by Mr. Buchanan. The agent stated his doubt of the entire truth of John Makepiece's story. The man was notoriously a reckless character. It was believed that he himself had served with the Constitutionalist army in Mexico some months. Since appearing in Cida and telling his story to the Associated Press man, he had become intoxicated and was still in that state, so could not be interviewed for further particulars.

A posse had started for Granadas the day before, to see what was the condition of affairs around the mining property of which Mr. Day had had charge. It was a fact that the guerrilla, Raphele, had overrun that district and had controlled it for some months; but his command was now scattered, and the more peacefully-inclined inhabitants of Granadas were stealing back to their homes.

"Have requested consular agent at Cida to wire you direct to Popham Landing, report of returning posse now overdue," was how Mr. Buchanan concluded the message.

"And that report may be along any time, now," declared the operator, encouragingly. "You people haven't got to start back up the lake yet awhile?"

"We'll stay as long as Miss Day wants to," said Nelson Haley, quickly.

"Sure we'll stay," cried Marty. "Miss Maltby told me to come back by and by, and finish that mince pie I couldn't manage at dinner time. There ain't no hurry to get back to Poketown, is there?"

Janice and Nelson were much amused by this frank statement of the boy; but the girl was only too glad to have the others bear out her own desire to remain within reach of the telegraph wires for a while longer. Mr. Buchanan's messages had eased her heart greatly.

Janice cried a little by herself—the first tears she had shed since the night before. But even Marty respected them and did not make fun of his cousin.

"Everybody is so good to me!" she cried again, when she had wiped her eyes and could smile at Marty and Nelson Haley. "And I believe it's all coming out right. This long day is going to be a real Christmas Day, after all!"



CHAPTER XX

THE TROUBLE WITH NELSON HALEY

From that time on Janice refused longer to be in what she called "the dumps." It was not her way to mope about; usually she cheered other people and did not herself stand in need of cheering.

She made the operator go home to his family to spend Christmas afternoon. When his call came Marty was to run over after him. This kept the trio of friends from Poketown close to the railroad station all the afternoon; but the interval was spent quite pleasantly.

Mrs. Maltby and her daughter came over, through the snow, to visit a while with Janice—and to bring Marty the pie!—and several other villagers dropped in. News of Janice's reason for being at Popham Landing had been spread abroad, and the people who came were more than curious—they were sympathetic.

The pastor of one of the churches, who was well acquainted with Mr. Middler, left his own family for half an hour and came to the station to ask if he could do anything of practical use for Janice. Had it been wise the trio from Poketown could have accepted half a dozen invitations for supper and evening entertainment.

"People are so good!" Janice cried again to Haley and Marty. "I never realized that mere strangers could be so very, very nice to one."

"Huh!" grunted Marty. "Ain't you always nice to folks—an' doing something for 'em? How do you like it yourself?" which remark made Janice and Nelson Haley laugh very heartily.

So, after all, it was a real Christmas, as Janice said. It was an odd one, perhaps, but there were some very enjoyable things about it. For instance, Janice and the young school-teacher got far better acquainted than they had ever been before—and Janice had always liked Nelson Haley.

In this present situation, Nelson stood out well. He was generous, sympathetic, and helpful. The fact that he was inclined to pursue the way of least resistance, and considered it right to "let well enough alone," did not impress one so deeply at the present moment.

Janice learned that the young man had neither father nor mother, and that his nearest relative was an old aunt who had supplied the money for his college tuition—at least, such money as he had not been able to earn himself. Nelson Haley, however, desired to be self-supporting, and he felt that he had accepted all the assistance he should from the old aunt, whose patrimony was not large.

"Old Aunty Peckham is just as good as she can be," he confided to Janice; "but I realize now—have realized for some years, in fact—that if she had not had me to worry about, she could have enjoyed many more good things in life than she has. So I told her I'd come to the end of accepting money from her whenever my own purse got low.

"I'll teach school in Poketown a couple of years and save enough to take up law; or perhaps I'll get a chance in some small college. Only, to teach in a real college means work," and he laughed.

"But—but don't you like to work?" queried Janice, doubtfully.

"Now, Janice! who really likes work?" demanded the young man, lightly. "If we can get through the world without much effort, why not take it easily?"

"That is not my idea of what we are put in the world for—just to drift along with the current."

"Oh, dear, me! what a very strenuous person you are," said the young man, still teasingly. "And—I am afraid—you'd be a most uncomfortable person to have around all the time. Though that doesn't sound gallant, I admit."

Janice laughed. "I tell you what it is," she observed, not at all shaken by the young man's remark, "I shouldn't want to feel that there wasn't something in life to get by going after it."

"'By going after it?'" repeated the young man, in some puzzlement.

"Yes. You say I'd be an uncomfortable comrade. And I expect you're right. Especially for a downright lazy person."

"Oh, oh!" he cried. "That was a hard hit."

"You're not really lazy, you know," she pursued, coolly. "You only haven't been 'woke up' yet."

"I believe that's worse than your former statement," he cried, rather ruefully now. "I suppose I do drift with the current."

"Well!"

"What kind of a fellow do you expect to marry, Janice?" he asked, with a twinkle in his eye.

"Why, I'll tell you," said the girl, practically and without a shadow of false modesty. "I expect a man to prove himself good for something in the world before he even asks me to marry him."

"Goodness me! he must be a millionaire, or president, or something like that?" chuckled Nelson.

"Nothing at all so great," she returned, with some heat. "I don't care if he's right down poor, if only he has been successful in accomplishing some really hard thing—something that shows the metal he's made of. No namby-pamby young man for me. No, sir! They can keep away," and Janice ended her rather serious speech with a laugh and a toss of her head.

"I shall bear your strictures in mind, Miss Day," declared Haley, with mock gravity. "I see very plainly what you mean. The young St. George who wears your colors must have slain his dragon."

"At least," Janice returned, softly, "he must have shown his willingness to kill the horrid thing."

The short winter day was already drawing to a close when the telegraph sounder began to call the station. Marty ran out at once and brought back the operator. He was quickly in communication with one of the great New York papers and found that it was over the paper's private wire that first authentic news from the Granadas district had arrived in the East.

The posse from Cida had found everything peaceful about the mines. The guerrilla leader, Raphele, had decamped. There had been an execution on the day John Makepiece had fled from the place; but the victims were some unfortunate Indians. The bandit had not dared kill the remaining American prisoner.

Mr. Broxton Day had managed to get into a shaft of the mine and there had lain hidden until Raphele, and his gang, had departed. Now he had gathered some of his old employees, and armed them with rifles hidden all these months in the mine, and the property was once more under Mr. Day's control and properly guarded.

Through the posse, Mr. Day made a statement to the newspapers, and to his friends and fellow-stockholders of the mine, in the States. To Janice, too, he sent a brief message of love and good cheer, stating that letters to her were already in the mail.

The relief Janice felt is not to be easily shown. To be positive, after these hours of uncertainty—and after the long weeks of worriment that had gone before—that dear Daddy was really alive and well, seemed too good to be true.

"Oh, do you suppose it can be so?" she cried, again and again, clinging to Nelson Haley's arm.

"Of course it is! Pluck up your courage, Janice," he assured her, while Marty sniveled:

"Aw, say, Janice! Doncher give way, now. Uncle Brocky is all right an' it would be dead foolish ter cry over it, when you kep' up your pluck so, before."

"Well! to please you both!" choked Janice, trying to swallow the sobs. "But—but——Come on! let's go home. Just think how worried Aunt 'Mira will be."

So they shook hands with the telegraph operator and Janice thanked him heartily. There were several other friendly folk of the neighborhood in the waiting-room when the three friends came out of the office, and the happy girl thanked them, too, for their sympathy.

It was quite dark when they got out into the cold again. The wind had shifted a point or two since morning, but it was still in their favor. Although the sun had set, the way up the lake was clearly defined. The stars began to twinkle, and after the Fly-by-Night was gotten under way the course seemed plain enough before them.

Now Janice enjoyed the sail. She was no longer afraid, and her heart beat happily. The ice boat made good its name on the trip to Poketown, and Nelson Haley brought the craft to land beside the steamboat dock in season for a late supper.

There was a crowd down at the lake's edge to see them come in. News of their trip to the Landing, and the reason for it, had been well circulated about town; and when Marty shouted to some of his boy friends that "Uncle Brocky was found—and he warn't dead, neither!" the crowd started to cheer.

The cheers were for Janice—and she realized it. The folks were glad of her father's safety because they loved her.

"People are so kind to me—they are so kind to me!" she cried again, and then she did burst into tears, much to Marty's disgust.



CHAPTER XXI

A STIR OF NEW LIFE IN POKETOWN

After that strange Christmas Day Janice saw a good deal more of Nelson Haley than she had before. The teacher was several years her senior, of course; but he seemed to find more than a little pleasure in her society.

On Janice's side, she often told herself that Nelson was a real nice young man—but he could be so much more attractive, if he would! When the girl sometimes timidly took him to task for his plain lack of interest in the school he taught, he only laughed lightly.

Nelson Haley suited the committeemen perfectly. He made no startling innovations; he followed the set rules of the old-fashioned methods of teaching; and (to quote Elder Concannon) he was a Latin scholar! Why the old gentleman should consider that accomplishment of such moment, when no pupil in the Poketown school ever arrived even to a Latin declension, was a mystery to Janice.

Even Miss 'Rill had better appreciated the fact that Poketown needed a more advanced system of education, and a better school building as well. And there were other people in the town that had hoped for a new order of things when this young man, fresh from college, was once established in his position.

They waited, it seemed, in vain. Nelson Haley was content to jog along in the rut long since trodden out for the ungraded country school.

It was not long after the Christmas holidays, however, when there began to be serious talk again in the town over the inconvenience in locality and the unsanitary condition of the present schoolhouse. Every winter the same cry had been raised—for ten years! Elder Concannon declared loudly, in the post office one day, that if the school had been good enough for the fathers of the community, and for the grandfathers as well, it should be good enough for the present generation of scholars. Truly, an unanswerable argument, it would seem!

Yet there was now a stir of new life in Poketown. There was a spirit abroad among the people that had never before been detected. Walky Dexter hit it off characteristically when he said:

"Hi tunket! does seem as though that air reading-room's startin' up has put the sperit of unrest in ter this here village. People never took much int'rest in books and noospapers before in Poketown. Look at 'em, now. I snum! they buzz around that readin'-room for chances to read the papers like bees around a honey-pot.

"An' that ain't all—no, sir! 'Most ev'rybody seems ter be discontented—that's right! Even folks that git their 'three squares' a day and what they want to wear, ain't satisfied with things as they is, no more. I dunno what we're all comin' to. 'Lectric street lights, and macadamized roads, and all sech things, I s'pose," and Walky chuckled over his flight of imagination.

"Wal, I dunno," said the druggist, argumentatively, "I'm free ter confess for one that a different system of street lightin' wouldn't hurt Poketown one mite. This here havin' a lot of ile lamps, that ain't lighted at all if the almanac says the moon ought ter shine, is a nuisance. Sometimes the moon acts right contrary!"

"My soul an' body!" gasped Walky. "You say that to Elder Concannon, and Mr. Cross Moore, and ol' Bill Jones! They say taxes is high 'nuff as they be."

"And school tax, too, I s'pose?" demanded another idler in the drug store.

"Wal," said Walky, "I b'lieve we could give the little shavers a better chance to l'arn their A, B, C's. And that old schoolhouse can't be het on re'l cold days. And it's as onhandy as it can be——"

"I believe you're goin' in for these new-fangled notions, too, Walky," declared the druggist.

"Guess I be, on the school question, anyway. My woman says she sha'n't let our Helen go ter school again this winter, for she's got one cold right on top of another las' year. It's a plumb shame."

It was from talks such as these in the village stores that the fire of public demand for a new school building—if not for a new system of education—finally burst into open flame.

Usually, when there was a public meeting, the basement of the Union Church—-"the old vestry", as it was called—was used. But although Mr. Middler had timidly expressed himself as in favor of a new school building, he did not have the courage to offer the use of the vestry room.

Therefore the reading-room next to the drug store was one evening crowded with earnest supporters of the belief that it was time Poketown built a new structure for the training of her youth.

Janice saw to it that Uncle Jason went. Indeed, with Janice on one side and Marty on the other, Mr. Day could scarcely escape, for his son and his niece accompanied him to the place of meeting.

Not that the young folks went in, for there wasn't room. It seemed that the people who favored a change in the old town's affairs were pretty numerous, and there was not a dissenting voice in the meeting. It was decided to have a special town meeting called to vote, if possible, an appropriation for the building of a new schoolhouse.

This first meeting was only a beginning. It served merely to solidify that public opinion which was in favor of the improvement. At once opposition raised its head, and during the fortnight preceding the town meeting, argument, pro and con, was hotter than at election time.

Janice was deeply interested in the project, although she had, during these first weeks of the New Year, more important thoughts to fill her heart and mind. Daddy was writing to her regularly. The mine buildings were being re-erected. The old force had come back to work, and for the first time since Broxton Day had arrived in Mexico, the outlook for getting out ore and making regular "clean-ups" was bright. But trouble down there was not yet at an end, and that worried her greatly.

The story of her father's captivity in the hands of the brigand, Raphele, had been made of light moment in Mr. Day's letters that immediately followed his escape; but Janice understood enough about it to know that God had been very good to her. Some other American mining men and ranchers in Granadas had not escaped with their lives and property from Raphele and his ilk.

Daddy sent a photograph, too; but that was not until he had recovered some from his hiding out in the mine without much to eat. Although he was haggard and bewhiskered, his eyes had that look in them that Janice so clearly remembered. When she awoke and lit her lamp in the early morning, there he was looking at her from the bureau; and when she retired she kissed the picture in lieu of having his real presence to bid good-night.

Those gray eyes of Broxton Day reminded her always of his oft-spoken motto: "Do something!" He seemed to be saying that to Janice from his photograph; therefore the girl was not likely to lose her interest in such a momentous affair as the new schoolhouse.

There was another interest that held Janice's mind and sympathy. This was the condition of poor little Lottie Drugg. As she had been quite blind when Janice first met her, now her hearing had departed entirely. She could seldom now distinguish the notes of her father's violin as he played to her. She would sit on the store counter and put her hand often on Hopewell's bow-hand as he dragged the more or less harmonious sounds out of the wood and strings. Otherwise she could not know that he was playing at all!

Nelson Haley had been touched by the case of the storekeeper's little girl, and had discussed the matter with Janice. Nelson had even written to a Boston specialist who treated the eyes, and who had been very successful in such cases as Lottie's. The fee the surgeon demanded was from five hundred to a thousand dollars for an operation. And poor Hopewell Drugg, although he strained every effort, had succeeded in saving less than two hundred dollars during all these months!

Nevertheless, Janice would not let the storekeeper lose heart. "It will come in time, Mr. Drugg," she told him, cheerfully. "And Lottie will be able to go to that wonderful school, too, where she will be taught many things."

For if the child could once obtain her sight, lip-reading would be possible for her, and through that the little girl might gradually become as well educated as any one, and have a fair chance for happiness in the world after all!

Although Nelson Haley was touched by Lottie's sad condition, and by anything else going on about him that had the personal note in it, Janice thought the Poketown school-teacher showed very little public spirit.

She began to realize that his overseeing of the reading-room and library was inspired by his wish to please her instead of his actual interest in the institution. This was very complimentary, but it did not satisfy Janice Day at all.

She was not interested in Nelson Haley in a way to crave the attentions that he had begun to show her. Indeed, she did not really appreciate his attitude, for there was nothing silly in Janice's character. She was still a happy, hearty girl; and if she had romantic dreams of the future, they were nothing but dreams as yet!

She had the same interest in Nelson that she had in her cousin Marty. It troubled her that the young man did not seem to have any serious interest in life. Just as long as he tutored his classes through their recitations in a manner satisfactory to the school committee, he seemed quite careless of anything else about the school. He admitted this, in his laughing way, to the girl, when she broached the subject of the fight for a new school.

"But it's your job!" exclaimed Janice. "You more than anybody else ought to be interested in having the boys and girls of Poketown get a decent schoolhouse."

"And suppose old Elder Concannon and the rest of the committee get after me with a sharp stick?" queried Nelson.

"I should think you, a collegian and an educated man, would be only too eager to help in such a movement as this," Janice cried. "Oh, Nelson! don't you know that the people who are waking up in this town need your help?"

"My goodness me! how serious you are about it," he returned, teasingly. "Of course, if you insist, I'll risk my job with the committee and come out flat-footed for the new schoolhouse and reform."

"I don't wish you to do anything at all for me," returned Janice, rather tartly. "If your own conscience doesn't tell you what course to pursue, pray remain neutral—as you are. But I am disappointed in you."

"There is feminine logic for you!" laughed the young man. "With one breath you tell me to follow the dictates of my own conscience, and then you show me plainly just how much you will despise me if I go against your side of the controversy."

"You are mistaken," Janice said, with some little heat. "I do not personally care what you do, only as your action reflects upon your own character."

"Now, dear me!" he sighed, still amused at her earnestness, "I thought if I came out strongly at the town meeting for the new school, you would award me the palm."

"My goodness me!" exclaimed the exasperated girl. "Somebody ought to award you a palm—and right on the ear! You're as big a tease as Marty," and she refused to discuss the school project with him any further.



CHAPTER XXII

AT THE SUGAR CAMP

Nelson Haley was, however, at the town meeting and spoke in favor of the new school building. Janice had a full report of it afterward from Marty, who squeezed in at the back with several of the other boys and drank in the long and tedious wrangle between the partisans in the school matter.

"And, by jinks!" the boy proclaimed, "lemme tell you, Janice, it looked like the vote was goin' ag'in us till Mr. Haley began to talk. I thought he didn't have much interest in the thing. Nobody thought he did. I heard some of the old fellers cacklin' that 'teacher didn't favor the idee none.'

"But, say! When he got up to talk, he showed 'em. He was sitting alongside of Elder Concannon himself, and the Elder had made a mighty strong speech against increasin' taxes and burdenin' the town for years and years with a school debt.

"But, talk about argument! Mr. Haley sailed inter them old fossils, and made the fur fly, you bet!"

"Oh, Marty! Fur fly from fossils?" chuckled Janice.

"That does sound like a teaser, don't it?" responded her cousin, with a grin. "Just the same, Mr. Haley made 'em all sit up and take notice. He didn't only speak for the schoolhouse, and new methods of teaching, and a graded school; but he took up Elder Concannon's arguments and shot 'em full of holes.

"You ought to have seen the old gentleman's face when Mr. Haley proved that a better-taught generation of scholars would possess an increased earning power and so be better able to take up and pay the school bonds than the present taxpayers.

"Say! the folks cheered! When Mr. Haley sat down, the question was put and the vote went through with a rush. But Elder Concannon and Old Bill Jones, and Mr. Cross Moore, and some of the others, were as mad as they could be."

"Mad at Mr. Haley?" queried Janice, with sudden anxiety.

"You bet! But they can't take the school away from him till the end of the year, as long as he doesn't neglect his work. So Dad says, and he knows."

Janice was worried. She knew that Nelson Haley had hoped to teach the Poketown school at least two years, so as to get what he called "a stake" for law-school studies. And there were not many ungraded schools in the state that paid as well as Poketown's; for it was a large school.

The furor occasioned by the special town meeting, and the fight for the new school, passed over. A site for the school was secured just off of High Street near the center of the town—a much handier situation for all concerned. The ground would be broken for the cellar as soon as the frost had gone.

The committee appointed at the town meeting to have charge of the building of the school were all in favor of it. There were three of them,—Mr. Massey, the druggist, the proprietor of the Lake View Inn, and Dr. Poole, one of the two medical practitioners in the town. These three were instructed to appoint two others to act with them, and as these two appointees need not be tax-payers, one of them was Nelson Haley, who acted as secretary.

When Janice heard of this, she was delighted. She had not seen the teacher more than to say "how-de-do" since their rather warm discussion before the date of the town meeting. Now she put herself in the way of meeting him where they might have a tete-a-tete.

There were not many social affairs in Poketown for young people. Janice had attended one or two of the parties where boys and girls mingled indiscriminately and played "kissing games," then she refused all such invitations. She was not old enough to expect to be bidden to the few social gatherings held by the more lively class of people in the town.

The church did little outside of the ladies' sewing circle to promote social intercourse in the congregation. So, although the school-teacher might have been invited to a dozen evening entertainments during that winter, Janice did not chance to meet him where they could have a "good, long talk" until the Hammett Twins gave their annual Sugar Camp party.